Grace OPC Sewickley PA

Sermon Book: Psalms

Our Dwelling Place in All Generations

About this sermon

Psalm 90 contrasts the eternal God with the brevity of human life. God is our dwelling place in all generations, from everlasting to everlasting, while our days pass like grass and end in death under his wrath against sin. Moses prays, ‘Teach us to number our days, that we may present to you a heart of wisdom.’ God can make brief lives fruitful for eternity, and he confirms the work of the hands of those who take refuge in him.

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Sermon transcript

As we continue our consideration of various Psalms this evening, we’re going to consider Psalm 90. So if you’d like to follow along in your Bibles, please turn to Psalm 90. Psalm 90, let us hear God’s holy word. This is entitled, A Prayer of Moses, the man of God. You have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were born or you gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. You turn man back into dust and say, return, O children of men, for a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it passes by or as a watch in the night. You have swept them away like a flood, they fall asleep. In the morning they are like grass which sprouts anew. In the morning it flourishes and sprouts anew.

Toward evening it fades and withers away. For we have been consumed by your anger, and by your wrath we have been dismayed. You have placed our iniquities before you, our secret sins, in the light of your presence. For all our days have declined in your fury. We have finished our years like a sigh. As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, or if due to strength, eighty years. yet their pride is but labor and sorrow, for soon it is gone and we fly away. Who understands the power of your anger and your fury according to the fear that is due you? So teach us to number our days, that we may present to you a heart of wisdom. Do return, O Lord, how long will it be? And be sorry for your servants.

O, satisfy us in the morning with your lovingkindness, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days. Make us glad according to the days you have afflicted us and the years we have seen evil. Let your work appear to your servants and your majesty to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and confirm for us the work of our hands. Yes, confirm the work of our hands. Dear ones, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s seek the Lord’s blessing upon the proclamation of his word this evening. Our Lord and Father in heaven, we thank you that in Christ you are indeed our dwelling place, our refuge, our ultimate home. We ask, Lord, that you would be our dwelling place this evening as we seek to receive instruction from your holy scriptures.

And we do pray that by your spirit you would illuminate us, open our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from your word, and grant us grace, O Lord, to take to heart that which the spirit is speaking to us in this portion of your God-breathed scriptures. Grant me your grace, O Lord, to declare your word with clarity and power. And we ask, Lord, that Jesus would be glorified this evening in the proclamation of your word. We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said. Amen. You may be seated. The title of my sermon for this evening is Our Dwelling Place in All Generations, and I’d encourage you, especially the children, to be listening for the following words, the words eternal, transient, brevity, wrath, mercy, and restoration. Well, dear friends, this was not their actual name, but we’ll call them the Smith family.

The Smiths were wonderful neighbors to my family in the neighborhood in which I grew up. They lived practically across the street from us and Mr. and Mrs. Smith showed their kindness and open-hearted hospitality to us by inviting us to use their backyard pool anytime we wished during the hot days of summer. We didn’t even have to ask as long as they weren’t having other guests over. We were welcome to pop by anytime. We didn’t even have to knock on the door or let them know. We could just stop by anytime and use their pool as long as one of our parents was with us. Mrs. Smith and my mother ended up becoming really good friends, and I can still remember the many times during the hot, lazy summer days of my youth when my brother and I had just a grand old time splashing about in the Smith’s large backyard pool, carefree and content as the sun beat down upon us.

I can just picture it in my mind. Often during these hot, carefree summer days, Mrs. Smith and my mother sat by the poolside, engrossed in the friendly chatter of conversation, as Mrs. Smith’s daughter, who is a few years older than me, quietly but devotedly worked on her suntan. But one evening, something happened that would bring an end to these carefree summer days at the Smith’s poolside. I think I was in middle school at the time. We called it junior high school back then. I think it was either in seventh or eighth grade, and I believe that it was an evening in either one of the fall or winter months. The phone rang. I think we had just had dinner. The phone rang. And my parents received a rather strange phone call from the Smiths’ daughter, who was in high school at the time.

They also had a son, but he was away at college at this particular time. Well, my parents, after they put the phone down, they looked rather sober and shaken up, sort of, they had that deer-in-the-headlights look after they put the phone down. And then they explained to me and my brother that the Smith’s daughter had just gotten word that her parents, who had been out for the evening, had been tragically and instantaneously killed in a horrible car accident. I remember, I believe it involved a truck and I was told that it happened so quickly they wouldn’t have even known what happened. And their daughter, who was home alone at the time, asked my parents if they could come over and be with her while she processed this tragic news. There are few things that made a more powerful and lasting impact upon me as a young person than the tragic and unexpected death of Mr. and Mrs.

Smith. I believe their funeral was the very first funeral that I had ever attended, and it was an open casket funeral. Friends, these events powerfully impressed upon my young, tender mind the utter uncertainty, frailty, and brevity of life. and also the awful and unwelcome reality of death and of death’s often unpredictable timing. Tragic events such as this one that I’ve shared with you serve to underscore and to highlight the truths that the Holy Spirit is communicating to us in this powerful prayer of Moses, the man of God, this prayer known as Psalm 90, which we are considering this evening. In this psalm, we read of and learn of truths such as the eternity of God, the brevity and sorrow and toil of human life in our fallen condition. But we also find in this Psalm the hope of escape from God’s righteous anger through the Lord’s forgiving, restoring, renewing mercies.

In the face of life’s brevity, uncertainty, sorrow, toil, and tragedy, Psalm 90 points us to the Lord as our dwelling place in all generations. Now in terms of the historical setting of this psalm, this psalm is ascribed to Moses, the prophet Moses, and there’s no good reason to doubt the Mosaic authorship of this psalm. Although there are, I believe, many Bible critics who would dispute the Mosaic authorship as they often dispute many of the claims of authorship in scripture, there’s really no good sound reason to reject this as indeed having been penned under the inspiration of the Spirit the prophet Moses. But what occasion led Moses to pen this particular psalm? Well, we’re not sure exactly. We cannot pinpoint any particular event during Moses’ ministry, but it would seem to make the most sense that Moses may well have written this psalm during the time of the wilderness wanderings of the children of Israel. that 40 years of lengthy wandering of God’s people in the wilderness.

Remember, God had delivered his people, Israel, from their slavery in Egypt. He had given them his 10 commandments on Mount Sinai, and he had told them to go in and to conquer the promised land, but the people did not believe in the Lord. They did not trust that the Lord was able to enable them to conquer these great and mighty cities in Canaan, these great and powerful military forces that they would face. They had forgotten all that God had done for them in Egypt, how he had poured out the plagues upon Pharaoh and the Egyptians. And so the people of Israel, having been rescued from their slavery, they provoked the Lord. Time and time again, they provoked him with their hard-hearted unbelief. And so God finally says, that’s it, to paraphrase, that’s it. The whole generation, the whole generation of men of fighting age was to perish in the wilderness before God would bring his people into the promised land.

And it is perhaps in the futility of their wilderness wanderings that Moses pens this psalm. Well, what do we learn of in this psalm? This psalm can basically be broken up into three major sections. The opening section, which we find in verses 1 and 2, and then the central section, which we find in verses 3 through 12, and then there is a final section. in verses 13 through 17. And this psalm exhibits a number of different moods, a number of different literary genres. The psalm begins on a note, a high note of praise to God as our dwelling place in all generations. But then the central section of the psalm focuses on the sober reality of death. Death being the result of God’s holy wrath and anger against human sin. But then the psalm closes on a note of prayer and petition, a note of hope as Moses and thus the people of God return to the Lord in prayer, beseeching the Lord to return to them and to be their dwelling place once again.

So let’s go through this wonderful portion of Scripture. And by the way, I would just mention as an aside that if you’re wondering what passages of Scripture to commit to memory, Psalm 90 is a wonderful portion of God’s Word to commit to memory. I would commend it to you. In the first two verses, we learn, first of all, of God’s eternal nature. If you’re following along in your sermon outline, this is the first main point. We learn here of God’s eternal nature. It starts off in verse 1, “…Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations.” The word that is translated here as dwelling place could be translated as refuge. What is this referring to? In what sense is the Lord our dwelling place? Think about it, the people of God throughout the years of their existence, through most of their existence at least, the people of God had wandered from nation to nation.

We think of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The people of God lived as foreigners in a foreign land in Egypt where they were enslaved. It was only after God brought them into the promised land and planted them in the promised land that they had some stability. But even then, even then, there were enemies that arose, God had to raise up the judges and so forth, and eventually there would be exile. The people would be exiled from their own land. And that just highlights the uncertainty and the transitoriness of this present life. But in all these generations where God’s people had lived as strangers and aliens in this present life, God has been and had been and he continues to be our dwelling place in all generations. The Lord is our ultimate eternal home. So again, notice how this Psalm begins on a note of praise.

Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. And then in verse two, Moses goes on to write, before the mountains were born, that’s a long time ago, before the mountains were born, or you gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. In verse one, Moses has spoken of God being our dwelling place in all generations. And the reason that he has been able to be our dwelling place, the dwelling place of his people in all of the generations of human history is because God is eternal. Our God is a multi-generational God. His covenant mercies in Christ are from generation to generation. from everlasting to everlasting. The reason why He can be our dwelling place in all generations is because He is the Eternal One. He is from everlasting to everlasting.

He existed even before the mountains were formed. in ancient times. Indeed, as the eternal one, God is actually beyond time. He is unbounded by time or space or matter or any other created reality. And if you try to meditate upon the truth of God’s eternality, if you try to wrap your brain around that, you’ll get a headache. It’s just, we can’t conceive of it. We are time-bound creatures. We can’t even begin to imagine God existing outside of time, but he does exist outside of time. He is over time. He is in time. He is from everlasting unto everlasting. Children, all of God exists everywhere at all times. Think about that. All of God exists right here. All of God exists up there. All of God exists now and five minutes ago. All of God exists a thousand years from now in the future, because God is beyond time.

He transcends time. He is from everlasting to everlasting, whereas we are creatures bounded by time. Oh, dear ones, let us look to the everlasting God as our dwelling place. Let us repose our confidence and trust in Him. He has demonstrated His faithfulness from generation to generation towards His people, and He continues to demonstrate His faithfulness and love to us even today. He is, as the hymn writer puts it, He is our help in ages past, our hope for years to come. He is the eternal one. And this should fill us with a sense of awe. This should fill us with a sense of glory as we contemplate the greatness and majesty of our eternal God. But in contrast to God’s eternal being, is the brevity of human life, especially human life under God’s wrath. And that brings us to the next section, the sobering section of Moses’ poem here, Psalm 90, in verses three through 12.

This brings me to my second point on your outline. Consider next the brevity of human life under God’s wrath. Brevity means briefness. We read in verse three, You turn man back into dust and say, return, O children of men. Where else in the Bible do we read about man returning to the dust? This is clearly an allusion to Genesis 3, verse 19, where God says to Adam, after Adam had fallen into sin, and as part of God’s pronouncement of curse upon mankind, God says, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Oftentimes at a funeral or at a graveside committal service, these words will be quoted, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. In the beginning, God formed Adam of the dust of the earth. He supernaturally formed Adam and breathed into Adam life and Adam became a living being. and God created mankind to live forever.

We were not created to die, for we were created in the image of the eternal God. But here in Psalm 90, verse three, Moses writes, you turn man back into dust and say return, O children of men. The context makes it clear that the reason for this return to the dust, the reason for death ultimately is the righteous anger and wrath of God against human sin. Human death is ultimately the result of human sin. As we’re told in Romans 6.23, for the wages of sin is what? The wages of sin is death, physical death, obviously, but not just physical death, spiritual death, and ultimately, for those who are not redeemed, eternal death under the holy wrath of God. And in this passage, Moses affirms that God is the ultimate sovereign over life and death. Ultimately, he is the one who determines the number of our days, whether our days will be many or few or somewhere in between. and He is the one who sovereignly allots to us the boundaries of our lives.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith, that fateful evening, when they got in their car to go out, I’m sure they were not expecting to happen what happened to them. But nevertheless, that was part of God’s sovereign plan, according to His divine wisdom. And then in verse four, Moses goes on to say, as Moses expands upon this contrast between the eternity of God and the brevity of human life, he says in verse four, for a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it passes by or as a watch in the night. Here we are given the divine perspective on time. God the Eternal One is beyond the confines of time, and therefore He relates to time differently than we do as time-bound creatures. This reminds me of what the Apostle Peter writes in 2 Peter 3, verse 8.

I’d invite you to turn there if you’d like. 2 Peter 3, I’m going to begin reading at verse In verse 8, in the context of this passage, Peter is addressing the scoffers, those who mock Christians because, you know, we say that Jesus is going to return and people will say, well, it’s been so long. Where is the promise of His coming? I thought you said He was coming back. And how does Peter address that? Well, he says this in verse 8. 2 Peter 3, verse 8, but do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some count slowness, because again, the Lord has a different view on time than we do, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to you. repentance.

God has a reason for delaying the final judgment. God is sovereign over time and God has a different perspective on time for he is the eternal one. And it’s interesting, you know, a thousand years to us seems like practically an eternity. A thousand years. Imagine living a thousand years Imagine having a Methuselah lifespan, if you will. Was it Methuselah who lived to be almost 1,000 years old in the Old Testament? And that seems to us to be so long. But from God’s perspective, 1,000 years is like yesterday when it’s passed away, or even, as he continues to use this imagery, as a watch in the night. as a watch in the night. What is a watch in the night? Well, a night watch was a period of about four hours in length. And this imagery is piled up to say, look, God’s perspective on time is not the same as your perspective and mine as limited creatures.

In fact, for those of you who are seasoned saints, if you will, up there in years, hasn’t your perspective on time changed over the years? I remember when I was a young child, when I was in elementary school, I remember thinking that 20-year-olds were just so old I mean, and I couldn’t imagine, you know, wow, how long is it gonna be if I live to be 20 years old? That’s so far in the future. But now as I look back on that as a 56 year old, I’m like, wow, where did the time go? Your perspective on time changes over time. And the older you are, it just, it seems that the more you live, the shorter the years, the quicker the years seem to fly by. Well, how much more so is God’s perspective on time different from our own?

And then to underscore what he’s saying, look at verses five and six. Moses writes, you have swept them away like a flood. They fall asleep. Death sweeps us away like a flood, like a sleep. In the morning they are like grass which sprouts anew. In the morning it flourishes and sprouts anew. Toward evening it fades Again, these verses emphasize the brevity of life. Dr. Van Gemeren, in commenting on this reference to the grass, which flourishes in the morning and fades and withers away in the evening, he writes, the analogy comes out of the context of the dry summer climate in Canaan, where the green landscape of the winter and spring could be changed to a brown, parched scenery within a few days, of hot weather. The time designations of morning and evening are metaphors for the brevity of life and are not to be taken literally with a wooden kind of literalness.

And then he goes on to write in verses 7 through 11, he begins to focus more on the cause, the reason for life’s brevity, and that is the anger of the Lord against human sin. Verse 7, for we have been consumed by your anger. And oh, the faithless children of Israel during the wilderness generation, they experienced the anger of the Lord. Ultimately, they were not able to enter into the promised land because of their unbelief, because they did not trust the Lord to do for them what he had promised to do. We have been consumed by your anger, and by your wrath we have been dismayed. You’ve placed our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. One of the things that Mr. Rotman stressed in his testimony on Friday night, he realized that he could appear on the outside as an observant religious Jew.

He could appear very pious, very righteous, but behind closed doors he had a potty mouth, a foul mouth, and he had sin and wickedness in his heart. You may think that you can hide your sins from God, but the Lord is not only eternal He is all-knowing, and He sees what you and I think in our heart of hearts. He sees what we do behind closed doors. Children, you can hide some things from your parents, but you can’t hide anything from the Lord. He sees all, and it says our secret sins are placed in the light of your presence. Verse nine, for all our days have declined in your fury. We have finished our years like a sigh. And then he reflects upon the average lifespan. He says, as for the days of our life, they contain 70 years, or if due to strength, 80 years.

Now, of course, he’s giving a general statement about the average lifespan. Moses himself lived well beyond 80 years. So some people live beyond this 70 or 80 year period. Others’ lives are snuffed out prior to that, before they reach those years. But what is characterized? What do the days of our lives, what are they characterized by? He goes on to say in verse 10, yet their pride is but labor and sorrow, for soon it is gone and we fly away. He’s not saying that this is all life is characterized by. There are pleasures, there are joys in life, but even in the midst of our pleasures, even in the midst of feasting, there is sorrow. Even in the midst of our pleasures, there is sorrow and toil. that characterizes our life, living life in this fallen context under the wrath of God.

For soon it is gone, and we fly away. And then, verse 11, who understands the power of your anger? The implication is no one does. God is infinitely holy and righteous. We feel glimpses of His anger through the miseries of this present life. But God’s anger, it’s not a temper tantrum, a sinful temper tantrum when God gets angry. His anger and wrath are his settled opposition to that which is unholy, that which is contrary to his holy character. God is a God of infinite holiness and righteousness. God is very angry with those who have sinned against him, those who have rebelled against him. It stirs up his anger, and his anger is a holy anger, a holy, righteous indignation against our sin. And who understands the power of his anger? And verse 11 goes on to say, and your fury according to the fear that is due you.

We don’t begin to understand just how holy God is and just how angry He is with sin. He is patient. He is kind. He holds back the full manifestation of His wrath in this present age. But His anger is coming. The full manifestation of His holy wrath is coming on Judgment Day. And so what is the conclusion here? I mean, here in verses 7 through 11, the brevity and sorrow of life lived in our fallen context is highlighted as we live life. under the righteous wrath and anger of God. Our brief lifespan in this fallen context is characterized by labor and sorrow, as verse 10 tells us. Again, perhaps Moses has in view the experience of the wilderness generation as he writes this. And this leads him to verse 12, where he asks a petition of the Lord.

He offers a prayer to the Lord for wisdom. He says in verse 12, so teach us to number our days that we may present to you a heart of wisdom. In other words, it’s as if he’s saying, Lord, since our days are so few and so fleeting and sorrowful, and since your anger against sin is so great, teach us to number our days that we may present to you a heart of wisdom. Where does wisdom come from? Children, what is the beginning of wisdom? The Bible says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. So this petition in verse 12, what does it imply? Well, since the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, the brevity of our lives and the reality of God’s righteous wrath against our sins should prod us, should lead us to seek His grace in a spirit of repentance and trust.

Well, this leads us naturally to the last hope-filled section of this psalm. This psalm, again, takes us to the heights and the depths of the extent of human emotion. It begins with praise, and then it plunges us into the somber reality of death and the wrath of God. Finally, in verses 13 through 17, we see Moses offering a plea for mercy and restoration. This is the final point in your sermon outline. We find here in these verses, in this final section of Psalm 90, a plea for mercy and restoration. And so Moses writes, do return, O Lord. And notice the word Lord, it’s in all capital letters. This is Yahweh, the covenant name of God, a name that that has in view God as the gracious, merciful, forgiving, covenant-making, covenant-keeping God of his people. Do return, O Yahweh.

How long will it be? And be sorry for your servants. O, satisfy us in the morning. There again is that morning and evening imagery. Human life is like grass that flourishes in the morning and by evening time it withers away. But there is a new morning that Moses looks to. He says, satisfy us in the morning with your loving kindness, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days. Replace this sorrow with gladness. Verse 15, make us glad according to the days you have afflicted us and the years we have seen evil. Let your work appear to your servants and your majesty to their children, which is another way of saying, Lord, intervene, act in grace and mercy, restore us, be our dwelling place once again. And not only that, he goes on to pray.

In verse 17, let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and confirm for us the work of our hands. Yes, he repeats himself for emphasis, confirm the work of our hands. The work of our hands in this fleeting, brief life, which is but a flash in the pan, but a blip on the radar screen of eternity. This life, how can we in this brief life bear spiritual fruit for God, only as God in mercy confirms the work of our hands. Again, in these verses, we see a mood of hope returning as Moses prays for God to return to his afflicted, humbled people. In other words, to become their dwelling place once more. And ultimately, friends, this last section of Psalm 90, ultimately, this is fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ. For in Christ, God’s mercies have been restored, and indeed, they are confirmed, and they are sure, and they are certain to us if we are in Christ.

Well, dear ones, I began this sermon by telling you the story of the tragic death of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, as I’ve been calling them. But in God’s kind providence and in hindsight, I believe there was actually a silver lining to the dark cloud of this tragic event. You see, I believe that the reason that Mr. and Mrs. Smith were so kind and so welcoming to my family is because they were followers of Jesus Christ. They were Christians. They loved the Lord. They were never pushy or overbearing about their faith, although I believe that Mrs. Smith would sometimes speak about her faith in Christ to my mother in their friendly poolside conversations. In addition to her words, their words to us, their welcoming spirit and kindness and openhearted neighborliness toward our family was a powerful witness for Christ to us.

I don’t think I was a believer at the time, but in hindsight I recall the preacher at their funeral giving a clear and powerful and simple presentation of the gospel. I also recall after their funeral service a kindly lady approaching my brother and me. She noticed that we were upset, probably crying, and she sat down with us, seeking to comfort us. And I remember her telling us, you don’t need to worry about Mr. and Mrs. Smith. They’re with Jesus. Take comfort, they’re with the Lord. I believe that God used their loving Christian witness along with the gospel message I heard at their funeral service to sow the seed of his word in my heart. seed that would later bear the fruit of conversion through the sovereign work of God’s Holy Spirit. God brought good to many out of that evil tragedy.

Though their lives were cut off prematurely, at least from a human perspective, the Lord graciously confirmed the work of their hands by using their humble, simple, loving Christian witness to touch the lives of many, including myself. And their legacy lives on. Their son, after graduating from college, went on to grow, he went on to become a foreign missionary. And my mother still keeps in touch periodically with their daughter who continues along with her family today to walk with the Lord in faith. Their legacy continues, for the Lord had confirmed the work of their hands though their lives had been cut short. And what the Lord did for them in making their lives fruitful for eternity, He can do for each and every one of us as we trust in Him. Dear ones, let us turn to the Lord and look to Him alone as our refuge, our dwelling place. our ultimate home, and let us trust in Him to confirm the work of our hands, to take the labors of this brief life of ours, and to bear spiritual fruit through our lives.

Amen. Let us pray. Our Lord and Father in heaven, sovereign and eternal God, We thank you and praise you that you are from everlasting, even unto everlasting, that you are our dwelling place in all generations. Lord, in this side of glory, in this life, we face uncertainty, we face sorrow and toil, and sometimes we face shocking tragedy. And yet we know, Lord God, that we can rest in you, for you, oh God, are our dwelling place. May we have a deepened sense of that spiritual reality in our lives, and may we look to the Lord Jesus Christ, who has come to dwell in our midst, and by his spirit who dwells within us, and may we walk in faith, hope, and love through union with him. In Jesus’ name we pray, and all of God’s people said, Amen.

Let’s close our time of worship by rising and we’ll sing from Psalm, I’m sorry, hymn 406, Jesus with thy church abide. We will sing the first three stanzas, stanzas one through three and also stanzas six and nine. We’ll rise and sing together hymn 406.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

April 23, 2023
Born in Zion

About this sermon

Psalm 87 celebrates Zion, the city God loves above every other dwelling in Jacob. Even Egypt, Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, and Cush, the old enemies of God’s people, will be counted as born in Zion. The psalm looks ahead to the church, the heavenly Jerusalem, where people from every nation are born again by the Spirit. God ordinarily brings his children to faith and nurtures them through the church, and all their springs of joy are in her.

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Sermon transcript

As we continue our consideration of various psalms this evening, we’re going to consider a very brief, yet a very packed psalm. A psalm that is packed full of gospel truth, biblical truth, as all the scriptures are. But there’s so much packed into this brief psalm. Psalm 87. Let us hear God’s holy word. Psalm 87. Entitled, A Psalm of the Sons of Korah. A song. His foundation is in the holy mountains. The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the other dwelling places of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God, Sila. I shall mention Rahab and Babylon among those who know me. Behold, Philistia and Tyre with Ethiopia. This one was born there. But of Zion, it shall be said, this one and that one were born in her. and the Most High Himself will establish her.

The Lord will count when He registers the peoples. This one was born there, Selah. Then those who sing as well as those who play the flutes shall say, all my springs of joy are in you.” The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever. Let’s ask the Lord to bless the proclamation of His Word this evening. Our gracious Lord and Father in Heaven, we once again thank you for your word, your God-breathed, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. It is a lamp unto our feet, a light unto our path. It is a guide to our way, and it leads us unto Jesus. We pray, Heavenly Father, that by the power of Your Spirit, You would open our minds and our hearts this evening to behold wondrous things from Your Word. And we pray that through this portion of Holy Scripture, You would once again lead us to Jesus and fill and strengthen our souls in communion with Him.

We pray these things, Heavenly Father, through Christ our Lord and all of God’s people said, Amen. You may be seated. Title of my sermon this evening is Born in Zion. And if you’re following along with the sermon outline, especially the children, there’s a number of words you can listen for. But I especially encourage you to listen for the words Zion, Church, Salvation, and Mother. Well, dear ones, Saint Cyprian, the early church father, famously wrote these words. He wrote, he cannot have God for his father who has not the church for his mother. Now, lest we imagine that this high and lofty view of the church is only a Roman Catholic view. The great Protestant reformer, John Calvin, expressed a similar sentiment. In chapter one, section one of book four of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, where he wrote the following, and I quote Calvin, he says, I shall start then with the church into whose bosom God is pleased to gather his sons, not only that they may be nourished by her help and ministry as long as they are infants and children, but also that they may be guided by her motherly care until they mature and at last reach the goal of faith.

And then he quotes from Mark 10 verse 9, for what God has joined together, it is not lawful to put asunder. So that for those to whom he is father, the church may also be mother. And this was not only so under the law, but also after Christ’s coming, as Paul testifies when he teaches that we are children of the new and heavenly Jerusalem. And he refers there to Galatians four, verse 26, from which is part of the passage that I read from Galatians earlier in the service. Likewise, friends, the theologians who authored our beloved Westminster Confession of Faith, declared that the visible church is, quote, the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. Now, of course, it’s very important that we not misunderstand these sentiments, these words, these high, these these these words that express such a high and lofty view of the church.

Of course, all of this does not mean that the church saves. The church doesn’t have the power to save us. Only the Lord Jesus Christ can save us. And he does so by God’s sovereign grace alone, through God given faith alone in Jesus Christ alone, apart from works of the law. Such sentiments do not mean that we somehow are saved by the good works of church attendance or affiliating with the church in responsible membership, though it is important to do those things. To suggest such a thing would be to turn the church into an idol and to replace Christ as the only Savior with the church as Savior. But friends, what great theologians of the church like St. Cyprian, St. Augustine, John Calvin, and the Westminster Divines were highlighting by those lofty statements that they wrote about the church as the mother of the faithful.

