Behold His Faithfulness

Behold His Faithfulness

Psalm 98

Main Idea: God’s faithfulness to his people means we can always rely on his promises and experience peace, joy, and hope in every circumstance.

Life is full of struggles. There are physical struggles—disability, infertility, the loss of a loved one, sickness, cancer—as well as emotional, relational, and spiritual struggles. Amid all these struggles, we have all kinds of questions for God, like, Where are you in the middle of this? Are you even there? Why is this happening in my life? When will this change? Some days we just ask, “God, how do I make it through this?”

If you’re asking those questions now, or if you’ve ever asked those questions, then you’re not alone in at least two senses. First, you’re not alone in that we all ask these questions at times, and it’s not just those who are alive today. The Bible is filled with people who asked real, honest questions like this of God—like the prophet Habakkuk: “How long, Lord, must I call for help and you do not listen or cry out to you about violence and you do not save?” (Hab 1:2). The Bible is not a book of shallow, trite faith that pretends everything is perfect in the world. This is a book about real wrestling with the realities of sin and suffering in the world and the inevitable questions that come with that.

Second, you’re not alone in your questions to God because God has not abandoned you in the middle of your questions. Amid the inevitable questions you and I wrestle with in this world, the God of the universe is faithful. Even when your faith starts to falter, God is faithful—to be with you, to help you, to uphold you, and ultimately to save you from a world of sin and suffering. That’s what Psalm 98 is all about.

Psalm 98 can apply to all sorts of different occasions. The psalmist praises God for his faithfulness but doesn’t identify a specific setting. Some people think this psalm is celebrating God’s salvation of his people out of slavery in Egypt, while others think it is celebrating when God saved his people out of slavery in exile, bringing them back to Jerusalem.

We’ll see what God’s faithfulness means, and then we’ll see why it matters.

What Faithfulness Means

In verse 3 the psalmist says that God has “remembered his love and faithfulness to the house of Israel.” Think of God remembering. We’re talking about the omniscient God of the universe, the one who knows everything in the world. How does he remember something? Doesn’t remembering something seem to imply that he forgot it at some point? You and I may forget all kinds of important and unimportant information, but not so with God.

Although God never forgets anything, there are times when we feel he has forgotten to listen to us, help us, or provide for us. God’s people felt this way when they were slaves in Egypt for four hundred years. We can only imagine the struggles of their faith during those years. They must have thought, God, where are you? When is this going to end? Yet we read this in Exodus 2:23-24 (emphasis added):

The Israelites groaned because of their difficult labor; and they cried out; and their cry for help because of the difficult labor ascended to God. And God heard their groaning; and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.

That phrase doesn’t mean God had forgotten his people. It means that when God’s people were wondering, “Does he remember us?,” God’s Word says he absolutely remembered them. He had not for one moment forgotten them. We read something similar in Exodus 6:2-6:

Then God spoke to Moses, telling him, “I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty, but I was not known to them by my name ‘the Lord.’ I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land they lived in as aliens. Furthermore, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are forcing to work as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant.

“Therefore tell the Israelites: I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from the forced labor of the Egyptians and rescue you from slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and great acts of judgment.”

God heard and remembered his people, and he delivered them. This kind of background in Israel’s history helps us makes sense of Psalm 98, for the Lord has “performed wonders; his right hand and holy arm have won him the victory. . . . He has remembered his love and faithfulness to the house of Israel” (vv. 1,3).

Psalm 98 also matches with the exile. For instance, after Babylon’s destruction of Jerusalem and deportation of the people of God, we read the following in Lamentations 5:1: “Lord, remember what has happened to us. Look, and see our disgrace! . . . Why do you continually forget us, abandon us for our entire lives?” (Lam 5:1,20). The people felt God had forgotten them. Yet, when God spoke to his people in the midst of exile, he reminded them that what they felt was not reality:

For this is what the Lord God says: I will deal with you according to what you have done, since you have despised the oath by breaking the covenant. But I will remember the covenant I made with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish a permanent covenant with you. (Ezek 16:59-60)

God had not forgotten his people, and he eventually brought them back from exile. This is why many people believe Psalm 98 was written on that occasion. Regardless of when this psalm was written, there are two things God’s faithfulness means.

