God Reigns Forever

BY Lindsey Jacobi

Book IV
Book IV is a response to the despair of Book III. With only two psalms attributed to David, this section anchors the worshiper outside the reign of David, all the way back to creation, the exodus, and the early history of the nation of Israel.

Crisis moments have a way of revealing our control issues, don’t they? When things are running smoothly, and all is well, we can start to naively think that we are in control. In the rare seasons when our families, careers, relationships, and finances are thriving, we rejoice that we have managed them all so well! Alas, when one of those trains runs off the track, we are confronted with the frightening lack of control that we actually have. In an instant, disappointment, pain, and suffering can cause us to forget what is true. 

Because suffering has a way of disorienting us, understandably, all we can see and think about are the obstacles and enemies that surround us. 

That is a major throughline of Book III of the Psalms, as the people of God lamented their suffering and exile. They needed a king—the promised King from David’s line—to restore their nation. They needed God to make good on His promises. Which brings us to Book IV which we began reading today with Psalm 90. In response to the darkness of the preceding book, it is a proverbial lifting of our heads. It’s a call to look up and around, behind and before us, to remember the hope that we have—that we’ve always had. It anchors us in a time long before the exile as a reminder that God was at work long before this moment, and He will continue to work in all the days to come. We have the same need as the psalmists—for God to lift our head above the circumstances we can see, reminding us what is and has always been and will always be true: He is on the throne. 

We need to echo Moses’s declaration that God has “been our refuge in every generation” (Psalm 90:1).
We need to declare each new morning that God’s faithful love remains (Psalm 92:2).
We need to take heart that all of creation is held in the hands of the Creator (Psalm 95:4–5).
We need to remember that God didn’t forsake Moses or Aaron or Samuel (Psalm 99:6), and He won’t forsake us. 

Sometimes we have to look, not just at our circumstances, but at ourselves and declare anew that God’s “throne has been established from the beginning” and indeed He is “from eternity” (Psalm 93:2). Even before a speck of dust formed the ground, He was God and He was on the throne.

One of the gifts of the psalms is that they don’t overlook or dismiss our circumstances. And neither does God. We are given examples repeatedly of how to come to God with any range of emotions, struggles, and experiences. He meets us right there. But even in the midst of all the kinds of chaos this broken world can bring, we get to say even louder; God reigns forever! Creation told of it, Moses declared it, generations of Israelites echoed it, the psalmists sung of it, and we get to join in that same chorus on this side of the cross. Indeed, God reigns forever!