PSALM 85 - Revive Us Again

Introduction

What do you do when you show kindness to someone and they throw it back in your face? You go out of your way to show grace and mercy to someone who has wronged you or hurt you; you forgive them freely and completely, you have no hard feelings, you genuinely let go of whatever resentment or bitterness that you were tempted to gold on to. You made peace; you mended the bridge, you buried the hatchet, you kissed and made up. And then a week later, that family member or co-worker or spouse (or whoever it is) goes and throws it all away.

What do you do? The temptation at that point is to say, “You know what? I can’t keep doing this; I’m done. They can go their way, I’ll go mine.” To have your good-faith forgiveness and reconciliation just wasted like that—just squandered—is one of the most disheartening, frustrating experiences you can have. And everyone in this room has gone through something like that at one time or another.

And I think that is one of the reasons that our relationship with God can become so difficult at times. Because every one of us who have come to faith in Jesus Christ for salvation knows that we have done the exact same thing with God’s grace that has been poured out on us. To look back at the free grace and mercy of God that brought you to saving faith in Jesus Christ and set you free from your sin and shame and guilt and given you that New Birth by which the righteousness of Christ has been counted to you by faith—and then to realize how you have squandered that grace.

The lust and perversion He delivered you from has taken up residence in your heart again. The anger and hatred and violent temper He forgave you for has begun to reassert itself. He changed your heart of bitterness and envy into a heart of love and compassion, but that old green-eyed serpent is starting to slither back into your life.

It is easy to look on God and imagine He is saying the same thing to you that you are tempted to say—it’s easy to believe that because God has done so much in saving you, and you have wasted His grace with your ongoing foolishness and sin, that it feels somehow inappropriate to come to Him again; that you are doubly unworthy to ask for forgiveness, because you already received forgiveness and threw it away.

All too often when we come to a place like this (and all of us have, at one time or another), it is far easier to simply avoid dealing with it. We allow our shame of our foolishness and ongoing sinfulness to lead us away from God; to avoid coming to Him in prayer; to find reasons to skip church this week; to leave our Bible unread and our sin unchecked.

If you find yourself in a place like this today, then this is what I pray you will see from God’s Word in Psalm 85 this morning:

The grace of God that PUT you TOGETHER can put you BACK TOGETHER

This psalm is part of Book III of the Psalms, compiled as a series of laments and prayers to God at a time when it seemed like His promises to Israel had failed—how do God’s people remain faithful to Him when it feels like He has forgotten His covenant with them?

It’s unclear whether this psalm was written about the return of the people from their 70 year captivity in Babylon, or if it is referring to an earlier episode in Israel’s history. But one way or another, the opening of the psalm is plain: The psalmist is lamenting the way the people had squandered God’s salvation:

Psalm 85:1–4 (LSB)

O Yahweh, You showed favor to Your land; You returned the fortunes of Jacob. You forgave the iniquity of Your people; You covered all their sin. Selah. You withdrew all Your fury; You turned back from Your burning anger. Turn us back, O God of our salvation, And cause Your vexation toward us to cease.

They had experienced God’s great saving power, and had thrown it away. But instead of running further away from Him (as our first Parents did in the Garden when they heard God’s voice calling to them in the cool of the day), the psalmist instead pleads with God to restore them. This psalm can be divided up into four sections, showing us how we are to come before God to plead to be put back together when we have allowed sin to tear us up.

The first thing the psalmist does here as he comes to God for restoration for his people is to

I. Acknowledge God's remarkable ACT of DELIVERANCE (Psalm 84:1-3)

One of the best ways to plead with God for mercy when you have squandered His grace in your life is to acknowledge what you have wasted:

The psalmist acknowledges God’s great gift to His people as He

Brought RELEASE from CAPTIVITY to sin (v. 1; cp. Rom. 6:22)

Psalm 85:1 (LSB)

O Yahweh, You showed favor to Your land; You returned the fortunes of Jacob.

This is one of the reasons why some commentators suggest that this psalm was written after the Babylonian Captivity—the word fortunes in Hebrew can also be translated “captivity” (as in Deuteronomy 30:3)

Deuteronomy 30:3 (LSB)

then Yahweh your God will return you from captivity [there’s our word] and return His compassion on you, and He will gather you again from all the peoples where Yahweh your God has scattered you.

