- Answer
Psalm 65:5
By terrible things in righteousness wilt thou answer us, O God of our salvation;
Who art the confidence of all the ends of the earth, and of them that are afar off upon the sea.
We are familiar with God’s many promises to answer prayer, as the God of our salvation and the confidence of the ends of the earth. But the way in which He answers is what is striking: He answers by terrible things (or, awesome deeds) in righteousness. The “terrible thing” is the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. No more awesome or terrible thing has ever been worked on the earth than the bodily resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection violently crushes and defeats sin and evil with righteousness in place of sin. The righteousness of God is His extreme, terrible, and unexpected answer to the pain and misery that sin, death, and the devil has wrought upon human beings. Though it was predicted no one saw it coming and nobody expected such a terrible event be the Answer.
God’s righteousness stands on top of and above sin, evil and everything bad in our world; God’s righteousness is given to us by grace as a gift; for us it covers and destroys everything that is opposed to God and His goodness, leaving us to enjoy God forever. God’s righteousness is terrible and awesome both in destructive power and in restorative power. In the Gospel the righteousness of God is revealed; it is terrible for Satan, Sin and Death, for they are utterly destroyed by it; it is awesome in its unexpected power to forgive, renew, restore, save and give eternal life to those who receive the gospel by faith.
When God answers us, hears our prayers, and meets our needs He does so in the same kind of terrible, awesome and unexpected way as He saved us through His death and resurrection. One reason we do not always see God’s answers to our prayers is that they come in such wonderful and unexpected ways that we often miss it. Sometimes, we don’t see it because we were not looking for it. But whether we see it or not, the promise is still true; God answers.