Psalm 89

Songs in the Tension

Psalm 89 carries us into the mystery of living between praise and lament. The psalmist begins with six reminders of God’s steadfast love, His promises to David, His power over evil, and His faithfulness across generations. Yet, with brutal honesty, he turns to complaint, asking how God’s covenant love can coexist with exile, defeat, and humiliation. The sermon highlights that two things can be true: God is good and yet life can be unbearably painful. Like Ethan the Ezraite, we are invited to bring our rawest questions before God, not with neat answers but with honest cries of “How long?” and “Remember me.” The psalm ends in silence, but the fuller story points us to Christ, God’s love embodied, mocked and scorned for our sake, yet faithful to the end. In Him we find not easy resolutions, but a Savior who enters the tension with us, carrying both our praise and our pain into the presence of God.