At its root it has the idea of “a way of life”, the general conditions of a way of living—sort of like the way we would talk about a young adventurer in a fairy tale “going off to seek his fortune”.

But see here, Christian, that this is what God has done for you, isn’t it? When He saved you, He set you free from the conditions of the way you were living; the sins that had held you captive—you died with Christ and you are no longer enslaved to the sins that used to control you. Where you once were helpless to say “no” to lust or bitterness or fear or laziness or anger, you now have the ability to say no to sin and yes to Him!

Romans 6:22 (LSB)

But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you have your benefit, leading to sanctification, and the end, eternal life.

God’s remarkable acts of deliverance meant that He brought release from captivity to sin, and also

Brought ESCAPE from WRATH against sin (vv. 2-3)

Psalm 85:2–3 (LSB)

You forgave the iniquity of Your people; You covered all their sin. Selah. You withdrew all Your fury; You turned back from Your burning anger.

God’s burning anger can also be translated furious anger—you deserved nothing less than the full fury of God’s righteous wrath against your crimes against Him. He had you dead to rights; all of the evidence He needed to convict you was right there before Him. You had done nothing to deserve anything from Him but damnation—everything you thought might help make your case that you were a good person did nothing more than add more guilt to your case; all the behavior you thought would impress Him only disgusted Him. And yet—with no help or participation on your part—He turned back His burning anger away from you!

The first part of this song is the psalmist’s confession on behalf of His people that their lapse into sin could not be traced to any fault in God’s saving them! There is no room for saying, “Well, God didn’t really save us back then—it’s not really our fault that we still struggled with sin...” No—God utterly delivered them from their captivity to sin; He completely turned away His righteous wrath from them over their guilt. Their subsequent return to their sin and folly is not because He didn’t finish the job of saving them; it is because they squandered His grace.

And so the second part of this psalmist’s prayer for restoration shows us that we must

II. Acknowledge our regrettable WASTE of God's GRACE (Psalm 85:4-7)

Verses 4-5 say:

Psalm 85:4–5 (LSB)

Turn us back, O God of our salvation, And cause Your vexation toward us to cease. Will You be angry with us forever? Will You prolong Your anger from generation to generation?

The word translated in the LSB as “vexation” (or “indignation” in the ESV) can also be rendered “provocation” or “anger”—it describes a response to being offended by insulting behavior. The psalmist is confessing on behalf of his people that

We have GRIEVED God with our FOOLISHNESS (cp. Eph. 4:30)

The Scriptures are clear here that, even though our iniquity is forgiven, our sin is covered, the furious righteous wrath of God has been withdrawn from us and His burning anger turned away, we can still offend and grieve God with our foolishness:

Ephesians 4:30 (LSB)

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

How do we grieve God with our foolishness? What does that look like in our lives? It looks a lot like leaving your phone and keys on the front seat of your car with the windows down while you run in to Sheetz for an iced coffee (when there are signs all over the place to “LOCK YOUR VEHICLE!!!”)—in other words, carelessness in your battles with sin. The folks at Sheetz know how many thefts are taking place in their parking lot, so they warn you to take precautions. But when you ignore them and get your phone stolen (or your car stolen!), it’s because of your own stupidity.

But we do that all the time in our spiritual lives, don’t we? We expose ourselves to temptations to sin, even though we are warned repeatedly throughout the Scriptures

Ephesians 4:27 (LSB)

...do not give the devil an opportunity.

And

James 1:14–16 (LSB)

But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is fully matured, it brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.

But deep down inside we still kind of want to be enticed by our own lust—so we leave the door open a crack, we walk down the wrong street, we ignore the sniper on the sloped roof—we are far more enticed by sin than we will admit. And God is vexed and indignant over how little we still desire His glory and how much we still desire the fleeting enticements of sin.

The psalmist acknowledges that we have vexed God with our foolish and deliberately inadequate defenses against the sin that still tempts us. And in verses 6-7 he goes on to say that

God must REVIVE us with His LOVINGKINDNESS (v. 6)

Psalm 85:6–7 (LSB)

Will You not Yourself return to revive us, That Your people may be glad in You? Show us, O Yahweh, Your lovingkindness, And give us Your salvation.

