The Banner of Truth in a Broken Land Text: Psalm 60:1-5
Introduction: When God Goes to War Against His People
We live in a soft and sentimental age. Our generation wants a God who is a celestial therapist, a divine butler, a cosmic affirmation machine. We want a God who is always on our side, regardless of what that side is. We want the blessings of the covenant without the obligations of the covenant. We want the inheritance without the obedience. And so, when we come to a passage like this one, it is a bucket of ice water in the face. It is jarring. It is offensive to our modern sensibilities. It is also exactly what we need to hear.
Here we have a psalm of David, a man after God’s own heart, and it begins with a raw, brutal, and honest lament. God has rejected them. God has broken them. God is angry. The land itself is shaking from the force of His displeasure. This is a corporate cry from a nation in crisis, a nation that has been on the receiving end of God’s fatherly, covenantal discipline. And make no mistake, it is His discipline. The enemy army that defeated them, the political turmoil, the national fracturing, it is all from His hand.
Our secular world sees a military defeat and attributes it to troop movements, superior strategy, or economic factors. The Christian, if he is thinking biblically, sees the hand of God. The pagan thinks in terms of horizontal causality only. The believer understands that all horizontal causes are governed by the ultimate, vertical cause. God is the one who gives victory, and God is the one who gives defeat. And sometimes, He gives defeat to His own people.
This psalm is a national prayer that we have forgotten how to pray. We have forgotten how to connect our national calamities to our national sins. We see the quaking and the breaches in our own land, the cultural rot, the political insanity, the moral collapse, and we either despair, or we blame the other political party. But we do not do what David does here. We do not look up and say, "O God, You have done this. You have been angry. Restore us." This is not fatalism. This is profound, robust, covenantal faith. It is the kind of faith that knows that the same God who has the power to break is the only God who has the power to heal. If your problem is just the Democrats, you might be tempted to put your ultimate hope in the Republicans. But if your problem is the righteous anger of Almighty God, then your only hope is in the mercy of that same God.
The Text
O God, You have rejected us. You have broken us; You have been angry; Oh, restore us. You have made the land quake, You have split it open; Heal its breaches, for it shakes. You have caused Your people to see hardship; You have given us wine to drink that causes reeling. You have given a banner to those who fear You, In order to flee to it from the bow. Selah. That Your beloved may be rescued, Save with Your right hand, and answer us!
(Psalm 60:1-5 LSB)
The Honest Assessment of a Covenant People (v. 1)
The psalm begins with a blunt and startling confession.
"O God, You have rejected us. You have broken us; You have been angry; Oh, restore us." (Psalm 60:1)
There is no sugarcoating here. David does not say, "O God, we seem to have encountered some unfortunate circumstances." He says, "You have rejected us." This is covenant language. When Israel was obedient, God went out with their armies. When they were disobedient, He stayed home. And when God stays home, the result is not a draw; it is a rout. To be rejected by God is to be broken. The two go hand in hand.
Notice the progression. Rejection. Brokenness. Anger. This is the logic of covenant discipline. God’s anger is not a petty, unpredictable rage. It is the settled, holy opposition of a righteous Father to the sin of His children. When a nation in covenant with God decides to walk in disobedience, to flirt with idols, to neglect justice, to redefine morality, God’s anger is the only reasonable and loving response. A father who is not angered by his son’s self-destructive rebellion does not love his son. God’s anger is a sign that the covenant is still in effect. His wrath is simply His love, in military uniform.
But this honest lament does not end in despair. It turns immediately to a plea: "Oh, restore us." This is crucial. The psalmist understands that the one who wounded is the only one who can heal. He doesn't turn to Egypt for help. He doesn't form a committee to explore other alliances. He turns back to the very God who has broken them. This is the essence of repentance. It is acknowledging God’s judgment as just, and then appealing to His character for mercy. True repentance agrees with God's verdict. It says, "Yes, Lord, you are right to be angry. You are right to have broken us. Now, for your own name's sake, restore us."
The Shaking of the Foundations (v. 2-3)
The consequences of God’s displeasure are described in cosmic and visceral terms.
"You have made the land quake, You have split it open; Heal its breaches, for it shakes. You have caused Your people to see hardship; You have given us wine to drink that causes reeling." (Psalm 60:2-3 LSB)
The stability of the very earth is tied to the covenant faithfulness of God’s people. When a nation sins, the land itself begins to vomit them out (Lev. 18:28). The quake here may have been a literal earthquake accompanying their military defeat, but it is certainly more. It is the shaking of the entire social and political order. When a nation abandons God’s law as its foundation, everything begins to crack. The institutions tremble. The economy shakes. The culture splits open, revealing ugly fissures. This is what we are witnessing in our own day. The foundations are being destroyed, and the land is quaking.
