Musician Of Guilt (Psalm 51)

There are more than 250,000 murder cold cases in the United States. That number grows by about 6,000 every year.

In ancient Israel, a notable killing had gone unpunished. It wasn’t exactly a cold case – rumors had spread here and there. After all, the victim was one of the greatest warriors in the nation: Uriah the Hittite. He was famous and celebrated – a hero of the kingdom.

There had been no arrests, no civil suit, seemingly no investigation. But then a scene worthy of the old Columbo series unfolded. The king himself was publicly accused. At this point two unexpected things happened. First, the king did not deny the charges. He confessed to adultery and murder.

In May, a New Mexico man walked out of a store, borrowed a phone, and dialed 911 to confess to killing his landlord in 2008. “He told [police] he was tired of being overwhelmed by guilt.”

It’s surprising to have someone confess to murder – especially a king. But then a second surprising thing happened: The killer was not led off to be executed under the Law of Moses. Instead, he went to worship. Some time later, he wrote the song we just listened to. For thousands of years it has endured as one of his most famous, alongside Psalm 23 and 139.

It remains important not only because of its beauty and history – not only because it speaks to us of the overwhelming grace of God – but because we know that this is a prayer that God accepts. This gives a roadmap for how we untangle ourselves from the ruin of sin and experience the tenderness, the washing, the strengthening of God’s forgiveness.

We begin above verse 1 in what is called the superscript.

Psalm 51:Superscript – For the choir director. A psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him after he had gone to Bathsheba.

When David’s men went to war, he stayed behind. One day he saw Bathsheba bathing, had her brought to the palace, and slept with her. Notice, our text says, “After he – David – has gone to her.” It was his doing. He reached out to take what wasn’t his and began this disastrous series of events. Bathsheba got pregnant and David’s efforts to cover up what he did ultimately led him to have her husband Uriah (who was David’s close friend by the way), killed.

David is guilty of not one but two capital offenses. There was no sacrifice that could cover him, no fine he could pay. There was no jail for him to do his time. Death was what he deserved. He had no hope other than God’s grace, and he knew it.

In verse 1, he begins to sing and pray.

Psalm 51:1-2 – ¹ Be gracious to me, God, according to your faithful love; according to your abundant compassion, blot out my rebellion. ² Completely wash away my guilt and cleanse me from my sin.

No bartering, no bravado. David throws himself on the mercy of the court of heaven and asks for the legal expunging of the record of what he had done.  This is a big ask. But David he knew the character of God. He believed God was a God of grace, of compassion, of mercy, and forgiveness toward the guilty. He knew about God’s unfailing love – that God wants to cleanse and forgive.

Psalm 51:3 – ³ For I am conscious of my rebellion, and my sin is always before me.

Even though for a year it seemed like David got away with his sin, internally he was crumbling. He kept thinking about what he did over and over again.

What really woke him up, though, was when the prophet Nathan came – sent by God – to confront him. He told David directly, “You have sinned. You have treated the Lord with contempt.” That scene, so harsh and so unpleasant in the moment, was the best thing that could’ve happened to David. He needed to be confronted with his sin.

If you’re not a Christian here today or if you’re a Christian who is living in sin, or hiding some wicked thing you’ve done, the Holy Spirit wants to expose it. That sin is going to ruin your life and you need to turn from it and be embraced by the grace of God. We need to see sin the way David did, as a terrible, defiling thing, because it is! And the more we ignore it, the more it will destroy.

Psalm 51:4 – ⁴ Against you—you alone—I have sinned and done this evil in your sight. So you are right when you pass sentence; you are blameless when you judge.

This is a shocking thing to hear. “Against you alone?” How about Uriah and Bathsheba? How about their friends and extended family? How about the nation at large?

Now, this phrase can be translated “against you above all I have sinned” But remember: a king could do what he wanted. What did Nixon say? “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

When Israel demanded a king so they could be like the rest of the nations, Samuel told them, “You don’t want a king. He can take your sons and your daughters and your horses and your cattle. He can take your fields and vineyards, and your grain.” Kings in this era ruled with absolute authority.

But even an atheist would look at what David had done – killing a man and taking his wife – and say, “That’s not right.” Why? Because God does exist and He has a standard of morality. If there is no God, then what David did is fine because it’s exactly what all the other animals in nature do.

But there is a God and He has a standard for right and wrong. And it’s His standard, not ours. Our standards of good and evil, right and wrong, seem to fluctuate over time. They change with culture. But God’s standard does not. What is normal in the world’s sight may be evil in God’s sight.

Someone in Israel might hear about what David did and say, “Well, he is the king after all, and Uriah was just a Gentile.” But David recognized that, despite what anyone else thought or said, he had violated God’s morality. And he recognized that God the Judge was watching and evaluating.

So why then isn’t the Judge judging? It’s because while God is a Judge, He is also a Savior. He is full of mercy and His desire is that people be rescued from the penalty of their sin.

Psalm 51:5 – ⁵ Indeed, I was guilty when I was born; I was sinful when my mother conceived me.

David’s problem wasn’t just that he had committed murder, the problem was that he was a sinner through and through. In his Psalms, David loves to look into the human heart and get down to the core issues. And, at our core, we have a sin problem.

C.S. Lewis wrote, “A man who admits no guilt can accept no forgiveness.” David wants forgiveness not just for one mistake, but for everything. He knows that what he did with Bathsheba and Uriah was not some one-off, freak accident. It flowed from his nature. Now, not everyone will become a murderer, but all of us are killers at heart. Jesus explained that in Matthew 5.

From our human hearts flow evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual immoralities, thefts, false testimonies, slander. David understood this and came to the conclusion that what he needed was a new heart, a new nature.

Psalm 51:6 – ⁶ Surely you desire integrity in the inner self, and you teach me wisdom deep within.

We learn here that not only is God a Judge, not only is He a Savior, He is also a Teacher. He is chair of the Wisdom Department, where we are instructed in truth and Godliness and heaven’s way so that we can know how to abandon sin and walk in fullness of life.

I appreciate the focus on depth in this verse. A lot of our time is spent on surface-level problems, but we have deeper things going on that need fixing but they are things only God can fix.

Recently our kitchen sink was draining really slow. We did all the things: Hot water, then Drano, then Liquid Plumber. The the auger came out. I got that thing going and you feel it going around the turns in your pipes. I didn’t hit any big clogs, so I kept going deeper. Before I knew it, all 25 feet of the snake was in the pipe. I thought, “How deep is this clog?” I snaked a couple more times and did more Liquid Plumber and now I’m just waiting for that deep problem to present itself again.

God wants to solve the deep problems of our hearts and lives. His grace is enough for it. His wisdom is effective for it.

Psalm 51:7 – ⁷ Purify me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.

David for legal cleansing and ceremonial cleansing. David wanted to be able to go into God’s presence to worship. For that to happen, he would need the purification of hyssop.

Hyssop was used to paint the doorposts during the first Passover. It was also used for the cleansing of lepers and to bring God’s people into covenant. David is saying, “I’m a leper who has broken covenant, I need a new Passover.”

While Jesus hung dying on the cross, some standing below dipped a branch of hyssop into sour wine and offered it to Him, mingling it with the blood pouring from His wounds.

We sinners need the cleansing supplied by the blood of an innocent substitute Who can wash us whiter than snow. Is there anything whiter than snow? There’s one thing: a human heart washed in the blood of Jesus Christ. It is made perfectly pure, free from any tarnish or defilement.

Psalm 51:8 – ⁸ Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.

It had been 9 months or a year since David’s scandalous behavior. He had involved multiple people bringing Bathsheba and in the plot to kill Uriah. Those palace walls were talking. Can you imagine the whispers in the corridors between the servants? No longer were the halls filled with praise and music – David wasn’t writing any new songs. Instead, there was shame and rumors.

David himself was aching within. Many scholars believe Psalm 32 is a companion to this one. In it, David describes the pain he was in, the weakness he felt, and how he was groaning all day long.

It’s interesting: David had “flexed” his kingly muscles – he saw a woman he wanted and took her. When his plan to cover up his adultery failed, he flexed again and had the husband killed. From the human perspective, it was a show of strength. “I can do whatever I want and no one can stop me.”

In actuality, this was the weakest David had ever been. With his relationship with God blockaded by sin, all his vitality drained away. He was crushed by his guilt.

Psalm 51:9-10 – ⁹ Turn your face away from my sins and blot out all my guilt. ¹⁰ God, create a clean heart for me and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Not just a repair, not just a remodel. David wants a new heart. One crafted with heavenly materials. His prayer is that God would bring order into the chaos of David’s heart, meaning his mind, his will, even his intellect.

When God saves us He does not simply reroute us from hell to heaven. He begins a total transformation of who we are. His intention is to give us a new mind, a new heart, new desires, new perspectives, new attitudes, new words, new priorities, new reactions, all in line with His character.

Psalm 51:11 – ¹¹ Do not banish me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.

Christians feel weird about this verse. Is David suggesting that we can lose the Holy Spirit? The answer is no. Jesus was very clear on this point in John 6:37, where He said, “the one who comes to me I will never cast out.” Remember, we are members of a new covenant with the Lord.

David lived in a time where the Spirit’s anointing did seem to come and go, particularly when a believer fell into sin. David saw firsthand how this happened to King Saul before him.

While the Spirit will not be taken from Christians, we are told that we can grieve Him. We can stifle Him. And Paul indicated that we can become disqualified from God’s service when we fail to walk in self-control. So, like David, we should be concerned about our relationship with the Holy Spirit.

Psalm 51:12 – ¹² Restore the joy of your salvation to me, and sustain me by giving me a willing spirit.

The term “willing” can also mean a “free” spirit. This is one of the great surprises of God’s plan. His desire is to free you, to give you total liberty, ultimately bringing you to heaven with a perfectly freed will but one that has no desire to sin. A will like Jesus’ own. So David is, in a sense, praying “on earth as it is in heaven. Make my heart now the way you want to make it in the end. Reprogram my desires to be totally in line with what You desire.”

David also asks that the joy he once felt. Do we have joy? It doesn’t mean our circumstances always make us happy. But joy is a supernatural power that can flow in any situation and it’s exceedingly important. Nehemiah 8 says that the joy of the Lord is our strength. Psalm 16 says that in God’s presence is abundant joy. A lack of joy is an indication that something is laying siege to our relationship with the Lord.

Psalm 51:13 – ¹³ Then I will teach the rebellious your ways, and sinners will return to you.

God’s heart is always others oriented. So, if we have a heart that is after God’s heart, like David did, we will also be others oriented. David’s desire was to rescue others out of their guilt and shame.

Psalm 51:14 – ¹⁴ Save me from the guilt of bloodshed, God—God of my salvation—and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.

God is righteous. He would never do the kinds of things we do – stealing and lying and killing and cheating and all the rest. Meanwhile, we are totally unrighteous. But the Lord is willing to take away our guilt and wrap us up in His perfect righteousness no matter what we’ve done.

Psalm 51:15 – ¹⁵ Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.

There was a 36 year gap between William Shatner’s debut album The Transformed Man and his follow up Has Been. I’m not sure anyone was too upset about having to wait. But, then again, Shatner is no one’s favorite musical artist.

David, the sweet Psalmist of Israel, one of the most important songwriters of all time, wasn’t writing songs. He didn’t have writer’s block, he had sinner’s block. But now, as part of this saving work, the Lord would give him songs again. And we are all the richer for it.

Psalm 51:16 – ¹⁶ You do not want a sacrifice, or I would give it; you are not pleased with a burnt offering.

This is another eyebrow-raising verse. Isn’t there like a bunch of books about the importance of animal sacrifice in the Old Testament? Yes, but remember, David is speaking on a deeper level. He has a wider view and he knows that God doesn’t just want a religious transaction. This isn’t just, “I broke a window, so here’s some money and we’ll call it good.” There was no sacrifice for murder.

So what did God want?

Psalm 51:17 – ¹⁷ The sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit. You will not despise a broken and humbled heart, God.

God wants you on the altar. He’s pleased when we surrender to Him in faith and obedience.

It’s interesting – the words for broken and humbled speak of smashing and crushing. David mentioned crushing before, up in verse 8. It seems we get to choose between crushed hearts or crushed bones. One dictionary says this about the humbled heart: “to be in a crushed state, or possibly actively to press on someone, implying destruction.” So we have the bones crushed under the destructive disease of sin or a heart pressed into the Lord, its stoniness destroyed and fused with the heart of God, in oneness with Him.

God will not despise a heart like that. To drive home that truth, you can read the incredible account of Ahab in 1 Kings 21. Ahab was the worst king of Israel. There was no one who devoted himself more to evil. But when the Lord brought a message of judgment, Ahab humbled himself. And the Lord said to Elijah: “Have you seen how Ahab has humbled himself before Me? I will not bring the disaster during his lifetime, because he has humbled himself before Me.” That’s how much God will not despise a humbled heart.