You left the door unlocked because you really kind of wanted sin to drag you off, and now you find yourself in the pig sty looking at the corn husks and melon rinds they’re trampling as they eat, and you realize how stupid you have been. The only way out of that pig sty of the consequences of sin is for God to bring you out. He Himself must be the One to revive you—to bring you back to life again out of the spiritual coma you’ve put yourself in. You can’t do it for yourself—you’ve let yourself be dragged away by your own lusts into prayerlessness, apathy toward worship, aversion to reading the Scriptures, awkwardness before God. The only hope you have is that God Himself will awaken you to spiritual life again.

And Christian, when you do cry out to Him in the midst of the pig sty you find yourself in, you have every confidence that He will immediately run to you with His love and forgiveness and restoration: Because He has spent the precious blood of His Son to seal His promise to save you and He will not allow that Blood to be wasted.

See the language of God’s covenant there in verse 7: “Show us O YHWH (the covenant name of God for His people) your lovingkindness (Heb. hesed—the steadfast, covenant love of God for His people).

In the original context of this psalm, the psalmist is confessing his people’s sin to God. And so he appeals to God’s unbreakable promise to love His people; that if they turn to Him in repentance, He will forgive them and heal them and give them salvation from their fooling around with sin.

The God who put them together from their lost state is the God who will put them back together in repentance. Christian, when you find yourself in the position of having squandered the grace of God that has been shown to you by your fooling around with sin, see the instruction of this psalm for your repentance—acknowledge God’s remarkable act of deliverance in bringing you to saving faith; acknowledge your regrettable waste of God’s grace. And when God in His great mercy and steadfast lovingkindness hears our cry to Him in the middle of the pig sty we find ourselves in, verse 8 shows us how we are to live in

III. Our humble RESPONSE to God's REVIVING us (Ps. 85:8)

Psalm 85:8 (LSB)

Let me hear what the God, Yahweh, will speak; For He will speak peace to His people, to His holy ones; But let them not turn back to folly.

It is always instructive to pay attention to the grammar of the text—if you look carefully you will see a shift as this psalm progresses. In verses 1-3, the psalmist is speaking in the third person plural—he is talking about others:

Psalm 85:2 (LSB)

You forgave the iniquity of Your people; You covered all their sin. Selah.

And then, in verses 4-7 he switches to the second person plural:

Psalm 85:4 (LSB)

Turn us back, O God of our salvation, And cause Your vexation toward us to cease.

But look here in verse 8 and you see that he has gone from saying they to we and now to me— “Let me heart what the God, YHWH, will speak… When God grants you that revival and return to Him, one of the signs of that work in your heart is your humble recognition that

“I must LISTEN to His WORD”

Depend upon it—just about every episode of sinful folly that a Christian can land himself in begins with somehow getting out from under a regular, intentional exposure to God’s Word. And when God brings that repentance and revival to a backsliding believer’s life, one of the first signs of His work is a renewed hunger for God’s Word.

As the psalmist prays for his people to be revived and restored to their right covenant fellowship with YHWH, notice that he doesn’t pray that they would listen to His Word or that they would come to Him—he prays it for himself first.

The prodigal son’s first response when he came to his senses was to go to his father. In the same way, Christian, when you wake up in the pig sty flee to God in His Word! You may have all kinds of excuses or justifications for how you wound up in such a fix; you may have a long list of other people who you blame for landing you in that folly, but the way out is when you resolve that you are going to search God’s Word for His instruction and His correction.

And as you do, you have the assurance—as did the psalmist—that God “will speak peace to His people, to His holy ones...” (v. 8b). The Scriptures will speak peace to the child of God; God’s Word will speak comfort and restoration to the heart regenerated by the New Birth in Christ.

When God revives our hearts, He brings with that revival a renewed hunger for His Word, so that we say “I must listen...” And the end of verse 8 gives us another resolution that we must make:

I must STOP being STUPID (v. 8b; cp. 2 Peter 2:20-21)

Psalm 85:8 (LSB)

... He will speak peace to His people, to His holy ones; But let them not turn back to folly.

