Psalms 102:12 - Meaning and Application

Many rich and precious comforts are gathered here to answer the sorrow just described. Though the faithful are knocked down, they are not left in despair, because light rises for them in darkness. The psalmist is in trouble, and God’s people are in trouble, but he now gathers reasons to steady his heart.

We are dying creatures, and all our earthly comforts are dying too, but God is the ever-living, everlasting God (Psalm 102:12). Our days are like a shadow, brief and fading, but the Lord endures forever. Our life passes away, our friends die, and our names may be forgotten, but God remains the same, and his remembrance lasts through every generation.

A good person loves God more than self, so the thought of God’s unchanging blessedness can comfort him in his own grief and death. God endures forever as his church’s faithful protector and defender. Since his honor and lasting name are so closely tied to the good of his people, we can trust that he will not overlook them.

Poor Zion is now in distress, but a time of rescue will come. The hope of deliverance rests on God’s goodness, because Zion has become an object of his pity, and on God’s power, because he will rise up and act, despite every enemy’s resistance (Psalm 102:13). The zeal of the Lord of hosts will bring it to pass.

What strengthens this hope is that a set time has been appointed for the church’s rescue. It will not just come someday, it will come at the time fixed by infinite wisdom, and therefore at the best time. Eternal truth has set that time, so it is sure and will not be forgotten or delayed forever. After seventy years, the appointed time to favor Zion and free her from Babylon did arrive.

Zion was in ruins, meaning the temple in the city of David had been destroyed. To favor Zion here means to rebuild the temple, as Psalm 102:16 explains. Daniel prayed for this same mercy: “Cause your face to shine on your sanctuary, which is desolate” (Daniel 9:17). The restoring of Zion is one of the greatest blessings a ruined people can ask for, because nothing else so fully restores church privileges.

This longing is shown for several reasons. First, it would greatly rejoice Zion’s friends (Psalm 102:14). God’s servants care for even the stones of the temple, though they lie broken and scattered, and they value even its dust and ruins. When the temple was destroyed, the stones were still there for a new building, and faithful people could still hope because of that. Those who truly love God’s church love it both in trouble and in peace, and their prayers and efforts for it are a good sign that God will favor Zion’s ruins.

Second, Zion’s restoration would affect her neighbors for good (Psalm 102:15). It may lead some to faith, or at least to conviction, because the nations will fear the name of the Lord, honor him more highly, and even the kings of the earth will be moved by his glory. They will think better of God’s people when he puts honor on the church, and they will be less willing to oppose it when they see God taking its side. They will even say, “We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you” (Zechariah 8:23). In this way, many among the people of the land became Jews because the fear of the Jews fell on them (Esther 8:17).

Third, it will bring honor to Zion’s God (Psalm 102:16). When the Lord builds up Zion, he will appear in his glory. Those who make God’s glory their highest goal desire and pray for this. The building up of the church is the glorifying of God, and for that reason we can be sure it will happen at the appointed time. Those who pray in faith, “Father, glorify your name,” may receive the same answer Christ received: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again,” even if for a time it seems hidden.

The prayers of God’s people may now seem ignored, but they will be carefully considered and greatly encouraged (Psalm 102:17). He will regard the prayer of the destitute. Kings may look with scorn on the poor who come to them, but the great God will not do that. The petitioners are called destitute, meaning lowly, broken, poor, and stripped of help. This kind of humble spirit is what God looks for in those who come near to him, and it will bring them to their knees.

God will not despise their prayer. More is meant than is said here. He will value it, take pleasure in it, and answer it with peace. That is the greatest honor a prayer can receive. The word is used this way because others may despise their praying, and even they themselves may fear that God despises it when their affliction lasts and their prayers seem unanswered.

When we think about our own smallness and sin, our spiritual darkness and deadness, and the many flaws in our prayers, we might fear that our prayers would be rejected in heaven. But here we are assured of the opposite. We have an advocate with the Father, and we are under grace, not under the law. This example of God’s favor to his praying people, even when they are needy, should give lasting encouragement to prayer (Psalm 102:18). “This will be written for the coming generation,” so that no one should lose hope, even in need, and no one should think prayer is forgotten just because the answer does not come right away.

Other believers’ experiences should encourage us to seek God and trust him. And if we are comforted by what God has done for others, we should give him the glory for it. The people who will be created will praise the Lord for what he has done for them and for those who came before them. Many who are not yet born will, by reading the church’s history, be led to become believers. Those people, created anew by God’s grace and like firstfruits of his creatures, will praise the Lord for his answers to prayer when they themselves were in greater need.

Prisoners who are wrongly condemned seem like sheep marked for slaughter, but God will see to their release (Psalm 102:19, Psalm 102:20). God looks down from the height of his sanctuary, from heaven where he has set his throne, that high and holy place. From there the Lord sees the earth, for nothing on this earth is hidden from his all-seeing eye. He looks down not just to observe the kingdoms of the world and their splendor, but to show grace, to hear the groaning of prisoners, and not only to hear them but to help them. He loosens those who are sentenced to death, even when they are only one step away from it.

Some understand this as the release of the Jews from captivity in Babylon. God heard their groaning there, just as he had when they were in Egypt (Exodus 3:7, Exodus 3:9), and he came down to deliver them. God notices not only the prayers of his afflicted people, which are the words of grace, but even their groans, which are the words of nature. We see God’s pity in hearing a prisoner’s groans, and his power in breaking the prisoner’s bonds, even when they are sentenced to death and tightly bound. Peter’s release is one example of this (Acts 12:6).

Such examples of God’s kindness and mercy help in two ways. First, they help declare the name of the Lord in Zion, and show that he truly is what he proclaimed himself to be, the Lord God, gracious and merciful. This declaring of his name in Zion will become the matter of praise in Jerusalem (Psalm 102:21). If God declares his name through what he does, we must declare his praise through what we say. That should be the echo of his name.

God will free his people from prison and captivity in Babylon so they can declare his name in Zion, the place he chose for his name to dwell, and praise him in Jerusalem when they return there. In the land of their captivity, they could not sing the songs of Zion (Psalm 137:3, Psalm 137:4), so God brought them back to Jerusalem so they could sing them there. God gives freedom from bondage for this purpose, “Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise your name” (Psalm 142:7), and even life from the dead, “Let me live, and I will praise you” (Psalm 119:175).

Second, these acts of mercy help draw others into God’s worship (Psalm 102:22). When God’s people gather in Jerusalem, as they did after returning from Babylon, many from other kingdoms join them to serve the Lord. This was fulfilled in Ezra 6:21, where not only the Israelites who had returned from captivity, but also many who had separated themselves from the nations around them, kept the feast of unleavened bread with joy. It may also point ahead to the conversion of the Gentiles, non-Jews, to faith in Christ in later days. Christ has proclaimed liberty to captives, and opening for those who are bound, so they may declare the Lord’s name in the gospel church, where Jews and Gentiles will be united.