Psalm 51:18 – ¹⁸ In your good pleasure, cause Zion to prosper; build the walls of Jerusalem.

When David was walking with God he always thought bigger than himself. He thought of the rest of God’s people, the ongoing work of God, the coming generations.

When he was captive to sin, David didn’t go out with his soldiers to fight. He didn’t care about Uriah or anyone else, only his own impulses and pleasures. But now we see how the fruit of repentance makes a person more like God.

How would Zion prosper?

Psalm 51:19 – ¹⁹ Then you will delight in righteous sacrifices, whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar.

They would proser in worship. David specifically highlights bulls, which draws our attention to the Feast Of Shelters, during which dozens of bulls were offered day-by-day. Shelters, which revealed how God’s desire is to tabernacle, to dwell with His people and that our Messiah is coming to tabernacle with us in His forever Kingdom.

God’s people prosper in His presence and with His presence in them, when they acknowledge their sin, turn from it, and allow the Lord tenderly transform them with His righteousness and grace. We are strongest when our hearts are crushed into His and our spirits made new, when we’re washed by His Word and walking in the newness of that life headed toward our final glory, totally new, totally free, totally surrendered and in harmony with God our Savior.

The Guilty Party (Psalm 32)

When someone is declared bankrupt many (but not all) of their debts are wiped out. But first their assets are liquidated and sent to creditors. Their accounts are left empty and their record is left with a mark that makes future business difficult or impossible. The Biblical bankruptcy process is much less punishing for the debtor. Paul explains in Colossians 2 that, for those who are saved:

Colossians 2:14 – [God has] erased the certificate of debt, with its obligations, that was against us and opposed to us, and has taken it away by nailing it to the cross.

All the wrong things you’ve done in word, thought, or action count toward your spiritual debt. If you had 1,000 lifetimes of good works you wouldn’t come close to paying it off. But God offers you a full pardon and is willing to go into His own pocket to pay your debt. If you let Him, He will not leave you empty-handed. He will immediately fill your eternal accounts with more than you could ask or imagine and will make you His Friend for all eternity.

In Psalm 32, David tells us how he personally discovered God’s forgiveness – how he went through this spiritual bankruptcy process. He went in being crushed by the weight of his guilt. But then he received God’s forgiveness and came out stronger, more secure, and more joyful than ever before.

Psalm 32:Superscript – Of David. A Maskil.

As an author, David is worth listening to. Of course, he’s writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and that is reason enough. But as a writer, David speaks with the authority of experience and expertise. John Phillips points out that David is one of the greatest sages of Scripture, one of the greatest saints, and one of the greatest sovereigns. But he is also one of the greatest sinners.^[1] So when he speaks about forgiveness and closeness with God, we should pay attention.

Psalm 32:1-2 – How joyful is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered! How joyful is a person whom the Lord does not charge with iniquity and in whose spirit is no deceit!

From the start, David wants us to feel joy as we realize God has made His forgiveness available to any person who is willing to receive it. That is good news which should fill up our hearts with celebration. Right from the start of this book, in Psalm 1 we’re told about the eternal joy that God wants for people. The problem is, we’re unable to walk that road of righteousness on our own. We don’t qualify. We fall short of the standards of righteousness. But now David reveals that there is a way to attain that spiritual happiness thanks to the forgiveness of God. The message of the Psalms is that anyone can walk with the Lord, anyone can be forgiven no matter what they’ve done because He has made it possible.

In verses 1 and 2, David describes a spectrum of sin. Commentators note that he uses three terms for those wrong things we do. The first is transgression, which speaks to us of rebellion against God. The second is sin, which means falling short or missing the mark of perfection. The third is iniquity. This is a term that speaks of corruption and twistedness – acts of evil.^[2] So we see David isn’t just talking about the worst of wickedness that men do. He’s talking about all of the wrong things. From basic imperfection to abject evil. It all applies and he says that all of it can be forgiven.

David also gives three different terms to describe what the Lord wants to do with our sin and guilt. First, He forgives. The Lord promises to carry our sins away and remember them no more. Second, David says our sins can be covered. It doesn’t mean a cover-up in the negative sense. And it doesn’t mean just sweeping our guilt under a rug for it to fester.

Some of you have had a stain on a wall and when you tried to paint over it, the stain bled through the new coat. But, if you first treat that wall and paint on Kilz primer, that will put an end to the stain. God cleans while He covers. The Bible explains that the blood of Jesus cleanses us and makes us brand new. It purifies us and covers us in righteousness so we can walk with God.

Third, David tells us that God will not charge us with iniquity. Perhaps you saw the story of Irmgard Furchner. At age 18 she worked as a secretary in a Nazi concentration camp. Almost 80 years later, the law finally caught up with her and she was brought to court. At her job, all she did was paperwork. But that was enough for her to be charged and found guilty for aiding in the murder of more than 10,000 people.^[3] There was nothing she could do to free herself from her guilt. The charges were waiting for her after all those decades.

God knows exactly what we’ve done. The thousands upon thousands of counts of imperfection, of rebellion, of hate, of wickedness, of selfishness, of meanness, or vice. And we’re guilty of them all. But God makes us this offer to carry them away, to cover, and to never charge us for any of it.

The offer sounds amazing until we read. “In whose spirit is no deceit.” Do we have to be perfectly honest before we can be forgiven? Jeremiah says, “The heart is more deceitful than anything else, and incurable.”^[4] So is this an offer that we can’t actually enjoy? Is this like one of those mailers you get claiming someone is going to win a million dollars when, clearly, no one is going to win?

Jesus once said to Nathanael, “Here truly is an Israelite in whom is no deceit.” Was that literally true? We don’t know a lot about Nathanael, but we know that he made the same mistakes as the other disciples. He argued over who was the greatest. He failed to be there at the foot of the cross, choosing instead to run and hide. And one of the only times he does speak in the Bible is when he scoffs at the idea that anyone from Nazareth could be used by God. Or consider David himself. He had many moments of terrible dishonesty.

This ‘no deceit’ line shows that forgiveness is not only about settling a debt. It is the beginning of a transformative process which completely changes us from the inside out. God doesn’t just say, “I’ll square your debt,” He goes further and says, “I’m going to make you a new creation.”

On top of that, the term for deceit here can refer to slackness, or a sluggishness to do an activity.^[5] David shares that he had that sluggishness at first.

Psalm 32:3-4 – When I kept silent, my bones became brittle from my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was drained as in the summer’s heat. Selah (There, what do you think of that?) ^[6]

We don’t know when David wrote this song or what situation he was referring to. Some scholars tie it to his sin with Bathsheba, and that’s definitely a contender. Whenever it was, he had fallen into sin and then held his guilt in his heart. He closed the Lord out and tried to act like nothing was wrong. But it started eating him alive. We know something about summer heat, right? David said this guilt that he was holding in was like those dog-days of late July. 115° but with no A/C, no shade, no ice.

David was a strong man. He had killed giants and lions and bears with his own hands. But he was no match for guilt. Did you know being “weighed down by guilt” is more than a metaphor? In 2013, Princeton published a study showing that the feelings of guilt are, indeed, felt like weight in our minds and bodies.^[7] David felt it eating him from the inside, crushing him from the outside.

In verse 4, was David suggesting that God was inflicting this pain on him? On the one hand, we have to take this Psalm with the Psalms before and after. In Psalm 31 David wrote, “my strength has failed because of my iniquity, and my bones waste away.” He rightly understood the destructive nature of sin. Paul talks about this in Romans 1, where sinners are left to deal with the appropriate consequences of their choices.

At the same time, though God is ready to forgive sin, He will not ignore sin. He applies firm pressure on the sinner in order to draw us to repentance, so He can remove the weight of our guilt. He tells His children that He will discipline them when they sin, because He loves them.

I was a lifeguard for a few summers in college. I always enjoyed practicing removing a swimmer with a neck injury from the pool. You would go in, apply a hold with firm pressure, rotate that swimmer into position, and get them strapped tight onto a backboard so they could be lifted out of the water. If not, the person would die. God applies that kind of pressure when we dive into sin.

Psalm 32:5 – Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not conceal my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah (There, what do you think of that?)

All David had to do to receive God’s forgiveness was confess. Technically, we don’t even see his confession here. He says, “I will confess to the Lord,” and immediately forgiveness flowed, the guilt was gone, and David had the relief he needed. So, what is confession? Confession is more than just saying a few words. Confession means to realize God’s truth in your heart, agree with that truth, turn from your sin and face God, saying, “I am guilty, I am sorry, and I want to receive Your mercy.”

Does this mean that, as a Christian, I don’t have forgiveness for individual sins until I confess? There are some churches that hold a doctrine like that. If you’re a Christian, if you’ve been born again, you have eternal forgiveness right now. In Christ we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace that He has poured out on us.^[8] God never comes back with a sponge to sop up what He poured out. But we also read in 1 John, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins.” So which is it?

There are two aspects of forgiveness. The first is judicial. Has your debt been paid? If you are in Christ, then Christ’s death on the cross dealt with all your sin, past, present, and future. You are sealed into a promise. When the Judge of heaven and earth looks at you, He sees His Son and pronounces you clean. But there is also relational forgiveness. When we rebel against God or go our own way, we remove ourselves from His boundaries and His leading and His commands. Those sins bring breeches and barriers in our relationship with the Lord. Through confession we are able to once again live in the fullness of His grace.

This is depicted in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The son went out from the father’s house on his own way, into ruin. The father did not announce, “the Prodigal is no longer my son.” He was still his son. But once the son came to his senses and returned home, he was able to have not just the title of son, but the benefits of the father’s love and they embrace and reconcile and rejoice together.

Another question is: If God knows everything, then why do I need to confess? Isaiah 55 explains that when we seek God, when we confess and abandon our own way and instead embrace the Lord, He is able to cover us with His compassion and freely forgive. Through confession we step from the shadow of guilt into the light of God’s mercy. The Prodigal not only had to mentally admit he was wrong, he had to also leave the pigsty and return to his father. Proverbs 28 says, “whoever confesses and renounces [their sin] will find mercy.”

David said, “I did not conceal my iniquity.” We’re no good at covering over our sin. That’s the job the Lord wants to do. Don’t think for a minute you can clean yourself up for God.

Awhile ago, one of our little ones got sick to their stomach in the middle of the night. We went in to make sure they were ok and we said, “Where did you throw up?” They said, “In the bathroom. But I cleaned it up.” Let’s just say, “clean” isn’t the word I would use. It was the middle of the night. They were sick. It was dark. They grabbed whatever towel they could and did their best. But they needed a parent to actually take care of it. Don’t try to cover your sin. Let the professional take care of it.

Psalm 32:6-7 – Therefore let everyone who is faithful pray to you immediately., When great floodwaters come, they will not reach him. You are my hiding place; you protect me from trouble. You surround me with joyful shouts of deliverance. Selah (There, what do you think of that?)

David is not suggesting all his problems were immediately solved. He was a man who knew many troubles for many years. But, in the final judgment, David knew he was safe. He would be delivered just as Noah was in the ark when the flood waters came.

There’s a judgment coming. If you’re not a Christian, you’re going to be judged for your sin. You will stand before God’s throne and your debts must be paid. Without Christ, there’s no deliverance.

There is also a global judgment coming one day. The whole world will be flooded with the wrath of God. Knowing that judgment is coming, let everyone who is faithful pray immediately. If you want salvation, there is no time to lose. Call out to God for forgiveness. Hide yourself in Him. Don’t wait. God is ready to receive each of us us as spiritual refugees, covering us and sustaining us and making us new. That’s not just David’s opinion – The Lord Himself would verify the message of this song. It’s the Lord speaking in our next verses,^[9] where we read:

Psalm 32:8-9 – I will instruct you and show you the way to go; with my eye on you, I will give counsel. Do not be like a horse or mule, without understanding, that must be controlled with bit and bridle or else it will not come near you.

Why would anyone refuse God’s offer of salvation and forgiveness? It happens every day. In fact, we saw a few weeks ago in our study of Isaiah 1 how God’s people had become so stubborn, so hard-hearted that they were, indeed, dumber than donkeys, spiritually speaking.

The truth is, our hearts are inclined to evil. We’re prone to wander. And we’ll wander right into ruin if we don’t trust the Lord and go His way.

Harry Randall Truman, not the president but the Mt. Saint Helens resident, was warned to evacuate his home in 1980. Precursor earthquakes had knocked him out of bed as he slept, so he moved his mattress to the basement. He told interviewers, “[that] mountain is a mile away, [it] ain’t gonna hurt me…You couldn’t pull me out with a mule team.”^[10] No mules would be necessary. On May 18 he was vaporized along with everything he owned with the volcano erupted.

A person who doesn’t admit they’re a sinner and then receive the free gift of God’s salvation is like Harry Randall Truman. They’re like an ignorant mule, with no understanding.