When God grants that revival to your heart, Christian, don’t be a fool. Stop leaving the door open for those temptations to take another run at you—like the fool in Proverbs 7:8-9 who decides to just “go out for an evening stroll” past the adulterous woman’s house. You have been dragged away and enticed by that sin enough times you know better than to wander back into its neighborhood! If it’s lust, then quit using your phone when you’re by yourself or you’re tired or stressed. If it’s slothfulness, then stop turning the TV on in the middle of the day; if it’s anxiety, then stop filling your mind and heart with all of the 24/7 News Cycle Of Impending Doom; if it’s discontent, then stop binging on the beautiful home remodel contest reality shows and social media feeds of everyone else’s “perfect life”.

The Apostle Peter makes a sobering warning to those who go back to their folly of sin after having heard the Gospel:

2 Peter 2:20–22 (LSB)

For if they are overcome, having both escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and having again been entangled in them, then the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment handed on to them. The message of the true proverb has happened to them, “A dog returns to its own vomit,” and, “A sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire.”

Christian, when God awakens you from your folly and grants you revival from your spiritual coma, do not go running back to the sins that got you into that mess in the first place!

This psalm is a song of encouragement to you, Christian, that the grace of God that put you together can put you back together. Acknowledge God’s remarkable act of deliverance that saved you; acknowledge your regrettable waste of His grace towards you when you run back to the sin He saved you from; respond with humility to His reviving your heart, resolving to listen to His Word and not return to your folly.

Beloved, in this life you will always be fighting this war—you will win battles with sin, and you will lose battles. There will be times when you will find remarkable victory over the flesh, and there will be seasons when you will be laid low by temptation. Both realities are reflected in this psalm—the great rejoicing over God’s favor to His people and His covering of their sin; His people’s great cry of lament over their squandering of His great grace and mercy as they turned back to their foolishness.

But see here as this psalm closes that you are not doomed to an eternal struggle back and forth between faithfulness and foolishness, obedience and backsliding. Because this great battle that you are engaged in, Christian, is not dependent on your own ability to be righteous. It is dependent on

IV. God's great PROMISE for your RIGHTEOUSNESS (Psalm 85:9-13)

Look as we move on through verses 9-10:

Psalm 85:9–10 (LSB)

Surely His salvation is near to those who fear Him, That glory may dwell in our land. Lovingkindness and truth have met together; Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.

The great promise for our righteousness before God is that

We have been RECONCILED to Him (v. 10; cp. Romans 8:2-4)

Consider that image there in verse 10— “Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” By itself, the righteousness of God does not bring peace, does it? When your life—what you have done, who you are—is brought before the scrutiny of the righteousness of God, the result can only be condemnation:

Psalm 130:3 (LSB)

If You should keep iniquities, O Yah, O Lord, who could stand?

Martin Luther hated the notion of the righteousness of God because it was a standard that he knew he could not keep. There is no peace possible with God as long as His righteousness stands in judgment of our sin.

But in Jesus Christ, the perfect righteousness of God met the peace of God—He made peace between us and God the Father by His death on the Cross, satisfying God’s righteous demands so that you and I could be reconciled to God:

Romans 8:2–4 (LSB)

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

Christian, you can fight sin and win, you can fight sin and lose; you can get knocked down and get back up off the mat and fight again and again and again—because your righteousness is guaranteed by Jesus Christ Himself!

The righteousness of Christ that has been counted to you by faith is not (as some see it) an excuse to live however you want with the expectation that God has to forgive your sin—like the social media profiles with a Bible verse in the bio and a feed filled with links to shockingly explicit songs and videos. The righteousness of Christ that has been counted to you by faith is your promise from God that you will not be finally lost in all your battles with sin!

Your comfort, Christian, as you find yourself fighting over and over with sin, as you struggle day by day to “put off the old man with its evil practices” (Col. 3:9), as you pick yourself up off the mat once again, having blown it for the umpteenth time, is that in Christ you have been counted righteous, and that in the end you will be given victory over your sin!

In the closing verses of this psalm the psalmist sings of his steadfast hope that the righteousness of YHWH will prevail—that

We will be ESTABLISHED in BLESSINGS (vv. 11-13)

Psalm 85:11–12 (LSB)

Truth springs up from the earth, And righteousness looks down from heaven. Indeed, Yahweh will give what is good, And our land will yield its produce.

