Pastor Fredo Ramos: Psalm 85. Lord, you poured out blessing on your land. You restored the fortunes of Israel. You forgave the guilt of your people. Yes.
You covered all their sins. You held back your fury. You kept back your blazing anger. Now, restore us again, oh God, of our salvation. Put aside your anger against us once more.
For will you be angry with us always? Will you prolong your wrath to all generations? Won't you revive us again so your people can rejoice in you? Show us your unfailing love, oh Lord, and grant us oh salvation. I listen carefully to what God the Lord is saying for he speaks peace to his faithful people.
Listen to that again. He speaks peace to his faithful people. Let them not return to their foolish ways. Surely his salvation is near to those who fear him, so our land will be filled with his glory. Verse 10, unfailing love and truth have met together.
Righteousness and peace have kissed. Truth springs up from the earth and righteousness smiles down from heaven. Yes. The Lord pours down his blessings. Our land will yield its bountiful harvest.
Righteousness goes as a herald before him preparing the way for his steps. Notice the connection by way of reflection now. The desire in verse one that Lord you have poured out your blessings on the land, restore us. And then that ending verse there, verse 12, our land will yield its bountiful harvest. God will pour down his blessings.
So this psalm is book ended with the with the past blessings that have come and the future blessings have come. And then the content in the middle is really the desire for the psalmist making this prayer of God, would you restore us? Restore us. Psalm 85 is, a beautiful psalm and prayer asking God for restoration. I don't know where you're at in your life today as you come to the reality of who you are and what you gotta get done today and the people that need you and are dependent upon you.
But I would imagine at some place in your life, you need the restoration of God. You need to once again experience, as the psalmist says, the unfailing love and the truth of God coming together in your life. You need to hear him once again speak peace to you. Why? Because God longs to restore you today.
He longs to restore me. He longs to restore our emotional, sensibilities. He longs to restore our our psyche, our bodies, our whole spirits. And so Jesus, we hear you inviting us and leading us now to respond with a plea of restoration. God, we not only wanna see our land be restored, we want to see our whole bodies be restored.
And so we ask now that through the power of your Holy Spirit, we would begin to discern the places of our lives that need your healing touch. And we claim the promises of Psalm 85. God, would you restore us today so that we might walk in your strength and in your power into all the things that you've called us to do. Restore us. In Jesus name we pray.
Amen.