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 the psalm 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 acting deaf, playing dead 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 (see Lev. 26:3-8). And so he must be roused, awakened 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 his 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 he did not make and cannot keep.
The apostle Paul quotes verse 22 in Rom. 8:36 as he speaks of his and his colleagues' experiences in serving Jesus. They are not spared the suffering; in fact, they’re like sheep ready to be slaughtered. Nevertheless, "in all these things", in all the struggles and sorrows, in all the perplexities and alarms, 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 fulfilled by Jesus the Messiah. Yet, whilst not replicating his atoning work, his people nevertheless share in bearing his marks upon their bodies and fill up his sufferings in their own flesh (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.
And yet, gloriously, in the face of such malevolence "nothing can separate us 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 was, 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 unbreakable security of his love. We have his word on that.
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).
The truth was, 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 unbreakable security of his love. We have his word on that.
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).
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How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
Is laid for your faith in His excellent word!
What more can He say than to you He hath said,
You who, unto Jesus, for refuge have fled?
In every condition, in sickness, in health,
In poverty's vale or abounding in wealth;
At home or abroad, on the land, on the sea,
As days may demand, shall thy strength ever be.
Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed!
I, I am thy God, and will still give thee aid;
I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,
Upheld by My righteous, omnipotent hand.
“When through the deep waters I call thee to go,
The rivers of woe shall not thee overflow;
For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,
And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.
When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie,
My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply;
The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design
Thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine.
The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to its foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavour to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake!
('K' in Rippon's Selection, 1787)