“I will show you the way to go; with My eye on you, I will give counsel.” God guides not with a whip, but with gentleness.^[11] The “way” He shows us is that “way” from Psalm 1 – the way where everything we do prospers. Where our lives are made strong and fruitful, weathering the seasons that come our way, always growing, always developing. This is where the Lord wants to guide us.

John Phillips gives us some important insight here. He writes, “If the Lord is to guide us with His eye, it means that we must stay close to Him. A person cannot give another person a warning look or a warm look or a welcoming look if he is in Chicago and the friend is in Atlanta. Let us see to it that we allow our Lord to guide us by keeping our Bibles open and our eye ever looking to Him. He will make it plain what we ought to do.” God’s counsel isn’t only for the sinner on the day of his salvation, it’s also for the saint every single day of their life.

Psalm 32:10 – Many pains come to the wicked, but the one who trusts in the Lord will have faithful love surrounding him.

To trust God means to depend on His faithful love.^[12] It means to put our hope in Him, rather than our own strength or our own plans or the systems of this world. To trust the Lord means to enter into this covenant love He talks about – His hesed. That we acknowledge the truth about ourselves, and that we receive His love and love Him in return. That’s how we walk in the joy of this song.

Psalm 32:11 – Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous ones; shout for joy, all you upright in heart.

A Psalm like this makes us think a lot about our mistakes and how we fall short of God’s glory. But let’s remember what David’s perspective is: He started with joy, he’s ending with joy. He says, “Here’s what’s true about God’s forgiveness. Here’s how we can all have it day-by-day, no matter what we’ve done. Here’s how God plans to revolutionize our lives and surround us like a shield and a refuge and a Teacher and with the kindness of a Friend. So let’s praise the Lord for it!” If we pause to consider all that God had forgiven David, or all that God forgave Paul, or all He has forgiven you and me, the spiritual reaction should be like finding out you’ve won the lottery.

Despite his many mistakes, David felt no need to carry his guilt any more. He confessed it and turned from it. It was done, it was gone. And it was replaced by joy.

How joyful are you? That’s how our text opened, right? “How joyful is the one.” David says forgiven people are joyful people. Paul does too. He described himself as overflowing with joy in 2 Corinthians. The Christian life is supposed to be full of joy and peace, overflowing with hope. Because the Lord bears away our guilt and leads us into a way full of joy.

Has God borne away your guilt? Or are you still on the run? In September of 2021, Irmgard Furchner went on the run, hoping to avoid her trial. She was picked up a few hours later.^[13]

Maybe you’re on the run, spiritually speaking. You can’t avoid the Judge. Turn yourself in. When you turn yourself in to this Judge, He cleans your slate, cancels your debts, makes you new. You don’t have to work off your guilt. You are saved by grace through faith, not of works.

In fact, when Paul spoke in Romans about how we are justified by faith alone, how salvation is all a work of grace, he used this Psalm as the Old Testament basis. If you believe what God has revealed in the Scripture, if you come to him in repentance, acknowledging your spiritual bankruptcy, He will forgive you.

For Christians, forgiveness isn’t new, but it’s not finished either. In this Psalm, David reminds us that God’s forgiveness still applies and we who are faithful can stay in that closeness with the Lord, we can be quick to praise, quick to rejoice, quick to pray in confession as we discover more and more of what God has saved us from and what He has saved us for and we walk with Him on this way He’s leading us.

Taking A Sleep Of Faith (Psalm 3)

On April 28, 1789, honorary midshipman Ned Young slept while mutineers took control of the HMS Bounty. The violence and commotion roused every other sleeping sailor from their berth, but not Ned.^[1] He only woke up after the mutiny was over. Seeing that the captain and his loyalists were adrift in the South Pacific, Ned “soon announced that he fully supported the mutineers.”^[2] They decided they would settle on a small island, south of Tahiti. Conflict arose and, when a battle broke out between the mutineers and locals, Ned slept through that battle as well.^[3]

In Psalm 3, we find David asleep during a mutiny. Now, David was no narcoleptic midshipman. He was a seasoned warrior who knew tactics, knew battle, and knew the danger he was in. The mutiny was against him, after all. His night of sleep was not accidental or coincidental. David’s slept because, in the midst of the worst crisis of his life, he was able to draw upon the spiritual rest provided by God.

Psalm 3 is a good Psalm for the new year. Many scholars consider Psalms 1 and 2 to be an introduction to the Psalter.^[4] One commentator explains Psalms 1 and 2 as providing the theological undergirding for the the rest that follow.^[5] After showing us the way of the righteous and then the dominion of the Messiah, we get to Psalm 3 – the first Psalm that’s called a Psalm, and the first song that is from man’s perspective to God – a prayer being sung out loud as an act of faith.

In this short prayer, David gets right to the point and says, “Lord, I need help!” We know why – this is the first Psalm that has a historical marker. We’re told David wrote this song “when he fled from his son Absalom.” This mutiny in the later part of David’s reign was sudden and widespread. David had to quickly run for his life with no provisions, no plan, and no safe-haven in mind. Absalom’s intent was to take the throne and kill his father. In that context, David produced Psalm 3.

But what’s remarkable is that the song isn’t just about asking for help. After the ask, David then writes line after line with absolute confidence that God knows, hears, and will answer with all the help that he needed. He was so confident that he decided to make camp, bed down, and get a good night’s rest. That’s how much he trusted the Lord. In fact, one scholar noticed that David’s declaration of trust is twice as long as his cry for help.^[6]

This morning, there is a wide range of circumstances represented among us. Some of you are in a period of abundance and enjoyment. Some of you are, in a sense, running for your lives. Some disease is after you. Some uncertainty looms over your future. No matter our circumstances, Psalm 3 is for us because all of us need help from the Lord and want the strength and the rest and the hope demonstrated by David in these words. And remember: These words were inspired and delivered and recorded and preserved because God knows we need them. These are the songs the Lord has provided so that we can sing and pray them back to Him.

Our text begins above verse one, in what is called the title or superscript.

Psalm 3:Superscript – A psalm of David when he fled from his son Absalom.

Some academics discount the superscripts, but these titles are in the canonical text of the Hebrew Bible.^[7] More importantly, Jesus references one of these superscripts in Matthew 22:45.

Right away we’re reminded of an important truth that is easy to forget: Every day, every season, every circumstance has a spiritual component. There is no experience we face that is separate from God’s commands and intentions for us or from His potential to use us. In the most hectic crisis of his life, David was used by God to write something that would help people for thousands of years.

Psalm 3:1 – Lord, how my foes increase! There are many who attack me.

It wasn’t just Absalom – David had lost the nation. The army was with his son. Some of his staff had switched sides. Other long-time haters came out of the woodwork against the king. Their attacks came in a variety of forms. Absalom’s was the most direct – “I’m going to kill you.” But then there was Ahithophel who had been a personal adviser who was now using his skill against David. There was Shimei, who had hated David ever since he took Saul’s place as king. He wasn’t a conspirator, but he made it his business to harass and insult David as he left Jerusalem. He screamed curses and threw stones at the king. And then there was Ziba. Ziba used David’s situation to better his own career by lying. He pretended to help but was selfishly profiteering.

Under this immense strain, the first word out of David’s lips is, “Yahweh!” He’ll call on that name 6 times in these verses – at least once in every section.

David’s desire was to be in the place God has called him – to be in his city, near the house of the Lord, in the position of service God had given him. All of that had been disrupted. And so David comes to the Lord and tells the Lord something He already knows.

It can feel silly to pray to the Lord about things He’s already aware of – but that’s everything! So why pray? Prayer is a tool God has given us so that we can develop closeness with Him and proper calibration for our hearts. In prayer we’re able to remind ourselves of Who God is and what He does. We’re reminded of what He has said in regard to our lives and His plans for us. In prayer we are able to relinquish ourselves to the Lord and invite Him to do what He wants to do in our lives. Prayer is one of the ways God gives us strength.^[8] And prayer is a relational act. God is a Person and desires close, communicative friendship with us.

Psalm 3:2 – Many say about me, “There is no help for him in God.” Selah

Not only were there actual attacks, there was also the head-shaking gossips around David – people who said that he had it coming. They were saying that he had forfeited any right he had to divine help after all he’d done.^[9] And, maybe they had a point. David had lied and stolen, cheated and murdered. He allowed one of his best friends to be slaughtered to cover up an affair. He broke the Law in moving the Ark of the Covenant, and because of him 85 priests and their families were butchered by Saul because they gave David a few loaves of bread.

But God’s help isn’t reserved for those who deserve it. Thank goodness, because none of us are worthy of God’s help. No, God’s grace is not about merit or payback or being good enough. In 1 John we’re told that it’s because of God’s great love that He helps us and brings us into His family. We don’t earn it, we receive it as a free gift.

John 1:12 – But to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be children of God, to those who believe in his name

Many said of David, “God’s not going to take your calls.” But David didn’t believe that. Rolf Jacobson writes, “The quotation of the enemies’ speech…establishes the central theological issue of the Psalm – [will] God help the psalmist?”^[10] That’s an important question for us to settle.

The verse ends with that word, selah (the first use in the Psalms). Scholars can’t agree on what it means. Some believe it was a musical direction – something like “make a crescendo.”^[11] John Phillips suggests that the word may mean: “There, what do you think of that!” That may be a more helpful thought since we are readers of the Psalms, rather than singers like in David’s time.

Psalm 3:3 – But you, Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, and the one who lifts up my head.

David wasn’t alone in his flight. He had his mighty men with him. There were some soldiers and even 600 Philistines who came in support. But he recognized that they weren’t the answer. They weren’t his shield, the Lord was! And not just a little wooden shield that David would have to hold up under his own strength, blocking an arrow or two that might come from one direction. David said, “You, Lord, are a shield all around me.” Covering on every side.

David’s words here are tender and moving. In the short term, David needed a shield, or we might say a parachute. But he recognized that God was so much more. This Hebrew word for shield has a bunch of derivatives, one of which is the term used for the Garden of Eden.^[12] That special, God-designed place, protected by a hedge all around and full of life and communion with the Lord.

Next, David says, “God isn’t just my shield, He’s my glory.” How was there glory in running for your life? How was their honor in this experience? David reveals that his self-worth wasn’t tied to a palace or a throne or his royal robes or the sword of Goliath. The Lord was his splendor. No one could take that splendor, that honor, that glory from him. And then he takes even another step into the tender kindness of God and says, “You’re the One who lifts up my head.”

We’re told in 2 Samuel that, as David fled the city, he went up the Mount of Olives barefoot and weeping. David recognized that the Lord was with him there, in his suffering, taking David’s head in His hands and lifting it up, as if to look him in the face and remind David of His love and presence. What a wonderful reminder of our Lord’s own visit to the Mount of Olives, where He went and suffered so that you and I could be rescued from our enemies of sin and death.

Psalm 3:4 – I cry aloud to the Lord, and he answers me from his holy mountain. Selah

David’s prayer was delivered out loud for everyone to hear. Of course, God could’ve heard it from the silence of his heart, but God’s people are commanded to sing aloud. Colossians 3, Ephesians 5. Singing our praises and prayers out loud is one of the best ways for us to make the most of these evil days. We’re told that, as we sing with and to one another, we are spiritually enriched.^[13]

David cried aloud. He wasn’t ashamed for anyone around him to know about his dependance on the Lord. He wasn’t trying to hide his troubles. In fact, linguists tell us that the phrase could be translated, “Whenever I cry aloud, He answers me.”^[14] This is how God consistently operates. Since He was faithful to David, we can be sure He will be faithful to us. His faithful love endures forever.

Psalm 3:5 – I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the Lord sustains me.

David cried out for rescue, he said, “I know the Lord will answer me,” but then he doesn’t wait for the response! He goes to bed! If someone broke into your house, would you call 911 and say, “I need some help,” and then go back to sleep?

Now, David didn’t do that, he was running, but we see the incredible peace and confidence that has flooded his heart. It’s like when the angel finds Peter sleeping in his jail cell the night before he’s supposed to be executed. Those men understood that life is not about circumstances, it’s about communion with a loving God Who sustains His people. In this case, David had not received any patriot missiles or access to a secret fortress that Absalom couldn’t find. Instead of immediate, tangible assistance, the Lord simply sustained David with hope.

This summer when I had my stroke there were two passages of Scripture that the Lord sent us that gave us hope when we didn’t know what was going to happen. The first was John 11:4, where Jesus said of Lazarus, “This sickness will not end in death.” The second was this Psalm. Night came, I had been admitted, and they told Kelly she couldn’t stay. So, I was alone, wondering and worrying, and felt impressed to listen to this Psalm. Even though at the time we had no medical fixes or answers to some of our big questions, the Lord supported us with hope.

Absalom had every advantage: He had numbers and weapons and popular opinion and better tactical positioning. But the Lord doesn’t need earthly power to sustain us. David knew it, so he got some rest. As Christians, we are invited to enter into this rest. Jesus said, “Come to Me and I will give you rest.” Hebrews tells us to make every effort to enter into this rest as we walk with the Lord.

Psalm 3:6 – I will not be afraid of thousands of people who have taken their stand against me on every side.

He didn’t have to be afraid because he had an all-powerful shield on every side. He was still in danger, but he knew the Lord was on the way.

Imagine you were playing poker and your opponent showed his hand: Four aces. That’s the kind of hand that can clear the table. But, if they show four aces while you’re holding a royal flush, it doesn’t bother you at all. Their powerful hand has no chance against yours.

On the spiritual level, we’ve been dealt a royal flush. There is no better hand. God has dealt you His grace, His goodness, His attention, and affection. He’s dealt you gifts and a spiritual family and special opportunities. Our part is to do what David did: Believe! He believed and rested.

Psalm 3:7 – Rise up, Lord! Save me, my God! You strike all my enemies on the cheek; you break the teeth of the wicked.

These sort of lyrics don’t usually make their way into our modern worship songs. There are a variety of Psalms that have this kind of language that scholars call “imprecatory prayer.” We know that David was a prophet, but he wasn’t in a vengeful mood. He showed almost unreasonable mercy to Shimei during this saga. And when it was time to fight he told his soldiers to “treat Absalom gently.”

Verses like these remind us that God is going to avenge. He is going to bring a full and fierce judgment on His enemies that cannot be escaped. And it reminds us that wickedness really does need to be restrained. Job and Joel describe the wicked as monsters with fangs and that breaking those fangs meant the innocent would not be devoured but delivered. We’re so used to seeing injustice and so used to the world calling evil good that we can be shocked by true justice.

Now we are on the other side of the cross. And on this side of the cross, Shimei isn’t our enemy – Satan is. Christ has commanded us to pray for our human enemies and persecutors. We’re to bless them, not curse them. We’re to understand that God loves those individuals just like He loves us and He wants to save them from the wrath they deserve just like He saved us.

God is a Warrior and He is going to repay the wicked for all that they do. It won’t be a slap on the wrist – it will be everlasting death in the Lake of Fire. But God’s hope (and ours should be too) is that all those enemies would repent and be saved rather than perish in their sin.

Psalm 3:8 – Salvation belongs to the Lord; may your blessing be on your people. Selah

David started in crisis. He ends in complete confidence not only for himself but for all God’s people. Which would include, by the way, many who were currently involved in the rebellion against him. That’s how powerful God’s intervention can be. He can bring rebels back into the fold. Some of the people who drew the sword for Absalom would later sing this song in the Temple, recognizing that God not only helped David, He helped them, too.

You see, the help God offers is not just a payday loan or a Saturday night special. God is offering salvation. And He alone can offer it. What is His salvation? It’s the same word that David used for “help” up in verse 2. This is one of those beautiful Bible moments. We discover that the word there is: yeshua. It’s a noun and a name. When you bring the Hebrew name into Greek it becomes Jesus!

The help we need isn’t a sword, it’s a Savior. When we call out for help, God gives Jesus. He is our refuge. He is our stronghold. Jesus, Who gives us His strength and His comfort and His love, His mind and His heart. Jesus, Who changes every perspective and makes sense of every circumstance. Jesus, Who is the Rock on which we can build our lives, Who loves us with an unfailing, loyal, kind love. Jesus, Who speaks and it is done. Jesus, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, Who has invited us to rule and reign with Him. That’s the help God has for those who call out to Him. He’s listening for your call even now.

I Gotta Have More Cymbal! (Psalm 150)

Songwriters call it “staggered.” It’s when a song is arranged so that it starts with one vocalist or instrument, then adds more vocals and instruments gradually.

Behind Blue Eyes by The Who is a good example. It starts with a single guitar… Then a single vocalist comes in… Then more and more vocals…
Then the bass… Then another guitar… Then 2:20 into it, the full band.

Metallica’s Enter Sandman and In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins are similarly staggered.

If you’re much of a classic rock fan, you can probably think of a few songs that start calm, but build, then at a certain point, you gotta crank the dial to full as they bring it. Stairway to Heaven, for example.

OK, you’re a fan of Country Music. The first staggered song that comes to mind: The Gambler, by the late Kenny Rogers. It opens with some finger picking… Then vocals… Then there’s some kind of percussion that sounds like a combination of a wooden block and dripping water. Instruments continue to build after that until the full band joins in.

Psalm 150 is staggered, and it builds:

It opens with what reads like a vocal solo in verses one and two.
In verses three through five, no less than eight instruments are introduced one-at-a-time, and some of those are plural.
The last verse is a turn-the-dial-to-full volume involving “everything that has breath.”

We’d expect nothing less from the closing psalm.

I’ll organize my comments around two points: #1 Your Praise Is Possessive As God’s Plan For You Builds, and #2 Your Praise Is Progressive As God’s Plan For You Builds.

#1 – Your Praise Is Possessive As God’s Plan For You Builds (v1-2)

The psalms are songs. We may not have the sheet music; but we must remember that they are songs.

In our commitment to teach verse-by-verse, we are driven to exposit the psalms as we do the historical books, or the Gospels, or the Epistles. If we do that with psalms, we are cheating ourselves.

Songs tend to elicit emotions and feelings. There’s nothing wrong with being inspired to feel by a psalm. In fact, we should get emotional.

If Psalm 150 doesn’t elicit strong feelings, we’re not doing it justice.

Psa 150:1  Praise the LORD! Praise God in His sanctuary; Praise Him in His mighty firmament!

The final five psalms begin and end with “Praise the LORD,” i.e., “Hallelujah!” It’s good to be reminded that “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.”

There is going to be a lot of praising in our future. We won’t be sitting around playing harps, doing nothing. It’s more like everything will be so truly awesome that praising the LORD will be a constant. There’s a scene in chapter five of the Revelation where “ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands” of angels break out in praise, followed by “every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them… saying: “Blessing and honor and glory and power Be to Him who sits on the throne, And to the Lamb, forever and ever!”

In our psalm, the people of God were gathered at His “sanctuary,” probably the Second Temple.

Around 586BC, King Nebuchadnezzar’s troops destroyed the first Temple – built by Solomon. They were held as captives in Babylon for 70 years.
The Second Temple was built by Zerubbabel and others after the Jews returned from captivity. It is sometimes called, Zerubbabel’s Temple. In New Testament times, Herod was remodeling Zerubbabel’s Temple into the magnificent structure most of us think of today. It is sometimes referred to as Herod’s Temple. But Herod’s Temple is still considered to be the Second Temple.

(If you’re counting, the Temple that we read about in the Great Tribulation will be the third).

The Temple in Jerusalem was the real estate on the earth that God had prescribed in order to meet with Israel. Concerning the Ark of the Covenant that would be placed in the Holy of Holies in the Temple, we read in Exodus, “And there I will meet with you, and I will speak with you from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim which are on the ark of the Testimony, about everything which I will give you in commandment to the children of Israel” (25:22).

I’m sure you’ve been to a music concert of some sort. The audience listens excitedly to the performance.

If the psalms have taught us anything, it is that in the sanctuary, the people were not an audience. They were participants.

Today, in the Church Age, there is no physical Temple. “Sanctuary” has a different meaning. At least two, in fact:

Jesus makes His sanctuary in the individual believer. In First Corinthians 3:16 we read, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”

Jesus also makes His sanctuary among His people collectively. In Second Corinthians 6:16, speaking of the gathered believers, the apostle Paul said, “For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I WILL DWELL IN THEM AND WALK AMONG THEM. I WILL BE THEIR GOD, AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE.”

We’re not an audience when we are gathered as the church. By our very presence, we are expected to be participants. Pastor Chuck Smith used to say that we are the choir.

Corporate worship should not be a performance. The worship team is here to lead us into our singing so that, all together, we are praising Jesus.

“Praise Him in His mighty firmament!” can be translated, Praise Him in the heavens.” The psalmist’s thoughts became elevated beyond life on the earth. He became aware that he was standing in the presence of Almighty God… In the specific place on earth that the LORD chose… Surrounded by the universe.

Think of it like this. David once sung, “What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him?” (Psalm 8:4).

It was that same awareness that all the universe, and the earth in it, and the Temple on the earth, was created with the sole purpose of God having a relationship with me; with you; with whosoever will believe on Him.

Nonbelievers think it is ignorant and arrogant to suggest that the earth has that much significance in our vast universe.

That is largely because they scoff at, and immediately dismiss, special creation. When you approach Genesis as literal history, given to us by God (Who was there), you see that creation was necessary so that He could make man in His image, and walk in a loving relationship with us.

Is that arrogant? I’d say it was romantic.

How many songs are there about what you’d give to the one you love if only you could?

Your Song has been covered by many artists:

I don’t have much money, but boy, if I did,
I’d buy a big house where we both could live.
I know it’s not much, but it’s the best I can do.
My gift is my song and this one’s for you.

In All I Have to Give, the Backstreet Boys sing, “I wish I could give the world to you but love is all I have to give.” Not very original, but you get the idea.

Well guess what? God IS in a position to give the world to us. His love for us is extravagant. Why wouldn’t He create a universe for us?

Have you watched It’s a Wonderful Life this season? Trying to convey his love for Mary, George says to her, “What is it you want, Mary? What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word, and I’ll throw a lasso around it and pull it down.”

The word I’m using to convey all this is possessive. It’s a word that can carry a negative connotation. But not if you are in love. As a romance word, it is endearing. It suggests a healthy desire to keep and protect the one you love.

Psa 150:2  Praise Him for His mighty acts; Praise Him according to His excellent greatness!

We might be tempted to think of “His mighty acts” as the parting of the Red Sea for Moses; or the day the sun stood still for Joshua; or the global flood in the days of Noah. Mighty acts indeed!

In the context set by verse one, His “mighty acts” would be His redeeming the human race by His plan to come into the world as the God-man to die in our place on the Cross. When you think about them, the flood, the Red Sea, halting the sun, were all performed by God for one purpose: To further His plan to provide the world with the Savior, Jesus Christ.

What a great start to this last psalm. The people of God were in the one place in the entire universe where the presence of God was revealed to them in a mighty way.

Wherever we are, gathered together, collectively, we are that place in the universe where God manifests His presence in mighty ways.

Jesus is possessive of us. We ought to be possessive of Him. We do it by not allowing anyone, or anything, to distract us from our beloved Bridegroom.

#2 – Your Praise Is Progressive As God’s Plan For You Builds (v3-6)

I think it’s safe to say that You’re a little bit Country, and I’m a little bit Rock n’ Roll.

Musical styles… Musical instruments… Song selection. Christians are never going to agree. And it doesn’t seem Christians want to agree to disagree.

Can we take our cue for corporate worship from the psalms? Even if we wanted to, it would be hard. Biblical Archaeology Review noted the following:

There are no ancient music notations to inform us on the music arrangements of psalms. What’s more, even though the collection of Biblical psalms as we know it from the Hebrew Bible was established quite late, the oldest psalms were likely composed already in the 14th century BC, from which we have no adequate documentation from Israelites themselves. We do not possess depictions of people performing psalms. The Bible does not tell us much about how psalms were originally performed.

God has wisely not prescribed any single liturgy. We have freedom to worship Him in new ways, with new songs.

We can say, from Psalm 150, that just about every instrument available was employed.

Psa 150:3  Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet; Praise Him with the lute and harp!
Psa 150:4  Praise Him with the timbrel and dance; Praise Him with stringed instruments and flutes!
Psa 150:5  Praise Him with loud cymbals; Praise Him with clashing cymbals!

Before we move on, I should say something about “Praise Him with… dance.” Every few years, dance gets reintroduced into worship, usually at an influential church. It’s mostly what you’d call ‘interpretive dance,’ a soloist or a troop praising God through their movements.

The Hebrew word for “dance” used here is machol. Since it’s a Hebrew word, in a Jewish context, let’s let a Jewish resource explain it to us:

The Bible doesn’t tell us what their dancing looked like exactly, but early Jewish literature presented the machol as a circle dance. The 16th century Jewish sage known as the Maharal of Prague explains that in a circle every person faces God, who is in the center, equally and divinely connecting to Him from all sides. At all Jewish simchas (festive occasions) such as weddings, or bat mitzvahs, and many of the Jewish holidays, you will see Jews cheerfully dancing in circles with arms tightly locked as brothers.

If you want to dance at church – lock and loop. You can use the ga-ga pit. We can rename it the Machol Pit. You can do a Machol Minuet… Or a Machol Moonwalk.

I don’t think the list of instruments in Psalm 150 was meant to be exclusive. The psalmist meant to convey that any and all instruments could be used in praising the LORD in song. Stringed or wind or percussion – properly arranged to bring attention to the LORD – use them.

One of our guiding principles here at CalvaryHanford is to recognize the gifts and abilities of the believers who decide to lock arms with us (so to speak). With regards to those who lead us as the choir… If there were no guitar players, but there were piano players… We’d be piano-led, because that’s God’s gifting to us.

If there were no musicians at all, we’d sing a cappella.

We do have some basic, bedrock ideas about style:

We prefer contemporary choruses over hymns; it’s just who we are. We were a result of the revival historians call the Jesus Movement. One of the questions we asked and answered was, “Why should the devil have all the good music?

We like order rather than chaos, so we don’t open-up Sunday mornings to the congregation sharing their individual spiritual gifts.

We can’t be sure that this psalm was staggered, starting with vocals then adding instruments one at a time, then more instruments, crescendo-ing with “loud cymbals” and “clanging cymbals.” But I’d like to think so.

Psa 150:6  Let everything that has breath praise the LORD. Praise the LORD!

I read somewhere this week, “Every breath is the gift of God and praise is the worthy response we should make for that gift.”

Derek Kidner noted that the literal phrase is, “Let all breath praise the Lord.” Then he commented, “His glory fills the universe; His praise must do no less.” .

John Trapp wrote, “We have all as much reason to praise God as we have need to draw breath.”

G. Campbell Morgan said, “The one condition of praise is the possession of breath, that is to say, life received from Him must return in praise to Him.”
Albert Barnes said, “Let a breathing universe combine in one solemn service of praise.” He was thinking ahead to eternity when the universe will have been redeemed and restored by God’s plan for it. Praise will be the vey air that we breathe.

There’s a lyric in a song by Chicago that captures a sense of what our praising God on earth is like: “Only the beginning of what I want to feel forever.”

What do I mean, your praise is progressive? Simply that you grow in praise as you make progress along God’s plan for your life. Every up, every down, and all that is in between, can further your awe at the wonder of His love for you.

Every morning you awake, God’s mercies are yours to experience in news ways. Every blessing, every buffeting, takes you deeper into His love for you.

You don’t just make progress on your path. You make progress in knowing Jesus.

When I was a young believer, Pastor Don McClure quoted Psalm 103:7, “[God] made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel.” He pointed out that Israel knew of God, through His works. But Moses knew the ways of God – His heart, His purposes, His character. He had progressed.

If you want to know the ways, and not just the works, of God, start by embracing grace. If you’re going to err, err on the side of grace. Read the Bible with grace in mind, not law. Prefer the spirit of the law, not the letter of it.

Here’s a gauge: In your Christian walk, and in ministering to others, do you emphasize what you must do for God? Or do you emphasize what God has done for you?

Thus ends the Book of Psalms. Alexander Maclaren said, “Psalm 150 is more than an artistic close of the Psalter: it is a prophecy of the last result of the devout life, and, in its unclouded sunniness, as well as in its universality, it proclaims the certain end of the weary years for the individual and for the world.”

We sing a song here, Golden City. One of its lyrics is,

Soon your trials will be over
Offered up by mercy’s hand
A better view than where you’re standing
A doorway to another land

F.B. Meyer said, “Your life may resemble the psalter with its varying moods, its light and shadow, its sob and smile; but it will end with Hallelujahs! if only you will keep true to the will and way and work of the Most Holy.”

The Prince’s Died (Psalm 146)

When Nick Fury wanted to know how Loki used the Tesseract to turn “two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys,” Captain America perked up.

Having been frozen for 70 years, Cap (that’s what we call him) was understandably ignorant of most of the pop culture references being made by his fellow Avengers.

When Fury mentioned “flying monkeys,” Thor said, “Monkeys? I do not understand.”

An excited Captain America blurted out, “I do! I understood that reference.”

In another of the films we see the page of a notebook on which Steve Rogers keeps a to-do list of pop culture he needs to get caught-up on. Things like disco, and both Star Trek and Star Wars.

I’m guessing almost everyone here ‘gets’ the flying monkeys as a reference to The Wizard of Oz. That’s quite an achievement for a book published in 1900, and made into a feature film in 1939.

Here are a few more references from Oz still in common use today:

“Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
“Lions and tigers and bears, O my!”
“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”
“There’s no place like home.”

The “We’re not in Kansas anymore” line is so iconic that it was #4 on a list of the top 100 movie quotes of all time that was compiled in 2005 by the American Film Institute.

One critic noted, “The list of television series that haven’t borrowed the line might be shorter than the list of those that have.”

When you use an iconic pop culture reference, everyone familiar with it ‘gets’ it.

Something like that is going on in Psalm 146. To really ‘get’ Psalm 146, we need to remember something about Second Temple Hebrew culture. It is this:

The Old Testament prophets had more to say about the coming Kingdom of God on earth than anything else.

Psalm 146 describes, among other things, a time during which there will be no poverty, and no physical handicaps, e.g., blindness.

These are iconic phrases. A Jew would recognize these as referring to conditions that will prevail on earth in the future Kingdom.

We need to read Psalm 146 looking ahead to the Kingdom. Only then will it comfort us in the present, rather than confuse us.

I’ll organize my comments around two points: #1 The Coming Kingdom Provokes Praise, and #2 The Coming Kingdom Provides Perspective.

#1 – The Coming Kingdom Provokes Praise (v1-2)

Pop culture references only work when we share a common background.

I find that out a lot when I share a sermon title, or a reference in the study, that no one gets.

Before we get to iconic, Kingdom phrases, the psalmist – and we don’t know who he is – sets the scene. It’s praise.

Psa 146:1  Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD, O my soul!
Psa 146:2  While I live I will praise the LORD; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.

The five psalms that conclude this great hymnbook are known as the Hallelujah Psalms. They begin with “Praise the LORD” and end with “Praise the LORD,” which is, of course, “Hallelujah.”

“Halel” means praise, or tell someone that they are very great.
The “u” means all of you!
“Jah” most Bibles translate as “LORD” with four capital letters.

The psalmist mentions the “soul.” He meant to elevate our thinking to living for eternity. Our bodies will die, and corrupt in the grave (or worse). But our soul will go on.

In verse two, the psalmist says he will praise the LORD both “while I live,” and “while I have my being.”

“While I live” sounds like his life on the earth.
“While I have my being” sounds like after life on the earth ends, on into eternity.

Now and forever, he would praise the LORD.
Praise would permeate his life.

I’ve noticed that at either end of the spiritual spectrum, praise can cease:

In times of blessing, we drift from the Lord, not sensing our need.
In times of buffeting, we find it hard to praise Him, since we sort of blame Him.

We have a couple of praise choruses that nail this:

“Blessed Be Your Name.” Every blessing You pour out, I’ll turn back to praise; When the darkness closes in, Lord still I will say, Blessed be the Name of the Lord.
“Trust in You.” When You don’t move the mountains I’m needing You to move, When You don’t part the waters I wish I could walk through. When You don’t give the answers as I cry out to You, I will trust, I will trust, I will trust in You!

“Hallelujah” means all of me telling the LORD He is very great; and that implies doing it all the time.

Ever play charades? Think of your daily life – language and body language – as a kind of worthy charade, in which people can easily guess that you are a believer whose life is dedicated to all-the-time Praising the LORD.

#2 – The Coming Kingdom Provides Perspective (v3-10)

Dr. J. Vernon McGee said of the prophets, “It was their theme song. They sound like a stuck record, saying over and over that the King is coming, the Kingdom is coming, and great blessings will be on this earth.”

The prophets made much of the coming King and Kingdom.
John the Baptist announced the King was on scene.
Jesus offered the Kingdom.
The disciples expected Jesus to establish the Kingdom. It was a constant theme in their thinking, and in their questioning the Lord.

When John and Jesus talked about the Kingdom, the Jews knew exactly what they meant, with little explanation.

The Kingdom isn’t an allegory for something else. We mean a literal reign of Jesus over the current earth, sitting on David’s throne in Jerusalem.

Looking back, we must acknowledge that the prophecies of the Bible that have been fulfilled were done so literally.
Looking forward, we must acknowledge that the prophecies of the Bible that have yet to be fulfilled will be done so literally.

We more commonly call it the Millennial Kingdom, or the Millennium. In the Revelation, in chapter twenty, we’re told no less than six times that the Kingdom will last one thousand years. In Latin, “thousand” is millennium.

Just to be clear: There will be a visible Second Coming of Jesus to the earth to establish and reign over the Kingdom for a millennium.

For the remainder of the psalm, the psalmist assumes a future perspective as he lives in the present.

(Or should we say, “the palmist?).

Psa 146:3  Do not put your trust in princes, Nor in a son of man, in whom there is no help.

“Princes” are anyone in a position of authority.
“Son of man” indicates the princes are merely men.

This doesn’t mean leaders are to be disregarded as unimportant. It serves as a reminder to not lose sight of the future King of kings. For a Jew, it meant keeping Messianic hope alive.

Our hope is a little different. The Jews rejected Jesus, and therefore rejected His offer to right then and there establish the Kingdom. Jesus ascended into Heaven, promising to return and establish the Kingdom.

The time in between Jesus’ ascension and Second Coming – our time – is the Church Age. We have our own iconic phrases, e.g., “In the world you will have tribulation,” and, “Our light affliction is but for a moment.”

Our hope is to be resurrected or raptured; and that event is imminent.

This is a good word for us, having just come through an election. Rather than apply it for you, I’ll just ask this: Mediate on the words, “Do not put your trust in princes, Nor in a son of man, in whom there is no help.” Let the Holy Spirit use them to bring you peace in these weird, turbulent times.

Psa 146:4  His spirit departs, he returns to his earth; In that very day his plans perish.

Leaders have their plans. Some of them are good, beneficial, or are at least they are meant to be. FDR’s New Deal; JFK’s New Frontier; LBJ’s Great Society… All meant for good.

Hitler’s Final Solution was a plan, too; a hideous, satanic plan.

Those leaders have perished. Their plans perished with them. MAGA seems on the brink of perishing, giving way to Build Back Better. It, too, will perish.

The LORD’s plan cannot fail. By His providence, it will play-out just as prophesied from Genesis through the Revelation. He came; He is coming.

Psa 146:5  Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help, Whose hope is in the LORD his God,

“Jacob” means the Jews; the nation of Israel. The story God tells throughout the Bible centers around the nation He established through Abraham, from which the Messiah would come to save and bless the world.

God – the almighty God; YHWH; Jehovah. He is the only One who can save and sanctify and glorify you. He must therefore become “the LORD [your] God.”

Psa 146:6  Who made heaven and earth, The sea, and all that is in them; Who keeps truth forever,

“Keeps truth forever” can be translated, is faithful forever. God created the universe, and put man in a beautiful Garden paradise. Adam and Eve ruined it. But God promised, immediately, to fix it. He has revealed how He will do that in the Bible. He’s been faithful up til now; He will be faithful to the end.

The Second Coming of Jesus ends the seven-year Great Tribulation. At His coming, there will be human survivors on the earth. A judgment will take place. Nonbelievers souls will be consigned to Hades. Believers will remain on the earth, in their human bodies, to live in and populate the Kingdom.

The topics in verses seven, eight, and nine would be understood as referring to the coming Kingdom.

No Israelite would confuse them for conditions that could exist unless and until the Messiah had come.

Once we recognize these references are from the future Kingdom, we won’t be confused about why there are still blind people; or why there is poverty.

Remember: The current Church Age has its own characteristics.

Psa 146:7  Who executes justice for the oppressed, Who gives food to the hungry. The LORD gives freedom to the prisoners.

“Justice” will be characteristic of the Millennium. Isaiah said, “But with righteousness He shall judge the poor, And decide with equity for the meek of the earth; He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, And with the breath of His lips He shall slay the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of His loins, And faithfulness the belt of His waist” (11:14-15).
Poverty will be abolished. Jeremiah said, “Therefore they shall come and sing in the height of Zion, Streaming to the goodness of the LORD For wheat and new wine and oil, For the young of the flock and the herd; Their souls shall be like a well-watered garden, And they shall sorrow no more at all” (31:12).
Captives will be released: Isaiah 61:1, “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me, Because the LORD has anointed Me To preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives, And the opening of the prison to those who are bound…”

Psa 146:8  The LORD opens the eyes of the blind; The LORD raises those who are bowed down; The LORD loves the righteous.

Isaiah said: “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing; for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert” (35:5-6). There will be no disabilities; all will be healed.

Doing what is right will permeate global society. John Walvoord summarized this, saying, “Taken as a whole, the social and economic conditions of the Millennium indicate a Golden Age in which the dreams of social reformists through the centuries will be realized, not through human effort but by the immediate presence and power of God and the righteous government of Jesus Christ.”

There is something here for your devotional life. Alexander Maclaren wrote, “All these classes of afflicted persons are meant to be regarded literally, but all may have a wider meaning and be intended to hint at spiritual bondage, blindness, and abjectness.”

In the Millennium, God will open blind eyes – physically. He’s not doing that now, not always. But we extrapolate from this future characteristic that God can heal another kind of blindness. He can open the eyes of the spiritually blind – freeing their will to receive Jesus.

Next the psalmist said, “But the way of the wicked He turns upside down” (v9). If it’s the Kingdom, where do “the wicked” come from?

Think of all the people who will be born to Tribulation survivors over a thousand years. I’m too dumb to do the math. But I do remember the math problem in which you double pennies everyday and after 31 days it amounts to over $10mil.

ANYWAY… Multitudes of the people born in the Millennium will reject Jesus as Savior. It’s incredible. Nevertheless, we read in the Revelation,

Rev 20:7  Now when the thousand years have expired, Satan will be released from his prison
Rev 20:8  and will go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle, whose number is as the sand of the sea.
Rev 20:9  They went up on the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city. And fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them.
Rev 20:10  The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
Rev 20:11  Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. And there was found no place for them.
Rev 20:12  And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books.
Rev 20:13  The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works.
Rev 20:14  Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
Rev 20:15  And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.

Perfect conditions on the earth… Utopia, as it were… Can reform, but not transform, the sinner.

Psa 146:10  The LORD shall reign forever – Your God, O Zion, to all generations. Praise the LORD!

Back to the present, but with a Kingdom perspective. The coming reign of the God of Jacob, of Zion, is assured. Not just for a thousand years, but “To infinity, and beyond.”

After the Millennium comes eternity. The apostle John wrote, “Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away… Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God” (Revelation 21:1-2).

Jesus promised you, “In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also” (John 14:2-3).

To which we with Hallelujah’s! respond, “There’s no place like home.”

In gods They Trust (Psalm 115)

In 1859, before a crowd of 25,000 people, Charles Blondin stepped out onto a tightrope strung across Niagara Falls. He was one of history’s most famous ropedancers and that day in June was a master performance. Not only did he walk the rope, he also ran on it, sat on it, lay down on it, and somersaulted along it. He carried out an old-timey camera on his back 200 feet over the span and snapped a picture of the crowd. He even took out a small stove so he could cook an omelet, lowering it to passengers on the famous Maid Of The Mist boat below.

If we saw David Copperfield or David Blaine doing it today, we’d assume it was some sort of camera trick. But, Charles Blondin was the real deal. You can look at photographs of him performing some of these feats, including carrying his manager Harry Colcord on his back from one side to another.

It’s reported that, on one occasion, after carrying Harry across the rope, Blondin “turned to a man in the crowd and asked him, ‘Do you think I could do that with you?’ ‘Of course,’ said the man. ‘I just saw you do it.’ ‘Well then,’ said Blondin, ‘Hop on and I’ll carry you across.’ ‘Not on your life,’ said the bystander.”

Psalm 115 is a song about trust. It compares the gods of this world to the God of heaven and confidently declares that Jehovah is not only trustworthy, but generous and caring and giving attention to you. Though many scholars feel that the song was written during a time of national distress, by the time the music ends, any singer would have their hearts filled to the brim with joy and confidence and excitement about what God was up to and what was still to come – that God was going to continue His gracious, extravagant work in their midst.

But the Psalm gives us this image: While God’s people sing of His greatness, outside there’s a crowd of unbelievers mocking God and His people. After all, how could an invisible God do anything?

How do we respond to a world that ridicules faith in the unseen? More importantly, how can we hang the weight of our lives, full of very real difficulties and obstacles on a God we cannot see? Psalm 115 not only gives us assurance, but sends us on our way with it rejoicing, so that the phrase ‘In God we trust’ isn’t just some tired slogan, but something we apply to the steps of our lives.

We begin in verse 1.

Psalm 115:1 – 1 Not to us, Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory because of your faithful love, because of your truth.

This song includes request for deliverance, excitement about God’s blessing in our lives and anticipation of our future eternity in heaven, but along the way we’re never to lose sight of the fact that it all comes from the Lord. He is the fount of all good. There’s nothing in us that merits what God graciously gives. It is He Who is Sovereign, it is He who deserves all glory.

We notice that they repeat that phase, “not to us.” Have you ever had someone say, “Thank you,” then when you say, “Oh, don’t mention it,” they stop you and look you in the eye and say, “No…thank you.” There’s a sincerity in this opening line. The singers truly want all glory to go to God. When a person gets saved, God does a work of conforming Christians to be like Jesus Christ, but we admit that there’s still a part of us that wants glory for ourselves. There’s a fundamental change that needs to happen in our minds. In fact, humans have been so ruined by sin that we need a new mind given to us – the mind of Christ. Right from the beginning of this moment of worship, the singers jettison any desire for glory and instead offer their hearts to the Lord alone.

The opening of the song also reminds us of God’s love and truth. These are not only aspects of who God is, they are demonstrations of His incredible generosity. It is by God’s mercy, His faithful love, that we are not consumed. It is by His revealed truth that we are set free from bondage to sin.

Some of you are contemplating retirement and what you’ll “do” once you’ve clocked out for the last time. We can’t fathom all the things God could be doing with His ‘time’ and power. What has He decided to do? He has decided to be God with us.

Psalm 115:2 – 2 Why should the nations say, “Where is their God?”

Sometimes the world asks this question as a taunt and an insult. Sometimes it asks in anger and frustration, like when people say, “If God exists, why is there suffering?”

From our perspective there are two ways to think about verse 2. One is that it’s a prayer to God, asking Him to make Himself known in the world. In Acts 4 the disciples pray that God would do great and dramatic things in their midst so that the world would know that Jesus is Messiah. But we can also see verse 2 as a rhetorical question. Any objective observer has to admit there is a God outside our universe. One who designs. One who intervenes. One who revealed Himself when He came in human flesh. “[God’s] invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made.” We can see the miraculous work of providence in every generation and every place throughout history.

Here is the simple answer to the question, though:

Psalm 115:3 – 3 Our God is in heaven and does whatever he pleases.

There is a sureness in this declaration. God is not just some sort of force. He’s a Person and He is in charge. No one can outmaneuver Him. No one can overthrow Him. No one can hide from Him. No one can lay a hand on Him or remove Him from His throne. He does whatever He pleases.

What does He please to do? Again, we consider all that God could be doing right now and then examine what He says brings Him pleasure. The Bible says it pleases God to interact with us. It pleases Him to deal with the problem of sin. It pleases Him to watch sinners repent. It pleases Him to adorn His people with salvation. It pleases Him to be with you. It pleases God to hold every atom of the cosmos together by His power, to raise up kingdoms and put down kingdoms, to change times and seasons in order to accomplish His unstoppable plan of grace in our lives and in this world. While the world mocks and ignores, this is what God does.

So now, let’s look for a moment at their gods.

Psalm 115:4-7 – 4 Their idols are silver and gold, made by human hands. 5 They have mouths but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see. 6 They have ears but cannot hear, noses, but cannot smell. 7 They have hands but cannot feel, feet, but cannot walk. They cannot make a sound with their throats.

Modern man may see himself as much more sophisticated than these ancient pagans who bowed down to statues of silver and gold, but the gods they worship today are just as powerless. Martin Lloyd-Jones wrote:

“A man’s god is that for which he lives, for which he is prepared to give his time, his energy, his money, that which stimulates him and rouses him, excites, and enthuses him.”

Today, the gods of man are often possessions or systems that make promises of security or a better world, yet they are just as powerless as a statue made out silver that tarnishes or gold that melts.

In 2013, the US government spent $2billion to build healthcare.gov, a website that promised a healthier future for anyone and everyone in America. Its performance at launch was so abysmal that only six people in the entire country were able to sign up on the first day. As a political idol, it was just like what’s being described in these verses. If your god can be stolen or conquered or crash or voted out of power, then what sort of god is that?

We can contrast the gods of this world with the God of the Bible through each point in these verses. Our God was not fashioned out of materials mined from the earth. He made creation from nothing. Our God does speak. He speaks life into existence. He speaks commands to His people. He speaks kindness to the undeserving. Our God sees everything. His eyes roam to and fro, with nothing hidden from His gaze. We’re told He never takes His eyes off of us at any moment. Our God also hears. He hears our prayers and our praises. He’s listening for us, even for our groanings. He hears cries for help and calls for justice. Hearing the cries of the needy, He brings comfort. Our God even smells! Our praises rise like incense to Him, bringing Him pleasure and the smoke of His wrath billows from His nostrils. His hand is mighty to save and is placed in loving care on each one of His people. His hands are open to receive us. With His feet He walks with us, lighting our way along the path. With His voice He comforts and supports, He roars in victory and with it He thunders His decrees. He speaks and it is done.

Psalm 115:8 – 8 Those who make them are just like them, as are all who trust in them.

Ultimately, those who serve some other god end up the same: Tarnished, vulnerable, dead and wasted. If you’re not a Christian you’re headed for this same end. Looking back, it’s easy to say there’s no difference between Ra and Baal, Zeus and Ganesh. But the truth is, there’s no difference between them and any modern system that you’re trying to hang the weight of your life upon, not when it comes to your eternity. No difference between Vishnu and what men blasphemously call the almighty dollar. If your God is not outside time and space, you’ve got a real problem. Because this life will soon be over and you are going to stand before your Creator and be judged.

Psalm 115:9-11 – 9 Israel, trust in the Lord! He is their help and shield. 10 House of Aaron, trust in the Lord! He is their help and shield. 11 You who fear the Lord, trust in the Lord! He is their help and shield.

James Montgomery Boice writes:

“If God tells us something once we should listen very carefully, because He is God. If He says something twice we should pay the most strict attention. How then if He repeats something three times? In that case, we should drop everything else we are doing, give our full attention to, study, ponder, memorize, meditate on and joyfully obey what God has said.”

Trust the Lord! In the Bible, to trust means that we are to boldly, confidently make God our refuge. To hang the weight of our lives on Him as Protector and Provider. To rely on His guidance for our courses and choices.

In Israel there were different levels of separation among God’s people that we see delineated here. You have the nation, the priests and then ‘God-fearers’ who weren’t ethnic Jews but had joined in with their assembly. And, under the law, there were distinct rules and privileges for each group.

Now, Jesus Christ has brought us into a new covenant. All those walls of separation and distinction have been broken down. Now we are, altogether, a family, a single generation of royal priests. It doesn’t matter if you work behind a pulpit or a pipe fitter. All have been unified in grace and purpose. Applying these verses, we are reminded that God is not simply to be acknowledged, but He is to be trusted. That He is the help we need for our nation, for our ministry, for our personal lives. And not only is He our help, He is our shield. In battle, it is the shield that sustains the blows, guarding the one behind it. Instead of you taking the impact from the sword or arrow, the shield does.

In How To Train Your Dragon, one of the Viking warriors is training young recruits in how to defend themselves against the attacks of their fire-breathing foes. He says, “Your most important piece of equipment is your shield. If you must make a choice between a sword or a shield, take the shield.”

With God as our help and shield, we don’t need to pay attention to the noise of the world. Whether it is mocking or threatening, we can persevere in confidence because our God is with us. And, as we saw in our study of Psalm 138, we need not be afraid of any foe, whether earthly or supernatural, because God is with us and for us and shields us with His limitless love and strength.

Psalm 115:12-13 – 12 The Lord remembers us and will bless us. He will bless the house of Israel; he will bless the house of Aaron; 13 he will bless those who fear the Lord— small and great alike.

God had given the nation of Israel covenant promises for physical blessings. He will not cancel out those promises. But to us different promises are made. When God speaks to us about the blessings He intends for our lives as Christians in the Church age, they aren’t for physical health and wealth. Rather, the promises are spiritual and eternal in nature. We learn in the New Testament that God blesses His people with spiritual growth and the development of spiritual fruit by which we bless others and build up the Church. We’re told that God’s promises to bless us with wisdom and increased faith and expanding joy and a greater capacity to serve others and endure hardship and bring honor to God. We also find that God’s blessings for us include a future plan for us to inherit the Kingdom, to see God, and receive heavenly rewards once this life comes to an end.

God’s heart has not changed. As He remembers Israel, He remembers us. Jesus promised He would never leave us or forsake us. Instead, He busies Himself in a constant effort to accomplish His unbreakable promises. And those promises will not only be kept to a certain few who seem significant or important from our way of thinking, they will be kept to all, both small and great alike.

Psalm 115:14-15 – 14 May the Lord add to your numbers, both yours and your children’s. 15 May you be blessed by the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.

Scholars tell us that the language used here indicates that God heaps blessings on His people. Piles of them. The Lord isn’t stingy or withholding. He’s extravagant in His gifts and kindness.

There’s an important contrast here: The Israelites were all too familiar with the gods of Canaan which demanded people burn their own children in sacrifice. The same thing happens so often today. People sacrificing children on the altar of convenience or career. But then we see the God of the Bible, who loves you and your children. Who invites your whole family to be brought together in a life of hopeful faith, filled with spiritual blessings. A God who lavishes love on a thousand generations. He’s not some sort of God who is only effective at harvest time or in certain geographical locations. He’s not only effective for four years at a time. He is always powerful, always King, always working.