What they were highlighting and stressing is that God, our Heavenly Father, is ordinarily pleased to birth His chosen ones into a living faith and to nurture them in that faith through the maternal ministrations of Christ’s church. In other words, God ordinarily brings his elect to saving faith in Christ and spiritually nurtures them in that faith through the ministry of the visible church, especially through the ordinary means of grace, namely the word of God, especially as that word is proclaimed or preached, as well as the administration of the sacraments and prayer. Scripture tells us in Romans 10, verse 17, so faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ. And it’s in that passage that Paul asks the question, how can they preach unless they are sent? He’s talking about hearing the preached Word of Christ, the Gospel proclaimed.

Friends, Christ has entrusted His ordinary means of grace, especially the preaching of His Gospel Word to His visible, organized church. not to parachurch ministries as valuable and as wonderful as some of those ministries are, but to the visible organized church. And this visible church points us to the ultimate Zion of God, the heavenly Jerusalem, our true spiritual mother. As Paul writes in Galatians 4, 26, but the Jerusalem above is free. She is our mother. Our brief passage for this Lord’s Day evening, Psalm 87, uses, of course, Old Covenant language to point us to these ultimate spiritual saving eschatological realities. These realities that are ultimately fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Church of Christ. This psalm reminds us that whoever we are and wherever we come from, if we belong to God’s people, We have been born in Zion, the spiritual mother of the faithful.

Now, what is the historical setting that God used to lead this psalmist to pen this beautiful poem of faith? Well, it’s difficult to pin down the original life setting. We’re given very little information in the psalm itself. And so scholars debate whether it is pre-exilic, exilic, or post-exilic in its composition. In other words, scholars debate, was this psalm written before the Babylonian exile, during the exile, after the exile? And wherever you come down on that question, it doesn’t really impact the meaning of this passage. As usual, I think Dr. Van Gameron offers some wise words. He says it may well have been associated, the psalm may well have been associated with any of the three pilgrimage festivals when Israel, together with proselytes, together with converts from outside of Israel, joined together in the worship of God at the temple.

What is the major theme of this psalm, our psalm for this evening? Well, the quote from one Bible commentator, this is a psalm celebrating Zion as the chosen city of God. It looks forward to people of all nations, even nations that have been enemies to Israel becoming citizens of this city. Another commentator says this brief psalm is essentially prophetic. It contains prophecy pointing forward to the New Covenant era. It says, the commentator says, the vision of Zion as the metropolis of the worldwide kingdom of God is not to be interpreted geographically, but spiritually. And he refers to Hebrews 11, verse 10. The dominant thought is that of a universal and glad acceptance of God as Lord and King, in which allegiance, all sources of international friction are removed. And of course, that will ultimately be fulfilled in its consummate realities when Jesus returns in glory.

So as we consider this brief psalm, I would first of all have us to consider the first three verses. Consider, first of all, the glory of Zion. This is a psalm of Zion. And the theme, the opening theme is that we read of in the opening verses of this psalm is the glory of Zion. That is my first main point for this evening. The psalmist opens This divinely inspired poem by saying his foundation is in the holy mountains, the holy mountains. What is he referring to? He’s referring to Zion, the temple mount, the place where God’s special covenantal presence dwelt in the midst of his wholly set apart people. And yet it is, as it is translated here in the New American Standard Version, in the Hebrew it is in the plural. Why is that?

Why is it in the plural? It literally could be translated as hills of holiness. Well, this could be perhaps because Jerusalem covers a number of hills. Perhaps that is in the psalmist’s mind. Or perhaps, as I think more likely, the psalmist is using a plural of majesty, emphasizing the majesty of Mount Zion. And what makes it majestic? What makes it majestic is that God has chosen Mount Zion as the place where he would come to meet with his people, where His people would gather in his presence, rejoicing in his redemptive covenantal mercies and offer their sacrifices of praise and adoration to him. As it says in verse two, the Lord, notice it’s in all capital letters, meaning Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel, the Lord Yahweh loves the gates of Zion more than all the other dwelling places of Jacob.

The gates of Zion, Mount Zion is unique among all of the places in the Holy Land. Mount Zion was unique. The Lord is said to love the gates of Zion. What is this imagery of the gates of Zion? What is the significance of this reference to the gates of Zion? Well, apparently gates is being used here poetically. Perhaps the gates of Zion are being used by the psalmist to represent the whole city. Or perhaps, as I think more likely, the gates of Zion represent the temple in particular, God’s dwelling place among his people. And the place again, as I mentioned, the place where the people communed with their God in holy, joyful worship and received from God his redeeming, forgiving mercy through the sacrificial system. And then it goes on to say in verse three, glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God.

Notice that this holy mountain, the gates of Zion and the city of God, these are all referring to the same thing in slightly different ways. God has spoken glorious things about Mount Zion. And why has he spoken glorious things about Mount Zion? Because Mount Zion is the place where glorious spiritual realities are at work, where God’s people experience his forgiving covenant mercies and grace, where God’s people again gather to offer joyful praise and adoration to their covenant-making, covenant-keeping God who has redeemed them from slavery and brought them to be his people and to come and dwell in their midst. We see one example of God speaking glorious things about Mount Zion in the prophecy recorded by the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 2, verses 2 through 4. And I’d invite you to turn there to that passage briefly.

Isaiah chapter 2, verses 2 through 4. The Holy Spirit through Isaiah says the following. Now it will come about that in the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the chief of the mountains. It will be raised above the hills and all the nations will stream to it. This anticipates the new covenant era when the Gentiles too will hear the glad tidings of great joy. Verse 3, And many peoples will come and say, Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us concerning his ways and that we may walk in his paths. For the law will go forth from Zion. And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, and he will judge between the nations and will render decisions for many peoples.

And they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation and never again will they learn war. And ultimately, of course, is fulfilled, consummately fulfilled when Christ returns in glory. Beloved Old Testament Zion, is fulfilled in Christ, first and foremost, and in His church. Christ is the ultimate living temple of God. He is the word made flesh who came to dwell amongst us, to tabernacle in our midst. And as the scriptures teach, we are living stones in union with Jesus Christ, the living temple. And we are being built up together by the spirit into a living temple in the Lord, as the apostle Paul expresses it, I believe, in Ephesians chapter two. The church is a glorious thing. The church is weak. The church is sinful.

The church has often fallen into grave error and grave, even near apostasy. And yet, God continues to use his church to proclaim the glad tidings of great joy, to proclaim the good news of Jesus, and to call the nations into fellowship with the Savior. God glories in Zion. He speaks glorious things of the city of God. His people speak glorious things of the city of God. To you, dear listener, glory in Zion, in Christ, and in His body, the church. In the second part of this psalm, which covers verses four through six, we next see Zion presented as the mother of the faithful. That’s my second main point. Zion here is presented as the mother of the faithful. And we come to verse four, which has some translational and interpretive issues connected to it, but I’ll just read it as it is presented here once again in the New American Standard Version.

It says, I shall mention Rahab and Babylon among those who know me. Behold, Philistia and Tyre with Ethiopia. This one was born there. Now, those of you who who have read the Bible, those of you who know the scriptures, do you recognize these various nations that are mentioned here in this verse? Rahab, Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, and so forth. What were these nations to Israel in Old Testament times? Well, these were nations that were Israel’s archenemies, that often stood in opposition to the people of God. And yet here we see that those from among these nations will be counted among those who were born in Zion. At least that is the traditional understanding. Now some suggest that this passage is better understood as a reference to the Jews who were dispersed among these nations. It could be translated, for example, in the vocative, O Rahab, O Babylon, and so forth.

And if that’s the case, perhaps the Holy Spirit is saying through the psalmist, look, you nations, Doesn’t matter that my people are scattered in your midst. They are still regarded by me as born in Zion, even though they are among the dispersion. And that’s one possible way to understand this passage. But brothers and sisters, I think the traditional understanding which sees this verse as a prophecy predicting a future time when even Gentiles will become part of God’s people. I think that is the more likely and correct view. of this passage. And indeed, there are many other passages in the Old Testament that anticipate this New Covenant era when the gospel will break out from its national boundaries and become international, when the nations will hear the glad tidings of great joy. I believe this passage anticipates the ingathering of the Gentiles, the Great Commission, and the New Covenant era.

I believe that’s what makes most sense, given the context of this passage. Now again, one commentator explains these nations as follows. He says, the list is composed of Gentile nations, Rahab, that’s a nickname for Egypt, Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, which was a Phoenician city, culturally Canaanite, and Cush, or Nubia, the region south of Egypt. That’s translated in the New American Standard Version as Ethiopia. all of which had been at one time or another enemies of God’s people and the city of Jerusalem. And yet the Most High Himself will establish Zion in order to allow the peoples, even these enemy peoples, to be treated as born in her. The people who once despised the true and living God and persecuted God’s people would come, people from amongst those nations would one day come to faith in the God of Israel, the true and living God, and would be regarded as being born in her, because they are born again by the Spirit.

This passage anticipates the new covenant era in Christ, the Great Commission, and therefore the ingathering of the Gentiles into the covenant people of God. And this sets our sights to the world. It also is, in that regard, a great missionary psalm, motivating us to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. And then in verse 5, the psalmist goes on and says, But of Zion it shall be said, This one and that one were born in her, and the Most High Himself will establish her. This is referring ultimately, I believe, not to not to the earthly temple under the old covenant. That earthly temple was simply a type of picture of ultimate spiritual heavenly realities, this is referring. to the spiritual heavenly Zion. It is that Zion which is the mother city of God’s people.

And this truth is reflected in many passages in Scripture. But let’s just take a look at one passage in the New Testament from Hebrews chapter 11. Let me read Hebrews 11 verses 8 through 10, which speaks of the patriarch Abraham. Hebrews 11 verses 8 through 10, it says, by faith, Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance. And he went out not knowing where he was going. By faith, he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise. Why did he do this? Look at verse 10. for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” Abraham was looking for no ordinary earthly city.

He was looking for the city which has foundations. And then skip down in Hebrews 11, and let us consider verses 13-16, where the author of Hebrews writing of these old covenant saints who had died, Verse 13, all these died in faith without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own. And indeed, if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, notice verse 16, as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.

A heavenly city. And not only that, That is, verse 6 of our passage tells us, the Lord will count when He registers the people. This one was born there. You know, the Bible contains a lot of genealogies, a lot of census material, and the Scriptures often speak to God’s people being registered in the census of His people. And I believe this ultimately, brothers and sisters, this is referring to Zion’s census, the register of those who have experienced the new birth, those registered in the Lamb’s book of life. This this idea of being registered among the census of God’s people is is reflected in numerous New Testament passages, just to quote from a couple. If you look at Philippians chapter four, verse three, Philippians four, verse three, as as Paul is giving his closing exhortations in that epistle.

He remembers his companions in the faith. He says this, indeed true companion, I ask you also to help these women who have shared my struggle in the cause of the gospel together with Clement also and the rest of my fellow workers. And he almost says as an aside, whose names are in what? Whose names are in the book of life. Their names have been registered in the book of life. And then if you consider Revelation 20, verse 15. Revelation chapter 20, verse 15. We read these words. If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. The Lamb’s book of life. Dear listener, are you registered in the Lamb’s Book of Life. Are you born in Zion? If you’ve been born again by the Holy Spirit, having trusted Christ and Christ alone as your Lord and Savior, wherever you live, whether you are of Jewish or Gentile stock, if you know Christ as your Savior, this psalm is speaking of you.

You have been born in Zion. And God, Yahweh, your Lord and Father in Heaven, He says of you, dear believer, this one was born There Zion again is the mother of the faithful, even as God is our father. And this, what is the conclusion of all of this? The conclusion is the joy of Zion. The psalmist brings this glorious brief psalm to full circle in verse seven, where he expresses the joy of Zion. This is my final point in your outline. Then those who sing as well as those who play the flute shall say, all my springs of joy are in you.” Why? What joy is this speaking of? This is speaking of the joy of salvation. This is speaking of the joy of those who have been registered in the Lamb’s Book of Life, the heavenly Zion.

Those who indeed, who have been born in Zion, because by sovereign grace they have been born again by the Holy Spirit. Springs of salvation. If you know Christ and His forgiving mercy, What is the result? The result is joy. The joy of the Lord. Springs of salvation are found in you, in your heart, and you find all of your joy in the reality of Zion. This is also expressed, we have a similar expression in Psalm 46, verse 4. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God. The holy dwelling places of the Most High. And it goes on to say God is in the midst of her. She will not be moved. God will help her when morning dawns. God is in our midst by his Holy Spirit. The gospel is here.

Christ is here. The Spirit is here. wherever Christ’s name is confessed, wherever his gospel is believed, wherever he is worshiped in spirit and in truth. May the joy of Zion be your joy and mine as we rejoice before him and commune with him in spirit and in truth. Amen. Let us pray. Our Lord and Father in heaven, we do praise you and thank you for Your grace to us, we thank you that we who know Christ by your grace alone, that we have been registered in the Lamb’s Book of Life, that we have been born in Zion, having been born again by your spirit. We thank you, Lord, that we belong and that we can commune with you in Christ, the living temple, and that you have are building us up together as a living temple in the spirit.

Be with us now, Lord, as we continue to worship you, especially as we celebrate together the Lord’s Supper. We ask these things in Jesus name and all of God’s people said. Amen.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

April 16, 2023
Yearning for the Courts of the LORD

About this sermon

The psalmist of Psalm 84 longs for the courts of the Lord and envies even the sparrow that nests by God’s altars. Israel’s men made pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times a year, and he finds joy in that journey, going from strength to strength through the valley of Baca. Christians travel on pilgrimage to the heavenly Zion, fed along the way by God’s word and refreshed by his Spirit. A day in God’s courts is better than a thousand elsewhere, and blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord.

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Sermon transcript

Psalm 84. Let us hear God’s holy word. It is entitled, for the choir director on the Gitteth, the Psalm of the Sons of Korah. How lovely are your dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! My soul longed and even yearned for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God. The bird also has found a house and the swallow a nest for herself where she may lay her young. Even your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. How blessed are those who dwell in your house. They are ever praising you, Selah. How blessed is the man whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. Passing through the valley of Baca, they make it a spring. The early rain also covers it with blessings.

They go from strength to strength. Every one of them appears before God in Zion. O Lord, God of hosts, hear my prayer. Give ear, O God of Jacob, Selah. Behold our shield, O God, and look upon the face of your anointed. For a day in your courts is better than a thousand outside. I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. For the Lord God is a sun and shield. The Lord gives grace and glory. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, how blessed is the man who trusts in you. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Please remain standing as we seek the Lord’s blessing upon the preaching of his word.

Our Lord and Father in heaven, we thank you for the scriptures, the word of God, it is a lamp unto our feet, a light into our path. It is a guide to our way, and we pray that as we consider this portion of the Holy Scriptures this evening, that the Spirit would illuminate our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from your word. Lord, grant us the grace to resonate in our hearts with the sentiments expressed by the psalmist here, that we would indeed find your dwelling place to be indeed lovely. We pray all of these things in Jesus’ name. And all of God’s people said, Amen. You may be seated. The title of my sermon this evening is Yearning for the Courts of the Lord. And there’s a number of words you can listen for this evening if you’re following along in your sermon outline.

And I would encourage the children to listen, especially for the words presence, temple, pilgrimage and trust. Well, dear ones, in the opening section of his classic book, The Confessions, Saint Augustine prayerfully addresses God with these often quoted words. And perhaps you’ve heard these words before. He says, For thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest on thee. Indeed, it is truly the case that our hearts are restless until they find their rest in the Lord. We were created in God’s image to have communion with the Lord. We lost that communion in the fall, but there still is a God-shaped vacuum, if you will, in our hearts. And when we are born again by the Holy Spirit, especially our hearts cry out for God and yearn for His presence.

Well, in our psalm for this Lord’s Day evening, ascribed to the sons of Korah, the psalmist expresses the restlessness of his heart as he longed, even yearned, to experience the joy of God’s presence in the Lord’s holy temple in Jerusalem. Now, the law of Moses had required all of the males in Israel to appear before the Lord in the place where he would choose to put his name three times each year. This requirement is laid out, for example, in Deuteronomy, chapter 16, verse 16. I’d invite you to turn there. I just want to read that verse, Deuteronomy 16, verse 16, where we read these words. Three times in a year, all your mails shall appear before the Lord your God in the place which He chooses at the feast of unleavened bread and at the feast of weeks and at the feast of booths.

And they shall not appear before the Lord empty handed. In other words, they shall come bringing a sacrifice to the Lord. This was required of all the males three times a year wherever they happened to live in the land of Israel. So again, what this means is that at least three times a year, all of the males were required to take time off of work and make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and for the celebration of these annual feasts, feasts that reminded the people of God of his special covenant relationship with them and his gracious provision to them. Now, I imagine that it’s likely that some of the Israelites viewed these obligatory pilgrimages with annoyance, perhaps viewing them as burdens to be fulfilled with a grudging sense of duty. But the author of our psalm for this evening reflects a very different attitude.

He reflects a believing, faith-filled attitude toward these pilgrimages, as this psalm seems to reflect the psalmist going on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he will come before the presence of the Lord at the tabernacle, or rather the temple. Here, the author of this psalm for him, for the author of this psalm, I should say, enjoying the divine presence and worshiping God in his holy temple are his greatest joy, his greatest longing. Indeed, we find our psalmist here yearning for the courts of the Lord, the place where God’s name dwells, the courts of the Lord. Of course, his language for God’s temple, where God’s special presence dwelt. Now, friends, there’s no way to be absolutely certain about the exact original historical setting for this psalm, and biblical scholars offer different theories about whether this psalm was written before the Babylonian exile or perhaps written during the exile.

In the latter case, this psalm reflects a longing of the psalmist for the old days when they used to be able to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but no longer. And so there’s differences on whether this is to be regarded as a pre-exilic psalm or an exilic psalm. However, once again, I often quote from Dr. Van Gammeren, but once again, I think he offers a balanced view. He says, this psalm contains a collage of diverse genres, hymn, prayer, lament, and a song of Zion. As to the time of composition or original life situation, it is equally difficult to come to an agreement The references to the anointed one, verse nine, suggests that the psalm is pre-exilic. Its setting may reflect a festive procession to Jerusalem during one of the festivals. Well, dear ones, again, whenever this psalm was composed and whatever may have been its original historical setting, the Holy Spirit has given to us in this psalm a beautiful and compelling expression of heartfelt devotion to the Lord an expression of devotion that can be used by believers and used by the church as a whole under many diverse circumstances and challenges and joys that we face in our pilgrimage of faith as we journey to that ultimate promised land of the new creation, where we will enjoy the everlasting feast of salvation through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, where we will dwell in the eternal temple of God in the new Jerusalem.

In this psalm, our Lord cheers us on our pilgrim way. And so, as we dive into our psalm for this evening, let’s focus on the opening four verses, the first section of this psalm. We see here in these verses the joy of God’s house. The joy of God’s house. The psalmist writes, how lovely are your dwelling places, O Lord of hosts.” Yahweh of hosts. Again, this is military language. God is the divine warrior who fights for His people. And He dwells in the midst of His people. And what is the psalmist’s response when he considers God’s dwelling place, His temple, the place where the people of God experience His special, covenantal, gracious presence? He says, how lovely are your dwelling places, O Lord of hosts. And then he says in verse 2, my soul longed and even yearned for the courts of the Lord.

My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.” The New Bible commentary says in verse 1 that we may well picture a pilgrim newly arrived exclaiming in rapture over the long-anticipated beauty of the Lord’s house. But the question arises, what is it that made the temple so lovely to this psalmist? Remember, the temple in Jerusalem was a symbol of the fact that God in His covenant grace and mercy had come to dwell among His people. The temple was where sacrifices were offered to to atone, at least symbolically atone for sin, where God’s forgiving mercy was experienced by the people of God living under the old covenant and where the worship of God took place, where God’s people worship the Lord with loud songs of joy and gratitude, praise and thanksgiving. It was the place where God’s special, covenantal, royal, gracious presence dwelt amongst his redeemed people.

And so its loveliness and beauty were not ultimately to be found in its architecture, its structure, although Solomon’s temple was indeed a beautiful structure. It was beautiful in terms of its architecture and structure and so forth. It was beautiful to behold. But the beauty of the courts of the Lord were not ultimately in that architecture or structure, but in the spiritual blessings of the divine presence that is signified and that God’s people experienced as they came in worship before the Lord at his holy temple. And verse two shows us that the psalmist devotion to God is not humanistic. It’s not me centered. It’s not. Man-centered, it’s God-centered. His devotion is deeply God-centered. His focus and joy is not ultimately in the temple itself, but in the divine occupant of the temple, who is described in this verse as the living God.

Again, he says, my soul, my soul, my inmost being, my soul longed and even yearned for the courts of the Lord. Why does he yearn for the courts of the Lord? Well, the second part of this verse makes it clear. My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God. It’s not so much about going to this special place as such. It’s what that special place represented. And it was the experience of God’s presence, his merciful, gracious, covenantal presence that filled this psalmist with such yearning and such joy. And then verse three is a very touching statement here. It says, the bird also has found a house and the swallow a nest for herself. where she may lay her young, even your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.” Now think about it.

This is almost a playful statement. As the psalmist either recollects or conveys to us what he sees in the temple there, he notices that there are some small common birds making their nests there by the altars, the place of sacrifice. as one commentator puts it, seeing even tiny birds making themselves at home, he realizes the safety of God’s house and for himself associates this with the Lord’s provision of thy altars, the places of sacrifice for sin, reconciliation and communion with God. Why does he bring up these birds, this observation, this almost playful imagery here? Well, notice how he describes the altars of God and the God of who is worshipped through sacrifice on the altars. He describes Him as, again, Yahweh of hosts, this mighty King and God. He says, even your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.

This glorious, majestic, divine King is willing to tolerate These tiny common birds in His presence, there’s safety there, even for these common birds. Since even these small and common birds are privileged to live in, in and around the temple of God, the great divine King. How much more can he be confident in his safety in God’s presence? And how much more blessed are those who are privileged to serve the Lord in his temple, such as the priests and the Levites who daily attended the worship and praise of God and offered the sacrifices to the Lord? Again, as he says in verse four, how blessed are those who dwell in your house. They are ever praising you. He pronounces this blessing, this benediction three times, as we will see in this psalm. How blessed are those who do what?

Who dwell in God’s house, who have day in and day out access to the Lord’s special presence in the temple. And he as a pilgrim is envious of that. How blessed they are. Here I am, a pilgrim. I come three times a year. I think the implication is I come to the temple three times a year. But how blessed are those who dwell in the house of the Lord. Now, what are some what are some applications that we can glean from this passage and apply to our situation today? Well, for one, one thing is clear. We, as believers living as we do under the new covenant, we no longer need to book flights and make pilgrimages to a temple in Jerusalem in order to experience the joys of God’s presence. After all, Christ has broken down the dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile in Christ.

Christ himself is the living temple and we are living stones in that living temple. So we can experience this special presence and joy of the Lord without having to travel to a special place. We experience that joy of the Lord as we worship him, especially as we gather for worship together as his covenant people, for we as the church corporate are also a temple of the living God in union with Christ. And so let me ask you, dear listener, Does your heart resonate with the sentiments expressed by the psalmist as he as he indicates that he longs and yearns to experience the joys of the divine presence and finds the dwelling place of God to be lovely, to be beautiful in his eyes? Does that resonate with you? And if not, why not? The Lord is beautiful.

He is beautiful, He is glorious, He is our wonderful Savior, and we ought to long for Him. May God, by His grace and through the Holy Spirit, give each and every one of us a yearning, a longing to dwell with and commune with our gracious, sovereign, triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But not only do we see the psalmist extolling the joy of God’s house, we also notice the psalmist in the second part of this psalm extolling the blessedness of the pilgrim way. And that’s the second point. If you’re following along in your sermon outline, we see next the blessedness of the pilgrim way. Verse five. Here he pronounces his second blessing. He says, How blessed is the man whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. How blessed is the man whose strength is in you.

Making these three annual pilgrimages required some strength, required planning, required strength. It’s not easy, and back then they didn’t have the kinds of technology that we have today that enables us to travel long distances relatively easily, and so it required strength. What was it that gave these pilgrims strength to travel the highways to Zion? Well, and by the way, the second part of this verse, in whose heart are the highways to Zion, there are differences of interpretation among the scholars. But I think what this has to do with is, again, the fact that these pilgrims, as they went on these pilgrimages year in and year out, they would get familiar with the routes that they would take. In fact, they could recall those routes in their hearts, in their minds. You know, if you’re familiar with a route, maybe it’s your commute to work, and you take that commute day in and day out, and if you’ve taken that commute long enough, you could probably almost do it with your eyes shut.

I wouldn’t recommend that, of course, but you know, you know the route like the back of your hand. Well, again, How blessed is the man whose strength is in you and the Lord, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.” His heart knows the way to Zion and longs for that way. Again, one Bible commentator says, from the vantage point of his present blessedness in God’s house, he looks back to the joy that attended his way. The ones that are described in verse 5 are those whose hearts are set on pilgrimage. They view it not as a grudging duty, but as a joy. And they know the pilgrim way. by heart, but they encounter difficulties on the way. Verse six says, passing through the valley of Baca, they make it a spring. The early rain also covers it with blessings.

What’s this talking about? What is this valley of Baca? Well, if it was an actual geographical location, we don’t know where it is today. It’s an unknown location. It may also be, this terminology may also be used in a symbolic sense and more of a poetical sense to represent any dry or arid part of the journey that the pilgrims had to pass through. Though some, again, some believe this is simply a symbol for affliction that might be experienced on the Pilgrim Way. Either way, This appears to be referring to a dry and arid place that these pilgrims needed to go through in order to reach their destination, to reach the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem. But notice, passing through the Valley of Bacchae, passing through these dry and wearisome parts of the journey, they make it a spring.

The early rain also covers it with blessings. They find refreshment even in the midst of this dry and weary land, even in the midst of the valley of Baca. And as it says in verse 7, They go from strength to strength. Every one of them appears before God in Zion. As the pilgrims make their journey difficult, though it may be challenging in part, as it may be, they go from strength to strength. They find strength and encouragement in their journey. Why? Because their eyes are set on the destination of their journey. You see the parallel to our walk of faith with the Lord. We, too, are pilgrims and we are making a journey through this life. We are making a pilgrimage to the heavenly Zion. What enables us to go from strength to strength as we pass through the desolate valley of Baca in our pilgrimage to the heavenly Zion?

What is it that strengthens us as believers in Christ as we make our way through this fallen, sin-cursed world, as we journey to our ultimate destination, our eschatological destination? Well, many answers could be given, but I think, brothers and sisters, God provides us with food in the wilderness. He provides us with refreshment, even as we pass, metaphorically speaking at least, through the valley of Baca. And that food is God’s word and the refreshing spring of the indwelling spirit refreshes our souls through the word. As you commune with your savior, as you ground yourself in his word and and feast upon his word, you will find strength for the journey. Are you, dear listener, finding strength? and refreshment in the Lord and His means of grace. Do you find yourself going from strength to strength? It is in our weakness that Christ’s strength is manifested and perfected.