Just as he began this psalm with thankfulness for how God had delivered them from their sin in the past and “showed favor to His Land” (v. 1), so he ends the psalm saying, He is faithful to do it again! The blessings of faithfulness in the Old Covenant were always tied to the fruitfulness of the Land that YHWH had given His people:

Deuteronomy 28:2–4 (LSB)

“And all these blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you listen to the voice of Yahweh your God: “Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. “Blessed shall be the offspring of your body and the produce of your ground and the offspring of your beasts, the increase of your herd and the young of your flock.

And so the psalmist is looking back to that promise, believing that the glory of faithfulness to YHWH would once again be seen in their Land—He would give what is good, and the land would yield its produce. The barren wasteland of their faithless wanderings from God would be transformed into a fruitful garden by His grace.

Have you found yourself in that wasteland today? You have been playing stupid games with your sin, and now are winning stupid prizes—God poured out His amazing mercy and grace on you when you came to Christ for salvation, and He set you free from your captivity to sin in remarkable ways, it seemed as though the joy and freedom and peace you had with God was a treasure so wonderful that you were utterly certain that nothing could ever compete with your love for Him and your commitment to being His disciple.

But then the temptations came. And your will wavered. And your convictions began to crumble. The Devil began to push all the old buttons. And you began to stumble. You began changing your tune when it came to your faith—it was still “very important” to you, but all of those old allegiances, all those old desires started crowding in on you. And pretty soon you find yourself, as Steve Taylor wrote, “locked in a washroom turning old tricks; deaf, joyless and full of it” ("The Finish Line Lyrics." Lyrics.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 23 Jul 2024. <https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/1044067/Steve+Taylor/The+Finish+Line>)

Beloved, if this is where you find yourself today—so far away from the joy and peace and holiness that you once knew—see here the promise in God’s Word for you today: In Christ, you have a promise of restoration in that right standing with God! The God who put you together to begin with will put you back together because of the work Christ has done on the Cross—the implacable righteousness of the thrice-holy God has been kissed by the Peace of the Son of God purchased on that Cross so that you can receive His gift of repentance and restoration!

Isn’t it time to leave all that foolishness behind? Isn’t it time to be done with the stupidity of making a great show of your Christian life while at the same time giving yourself a pass on your favorite sins? How can a Christian be so callous as to look on the dying agony of Christ on the Cross, suffering the unbearable physical and spiritual torture of purchasing your redemption from the wrath of God, and say in effect, “Hey, as long as You’re dying for these sins, would You mind if I added one more sin that I am planning on committing later today?” How stupid can you be?

Christian—you have been purchased by the blood of Christ; the righteousness of God has met the peace of God through His work, and He delights to call you back to repentance! When the prodigal came home, wincing over how he had squandered his father’s wealth and certain that he would only be fit for slavery, his father ran to meet him with all the blessings he could bring! Christian, no matter what kind of pig sty you’ve been living in, no matter what treacheries you have committed against the grace that purchased you, you can come home!

And if you look at your Christianity as a way to add value to an already moral life—trusting in Jesus gives you an extra boost to your good habits and upstanding values—then you need to understand that your Christianity is only skin deep. Because if your notion of what Christ does for you goes no farther than making you a more decent person and being your friend when things get rough; if you do not see Him as your only hope to escape the holy wrath of God that you so richly deserve because of your utter wretchedness and sinfulness before His righteousness, then you do not really know Jesus at all.

Jesus Christ is God Himself in human flesh, Who came to earth in perfect holiness and sinlessness and chose to take on your sin and be crushed under the wrath of God for you. There is nothing that you contribute to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary—and it is only when you leave all of that sin behind (even the fun stuff) and plead with Him for mercy on your miserable condition, to forgive your iniquity and cover all your sin and withdraw His fury and turn back His burning anger from you that He will show you His lovingkindness and give you His salvation:

Romans 10:9–10 (LSB)

that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, leading to righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, leading to salvation.

There is rescue from the penalty and power of your sin; there is righteousness and peace with God purchased by the Cross; there is restoration for all of the barren wastelands of sin and folly of your rugged ways—you can have all of it, in this life and the next, when you come—and welcome! to Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION

Hebrews 13:20–21 (LSB)

Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, our Lord Jesus, equip you in every good thing to do His will, by doing in us what is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

ADDITIONAL NOTES: