Psalm 85:1-13

O Lord, You showed favor to Your land; You restored the captivity of Jacob. You forgave the iniquity of Your people; You covered all their sin. You withdrew all Your fury; You turned away from Your burning anger. Restore us, O God of our salvation, and cause Your indignation toward us to cease. Will You be angry with us forever? Will You prolong Your anger to all generations? Will You not Yourself revive us again, that Your people may rejoice in You? Show us Your lovingkindness, O Lord, and grant us Your salvation. I will hear what God the Lord will say; for He will speak peace to His people, to His godly ones; but let them not turn back to folly. 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. Truth springs from the earth, and righteousness looks down from heaven. Indeed, the Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its produce. Righteousness will go before Him and will make His footsteps into a way.^[1]

Psalm 85 is a prayer of mercy for the nation. The psalmist recounts what the Lord has done for His people and yet, in his estimation, the nation is not yet restored. He reasons that the cause of this delayed restoration is that God is still angry and wonders how long this anger will endure. What does restoration look like for the psalmist? Restoration has come when God speaks peace to His people. It has happened when “truth springs from the earth, and righteousness looks down from heaven.” It has happened when the Lord has given what is good and the land has yielded its produce.

Restoration is the rallying cry too of many today, and like the day in which the psalmist lived and wrote, it is just as elusive. It is not uncommon to hear the desire expressed to return to a romanticized time when things were perceived to be somehow better. The cry is for a return to a time of family values, or a time when morality was stronger, more excellent. It is surely debatable whether times were any better in the past than they are today. The answer surely lays in individual perception. Perhaps one’s energy is best spent not in longing for a past era that may have never been as good as they remember, but instead seeking for why things are not better. The psalmist concluded that the obstacle to restoration was the sin of the people and implores God to Himself revive the nation again so that the people may rejoice in Him. It sounds like a more than worthy plea for any generation, especially for the one in which we live.

Gracious God, our nation needs revival in the most desperate way. We have chased after other gods, and gone our own way. We have arbitrarily pronounced that which You despise good, as if morality is determined by public opinion. We have not obeyed Your commands, laws, or decrees, and we have failed to love You or our fellow humanity. You are justified in Your anger, but we ask that you relent from Your anger and provoke revival in our time and our land so that we Your people may rejoice in You again. Amen.

^[1] New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Ps 85:1–13.