May you find your rest and your refreshment and your strength in the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for you and rose for you, who intercedes for you before the Father, and who will pull you through even unto the end. But finally, we see in this passage the delights of dwelling with God, the delights of dwelling with God. There’s sort of a change or a shift of focus at this point in the psalm as the psalmist offers a prayer to God. He says in verses 8 and 9, O Lord, God of hosts, hear my prayer. Give ear, O God of Jacob. And the fact that he is addressing God as the God of Jacob indicates that he is appealing to God as the faithful covenant keeping God. He’s appealing to God’s covenant mercies in his prayer.

He’s not appealing to his own worthiness or his own obedience or anything like that. And what does he say? Behold our shield, O God, and look upon the face of your anointed.” Who is or what is this shield? It is the Lord’s anointed. And who is the Lord’s anointed? It is the Davidic king. Here, the psalmist interrupts this expression of joy in the Lord’s courts, the Lord’s presence, and joy in the pilgrim way. To pray for the king, why does he do that? Again, this is a prayer, verses eight and nine are a prayer for the king, the Davidic king, the Lord’s anointed, who is the shield, meaning the protector of God’s people. The temple in Jerusalem, God’s dwelling place among his people. only remain stable and secure as the Davidic king was faithful to God’s covenant.

I think that is the concern that’s going on here. That’s why the psalmist enjoying the presence of God in the temple understands that that temple will not stand forever. That temple will only stand in so far as the Davidic king is faithful to the Lord’s covenant. But of course, if you know, The history of God’s people in the Old Testament, most of the kings, many of the kings were unfaithful. And even the faithful kings like David, the sweet psalmist of Israel, the man after God’s own heart. There were some pretty profound occurrences or episodes in David’s kingship and life where he fell into grievous sin that brought harm not only upon himself, but upon the people of God. Because again, the Lord’s anointed king represented the people and protected the people. And the king, so very often the Davidic king, broke the covenant.

In fact, all of them did to one degree or another. And so the psalmist prays for God to continue to bless the king. He prays for the shield of God’s people, the protector of God’s people, because he knows that if the king is unfaithful, then sooner or later the covenant curses would come upon the people, the temple would be destroyed, and the people would be sent away from God’s holy land, sent into exile. Of course, that’s precisely what happened eventually. But this points out the need for an ultimate anointed one. It points out the need for great David’s greater son. This prayer is ultimately fulfilled in our Lord Jesus Christ. For He is, as I said, great David’s greater Son. He is the ultimate anointed One. The ultimate Messiah. The word Messiah means anointed One.

He is God’s chosen, anointed King. And He alone was faithful to keep the covenant. He alone is adequate to serve as our shield, our protector. In union with Him, we are shielded from the wrath of God In union with him, we experience the divine presence. By his obedience and sacrifice, he has secured for us an eternal home in the heavenly temple, the eternal dwelling place of God. And so this accounts for the prayer for the king that the psalmist offers up. And then the psalmist once again reflects upon The delights of dwelling with God in his temple, he says, for a day in your courts is better than a thousand outside. I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God. In other words, I would rather be a guard at the at the doors of the temple to protect the temple from anything unholy entering.

I’d rather be I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. I’d rather almost be standing at the periphery of the temple than to dwell in the tents of the wicked. And then he says in verse 11, for the Lord God is a sun and shield. He is a sun. He gives us light. He gives us blessing. And He is our shield. He protects us. The Lord gives grace and glory. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. I believe the Apostle Paul may be reflecting upon this very passage when he writes in that well-known passage in Romans chapter eight. Verse 31, what then shall we say to these things if God is for us, who is not against us? He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him over for us all.

How will he not also with him freely give us all things? Again, the psalmist says, no good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. Those who walk uprightly, that’s the fruit of faith. preaching salvation or justification by works or anything. But again, no good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. Compare that to what Paul writes. He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him over for us all. How will he not also with him freely give us all things? Praise be to God. And then the closing, the closing verse, the psalmist bursts out once again. with a pronouncement of blessing. But this time He says, O Lord of hosts, how blessed is the man who does what? Who trusts in You, or as some translations put it, take refuge in You.

The blessed man is the one who takes refuge in Yahweh of hosts, Yahweh of hosts and His anointed King, Ultimately, the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the shield and Son of His people. Are you trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ as your shield, your protector, your Son, your salvation? As you rest in Him, you will know His peace. You will know His presence. And you will know what it is like to dwell in the courts of the Lord. Verse 10, For a day in your courts is better than a thousand outside. I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. Praise be to God that in Christ, and especially in the consummated kingdom, we won’t just be dwelling at the threshold. We’ll be on the inside.

We will fully belong. And there will be nothing separating us ever again from His love. Amen. Let us pray. Gracious Lord and Father in Heaven, we thank you, O God, that you in sovereign grace and mercy have come to dwell in our midst through Christ our Savior. We ask that you would grant unto us hearts that resonate with what this psalmist says, that we might find your dwelling place Indeed, lovely and beautiful. And that dwelling place is Jesus. We pray, Heavenly Father, that you would give us grace to go from strength to strength, even as we journey on this pilgrim way. And even when we journey through the valley of Baca. Refresh our souls by your Word and Spirit. Strengthen us, uphold us, comfort us, and keep our eyes fixed on our ultimate destination. of Zion, the heavenly Zion.

In Jesus name we pray, and all of God’s people said, Amen. As we close our time this evening, let’s rise and sing as our our psalm of dedication to the Lord. Psalm 84b, O Lord of hosts, how lovely 84b.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

April 2, 2023
Restore Us!

About this sermon

Psalm 80 is Israel’s prayer for restoration, probably after Assyria swept away the northern kingdom. The refrain grows stronger each time: ‘Restore us, O God, and cause your face to shine upon us, and we will be saved.’ Israel was a fruitless vine, and Jesus Christ is the true vine in whom his people bear fruit. God’s face shines on his people in Christ, the Son of Man at his right hand, and that grace revives the church to call on his name.

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Sermon transcript

As we continue our study of various psalms from the book of Psalms, tonight we consider Psalm 80. Psalm 80. Psalm is entitled as follows. Hear the word of God. For the choir director sent set to El Shoshanim, the psalm of Asaph. Oh, give ear, shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock, you who are enthroned above the cherubim, shine forth before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, stir up your power and come to save us. Oh, God, restore us and cause your face to shine upon us and we will be saved. Oh, Lord, God of hosts, how long will you be angry with the prayer of your people? You have fed them with the bread of tears and you have made them to drink tears in large measure. You make us an object of contention to our neighbors and our enemies laugh among themselves.

Oh, God of hosts, restore us and cause your face to shine upon us and we will be saved. You removed a vine from Egypt. You drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground before it and it took deep root and filled the land. The mountains were covered with its shadow and the cedars of God with its boughs. It was sending out its branches to the sea and its shoots to the river. Why have you broken down its hedges so that all who pass that way pick its fruit? A boar from the forest eats it away and whatever moves in the field feeds on it. O God of hosts, turn again now, we beseech you. Look down from heaven and see and take care of this vine, even the shoot which your right hand has planted and on the son whom you have strengthened for yourself.

It is burned with fire. It is cut down. They perish at the rebuke of your countenance. Let your hand be upon the man of your right hand, upon the son of man whom you made strong for yourself. Then we shall not turn back from you. Revive us and we will call upon your name. Oh, Lord, God of hosts, restore us. Cause your face to shine upon us and we will be saved. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s ask the Lord to shine the face of his grace upon us and instruct us from his word this evening. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, Indeed, we pray that you would shine the light of your countenance upon us, that we may be saved. We pray that by your spirit you would open our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from your word.

We ask, Heavenly Father, that you would use me in an unworthy earthen vessel to declare the glories of your word this evening with clarity and power, with clear instruction. And we pray that you would make us open and receptive to these truths. We pray that you would be with us now. Heavenly Father, we ask all of these things through Christ our Lord and all of God’s people said, Amen. You may be seated. Title my sermon this evening is Restore Us, and there’s quite a number of keywords you can be listening for tonight. I would focus in especially encourage the children to listen for the words Restore, Shepherd, Vine and Son of Man. Well, dear ones, our psalm for this Lord’s Day evening is another community lament that reflects an historical situation where God’s people faced national distress over harsh treatment inflicted upon them by a foreign adversary.

The NIV study Bible, in its introductory study note, I think puts it well in describing this psalm as, quote, Israel’s prayer for restoration when she had been ravaged by a foreign power. It goes on to say, it seems likely that Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh, referred to in verse two, here represent the northern kingdom. This suggests that the disaster suffered was the Assyrian campaign that swept the Northern Kingdom away. And just by way of historical notation, the tribes of the Northern Kingdom, Samaria, were exiled by the Assyrians in 722 BC. So that just kind of gives you a little historical marker for around the time when this psalm may have been written. That study note goes on to say that recent archaeological surveys of Palestine have shown that Jerusalem and the surrounding countryside experienced at this time a dramatic increase of population, no doubt the result of a massive influx of displaced persons from the north fleeing the Assyrian beast.

This could account for the presence of Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh at the Jerusalem sanctuary. and for a national prayer for restoration with special focus on these tribes. And some might say, well, that’s interesting historical information. But is this really a psalm that we as God’s people today living as we do under the new covenant, living after the coming of Christ? Is this is this a psalm that we as God’s people today should take upon our lips and use to pray and use to sing praises to God? And my answer to that question would be absolutely yes. This psalm is most appropriately prayed, especially and sung, especially today by Christ’s church during times of intense persecution. And when the enemies of the gospel threaten to destroy and decimate the church of Jesus Christ, And I would also suggest to you that this is a song that it is appropriate for us to sing and to pray during periods of Christian history.

When the church finds itself under the providential discipline of God, it finds itself chastened by the providential discipline of God for its unfaithfulness, its worldliness and its unfaithfulness to the gospel. And therefore, when the church is in need of spiritual renewal and restoration, And restoration, of course, is the central theme of this psalm. God’s people at this point in history need restoration, national restoration, and, of course, more foundationally, spiritual restoration. This major theme of the psalm is seen by the repeated refrain. The refrain starts in verse three. Oh, God, restore us and cause your face to shine upon us and we will be saved. This refrain is repeated four times. It’s repeated in these in these precise words three times in particular. But with each repetition, there is an intensification to this refrain. And so in verse three, for example, God is just addressed as O God.

But skip down to verse seven. And how is the Lord addressed? O God of hosts. Restore us. And cause your face to shine upon us. And then at the end of this psalm in verse 19, O Lord, O Yahweh, God of hosts, restore us. Cause your face to shine upon us and we will be saved. The third the third repetition of the refrain is in slightly different wording in verse 14, where it says, Oh, God of hosts, turn again. Now we beseech you look down from heaven and sea and take care of this vine. So you see sort of the the flow of the psalm is one that is of increasing intensification as God’s people cry out to the Lord for restoration and salvation. With all of this in mind, let’s dive into our psalm for this evening and consider what we can learn from it.

And I want to have us first focus on the opening section of this psalm, verses one through seven. And what we have in this opening section, this is the first point in your sermon outline, is an earnest appeal for the shepherd king of Israel to act for the restoration and deliverance of his people. We have here an earnest appeal for the shepherd king of Israel to act for the restoration and deliverance of his people. The psalm opens with a cry, a plea, that is dripping with pathos. O give ear, shepherd of Israel. How is God addressed in the opening verse of this psalm? He is addressed as the shepherd of Israel. O give ear, shepherd of Israel. You who lead Joseph like a flock.” Yahweh the Lord, the covenant God of Israel, is depicted as a God who shepherds his people.

His people are his sheep. He leads them like a flock. And then he describes this shepherd of Israel as one who is enthroned above the cherubim. And the psalmist pleads with Yahweh the Lord, the shepherd king of Israel, to shine forth. There’s so much, I could actually preach an entire sermon on just this one verse. There’s so much packed in here. Now, when you think of a shepherd, what kind of images come to your mind? My suspicion is that when we think of shepherds and shepherding, we tend to think of a sort of peaceful pastoral scenes. You know, we reflect upon Psalm 23. He leads me besides quiet, quiet waters. He restores my soul. And we think of we think of peaceful imagery and we think of shepherds in sort of almost a sentimental way, almost a romanticized way.

But it’s important to understand that the term shepherd was actually a common title for kings in the ancient Near East. And so when God is referred to as a shepherd, There are often royal connotations attached to that, not sentimental or, you know, sentimental types of of associations, but rather royal connotations attached to this. And the fact that God is here viewed as the shepherd king of Israel is confirmed by the psalmist picturing God as enthroned above the cherubim. Now, what are cherubim? Well, the cherubim in the scriptures are angelic beings. In fact, they are the guardians of the throne of God. In a sense, shepherds are these and these glorious angelic beings. And there were two artistic cherubim of gold on the mercy seat that was located on top of the Ark of the Covenant.

Children, do you know what that mercy seat? on top of the Ark of the Covenant with the two cherubim of gold. Do you know what that mercy seat represents? That symbolizes the throne of God. And so by symbolizing the throne of God, The seat of gold, the cherubim that were on top of that mercy seat, on top of the Ark of the Covenant, which was located in the Holy of Holies in the sanctuary, first the tabernacle and later on the temple, symbolizes God’s gracious and holy reign as the divine king, the divine king who dwelt in the midst of his holy people. And in the Old Covenant, in Old Testament times, God’s Shekinah glory shone above the mercy seat where these these figures of cherubim were placed. And so this is very significant. So the psalmist is crying out to God, appealing to God as the royal shepherd king who leads his people, the royal shepherd king who is enthroned above the chair of him, who is sovereign, who reigns in grace and mercy.

And what is the petition for the shepherd king of Israel? What does the psalmist ask of the shepherd king? He says, shine forth. Shine forth. This is a picturesque plea for God to display his power and glory in coming to the rescue of his afflicted people. Shine forth, God had shown forth in the past. The psalmist is essentially asking, I believe that just as God’s supernatural kind of glory shown above the cherubim on the mercy seat in the sanctuary and just as he led forth his people in the wilderness by a pillar of cloud by day and by a shining pillar of fire by night, leading and guiding and protecting and governing his people. So now may God stir up His glorious power to intervene, to save and to restore His afflicted and likely displaced people.

As it says in v. 2, before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, three tribes of Israel who dwelt in the northern kingdom. Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, stir up your power and come to save us. And then v. 3, We are confronted with the first refrain. Oh God, restore us. And cause Your face to shine upon us and we will be saved. The psalmist here petitions God for a national restoration of His distressed and likely displaced people. And notice, as part of this restoration, the psalmist says, cause Your face to shine upon us. What is this a reference to? What does it mean for God’s face to shine upon you, to shine upon me? Of course, God is a spirit. He doesn’t literally have a face like you and I do. The face of God, what does that face represent?

Well, this, first of all, it’s important to understand that this is actually alluding to and hearkening to the Aaronic priestly blessing recorded back in Numbers 6, 24 through 26. I’d invite you to turn there to Numbers chapter six. And let me just read verses 24 through. I’m going to start with verse 23. This is what God through Moses told Aaron, Aaron, the high priest, Moses, his brother. God instructed Aaron to place the name of the Lord upon the people by speaking this blessing, this benediction. Verse 23, speak to Aaron and to his son saying, thus you shall bless the sons of Israel. You shall say to them, the Lord bless you and keep you. Notice verse 25, especially the Lord do what the Lord make his face shine upon upon you and be gracious to you.

The Lord lift up his countenance on you and give you peace. So they shall invoke my name on the sons of Israel. and I then will bless them.” So, in light of the Aaronic blessing, what does it mean for God’s face to shine upon His people? Well, the picture of Yahweh’s face shining upon His people is a picture of God looking upon His people with grace, favor, and divine approval. And it is only as God shines His face upon His people that they will be saved as the refrain says, Oh, God, restore us and cause your face to shine upon us and we will be saved. There’s no salvation, no deliverance, whether national or spiritual, apart from God shining his face, the light of his grace upon us. Does God shine His face upon us today?

Yes, He does. The reason that God can shine the face of His grace upon us believers today is because the Father turned His face away from His Son when the Son was dying on the cross for our sins. And Jesus cries out, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? In other words, by implication, why have You turned Your face away from Me? For Christ bore the wrath of God on the cross in our place, in our stead. Deliverance and salvation, whether national or personal, is only possible when God looks upon us with grace and favor. But how can God look upon us sinners, wretches, disobedient, fallen in Adam? Children of wrath, how can God look upon us with favor? How can He shine the light of His countenance upon us? Well, because He sees us in union with Jesus Christ, His Son.

Only as the Father looks upon us in Christ does He view us with grace and favor. In union with the Lord Jesus Christ, the face of God, our loving Heavenly Father, shines upon us with divine approval. For as the Father testified of His Son at His baptism, at Christ’s baptism, this is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. And if you are in the Son, then God is well pleased with you because He’s well pleased with His Son. Not because He’s pleased with you in and of yourself, but because you are in Christ. O God, restore us and cause Your face to shine upon us and we will be saved. And then, again, There’s some intensification that takes place beginning at verse four, where the psalmist, the psalm of Asaph, this is ascribed to Asaph and the Asaphite singers.

Oh, Lord, God of hosts. Here, the covenant name of God is used. Oh, Lord, God of hosts. How long will you be angry with the prayer of your people? Now, what is who are the hosts? What does it mean for God to be the God of hosts? Well, remember how the shepherd imagery pictures God as a mighty king and he is the shepherd king of Israel who sits enthroned above the cherubim, this mighty shepherd king. is also the captain of our salvation. The term host, this is a military term. Yahweh is the God of hosts, both the heavenly host of angels and also the earthly hosts of his people who are called to engage in holy warfare against the world, the flesh and the devil. Of course, we today in the new covenant, we are not called to take up arms against the wicked and unbelieving.

We are called upon to take the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, and to extend the olive branch through the proclamation of the gospel to call the nations to repentance and salvation, not to destroy the wicked, but to bring them the hope of salvation in Jesus Christ. But in any case, Oh, God, the Lord God of hosts, God is the sovereign king and captain of his hosts. And here the psalmist confesses that God is angry with his people. In fact, God appears to be so angry from the psalmist vantage point that it seems as if even the prayers of his people stir up his hot wrath. Now, if you have read the historical books of the Old Testament, you know about the history of the northern kingdom after the united monarchy under David and Solomon, under Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, the 10 tribes separated off from Judah. in the south, and so the northern tribes were under Jeroboam, the son of Nebat.

And if you know about the history of the northern kingdom, it is a sad, sad history. It is a history of apostasy, a history of God’s professed people turning away from the Lord and under the wicked leadership of Jeroboam, a false priesthood, a false apostate form of religion was raised up among the people of God. And thus, the people of God in the Northern Kingdom as a whole broke the covenant. They went after other gods. They were unrepentant, unbelieving, and disobedient. And while God raised up prophets and sent his prophets to his people in the Northern Kingdom, calling them to repentance, and while God preserved a godly believing remnant among the northern tribes. Nevertheless, as a whole, the northern tribes were deeply wicked and unbelieving. And so God raised up the Assyrians to come in and kick them out of his land, to take them into exile.

And the Assyrians were brutal and beastly in their treatment of God’s people. And here in verse five, it says, You have fed them with the bread of tears and you have made them to drink tears in large measure. God is angry with the prayers of his people, his covenant breaking people, and he’s fed them with the bread of tears and made them to drink tears in large measure. This is very as is common in the Psalms. We have here picturesque language of the deep sorrow of God’s people that resulted from God’s anger. And that deep sorrow is expressed as a diet of tears. And what a contrast to God’s provision for his people in the wilderness. Remember when God was leading the Israelites through the wilderness, he brought them out of Egypt and he gave them his law on Mount Sinai and he led them through the wilderness.

How did God feed his people in the wilderness? He provided them manna from heaven. And he also at times when they were in thirsty land, he provided them water even from the rock. But now God’s people under judgment, now they’re not eating manna from heaven. They’re not drinking water from the rock. Their meat and their drink are their own tears. So sorrowful are they under the chastening hand of God. Not only are They sorrowful over God’s judgments upon them, but also, as it says in verse six, you make us an object of contention to our neighbors and our enemies laugh among themselves. They are they are sneered at by their Gentile unbelieving neighbors. They are scoffed at. They are derided. And then verse seven, we have the second refrain with its note of intensification. Oh, God of hosts, restore us and cause your face to shine upon us and we will be saved.

Well, that leads us here. Here again, this repetition underscores the earnestness and intensity of the psalmist’s plea. But next in the second section here in verses eight through 13, And this is my second point, we see a reflection on past mercies contrasted to present distresses. We have past mercies, we have a remembrance, the psalmist remembering God’s past mercies and contrasting that with the present distresses that are being experienced by God’s people. In verses eight through 11, the psalmist here remembers how God in his covenant mercies had graciously delivered his people from their slavery in Egypt and had settled them, planted them like a vine, if you will, in the promised land. As it says in verse eight, you removed a vine from Egypt. What what vine is the psalmist talking about? He’s talking about Israel.

You removed a vine from Egypt. You drove out the nations. He conquered the people of the promised land and he planted this vine in the promised land. You know, Israel in the Old Testament is sometimes pictured as a vine, a vine that God has planted in the promised land. And I know I I read this passage last Lord’s Day, but I would refer you again to Isaiah five verses one through seven, Isaiah, chapter five, verses one through seven. And one of the sad things about this vine that God had planted is that sadly it turned out to be a fruitless vine, a vine that invited God’s judgment, a vine that was eventually burned up and cut down. Let me sing now for my well-beloved a song of my beloved concerning his vineyard. My well-beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill.

He dug it all around, removed its stones and planted it with the choicest vine. And he built a tower in the middle of it and also hewed out a wine vat in it. Then he expected it to produce good grapes, but it produced only worthless ones. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard than I had that I had not done in it? Why, when I expected it to produce good grapes, did it produce worthless ones? So now let me tell you what I’m going to do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge and it will be consumed. I will break down its wall and it will become trampled ground. I will lay it waste. It will not be pruned or hoed, but briars and thorns will come up and I will also charge the clouds to rain no rain on it.

Their God is through. Isaiah is predicting judgment upon the nation. And then there is an explanatory note in verse seven. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel and the men of Judah, his delightful plant. Thus, he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed for righteousness. But behold, a cry of distress. Sadly, Israel was a fruitless covenant breaking vine throughout its history. But Jesus Christ, Being the true Israel is also the true vine, and in him we are the branches. This theme of the vine and the branches comes out in John chapter 15. I’d encourage you to turn to John 15. Let me just read the first five verses of John chapter 15. We see how Christ succeeds where Israel failed. Christ is the true Israel, just as he is the last Adam who succeeds where the first Adam failed.

The first Adam broke the covenant. Christ has kept the covenant. Israel of old broke the covenant. But Jesus, the true Israel, the true vine of God, has kept the covenant and life and fruitfulness comes from abiding in him. Jesus says in John 15, I am the true vine and my father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away and every branch that bears fruit, he prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in me. And I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine. You are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit.

For apart from me, you can do nothing. The only way you and I can bear the spiritual fruit of righteousness and obedience, walking after new obedience, bearing the fruit of the spirit is if we are attached to Christ, the true vine for life and salvation comes from him and through him. And so getting back to our psalm for this evening, with all of this in mind, the psalmist writes. that God had removed a vine from Egypt, drove out the nations, planted it in the promised land. Verse nine, you cleared the ground before it and it took deep root and filled the lands. The mountains were covered with its shadow and the cedars of God with its boughs. Cedars, mighty trees were covered with its boughs. And notice verse 11, it was sending out its branches to the sea.

Meaning the Mediterranean Sea, the western extent of the of the promised land, and it shoots to the river, the Euphrates River to the to the east. Here we have the ideal fullness of the promised land that God had given to his people. But then in verses 12 and 13, the psalmist expresses perplexity over God’s apparent abandonment of his vine. As he says, why, verse 12, why have you broken down its hedges so that all who pass that way pick its fruit? Why have you removed your protection from us, Lord, so that the Assyrians, these foreign aggressors, these bestial, cruel oppressors have come in and have have indeed picked its fruit. And then he describes these aggressors as a boar from the forest. Verse 13, a boar from the forest eats it away and whatever moves in the field feeds on it.

Now, with all of this in mind, in the closing section of our psalm for this evening, we see a plea for restoration, but restoration through the promised son of man. Hope is found for this burned down fruitless vine. Hope is found in this mysterious figure of the Son of Man. Here again, we find a plea for restoration through the promised Son of Man. Look at verse 14. Oh, God of hosts, turn again now. We beseech you. Look down from heaven and sea and take care of this vine. Don’t abandon us. Shine the light of your countenance upon us once again. Take care of this vine, this vine, which by implication you, Lord, have planted. Even the shoot, verse 15, even the shoot which your right hand has planted and on the son whom you have strengthened, for yourself.

Again, we see here another plea for God to restore his people. And notice in verse 15 how Israel, this vine of the Lord, is also described. It is described as God’s son. In fact, this is another image for Israel, God’s people, in the Old Testament. Israel is described back in, if you want to look it up and read along with me, Exodus 4, verses 22 and 23. Israel is described as the Son of God. In Exodus chapter 2, verse 22, we read these words. God instructs Moses, then you shall say to Pharaoh, thus says the Lord, Israel is my son, my firstborn. So I said to you, let my son go that he may serve me. But you have refused to let him go. Behold, I will kill your son, your firstborn. So Israel is God’s son.

But then, verse 16, what has happened to this vine, this son? Verse 16, it is burned with fire. It is cut down. They perish at the rebuke of your countenance. Instead of the light, the shining light of God’s countenance, they have experienced the rebuke of his countenance for their apostasy and covenant breaking. And then we see this plea focusing in on another figure, the Son of Man figure. Verse 17, let your hand be upon the man of your right hand, upon the Son of Man whom you made strong for yourself. Let your hand be upon this man of your right hand. For God’s hand to rest upon someone is for God to strengthen them, to bless them. Let your hand be upon the man of your right hand. And who is this man of God’s right hand?

He is described as the son of man. whom you made strong for yourself. Now, some folks think, some commentators think that this too, in verse 17, this son of man figure must be referring to Israel again, given that back in verse 15, the son seems to be referring to Israel. But more likely, I think Dr. Van Gammeren is probably correct when he writes the following. The ground of hope in restoration lies in the man at your right hand, also called the Son of Man. These are allusions to the Davidic dynasty. See, King David represented God’s people. As the king, he was the representative. He was God’s right hand man, if you will. But David was also a type, a picture of his greater son. And who is that? Jesus Christ, the messianic son of man.

Dr. Van Gameren goes on to say, these allusions to the Davidic dynasty focus the hope of the godly in the continuity of God’s redemptive purposes. You see, God was not through with his people. He had not finally abandoned them. Though they were faithless, though they were apostates, though they had broken the covenant, there was yet hope. And that hope is found in this Son of Man figure. Dr. Van Gammeren writes, regardless of what happened at Samaria and of what may happen to Jerusalem, the Lord will be true to David. Remember, God had made a covenant with David the king and promised David a perpetual dynasty. And that perpetual dynasty was fulfilled in great David’s greater son, the Lord Jesus Christ. God’s kingdom will be established by the Messiah of David, as Dr. Van Gemeren says, and he refers us to Psalm 2.

