Do you remember the cry of the saints in Revelation, which I referred to previously: "How long, Sovereign Lord" (Rev. 6:10)? That question hangs in the air throughout Revelation. It is there at the end. But at the end we also have the answer of Jesus, who says, "Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End" (Rev. 22:12, 13; see vv. 7, 20). To this we reply, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus" (v. 20). The editor who closed out this third book of the Psalter had a like faith when he followed Ethan's cry with the faith-filled ascription: "Praise be to the LORD forever! Amen and Amen” (Ps. 89:52).
We also are party to a covenant, if we have believed on Jesus Christ. The Jews are to be brought to faith in the last days. But we stand in a like covenant today, and the attributes of God that formed the earlier covenant are for our encouragement. When we talk about God's irrevocable covenant we are speaking about God's immutability. Immutability means that God does not change, and because he does not change he can be counted on.
In case we have any question about the tone in which the psalmist is making the statements in verses 39-45, we find ourselves pointed in the right direction in the eighth and final stanza (vv. 46–51). Here we have his appeal, focused on the question: "How long, O LORD" (v. 46)? It is a common question of the saints, arising out of what seems to be a breaking of the covenant. In Revelation the saints ask God, "How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood" (Rev. 6:10)? Believers ask this when they feel abandoned and when God does not seem to act. But the cry is not unbelief. On the contrary, it is the cry of faith, for it is to God, and it is looking for an answer.
What is most striking about the phrasing of the psalmist’s list of accusations is that God is held to be responsible. Notice the pronoun "you," meaning God. It is the subject of nearly every sentence in this section (eleven times in the New International Version). The only sentences that do not have God as their subject are in verse 41:
Psalm 89 has the distinction of being one of the greatest passages in the Bible dealing with the faithfulness of God. But it does it in two ways. The first half praises God for his faithfulness exuberantly and without any qualifications. It particularly praises him for his faithfulness in keeping his covenant with King David (2 Sam. 7). The latter half expresses the gap between the promise and reality.
