The Unflinching Amen: Faith at the Bottom of the Barrel Text: Psalm 89:52
Introduction: A Doxology in the Dark
The book of Psalms is not a random collection of religious poetry. It is the prayer book of the saints, divinely structured and arranged to teach us how to speak to God in every conceivable circumstance. It is organized into five books, a structure that intentionally mirrors the five books of Moses. And just as each book of the Pentateuch lays a foundation for our understanding of God's covenant dealings, so each book of the Psalter schools us in the life of faith. Each of the first four books concludes with a formal doxology, a burst of praise that seals the preceding psalms. Our text today is one such doxology, the one that closes the third book.
But this is no ordinary doxology. To understand its power, you must understand its placement. It comes at the end of Psalm 89, which is arguably one of the darkest psalms in the entire collection. The psalmist, Ethan the Ezrahite, has spent the better part of fifty verses recounting God's glorious, unbreakable, sworn-in-blood covenant with David. He rehearses God's promises of an everlasting throne, an invincible dynasty, and a kingdom that would endure like the sun. But then, in verse 38, the music screeches to a halt. The psalmist looks around at the smoking ruins of Jerusalem, at the humiliated king, at the broken covenant, and he cries out to God, "But you have cast off and rejected... You have renounced the covenant with your servant... Where are your former steadfast loves, which you swore to David in your faithfulness?"
The psalm is a raw, honest, heart-wrenching lament. It is the cry of a man whose circumstances are screaming that God has failed. The facts on the ground seem to contradict the promises in the Word. The throne is overturned. The anointed one is mocked. The covenant appears to be null and void. The psalm ends with the taunts of God's enemies ringing in the psalmist's ears. And then, without any transition, without any explanation, without any resolution to the agonizing questions he has just raised, we get this verse. It lands like a thunderclap in a graveyard. After staring into the abyss, after cataloging the disaster, after demanding an answer from heaven, Ethan the Ezrahite plants his feet, lifts his head, and shouts defiance at the darkness.
This is not cheap praise. This is not happy-clappy worship from a man whose life is going swimmingly. This is the hard, gritty, muscular faith of one who chooses to bless God not because of his circumstances, but in spite of them. This is faith at the bottom of the barrel. And it is here that we learn what true worship is.
The Text
Blessed be Yahweh forever!
Amen and Amen.
(Psalm 89:52 LSB)
Blessing the Unseen God
We begin with the declaration itself:
"Blessed be Yahweh forever!" (Psalm 89:52a)
The word "blessed" here is baruch. It means to praise, to adore, to speak well of. But who is being blessed? It is Yahweh, the covenant-keeping God, the great I AM. This is the very God whose covenant the psalmist has just accused of being broken. This is not an abstract philosophical principle. The psalmist is blessing the very character and name of the God whose actions, or lack thereof, are the source of his profound anguish. He is not blessing God for the wreckage of the kingdom. He is blessing God in the middle of the wreckage.
This is the faith of Job, who, after losing everything, declared, "Yahweh gave, and Yahweh has taken away; blessed be the name of Yahweh" (Job 1:21). It is the faith of Habakkuk, who, facing total economic and societal collapse, resolved to say, "Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines... yet I will exult in Yahweh; I will rejoice in the God of my salvation" (Habakkuk 3:17-18). This is bedrock biblical faith. It is a faith that is not dependent on feelings, circumstances, or empirical evidence. It is a faith that rests entirely on the revealed character of God.
The psalmist is making a crucial distinction. He is distinguishing between God's providence and God's person. He cannot make sense of God's providence. The circumstances are a tangled, bloody mess. But he knows God's person. He knows God is faithful, just, and good, even when the providential outworkings of His will are inscrutable and painful. Therefore, he blesses the person of God, even when he cannot understand the purposes of God. This is the essence of maturity in the faith. Any novice can praise God on the sunny mountaintop. It takes a veteran saint to praise Him from the dark valley.