Friends, Jesus, the Messiah, great David’s greater son, he is the ultimate answer to this prayer. God’s kingdom has drawn near to us in Jesus Christ. And he is the ultimate messianic son of man who established the kingdom of God and who will consummate it at his glorious second advent. Have you embraced him as your shepherd king? Have you looked to him for restoration and salvation? He is your only hope. He is the only hope of the church of Jesus Christ. And then verse 18. After petitioning the Lord to let His hand be upon the man of His right hand and to bless, make the Son of Man, who is made strong for yourself, after the psalmist directs our hope to this Son of Man figure, what will be the result? Verse 18, then we shall not turn back from you.

Revive us and we will call upon your name. This is a, I believe, a vow, a promise that, Lord, if you will restore us through the Son of Man, then we will call upon your name. But then we will be enabled to call upon your name because we will abide in the true vine, the Lord Jesus Christ. And then this psalm comes to a climactic conclusion in the final refrain. Oh, Yahweh, Oh, Lord, the word Lord, there is an all capital letters indicating the English translators are indicating that this is a translation of the Hebrew term Yahweh, which is the covenant name for God, the God who graciously comes and binds himself in covenant love to his people. Oh, God, Lord Yahweh, God of hosts, restore us, cause your face to shine upon us. And we will be saved.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, praise be to God that His face shines upon us in the Lord Jesus Christ. As you trust in, as you abide in Him, the face of the Father in grace and mercy and forgiveness shines upon you and that will transform you and enable you and revive you. It will enable you to call upon His name. And as we as a church look to the Lord Jesus and abide in him, calling upon his name, resting and trusting in him, crying out to him, he will restore us and revive us. Amen. Let us pray. Gracious Lord and Father in heaven, we thank you, O God, for the richness of Holy Scripture. We thank you, O God, for the truth of your word. It is a lamp unto our feet, a light to our path.

And we thank you for Jesus, the Son of God and Son of Man, our Messiah, our Savior, our King, our Lord. We pray that by your Spirit, you would revive and restore us, O God. And we, by your grace, will call upon your name and not turn back from you. We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, Amen. Let’s rise and respond to what we have heard by singing together hymn 413, Revive Thy Work, O Lord. 413.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

March 26, 2023
Where is their God?

About this sermon

Psalm 79 is a lament by the exiles after Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and its temple, and it asks how long the Lord will be angry. The psalmist pleads for God’s wrath on the nations that do not know him, and he confesses the sins of his own people. He asks for atonement and forgiveness for the sake of God’s name, and Christ provides that atonement. God will judge every persecutor of his people, and the gospel still goes out to the nations in this age of grace.

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Sermon transcript

Please remain standing for the reading of God’s word. My sermon text this evening, as we return to our consideration of select Psalms from the book of Psalms tonight, we’re going to consider Psalm 79. Psalm 79. This is entitled, Psalm of Asaph. Friends, hear the word of God. O God, the nations have invaded your inheritance, they have defiled your holy temple, they have laid Jerusalem in ruins. They have given the dead bodies of your servants for food to the birds of the heavens, the flesh of your godly ones to the beasts of the earth. They have poured out their blood like water round about Jerusalem, and there was no one to bury them. We have become a reproach to our neighbors, a scoffing and derision to those around us. How long, O Lord? Will you be angry forever?

Will your jealousy burn like fire? Pour out your wrath upon the nations which do not know you. and upon the kingdoms which do not call upon your name, for they have devoured Jacob and laid waste his habitation. Do not remember the iniquities of our forefathers against us. Let your compassion come quickly to meet us, for we are brought very low. Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name, and deliver us and forgive our sins for your name’s sake. Why should the nations say, Where is their God? Let there be known among the nations in our sight vengeance for the blood of your servants which has been shed. Let the groaning of the prisoner come before you according to the greatness of your power. Preserve those who are doomed to die.

And return to our neighbors sevenfold into their bosom the reproach with which they have reproached you, O Lord. So we your people and the sheep of your pasture. We’ll give thanks to you forever to all generations. We will tell of your praise. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for God’s blessing upon the preaching of his word. Gracious and sovereign and holy God, heavenly father, we thank you and praise you that you are a God of justice and righteousness and a God of mercy and grace. We ask Lord God. that as we consider this portion of Holy Scripture, that your Holy Spirit would cause us to hear and receive that which you are speaking to us and teaching us in this portion of your inerrant scriptures.

Lord, we do ask that we would take these truths to heart and we pray that they might bear spiritual fruit in our lives, fruit that brings glory to your name. We ask these things, praying once again for the forgiveness of our sins through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, and all of God’s people said. Amen. Foundation, you may be seated. The title of my sermon this evening is, Where is their God? And as you might notice, if you’re following along in the sermon outline, there’s quite a few key words you can be listening for this evening, but I would suggest a couple of words. Lament, vindication, forgiveness, and atonement. Well, dear ones, what we have in our passage for this Lord’s Day evening is very likely a grievous lament by the Jewish exiles in Babylon as they pray for God’s justice to be manifested against the nations that had defiled and destroyed Jerusalem and its temple.

But in this psalm, the psalmist also prays for God’s forgiveness toward them, his repentant, exiled people. The historical occasion that serves as the backdrop for this psalm is very likely the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the Babylonians, followed subsequently by the exile of the Jews into Babylon, events which took place in 587-586 BC. Dr. Willem van Gemmeren sets this psalm in context when he says that this is a lament written most probably on the occasion of Jerusalem’s fall and the subsequent exile of Judah, 586 BC. Its concerns resemble those of Psalms 44 and 74. Central to the psalmist’s prayer is the question of how long the Lord will remain angry with his people. And then it goes on to say the structure of this psalm reflects the characteristic elements of the national lament, elements such as questions, prayer, and hope.

Now as we living as believers under the New Covenant. As we read a psalm like this, we might wonder, well, what is the relevance and the use of a psalm like this for the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ today and for us as individual Christians? I like the comment made in one of my study Bibles, there’s a study note in the Lutheran study Bible that says this, originally written as a lament over Babylon’s destruction of Israel, this psalm remains applicable to all Christians who suffer hardship and struggle at the hands of unbelievers. Christians throughout the world become the taunt of the unbelievers around them as they are either explicitly derided or condescendingly treated. because of their faith and trust in God. This psalm is well prayed by such sufferers as it assures us that God is reliable and his deliverance is trustworthy.

Well, what do we see and what do we learn from this psalm? Well, let’s dive into our passage for this evening. And the first thing I want us to focus on as we focus on the first four verses of our passage tonight, what we find here is a lament over a national disaster at the hands of the heathen. What we have here is a lament over a national disaster at the hands of the heathen. The psalmist begins, O God, the nations have invaded your inheritance. The psalmist cries out to God, and the name Yahweh is not here in this particular verse. The Lord, the name Yahweh, the covenant name for God, is mentioned later on. But in the beginning of this lamentation, this heart-wrenching lamentation, the psalmist simply uses the generic name for God. Oh God, the nations have invaded your inheritance.

Which nations? He’s speaking there about the Gentile nations, the idolatrous pagan nations that had attacked God’s land and God’s holy temple. Oh God, the nations have invaded your inheritance. What is God’s inheritance? Well, ultimately, your inheritance here refers to God’s covenant people, Israel, God’s visible covenant people, and the promised land where they dwell is a secondary application of that. So God’s enemies have attacked his land, God’s land, God’s people. And it goes on to say they have defiled your holy temple. What is God’s holy temple? What is this referring to? It’s referring to God’s sacred dwelling place, the temple in Jerusalem, the temple which served as a symbol of God’s gracious presence and reign in the midst of his covenant people. And here there is a sense of indignancy that the psalmist conveys here as he cries out to God because the heathen, The unbelieving Gentiles have defiled the holiness of God.

It was very significant. The temple was very significant for God’s people living under the old covenant, because, as I said, the temple signified that God had come to dwell as the faithful covenant savior in the midst of his holy people, his set apart people. And by destroying the temple in Jerusalem and laying Jerusalem, the holy city, in ruins, these nations, again probably referring to the Babylonians and their allies who had destroyed Jerusalem and its temple, what they had done is defiled the very holy presence of God himself, Jerusalem being the holy city where God’s palace temple was situated and where the people of God went to celebrate their feasts and to offer their sacrifices, sacrifices that pointed forward to the final sacrifice of Christ on the cross. of Calvary. Oh God, the nations have invaded your inheritance.

They’ve defiled your holy temple. They have laid Jerusalem in ruin. But then it goes on to say, even worse, verse two, well, not even worse, but part of their desecration of God’s holy space and God’s disregard for God’s people. It says in verse two, they have given the dead bodies of your servants for food to the birds of the heavens. the flesh of your godly ones to the beast of the earth. Not only did the heathen desecrate and defile God’s holy dwelling, but they degraded the dead bodies of God’s people by withholding from them a proper burial and leaving their bodies as carrion for the beasts and birds to devour. And that was regarded, especially in the ancient Near East, as a horrible fate to suffer. As Dr. Van Gemeren points out, the lack of burial was considered a terrible fate. in the ancients near east.

These were God’s people that were slain by the heathen, their bodies left to rot out in the open, their bodies left for the birds, the vultures, the beasts to tear apart and consume. Notice how the psalmist describes the people of God who had suffered this fate. In verse 2, he describes them as your servants, God’s servants, and as your godly ones. Likely here, the psalmist has in view the godly remnant among God’s unfaithful people. You see, God had raised up the Babylonians to go in and be his instruments of judgment against his covenant-breaking people. The people had broken the covenant. They had been disobedient and unrepentant and unbelieving. They had turned away from Yahweh, their God, the true and living God, and they had turned to idols. And God had raised up many prophets, sent many prophets to them to call them back to the Lord, to call them back to bearing spiritual fruit before God, but they had persistently refused.

And so God does finally exile them from his land and he uses the Babylonians and their allies as his instruments of judgment against his unfaithful people. But even in the midst of the unfaithful, there was a godly remnant. And so it would seem that the psalmist here is crying out to God from the standpoint, from the perspective of the elect remnants that God had preserved amongst the unfaithful at that time. You see, God’s judgment against his covenant-breaking people through the Babylonians had impacted not only the unfaithful among God’s visible covenant people, but the faithful as well. Again, to quote from Dr. Van Gemeren, he says, Though famine, war, death, and exile were deserved punishments for Judah’s sins, the people were still spoken of as the people of God. They are called your servants and your saints, or godly ones.

The godly remnants was like leaven by which the whole nation was protected and consecrated. God’s judgments, at least temporarily speaking, impact not only unbelievers, not only the unfaithful among God’s professed people, but even true believers as well. In this current age, this present age, God does not promise that we will be shielded from the providential judgments that he may seek to bring against the wicked. But then in verse three, he goes even further in this lament. He says of these heathen, these unbelieving idolaters who were seeking to destroy God’s people. Verse three, they have poured out their blood like water round about Jerusalem. What a picture. They have shed the blood of your people like water, the blood of the Jews, flowed like water around Jerusalem as a result of this invasion and this horrible desecration of God’s land, God’s holy city, God’s holy temple.

They poured out their blood like water round about Jerusalem and there was no one to bury them. While the Babylonians and their allies were indeed instruments in God’s sovereign hand for bringing his covenant curses upon his faithless, unrepentant, covenant-breaking people. They destroyed God’s people with excessive cruelty and sadistic delight.” This is made clear in the record of Holy Scripture as we read about the events that led to the destruction of the temple and the exile into Babylon. The Babylonians, yes, they invaded Jerusalem. They slew the people of God, but they did so not with an attitude of reverence toward God, but they did so with wicked cruelty and delight. They showed no reverence for God, no respect for the special status of God’s covenant people. And therefore, these heathen ones, by their cruel and vindictive actions, actually bring upon themselves, they bring themselves under the curse that Paul mentions, not Paul, sorry, God mentions to Abraham back in Genesis 12 verse 3.

Remember when God called Abram to journey? It says in chapter 12 verse 3, God says to Abram, and I will bless those who bless you and the one who curses you I will curse and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. by their cruel and vindictive actions. The Babylonians were in effect cursing God’s people and the curse was to return upon them. As many truths that we can learn from this lamentation, this grievous lamentation that we read here in the opening verses of Psalm 79, but I want to just make a couple points of application. What we learn, among other things that we learn in this passage, is that unbelievers, like the Babylonians, are subject to the judgment and scrutiny of God for their actions, even when God uses their actions to discipline his people.

Some might say, well, wait a minute, the Babylonians, in a sense, they didn’t know any better. They were pagans. They didn’t know the true and living God. They, you know, they acted according to their pagan nature. So, you know, why is the psalmist being so harsh? Well, while it is true that the Babylonians were indeed idolaters, Gentiles, they too had access to God’s general revelation. All human beings in their heart of hearts, because all men are created in the image of God, we all bear the image of God. Therefore, the works of God’s law are written on their hearts. All people, because of the light of creation, the light of God, the light of general revelation that comes through creation and conscience. All mankind knows that God is and that they are morally accountable to him.

So these Babylonians, even as they were cruelly and with sadistic delight slaying men, women, and children in Jerusalem, they knew that what they were doing was an affront to the God of Heaven. They knew in their heart of hearts that they were sinning against God. And furthermore, no doubt these Babylonians had at least heard second-hand about the amazing God of the Israelites, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who had poured out mighty plagues upon the Egyptians and had brought his people out of Egypt into the Promised Land. That word about God, the true and living God, had resonated throughout that region of the world. And so, though they were pagans, though they were idolaters, what they did was still inexcusable. This reminds us that all people, whether they know Christ or not, whether they have access to the Bible or not, all people are morally obligated to fear and reverence the true and living God, to reverence his holiness, and to conduct themselves with compassion toward others, especially toward God’s people.

Another take away from this is that we learn in this passage, God, the spirit through this passage that he has inspired, assures us that God indeed takes notice of how the world treats his people, and he will vindicate his suffering people sooner or later, either by bringing their enemies to repentance or by bringing them before his judgment throne and executing judgment against them. And so we see here this lament. But next, as we move on to the next section of Psalm 79 verses five through nine, we see here a plea for both vindication and forgiveness, a plea for vindication and forgiveness. The psalmist is crying out for vindication. crying out for God to do something about these wicked heathen who had slain the people of God and destroyed the Holy Temple and desecrated God’s holy presence.

And yet this lamentation and plea for vindication does not come from a heart of self-righteousness, but a heart that recognizes its own sin. Verse 5, the psalmist writes, How long, O Lord? And here, Lord is in all capital letters. He’s crying out to God as the faithful covenant God. How long, O Lord? What’s the question? Will you be angry forever? What does this question assume? This assumes, this implies that God’s people had sinned against him and thus that God’s anger, God is angry with his people. The psalmist wants to know how long God is going to put up with this kind of behavior from the heathen before he acts to vindicate his people. But he recognizes that that he and the people of God, that they are guilty, that they deserve God’s anger. But he says, how long?

And then he asks another question, which is closely related, basically a different way of asking the same question. Will your jealousy burn like fire? It’s interesting that he uses the term jealousy. God’s relationship to Israel is often likened to a husband’s relationship to his wife. And just as a husband feels jealousy when he discovers that his wife has been unfaithful, so Yahweh, the Lord, burns with a divine jealousy when his people go astray, especially when they go astray after other gods. And then verse six. Here is the petition for vindication. Pour out your wrath upon the nations which do not know you. In other words, Lord, why are you pouring out your wrath upon your people who know you? Pour out your wrath upon the nations which do not know you and upon the kingdoms which do not call upon your name.

Notice that language of pouring out just as the heathen, just as the Babylonians had poured out the blood of God’s people around Jerusalem so that the blood of God’s people flowed like water around Jerusalem. May God pour out his righteous wrath upon the unrepentant heathen nations who do not know him. That’s the implication of this petition here. And why? What is the basis for this plea for vindication and and holy vengeance against the wicked. Verse seven, for they have devoured Jacob and laid waste his habitation or his homeland as it’s translated in the NIV. The rationale for God’s wrath here to being called down upon these nations is because they have devoured Jacob like a lion would devour its prey. They have devoured Jacob. Not only that, they’ve laid waste his habitation, his homeland. They’ve shown hostility toward God’s people.

Cruelty, they’ve acted with excess vindictiveness against the people of God. But then notice verse eight. Do not remember the iniquities of our forefathers against us. Let your compassion come quickly to meet us, for we are brought very low. The psalmist here in this verse with repentance, humility, confesses the accumulated sins of God’s people, and he pleads with God not to remember the accumulated iniquities of the forefathers, but instead to do what? Well, look at verse 9. Help us, O God of our salvation. Here the psalmist turns to God as the God of our salvation, speaking for the people of God The psalmist, as the voice of God’s people, recognizes that God and God alone is our salvation. You, O God, are the God of our salvation. Help us, O God, of our salvation, because we are worthy of your help, because we merit or deserve your help.

Does he say that? No. Help us, O God, of our salvation for the glory of your name, not because we deserve it, but for the praise of your glorious grace is the implication here. And that is why God has chosen and why God has redeemed us, not because we deserve it, but for the praise, ultimately for the praise of his glorious grace, for the glory of his name. And then he goes on to plead, deliver us and forgive our sins. Why? Because we deserve to be forgiven? Because we deserve to be delivered? No. God rightly had brought this act of temporal judgment upon his people. raising up the Babylonians as his instruments of judgment to execute the curses of the covenant upon his covenant breaking apostate people. They had been taken into exile, but in wrath, God remembers mercy.

And so this psalmist speaking for the exiled community says, Lord, we need your salvation. Don’t remember the iniquities of our forefathers against us. Let your compassion come quickly to meet us. We are brought very low. We’ve been humbled, O God. God had to send them into exile to humble them, but he did humble them. But he humbled them and brought them down that he might ultimately restore them. Help us, O God, of our salvation for the glory of your name. Deliver us and do what? Forgive our sins for your name’s sake. Again, not because we deserve forgiveness or deliverance, but forgive us for your name’s sake. The term here in the Hebrew could be translated, provide atonement for us. Now, think about that. Atone for our sins. Think about that. The temple where sacrifices, sin offerings and sacrifices had been offered as symbolic atonements for the sins of God’s people, that temple had been destroyed.

So how is it that God is going to provide atonement for the sins of his people when the temple has been destroyed and therefore the ability of God’s people to offer sacrifices has been done away with at this particular time. How is it that atonement is going to be provided? Well, the psalmist pleads for God to forgive and to provide atonement for your namesake. Ultimately, friends, this plea for forgiveness and atonement can only be answered by the atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross of Calvary. This passage points us forward to the perfect final, once for all atonement of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. That is our only hope. That is our only plea before the Father. We deserve, we like the people of God of old, we deserve God’s anger, God’s judgment, God’s wrath.

We deserve to be cast out, to be exiled. But we, like the psalmist, are encouraged in the scriptures in the gospel to look to God as the God of our salvation and to plead with God to provide atonement for us. And in Christ, he has provided this perfect atonement. And he does so again, not because we deserve it, but for his namesake, because it glorifies him to atone for our sins, to forgive us. Do you know Christ as the one who forgives your sins. Are you resting upon him as the God of your salvation? But finally, in this short song, as we come to the final section of the song versus 10 through 13, we notice here faith filled anticipation of full vindication and restoration. Let me repeat that faith filled. We have here in these verses faith filled anticipation of full vindication and restoration.

Verse 10. Why should the nation say where is their God? You see, the Babylonians and their allies, when they conquered, when they conquered Israel, when they conquered, when they destroyed Jerusalem and tore down the temple in their pagan mindset, they would interpret that event to mean that their gods had conquered the God of Israel. And so the psalmist is concerned that for God’s honor, the nations, the unbelieving heathen nations would look at this and say, Oh, where is where is their God? Their God was absent. He didn’t defend his people. He didn’t defend his holy temple. He must not be a very powerful God. He must not be capable of defending his people. Now, the psalmist says, Why should the nation say this? Why should the nation say, where is their God? And then he pleads, he says, let there be known among the nations in our sight vengeance for the blood of your servants, which has been shed.

In other words, God act in righteous judgment, bring justice to bear upon those who have committed these atrocities so that the nations would know that you are indeed God, that you are indeed the true and living God that you are indeed powerful and able to save. The psalmist in verse 10 essentially pleads for God’s vindication to be carried out speedily in our sight. Let not justice be delayed, in other words, is what the psalmist is saying. And then he goes on to say in verse 11, let the groaning of the prisoner come before you according to the greatness of your power. Preserve those who are doomed to die. What prisoner or prisoners does he have in mind? Well, perhaps this term prisoner, perhaps this is being used somewhat metaphorically for the exiles in general. After all, these exiles as captives in a foreign land would certainly face death if they tried to escape the land of their exile and return to their homeland.

Or perhaps this refers to literal prisoners among the Jews, among the exiles who faced the real possibility of execution, whatever the case may be. God, the psalmist pleads with God, remember those imprisoned. God does not forget those who are imprisoned. He remembers his people, whatever their circumstances may be. And his heart goes out to the groaning prisoner. And then verse 12 return to our neighbors, he’s referring there to their pagan neighbors, the Babylonians. Return to our neighbors sevenfold into their bosom, the reproach with which they have reproached you, O Lord.” In other words, bring your justice to bear against them. What is this reference to sevenfold? What does he mean when he says return to our neighbors sevenfold into their bosom, the reproach with which they have reproached you? Well, in the Bible, as many of you know, The number seven often is used as a symbol for completeness.

And so, sevenfold vengeance means full measure. In other words, visit reproach in full measure against these wicked heathen. Now, again, to our modern sensibilities, we read a psalm like this and we’re tempted to think, well, this sounds awfully harsh. This sounds like a raw spirit of revenge that is being expressed here by the psalmist. But again, this is not a plea that is motivated by a spirit of vengeance, but rather, this is a cry for God’s justice to be displayed. Imagine having a wife, a brother, a sister, a mother or father, a child. Imagine seeing that loved one, brutally slain with the sword by evil Babylonians coming in with cruelty and sadistic delight, destroying your loved ones in your sight and dragging you off away from your homeland. You would cry out for God. You’d say, God, why?

Oh, God, hear my plea for justice. Let there be justice displayed. Dr. Van Gameren writes, in view of the atrocities of the nations against God’s community and in view of the gravity of Judah’s suffering, the psalmist prays for divine vindication for his people. And I think, Dr. Van Gameren, what he says next is very important. He says, there is no spirit of raw vengeance, but rather of justice. Justice must be done because of the conduct of the heathen. But again, this reminds us, brothers and sisters, that God in Christ has satisfied the demands of his own justice. Christ has satisfied the justice of the father for all of those who belong to him. We deserve God’s wrath and judgment to come upon us. But for those of us who are in Christ, Christ has taken that judgment upon himself.

He has satisfied. He’s made propitiation before the father. The wrath of the father is satisfied. God, the father out of love, sent his son to satisfy the demands of his own wrath. Praise be to God for that. The psalmist goes on to pray, return to our neighbors, sevenfold into their bosom, the reproach with which they have reproached you, O Lord. And then verse 13. So we, your people, what will be the result of this? So we, your people and the sheep of your pasture will give thanks to you forever. to all generations we will tell of your praise.” Why will the psalmist and his exiled brothers and sisters, why will they give thanks to the Lord forever? Because if God indeed heeds this cry and pours out his wrath upon the Babylonians, which by the way he did, God did answer these pleas.

The Babylonians were destroyed and brought, their empire was destroyed. But why is it that they would give praise to God forever? Because they delight to see the wicked suffer? No, but because justice will be done. Justice and mercy will be done. Yahweh is the gracious shepherd king of his people. Notice the language here. So we your people and the sheep of your pasture. The psalmist appeals to God as the shepherd king of his people. The shepherd king who leads his people. And again, this points us to Christ. Christ reveals himself as our good shepherd, the good shepherd who laid down his life for his sheep. To all generations, we will tell of your praise. This poem ends on a note of hope and trust that in the end, God will vindicate, forgive and restore his people.

In closing, beloved, God’s word promises us. that in the end, our God will indeed right all wrongs. As we look out into the world today, we see that that even today in many parts of the world, there are brothers and sisters in Christ who are living under horrible persecution, experiencing horrible suffering and atrocities at the hands of the unrepentant wicked. And we cry out to God. We pray, of course, for the conversion of the wicked that they might repent. And certainly we should. This is an age of grace. This is a time where God is holding back the manifestation of his full wrath. This is an opportunity, as he calls his church, to go into all the world to make disciples of all nations, to preach the gospel to all who will listen. We are to do that.

God is holding out an olive branch. The free offer of the gospel is to go forth, and God is able in his sovereign mercy to convert and save even the most wicked of men. But if he chooses not to convert them, we can be assured that those who mistreat and persecute and commit atrocities against God’s people will in the end be brought to justice. The proof of that is the death and resurrection of Christ and his promised future second advent. All of this assures us that our salvation and forgiveness have been secured. It also assures us that Christ will right all wrongs. and will bring both ultimate justice and ultimate mercy in the end on that final day of judgment. Are you ready for that day? You’re only ready for that day if you are united by penitent faith to the Lord Jesus Christ.

May God in sovereign mercy give you, dear listener, the grace to receive and rest upon Christ and Christ alone for your salvation, to cry out to him as the God of your salvation. Call upon the name of the Lord Jesus today. Rest upon him for your salvation and you will be saved and you will stand in him on that final day. Amen. Let us pray. Our Lord and Father in heaven. Once again, these are these are sobering truths that we’ve considered this evening, but also comforting truths. Lord, we live in a very unserious world. a world that is obsessed with things that are trivial and passing. The Lord, your word confronts us with eternal realities. We pray, Heavenly Father, once again, that you would give us the grace to live in the light of eternity and help us, Lord, when we face injustice, when we face persecution, when we face the scoffing and the mockery of the world.

May we not be discouraged, though. May we pray for those who mock us and persecute us, that they might be converted. And may we rest knowing that you, O Lord, will indeed bring all things to rights in the end, that you will right all wrongs and that you will vindicate your people. In Jesus’ name we pray and all of God’s people said, Amen.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

March 19, 2023
Despondency, Remembrance, and Hope

About this sermon

Psalm 77 opens in despondency: the psalmist remembers God and is troubled, asking whether the Lord has rejected his people for good. Crises of faith come to God’s people through loss, illness, and despair, and even Jesus cried out, ‘My God, why have you forsaken me?’ The psalmist finds his way back by remembering God’s mighty works, above all the exodus. Christians remember an even greater redemption, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and that memory rekindles hope.

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Sermon transcript

This evening, as we continue our consideration of various psalms from the book of Psalms, we’re going to consider tonight’s Psalm 77. Psalm 77. Let us hear God’s holy word. It is entitled for the choir director, according to Jeduthun, a psalm of Asaph. My voice rises to God and I will cry aloud. My voice rises to God and he will hear me. In the day of my trouble, I sought the Lord. In the night, my hand was stretched out without weariness. My soul refused to be comforted. When I remember God, then I am disturbed. When I sigh, then my spirit grows faint. Selah. You have held my eyelids open. I am so troubled that I cannot speak. I have considered the days of old, the years of long ago. I will remember my song in the night.

