Once upon a time all was well. That’s the gist of verses 1–3. In particular, God was generous to his people, forgiving their sins.

But the psalmist speaks from a different place – probably a time of loss in Israel’s life, perhaps when they were in exile. Hence the prayer ‘Restore us again’ (v 4). Return us to what we once experienced. It is a prayer for reconnection with God.

The key insight of the psalm is that the current sense of distance from God is not because God is unfaithful. No, he promises peace (v 8). But something has separated God’s people from the source of their joy (vs 5,6). The psalm ends with four verses celebrating God’s gifts of faithfulness and righteousness (vs 10–13). So the response to feeling distant from God is not to doubt his goodness, but to long to experience it.

Note the combination of honest assessment of problems along with confidence that God is good. This is typical of how the Psalms shape our hearts’ desires, as we seek to ‘listen to what God the Lord says’ (v 8). The psalm ends with rich, heart-warming imagery and life-giving verbs: kiss, spring, yield… It is a psalm for our emotions as well as our understanding.

‘Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?’¹

This psalm begins with the declaration that was only implicit in Genesis 5: ‘You, Lord, showed favour to your land … you forgave the iniquity of your people and covered all their sins. You set aside all your wrath and turned from your fierce anger’ (vs 1–3). While the psalmist has Israel and the Israelites in mind, the same was true before Israel came into being and it is true for us, too. God is the same yesterday, today and for ever: we have a God who is quick to forgive and to cover sin.

At the same time, as the psalmist goes on to testify, God does get angry and he does punish. The psalm is a plea for the God of salvation to restore his people under judgement. Our friend Jonah could have predicted that the outcome of the psalmist’s prayer would be positive because he knew that God is ‘one who relents concerning calamity’.² Indeed, the psalmist knew this, too, for he praises God for the anticipated deliverance (vs 8–13).

At the same time, God’s lovingkindness and salvation must not be taken for granted. We know, of course, that we cannot do whatever we like because ‘the Lord will indeed give what is good’ (v 12). Nevertheless, we can sometimes behave as if we did assume that God’s forgiveness is our right. It is not simply a matter of not presuming upon God’s grace, however, as the apostle Paul points out in the verses quoted above. The reason we should not intend to sin wilfully is that we have died to sin. We, ourselves, should now be modelling the kind of God in whose image we are created, demonstrating his qualities as expressed in Psalm 85: lovingkindness, truth, righteousness and peace.

Thank you, Lord, that through Christ we have forgiveness; that our offences have been swept away like a cloud and our sins like the morning mist.

¹ Rom 6:1,2, NASB  ² Jonah 4:2, NASB