This Psalm is an assurance of the sure realisation of God’s promises. Most people have expectations, some great, some less so. Whatever expectations we may have, they are sometimes a fire within us and sometimes a basis of despair.
I do have problems with David, King of the Jews. What a history! The OT lesson for this Sunday relates how God, through “His friends” (Ps. 89:19) promised a ‘house’/dynasty for David that would endure for ever. We see this as being realised in the life of Jesus, a life which endures to this day, with us. We read of this in 2 Sam. 7, but what a flawed character, reading on to Chapter 8 we read of how many widows and orphans he created in his region. Continue reading and he is in trouble for stealing an immediate neighbour’s wife, we already know that he has downloaded his genes to a whole string of girls. We may often wonder why God bothers with us, well she bothered with David!
AND God’s promise persists. We read in the epistles that the product of Jesus’ life and ministry is the vision of ‘a new heaven and a new earth’. This idea is first introduced for us in the concluding record of the prophet Isaiah, Is. 65 has the picture of ‘the new Jerusalem’ where the ‘lamb and wolf lay down together’ and then in chapter 66:22, new heaven and earth, (consistent with the Psalms which are pre-Christian, Isaiah concludes in v. 24 with a challenging aside).
Here we have questions to ponder. What does a new heaven mean? What does a new earth look like? Are we presently living in a new heaven & earth? Are we in the process now? Is this newness a product of the ministry of ‘the body of Christ’?
If the latter, as it seems to me, what is my/your /our role in this renewal?
Ian Farquhar
Launceston North Uniting Church