I will meditate with my heart and my spirit ponders. Will the Lord reject forever and will he never be favorable again? Has his loving kindness ceased forever? Has his promise come to an end forever? Has God forgotten to be gracious or has he in anger withdrawn his compassion? Selah. Then I said it is my grief that the right hand of the Most High has changed. I shall remember the deeds of the Lord. Surely, I will remember your wonders of old. I will meditate on all your work and muse on your deeds. Your way, O God, is holy. What God is great like our God? You are the God who works wonders. You have made known your strength among the peoples. You have, by your power, redeemed your people, the sons of Jacob and Joseph, Selah.

The water saw you, O God. The water saw you. They were in anguish. The deeps also trembled. The clouds poured out water. The skies gave forth a sound. Your arrows flashed here and there. The sound of your thunder was in the whirlwind. The lightnings lit up the world. The earth trembled and shook. Your way was in the sea and your paths in the mighty waters. And your footprints may not be known. You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron. Dear friends, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s ask the Lord to bless us with the proclamation of his word this evening. Our gracious Lord God and Father in heaven, how thankful we are for your word and we are especially thankful for the Psalms as they express the full range of human emotion.

We thank you that your spirit has inspired these psalm writers to pen these wonderful poems of faith and trust. Lord, we ask that you would grant us grace to understand this portion of your God-breathed, inerrant, infallible word. We pray that your Spirit would open our minds and our hearts to be receptive to that which the Spirit is teaching us in this portion of your God-breathed scriptures. Be with us now, bless us, and grant me, your unworthy servant, the grace to declare your word with clarity and power for your glory and for the edification of your people. In Jesus’ name we pray. and all of God’s people said. Amen. You may be seated. The title of my sermon this evening is Despondency, Remembrance, and Hope. And there’s a number of key words you can be listening for in my sermons this evening.

Distress, faith, doubt, remember, and hope. Well, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, I want to ask you a question. Don’t answer out loud, of course, but be honest in your heart. Have you ever experienced in your walk with the Lord a crisis of faith? A crisis of faith that left you perhaps questioning God’s goodness, or perhaps questioning the reality of his love for you, or perhaps a crisis of faith that left you with serious doubts about the very existence of God himself, or perhaps doubts about the truthfulness and trustworthiness of the Bible as God’s Word. You know, many circumstances and factors can potentially lead to such a crisis of faith, and many of God’s people throughout the history of the Church, and even throughout Biblical history, have faced crises of faith from time to time.

For example, if you’ve experienced such a crisis of faith, perhaps this crisis of faith was brought on by a deluge of sudden and unexpected suffering flooding into your life Suffering such as the tragic, sudden, and unexpected loss of a close loved one. Or the onset of a debilitating physical health challenge or disease. Or a devastating financial loss that puts you at risk of potentially losing everything that you’ve worked for your whole life. Or perhaps emotional and mental health issues that stank you into a pit of despondency and left you in a state where you felt that you could barely function. in your day-to-day life. And of course, the list could go on in terms of trials and tribulations, problems and struggles of living in this fallen, sin-cursed world. There are many such circumstances that could lead us to have a crisis of faith.

Well, dear ones, if you’ve ever faced a crisis of faith in your life, in your walk with the Lord, or if even now you are perhaps living through and experiencing such a crisis of faith, Passages like this from God’s Word remind you that you are not alone. In fact, the Word of God records for us numerous occasions in redemptive history when God’s people, both as individuals and sometimes collectively as a covenant community, faced crises and conflicts that led them to question God’s covenant faithfulness and to question the certainty of His promises. And there are numerous passages of scripture where even the most faithful and the most godly among God’s people are recorded as questioning God and wrestling with how to reconcile the goodness of God and the certainty of his covenant promises with the historical realities of suffering and sometimes oppression that they were facing in their daily experience.

Our passage for this Lord’s Day evening is one such passage where the strongest is experiencing just such a crisis of faith, crying out to God with intense emotion, and questioning God’s apparent inaction in the face of the sufferings of His people, either the psalmist’s personal suffering, or perhaps Israel’s national suffering, or perhaps a combination of both. Now, Psalm 77 begins, in one sense, with a note of despondency. perhaps reflecting a time in Israel’s history where it seems like the Lord has rejected and forgotten his people, but it ends on a note of renewed hope in the Lord. The psalm title ascribes this psalm to Asaph. Asaph was one of the temple musicians in the days of David, and the scholars tell us that this could either mean that Asaph himself penned this psalm or that one of his descendants, one of the Asaphites, descendants perhaps penned this psalm.

Whatever the case, we know that ultimately it is from the Holy Spirit, for all scripture is breathed out by God, and holy men of God penned the scriptures as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. What is it that brings this Asophite psalmist out of the dark pit of his despondency and crisis of faith back into a place of renewed faith and hope? Well, the basic answer to that question is the act of remembering the mighty deeds and wonders and works of Yahweh in the past, especially remembering his great acts of redeeming his people out of slavery in Egypt and bringing them through the Red Sea, as well as his act of shepherding his people like a flock through the ministry of Moses and Aaron. And by the way, remember that for God’s people who lived under the old covenant, the exodus events for them was the paradigm of God’s gracious intervention to redeem and save his people.

When they considered God’s saving mercies, they would look back to the exodus event as the evidence that God had redeemed them and taken them to be his people and that God had saved them and brought them to himself. Just as the death and resurrection of Christ serve as the great and consummate act of God for us today as believers living under the New Covenant. When we remember the foundation of our faith, we look back to the death and resurrection of Christ, our Savior. God’s people before the coming of Christ looked back to the Exodus events. Now, the scholars like to debate various issues, and the scholars debate whether this psalm should be classified as an individual lament, which means that the psalmist here is simply speaking for himself, bringing his own lamentation and his own personal crisis of faith to the Lord, or whether this should be more properly classified as a communal lament, where the psalmist, though using individual terms, speaks on behalf of the nation of Israel.

Now, good and sound and convincing arguments can be made for either viewpoint. And I’m going to leave it to the scholars to duke it out on that one, because quite frankly, it seems to me that this psalm, like many of the psalms, is general enough that it can be used either individually or communally. This is a psalm that you can take upon your lips as an individual believer when you face a personal crisis of faith. But this is also a psalm that we as the church, that we as God’s people, When we face a crisis of faith, or when we face troubles or tribulations, perhaps persecution, this would be a wonderful psalm for us to sing and pray together as the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. So with all of this background information in mind, let’s dive into our psalm and into its contents.

And we see here, as we look at the opening section of this psalm, verses 1 through 6, what we find here, first of all, is faith tested by the apparent inaction of God. Faith tested by the appearance, not the real, but the apparent inaction of God. Sometimes, doesn’t it seem sometimes like God has just taken a nap? Or maybe he’s on a leave of absence? Or maybe he’s checked out? Sometimes it can seem that God is detached, uninvolved in his world. We see this, first of all, brought forth in the first two verses The psalmist says, my voice rises to God and I will cry aloud. My voice rises to God and he will hear me. In the day of trouble, I sought the Lord. In the night, my hand was stretched out without weariness.

Now, even in the midst of his crisis of faith and his despondency, the psalmist is looking to the Lord and he does express some confidence in the Lord, but that confidence is tainted by and shrouded by this crisis that he is facing. And so this psalmist cries out to God with intense emotion. The language here conveys deep and intense emotion. Here the psalmist is engaged with God. He is crying out to God. In fact, the repetition in verse one, my voice rises to God, my voice rises to God, contributes to this sense of urgency and intensity by way of emphasis. In fact, verse 1 could literally be translated, I’m told, as, My voice to God, I cry for help. My voice to God. The cry for help is sandwiched between two references to the psalmist’s voice.

And the language of trouble or distress used by the psalmist in verse 2, along with the imagery of stretching out his hands to God without weariness, which indicates persistent prayer, not just offering up a brief, short prayer, but persistently seeking God in prayer, lifting up his hands, which was a common posture in prayer. It’s not that the psalmist is here Pentecostal. He’s just crying out to God persistently in prayer. This, all of this, the language, the imagery here serves to underscore the desperation and the emotional intensity of the psalmist’s plea. What does this teach you and me about our prayer lives? God is interested and he welcomes us to bring the whole range of our emotions to him. When we’re feeling depressed, when we’re feeling down, we don’t have to put on a we don’t have to put on a bold face before God.

We don’t have to pretend like everything’s OK. Sometimes when we’re talking to other people, And we’re feeling down inside. Sometimes you put on a happy face, but inside we’re dying. You don’t have to do that with your heavenly father. He welcomes you to bring your distress, your troubles to him. And then verse three, we read this. The psalmist says, When I remember God, then I am disturbed. Now that’s strange. When he remembers God, he’s disturbed, he’s troubled. He says, when I sigh, then my spirit grows faint. Why would remembering God distress him, disturb him? Initially, the psalmist’s remembrance of God does not comfort him, as we will see later on in this psalm. Ultimately, it is remembering the mighty works of God, especially his mighty act of redemption in the Exodus event, that brings this psalmist out of his spiritual funk and crisis of faith.

But initially, remembering God disturbs him, troubles him. Why? Well, perhaps because the psalmist is wondering, why has the God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God who has been faithful in the past to act in response to the cries and prayers of his people, why has this God, Yahweh, the true and living God, my covenant God, why is he not hearing me? He’s acted in the past. Why has he stopped acting? He’s intervening to rescue and deliver in the past. Why is he not responding to my present please? And then verse four, the psalmist uses very picturesque language. He says, You have held my eyelids open. What a picture. God holding your eyelids open. What is this an image of? This is an image of insomnia. Restlessness, he can’t sleep, and he says, God, you’re holding my eyelids open.

In other words, I’m so troubled, I’m so distressed that I can’t sleep. You ever been so troubled, distressed that even though your body is exhausted, you just can’t get to sleep because your brain won’t turn off. And then verse five and six, I have considered the days of old, the years of long ago. I will remember my song in the night. I will meditate with my heart and my spirit ponders. He’s musing. He’s pondering. He’s wondering. He is wrestling with God. He’s trying to figure out the ways of God and how the God revealed in the scriptures, the God who has done mighty acts for his people in the past. How is it that this God now seems to be inattentive? Dr. Van Gemeren says this about verses 5 and 6, he says, in his remembrance, in the psalmist’s remembrance, the psalmist recalls the acts of God celebrated in the, quote, songs in the night, verse 6.

The present distress seems contradictory to the history of God’s involvement and love for his people. What the psalmist is wrestling with here is the mystery of God’s providence. The mystery of Our holy, righteous, just, and gracious God’s dealings with mankind. And it is a mystery. Sometimes we don’t know what God’s up to. Sometimes it just doesn’t seem clear. We can’t read God’s providence successfully. We have only a limited, finite view. God sees the big picture. We don’t. And so here, the mystery of God’s providence is confronting the psalmist. And the mystery of God’s providence can sometimes prove to be a challenge to our faith. It can sometimes create a crisis of faith. For example, one of the mysteries of God’s providence that I wrestled with at the time, and I’m not going to get political with this, but I’m sure you’ll remember when we withdrew from Afghanistan.

And you remember what happened? The Taliban took over. Many of our brothers and sisters in Christ who live in Afghanistan are now trapped there, having to live under the regime of this violent, evil, Islamist regime, the Taliban. Our brothers and sisters living in Afghanistan, living under the Taliban, face great danger, face violence, persecution, torture, and death. And I remember at the time wondering, Lord, why would you allow this to happen to our dear brothers and sisters in Afghanistan? No doubt, being a minority faith there in that land, no doubt they already suffered difficulty. Why would God bring in more difficulty and suffering by allowing the Taliban to rule in that land? And so that was a struggle with me. And I was like, Lord, why? Why would you do that? And the answer to that question is, I don’t know.

I don’t know. I know God is good, and I know our brothers and sisters in Afghanistan face great suffering and violence for their faith, for their confession of Christ. Friends, as we consider, and I’m sure there are examples that you can think of as well, but as we consider the entirety of the Bible’s witness to the ways of God with man, we understand as we study the scriptures that often God is at work behind the scenes, if you will, he’s always at work behind the scenes, actually, even when he seems to be inactive from our human point of view. Sometimes it seems to us like God’s taking a nap, that he’s not hearing us, but he’s actually much more at work than we could even begin to realize. Think, for example, I’m sure many of you are familiar, I’m sure you’re pretty much all familiar with the story of Joseph, right?

Remember, think about Joseph as a young man. favored by his father, hated by his brothers, cruelly sold into slavery by his brothers in an act of just hard-hearted evil and cruelty. Can you imagine? Put yourself in Joseph’s shoes, or sandals as it were, as your brothers betray you. They strip you of that coat of many colors that your father had made for you. They throw you into a pit, and then they sell you into slavery. And you are taken away, and Joseph may have been 17, he was a young man at the time. You’re taken away from everything that you’ve known. You’re stripped away from your family. You’re put in chains. You’re taken to a foreign land. You’re sold to Potiphar. And then you’re falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife of making moves on her, and you end up in prison.

But God, in his timing, raises you up. And in God’s timing, you eventually become second to Pharaoh alone. But I imagine that Joseph, while he was being dragged to Egypt to be sold as a slave, I’m sure that Joseph felt abandoned by God. The scriptures don’t tell us what Joseph said to God or how he prayed to God during that time. But one can imagine Joseph crying out, Lord, Where are you? Help me. Why? And the answer seems to be silence. He feels abandoned by not only by his brothers and family, but by God himself. But you know, the end of the story in God’s gracious providence, eventually there is a reconciliation. David, it’s not David. Joseph is reconciled to his brothers. And as as their father is nearing his death, Joseph’s brothers are worried like, okay, when our father dies, Joseph’s going to take out his revenge on us.

So they, you know, they try to say, well, our father said, you’ve got to forgive us, paraphrasing. And what does Joseph say to them? He says to his brothers, his brothers who had treated him with such cruelty and hatred. He says to them, you meant it for evil. Yes, you did evil, but God meant it for good. Joseph saw the end towards the end there. Joseph saw what was going on, but only in hindsight. Beloved, God is at work in his mysterious providence, and we don’t always understand why God allows the suffering that he does even among his people. But psalms like this remind us that God understands when we feel distressed and confused in the face of evil and suffering. And he invites us to bring our questions and our cries to him in prayer.

And that brings us to our next section of this psalm, verses seven through ten, where we find the Lord questioned. That’s the second main point in your outline. The Lord questioned. Look at verses seven through ten. These are poignant questions, piercing questions. The psalmist says, will the Lord reject forever and will he never be favorable again? Has his loving? These are the things that he’s wrestling with. These are the questions that keep them up at night. Has his loving kindness ceased forever? Has his promise come to an end forever? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Or has he in anger withdrawn his compassion? Selah. Then I said it is my grief that the right hand of the Most High has changed. And by the way, verse 10 is a very difficult passage to translate and interpret in the Hebrew. which helps to explain the differences in the various English translations.

I’m reading here from the New American Standard Version where the psalmist seems to suggest that he became convinced that the Most High has changed his ways, that in fact God has forgotten to be gracious and rejected his people, and it’s translated differently in other English translations. But I think the study note on this verse that is found in the New Geneva Study Bible, today the Reformation Study Bible, is probably on target when it explains that, quote, verse 10, it says, this verse provides a crucial transition in the psalm. By remembering God’s great acts in the past, the poet builds confidence in the present and for the future. So, in case you’re wondering about verse 10, but let’s take a view of these verses as a whole. Here, the psalmist, in the words of one commentator, here in verses 7 through 10, the psalmist, quote, encourages himself to think that the favor, love, promises, and grace of God are changeless.

He expresses this in six questions, each expecting the answer no. In other words, when the psalmist is asking these questions, he expects a negative answer. I like what Van Gameron says about this. He says, The formulation of questions has a therapeutic effect. In other words, it’s not wrong to ask questions of God, to wonder, to wrestle with these things. Van Gameron says doubts and questions are expressed by the greatest men of God in the Old Testament and even by our Lord Jesus on the cross, quoting Psalm 22, verse one. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That’s a quote from Matthew 27, 46. And Gameron says, in asking these questions and in expressing his doubts, the heart of the psalmist comes to rest, for he knows that the God of Abraham cannot deny himself and cut himself off from his own people.

In questions there lies hope. What do we learn from this? How are we to How are we to take these truths and apply them to our lives? Well, friends, God’s word certainly forbids us from taking the Lord’s name in vain, certainly forbids us from such things as blasphemy and raging arrogantly against the Lord. But at the same time, the Bible does not prohibit us from crying out reverently to God in our confusion and distress, or even from questioning God. God is not intimidated by our questions. He’s not intimidated by our honest doubts. In fact, he welcomes them. Some of the most prominent figures in the Bible, as we’ve seen, prominent figures who were eminent for their faith, were believers who wrestled mightily with God and even struggled intensely at times with doubt. Our gracious Heavenly Father, like I said, is not intimidated by our doubts or our questions.

In fact, he invites us to bring our questions, our doubts, our struggles, and our distresses to him. Dear listener, are you turning to your Lord in your distress? When you face a crisis of faith, do you bring that crisis to the Lord or do you try to pretend that everything’s okay? God sees through your facade. You don’t have to put on a show for God. He knows your heart. He knows you better than you know yourself. So cast your cares upon the Lord. Bring your questions before the Lord. Don’t rage against the Lord. Don’t take his name in vain. But be honest with the Lord. You know, any good friendship or good marriage requires openness, transparency, honesty. The Lord, our Heavenly Father, desires our full honesty as we come before him. Are you bringing your doubts and questions before the Lord in prayer, and are you seeking answers to your questions in his word?

That leads me to the final section of this psalm and my final point. We notice here in verses 11 through 20, the mighty deeds of Yahweh remembered and hope rekindled. Look at verses 11 and 12. The psalmist writes, I shall remember the deeds of the Lord. Surely I will remember your wonders of old. Here he is. He is determined to remember the mighty deeds of the Lord, the deeds from of old. He says in verse 12, I will meditate on all your work and muse on your deeds. Notice the variety of language that he uses. He says, I will do what? I will remember, I will meditate, I will muse. And what’s he going to remember, meditate and muse on? God’s deeds, God’s wonders, his work, his mighty deeds. The psalmist piling up of words here seems to imply that he is reflecting upon the works of God in all of their multifaceted variety, such as, as Van Gameron puts it, his mighty works in creation, redemption, judgment and salvation.

And then it goes on to say in verse 13, the psalmist confesses your way, O God is holy. What God is great like our God. Here we see his faith being rekindled. as he recognizes the holiness of God and the greatness of God, especially in contrast to the false gods and idols of the Gentile nations. And then verses 14 and 15, you are the God who works wonders. You have made known your strength among the peoples. You have, by your power, redeemed your people. And the people of God are described as the sons of Jacob and Joseph. Here the psalmist in these verses confesses the holiness, greatness and power of God as displayed in his redemption of his people, his people being described here, as I said, as the sons of Jacob and Joseph. In other words, not just the Northern Kingdom, not just the Southern Kingdom, not just certain tribes among his people, but all of his people collectively considered all of God’s people in their entirety.

And then we transition into verses Now, verses 16 through 19 are quite possibly the psalmist taking another poem that reflected upon the Red Sea crossing and incorporating that poem into his own psalm. It says, verse 16, the water saw you, O God. There’s personification going on here. The psalmist is personifying the waters of the Red Sea. The waters saw you, O God. The waters saw you. They were in anguish. The deeps also trembled. The clouds poured out water. The skies gave forth a sound. Your arrows splashed here and there, probably referring poetically to the lightning. The sound of your thunder was in the whirlwind. The lightnings lit up the world. The earth trembled and shook. Your way was in the sea. Your path in the mighty waters. and your footprints might not be known. God, part of the Red Sea, he walked as it were through the Red Sea, leading his people Israel, but you could not see the footsteps, the footprints of the Lord.

Again, as one commentator puts it, what we have here in these verses is a poetically heightened description of the majesty of God displayed when he opened the way through the Red Sea. And it’s interesting, the language that he uses here about the storm and the lightning and so forth. The ancient Canaanites, the Gentile peoples that surrounded Israel, worshipped Baal, and Baal was viewed as the storm god, the god of the lightning and the thunder and the rain and all of that. And so Van Gemeren points out that the Lord’s appearance is cast in the language of Canaan, where Baal was the storm god. His power was thought to be displayed in the clouds, rain, thunder, and lightning. For Israel, Baal’s alleged power was dwarfed by the awesome powers of the God of Israel.” And so, it’s interesting in this language, what might be going on here is the psalmist might be using this language to kind of attack Baal.

We might have a subtle anti-Baal polemic going on here. In other words, the psalmist might be subtly trolling Baal worshipers. making fun of their deity and say, no, our God, Yahweh, the true living God, he is the true God over the storm and the sea. And then verse 20, you led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron. The imagery in verses 16 through 19 is violent imagery as God parts the Red Sea and we have the power of God, the majesty of God displayed in the storm. But then, verse 20 ends the psalm with tranquility as we get a picture of Israel, God’s people, being led like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron. God delivered his people through mighty acts of judgment and redemption that he might lead his people beside the still waters.

And so we see through this poetic language that faith is rekindled and hope is restored. As I mentioned before, as we close our time in the Word this evening, in Old Testament times, the people looked back to the Exodus event and its aftermath as the ultimate display of God’s grace, power, and faithfulness in redeeming his people. The Exodus was the primary redemptive event In Old Testament times, it’s what it’s what I it’s what identified God’s people. We are the people whom God has rescued from slavery in Egypt. We are the redeemed chosen people of God. But, of course, God’s power to redeem. And his covenant faithfulness to fulfill his promises of salvation are even more powerfully, even more consummately displayed in the incarnation of miracles and especially the death and resurrection. of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

So when troubles distress your soul, when doubts assault you, remember Jesus Christ. Remember and reflect upon the Lord Jesus Christ and his mighty work of dying on the cross for your sins and rising from the dead for your justification. And as you reflect upon Christ, the Christ who loved you unto death, the Christ who was crucified for the forgiveness of your sins, dear brothers and sisters, the Christ who rose from the dead, that you might be with him forever. That Christ has not abandoned you. Remember what he has done for you. Remember that he has promised to abide with you as Jesus promised in the Great Commission. Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Trust in him. Look to him. Remember him. And as you do, may your hope be rekindled.

May your faith be strengthened and may your crisis of faith, whatever it might be, be resolved. Amen. Let us pray. Our Lord and Father in heaven. We do thank you and praise you. That you love us. That you abide with us. that you understand, O Lord, when we struggle with faith. For, Lord, we live in a fallen, sin-cursed world. But we thank you, Lord Jesus, that you have told us to fear not, for you have overcome the world. In this world, we will have trouble. May we not fear, for you have overcome the world, and you will pull us through, Lord God. You will pull us through to the end. You will preserve us in your grace. May we live in the light of that truth. May we be strengthened with confidence in you as we face the struggles of living in this fallen world, as we wrestle with the mysteries of your providence.

We pray all of these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, Amen.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

February 26, 2023
God is Known in Judah

About this sermon

Psalm 76 celebrates that God is known in Judah and dwells in Zion, where he broke the weapons of war. Knowing God personally, in covenant fellowship through Christ, is eternal life. God rebukes the proud powers of the world, and even the wrath of man will praise him. His people should fear only displeasing their heavenly Father, and Revelation 19 shows the final victory of the King of kings.

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Sermon transcript

Please remain standing as we seek the Lord’s blessing upon the reading and the proclamation of his word this evening. Let us pray. We do bless you, Yahweh, Lord, true and living God, Heavenly Father, we bless you and praise you, O God, that you have forgiven our iniquities through the blood of Christ. We thank you, O God, that you have renewed us by your spirit. We thank you that you have called us out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the son of your love in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of your sovereign, omnipotent grace. We thank you that we are secure in that love and that there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. And we thank you that you build us up in that love as you build us up in Christ through the word.

We do ask that you would do that this evening, O God. We pray that by your spirit you would bless the reading and the proclamation of your word. May it be to our spiritual good and to your glory. We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said. Amen. Please remain standing for the reading of God’s word. As we continue our study of various psalms this evening, we are in Psalm 76, Psalm Seventy six. Let us hear God’s word. This is entitled for the choir director on stringed instruments, a song of a staff, a song. God is known in Judah, his name is great in Israel, his tabernacle is in Salem, his dwelling place also is in Zion. There he broke the flaming arrows. The shield and the sword and the weapons of war, Selah.

You are resplendent, more majestic than the mountains of prey. The stout-hearted were plundered. They sank into sleep and none of the warriors could use his hands. At your rebuke, O God of Jacob, both rider and horse were cast into a dead sleep. You, even you, are to be feared. And who may stand in your presence when once you are angry? You caused judgment to be heard from heaven. The earth feared and was still when God arose to judgment to save all the humble of the earth. Sheila, for the wrath of man, shall praise you with a remnant of wrath. You will gird yourself, make vows to the Lord your God and fulfill them. Let all who are around him bring gifts to him who is to be feared. He will cut off the spirit of princes.

He is feared by all the kings. of the earth. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. You may be seated. This evening, the title of my sermon is God is known in Judah. And again, there are a number of keywords you can be listening for. If you find that helpful following along in my sermon, and I especially encourage the children to listen for the words presence, protection, and judgment. Well, dear ones, there is no greater privilege, there is no greater blessing, there is no greater joy than knowing God. Not just knowing about God, not just having a theoretical or intellectual knowledge about God, although that is important, but a real knowledge of God. Not just having some vague subjective sense that some kind of higher power might exist, but actually knowing God, knowing the one true and living and triune God, the God revealed in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

Knowing God in the sense of having personal spiritual, covenantal, communion and fellowship with God in union with the Lord Jesus Christ. Knowing God not merely as creator and judge, but as Savior, Redeemer and King. Even being able to say of God in Christ, what a friend we have in Jesus. Indeed, the Bible teaches that to know God in the sense of saving knowledge is actually to have eternal life. As our Lord Jesus himself has said in his high priestly prayer in John chapter 17 in verse three of that of that chapter, we read these words, the Lord Jesus says to his father, this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. Notice as an aside that that Christ puts himself on the same level with God, for he is indeed God.

The importance of knowing God as he has revealed himself in his word and through the Lord Jesus Christ was powerfully brought home to me as a young believer when I read the late Dr. J. I. Packer’s now classic book, which is appropriately named and appropriately entitled Knowing God. It was one of the most impactful and influential books that I’ve ever had the privilege to read, outside of the Bible itself, of course, and I commend Packer’s book to you if you have not read it yet. And I’m not here to give a book report, don’t worry. But as Packer, in that marvelous Bible-soaked book, as Packer unpacked the biblical truths about the being, the character, the attributes, and the mighty acts of God, and expounded the gospel of Jesus Christ in a very clear and compelling way.

