Throughout the ages, the church of God has experienced dreadful times of darkness. One need only to think back to the Middle Ages when men were held captive to the hier­archy of the Roman Catholic Church and all of its excesses, superstition, and heresy. Those were dark times indeed. But God raised up a man who would be the formidable cata­lyst for the revival of true religion. It is not surprising that this dark period was called the “Babylonian Captivity” of the church by Martin Luther, God’s instrument of reform, because of the church’s bondage to the “doctrines of devils” (1 Tim. 4:1). Yet times of captivity and darkness for God’s people are nothing new. In the pages of sacred Scripture there have been times when true religion appeared to be at very low ebb and God’s disfavor seemed to abide on the land.

Psalm 85 opens with an earnest prayer in which the psalm­ist looks back to the past,

LORD, thou hast been favourable unto thy land: thou hast brought back the captivity of JacobPsalm 85:1

Looking to God’s dealings with His people in times past gave him hope and encouragement for the present. The history of God’s people is more than an account of what has happened in the past; it is prophetic history in which the past serves as a prophetic indicator for the future. If God in marvelous ways revived and reformed His church in the past, then would it not be His good pleasure to do so again? Should we not then be calling to Him in earnest prayer to deliver His captive church from its enslavement to heresies, superstitions, and false prophets, as He has done before?

The psalmist also clearly identifies the divine channel through which past restoration came:

Thou hast forgiven the iniquity of thy people, thou hast covered all their sin. Selah.Psalm 85:2-3

Only once forgiveness came did blessing follow. Their captivity, whether it was defeat by the enemies of Israel on the battlefield or the captivity in Babylon, was a result of their sin which had brought the fierceness of God’s anger upon them. The concept of a God who responds in wrath to sin does not fit well in the mind of modern man. How can a God of love ever show anything as reprehensible as wrath? The psalm­ist had no mistaken notions about the wrath of God because he knew that the God he was dealing with was an utterly holy God, whose eyes were purer than to behold any evil. In fact, he clearly sees that the calamity in which the people of God found themselves was the result of divine displeasure. “Wilt thou be angry with us forever?” he asks (v. 5). But he takes consolation in the fact that if, in the past, God has graciously forgiven His sinful people, surely He will do so again. This man knew by experience that God was not only a God of justice and wrath, but also a God of grace and mercy. Based on what he knows about God, he pleads in all earnest, “Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee?”

Is it not time for us to cry out to God on behalf of His err­ing and wayward church: “O Lord, forgive us our iniquity and sin and remove Thy righteous anger which burns upon us as a nation and a church. Turn us from the folly of our ways and deliver us from our self-inflicted captivity to falsehood and to evil. ‘It is time for thee, LORD, to work, for they have made void thy law.’ O Lord, revive us again as Thou hast graciously done in the past!” Having so done, the people of God assume the position of hopeful expectation:

I will hear what God the LORD will speak: for he will speak peace unto ... his saints.Psalm 85:8

This is the position that the prophet Habakkuk assumed after putting his case before the Lord (Hab. 2:1).

We can, however, only assume an attitude of hopeful expectation if we are assured that reconciliation between heaven and earth has come about.

Surely his salvation is nigh them that fear him ... mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each otherPsalm 85:9-10

God’s promised blessings, as we have seen, came through the channel of forgiveness and as Christians we realize that this channel is the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. On the cross alone do righteousness and peace kiss. It is on the cross of Christ that both God’s perfect justice is satisfied and God’s mercy is made manifest. As we plead the removal of God’s righteous anger upon His church for the sake of Christ alone, we can expectantly await the time of God’s reformation so that His people may indeed rejoice in Him.