There is a true story told of a drowning at Back, Lewis, on a dark winter’s night in the year 1894. A number of small-line fishing boats had already put to sea, as the weather seemed favourable. One of the local skippers and his crew arrived later than the rest. But before they launched their boat, the ‘Old Man’ lay down to put his ear to the shingle on the foreshore. He sensed through the sound that a storm was imminent and warned his crew not to launch the boat. The storm broke suddenly, with the result that a number of boats were wrecked, and a total of 19 crewmen were lost, including four fathers and four sons. Altogether eight women were widowed and 27 children left fatherless.

The physical posture of the skipper in this tragic story resembles the prayerful posture of the Psalmist in our text: but as he waits to hear God’s Word, he anticipates not a storm but the voice of peace! ‘God will speak peace to his people and to his saints.’ There is no peace in this world like having peace with God and experiencing the peace associated with receiving forgiveness of sins.

Now, commentators are for the most part agreed that this psalm was written after the return of the Jews from the captivity of Babylon. Despite the fact that they enjoyed such liberty through the gracious dealing of God, they seem to have fallen again into sin, and this psalm shows them suffering under some tokens of God’s displeasure.

Clearly the psalm was to be sung by the congregation, led by the overseer of the music. The writer of the psalm commits his composition ‘To the Chief Musician, a psalm for the sons of Korah’. From 2 Chronicles 20:19, we read that the descendants of Korah were singers in the temple.

The psalm suits the state and experience of the church in many stages of its history, and I wish to present some thoughts from the psalm under three headings, as it describes:

1. A people in trouble;

2. A people at prayer; and

3. A people resolved to wait upon God.

1. A People in Trouble⤒🔗

It is clear from a casual reading of the psalm that these people are conscious of God’s anger against them: what is not at all clear from the psalm is the specific reason for the Lord’s displeasure at this time. However, our general observation is that God’s anger with His people is always to be understood within the framework of the Covenant relationship that exists between them and their God. He has a claim upon their obedience and trust, and when they break outside the parameters of this relationship, and forsake their covenant responsibilities, God is justifiably angry with them.

Specific reasons for God’s anger can be gleaned from the pages of biblical history as His people failed to be true to their God. The LORD also revealed His anger at social injustices, such as when widows and the fatherless were treated unfairly; and the people of Israel on numerous occasions provoked the LORD by their idolatry, turning to other gods. Now, the subjects of this psalm in some measure knew that their God was a ‘consuming fire’ as they experienced His anger against them. His anger was revealed against His people in various ways down through the centuries.

Now, although we are separated by time and culture, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination for us to see some parallels between the problems experienced by God’s ancient covenant people and ourselves. The troubles in our national life and our ecclesiastical life as well as our personal lives can often and easily be traced back to our departure from the Word of God, some abdication of our covenant responsibility. The high crime rate, the constant threat from terrorism, the broken families, the teenage pregnancies, the abuse of children, the half empty churches, the broken Sabbaths, all seem to make a common statement.

That our God is angry with us cannot be denied.

The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.Romans 1:18

But where do we go from here? Where did the composer of this psalm go? He and his people turned to the God of their salvation in prayer!

2. A People at Prayer←⤒🔗

Someone has said, ‘Perplexity is the great provocative of prayer’. To be sure, adversity often bends the knee that would rarely stoop at any other time. And the prayer of the believer is not unwelcome because necessity provokes it; the Lord invites the emergency summons:

Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.Psalm 50:15

As the Psalmist, with some urgency, turns heavenward for help, he immediately draws encouragement from the LORD’S dealings with His people in past generations, and prays for God’s intervention. After all, God had already shown favour to His land, His people, whom He had chosen for Himself! He had delivered them from the Egyptian bondage, taken them through the wilderness, fed and protected them, and given them the land of Canaan for an inheritance, a land flowing with milk and honey.

‘You have brought back the captivity of Jacob,’ the Psalmist argues, and this in a temporal sense, from Babylon. But we understand that in God’s gracious dealing, there is a spiritual deliverance, out of the clutches of sin and Satan. Redemption through Christ secures an eternal deliverance.

In verse 2 he continues to be encouraged: ‘You have forgiven the iniquity of your people.’ Their iniquity was great, but this was lifted off them through God’s way of atonement. Christ, the sin bearer, has borne it, carried it away so that it shall never return to their destruction. By the application of His blood to their consciences, each believer will discover forgiveness for themselves.

‘You have covered all their sins.’ The blood of Christ’s sacrifice covered the sins so that God was propitiated. God’s justice is satisfied and God’s law no longer condemns. No sin remains uncovered!

In verse 3 he receives comfort from the thought that ‘You have taken away all your wrath.’ Sin occasions wrath and the people of God are as deserving of it as others, yet the LORD has gathered it up and poured it forth upon His Son, who stood in their room and stead. He continues: ‘You have turned from the fierceness of your anger.’ The anger of God is very fierce against sin and sinners. It is poured forth like fire and there is no abiding it. ‘Our God is a consuming fire’ (Hebrews 12:29).

However, regarding the LORD’S people, the wrath of God is pacified through the atoning work of the Mediator, the LORD Jesus Christ.

In His office as priest, Christ ...once offered up himself a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice and reconcile us to God. The prophet Isaiah, in his own day, could sing: ‘O LORD, I will praise you: though you were angry with me, your anger is turned away, and you comfort me.’Isaiah 12:1

In Psalm 85, the man of God, encouraged at the remembrance of God’s mercies shown in times past, now approaches the Throne of Grace and makes the following petitions:

• Firstly, in verse 4, he pleads, ‘Turn us’, or ‘Restore us, O God of our salvation’. These words clearly acknowledge that he and the congregation have been rebellious, walking on the wrong road, even the road of disobedience, away from their God.
  
  This is also a fervent prayer for grace to repent, addressed to the only One who holds real hope for the individual and the nation.
  
  Each one of us, sensible of our own and the church’s sins, should in similar fashion apply to God, who gives repentance and forgiveness to His backsliding people. Here we note the order of the petition of the man of God: he prays in the first place, ‘turn us, O God’. And then he looks expectantly to the God of all grace to remove the tokens of His wrath. And the LORD’S covenant of grace is the only ground upon which to pray and hope for deliverance.

• Secondly, in verse 6, he prays, ‘Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?’ Literally: Make us live again! A time of backsliding is surely a time of deadness in the church. But this man remembers better times.
  
  Of course our own Scottish church history is studded with bright and joyous times of revival such as took place at Kirk o’ Shotts and Cambuslang in the 17th and 18th centuries, and at other times such as in Uig, Lewis, in the 1820’s and Carloway in the 1930’s, to name but a few. These were times when the Spirit of God moved in a mighty way, extending and building up His kingdom.
  
  Rev. Norman Macleod, in his Lewis Revivals of the 20th Century, states that when we pray for ‘Revival’ we plead for Seasons when Christians are awakened to a more spiritual frame, to more fervent prayer; to more earnest endeavour to promote the cause of Christ; and along with this, or consequent upon it, seasons when impenitent and careless sinners are aroused to concern about their souls, and are led to accept Jesus Christ as He is freely offered in the Gospel.
  
  While it is agreed by all who have experienced a revival that what we need are not new methods but the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, it would seem that a ‘night of weeping’ often precedes a time of revival. In this psalm we see the believer wrestling at the throne of grace, seeking God’s blessing. In God’s good time the blessing came (v12).
  
  While we as a denomination have many reasons to thank God, I often ask myself the question, ‘What is the reason for what I perceive to be a lack of spiritual power in the church, and the low state of spiritual life in our nation today?’
  
  This is not a new question. It was asked, and an answer given, at a conference of ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church at Stellenbosch, South Africa in April 1912, as recorded by Rev. Andrew Murray in his book Prayer Power.
  
  Murray writes: ‘If only we study the conditions in all sincerity, we shall have to acknowledge that our unbelief and sin are the cause of the lack of spiritual power; that this condition is one of sin and guilt before God and nothing less than a direct grieving of God’s Holy Spirit.’
  
  Murray further explains: ‘...The Lord graciously so ordered it that we were gradually led to see the sin of prayerlessness as one of the deepest roots of the evil. No one could plead himself free from this. Nothing so reveals the defective spiritual life in minister and congregation as the lack of believing and unceasing prayer. Prayer is indeed the pulse of the spiritual life. It is the great means of bringing to the minister and people the blessing and power of heaven. Persevering and believing prayer means a strong and an abundant life.’
  
  Surely Murray is right in what he says!
  
  The prophet Habakkuk, in verse 3:2, fervently prayed in similar vein to the writer of Psalm 85:

O LORD, revive your work in the midst of the years! In the midst of the years make it known, in wrath remember mercy.

• Thirdly, in Psalm 85:7 our petitioner prays that he be shown the mercy of the LORD; that he might experience again in his soul, the power of that covenant love; that his heart might burn within him in response to a new view of God’s loving-kindness. To receive in his spirit, as old Simeon received in his arms (Luke 2:30) the salvation of God, saying as he rejoiced, ‘Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared before the face of all peoples...’

3. A People Prepared to Wait Upon the LORD←⤒🔗

Sadly and to our shame, we may sometimes be hasty to speak words in the presence of God without due reverence in our spirit. And this may be seen by the carelessness of our souls after prayer. Often we may be guilty of throwing away our prayers as children throw away toys, without looking after them enough, and not be as expectant of an answer as we ought. We should be like the beggar who pleads for alms. He is not satisfied with having made his request; he waits for an answer and never considers himself as having succeeded in his requests until he has received his desire.

The writer of Psalm 130:5-6 was also of a noble spirit, willing to wait for God’s answer to his prayers:

I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in His word do I hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning – yes, more than those who watch for the morning.

Similarly, with true earnestness of spirit, the man of God in Psalm 71:14 resolved with total commitment, seriousness, and great expectation to hope in his God continually.

In what sense should the believer expect to hear what God the LORD will speak? I do not think any of us should expect to hear an audible voice from heaven! God speaks to us in His written Word and by His Spirit. David in Psalm 40 waited patiently for the LORD, who inclined to him and heard his cry.

When our Risen LORD spoke to the two on the road to Emmaus, ‘He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself’ (Luke 23:27). We have in our possession these same Scriptures today, and have access to them through reading and hearing them expounded by the servants of Christ. It is our privilege and responsibility to ‘Receive the word with faith and love, lay it up in our hearts and practice it in our lives’ (Shorter Catechism, answer 90).

Of course, many voices call for our attention in the world; voices which are no better than the sirens of Greek Mythology, who lured seafarers to their death by their singing. Among these are the following:

• The voice of a generation that cares little for biblical authority or our Reformation heritage.

• The voice of a culture that places more value on appearance than on substance.

• The voice of man’s wisdom – which St Paul avoided like the plague while in Corinth.

Let us, like the skipper of the little fishing boat on that fateful night at Back, Lewis, in 1894 – who was in fact my great-grandfather – bow down and hear what God the LORD will speak. We must carefully put our ear to the Word of God that we might make out what He is saying to us, above the din and unholy noises of this world. What does the LORD say by way of encouragement to His poor people? He speaks peace!

Jesus said, ‘Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.’

The woman taken in adultery also heard precious words from the mouth of Christ: ‘Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?’ She said, ‘No one, Lord.’ ‘Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more’ (John 8:11).

The charge to ‘sin no more’ has a parallel with the words of our text: ‘Let the saints not turn back to folly.’ There is nothing more inappropriate than that those who have heard the voice of Christ in peace go back to heeding the promptings of the world, the flesh and the Devil. We must be in danger of doing this; otherwise the Scripture would not have issued such a warning!

May God keep us, always prayerful, watchful and faithful, doing His will and not our own, lest we turn back to folly. And during these days of General Assembly I pray that we all be eager to hear and obey the LORD’S voice in all matters, to His glory and for the good of His Cause among us.