My heart was stirred. My spiritual taste buds longed to taste more of the goodness of the Lord, and I was driven back to the Word of God to learn more about the great God revealed therein. Now, friends, I bring up the importance of knowing God in a saving sense in introducing our passage for this Lord’s Day evening, because in this passage of God’s Word, The psalmist speaks of the knowledge of God that is enjoyed by the covenant people of God. He says in verse one, God is known in Judah. His name is great in Israel. Now, our psalm for this Lord’s Day evening is found in book three. This is the first psalm I have preached in this series from Book 3 of the Psalter, and Book 3 begins with Psalm 73 and goes through Psalm 89.

The title of this psalm ascribes it to Asaph. Asaph was a leader of one of King David’s Levitical choirs, so we read in the title or superscription for the choir director on stringed instruments, A Psalm of Asaph. a psalm. Though some scholars suggest that this title could simply mean that this is an Asaphite psalm. In other words, this psalm may have been written by Asaph himself or by one of Asaph’s descendants. Whatever the case may be, whoever was the human author of this particular psalm, we know that it was penned by one who was carried along by the Holy Spirit, and so what we have here is with all of Scripture, the inspired Word of God. This psalm can be described as having the form of a victory hymn, since it depicts God as the divine warrior delivering his people by granting a great military victory over their enemies.

The New Bible commentary states that this psalm, quote, celebrates a victory in which Yahweh has significantly revealed himself. God has revealed himself significantly through this mighty act of victory over Israel’s enemies. In terms of the original historical setting that led to the composition of this psalm, it is a psalm, like many of the psalms, it’s general enough that its details could apply to any number of conflicts that Israel had with its enemies at various points in its history. However, as another Bible commentator has suggested, and I quote, the ancient tradition may well be correct that the psalm was composed after the Lord’s destruction of Sennacherib’s army when it threatened Jerusalem. You can read about that in 2 Kings chapter 19, and indeed that could very well be the historical background to the composition of this psalm.

But friends, whatever the historical circumstances that led to the composing of this psalm, and whenever it was written, It celebrates God’s great victory over the enemies of his people, a victory that reveals the Lord’s revelatory and royal presence and his faithfulness in protecting and defending his own. And as we dive into our passage for this evening, we’re going to look at three different sections of this psalm. The first section are the opening verses, verses one through three, and then we will consider verses 4 through 10, and then the final section, verses 11 and 12. And as we focus on the first part of this psalm, consider first of all, beloved, that we learn here that by His gracious presence and protection, God is known among His people. By His gracious presence and protection, God is known among His people.

In verse 1, again, It comes out of the gates. The psalmist writes, God is known in Judah. His name is great in Israel. Now here we have parallelism going on, very common in Hebrew poetry, where the psalmist says basically the same thing in two slightly different ways. But he mentions Judah and then Israel. Now, politically speaking, historically speaking, those designations, Judah is sometimes used in the historical books to refer to the southern kingdom. After the monarchy divided, after the united monarchy under David and Solomon, the kingdom was divided under Rehoboam, and so Judah was the southern kingdom, and Israel represented the northern kingdom. It would seem that in this particular passage, the psalmist is using those two designations for the people of God to be inclusive of the whole of the people of God, whatever their tribal affiliations may be.

We’re told God is known in Judah, his name is great in Israel. Now, of course, God is known through his law, his word. his Torah, his covenant instruction, as revealed in the Holy Scriptures. We know God, of course we know God in a general sense through his general revelation, his revelation and creation, but that revelation only gives us enough information, if you will, to condemn us, to leave us without excuse, as we confessed earlier in the service from that section in the Belgic Confession. But God has made himself known in a way by which we can the saving knowledge of him through his word. But in this particular psalm, the psalmist is not focusing so much on God’s knowledge that comes to the people through the word, but his knowledge that comes to his people through his presence and his mighty works in protecting them.

In this particular psalm, the psalmist focuses on God being known by his special presence in the tabernacle or temple. As it says in verse two, his tabernacle is in Salem. Salem was the older name, the more ancient name for the city of Jerusalem. His dwelling place also is in Zion, Zion being the Temple Mount, the mountain on which the Temple was built. And the Tabernacle and later on the Temple, what was the significance of the Tabernacle and Temple? And why is it that so much ink was spilled by the various authors of of the Old Testament in describing the tabernacle. Well, because God redeemed and rescued his people so that he might dwell among them. And the tabernacle, and later on the temple, represented God’s dwelling place, his palace, where he was present and revealed his presence and covenant grace to his people, Israel.

The Holy God came to rule over and dwell amongst his sinful people in the tabernacle in the temple. And so God is known to his people in this in his special presence. But God also makes himself known through his mighty acts, whereby he rescues and delivers his people. As verse three points out there, there where on Mount Zion, the temple Mount there, he broke the flaming arrows the shield and the sword and the weapons of war. When it speaks of God breaking these military implements, this is language of military conquest. God, the divine warrior who fights for his people and protects them from all of his and their enemies, conquered their enemies, Israel’s enemies, even at the very door of the temple. Again, as I mentioned, Judah and Israel are probably being used here not to refer to the southern and northern kingdom respectively, but to include all of God’s people.

God is known among all of his people and his name is known. What does it mean when it says his name is great in Israel? What does it mean to praise the name of the Lord? Why not just praise the Lord? Well, what does the name of the Lord represent, children? God’s name, children, God’s name represents who he is, his being, his character, and especially his character as he acts to deliver and bless his people. And again, God has blessed his people with redemption and deliverance, and he has come to dwell in their midst. This is seen throughout the scriptures, and here the psalmist is reminding the people of God of all that God has done for them to deliver them and dwell in their midst. Bringing this up to our present situation, living after the coming of Christ, living as we do under this new covenant situation, once again I would remind us, and I mentioned this this morning in the sermon, but it’s a very important and central biblical theme, that Christ as our Savior is the living temple of God who fulfills the symbolism and typology of the old covenant tabernacle and temple.

And we believers are a living temple in union with Jesus Christ as we are made in him a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. And I know I read this from this passage this morning, but I want to again read just a couple of verses from this very pivotal passage in Ephesians chapter 2 verses 19 through 22, it says this, Paul writes, so then you are no longer strangers, you Gentile believers are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, notice as an aside, not having been built on the foundation of the apostle Peter, but the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole building being fitted together is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the spirit.

Praise be to God. We know, brothers and sisters, we know God’s abiding presence and protection because we are in Christ. We are in union with him, and he dwells among us by his word and spirit, and he indwells us by faith. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation, and the gospel shows us that Christ is in us the hope of glory. We know him in the ordinary means of grace that he is entrusted to his church, especially the word, the sacraments and prayer. Let us as God’s people, as we center our lives on Christ and on his word, as we gather together as covenant people around the word. Let us say with confidence, God is known in Judah. His name is great in Israel, and we, brothers and sisters, are in Christ, the Israel of God.

But moving on to the next section, we learn in verses four through ten, that the God of Jacob is the divine warrior who fights for his people by bringing judgment upon their enemies. God is the divine warrior who fights for his people by bringing judgment upon their enemies. The theme of God as a divine warrior is a very common theme in the book of Psalms, and we find that theme coming out and being expressed in our passage for this evening. In verse four and five, we read the following. The psalmist says, You are resplendent, more majestic than the mountains of prey. Again, there’s some question as to how to translate this verse. Sometimes the Hebrew is difficult, but more majestic. God’s majesty and glory is being instilled here. And he pictures for us mountains of prey.

The stout hearted were plundered. They sank into sleep. These are mighty warriors that threatened the safety, indeed the lives of God’s people. The stout hearted were plundered. In other words, they were defeated so that they could be plundered. They sank into sleep and none of the warriors could use his hands. These mighty warriors that threatened God’s people. They sank into sleep. In other words, God killed them. They could not use their hands. Their strength was sapped. They were unable to carry out their schemes against God’s people. And then verse six, at your rebuke, O God, both rider and horse were cast into a dead sleep. Again, verses four and five point to the fact that God had defeated a mighty, powerful army of Israel’s enemies. And the psalmist is remembering that and reflecting upon that mighty victory that God had given to his people.

And then in verse six, the God of Jacob again, God is described as the God of Jacob. In other words, the covenant God, the true and living God who make covenant with the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. At your rebukal, God, both rider and horse were cast into a dead sleep. Now, the language here in this particular verse may harken back to the Exodus event where God defeated the chariots and horses of Pharaoh in the Red Sea, but whether or not that is the case referenced here to rider and horse, or as the New American Standard Version translates it, horse and chariot. This is a metaphor for political power and military strength. Oftentimes in this fallen world, Political powers and military might have been used against the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, have been used against God’s covenant people.

And sometimes it seems that the people of God, the faithful remnant, are so weak and so small and so vulnerable to attack from the mighty armies and mighty forces of the fallen world system. But we are reminded here, brothers and sisters, that we’re actually on the winning side. At the rebuke of our God, the God of Jacob, the enemies of the Lord will fall. They will either fall in repentance and come to faith in Christ, or they will fall under his judgment if they refuse the way of repentance. This should give us hope. This should give us strength. No matter how tenuous the state of the church seems to be, and oftentimes it seems very weak, yet Our Savior is a mighty Savior. Our God is a mighty God. He is our divine warrior. He fights for us.

He conquers all of His and our enemies. Let us pray that He conquers our enemies with His grace, bringing them to repentance and faith. But all of that brings us to verse 7, and many scholars seem to view verse 7 as really the thematic center of this psalm. In verse 7 The psalmist says, Asaph says, you even you are to be feared. And who may stand in your presence when once you are angry? Oh, these pagan armies had threatened the people of God, even up to the very doors of the temple of God, which represented God’s presence among his people. But they were not able to stand. God defeated them. Who can stand in the presence of God when once he is angry. Have you ever thought about that question? Praise be to God that that we who know Christ is our Lord and Savior that that we are not the subjects of God’s anger.

God poured out his anger upon Christ. His anger against our sin was poured out upon our substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ, so that his grace might be poured out upon us. But imagine if you were apart from Christ and had to stand as a sinner before the presence of the infinitely holy God, a God who not only created you and held you and holds you in the palm of his hand, but the God whom you have offended, the God who views you from the standpoint of an angry judge who may stand in your presence when once you are angry. No matter. No wonder that The Ace of Apostles says here, you, even you, are to be feared. How often is it that we hear today people using the language of God-fearing man or God-fearing woman?

It used to be that if you wanted to compliment someone, you would say, oh yeah, such and such is a real God-fearing man or God-fearing woman. In our highly secularized culture, we don’t hear that kind of language. But brothers and sisters, among us as the people of God, that should be common lingo. We should aim to be a God-fearing people, not that we fear God’s wrath, but that we have a sense of holy reverence and awe for God. If we are in Christ, we need not fear his wrath, but we sure should fear the Lord in the sense of a faith-filled fear that trembles at his word and has a sense of reverence and awe and desires not only to please God, but fears more than anything else, displeasing the loving Heavenly Father who has sent his son to redeem us.

Oh, Christian, are you afraid of offending your loving Heavenly Father after all that he’s done for you in sending his son Jesus Christ to die for your sins, in sending the Holy Spirit to bring you to repentance and faith and to renew you in his grace, After all that he has done for you in justifying you by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone, apart from your works and giving you a standing in grace that you cannot fall out of. After all that he has done for you, securing your eternal salvation through the life, death and resurrection of Christ. If we know the Lord and have tasted that the Lord is good, our greatest fear as God’s children should be displeasing our heavenly father. We should desire more than anything else to be well pleasing to the Lord and by his grace in Christ, we can rejoice because our father is well pleased with Christ.

Remember what the father said of his son at our Lord’s baptism as the spirit alighted upon our Lord Jesus at his baptism in the form of a dove. What did the father say? This is my beloved son. in whom I am well pleased. If you are in union with Christ, the son, the father is well pleased with you, not because of you, but because of Christ, your savior. So let us fear the Lord with reverence and awe and strive by his grace out of gratitude for his gift of salvation to be well pleasing unto him. And then it goes on to say in verse eight, you caused judgment to be heard from heaven The earth feared and was stilled when God moves in judgment, when he moves to act for his people. The earth is often depicted depicted as standing still as God does his act of judgment and deliverance.

Verse nine, when God arose to judgment to save all the humble of earth. And then verse 10, for the wrath of man, shall praise you. With a remnant of wrath, you will gird yourself.” Now, again, from what I can gather in my studies, this is a verse that presents some challenges to the translators, but if we take it as it is translated in versions such as the New American Standard Version, it indicates, as one commentator puts it, this indicates that Yahweh turns man’s rebellious expression of anger to his glory. Even the wrath of man shall praise you with a remnant of wrath. You will gird yourself. What is the wrath of man? The anger of man? This is simple. It is twisted. It is distorted. But God, because he is sovereign and because he is able to turn even evil things to his good purposes, even the Lord, our sovereign Lord, can cause even even the wrath of man, the sinful wrath of man, to praise him.

He can cause all things to work together for good. Think of this, the story of Joseph. Rejected by his brothers, sold into slavery, and yet, as Joseph tells his brothers, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. There’s an example of God turning the wrath of man, the sinful wrath of Joseph’s brothers to praise him, to display his marvelous, forgiving grace, even to the patriarchs who had done such an awful thing to their brother. Friends, this is comforting because it tells us that nothing can hinder his sovereign plan, not even the wrath of man, not even the powerful armies and of the enemies of God. The wrath of man shall praise him with a remnant of wrath. You will gird yourself. God is in control. Praise God that he is active in protecting his people from all of his and their enemies.

Let us rest beloved in his protective care. Well, in closing, as we look at the final section, the last two verses of this passage, let us consider the appropriate response to this knowledge of God, the appropriate response to the knowledge of God. As Asaph closes up this psalm, he says, Make vows to the Lord your God and fulfill them. First, he addresses the people of God, and he says, Look, mean business with God. You’ve made vows to the Lord. Fulfill them. Bring appropriate worship and honor to Yahweh your God. the God whom you know. God’s people are to bring him worship and to fulfill their vows. But then he also addresses all who surround his people. He says, let all who are around him bring gifts to him who is to be feared. See, God is not just to be feared among his people who believe in him.

God deserves to be feared among all the nations. All the peoples upon the earth are to fear and tremble before the true and living God, for he is the creator of all, and all will one day stand before the judgment seat of Christ. And that should strike the hearts of all with fear and reverence. And then verse 11 and 12, verse 12, rather, he will cut off the spirits of princes, the spirit of princes. He is to be feared by the kings of the earth. Even princes, even kings, even those in the highest position of authority in terms of human authority, even they owe God their reverence and their tribute. All people, even kings of the earth, owe him tribute and fear. God’s sovereign power and judgment should restrain the arrogance of his enemies and should cause even them to humble themselves before him and to bring their tribute.” There is a certain fear of God that falls short of saving faith.

There is a general sense of the fear of God that was experienced and known by some of Israel’s neighbors in the time of the Old Covenant, for example. There is a sense in which that fear of the Most High God restrained them. from carrying out their schemes and plots against the people of God. But that fear does not seem to be very common today. Let us pray that we would fear God in the sense of holy reverence and awe, but that God would also cause the fear of his holy name to spread around the world so that people would recognize their need for his grace, their need for his salvation before it is too late. because all owe him reverence, awe, all owe him their fear and their worship. Friends, ultimately, this psalm points us to the final victory of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, for he will one day return in glory as the ultimate divine warrior and ultimately, ultimately, excuse me, and consummately conquer all of his and our enemies.

And so I would leave you with a vision from the book of Revelation of this final victory of Christ. As we close our time in the word this evening, I’d invite you to turn to Revelation 19 and let me read verses 11 through 21. Revelation 19 verses 11 through 21. And I saw heaven opened and behold, a white horse And he who sat on it is called faithful and true and in righteousness he judges and wages war. His eyes are a flame of fire and on his head are many diadems and he has a name written on him which no one knows except himself. He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood and his name is called the word of God and the armies which are in heaven clothed in fine linen white and clean were following him on white horses.

From his mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it he may strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. And he treads the winepress of the fierce wrath of God the Almighty. And on his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and he cried out with a loud voice, saying to all the birds which fly in midheaven, Come assemble for the great supper of God so that you may eat the flesh of kings and the flesh of commanders and the flesh of mighty men and the flesh of horses and of those who sit on them and the flesh of all men, both free men and slaves and small and great.

And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies assembled to make war against him who sat on the horse and against his army. And the beast was seized and with him the false prophet. who performed the signs in his presence by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire, which burns with brimstone, and the rest were killed with the sword which came out from his mouth, the mouth of him who sat on the horse, and all the birds were filled with their flesh. Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is what we look forward to. This is our hope. And if you are in Christ, you need not fear being on the receiving end of that wrath.

You know, the Lord, are you united to Christ? Make sure by the grace of God that you are right with him this evening. May God in sovereign mercy, open your heart to receive and rest upon Christ this evening. Let us pray. Our Lord and father in heaven, we thank you. that you are a sovereign God, that you are our divine warrior who fights for us. We thank you, Lord, that we can know you in your word, by your presence, and through your mighty acts in history and in our lives. We ask, Lord, that our faith would be deepened by what we’ve heard this evening, and that you would help us by your spirit to work out that which you have worked in us by your word and spirit. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

February 19, 2023
Let All the Peoples Praise You

About this sermon

Psalm 67 is a missionary psalm: God blesses his people so that his way may be known on earth and his salvation among all nations. Before Christ the Gentiles lived without God and without hope, with rare exceptions like Rahab, Ruth, and Naaman. The blessing of Abraham now reaches every nation, and all who belong to Christ are Abraham’s heirs. The church prays and gives for missions, and it prays for the conversion of the Jews, so that all the peoples praise God.

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This afternoon, as we continue to work our way through various psalms in the Book of Psalms this afternoon, we’re going to consider a brief psalm, Psalm 67. So I invite you to turn to Psalm 67. The psalm is entitled, for the choir director with stringed instruments, A Psalm, A Song. God be gracious to us and bless us and cause his face to shine upon us, Selah. that your way may be known on the earth, your salvation among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, O God. Let all the peoples praise you. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you will judge the peoples with uprightness and guide the nations on the earth. Selah. Let the peoples praise you, O God. Let all the peoples praise you. The earth has yielded its produce.

God, our God, blesses us. God blesses us. that all the ends of the earth may fear him. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s bow our heads for a word of prayer. Our Lord and Father in heaven, once again, we ask that your spirit would open up our hearts to hear what is being taught to us in this portion of your infallible word. We ask, O Lord, that Your word would find a lodging place in our hearts. We pray that this would be manna from heaven to us as we consider the scriptures. Feed us through the word and strengthen us in your grace. For Jesus’ sake we pray, and all of God’s people said, Amen. You may be seated. The title of my sermon this afternoon is Let All the Peoples Praise You. number of keywords that you can be listening for to help to help you follow along this afternoon.

Well, dear friends in Christ, this short psalm that we are considering on this Lord’s Day afternoon has rightly been described as a missionary psalm. It’s a portion of the Old Testament scriptures that reminds us that even in Old Testament times, God was not just concerned with his own people, Israel. He was not just concerned that his own people know and worship and reverence him appropriately. Rather, since God is the creator of all humanity and since he is the sovereign Lord over all of the nations of mankind, his ultimate goal in blessing his people is that his way may be known on the earth. His saving power among all the nations, as verse two tells us, that your way may be known on the earth, your salvation among all nations. Now, consider what it was like on this earth during Old Testament times.

In Old Testament times, the knowledge of the true and living God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the proper worship of the true and living God was almost exclusively limited to the covenant nation of Israel. Now, there are in the Old Testament occasional accounts of Gentiles coming to what we may regard as a saving knowledge of the true and living God, that true and living God being the electing, redeeming, covenant keeping God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Think, for example, of Rahab the Canaanite, the prostitute who hid the spies who came to faith in the true and living God. Think of Ruth the Moabitess. Or think of Naaman, the commander of the army of the king of Syria, who had been healed of his leprosy by God through the prophet Elisha, and who actually took back some Israelite soil with him back to Syria so that he could offer sacrifice to the God of Israel, and so forth.

But besides very rare exceptions such as these, before the coming of Christ, the Gentile nations outside of Israel lay under the thick spiritual darkness and satanic bondage of pagan idolatry, with no saving knowledge of the true and living God. Indeed, to borrow words from the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians, prior to the coming of Christ and the New Covenant era, the Gentile nations on the whole were, to quote from Paul, separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise having no hope and without God in the world. Those are tragic words. There is no worse condition to be in, spiritually speaking, than to be in a position where you are without God and without hope in the world. However, the old covenant scriptures anticipate a time in redemptive history when the blessings of the Abrahamic covenant would spread to all of the nations of humanity. and when all the nations of mankind would come to acknowledge and confess and worship the God of Israel as the one true and living God.

This, of course, would happen as a result of the coming of the promised Messiah and the ushering in of the messianic era. Our passage from God’s word for this Lord’s Day afternoon is one such passage that points to and anticipates that time when people from all nations will know and worship and reverence the true and living God. As the people of God cry out in this psalm in verses 3 and 5, let the peoples praise you. Let all the peoples praise you. Now, what was the life setting that serves as the background for the composition of this particular psalm? Well, the honest answer to that question is we don’t know with certainty. Dr. Van Gemeren says of this psalm that, quote, its life setting is difficult to determine. Now, some scholars suggest that this psalm might have been used in worship at the Feast of Tabernacles or perhaps as a thanksgiving for fruitful harvest.

This is certainly possible given the reference to a fruitful harvest in verse six. where we read, the earth has yielded its produce. God, our God, blesses us. The allusion to the priestly Aaronic blessing in Numbers 6, verses 24 through 26, as that allusion is found in verse 1, and the repeated refrain in verses 3 and 5, suggest that this psalm may have been used as part of some kind of antiphonal call and response liturgy, perhaps, again, during one of Israel’s feasts. But beyond those possibilities, we don’t really know the original setting of this psalm. But the content of this psalm is glorious because it points us, it gives us a universal missionary picture. It reminds us that our God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the blessed Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is a God who seeks and saves that which is lost.

So let’s dive in and consider what we can learn from this brief psalm. First of all, notice, friends, that God’s blessing upon his people leads to blessings among the nations. God’s blessing upon his people leads to blessings among the nations. Again, let’s consider verses one and two. God be gracious to us, the first petition In the opening verse of the psalm is a petition for God to be gracious to us as people and to do what to bless us and cause his face to shine upon us. Selah is probably a musical or liturgical term. Why? Verse two, that your way may be known on the earth, your salvation among the nations. Now, I mentioned that verse one includes an allusion to the Aaronic benediction of Numbers chapter six, verses 24 through 26. God be gracious to us and bless us and cause his face to shine upon us.

Let’s turn to number six. Let me just read number six, verses 24 through 26. You’ve heard these words before at times as part of the benediction at the end of the service. It says this. Thus shall you bless the sons of Israel. You shall say to them, The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance on you and give you peace. Clearly, in this verse, this allusion to the Aaronic blessing indicates that this psalm may indeed have been used as part of an extended benediction at the end of of corporate worship, perhaps of the tabernacle or temple. But whatever the case may be, in this verse, the worshipers recognize their need for God’s grace and blessing. As we come before God in our prayers, let us not come with an arrogant spirit, assuming that we are worthy to have an audience with the creator of the universe.

Instead, let us come in humility, recognizing that God receives us only because he is gracious to us. And out of his sovereign grace, he chooses to condescend to bless us and to cause his faith to shine upon us. Now, that’s interesting language there at the end of verse one. May the Lord cause his faith to shine upon us. Whatever could that mean? God’s faith shining upon us. Dr. Willem van Gameren comments, he says, an oriental monarch revealed in his facial expression either his pleasure or displeasure with the party that sought an audience with him. So the image of God’s face shining upon us seems to be a symbol for his favor and blessing. So God’s face shining upon his people appears to be a symbol for his favor and blessing. So the psalmist here is asking God, Lord, may you cause your favor and blessing to rest upon us, your people.

And the use of this terminology of God’s face is a is a powerful way to get that imagery to stick in your mind and drives home the fact that we indeed need God to graciously favor us if he would receive us into his presence. Now, some of the children might ask, well, wait a minute, does God really have a face? Does God have a body like man, children? No, he does not. Of course, God is invisible. Since God is an invisible spirit, he doesn’t literally have a face like we do. As the Children’s Catechism reminds us in the answer to question 9, the question is, what is God? The Bible-based answer is, God is a spirit and does not have a body like men. Why then does the Bible sometimes refer to God as if he has a face?

Why does the Bible sometimes speak of God’s eyes, God’s nostrils, God’s ears, God’s hands, or his arms, his legs, his feet, even his toes, his fingers. Why do we read of these things in the Bible? Well, when the Bible speaks about God as if he had body parts, like eyes, ears, hands, or even a face, and so forth, this is what the scholars call anthropomorphic language, which is basically a fancy way of saying that God is using this language to speak about himself as if he were like a man. And he’s doing this because we can’t really conceptualize or understand God as a disembodied spirit. So God comes down to our level and speaks to us about himself in a way that we can relate to, a way that we can understand. But nevertheless, please understand this language here of God’s face is not intended to be interpreted in a woodenly, literalistic fashion.

Rather, this is again a symbol, a symbolic language for God’s favor and blessing resting upon His people. And why is it that God has petitioned to bless and show favor toward His people? Well, we’re told in verse 2, that your way may be known on the earth, your salvation among all the nations. Here we see that Hebrew parallelism where where the same thing is being said twice in a slightly different way. For God’s way to be known upon the earth is the same thing for his salvation to be known among the nations. And so God is petitioned to bless and to show favor toward his people so that all the nations of mankind might come to know God’s ways and might come to experience his saving power. This verse helps to show that knowledge of the true God was never intended to be permanently limited to the people of Israel, but was to spread to all of the nations of humanity.

It also serves to show that even in Old Testament times, there was a longing and a desire among God’s faithful people for the knowledge and salvation of God, not just to be experienced by themselves, but to be experienced by all the nations, even among those Gentiles who lived outside of the boundaries of national Israel. This is even hinted at in the Torah, in the Pentateuch, the first five books in the Old Testament, the books of Moses. For example, turn with me, if you would, to Deuteronomy chapter 4, and let’s look very quickly at Deuteronomy 4, verses 5 through 12. I’m sorry, 5 through 8. Deuteronomy chapter 4. Verses five through eight, we read these words. God, through Moses, addressing the children of Israel as as they’re about to enter in and conquer the promised land, says this.

See, I have taught you statutes and judgments just as the Lord my God commanded me that you should do thus in the land where you are entering to possess it. So keep and do them. God is calling his people to be faithful, to keep and to do his word. Why, for that is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes and say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what great nation is there that has a God so near to it as is the Lord our God whenever we call upon him? Or what great nation is there that has statutes and judgments as righteous as this whole law, which I’m setting before you today? God’s presence with his people Israel and their faithfulness to follow his word by his grace was meant to be a witness to the peoples that surrounded Israel was meant to be a witness to them that they might come to know the true and living God and might come to understand his word.