And notice the timeframe: "forever." This is not a temporary truce. It is not a "let's just praise God until things get better" kind of statement. It is a declaration that God is worthy of praise, eternally, regardless of what happens to me, to my family, or to my nation. The psalmist lifts his gaze from the temporary disaster of the Davidic kingdom to the eternal reality of the God who reigns over all disasters. He is saying that even if the promises to David have failed, which they have not, God Himself has not failed, and therefore He is worthy of endless praise. This is a faith that has been to the edge of the cliff, looked down, and decided that the God who holds the universe together is more real than the crumbling ground beneath his feet.
The Double Ratification
The doxology concludes with a two-fold confirmation, a solemn and emphatic seal.
"Amen and Amen." (Psalm 89:52b)
In our day, "Amen" has become little more than a liturgical period at the end of a prayer. It is the Christian equivalent of "over and out." But in the Scriptures, Amen is a mighty word. It comes from a Hebrew root that means to be firm, to be established, to be true. When you say Amen, you are not just saying, "I hope so." You are saying, "This is true. This is reliable. Let it be so because it is so." It is an affirmation of a settled reality.
When the people of Israel entered into a covenant renewal and heard the curses for disobedience, they were all to respond to each curse with "Amen" (Deuteronomy 27:15-26). They were saying, "This is true. This is just. We affirm the righteousness of this standard and its penalty." When we say Amen to God's praise, we are saying, "Yes, it is absolutely true that He is blessed forever. I stake my life on it."
So why the repetition? Why "Amen and Amen"? This doubling is for the sake of solemn emphasis. It is the psalmist's way of pounding his fist on the table. It is a resolute, unwavering, unshakeable affirmation. The first Amen says, "I personally and wholeheartedly agree." The second Amen says, "And I want it to be known that this truth is objectively and eternally established, regardless of my agreement." It is both a personal subscription and a proclamation of objective fact.
Think of the context. The enemies are mocking. The circumstances are bleak. Doubt is whispering in his ear. The psalmist answers all of it with this double ratification. To the mocking enemies, he says, "Amen and Amen." To the bleak circumstances, he says, "Amen and Amen." To his own doubting heart, he says, "Amen and Amen." He is shutting down all other arguments. The debate is over. The verdict is in. God is blessed forever. Full stop.
This is precisely how our Lord Jesus Christ used the word. In the Gospel of John, He repeatedly prefaces His most profound statements with, "Amen, Amen, I say to you..." which we translate as "Truly, truly..." Jesus is the great Amen of God (2 Corinthians 1:20). He is the one in whom all of God's promises find their "Yes and Amen." The psalmist here, in the depths of his despair over what seems to be a broken promise, is actually prophesying of the one who is the ultimate fulfillment of that promise. The covenant with David did not fail; it finds its ultimate expression in the Son of David, Jesus Christ, whose kingdom shall have no end.
Conclusion: The Unshakable Kingdom
Psalm 89 is a microcosm of the Christian life. We live in the tension between the "already" and the "not yet." We have the sure and certain promises of God in Christ, but we live in a fallen world where things go terribly wrong. We see sickness, death, injustice, and the apparent triumph of evil. Like the psalmist, we look at the state of our nation, our churches, and sometimes our own families, and we cry out, "Lord, where are the promises you swore?"
And it is right here, at the end of Book Three of the Psalter, at the point of maximum tension and apparent covenant failure, that the Holy Spirit teaches us what to do. We are to do what Ethan did. We are to look the disaster squarely in the face, acknowledge it for what it is, bring our honest lament to God, and then, by a sheer, rugged act of faith, bless His name and declare His eternal worthiness.
Our faith is not in the stability of our circumstances. Our faith is in the character of our God. Our hope is not in the preservation of the American experiment. Our hope is in the unshakable kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. The covenant with David looked like it was in ruins, but it was simply waiting for its true King. And in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, God the Father gave His ultimate "Amen" to every promise He ever made.
Therefore, when our personal world is shaking, when the nation is crumbling, when the enemies of God are mocking, we have been given our line. We are to plant our feet on the rock of God's revealed character, look the storm in the eye, and say with the saints of old, "Blessed be Yahweh forever!" And to that, we must add our own defiant and joyful confirmation, our own double ratification in the face of all unbelief. Amen and Amen.