Psalm 115:16 – 16 The heavens are the Lord’s, but the earth he has given to the human race.

As we trust God and go His way, He then trusts us to steward the world. He has given it to us as a gift that we might enjoy it and live in it and use it, but along with that we have a responsibility to tend it as God would. He has shared dominion with us, because He is generous. We should approach our relationship to the physical world in a Godly way, which means prioritizing compassion toward people, not being needlessly wasteful, and cherishing God’s creation.

Psalm 115:17-18 – 17 It is not the dead who praise the Lord, nor any of those descending into the silence of death. 18 But we will bless the Lord, both now and forever. Hallelujah!

This is not suggesting soul sleep or that there’s no worship in heaven (much the contrary). It’s simply saying that, for this life, once we die, we no longer offer God praise on the earth. The opportunities and responsibilities for worshipping God, giving Him glory, doing His work and spreading His word are for the living. And so, the song ends with a loud call of “hallelujah,” which means “Praise the Lord!” We’re to be like all the people involved in passing the olympic torch and keeping it aflame. We are to see what God has done for us and turn around and bless Him back. Of course, we cannot do for Him what He has done for us. But we can turn back and bless Him with loving, obedient, joyful hearts, full of praise and confidence.

Verse 17 gives us one more thing to think about: It’s a way for us to judge whether we’re spiritually dead or not. To be spiritually alive means we not only believe God and trust Him, but that we are praising Him, blessing Him, diverting the flow of our lives to bring Him glory. Are you on an ascending path, leading to heaven or a descending road, leading to death?

All around us there is difficulty, darkness, not to mention the jeers of the unbelieving world. We can still be sure God is good, that He is with us and that we can trust Him.

When Charles Blondin invited his manager, Harry Colcord onto his back for what seemed an impossible journey, he gave his manager the following instructions: “Look up, Harry.… you are no longer Colcord, you are Blondin. Until I clear this place be a part of me, mind, body, and soul. If I sway, sway with me. Do not attempt to do any balancing yourself.”

God invites us to rest securely in Him on this death-defying walk from shore to shore. He can do what no other god can. He can and will deliver us across. We want to be people who don’t simply watch with the crowd, but join Him in the fantastic, bringing Him glory through the offering of our lives. He’s ready to take us on and He can be trusted, both now and forever. Hallelujah!

The Bold And The Worshipful (Psalm 138)

Writers call them “time jumps.” It’s when the story they are telling jumps forward, or backward, in time.

The Christmas movie season is upon us. You will likely encounter a new or old version of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. You’ll jump with Ebenezer Scrooge to Christmas past, and to Christmas future. The things Scrooge witnesses in the past and future radically change his life in the present.

Psalm 138 seems to have been written by David at his coronation, on account of which he worships the LORD, who had made good His promise to him.

The psalm has time jumps within it:

There is a time jump to the future. In verses four and five we read, “All the kings of the earth shall praise You, O LORD, When they hear the words of Your mouth. Yes, they shall sing of the ways of the LORD, For great is the glory of the LORD.” I don’t think that happened during David’s reign. It hasn’t happened yet. It sounds like something that the Bible says will happen, in the Millennial Kingdom of God on the earth after Jesus’ Second Coming.

The psalm time jumps to the past. In verse three David spoke of a previous day “when I cried out, You answered me, And made me bold with strength in my soul.”

David chose to utilize time jumps to underscore what he would say in verse eight: “The LORD will perfect that which concerns me.”

God had begun a great work in David in the past; God was performing the work in the present; He would perfect it in the future.

Same with us! “He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).

When you receive Jesus Christ, God saves you.

Everyday after that, He works to sanctify you – to make you more-and-more like Jesus.

At the resurrection and rapture of the church, your salvation will be complete as you receive your glorified body.

I’ll organize my comments around two points: #1 Jesus Will Complete The Work He Has Begun In You Despite Supernatural Opposition, and #2 Jesus Will Complete The Work He Has Begun In You Despite Human Opposition.

#1 – Jesus Will Complete The Work He Has Begun In You Despite Supernatural Opposition (v1-3)

God’s great work of grace in changing us does not go unchallenged. We can expect opposition. And not just from other human beings. As Nick Fury said, “We learn that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously outgunned.”

We’re introduced to supernatural beings in the unseen realm in verse one.

Psa 138:1  A Psalm Of David. I will praise You with my whole heart; Before the gods I will sing praises to You.

The Hebrew word translated “gods” is elohim. Isn’t that the name of Almighty God? Turns out, “No,” it is not the name of Almighty God.

One resource says,

“The word elohim occurs more than 2500 times in the Hebrew Bible, with meanings ranging from “gods” in a general sense (as in Exodus 12:12, where it describes “the gods of Egypt”), to specific gods (e.g., First Kings 11:33, where it describes Chemosh, “the god of Moab”), to demons, seraphim, cherubim, and other supernatural beings, and even to the spirits of dead humans (e.g., Samuel in First Samuel 28:13). There are also frequent references to YHWH, the Almighty God of Israel.”

Satan, fallen angels, demons – these, too, are elohim. Any being who lives in the unseen realm is an elohim.

The Almighty God, the God of Israel, YHWH, is an elohim. But note: While YHWH is an elohim, no elohim is YHWH. They are created beings; subordinate beings. The Bible always makes it clear no other is like Him.

If you want more on this, check out our study in this series on Psalm 82.

Let’s return to verse one:

Psa 138:1  A Psalm Of David. I will praise You with my whole heart; Before the gods I will sing praises to You.

At his coronation, David’s heart was filled with praises, and this was just the song for the occasion.

Exactly who the elohim in the audience were is not specified. But since later in this song he refers to crying out, needing help, I think we can safely say that evil elohim were involved.

You’d expect interference against David and Israel. There are elohim at work behind the scenes of the nations of the world. Here are two references that bear this out:

The prophet, Daniel, was praying. The angel Gabriel was dispatched to give Daniel information about the Last Days. Upon arriving, Gabriel explained, “from the first day that you set your heart to understand, and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard… but the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days; and behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I had been left alone there with the kings of Persia” (Daniel 10:12-13). A supernatural being, an elohim, was a “prince” assigned to Persia, and he sought to interfere with God’s plans and purposes for Daniel, and for Israel.

In the Revelation of Jesus Christ, we read that “Satan’s throne” was in the city of Pergamum (2:13). It may be a reference to an altar to Zeus that was there. But I see no reason not to take it literally. Elohim were headquartered there.

Satan has principalities and powers, rulers of the darkness of this world, in key positions behind the scenes of the nations to interfere with God’s plan in general, and God’s plan specifically for you.

If you stop there, it’s terrifying. In a battle with sinister elohim, by ourselves we are “hopelessly, hilariously outgunned.”

But we are not by ourselves, are we? Not by a long shot. God the Holy Spirit dwells within us. Greater is He that is in us than the elohim against us.

Psa 138:2  I will worship toward Your holy temple, And praise Your name For Your lovingkindness and Your truth; For You have magnified Your word above all Your name.

The “Temple” wasn’t built in David’s lifetime. He was either referring to the Tabernacle, or time jumping to the future Temple.

The attribute of God that was especially on David’s heart when he penned this psalm under inspiration was “lovingkindness.” David mentioned it in connection with “truth.” God’s lovingkindness is a truth to be held despite any feelings to the contrary.

The LORD’s lovingkindness was just as true during the years of David’s exile as they were at his coronation.

All of God’s attributes are “truth” regardless my circumstances or experiences.

“You have magnified Your word above all Your name” needs a better translation. Derek Kidner writes, “The meaning of [this phrase] can only be that God has fulfilled His promise in a way that surpasses all that He has hitherto revealed of Himself.”

For a long time, more than a decade at least, God’s promise that David would be king seemed improbable, if not impossible. Yet here he was, despite all supernatural interference.

Does it seem strange that evil elohim would be in a heavenly audience hearing David sing? We get a glimpse of something like this in the beginning of the Book of Job. In the ISV, we read, “One day, divine beings presented themselves to the LORD, and Satan accompanied them” (1:6). Strange as it may be, there was Satan, in Heaven with other elohim.

Psa 138:3  In the day when I cried out, You answered me, And made me bold with strength in my soul.

David cried out, and God answered it by strengthening what we call the inner man. That strengthening of soul produced the boldness David needed in order to wait on the promises of God. Though he stumbled along the way, he never lost sight of the LORD’s lovingkindness.

The Bible indicates that Christians will one day rule and reign with Jesus on the earth. Right now, we seem more like David in exile, hunted down as fugitives by the malevolent supernatural beings in Satan‘s army. Pray that God grant to you strength of soul by his indwelling Holy Spirit. Be bold in believing His promises to you.

#2 – Jesus Will Complete The Work He Has Begun In You Despite Human Opposition (v4-8)

Our physical battleground isn’t in the unseen realm. It is at home, at work, out in the world at large. The world is currently held captive by the god of this world, Satan. Without the need for possession, he takes captive nonbelieving human beings, enlisting them to do his will to interfere in your life.

Some things defy explanation apart from supernatural interference. So many incredible, nonsensical, things are happening right now on account of COVID19. A California judge ordered San Diego to reopen strip clubs while the county carries on with its crackdown on churches. Don’t even try to figure out the logic.

There is something supernatural going on behind the scenes of a decision like that.

For the sake of argument, let’s say the governing authorities have no malice in targeting churches. Don’t you think that devils do have malice, and want to take advantage of this opportunity to close churches?

An early church father said, “Nothing ordinarily so repairs the soul, and makes a person better, as a good hope of things to come” (Chrysostom). David’s “good hope of things to come” began in verse four.

Psa 138:4  All the kings of the earth shall praise You, O LORD, When they hear the words of Your mouth.
Psa 138:5  Yes, they shall sing of the ways of the LORD, For great is the glory of the LORD.

That’s gotta be future. I can’t remember a time in human history when “all the kings of the earth” praised the LORD. Or when all of the earth heard the Word of God.

That time is coming. At the end of the Revelation, the apostle John wrote concerning the New Jerusalem, “And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it… And they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it (Revelation 21:24 & 26).

In Zechariah 14:16 we’re told, “And it shall come to pass that everyone who is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles.” This happens after the Great Tribulation, after the Second Coming of Jesus.

It’s reasonable to ask, “How does hope of the future help me now?” Hold that thought…

Psa 138:6  Though the LORD is on high, Yet He regards the lowly; But the proud He knows from afar.

The “lowly” are believers who are being opposed.

The “proud” is our opposition.

The “proud” seem on top, in power. Believers are oppressed – sometimes with no end in sight. David was no stranger to this kind of treatment:

His own family excluded him when the prophet Samuel came to their house to anoint the next king of Israel.

His brothers mocked him when David expressed shock that no one would accept the daily challenge of Goliath.

King Saul threw spears at David, then chased him, seeking his life.

All the while, David held to the hope of the future God had promised him.

The “LORD” “on high” condescends to involve Himself against those who oppose us. Think of it: Almighty God is for you.

The apostle Paul boldly said, “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:31-32).

Right after Paul said that, he rattled off quite a list of beings who are against us. What, then, gives us the victory now, not just in the future?

Psa 138:7  Though I walk in the midst of trouble, You will revive me; You will stretch out Your hand Against the wrath of my enemies, And Your right hand will save me.

The next time someone does asks, “How are you?”, tell them, “I walk in the midst of trouble.”

“I walk in the midst of trouble” could describe a believer pretty much any time. During times you might feel free from trouble, plans are being made against you by the ruler of this age’s accomplices.

“Revive.” It has a lot of possible meanings, including “preserved from the wrath of my enemies.” Your ultimate enemy was death. I say ‘was’ because death was defeated by Jesus as He died on the Cross, then rose from the dead. If you are in Christ, “to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

“To live is Christ” means, among other things, that everything He promises you is available. You have the Holy Spirit living in you, and you have every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies. All that you require to live out your life in godliness is yours.

I asked you to hold a question – “How does hope of the future help me now?” Hope in your future revives you. It breathes new life in you by the Holy Spirit.

“You will stretch out Your hand against the wrath of my enemies, And Your right hand will save me.”

Sorry lefties, but the “right hand,” in the Bible, is the power hand.

I like that I’m saved by God’s right hand, and that my enemies can easily be defeated by His left. It’s like He’s saying, “The LORD can beat my enemies with His right hand tied behind His back!”

Psa 138:8  The LORD will perfect that which concerns me; Your mercy, O LORD, endures forever; Do not forsake the works of Your hands.

If the LORD “will perfect that which concerns me,” why ask Him to “not forsake the work of His hands?”

Do you have a project that you started but have yet to finish? Maybe you have no time; or you ran out of money; or you simply lost interest it it.

You are a project that the LORD started but has yet to finish. He has all the time, and unlimited resources, for Project Gene. More importantly, He cannot, will not, lose interest in me.