God Never Forgets His People

Even when it seems like the world is caving in around you, you don’t ever have to wonder if God has forgotten you. God is faithful, which means he hears you in your groaning, he sees you in your suffering. He knows you and he loves you, and he doesn’t ever forget you.

God Always Keeps His Promises

Verse 3 says that God has remembered his “love” to the house of Israel. The psalmist uses the word for God’s covenant love. When God called Abraham, the father of God’s people Israel, God entered into a covenant with Abraham. A covenant is similar in some ways to a marriage commitment. God promised to be with Abraham and his descendants; he promised to bless them, to protect them, to preserve them, and to bring them into the promised land. So when God saved Israel from slavery in Egypt, and then from slavery in exile, God was keeping his promises. This covenant-keeping love is featured throughout the book of psalms (and throughout Scripture as a whole).

For example, Psalm 105 recounts the history of God’s people, including the time when God’s people were slaves in Egypt (v. 23). God sent Moses to perform all kinds of signs and send all kinds of plagues among the Egyptians (vv. 26-36), eventually bringing Israel out of Egypt (v. 37) and leading them with a cloud by day and fire by night (v. 39). God gave them bread from heaven and water from a rock (vv. 40-41). So why did God do all of this? Psalm 105:42 tells us: “For he remembered his holy promise to Abraham his servant.” God never forgets his people, and God always keeps his promises.

Another place we see God’s faithfulness is in the story of Christ’s birth. Here’s how Luke’s Gospel presents God’s covenant-keeping love to his people through a man named Simeon:

There was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. This man was righteous and devout, looking forward to Israel’s consolation, and the Holy Spirit was on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he saw the Lord’s Messiah. Guided by the Spirit, he entered the temple. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to perform for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him up in his arms, praised God, and said,

Now, Master, you can dismiss your servant in peace, as you promised. For my eyes have seen your salvation. You have prepared it in the presence of all peoples—a light for revelation to the Gentiles and glory to your people Israel. (Luke 2:25-32)

God’s promises of a coming Messiah started centuries before Simeon, stretching all the way back to the beginning of the Bible when sin, suffering, and death first entered the world. In Genesis 3:15 God promised that he would send a seed from the woman who would crush the head of Satan. In Genesis 12:1-3 God foretold how the seed of Abraham would bring blessing to all the peoples of the earth. He would be a prophet like Moses, according to Deuteronomy 18:15. According to 2 Samuel 7:16, he would be a king from the line of David, and his throne would last forever. Isaiah explained that he would be born of a virgin (Isa 7:14) and that he would be called “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace” (Isa 9:6).

These promises were a perpetual source of comfort and consolation in the midst of massive suffering among God’s people, whether it was during slavery in Egypt or when foreign nations eventually plundered them, destroyed the temple, and scattered them into exile. Yet, amid exile, God promised his people a shepherd from the line of David (Ezek 37:24-27). So even after God’s people returned from exile, they were still waiting for the Messiah. Again God promised, “Look, your King is coming to you; he is righteous and victorious. . . . He will proclaim peace to the nations” (Zech 9:9-10). All the way to the last chapter of the last book of the Old Testament, God promised, “The sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings” (Mal 4:2). Then there was silence—for four hundred years.

Imagine generation after generation asking, “Where do we look for help? What’s wrong?” Then, after centuries of silence, Simeon, who Luke says was “righteous and devout,” a man who had longed and looked for Israel’s consolation (Luke 2:25), walked into the temple trusting the promise of God on a day that seemed like every other day. But this day was different. The glory of God was in the temple; the consolation of Israel had come. Simeon had waited all his life; creation had waited for centuries. And now the Christ, the promised Messiah, was right in front of him. This was, and is, the greatest news in all the world: God has not forgotten his people! God has kept his promise—to bring salvation to you and me! This is why, according to Psalm 98, we respond by singing “a new song to the Lord,” for “he has remembered his love and faithfulness to the house of Israel; all the ends of the earth have seen our God’s victory” (vv. 1,3).

