A Remarkable Streak

Psalm 89:29-37

29“I will preserve an heir for him;

his throne will be as endless as the days of heaven.

30But if his sons forsake my law

and fail to walk in my ways,

31if they do not obey my decrees

and fail to keep my commands,

32then I will punish their sin with the rod,

and their disobedience with beating.

33But I will never stop loving him,

nor let my promise to him fail.

34No, I will not break my covenant;

I will not take back a single word I said.

35I have sworn an oath to David,

and in my holiness I cannot lie:

36His dynasty will go on forever;

his throne is as secure as the sun,

37as eternal as the moon,

my faithful witness in the sky!”

Interlude

Most fans who went to Camden Yards to see the Baltimore Orioles game on September 21, 1998, didn’t know that they would be attending a game that would go down in the record books. The record, however, didn’t involve something they saw but rather something they didn’t see.

When the Baltimore Orioles trotted out on the field, Cal Ripken Jr. wasn’t among the players. That was a momentous nonappearance.

You see, Ripken had played in 2,632 consecutive baseball games over a period of sixteen years. He had never missed a game. But on that September day he decided the streak had gone on long enough, so he told the manager to scratch his name off the lineup card. Ripken’s incredible consecutive-game string finally came to an end.

In this world it seems that all streaks eventually come to an end. But God once told David that his streak of love for him would never end (see 2 Samuel 7:15), and this is affirmed in this psalm as well.

God regards us with this same kind of unfailing love. In baseball terms, God says to us, “Though your batting average is below .200, though you strike out twenty times in a row, though you make stupid errors on every easy grounder that is hit to you, I will never stop loving you.”

A streak of 2,632 consecutive games? God says that’s not much compared to the unbroken streak of love he has for us.

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,

Bright shining as the sun,

We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise

Than when we’d first begun.

JOHN NEWTON

Bible Networking

For more on God’s covenant with David, see 2 Samuel 7. Note David’s response in verses 18-29 of that chapter.

Notable Quotable

“David’s line in the person of Jesus is an endless one, and the race of Jesus shows no sign of failure. No power, human or satanic, can break the Christian succession. . . . A seed and a throne are the two great promises of the covenant. We are the seed who must endure forever, and we are protected and ennobled by that King whose royalty will last forever.”

CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON