6. Chastisement for Covenant-breakers! Psalm 89:30-34

Text: “If His children forsake My law, and walk not in My judgements; if they break My statutes, and keep not My Commandments; then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. Nevertheless, My lovingkindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer My faithfulness to fail. My Covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of My lips.”

Psalm 89:30-34.

Good morning, Covenant-breaking Christian!  Do you find yourself on the end of the chastening rod of the Almighty and Holy Lord God this morning?  Do the pangs of guilt, and shame, and loss of closeness to the Living Lord God find you grieving within for committed sin, or indulging in some besetting sin that you wrestle with constantly?  Are you fully aware of the grief you have caused the indwelling Lord God, that Spirit of absolute Holiness, Who is even now putting distance between your precious, born-again, soul and Himself – for He cannot, will not, happily abide in the same vessel with unconfessed sin!  Fact.

“If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” (Psalm 66:18)

“Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. AND GRIEVE NOT THE HOLY SPIRIT of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: and be kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” (Ephesians 4:29-32)

God only chastises His own Blood-bought children. When teaching in Bible Classes, I have often used this following illustration reference the chastisement of the Lord: Inner-city children set up a makeshift wicket, produce a cricket-bat, and a cricket-ball, and proceed to have a game of cricket in a quiet street in any given residential area.  It is not too long before we hear a crash, as one of the children connect properly with the bat and ball, and the hard cricket-ball crashes through a nearby house window. What happens next?

Yes, parents look out of their windows, immediately realise what has happened; ascertain whether or not THEIR child is involved in the action, and go out into the street to bring THEIR child into their own home – putting distance between the offending ‘cricket-match’ which has produced a broken pane of glass, and THEIR child.

After discovering exactly which child broke the neighbour’s window – ALL the group are then strictly admonished for being so foolish as to set up and play a cricket-match in the confines of a residential street. But each father/mother is then responsible for chastening THEIR OWN child, or making payment for their own child’s irresponsibility in the matter of paying for the broken window. 

No father/mother is responsible for the chastisement of another family’s child!

This practice mirrors the practice of God our Heavenly Father. The Lord God only chastens His own Blood-bought children. The Devil has no desire to chasten his children for any misdemeanour, in fact, it is usually that Evil One who has encouraged his children to sin in the first place! (John 8:44)

“For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.  If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as sons; for what son is he whom the Father chasteneth not?  But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits , and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but He for our profit, that we might be partakers of His holiness.” (Hebrews 12:6-10)

Verse 30. “If His children forsake My law. How astonished many would be if they knew what the real case was of those perhaps whom they admire, and think highly advanced and exalted in the Divine life, if they were to know the falls, the wretched falls, falls in heart, in word, and in practice; if they were to know the deep distress that the children of God, who are far advanced as they suppose in the Divine life, are continually suffering from the effect of such transgression! (Capel Molyneux,1855)

Show me the Christian that never sins – and I will show you, the altogether lovely Christ alone! (1 John 1:8;10) We break God’s Covenant with us when we sin. Beware.

Verse 32. “Then will I visit their transgressions with the rod. Praise God for His rod of correction of us, ‘His people’!  The Lord God in His lovingkindness to us, His children, will not permit us to stray too far into what John Bunyan called, a ‘bypath meadow’ of transgression and sin. (Read Pilgrim’s Progress).  God’s rod of chastisement is applied to His born again children, to keep us from backsliding into a quagmire of sin and woe. Hallelujah!

“…Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.” (Psalm 23:4) The rod of chastisement, the staff of God’s ever-given strength and grace.  What a Shepherd we have in Christ Jesus!

Verse 33. “Nevertheless, My lovingkindness will I not utterly take from him. This is part of God’s Divine Covenant with us, ‘His people’, with those of us whom our Father elected to give to Christ Jesus in Eternity – before the foundation of the world.  God is a Sovereign God, and is, has been, and shall always be, in full and total control of all He has Created.

“All that the Father giveth Me (Christ Jesus), shall come unto Me; and him/her that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out. For I came down from Heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.” (John 6:37-38)

Verse 33. “…Nor suffer My faithfulness to fail. Man’s faith may fail him sometimes, but God’s faithfulness never fails him: God will not suffer His faithfulness to fail. God’s operations may have an aspect that way; the Devil’s temptations and our unbelieving hearts may not only make us think so, but persuade us it is so.  Whereas, it cannot be so, for the Lord will not suffer it, He will not make a lie in His truth or faithfulness; so, the Hebrew is: He is a God that cannot lie, He is Truth, speaks truth, and not one of His promises can or shall fail; which may afford strong consolation unto all that are under any promise of God.” (William Greenhill, 1591-1677)

Thought: Verse 34. “My Covenant will I not break. It is His own Covenant. He devised it, drew up the draft of it, and voluntarily entered into it; He therefore thinks much of it.  It is not a man’s covenant, but the Lord claims it as His own. It is an evil thing among men for one to be a ‘covenant-breaker’, and such an opprobrious epithet shall never be applicable to the Most High.” (C.H. Spurgeon, Treasury of David, page 374) So be it, dear Lord. Amen.