I was reading Psalm 44 this morning, where God was praised for the past victories He gave to His people. And then the Psalm takes a sharp, dark turn with phrases like these: “But now you have rejected and humbled us” and “You gave us up to be devoured like sheep” and “You have made us a reproach to our neighbors.” A few verses later, as if to express how confusing this turn of events was, the psalmist writes, “All this happened to us, though we had not forgotten you or been false to your covenant.” God seems to have forgotten them even though they had not forgotten God.
And yet the psalmist goes on to write, “Rise up and help us; redeem us because of your unfailing love.” The writer appeals to God’s unfailing love because He covenanted to show love to Israel. God made a promise and He cannot break it, because He’s God. Interestingly enough, Paul actually quotes from Psalm 44 when he writes the following:
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-39).
What Paul quotes in verse 36 of Romans 8 is verse 22 of Psalm 44, where the psalmist describes a situation in which the outward circumstances have gone bad and God is not making them good again. By quoting Psalm 44, Paul reminds us that suffering has always been part of the experience of God’s people. And suffering does not separate believers from Christ, but actually helps us progress toward our ultimate goal. In other words, it’s ok for the outward circumstances to be bad if the inward circumstances are good. This is true primarily because it’s not possible for God not to love us. We can, indeed, say to Him, “Rise up and help us; redeem us because of your unfailing love.”
Troy Burns