I Will Sing of the Steadfast Love of the Lord

Order of Service

• Bible Study — Psalm 89:1-14
• Prayer

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Sermon Title: I Will Sing of the Steadfast Love of the Lord

Scripture: Psalm 89:1-14

I. The God of the Covenant Is Full of Steadfast Love

• A. The Psalm is attributed to Ethan the Ezrahite, likely the Levite musician David appointed to serve before the tabernacle, mentioned in 1 Chronicles 6:44.

• B. Psalm 89 is the final psalm of Book Three of the Psalter (Psalms 73–89), the darkest of the five books, characterized by lament, exile, and sorrow over God seemingly abandoning Israel.

• C. The Psalm divides into two stark sections: verses 1–37 praise God for his covenant with David, while verses 38–52 shift to lament, questioning whether God will fulfill his covenant promises.

  1. The Psalm was likely used by Israelites in Babylonian exile, voicing grief over the destroyed temple and the absence of a Davidic king.
  2. The Davidic covenant, rooted in 2 Samuel 7, promised David an everlasting dynasty and throne through his offspring.

• D. The central theme is hesed — the Hebrew word for steadfast love, covenant loyalty, and faithfulness — which appears throughout all 52 verses.

  1. Hesed is bound up with God's covenant-making nature, first prominently seen in the Mosaic covenant at Sinai (Exodus 33–34).
  2. Here in verse 3, hesed is expressed specifically in terms of the Davidic covenant.
  3. Covenant theology shows that hesed does not change, but deepens and is expressed through successive covenantal administrations: Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, and New.

• E. God's love is not abstract or merely emotional — it is defined and made concrete by his covenant vows.

  1. Unlike human love that can fade, God's steadfast love is bound to an oath he swears by his own name.
  2. God's hatred of divorce (Malachi 2:16) reflects that divorce is antithetical to his covenant-keeping character.
  3. The ninth commandment — "You shall not bear false witness" — is fundamentally covenant language: God bears true witness to his promises and calls his people to do the same in their dealings with one another.

II. The God of the Covenant Is Lord of the Heavens

• A. Verses 5–8 depict the angelic host — the assembly of holy ones in the third heaven — praising God as greater than all heavenly beings.

• B. The faithfulness surrounding God's throne (verse 8) is best understood as the angelic host proclaiming and praising God's faithful character, as angels do at the birth of Christ and throughout the book of Revelation.

• C. God's immensity — his boundlessness and inability to be contained — is affirmed: as Solomon declared at the temple dedication, even the heaven of heavens cannot contain him (1 Kings 8:27).

  1. This is why the second commandment forbids idols: no image can contain or represent the immense God.

• D. The theological point: the one who stoops down to make covenant in time and space is the same one whom the angels have praised in eternity as the faithful one full of steadfast love.

  1. God does not act in steadfast loving ways in order to become steadfast love — he acts that way because he is, by nature, steadfast love.
  2. The angels' eternal praise of God's faithfulness is a guarantee and added weightiness to every covenant promise he makes with his people.

III. The God of the Covenant Is Lord of the Earth

• A. Just as the greatest beings in heaven praise and submit to God, so do the greatest spectacles of earth (verses 9–14).

• B. God stills the raging sea (verse 9) — the sea was a symbol of chaos and overwhelming power that no human could withstand.

• C. God crushes Rahab (verse 10) — most likely a reference to a mythological beast symbolizing the forces of chaos, also referenced in Job 9:13, Job 26:12, and Isaiah 51:9.

• D. Mount Tabor in the Jezreel Valley and Mount Hermon in the north — the most majestic mountains in Israel — bow and submit to the Lord (verse 12).

• E. All of creation has a vested interest in God's covenant-keeping, as seen in the Noahic covenant and in Romans 8:22, where all creation groans for the adoption of the sons of God.

• F. Psalm 89 calls us to add a dimension to our experience of general revelation: beholding majestic creation should prompt not only "Isn't God great?" but also "Isn't God faithful to his covenant?"

  1. When the Spirit enlightens our eyes through special revelation, we see that the God of creation is the covenant-making, covenant-keeping God.
  2. Creation's grandeur proclaims God's steadfast love, fulfilled ultimately in and through the covenant head who shed his blood — Jesus Christ.