Why God’s Faithfulness Matters

After seeing what God’s faithfulness means, the psalmist gives us at least three reasons God’s faithfulness matters for our lives.

You Can Have Peace from Your Past

Psalm 98 starts by looking back, then it looks to the present, and finally it looks to the future. Regardless of whether the psalmist is looking back to slavery in Egypt or slavery in exile, he’s talking about the Lord’s deliverance and salvation. How much more, on this side of the coming of Christ and his death on the cross for our sins, should we sing this “new song”?

God has saved us not just from slavery in Egypt or exile but from our sin! Despite our unfaithfulness to him, he has remained faithful to us. He has not forgotten us. He has kept his promises to us—to love us, to care for us, to keep us, to preserve us, to save us from our sin. In Jeremiah 31:34 God promises to all who trust in Jesus, “I will forgive their iniquity and never again remember their sin.” Oh, Christian, let this soak in: God has saved you not only from the penalty and power of sin but also from the remembrance of it in your life altogether. He chooses not to remember any of it!

You Can Have Joy in the Present

In light of God’s faithfulness, the psalmist exhorts the whole earth to “shout for joy” to the Lord (v. 4) and to “shout triumphantly in the presence of the Lord, our King” (v. 6). The language in these verses is loud, with “trumpets and the blast of the ram’s horn” accompanying shouts and singing. In a world of sin and suffering, because of the faithfulness of God, we have a loud, triumphant song to sing.

Even in the midst of struggle, we know God has not, and will not, forget us. He will keep every single one of his promises to us—promises to strengthen us in the middle of our weakness, to give us wisdom in the middle of confusion, peace in the midst of turmoil, rest in the midst of stress, calm in the midst of anxiety, courage in the face of fear, and ultimately, hope in the face of despair. God has promised us every single one of these things, and he always keeps his promises, no matter how hard this world gets.

You Can Have Hope for the Future

The last part of this psalm is a call for all creation to celebrate the coming of the Lord. The righteousness of God will reign over the world, and everything in the world will be made right. This psalm is about something much bigger than deliverance from slavery in Egypt or from exile. It’s about something much bigger than even the initial coming of Christ. This is why Isaac Watts wrote his hymn “Joy to the World.” He wasn’t painting a picture of the birth of Christ; he was painting a picture of the return of Christ. He wrote about the day when heaven and nature are fully united in song before Christ the King.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,

Nor thorns infest the ground;

He comes to make His blessings flow

Far as the curse is found,

Far as the curse is found,

Far as, far as, the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace

And makes the nations prove

The glories of His righteousness,

And wonders of His love,

And wonders of His love,

And wonders, wonders, of His love. (Watts, “Joy to the World”)

Watts wrote this hymn in anticipation of the day when Christ will rule the world with truth and grace, and we will perfectly enjoy the glories of his righteousness and the wonders of his love. Obviously, all of these things are possible because of the first coming of Christ—his life, death, and resurrection—but we’re still waiting for the day when sin and suffering will be no more. We have put our hope in the faithfulness of God.

Reflect and Discuss

1. Why do times of trial and suffering cause us to doubt God’s promises?
2. How would you respond to the following statement: Only unbelievers feel abandoned by God. What examples would you use from Scripture?
3. Given that God is all-knowing, why does Scripture talk about God “remembering” his promises? How is this different from our inability to recall important bits of information from the past?
4. When have you felt forgotten by God? How were you reminded of his faithfulness?
5. What episodes in Israel’s history caused them to doubt God’s faithfulness?
6. What are some examples of God’s being faithful to Israel in the Old Testament?
7. How does Psalm 98 call us to respond to God’s faithful love?
8. How is God’s faithfulness demonstrated through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection? Name some specific Old Testament promises that were fulfilled.
9. How should God’s faithfulness affect our motivation to read, meditate on, and memorize Scripture?
10. Make a list of promises God has made to those who are in Christ so that you can memorize them.