Contemplating comfort

“I remember I used to read Psalm 88 years ago and think, ‘Man, there’s not a ray of sunshine in that psalm!’ ” recalls Jordan in an old study. “Somebody has said that there’s ‘no ray of light or word of comfort’ in this whole psalm. That’s true except for verse 1: ‘O LORD God of my salvation.’

“The only hope in that psalm is the first phrase. The rest of it is just a plaintive cry of the Believing Remnant in Israel as they are consumed by the despair and the persecution of that time of Jacob’s trouble, and you see that deep longing that takes hold of the Little Flock’s heart as they look to the Lord for deliverance.

Psalm 89 is the deliverance. It’s sort of the capstone of the description of the deliverance and the avenging and the release of Israel from all the persecution into this great light—this sunshine of the sure mercies of David. Coming as it does after Psalm 88, it would certainly be a great balm.

Isaiah, when he talks about John the Baptist, he says, ‘Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem,’ this is the kind of stuff that will comfort them. Just like the words about God’s grace and the provision you have in Christ comforts you, these things are what give hope and comfort, strength and support for the nation Israel.

“The word ‘comfort’ is an interesting word. We usually think about comfort like patting somebody on the back, making them feel better. But the word comfort really means to fortify somebody in their inner man. ‘Fort’ is for fortitude. The prefix ‘com’ is ‘to bring it into your life’ with fortitude. ‘To be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man.’

"That’s what comfort is and that’s what sound doctrine does in your inner man. The more doctrine--the more explanation, the more details you have--the more comfort there is.

“I’m often struck by I Thessalonians 4:18: ‘Wherefore comfort one another with these words.’ After describing the details of the rapture, he says, ‘Wherefore comfort one another with these words.’ I’ve thought and thought about that passage in the context of I Cor. 15:52: ‘In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.’

“It takes longer to read that than it takes for that to happen! Your resurrection is going to take place at the speed of light.

“That moment there . . . the Greek word translated ‘moment’ is our word ‘atom.’ When that word ‘atom’ got into the English language, it meant ‘the smallest part of something.’ Now, we now know you can split the atom and find some smaller things, but the reason they use that word in English is because that was the smallest thing anybody knew about. In order to define that, Paul goes on to call it ‘in the twinkling of an eye.’ The reflection of light off of your eye.

“Well, how fast does light travel? 186,000 miles per second, rounded off. That’s kind of fast, give or take a few miles. That’s pretty quick. It’s only 24,000 miles around the earth. That means every 100,000 miles you go better than four times around the earth and for 186,000, you’d go about 7-8 times around the earth a second. Whoa, you talk about BUSY, man!

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A Maschil is a psalm designed for the edification, the education, the understanding to be enlightened. It’s an instructive psalm. These titles, when it says a Maschil, there other kinds of psalms, and what those titles do is they tell you what the intent of the psalm is.

Psalm 89 says it’s a ‘Maschil of Ethan the Ezrahite.’ In I Kings 4 and I Chronicles 25 you’ll find Ethan. He was the wisest of Solomon’s counselors. God had told Solomon (I Kings 11) that because of his idolatry, the kingdom was going to be taken away from his sons and wasn’t going to continue in his family, and Ethan would have known about that.

“That’s why we’re going to read about the failure of the son of David to accomplish, and so Ethan writes this in the light, obviously, of knowing God was going to take the kingdom line lineage of Solomon away from his sons. But God wasn’t going to take the covenant away from David because there was going to be another son of David to accomplish what God promised.

“Psalm 89 says, “I will sing of the mercies of the LORD for ever: with my mouth will I make known thy faithfulness to all generations.
[2] For I have said, Mercy shall be built up for ever: thy faithfulness shalt thou establish in the very heavens.
[3] I have made a covenant with my chosen, I have sworn unto David my servant,
[4] Thy seed will I establish for ever, and build up thy throne to all generations. Selah.’

“In either verse two or three, Ethan quits talking and now God’s talking. And it’s really going to be God, through Ethan, talking for the rest of the chapter.

“Now, that term ‘Selah’ in prophecy . . .  I know what they say in the devotional commentaries, that that’s a rest note in music, and that’s true, and that you are supposed to stop and contemplate that and think about what he just wrote.

“But, you know, you’re supposed to meditate on all the words. When you see that word Selah in your Bible, especially in the psalms, that term does two things. No. 1, it tells you the context is the Second Advent. Two, you want to stop and think about this passage in light of the Second Coming.

“So it’s a little flag, a reminder, a thing to point out to you the context doctrinally is going to be the Second Advent. And if you want to see where you can know that for sure it’s Habakkuk 3.”