Psalm 44 expresses deep agony. The nation is in turmoil and, seemingly, a sitting duck for its enemies. They not only feel weak, they are weak, desperately so. And they are gloated over with great glee.
It hadn’t always been like this. In times past, things had been far more positive, far more expansive and assured. Looking back from the rusting present, they were the golden days, shiny and inviolable.
And the writer of Psalm 44 knows where the blame lies. The fault can be laid, fairly and squarely, at the door of the God to whom they belong - the living God, the God of all the earth; the unconquerable, all-powerful God of covenant faithfulness. And right now, this God is playing dead, acting deaf and covering his eyes to their harsh reality. In a devastating charge, he is accused of having sold his people for a pittance and been none the richer for it.
What galls the writer is that this would be understandable if they had acted treacherously towards him, but they hadn’t. They had been faithful to the covenant; they had kept their part of the bargain - and he had reneged on his (cf. Leviticus 26:3-8). And so he must be roused, awoken to their plight, stirred to take his own vocation seriously. Wasn’t it he who said they would be his people and he their God? Then it’s time to make good on that commitment.
Those are serious charges against a God whose character is supposedly marked to the core by faithfulness and integrity. But this is a deal that he did not make and cannot keep.
The apostle Paul quotes from this psalm in Romans 8:36 as he rehearses the security he and his colleagues - along with all Christians - know in Jesus, even in the face of profound suffering. They are not spared the suffering - in fact, they’re like sheep ready to be slaughtered; nevertheless, "in all these things" they are more than conquerors in Jesus.
The experience of God’s people, as much in the Old Testament as in the New, would be traced along the arc of suffering for the sake of God’s purposes in the world. That would, of course, be uniquely exemplified by the Messiah; yet, whilst not replicating his atoning work, his people would nevertheless share in bearing his marks upon their bodies and fill up his sufferings (Gal 6:17; Col 1:24).
The (gospel) mystery of the anguish of Psalm 44 is that, if it wasn’t discipline for sin, then it must have a sanctifying - that is, a missional - dimension to it. The work of God progresses in the world not through sweeping all his enemies away in military victory but by the triumph of love over evil, even in the face of slaughter.
The context of Paul’s use of Psalm 44 in Romans 8 reminds us, too, that such suffering has a demonic aspect to it. Just as the nations raged in Psalm 44, just as Jesus was confronted and opposed by evil, so Paul and his companions knew the reality of such a struggle. It simply will not be otherwise.
And yet, still, in the face of such malevolence, "nothing can separate from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord". Nothing will prevent the whole cosmos being flooded by the light of his glory, as the waters cover the sea, even when the daily reality is that his people ”are considered as sheep to be slaughtered”.
The truth is, he hadn’t forsaken his people; he hadn’t refused to keep the bargain they believed he had made with them. There never was a promise of seamless victories over all hardship and all enemies. Rather, their experience would presage the coming of the Messiah whose sufferings would be for a world of sin. And those who suffer with him will have the Spirit of glory and of God resting upon them as he leads them in the greater security of his love.
The serpent would strike their heel - but in the Messiah, they would crush his head, through the gospel of the God of peace (Romans 16:20).
Two reflections in the light of the above:
i. Some prayer for revival can sound like a refusal to embrace suffering as a means by which the gospel will advance. That sounds dreadfully harsh, I know, but I believe it can be true. The impetus for such praying is the diminution of the church’s standing in the nation and the rise of secularism and other powers. And the answer, the only answer, it is suggested, is the ‘sweeping away’ of all such through a mighty revival. That sounds very much akin to the pleas of Psalm 44 but is sorely lacking the gospel refraction that psalm is given in Romans 8.
ii. Are we not in danger of giving a casual and careless response to the terrible sufferings of God’s people in the world, given that this is, seemingly, how it’s always going to be? And is that danger not increased through the relative ease in which many of us live? Indeed we are and indeed it is - but it need not do so. Whilst recognising the mysterious role of suffering in gospel progress and that to be God’s people inevitably means being caught up into the sufferings of the Messiah, it is still fully right to cry with the martyrs beneath the altar in Revelation, "How long, O Lord, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth…?" A lesser response, a failure to weep with those who weep, would be unconscionable.
