¹O Lord, You showed favor to Your land; You restored the captivity of Jacob. ²You forgave the iniquity of Your people; You covered all their sin … ⁶Will You not Yourself revive us again, that Your people may rejoice in You?

The prayer of this psalm can be summarized as follows: “Lord, revive us again, just as You have done in the past, for we trust that You will restore us to the place of blessing.” How relevant this verse is for us today. The history of ancient Israel displays a series of sinning, falling away from God, and restoration through forgiveness and God’s grace. That is also the frequent experience of all believers in varying degrees. In fact, confession of sin is a central theme of NT teaching. We will never achieve a sinless state before our complete sanctification in the Lord’s presence when we shall become like our Lord Jesus Christ (1 John 3:2). Spiritual growth, for now, is not so much the process of sinning less and less, but of moving from sporadic or periodic revival to a continuous revival with daily confession of sin.

 Verses 1-3 of Psalm 85 point to a previous revival when Israel had sinned but was graciously forgiven by God and restored to blessing. Although some speculations have been offered, we cannot be sure what and when that was. The “Sons of Korah” (as noted in the authorial inscription) is most likely a reference to a musical guild from among the Levites who were descendants of Korah. If they were downline from Korah far enough, this psalm could have been written after the Babylonian captivity and Israel’s restoration to the land. Biblical history shows that after restoration, Israel still experienced harassment from neighboring people groups, which the writer of this psalm sees as instruments of God’s judgment on Israel. However, another view holds that Korah himself lived during the time of Moses and the Exodus, hundreds of years before Israel was taken into captivity by the Babylonians. So, the psalm very well may refer to a previous time in Israel’s checkered history of sin, confession, and revival. Regardless of the historical background, this psalm speaks to any situation where revival is needed.

Just as sin brought consequences to Israel in the form of military defeat, God’s favor matched and eclipsed each occurrence. From a human perspective, one would think repeated sin would entirely and permanently sever God’s grace from those who sin, but that is not the case. By His very nature, the Lord is gracious and forgiving—that is infinitely characteristic of Him. None of us could ever repay the debt owed to Him for our sins. The defining core of faith is believing His grace is greater than our sin!

Verses 1-3 rehearse, in six brief declarations, what God has done in the past, the first of which gives the overview: God showed favor to Israel, restored them to the land, forgave their iniquity, covered all their sin, withdrew all His fury, and turned away from His anger toward them. There is much confusion today about forgiveness, but this psalm shows that God’s forgiveness comes after He gave them their just consequences. This took the shape of Israel’s military defeat and being taken away as captive prisoners. While there is no explicit mention of Israel confessing their sin, biblical history shows that their confession of wrongdoing always preceded God’s forgiveness and revival.

Next, the psalm writer pleads with God to do it again, to revive and restore Israel (vss. 4-7). Nehemiah, who helped in the revival of Israel in the land after the Babylonian-Medo-Persian captivity, models the ideal prayer of confession:

“I beseech You, O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God … let Your ear now be attentive and Your eyes open to hear the prayer … which I am praying before You now, day and night, on behalf of the sons of Israel Your servants, confessing the sins of the sons of Israel which we have sinned against You; I and my father’s house have sinned. We have acted very corruptly against You and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the ordinances which You commanded Your servant Moses.” (Neh. 1:5–7)

The psalmist asks for restoration of the blessings of salvation and for God’s anger to abate (vs. 4). The consequences of their sin have gone on long enough, from their human perspective (vs. 5). As an incentive, the writer prays that if God does indeed revive Israel, then they will rejoice in Him (vs. 6). God doesn’t need such an incentive, for He needs nothing from anyone. But we need to see that godly prayer is not limited to asking for our own well-being (in Israel’s case, rescue from captivity) but to bring us back into right relationship with God, where we can again rejoice in how great He is.

Finally, the psalm writer appeals on the more profound basis of God’s lovingkindness (vs. 7). Again, we see this in the prayer of Nehemiah:

“Remember the word which You commanded Your servant Moses, saying, ‘… if you return to Me and keep My commandments and do them, though those of you who have been scattered were in the most remote part of the heavens, I will gather them from there and will bring them to the place where I have chosen to cause My name to dwell.’” (Neh. 1:8–9)

Nehemiah and the writer of this psalm knew that God always keeps His promises, and both call on God to “remember” this foundational promise to restore Israel fully to the land upon their repentance. God is not obligated by some external code of conduct but by lovingkindness (the Hebrew word hesed can be translated as “loyal love” or “promise-keeping love based on His covenant relationship with Israel”). Today, we Christian believers are God’s people, brought into a new covenant with God by the blood of Jesus Christ (Matt. 26:28, etc.). Therefore, we too can pray in a way that aligns us with God, who keeps His lovingkindness-promises to us also.

Verse 8, then, expresses the trust we can have in God, and this quickly springs into beautiful words of hope (vss. 9-13) which will sustain believers through the long periods of waiting on God’s response to our prayers. He will bring salvation, not only for our eternal life but also from and in our problems of life today (vs. 9). “Surely His salvation is near to those who fear Him” (vs. 9). In God’s timetable, His salvation is not far off. Poetically and succinctly, we read, “Lovingkindness and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” (vs. 10). God in all His character and attributes is completely unified; there is no tension in Him between any of these things. Pithy sayings like “God’s love wins out over His judgment” are bad theology! How wonderful it is that as we grow in faith and knowledge of God, we increasingly appreciate how God is perfectly whole in all He says and does! And so we continually ask God for revival in our hearts as we align with Him.

Lord, You are an amazing and awesome God who forgives all our sins. I ask that Your Spirit would continuously convict my heart of sin so that I would experience continuous revival.