Beloved, God had promised Abraham that in him all the families of the earth will be blessed, as God promised to Abraham back in Genesis 12, verse 3. And God also told Abraham that he would make Abraham, quote, the father of a multitude of nations. That’s promised in the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis 17, verses 4 and 5. God not only promised in his covenant with Abraham that he would make Abraham the father of the Israelite nation, but that he would make Abraham the father of a multitude of nations. The Abrahamic covenant wasn’t just a Jewish thing. It anticipated the universal proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ in its new covenant fullness. This covenant promised to Abraham, of course, was ultimately fulfilled in Jesus the Messiah for all who are united to Christ, our sons and daughters of Abraham, at least spiritually speaking.

And by the way, this is a very clear teaching in the New Testament scriptures. It’s a teaching that has been obscured by the error of dispensationalism, but it is a teaching that is very clear in the word of God. It’s not about race. It’s not about physical lineage or genealogy from Abraham, the patriarch. It’s about God’s grace, and it’s about faith. Consider, for example, there’s many passages we could look at, but as we compare scripture with scripture, look with me, if you would, at Galatians 3, verses 28 and 29, Galatians chapter 3, verses 28 and 29. The Apostle Paul there, as he’s counteracting the Judaizers, the proclaimers of a false and legalistic gospel, As he’s speaking of God’s covenant plan and of justification by faith. Here’s what he says. Galatians 3 verse 28. There is neither Jew nor Greek.

The Greeks being used there to indicate Gentiles. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free man. There is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And then notice what he says in verse 29. And if you belong to Christ. Now let’s pause there. Who’s he addressing? He’s addressing a congregation of mostly Gentile Christians. He says, if you, you Gentiles included, if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to the promise. The promise was never meant to be limited to national Israel. It was a promise that was to spread around the world. And we have hints of that even in the old Testament scriptures, this verse of Galatians 329 reminds me of that little children’s song. Father Abraham had many sons, many sons that father Abraham, I am one of them.

So are you. So let’s just praise the Lord. Indeed, let all the nations praise him. Our song for this afternoon anticipates this time in redemptive history. when peoples from all the nations of humanity would come to know the true and living God through his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and would experience his blessing of salvation, resulting in worldwide worship and reverence for the true God. Let us pray for God to continue to bless us, his people, not just so that we might bask in his blessings, Though, praise God, he desires to bless us. Indeed, he has in Christ blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. But let’s not just pray for God to bless us that we may keep those blessings to ourselves. Instead, let us pray for God to bless us, his people, that his blessings might flow far as the cursed is found.

Now that brings us to the next section of this brief psalm. Consider next, beloved, that worldwide knowledge of God leads to worldwide praise for God. Worldwide knowledge of God leads to worldwide praise for God. Verse three. Let the peoples praise you, O God. Let all the peoples praise you. Notice it’s not just people, it’s peoples, plural. Let the peoples, meaning the Gentiles too, let the peoples praise you. Let all the peoples praise you. Let the nations be glad. and sing for joy, not just the nation of Israel, but the nations. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you will judge the peoples with uprightness and guide the nations on earth. Selah. And then verse three is repeated again. The words of verse three are repeated in verse five, indicating a liturgical refrain.

Let the peoples praise you, O God. Let all the peoples praise you. I want to share with you a quote from John Piper. Some of you, I’m sure, are familiar with the popular evangelical preacher, John Piper. And before I share this quote with you, I do want to say that I have some serious theological differences with and reservations about John Piper and his theology. But in his book on missions, entitled Let the Nations Be Glad, he begins that book with a very sound statement. So, here what he has to say. He says this, missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exist because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more.

It is a temporary necessity, but worship abides forever. Worship, therefore, is the fuel and goal in missions. It’s the goal in missions because in missions we simply aim to bring the nations into the white hot enjoyment of God’s glory. The goal of missions is the gladness of the peoples in the greatness of God. If you’re taking notes, write that down. Let me repeat that. The goal of missions is not just the salvation of sinners, praise God, that’s one aspect of the goal of missions, but the goal of missions is the gladness of the peoples in the greatness of God. Piper’s words kind of remind me of some words that are probably more familiar to you. The words of the answer to the shorter catechism, question one, what is the chief end of man? We know the answer, right?

Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. Not just man’s chief end is to glorify God, but to enjoy him forever. Let the nations be glad. Let the peoples praise you. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy. God delights in the joy of his people rejoicing in him. Now, in verse four, The psalmist goes on and says, let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you will judge the peoples with uprightness and guide the nations on the earth. Now, some of us might, you know, look at that term judge and we might think, well, why would we rejoice at the notion of God being our judge? When we tend to think of a judge, we tend to think of an austere figure who condemns us, who either justifies or condemns.

And sometimes the Bible contemplates God in that role as the judge, the judge who either justifies or condemns. But here the term judge is being used in the sense of govern. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy. Why? For you will judge, i.e., you will govern the peoples with uprightness. and guide the nations on the earth. In the ancient world, a just and good judge was a rare thing. Oftentimes, judges, you know, you had to, if you wanted justice, you had to grease the palms of the judge. You had to bribe the judge to hear your case and to give you justice. But if you were poor, if you were without resources to bribe the judge, then your case would not be heard and justice and uprightness would not be done. But the good news is that God will judge his people in the sense he will govern them and he will bless them.

To be judged, in other words, governed by the God of grace, blessing and covenant mercies, is not to experience his condemning wrath, but to know his saving and guiding power and presence. Think, for example, of the book of Judges in the Old Testament, where the Israelites would go astray and break the covenant and God would raise up a foreign adversary to judge them, to bring a punishment upon them for their violations of the covenant. It was a cycle that was repeated over and over again during that period of Israel’s history. The people would again cry out to the Lord for deliverance, and the Lord would raise up what? A judge. That judge was a savior figure that pointed forward to Jesus. the savior and judge of his people. So it is a good thing for God to judge us in the sense that is being spoken of here in verse four.

You will judge the peoples with a brightness and guide the nations on the earth. Beloved, let us join our hearts and voices with that of the psalmist in praying that great multitudes of people from among all the nations of humanity would come to worship and praise God in spirit and in truth. out of gratitude for his gift of salvation in Jesus. Do you, dear listener, know his saving grace? Have you, by his grace, come into the white-hot enjoyment of God’s glory? Come to Christ, and he will receive you, and you will know the joy of the Lord. Well, finally, as we come to the end of this psalm and to the end of our worship service as well, Notice in verses six and seven, consider worldwide reverence for the God of the bountiful harvest, worldwide reverence for the God of the bountiful harvest.

Verse six, the earth has yielded its produce. God, our God, blesses us. God blesses us that all the ends of the earth may fear him. It appears that God has indeed provided his people with a bountiful harvest in response to their petition for blessing, as verse seven seems to show. And so the goal of God blessing his people with a bountiful harvest is for the nations outside of Israel to notice that bountiful harvest and to come to reverence the true and living God of Israel. Well, what’s the connection there, Pastor? Why is it that you know, that the psalmist thinks that the nations outside of Israel will notice God, Yahweh, granting his people a bountiful harvest and will come to consider and reverence the true and living God, the God of Israel. Well, think about it.

Many ancient pagans looked to their idols, their deities, to provide them with a successful agricultural cycle and thus a fruitful harvest. There are harvest gods, harvest deities in the ancient Near East, for example. But we know, and the Israelites, the faithful Israelites at least knew, that the true and living God alone provides such a harvest. And so, the pagan peoples surrounding Israel seeing God so abundantly providing His people with blessing, that too would draw them to consider the God of Israel, to see Him as the true and living God. By implication, the joy of Israel over God, having blessed them with a bountiful harvest, leads the psalmist here to pray for God to grant, by implication, a great spiritual harvest of salvation, a spiritual harvest that will extend beyond the borders of Israel to bless a great multitude from among the nations and people groups of the world, that they might come to know and trust and reverence the true and living God, the God who shows grace, the God who grants blessings, the God who governs and guides the nations of mankind in his ways.

May this be our prayer as well, that all the ends of the earth may fear him. What does it mean to fear God? Adam and Eve, after they fell in the garden, they certainly were afraid of God. They ran from God. They hid from God. They sowed fig leaves to try to cover their nakedness. But that’s not the kind of fear, that craven fear that flees from God. That’s not what the psalmist is speaking of here. What does it mean to fear God in a godly sense, in a sense that proceeds from true faith? It is a sense of holy reverence and awe. Holy reverence and awe. May all the ends of the earth fear him in the sense of reverence him with awe. That is our prayer, and that is our prayer for ourselves as well, that we might reverence him in this way.

Just to close off our time, I want to leave you with a quote from Dr. Willem van Gemmeren. In his commentary on the Psalms, he has a very insightful paragraph, and I just want to read this. He says this. This is considering that this is a missionary psalm. He says, since the coming of Christ, The roles of the Jews and Gentiles have been reversed. The Church of Christ, as the people of God, is largely composed of Gentiles who’ve come to know God’s ways in salvation, in the kingdom of Christ, and in his sovereign rule in the affairs of this world. Our joy is now full in Jesus Christ. We have reason to sing for joy as our Heavenly Father blesses us by providing for our needs. And he refers to Matthew 6, 25 to 34.

Our prayer must always include a petition to the Father that Israel too may fear him by believing that Jesus is the Messiah. Then all the ends of the earth will fear him and the goal of the messianic kingdom will be closer. Friends, as we pray and work and give to send missionaries throughout the world, as well we should, Let us also remember to pray for and labor toward the conversion of the Jews. Few things are more joyful than seeing a Jewish person come to see, to see their eyes open, to recognize Jesus as their Messiah, their Savior, their Lord, their King. It is a joyful thing. Let us pray for the conversions of the Jews. In God’s sovereign mercy, may he grant that greater numbers among the Jews would come to recognize and accept Jesus of Nazareth as their divine Messiah and Savior.

And so that all the nations, that all the peoples may praise him. Amen. Let us pray. Gracious Lord and Father in heaven, we thank you and praise you that you are a missionary God, a God who seeks and saves that which is lost. We thank you, Heavenly Father, that you loved us and you sought us out. You sent your son Jesus for us, you poured your spirit upon us, you drew us with the cords of love unto faith in Christ, and you continue to abide with us. Give us missionary hearts, hearts that care for the souls of the lost and long to see them too come to faith and salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. In his name we pray and all of God’s people said, Amen.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

February 5, 2023
God’s Kingdom and the Imprecatory Psalms, Part 5: Holy War

About this sermon

The imprecatory psalms belong to the setting of holy war, the cosmic conflict between God’s kingdom and Satan’s. Psalm 68 opens with Moses’s cry from Numbers 10, ‘Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered,’ and it praises God as the divine warrior who cares for the fatherless and the widow. God led his people through the wilderness, and Christ now leads his church through this present evil age toward the new heavens and new earth. Christ ascended on high, led captivity captive, and gave gifts to his people, and he will come again to finish the victory.

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Please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word as we continue our study of the various psalms in the book of Psalms. This evening we’re going to consider the first part of a longer psalm, Psalm 68. We’re going to consider verses 1 through 18. Psalm 68, verses 1 through 18. Let’s hear God’s Holy Word. Psalm is entitled for the choir director of Psalm of David, a song. Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered and let those who hate him flee before him. As smoke is driven away, so drive them away. As wax melts before the fire, so let the wicked perish before God. But let the righteous be glad. Let them exalt before God. Yes, let them rejoice with gladness. Sing to God. sing praises to his name, lifts up a song for him who rides through the deserts, whose name is the Lord and exalts before him.

A father of the fatherless and a judge for the widows is God in his holy habitation. God makes a home for the lonely. He leads out the prisoners into prosperity. Only the rebellious dwell in a parched land. Oh, God, when you went forth before your people, When you marched through the wilderness, Stele, the earth quaked. The heavens also dropped rain at the presence of God. Sinai itself quaked at the presence of God, the God of Israel. You shed abroad a plentiful rain, O God. You confirmed your inheritance when it was parched. Your creatures settled in it. You provided in your goodness for the poor, O God. The Lord gives the command. The women who proclaim the good tidings are a great host. Kings of armies flee, they flee, and she who remains at home will divide the spoil.

When you lie down among the sheepfolds, you are like the wings of a dove covered with silver and its pinions with glistening gold. When the Almighty scattered the kings there, it was snowing in Zalman. A mountain of God is the mountain of Bashan. A mountain of many peaks is the mountain of Bashan. Why do you look with envy, O mountains with many peaks, at the mountain which God has desired for his abode? Surely the Lord will dwell there forever. The chariots of God are myriads, thousands upon thousands. The Lord is among them as at Sinai in holiness. You have ascended on high. You have led captive your captives. You have received gifts among men, even among the rebellious also. that the Lord God may dwell there. May God add his blessing to this reading of his word.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. You may be seated. I told my sermon this evening is God’s kingdom and the imprecatory Psalms were part five in studying the imprecatory Psalms or various imprecatory Psalms and the Theme tonight is the theme of holy war, and you’ll notice there’s quite a number of key words you can be listening for in my sermon tonight if that’s helpful to you. Well, dear ones, in recent weeks in our study and consideration of the book of Psalms, we’ve been focusing on various so-called imprecatory Psalms. Now, what is an imprecation? An imprecation, that’s a fancy word for basically a spoken curse. And so the imprecatory prayers and psalms of the Bible are prayers and psalms that call upon God to bring his righteous and holy judgment and his curse upon the unrepentant, settled enemies of God and God’s kingdom.

Now, as I’ve mentioned before, as we’ve considered various imprecatory psalms, Many Christians find these seemingly vindictive prayers of Scripture to be troubling, and this is true even among Bible believing Christians. They find these Psalms and prayers of Scripture to be troubling, especially since our Lord Jesus Christ has called us as his disciples to love even our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us, to be peacemakers, not warmongers, and to seek to overcome evil with good. That being the case, how can we take upon our own lips and use in our own prayers the various imprecatory Psalms and prayers of Holy Scripture. Now, as we’ve considered in past weeks, there is really no real contradiction when you when you dig beneath the surface and when you give it careful consideration. There’s no real contradiction between, for example, praying for the conversion and salvation of our enemies and of unbelievers in general.

On the one hand, and also praying for God, on the other hand, to remove obstacles to the advancement of his kingdom by destroying the schemes of the wicked and restraining the wicked and even bringing his judgments upon the settled, unrepentant enemies who persecute God’s church and oppose his kingdom. We’ve also seen that these imprecatory psalms are not prayers that are to be motivated or that are motivated by a spirit of personal vengeance against personal enemies. Rather, they represent Christ for God to bring justice to bear upon those who bring great suffering upon God’s people and who seek to overthrow the righteous rule of God’s kingdom. But dear ones, I want to suggest to you on this Lord’s Day evening that there’s one important theme of God’s Word that undergirds these imprecatory Psalms and that will aid us and help us to understand more clearly why it is that the Holy Spirit inspired these prayers of Scripture and therefore has included them as part of the canon of Scripture.

One important theme of God’s Word that undergirds these so-called disturbing prayers of Scripture is the theme of holy war. The imprecatory psalms and prayers of the Bible were written in the context of what we might call holy war. Now, what do I mean by holy war? Well, the ultimate holy war represents a cosmic spiritual struggle. It represents the cosmic spiritual warfare where God is called upon to go forth as the mighty divine warrior to fight for his people by conquering all of his and our enemies, and by vindicating his oppressed, suffering people. Now, in Old Testament times, under the Old Covenant, this principle of holy war was operating on the level of what we would call typology. In other words, God in the Old Testament, under the Old Covenant, God gave us earthly pictures of his cosmic, heavenly warfare against the forces of Satan and Satan’s pseudo kingdom.

In the Old Covenant era, God actually brought physical and indeed national judgments upon the enemies of God’s people, the Israelites, including the judgment of military conquest. Think, for example, of the great judgments that God poured out upon the mighty King Pharaoh and the Egyptians who had enslaved and oppressed the people of God for centuries. Think about those mighty plagues that he poured out upon Pharaoh and the Egyptians. Those plagues not only impacted Pharaoh and the Egyptians and brought God’s judgment upon them, but ultimately those plagues, the spiritual background of those plagues was God’s judgment upon the so-called gods of Egypt. The plagues were ultimately judgments of God against the so-called gods of the Egyptians. Or think, for example, think as well of God’s military conquest and destruction of the Gentile peoples who had inhabited the promised land before God, through Joshua, led Israel into that land to conquer that land.

These physical judgments and military conquests were ultimately pictures or types of the great cosmic spiritual conflict, the great holy war between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan. And these judgments give a foretaste of the ultimate final judgment that God will bring upon the world of the unrepentant wicked on the final day of judgment. There’s a sense in which these actions, for example, the conquest of the Canaanites by the Israelites and the fact that God called them, the Israelites, to go in with the sword and actually slaughter these pagan peoples and to commit them to God, to put them under the ban, to destroy them. The fact that God did that, that is actually sort of a picture of the final judgment, what God will do in the final judgment. And so this is typology.

That’s what we mean when we talk about typology. These are pointers or types to that ultimate judgment that God will bring upon his people on that final day. But things have changed with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. With the coming of Christ and the New Covenant, we no longer conduct holy war against Satan’s servants by taking up a sword of steel in order to slaughter and kill and destroy them. Rather, we engage, we do indeed continue to engage in holy war under the New Covenant. But we do so by taking up the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, in order to convert the enemies of God, and in order to take every thought captive to the obedience of Jesus Christ. And so, for example, the Apostle Paul speaks in this manner of our warfare in 2 Corinthians 10, verses 3 through 6.

I know I’ve read this passage in past sermons when we’ve considered the imprecatory Psalms, but let’s review this real quickly. 2 Corinthians 10, verses 3 through 6, Paul writes For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war. See, there’s there’s holy war still even under the new covenant. Though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God. And we are taking every thought captive. to the obedience of Christ, and we are ready to punish all disobedience whenever your obedience is complete. And so, dear ones, our passage for this Lord’s Day evening helps to highlight this principle of holy war by focusing on the theme of God as the divine warrior who fights for his people.

Now, in terms of the original setting of this psalm and the historical circumstances that the Holy Spirit used to inspire David to write this psalm, it is likely that this psalm represents a processional liturgy. Perhaps this psalm was penned for the occasion of the bringing back of the Ark of the Covenant from the Philistines back to its back to the tabernacle in the days of David. The NIV Bible study note introducing this psalm says the following. It says of this psalm that it is a processional liturgy celebrating the glorious and triumphant rule of Israel’s God. Verses 1 through 18 contain many clear references to God’s triumphal march from Mount Sinai in the days of Moses to Mount Zion in the days of David. The events at Mount Sinai marked the birth of the kingdom of God among his people.

The establishing of the Ark of the Covenant, symbol of God’s throne in Jerusalem, marked the establishment of God’s redemptive kingdom in the earth with Jerusalem as its royal city. The early church, taking its cue from Ephesians 4, 8 through 13, understood this psalm to foreshadow the resurrection, ascension, and present rule of Christ and the final triumph of the Church over the hostile world. With all of this in mind, let’s dive into our passage for this evening, and I need to credit Dr. Willem van Gemmeren for the basic structuring and ideas for my main points. First of all, in the first three verses of this passage, we see here a cry for God to arise as the divine warrior. We see here a cry for God to arise as the divine warrior of his people. Verse one, let God arise.

Let his enemies be scattered and let those who hate him flee before him. Notice the parallelism there. The author of this Psalm, David, saying basically the same thing in a slightly different way. In the second line, asking for God to arise and causes enemies to be scattered. Let those who hate him flee before him. That’s to be scattered. And then verse two, as smoke is driven, so drive them away as wax melts before the fire. So let the wicked perish before God, but let the righteous be glad. Let them exult before God. Yes, let them rejoice with gladness. Now, verse one is is very significant and very interesting as well, because what we have in verse one are echoes of numbers 10 Let’s go back to the book of Numbers. Look at Numbers chapter 10, beginning at verse 35, Numbers 10, verse 35.

And this is what Moses would say every time when the people of Israel were journeying through the wilderness. They were led by the pillar of cloud by day, the pillar of fire by night. Whenever they had to break up camp, Moses would say these words, it says this verse 35. Then it came about when the ark set out that Moses said, Rise up, O Lord, and let your enemies be scattered and let those who hate you flee before you. When it came to rest, he said, Return, O Lord, to the myriad thousands of Israel. Notice again the military language there. Moses, whenever the pillar of cloud and fire lifted up, indicating to the people it’s time to pack up the tabernacle and move on to the next encampment, Moses would say these words. And these words indicate that God is indeed the divine warrior who scatters the enemies of his people before them, and that he dwells amongst the myriad thousands of Israel.

Israel being his army, his people. So here we have echoes of numbers 1035 in particular. I’ll think about our passage for this evening as it reflects that language from from the book of Numbers. When David says, let God arise, let his enemies be scattered. Why is that important? Why is that significant? Well, you think about it this way. If God’s enemies are scattered, They cannot be unified, they cannot solidify their power and their schemings against God’s people, so I think this is implied here in this request. Let God’s enemies be scattered, let them be defeated before the Lord, the divine warrior, and let them be scattered as well by implication so that they cannot consolidate their power and use that power against the people of God. And then, David continues along this theme using, as is typical of the Psalms, using some very picturesque language here.

As smoke is driven away. Again, we can all picture smoke being driven away by the wind, for example. As smoke is driven away, so drive them away. And then he gives us another image. As wax melts before the fire. We’ve all seen the candle melt down. We know what it’s like for wax to melt before the fire. So we have this picturesque language of God defeating his enemies as the divine warrior for his people. But in contrast, verse three says, but let the righteous be glad. Let them exalt before God. And one of the reasons why the righteous, those who are in right relationship with God by his grace, one of the reasons that we are glad is when we see God restraining and conquering all of his and our enemies. And so we have, in verse three, the righteous contrasted with the wicked.

Let the righteous be glad. Let them exult before God. Yes, let them rejoice with gladness. Again, it starts off with a very solemn note calling upon God to disperse and scatter his enemies, but then bringing a note of joy into this. Let the righteous be glad. Let them exult and rejoice before God. with gladness. Beloved, praise God that he is our divine warrior who fights our battles for us. And the imprecatory prayers and Psalms of Scripture help to underscore this truth. Though they are shocking sometimes in the language that they use, they remind us that our God is a just and a holy and a righteous God, a God who fights against Satan and Satan’s kingdom and Satan’s servants. He subdues them before him. He is a God who is all powerful and we can rest in him.

He fights our battles for us. Indeed, in Christ, our Savior, the victory has been won. Sin and death and the devil have already been conquered. And therefore, in Christ, we are more than conquerors through him. So let us praise God. that God is indeed our divine warrior. But as we move on to the next section of our psalm for this evening, and we focus next on verses four through six, we should praise God for his vindication of and care for his needy people. What we have here in these verses is praise for God’s vindication of and care for his needy people. Verse four, sing to God, sing praises to his name, lift up a song for him who rides through the deserts. He rides through the deserts. He was with his people journeying with them through the deserts, through the wilderness.

Whose name is the Lord and exalts before him. Why should we do that? What is the occasion or cause or incentive to praise God other than the fact that he that he deserves our praise and our worship. Well, notice verses five and six. Though Yahweh, the Lord, is indeed the divine warrior of his people, he is also described in tender language as well. Notice verses five and six. A father of the fatherless and a judge for the widows is God in his holy habitation. His holy habitation there in Old Testament terminology would be the place of his dwelling. It would be in the tabernacle and later on in the temple, where the Ark, which was a symbol of God’s throne and God’s presence and reign amongst his people, where God dwelt among his people. God who dwells among his people, who fights for them as their divine warrior, is a loving heavenly father.

And he is a father of the fatherless and a judge for the widows. And in ancient society, in the context here, The most vulnerable members of society included orphans and widows, the fatherless and widows. God is concerned for the most vulnerable and needy and lowest among society, and he takes up their cause. He is a father of the fatherless and a judge for the widows is God in his holy habitation. And then he mentions others. Verse six, God makes a home for the lonely. He leads out the prisoners into prosperity. Only the rebellious dwell in a parched land. When it comes to those who are rebellious against God and against his covenant, against his rule and reign, they dwell in a parched land. But God leads out his needy, abandoned, imprisoned people into a place of prosperity and blessing indeed.

Not only is God a divine warrior, He is also a compassionate God who cares for the most vulnerable among his people. The imprecatory prayers of scripture reveal how God actually shows care for his needy people. One of the ways that God shows his tender care for the widows and the orphans, for the lonely and the imprisoned, for those who are unjustly persecuted among his people, is by taking up their cause as their divine warrior. and conquering and restraining all of their enemies and his enemies and friends relating this to Christ. Praise God that in Christ we have been and will be vindicated. God cares for us. He fights for us. He is a father to us. And he puts us in the family of God. He puts the lonely in families. Praise God for that.

We see next in this longer and final section we’re considering tonight in verses 7 through 18, we see here a reflection upon God’s mighty actions for his people as their divine warrior. We’ve spoken about the theme of holy war, but we see holy war in action and a reflection upon how God has acted as the divine warrior in engaging in holy war in verses seven through 18. It says this, Oh, God, when you went forth before your people, when you marched through the wilderness, Selah, the earth quaked, the heavens also dropped rain at the presence of God. Sinai itself quaked at the presence of God, the God of Israel. You shed abroad a plentiful rain, Oh, God. God provides his people with rain in the wilderness. He provides for their thirst for their needs. You shed abroad a plentiful rain, O God, you confirmed your inheritance when it was parched, your creatures settled in it, you provided in your goodness for the poor, O God.

These verses recall how God led his people out of Egypt. Not only had he redeemed them from slavery and freed them from their slavery in Egypt, He led them out of Egypt. He led them through the wilderness. He led them to Mount Sinai, where he revealed his law, his word to them. And thus, and he leads them ultimately to the promised land where he settles them in their new home in the promised land. Not only does God fight for his people as their divine warrior, he also journeys with them and leads them in their pilgrimage to the promised land. And this is a picture of what the Lord continues to do for us. We have been rescued from slavery worse than the Israelite slavery to Pharaoh and the Egyptians. We have been rescued through Christ from slavery to sin.

Christ has rescued us, redeemed us, and taken us to be his own. And he is leading us through the wilderness of this present evil age. He’s leading us through this wilderness to the ultimate promised land, the new heavens and the new earth, wherein righteousness dwells. And he goes before us. He fights our battles for us. He journeys with us through our trials, through our pains, through our tribulations, and through our blessings. He guides and directs us by his word and spirit in our pilgrimage. And so Not only does God fight for his people as their divine warrior, he journeys with them and brothers and sisters, he journeys with you and with me as we make our pilgrimage to the promised land of the new Canaan, the ultimate Canaan, the new heavens and the new earth where in righteousness dwells.

And then in verses 11 through 14, it says the Lord gives the command. The women who proclaim the good tidings are a great host. Kings of armies flee, they flee. And she who remains at home will divide the spoil. When you lie down among the sheepfolds, you are like the wings of a dove covered with silver and its pinions with glistening gold. When the Almighty scattered the kings there, it was snowing in Zalman. We have a picture here of dividing the spoils from battle, and the women are depicted as as proclaiming the good news. Kings of armies, they flee, they flee. These verses recall God’s conquest of the promised land and his subjugation of the peoples of that land, and how God enabled his people to be victorious and to not only get a foothold in the land, but eventually to take the land and subdue it.

