A sermon on Psalm 85 for the Wednesday after the Third Sunday in Advent. Delivered by Pastor Caleb Strutz.

Sunday’s sermon was a little weird, focusing on the Introit instead of one of the readings. And we’re continuing that weirdness today, as we focus on the Psalm instead of the Gospel or Epistle. Psalm 85 is actually one that we’ve interacted with before, albeit in a more limited way.

The Introit can be divided into two parts, it’s usually taken from two separate verses of Scripture. On Sunday, we dove with the first part from Philippians 4, but then we also read Psalm 85:1, “Lord, You have been favorable to Your land; You have brought back the captivity of Jacob.” Just like the Introit introduces the theme for the service, the first verse of a Psalm often sets the tone for the rest of the Psalm.

And, just like on Sunday, we see in Psalm 85 this mix of joy and sorrow. There’s rejoicing in the past and the future, but it’s restrained and hindered in the present. But the message can really be summed up in the first verse. The Lord has been favorable to you, past, present, and future.

I. Past

Our Psalm begins by the psalmist looking to the past and rejoicing in how God shown favor to His people. Notice the verbs in verses 1-3, “You have been favorable,” “have brought back,” “have forgiven,” these are all things that have happened in the past.

And when he looks in the past, he sees three things. Sin, anger, and mercy. He speaks of “the iniquity of Your people,” and “all their sin.” He’s real and honest when he looks at the past, he doesn’t sugar coat it or shy away from it.

And the effects and the consequence of that sin is God’s wrath and “the fierceness of [His] anger.” And again, he admits that that was justified. God is angry with sin and rightfully so. There’s no excusing that sin, no protest that it wasn’t fair for God to be angry. He calls a spade a spade, he’s real about sin and its consequences.

But even with this language of sin and wrath, it’s clear that this section is one of rejoicing. God has been favorable to His land, He has brought back the captivity of Jacob. Now it’s possible that this refers to the return from the Babylonian exile, but there’s certainly plenty of other periods in the history of Israel that this could refer to as well. He looks in the past and yes, there’s sin and yes, there’s wrath, but the most predominant thing is God’s mercy.

Even though they sinned, even though they provoked God’s wrath, He forgave their iniquity, He covered their sin, He took away His wrath. God has shown grace and favor and mercy, this is what he sees when he looks into the past, this is the foundation of this prayer, the foundation of the relationship between God and His people.

And we can see this as well. As we look into our pasts, we see a lot of regrets, a lot of things that we wish we had done differently. And we gotta be honest with that. And we gotta be honest with what that deserved. God’s wrath against sin is justified.

But as we look at the past, hopefully that’s not the only thing you see. The predominant note is God’s mercy and forgiveness. That even though there were times that we wanted nothing to do with Him, even though our sins deserved punishment, we see how God brought us through them. That He is faithful and has preserved us and carried us and the only reason we are where we are now is because of God’s grace and mercy. He has been favorable to us, restored us, and forgiven us.

II. Present

But that’s the past. It’s easy to see God’s mercy and grace in the past. It’s a lot harder to see it in the present. Even though this Psalm begins by rejoicing in God’s restoration, there’s this sense that now something’s off. Verses 4-7 shift to the present and show that something’s wrong.

God has brought back the captivity of Jacob, but now the plea is that He restore us again. He turned away all His wrath before, but now He’s angry again. We can look at the past and rejoice, but there’s no rejoicing in the present unless God revives us again.

This next section shows us that something’s wrong in the present. We can look in the past and see how God dealt with us with mercy and grace then, how our sin rightly provoked His anger but was turned away. But what about now? It’s hard to see that in the present.

Because sin doesn’t just stay in the past. When we look in the past, it’s easy to see how our sin provoked God’s wrath, but in the present, in this section, there’s no mention of sin, only of anger. When we experience troubles and difficulties and hardships, it’s a lot harder to be honest with ourselves in the present like we can be when we look in the past. We can look in the past and see God’s mercy, but that doesn’t always make the present any easier.

Even as we’re caught up in sin presently that’s hard to identify and admit, even as we go through times when it seems like God’s angry with us for no reason (although He never is), this cry for help and mercy is still built on this foundation of trust, as hard as that might be.

But how can we turn to God when He’s angry with us? That’s the last thing we want to do. When I feel like God is angry with me, my sinful nature wants nothing to do with Him. There’s this objection that it’s not fair. How often do we turn away from God when we need Him the most? God’s anger is a sign that something’s wrong. But how often do we try to put the blame on God instead of admitting that I’m the problem.

But we see that turning to God, even when He’s angry with us, is a small taste of mercy and grace. Because we can’t turn ourselves to God. We plead for Him to restore us, for Him to revive us. To get past our pettiness, to see past whatever’s going on in the present, we need to recognize that we need God to help us. We need Him to help us see what’s wrong and to trust in Him to see us through it all. We need Him to remind us of His faithfulness, to turn us to the past to see this mercy there and turn us to the future so that we can place our hope in His promises.

III. Future

And that’s exactly what the psalmist does in the second half of the Psalm, from verses 8 to 13. He has recalled the past, issued his plea in the present, and then he waits and looks forward to the future. He has poured out His heart before God and now he sits in silence, waiting for God to speak. Because he knows what he’s going to hear. The way out of the present is to be rooted in the past and to look forward to the future.

Notice again the tense of these verbs. We started the Psalm with these past actions, issued a plea for God to help in the present, and now we look forward to what God will do. And from the perspective of the Psalmist, when he looks forward, as he sees his way out of present difficulties, he looks forward to the Messiah.

“I will hear what God the Lord will speak, For He will speak peace To His people and to His saints; But let them not turn back to folly.” It’s hard to see your sin in the present, but as he looks to the future, he can see the present more clearly. God’s anger in the present moment seems unjustified, but as he looks forward to God delivering His people from their sin, he sees there’s something going on right now that we need to be delivered from. Even as we must endure the consequences of our sin, we look forward knowing what will happen, that God will speak peace to His people, that He will be gracious and forgiving again, just as He was in the past.

“Surely His salvation is near to those who fear Him, That glory may dwell in our land.” Again, see what the Psalmist is looking forward to. The way out of whatever is going on in the present is to look to Christ. In Jesus, God’s salvation is near to us, for He is Immanuel, God with us. In Christ, God’s glory has dwelt in our land, as God became man to rescue His people and bring them back from the captivity of sin.

“Mercy and truth have met together; Righteousness and peace have kissed.” These attributes of God are manifest in Christ. He has shown mercy in taking up the iniquity of His people. He is the truth as the Word of God incarnate. Righteousness and peace have kissed on the cross as He suffered innocently and as the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him.

In Christ, “Truth [has] sprung out of the earth,” as He was born of the Virgin, “And righteousness [has] look[ed] down from heaven,” as the Son of God left His heavenly throne to enter this world. As the Psalmist looks towards the future, he sees Christ as the fulfillment of all of God’s promises. As we look out of our present difficulties, we look to Christ for deliverance.

In Him, all the promises of God have come true. In Him, all our sins are covered and God’s wrath is taken away. In Him, we have the answer to every difficulty, we have God’s mercy and grace fully revealed. In Him, we have our path forward.

“Righteousness will go before Him, And shall make His footsteps our pathway.” As we journey through the present difficulties of this life, we follow in Jesus’ footsteps. We don’t journey alone, He shows us the way forward. He has blazed the trail for us, endured all of God’s wrath, passed through death, and rose triumphantly to life. And He brings us in His footsteps. He puts our sins to death, and brings us to new life. He shows us the way out of this world and into the next. The answer to the present lies in the future.

Once again we see how our lives are filled with mixed emotions. We can look to the past and rejoice as we see God’s grace and forgiveness then, we can look to the future and place our trust in God’s promises, but the present is always the most difficult, always the hardest to see clearly, always a struggle to rejoice in. But the present is placed in the context of the past and the future. So that even as we struggle because it seems like God’s angry with us for no reason, we still turn to Him and ask Him to help us to see things clearly and to see us through. When we become absorbed in the present, we’re not looking at God’s faithfulness in the past, we’re not looking to His promises in the future, we’re not looking to Christ. But He is the answer. He is mercy and grace and forgiveness incarnate. He leads us in the path of His footsteps as we journey through the difficulties of the present into God’s future and final deliverance. The Lord has been favorable to you, even now, because He always has been and He always will be. Amen.