Again, David’s response is not to blame the geological faults. He says, "You have made the land quake." And his prayer is not for better architects, but for a divine healer: "Heal its breaches, for it shakes." He knows that political solutions are like applying duct tape to a fault line. The problem is foundational, and only the creator of the foundation can repair it.
Verse 3 continues the theme of divine agency in this hardship. "You have caused Your people to see hardship." And then the metaphor shifts. "You have given us wine to drink that causes reeling." This is the cup of God’s wrath, a frequent image in the prophets (Is. 51:17; Jer. 25:15). It is a picture of utter disorientation. When God judges a nation, He gives them over to confusion. Their leaders make foolish decisions. Their experts are baffled. Their people stagger about, drunk on propaganda and lies, unable to think clearly or see straight. They reel from one crisis to another, lurching toward the ditch. This is not an accident. It is a judgment. God has served them the wine of confusion, and they have drunk it to the dregs.
The Rallying Point of Grace (v. 4)
In the midst of this staggering judgment, God provides a point of clarity, a standard of truth.
"You have given a banner to those who fear You, In order to flee to it from the bow. Selah." (Psalm 60:4 LSB)
Even in wrath, God remembers mercy. He does not abandon His people entirely. For those who still fear Him, for the faithful remnant, He provides a banner. A banner in the ancient world was a rallying point in the chaos of battle. It was the standard where the troops were to gather, to receive orders, to find their king. When everything is shaking and everyone is reeling, God raises a standard of truth.
What is this banner? Ultimately, this banner is Jesus Christ. He is the standard, the ensign for the peoples (Is. 11:10). He is the truth to which we must rally when the arrows of judgment and the lies of the enemy are flying thick and fast. When the culture is drunk and staggering, the church is to be sober, standing firm, gathered to the banner of the gospel. This is not a banner of our own making. It is not a political platform or a cultural agenda. It is a banner that God has "given" to us. Our job is not to design the banner, but to lift it high, so that others who fear God can see it and rally to it.
The purpose of the banner is "to flee to it from the bow." The truth is our refuge. When God’s judgments are in the earth, the only safe place to be is standing under God’s truth. The world thinks safety is found in compromise, in hiding, in blending in. But the Bible says safety is found by running to the most obvious, central, and controversial place on the battlefield: the banner of the King. This is where we find our identity, our marching orders, and our protection.
The Foundation of Our Plea (v. 5)
The first section of the psalm concludes by grounding the entire prayer in God's love and God's power.
"That Your beloved may be rescued, Save with Your right hand, and answer us!" (Psalm 60:5 LSB)
After acknowledging God’s righteous anger and judgment, the psalmist now appeals to God’s covenant love. "That Your beloved may be rescued." He is not appealing to their own merit. He is not saying, "Save us because we are so wonderful." He is saying, "Save us because we are Yours. We are Your beloved." This is the heart of covenant prayer. Our standing before God is not based on our performance, but on His promise. We are beloved, not because we are lovely, but because He has set His love upon us in Jesus Christ.
This is the confidence we have in prayer, even when confessing our national sins. We are simultaneously acknowledging our guilt, which is great, and appealing to His grace, which is greater. We are admitting that we deserve the reeling wine of judgment, while at the same time pleading for the rescue that is promised to His beloved.
And how will this rescue come? "Save with Your right hand." The right hand of God is the symbol of His omnipotent power and authority. It is the hand of the warrior King. It is the hand that crushed Pharaoh at the Red Sea. It is the hand that raised Jesus from the dead. The psalmist is not asking for a little bit of help. He is asking for a divine knockout blow. He is asking for God to intervene with the full force of His sovereign power.
The prayer is simple and direct: "Save... and answer us!" In a time of national crisis, when the land is shaking and the people are reeling, this is the only prayer that makes any sense. It is a prayer born of desperation, but it is a desperation that is shot through with hope. It is the hope that the God who judges His people is also the God who loves His people, and that His right hand is mighty to save.
Conclusion: From Reeling to Restoration
This psalm provides a divine roadmap for a nation in trouble. It begins where we must all begin: with honest, corporate repentance. We must look at the breaches in our land, the staggering confusion in our culture, and the defeats we have suffered, and we must have the courage to say, "O God, You have done this. You have been angry." We must stop blaming everyone else and agree with God’s verdict against us.
But we cannot stop there. We must then see the banner that He has raised for us, the banner of the cross of Jesus Christ. We must flee to it. We must gather there. In a world that is drunk on lies, we must be a people sobered by the truth. We must rally to the standard of God’s Word and refuse to be moved.
And from that place, standing together under that banner, we can then lift our voices and pray with confidence. We can appeal to Him as His beloved. We can ask for the full display of His saving power. We can ask Him to heal the breaches in our land, not because we deserve it, but because He is a merciful and covenant-keeping God. The path from reeling to restoration always runs through repentance and always rallies at the cross.