The Longing For The New Normal

Psalm 85

1 LORD, you were favorable to your land; you restored the fortunes of Jacob. 

2 You forgave the iniquity of your people; you covered all their sin. Selah 

3 You withdrew all your wrath; you turned from your hot anger. 

4 Restore us again, O God of our salvation, and put away your indignation toward us! 

5 Will you be angry with us forever? Will you prolong your anger to all generations? 

6 Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you? 

7 Show us your steadfast love, O LORD, and grant us your salvation. 

8 Let me hear what God the LORD will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his saints; but let them not turn back to folly. 

9 Surely his salvation is near to those who fear him, that glory may dwell in our land. 

10 Steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other. 

11 Faithfulness springs up from the ground, and righteousness looks down from the sky. 

12 Yes, the LORD will give what is good, and our land will yield its increase. 

13 Righteousness will go before him and make his footsteps a way. 

There are places in Scripture that give us a sense of comfort and contentment with normality.

But then there are also places in Scripture (Psalm 85) that exhort us to a kind of holy discontent with the way things are, with the normal rhythms of life in a fallen world.

Wouldn’t it be nice if it was just one or the other? Wouldn’t that simplify our expectations?

This Psalm is meant to cultivate in us a longing for a new normal—a longing for the inbreaking of God’s mercy and power

in our lives, in the church, and in the world.

Recall (1-3)

When Israel falls into unbelief and idolatry, often that is linked with forgetting the displays of the saving power of God in

their midst.

We often pray like Deists, as though God had a policy of non-interference with the world as it is.

The Old Testament is theology in action. God works, speaks, feeds, subdues, lifts up, brings down, leads, loves, saves!

Pray (4-7)

In one sense the ultimate judgment is for a sovereign God to refuse

to overcome that which is most normal about life here – namely global idolatry and personal idolatry.

The Psalmist doesn’t merely say, “Help us to turn.” It pleads with

God to do something more: “Turn us, bring us back, restore us!”

God revives his Church by revealing himself afresh. He “shows us”

his steadfast love.

This passage and its faith-filled prayer for a new normal, is a kind

of rebuke: If you don’t believe personal, societal, national, even global revival is possible, you have forgotten the power of God.

Trust and Obey (8-13)

Whatever this reviving work of God is – it’s not something that

renders the believer passive.

If we don’t pray for things that might set us up for disappointment

we’re not doing it right.

We are not called to merely pray safe, self-protecting, face-saving

(“realistic”) prayers.

We are to pray and hope as though God has options!

Thanks Matt!