And then in verses 15 through 18, we get some very, oh, and by the way, let me just back up a minute. Now, verse 13 is a little bit challenging. translation-wise, but when it refers to the wings of a dove covered with silver and its pinions with glistening gold, this perhaps is language that describes some of the spoil. Doves covered with silver, pinions with glistening gold, these were ornaments apparently that had been taken as spoil. And when it says the Almighty scattered the kings there, again, Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered. We have here a picture of military conquest. And wherever Zalman is, it appears to have been a high mountain because there is snow on the mountain. Well, that leads to the next section, which also refers to mountains in verses 15 through 18.

A mountain of God is the mountain of Bashan. A mountain of many peaks is the mountain of Bashan. Why do you look with envy, O mountains with many peaks, at the mountain which God has desired for his abode? What’s going on here? Well, we have a bit of personification going on here, as the mountains of Bashan were apparently high and lofty mountains, especially when compared to Mount Zion, where God had chosen to make his abode in the tabernacle and later the temple. Yet God Even though the mountains of Bashan, in terms of physical grandeur, were high and lofty and lifted up, yet humbler Mount Zion was yet greater, because God chose to make Mount Zion the place of his sanctuary. And thus, the mountain of Bashan is personified as being jealous of Mount Zion. You’re a smaller mountain than me.

Why has God chosen you? Again, God often chooses the foolish things of this world to shame the wise, the weak things of this world to shame the strong. And he doesn’t need to choose the highest loftiest mountain peak for the place of his dwelling amongst his people, because he is sovereign. He is God. And in verse 17, we also see images that reflect upon God as the divine warrior who fights for his people in engaging in holy war against the enemies of his people, the enemies of his kingdom rule. We see references to chariots. Verse 17, the chariots of God are myriads, thousands upon thousands. Perhaps this is a reference to the heavenly hosts, the mighty angels that are behind the scenes, engage in spiritual warfare. The Lord is among them as at Sinai in holiness.

God is dwelling among his people like he did at Sinai. And remember the great the great theophany and revelation of God at Mount Sinai, the thunders, the thunderings, the lightnings, the mountain, the smoke of the mountain thick as the smoke of a kiln, as if the mountain itself was on fire with the glorious presence of God, and there was an earthquake, and God’s voice thundered forth from Mount Sinai. We, the readers of this psalm, are to have those images and those pictures come into our mind as we reflect upon the presence and holiness of God, the divine warrior who goes out amongst his people and sends forth his chariots. And then verse 18, a very significant verse because it is quoted by and alluded to by the Apostle Paul in Ephesians chapter 4, and Paul applies this passage to the ascension of Christ.

You have ascended on high. You have led captive your captives. Now, in the original setting, this ascension on high would be the ascension of the Ark of the Covenant, God’s throne, to Mount Zion, where his tabernacle was. But that was a type, a picture, an anticipation of our Lord Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead and ascension into heaven, and the giving of the pouring out of the gifts of the Spirit upon his church. So again, verse 18, you have ascended on high. You have led captive your captives. You have received gifts among men, even among the rebellious, also that the Lord God may dwell there. Here, Yahweh entering his sanctuary on Mount Zion ultimately points to and is fulfilled in Christ’s ascension. And again, I would I would read to you briefly as we as we wrap up our time in the word this evening from Ephesians chapter four. and verses seven through ten.

The Apostle Paul here has been exhorting the Ephesians to to walk in unity to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, and he reminds them of of the gifts of grace that God has given to him to them that they are meant to use in service to one another. Verse seven. But to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore, it says, When he ascended on high, he led captive a host of captives and he gave gifts to men. And then Paul explains. Now this expression, he ascended, what does it mean except that he also had descended into the lower parts of the earth? This is a reference to our Lord’s incarnation and ultimately his death and burial. He who descended is himself also he who ascended far above all the heavens. so that he might fill all things.

Christ rose from the dead and he ascended into heaven. And so our victorious King, the Lord Jesus Christ, the ultimate divine warrior, has conquered death and he has ascended on high. He has led captivity captive and he has received gifts that he might give the gift of his Holy Spirit to his people. And so, friends, What is the conclusion to all of this? Well, the imprecatory prayers and Psalms of Scripture again are written in a context of holy war. They remind us of that ultimate spiritual warfare between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan. And they do also warn us that those who persist unrepentant in opposing God in his kingdom will indeed experience, will taste the judgment that these prayers call down upon those who persist in their impenitence. But all of this also points to Christ.

Christ is the Prince of Peace who is also the Divine Warrior. He has conquered in the Holy War, the ultimate Holy War. The victory has been won. This present age is simply the outworking of the implications of that victory. And that victory will be consummated when our Lord Jesus Christ returns from his throne of glory, comes back to this earth at his second advent, and ushers in the new heavens and the new earth. Let us praise God that Christ has gone before us and that he is coming back for us. And let us engage in spiritual holy warfare by the word of God, by praying for our enemies, loving and praying for our enemies, and praying for the mission of Christ’s church to go forth. Amen. Let us pray. Gracious Lord and Father in heaven, we thank you and praise you, O God, for your word, and we thank you for our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus, we thank you that you are our victor, that we are more than conquerors through you, for you have loved us and laid down your life for us, and you’ve been raised for us You reign at the right hand of the Father where you intercede for us and you will come for us again. Lord, we ask that you would give us grace to live out the implications of your lordship in our lives. And we pray that we might indeed take up the full armor of God and do battle against the world, the flesh and the devil, not with carnal weapons, but with the spiritual weapons. bringing every thought captive to the obedience of Jesus Christ for it is in his name that we pray and all of God’s people said. Amen.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

January 29, 2023
God’s Kingdom and the Imprecatory Psalms, Part 4: Cast your Burden upon the LORD

About this sermon

Psalm 55 turns from lament to confidence: cast your burden upon the Lord, and he will sustain you. David calls on God evening, morning, and noon, like Daniel after him, and he trusts God to bring the treacherous and unrepentant down to the pit. Vengeance belongs to the Lord, and the psalm reminds God’s people that they fight a spiritual war that Christ has already won. The church casts its burdens on God and prays that his enemies will become his friends in Christ.

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Sermon transcript

remain standing for the reading of God’s Word. This evening we continue our consideration of the imprecatory Psalms, and in particular we continue our study of Psalm 55. On the last Lord’s Day we consider the first 15 verses. This evening we’ll consider verses 16-23, the second part of this psalm, but I want to read this psalm in its entirety to give the fuller context. So, dear friends, let us hear God’s holy word. This is entitled, for the choir director on stringed instruments, A Mascule of David. Give ear to my prayer, O God, and do not hide yourself from my supplication. Give heed to me and answer me. I am restless in my complaint and am surely distracted. because of the voice of the enemy, because of the pressure of the wicked. For they bring down trouble upon me, and in anger they bear a grudge against me.

My heart is in anguish within me, and the terrors of death have fallen upon me. Fear and trembling come upon me, and horror has overwhelmed me. I said, oh, that I had wings like a dove. I would fly away and be at rest. Behold, I would wander far away. I would lodge in the wilderness, Selah. I would hasten to my place of refuge from the stormy wind and tempest. Confused, O Lord, divide their tongues, for I have seen violence and strife in the city. Day and night they go around her upon her walls, and iniquity and mischief are in her midst. Destruction is in her midst. Oppression and deceit do not depart from her streets. For it is not an enemy who reproaches me, then I could bear it. Nor is it one who hates me who has exalted himself against me.

Then I could hide myself from him. But it is you, a man my equal, my companion, and my familiar friend. We who had sweet fellowship together walked in the house of God in the throng. Let death come deceitfully upon them. Let them go down alive to Sheol, for evil is in their dwelling in their midst. As for me, I shall call upon God. and the Lord will save me. Evening and morning and at noon I will complain and murmur, and He will hear my voice. He will redeem my soul in peace from the battle which is against me, for they are many who strive with me. God will hear and answer them, even the one who sits enthroned from of old, Selah, with whom there is no change and who do not fear God. He has put forth his hands against those who were at peace with him.

He has violated his covenant. His speech was smoother than butter, but his heart was war. His words were softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords. Cast your burden upon the Lord and he will sustain you. He will never allow the righteous to be shaken, but you, O God, will bring them down to the pit of destruction. Men of bloodshed and deceit will not live out half their days, but I will trust in you. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let us pray. Dear Lord and Father in heaven, how thankful we are for the Holy Scriptures. They are indeed a lamp unto our feet, a light into our path. And we thank you, O God, especially for the book of Psalms. We thank you, O God, for these wonderful, inspired prayers of your word, that we can take these prayers upon our lips, O God, and express our hearts to you.

We ask, O Lord, as we consider this portion of the book of Psalms in Psalm 55, that your spirit would open our minds and our hearts, that we might behold wondrous things from your word, that we might take instruction, that we would take these truths to heart and ponder them and mull over them, that they might become part of our piety, our prayer unto you. We ask all of these things in Christ’s name, and we ask, O Lord, that in this psalm you would show us Jesus. In his name we pray, and all of God’s people said, Amen. You may be seated. I’m sorry that I did not get you a sermon outline for this evening’s sermon, but there are a number of keywords that you can be listening for if you find that helpful.

Let me just name a couple. The words confidence, treachery, burden, imprecation, deliverance, and prayer. Well, dear ones, on this Lord’s Day evening, as I mentioned, we continue our consideration of Psalm 55 as we’ve been exploring a number of the so-called imprecatory psalms. Now, remember that the term imprecation means curse, and an imprecatory prayer, or a psalm that is described as an imprecatory psalm, is a psalm that contains prayers for God to bring his righteous judgment and wrath upon those who are impenitent and settled in their opposition to God and God’s kingdom as well as God’s King, King David. As I pointed out last week, Psalm 55 has the characteristics of what Bible scholars call an individual lament. So it is an individual lament psalm. As one scholarly note that introduces this psalm puts it, and I quote, like many laments, this psalm bemoans the attack of enemies.

Most unusual is the sorrow over betrayal by a friend. The psalm descends to the pits of despair, but turns at the end toward the Lord with hope. And then the commentator says this, and I think this is very important. The psalm anticipates the suffering of Christ, who is betrayed by Judas, a disciple of his inner circle. Friends, in this psalm, David’s words of distress and suffering at the hands of violent, wicked men, exemplify and point forward to the redemptive sufferings of Christ our Lord, our Lord who is himself the suffering servant-king, our Lord who is great David’s greater son, the anti-type of whom King David was but a type.” Now, what was the historical background? to this psalm. What was the historical incident that led David, under the Spirit’s guidance and inspiration, to pen this beautiful and powerful psalm?

Well, the honest answer to that question is that we simply don’t know with any degree of certainty. We don’t know who in particular David had in mind when he describes in this psalm the traitorous, quote, friend and confidant who had betrayed him. Although a number of individuals might vie for that possibility, some suggest that David is here describing his traitorous son Absalom, who led a conspiracy to kill his father and seize his father’s throne. Others suggest that this would better describe David’s trusted counselor Ahithophel, Remember, Ahithophel had treacherously abandoned his loyalty to David and had joined in on Absalom’s insurrection. And both of those men would be possible men who would fit well the description of David’s treacherous friend as described in this psalm. But in any case, as I pointed out on the last Lord’s Day, all of this supports the view and reminds us of the fact that the Psalms are not ultimately the prayers of King David, nor the prayers of Asaph, nor the prayers of the sons of Korah, nor of any of the other psalmists whom the Holy Spirit employed to pen these inspired poems.

The Psalms, these inspired prayers and songs and poems that we find in the book of Psalms, these Psalms are ultimately the prayers of our Lord Jesus Christ. whose spirit moved David, David being a type of Christ, and other psalmists to pen their compositions by divine inspiration. And I would suggest to you, brothers and sisters, that if you approach the Psalms as the prayers of Christ, as you take those prayers upon your lips, as we pray the Psalms, as we sing the Psalms, we are praying and singing the prayers of King Jesus, great David’s greater son. Now, as an aside, some might say, well, wait a minute, Pastor, that doesn’t make sense because some of the Psalms contain confessions of sin. How could that represent the prayers of Jesus? Jesus had no sin, which is true.

He was the sinless one, the sinless son of God. But remember, my friends, that though Jesus is the sinless, thoughtless lamb of God, he had no sin. He never had sin. He never He never became a sinner, yet we are told in Scripture that Jesus identified, as our Savior, He identified with our sin. He took our sin upon Himself. As Paul writes, He who knew no sin became sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. Not that Jesus personally Himself became a sinner, but He took our sin upon Himself. And so, as the Spirit of Christ prays, these confessions of sin, for example, in the Scriptures, that represents Christ praying in union with his people, having taken their sins upon himself, having served as our sin-bearer, our substitute. I just wanted to kind of, I know that’s a little bit of off-roading there, but let’s bring it back to the imprecatory Psalms.

If these Psalms that pray for God to bring his destruction, his righteous judgment upon his settled enemies, these imprecations that are so troublesome to so many Christians. If we view these imprecatory psalms as the war psalms of Jesus the Prince of Peace, again to borrow from the title of a book by that name written by Reverend James Adams, if that is the case, then again, as we continue our consideration of these imprecations, we see them as representing the cries of our King Jesus. They are his cries to the Father as he engages in holy spiritual warfare against Satan and Satan’s pseudo-kingdom. So, with all of this kind of background information in mind, let’s again orient ourselves toward our passage for this evening. On the last Lord’s Day, we considered, as I mentioned, the first 15 verses of this psalm.

Psalm 55 begins with David in a very dark place. David writes this poem from a place of both deep distress and existential danger. We saw that in the opening section of the psalm in verses one through three, We consider David’s desperate prayer for God’s help as he cries out, Give ear to my prayer, O God, and do not hide yourself from my supplication. Give heed to me and answer me. I’m restless in my complaint. I’m surely distracted. We can feel the pathos of David as he cries out in anguish for deliverance from the Lord. In verses four through eight, we consider David’s description of the anguish that he had experienced as he goes into great detail about how the terrors of death, look at verse four, my heart is in anguish within me. The terrors of death have fallen upon me.

Fear and trembling come upon me. Horror has overwhelmed me. And he just wants to escape. He wants to, he longs to become a dove and just be able to fly away and escape from his circumstances. And in verses from verses nine through 15, we consider David’s plea for God to manifest his justice against the enemies of God’s king and God’s kingdom. And this is where the imprecations, the prayers for judgment come in. As he says, not only prays in verse nine for God to confuse his enemies and divide their tongues, hearkening back to the Tower of Babel, for example, but also praying for the destruction of his enemies. And especially as you look at verse verse 15, as he describes the betrayal of his so-called friend who betrayed him. He says, let death come deceitfully upon them.

Let them go down alive to shale, like Dathan and Abiram, being swallowed up by the earth. Let them go down alive to shale, for evil is in their dwelling, in their midst. But after crying out to God in the first part of this psalm, in a lament of great emotion over being betrayed by a trusted friend and confidant. In this second part of Psalm 55, there’s a change. We see David’s faith rekindled. We see his hope revived. We see him beginning to emerge from the pit into a place of hope as he cast his burden upon the Lord and as he looks to his God for deliverance and vindication. As I hope to underscore, in this sermon this evening, that’s really what the so-called imprecatory Psalms are pointing us to. We are not to take vengeance upon ourselves.

We’re not to engage in personal revenge against personal enemies. Indeed, we are to pray for and love even our enemies. But when it comes to God’s settled enemies who seek to destroy his church and which seek to tear us down and and weigh us down with burdens. David reminds us here, we are to cast our burdens upon the Lord, and we can have hope because the Lord will hear us. And so let’s dive in. Let’s consider, first of all, from verses 16 through 19. We have here David expressing prayerful confidence that God will hear and act to deliver his servant. Prayerful confidence that God will hear and act to deliver his servant. Verse 16, David says, As for me, I shall call upon God. He has been calling upon God. He’s been calling upon God from this pit of despair, this pit of anguish.

But then he goes on to say, And the Lord will save me. Notice the word Lord there, all capital letters. What does that indicate? That’s an indication from the English translators that they are translating the Hebrew word for the covenant name of God, Yahweh. Even though David is so distressed by the enemies that surround him and seek to tear him down, and the violent men who threaten him and put him in danger, yet He still looks to his God as Yahweh, the faithful covenant God, the God who had promised David the kingdom, a secure and stable kingdom. Indeed, the God who had promised that David’s dynasty would be an everlasting dynasty because great David’s greater son would be the Messiah and God shall not go back on his promise. So the Lord Yahweh will indeed deliver him, save him.

And then he goes on to say, again, from the pit of dark despair, the light of hope begins to dawn as David resorts to prayer and trust in Yahweh for salvation from his enemies. And then in verse 17, he says, evening and morning and at noon, I will complain and murmur. These references to complaining and murmuring are, he will do so in prayer. He will bring his complaints. He will bring his burdens. to the Lord, calling upon the Lord. And what is his view? I’ll do it, but it’s not going to do any good. My prayers are going to bounce off the ceiling, right? No, he says he will hear my voice. Note. Note the confidence that David that emerges in David’s prayer here. Verse 16, the Lord will save me. Verse 17, he will hear my voice.

God hasn’t abandoned me, God continues to heed my voice. Now, this phraseology of evening and morning and at noon, crying out, complaining to God, obviously in prayer and lament, some see here a reference to the practice of three set prayer times per day. Prayer in the morning, prayer at noon, prayer in the evening. And we see that pattern sometimes in Scripture, for example, We see that pattern practiced by the prophet Daniel. If you look at Daniel chapter 6 verse 10, in fact, this is one of the things that got Daniel in trouble with his personal enemies. Daniel chapter 6 verse 10, what does it say there? It says, Now when Daniel knew that the document was signed, the document that said you’re not allowed to worship any god for a month but the king, when Daniel knew that the document was signed, he entered his house, Now in his roof chamber, he had windows open toward Jerusalem.

He prayed towards the holy city, toward the place of the temple where God had dwelt. And what does he do? Does he pray secretly? Does he make sure no one sees him? Nope. King says, you’re not allowed to pray to anyone but me. Daniel says, nope. I’m going to continue to pray to the true and living God. He opens up the windows towards Jerusalem. And what does it say? He continued kneeling on his knees three times a day, praying and giving thanks before his God as he had been doing previously. Now, back to our psalm, some suggest that, well, that’s what the psalmist here, that’s what David is referring to, his practice of praying formally three times a day. And perhaps David did that, but I tend to think that Dr. Willem van Gemmeren’s view makes more sense of the terminology of evening and morning and noon when he says these three temporal references, however, need not be limited to three specific prayers.

Rather, they express totality. In other words, Lord, I will pray throughout the day, not just in the morning, not just in the evening, not just at noon, but throughout the day. David is persistent in prayer, though David is in anguish, though David has experienced betrayal, he does not give up. He perseveres in prayer, just like our Lord Jesus Christ, great David’s greater son, was a model of persevering prayer. Jesus always made time, our Lord Jesus always made time to commune with God the Father in prayer. And then verse 18, David goes on to say, again expressing confidence in the Lord, he will redeem my soul in peace from the battle which is against me. For there are many who strive with me.” Obviously, he had that one friend who had betrayed him in mind, but other enemies as well he has in mind.

And again, he expresses confidence that God will redeem him, rescue him from all of his foes. And then verse 19, God will hear and answer them, even the one who sits enthroned from of old. Isn’t that an interesting description of our God? He is the one who sits enthroned. Who sits on the throne? The king. Royalty. David knows that God is sovereign. That God rules. That he is in control. And that is the foundation of his confidence. God is a faithful covenant-making, covenant-keeping God. And God sits, this covenant-keeping God, who had made promises to David that covenant-keeping God is enthroned from of old. He is the eternal King. And then it goes on to say, with whom there is no change, and who do not fear God. Now, here’s where it gets a little bit confusing in the Hebrew.

The line, with whom there is no change, does that refer to God? Certainly the Bible teaches that our God does not change. He is not a fickle God. change his mood. He is the same yesterday and today and forever. But others suggest that this reference to the one who does not change is referring to sinners who refuse to change, who refuse to repent, and who do not fear God. So, technically speaking, with whom there is no change could refer to the Lord, the one who sits enthroned from of old, or it could refer to David’s enemies, who refuse to repent and change their ways. The NASV that I’m using as the English translation that I’m preaching from, it’s a literal translation. It kind of leaves it a little bit ambiguous. But other English translations seem to be a little more definite.

For example, in the ESV, if you’re following along in the ESV, it says, because they do not change and do not fear God. Revised Standard Version reads, because they keep no law and do not fear God. And the NIV translates it, men who never change their ways and have no fear of God. I tend to think that David is probably referring here because he begins to focus not on God, but on those who do not fear God upon the wicked. I think this line, with whom there is no change, as probably referring to David’s enemies. And certainly, friends, it is a dangerous thing to refuse repentance, to refuse to change your ways and turn from them to the Lord God and to lack in fear of God. The bottom line, beloved, as we would put it in our New Testament lingo from the New Testament scriptures, David is basically expressing the view here that greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world.

He’s basically saying, like Paul would say, if God is for us, who can be against us? David knew that in his sovereign mercy, God was for him, for David, and for those whom David, as the theocratic king, represented. And if God is for him, who can be against him? Not even these violent enemies, not even Again, I know that we are familiar with this passage, but this psalm reminds me of what the Apostle Paul writes in Romans 8, verses 31 to 34. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? We have greater enemies in the flesh than a king like King David had. We have the world, the flesh, and the devil. But Jesus Christ has conquered them all. God is for us who can be against us.

Verse 30-32. He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him over for us all. How will he not also with him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies. Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is he who died. Yes, rather, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God. who also intercede for us. Brothers and sisters in Christ, may that wonderful truth give you the kind of confidence that David expresses here in this portion of Psalm 55. May you and I say with David, as for me, I shall call upon God and the Lord will save me. The Lord will hear my voice. But as we move on in this section of the Psalm, Notice next the treachery of David’s, quote, friend, as it is described here in verses 20 and 21.

What we have here in verses 20 and 21 is David describing the treachery of his so-called friend, the one who had betrayed him. It says in verse 20, and here David again is speaking of this betrayer, he put forth his hand against those who were at peace with him. He violated his covenant. David’s traitorous friend was a covenant breaker. What is a covenant? We could spend a lot of sermons preaching on that subject, but to whittle it down to simple terms, a covenant is a solemn agreement with sanctions that are imposed for the breaking of the covenant and blessings for keeping that covenant. David’s friend was one who had made covenants covenant of friendship with him. He trusted this individual, but this individual with vileness and hardness of heart turned away from his loyalty to David, broke the covenant.

And then verse 21, it says, His speech was smoother than butter, but his heart was war. He was so smooth talking on the outside. Ever met anyone like that? Someone who just overwhelms you with their friendly personality and so smooth talking. But then when you get to know them, their words become like daggers. His heart was war. In other words, he was deceptive. He was intentionally deceptive and evil in his behavior towards David. Because even though his outward speech sounded wonderful, His heart was war. His words were softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords. To quote from one commentator, his heart was actuated by malice for all the suavity of his speech. His former words, interpreted now by his subsequent action, are like sword thrusts in the heart. Again, all of this anticipates the malicious deception of Christ’s betrayer, Judas Iscariot.

Judas was himself deceptive and intentional in his evil scheming against our Savior. Judas was not simply a misguided unbeliever who got it wrong theologically. Judas was an intentional, willful deceiver and schemer. And Judas betrayed his master, not with a slap or with a punch or with a sword thrust. How did Judas betray his master? Do you remember? He betrayed his master. He said, friend, betrayed him with a kiss. And how that must have crushed our Lord’s spirit. Jesus knew it was going to happen. Jesus, in his divine nature, knew. what Judas was going to do. But still, Judas was among our Lord’s trusted confidants. Judas was among the inner circle of his disciples. And so what Judas did was inexcusable. Again, this passage reminds us that the imprecatory prayers of the Psalms are directed against the settled enemies of God and God’s kingdom.

They’re not directed against personal enemies that you might have a personal vendetta against, or people that you might not happen to like very much. It’s against the enemies of God and God’s kingdom. They are not prayers calling for personal vengeance against merely personal enemies. They are kingdom-focused prayers. We see that as David prays against his so-called friend who betrayed him who broke covenant with him and proved himself to be a settled, impenitent enemy of God and God’s people. And so, what is the conclusion of this matter? What is the conclusion of Psalm 55? The conclusion is, brothers and sisters, cast your burden upon the Lord. Cast your burden upon the Lord. Verse 22, cast your burden upon the Lord, upon Yahweh. the faithful covenant God and Savior who sent his son Jesus to redeem you and me from our sins, beloved.

Cast your burden upon the Lord and what’s the promise? He will sustain you. He will never allow the righteous to be shaken. It doesn’t mean God promises to make life easy for us if we are rightly related to him. Indeed, those who are saved, those who are justified those who are among the righteous in this present age often face many obstacles, many persecutions, many sufferings, many troubles and trials. But he will never allow us to be shaken in the ultimate sense. He keeps us in his sovereign care. He guards us. He shepherds us. Verse 22 But you, O God, will bring them down to the pit of destruction. Men of bloodshed and deceit, like Judas Iscariot, like this enemy of David that he mentions, this betrayer of David, will not live out half their days.

But how does he end this psalm? Not on the note of bitterness towards his former friend who had betrayed him, but on a note of trust and confidence in the God who had redeemed him. the God who had raised him up to be a king, the God who continued to abide with him even through all of his trials as the theocratic king of Israel. Here we see confidence that God will sustain and preserve the righteous from ultimate destruction, but will also bring the unrepentant wicked down to the grave, to the pit of destruction. Again, ultimately, the imprecatory Psalms direct us to cast our burdens upon the Lord. It’s not for you or for me to bring judgment or vengeance upon the unrepentant wicked. Vengeance belongs to the Lord. The imprecatory Psalms remind us of that.

They also remind us that the scriptures also remind us that we are engaged in a spiritual warfare, the kingdom of God against the kingdom of Satan. Oftentimes on the outside, it looks like Satan’s kingdom is doing pretty well and the kingdom of God is not fair and too well. But we walk by faith, not by sight, because in Christ we are already victorious. And he has promised never to leave us nor forsake us. Whatever your circumstances, brothers and sisters in Christ, whatever our circumstances together as a church, may we cast our burdens upon the Lord, trusting in his justice in due time. and also praying for his mercy upon those who now oppose his kingdom. May we pray that those who are now his kingdom enemies might be converted and become his friends in Christ.

Amen. Let us pray. Our Lord and Father in heaven, we thank you, O God, for the richness of Holy Scripture, for these rich prayers in the book of Psalms, We pray, Heavenly Father, that you would give us grace to take these truths to heart and grant us grace, Lord, as we face the burdens of walking with you in this present evil world. May we cast our burdens upon you, and we thank you, Lord Jesus, that you take our burdens off of us, that you’ve borne our burdens on the cross so that we might find that your yoke is easy, your burden is light. May we find our rest in you. In your name we pray and all of God’s people said, Amen.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

January 22, 2023