Albert Barnes said,

He will complete what He has begun. He will not begin to interpose in my behalf, and then abandon me. He will not promise to save me, and then fail to fulfill his promise. He will not encourage me, and then cast me off. He will complete what He begins. He will not convert a soul, and then leave it to perish. “Grace will complete what grace begins.”

When David said, “don’t forsake me,” he was expressing a proper impatience for the LORD to accelerate His work in his life.

Truth is, progress in making us, in molding us, is often interrupted not by the LORD, but by us. Charles Ryrie said, “ A Christian of longer standing may not be spiritual not because he has had insufficient time, but during the years of his Christian life he has not allowed the Holy Spirit to control him.”

David would example this in his life. After he committed adultery with Bathsheba, and arranged for her husband to be killed, he made no spiritual progress.

He would say of that time, “When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away by my groaning all day long. My strength was exhausted as in a summer drought” (Psalm 32:3-4).

David repented, and David was revived. He experienced that the LORD’s mercy endures forever. It means He won’t quit. He won’t give up on us. He will finish what He has started.

Some of you may have experienced this. You were walking with Jesus, in the Word, in prayer, in fellowship. You fell away. For weeks… months… years… decades. The moment you repented, the LORD’s mercy was abundant.

Paul, Peter, and John were guys who jumped time in their writing:

Among the time jumps in Paul’s letters, he described the day that Jesus will, “Present [the church] to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27).

Peter jumped to the future when he wrote, “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up” (Second Peter 3:10).

John jumps in chapter four of the Revelation to show us the Great Tribulation, the Second Coming of Jesus, the Millennial Kingdom, and the New Jerusalem – and everything in between and after.

Peter does some time jumping to the past, talking about Noah and the global flood.

All of them apply their jumps to the present. Peter is a good example, saying, “what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness” (Second Peter 3:11).

Your hope in the future makes all the difference in your walk in the present. It revives.

We Tone The Night (Psalm 134)

Those of you who are old enough… Do you remember when you would go to a theater to watch a movie? Those were good times.

I especially liked the trailers. You know, the previews for upcoming movies. They preceded the movie, but that wasn’t always the case.
When movies were sent to theaters on film, the previews were added to the end of the reel; hence, trailers.

End credits are another story. They have gotten longer and longer over the years. Ten… Twelve… Sixteen minutes is not unusual. Why not leave? We are forced to watch them because the producers have added mid-credit and end-of-credit scenes.

Gang Boss… Gaffer… Grip… Wrangler… Best Boy. Who cares, beyond their moms? No one ever says, “Look – isn’t that the Gang Boss from Rogue One?” Instagram isn’t blowing up with Best Boy selfies.

These folks are absolutely essential to the movie. Without them behind the scenes, there would be no scenes.

Psalm 134 introduces us to some end-credit-like servants behind the scenes of the annual feasts. Look at verse one: “You servants of the LORD, Who by night stand in the house of the LORD!”

We will see that this special unseen night shift included workers and watchmen.

Can we see ourselves in this psalm? Sure.

In First Thessalonians 5:6 we read, “Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober.”
In the Revelation, Jesus told us, “And behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work” (22:12).

Don’t sleep; you’ve got the night shift and should watch and work, behind the scenes of the great drama unfolding, because the Lord is coming.

I’ll organize my comments around two points: #1 You Are The Lord’s Behind-the-Scenes Worker, and #2 You Are The Lord’s Behind-the-Scenes Watchman.

#1 – You Are The Lord’s Behind-the-Scenes Worker (v1-2)

Those of you who are old enough… Do you remember when you could go to a magical place called Disneyland? Those were good times.

Over 1500 workers were employed on the night shift to get the park ready for the next-day’s guests.

The Temple in Jerusalem required a lot of night shift workers. It’s hard to be totally accurate about exactly what went on overnight. Both Jewish and Gentile sources are spotty at best; and they sometimes disagree on details.

We don’t need to know exact details. We only need to realize that there was a lot to be done. Whether it was the Feast of Passover & Unleavened Bread, or Pentecost, or Tabernacles, Jerusalem would swell with pilgrims coming to the Temple for the prescribed days of those festivals. The numbers of pilgrims is hard to calculate. At its lowest it had to be tens of thousands.

Sometimes at a large gathering, e.g., a dinner, the host will recognize the kitchen staff, or others, who “made it all possible.” That is essentially what happens in verses one and two.

Psa 134:1  A Song of Ascents. Behold, bless the LORD, All you servants of the LORD, Who by night stand in the house of the LORD!

As the returning pilgrims say, adios, to Jerusalem, we say, au revoir to the Songs of Ascent – Psalms 120 through 134. These going-up-to-worship songs, Israel’s festival playlist, end fittingly in 134.

The pilgrims pause to recognize those “servants of the LORD, Who by night stand in the house of the LORD!”

In the Old Testament book of Second Chronicles, in chapter nine, some of the general duties of workers in the Temple are listed. Let me read you an edited passage:

The gatekeepers were assigned to the four directions: the east, west, north, and south… in this trusted office were four chief gatekeepers; they were Levites. And they had charge over the chambers and treasuries of the house of God. And they lodged all around the house of God because they had the responsibility, and they were in charge of opening it every morning… Now some of them were in charge of the serving vessels, for they brought them in and took them out by count. Some of them were appointed over the furnishings and over all the implements of the sanctuary, and over the fine flour and the wine and the oil and the incense and the spices. And some of the sons of the priests made the ointment of the spices. [Some] of the Levites… had the trusted office over the things that were baked in the pans. And some… were in charge of preparing the showbread for every Sabbath. [There were] the singers… Levites, who lodged in the chambers, and were free from other duties; for they were employed in that work day and night.

The “gatekeepers” were the watchmen we will discuss in our second point. Notice some of the additional duties: Treasury security guard, those charged with the vessels and implements, those who oversaw the furnishings, perfumers, and bakers. It isn’t an exhaustive list. There was plenty of additional work to do.

Let’s see if we can make a biblical application to the church. The Jews attended the annual feasts. There were seven altogether, but only three were required.

We know that all seven of the feasts pointed forward to Jesus:

Jesus was the final Passover lamb, the Lamb of God slain for the sins of the world. He died on the Cross exactly when the lambs were being slain in the Temple.
Passover included the Feast of Unleavened Bread. It pointed to Jesus’ sinless life (as leaven is a picture of sin in the Bible), making Him the perfect sacrifice for our sins.

• First Fruits pointed to Jesus’ resurrection as the first fruits of the righteous. Jesus was resurrected on this very day, which is one of the reasons that Paul refers to him in First Corinthians 15:20 as the “first fruits from the dead.”

• Pentecost occurred fifty days after the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened Bread and pointed to the great harvest of souls and the gift of the Holy Spirit for both Jew and Gentile, who would be brought into the kingdom of God during the Church Age. The Church was established on this day when God poured out His Holy Spirit and 3000 Jews responded to Peter’s great sermon and his first proclamation of the Gospel.

• Trumpets was the first of the fall feasts. Many believe this day points to the rapture of the church when Jesus will appear in the heavens as He comes for His bride, the church. The Rapture is always associated in Scripture with the blowing of a loud trumpet (First Thessalonians 4:13-18 & First Corinthians 15:52).

• The Day of Atonement points to the Second Coming of Jesus when He will return to earth. That will be the Day of Atonement for the Jewish remnant when they “look upon Him whom they have pierced,” repent of their sins, and receive Him as their Messiah.

• The Feast of Tabernacles (or Booths) points to the Lord’s promise that He will once again “tabernacle” with His people when He returns to reign over all the world.

When we meet on the first day of the week, following the custom of the early church, it be like celebrating all four feasts that were fulfilled, and the three that will be fulfilled.

When the Lord died on the Cross, one of the miracles that accompanied His accomplishment was that the veil in the Temple, that kept the Ark of the Covenant out of view, was torn from top-to-bottom.

It forever signified that access to God was immediate and for everyone through Jesus Christ. It communicated that everything preceding the veil was now done away with. All the sacrifices and ceremonies were fulfilled in Jesus.

The gathering of the church to celebrate Jesus requires behind-the-scenes work and workers. Let me ask you this – not to burden you, but to make a point. Can you name all of our Children’s Ministry workers? I can’t!!

Yet they have prepared all week to minister to children Jesus desires would come to Him.

Back to our psalm… Verse one mentions those who by night stand in the house of the Lord. The passage we heard from Chronicles specifically mentioned “singers… the Levites, who lodged in the chambers, and were free from other duties; for they were employed in that work day and night.”

As I mentioned, details are spotty. But from these two passages I think it safe to say that there was singing in the Temple all through the night, every night.

Why not? We know that the earthly Temple was patterned after the Temple in Heaven (Hebrews 8:5). In the Revelation, in Heaven, we read that there is constant worship singing.

Commentator Derek Kidner wrote, “The Temple was never left without… Levites, to… sing praises in it.”

Should we form choirs that sing 24/7 while we are not having services? It’d be hard to fill some slots.

Not necessary IF we obey the apostle Paul’s exhortation that we each, “[speak] to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:19). It is an example of what we mean when we say that everything is fulfilled in Jesus. The constant worship in the Temple is replaced by constant worship in our hearts.

Psa 134:2  Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, And bless the LORD.

A quick word regarding lifting your hands, and worship posture in general. A good rule to follow when you feel led to express worship in a more physical manner is this: Do not disturb. Will your movement disturb others, distracting them? Will it call attention to you, instead of to the Lord? In First Corinthians 14:32, in a passage about orderly worship, the apostle Paul said we can control ourselves; and we should, for the sake of others.

The bakers were baking for the LORD; the perfumers were perfuming for the LORD.

In the church, we are told, “And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ” (Colossians 3:23-24).

That’s great – until you start to think that what you are doing for the Lord is menial, or that it doesn’t matter. If it is service for the Lord, and it is done as unto Him, it cannot be menial, and it does matter.

In one of the great movie sequences of all time, Daniel Russo was given three tasks:

Wax car.
Paint fence.
Sand floor.

Mr. Miyagi gives him very explicit instructions about how to perform each task. “Wax on; wax off.” Daniel despairs, thinking what he is doing has no connection to karate.

Until Mr. Myagi takes him through the sequence. “Show me wax car… Show me paint fence… Show me sand floor.” The repetitive motions had become second-hand reactions and functioned as defensive blocks.

I think sometimes the Lord says to us, “Show Me clean toilet.” “Show Me wash feet.”

#2 – You Are The Lord’s Behind-the-Scenes Watchman (v3)

Somewhere during our study of the psalms we mentioned that many are antiphonal. Loosely defined, that means they are written so that the singers are responding to one another.

In Psalm 134, it seems verses one and two are the good-bye recognition of the pilgrims directed to the night shift. That makes verse three the response of those tireless, mostly anonymous workers.

Psa 134:3  The LORD who made heaven and earth Bless you from Zion!

As if they had said, “We will lift up our hands and bless the LORD; now go in peace, and may God shower down his blessings upon you!”

The “heavens” is the universe God created. In it is the earth upon which He placed mankind.

In all of that created universe, in all its splendor and wonder, on the earth… “Zion,” Jerusalem, is arguably the most important geography. It is the spiritual center. It is the place God chose to dwell among His people in the Ark of the Covenant, in the Holy of Holies, in the Temple.

All “blessing” comes from God and thus, in a sense, it comes from “Zion,” from Jerusalem.

Jesus died on the Cross at Calvary just outside of Jerusalem. He was buried; He rose from the dead there. When He comes again, in His Second Coming, it will be to Jerusalem. He will rule over the world on David’s throne in Jerusalem.

The future seven-year Great Tribulation is a time when God will be dealing especially with the Jews; and much of it will focus on Jerusalem and the Promised Land.

Let’s talk specifically about the night watchmen at the gates. We have the most agreed upon information about them. One reliable source, the Jewish Encyclopedia, says the following:

A strict watch over the Temple was maintained, the guard being composed of three priests and twenty-one Levites. The Levites kept guard as follows: One at each of the five gates of the mount entrances; one at each of the four corners within the mount enclosure; one at each of the five important gates of the courts; one at each of the four corners within the court; one at the Chamber of Sacrifice; one at the Chamber of Curtains; and one behind the Holy of Holies. The captain of the guard saw that every man was alert, chastising a priest if found asleep at his post, beating him with his staff, and sometimes even punishing him by burning his shirt upon him, as a warning to others (Midrash i. 1).

The info about shirt-burning comes to us through what is called midrash, which is ancient Jewish interpretation of the Scriptures.

The watchmen – they didn’t know when their captain might visit their posting. Other reliable sources explain that the napping watchman would puff-up his outer garment as a pillow to rest his head upon. Caught napping, his captain would burn his puffy-shirt.

Watching, staying awake, not slumbering, are all exhortations given to us as believers in the Church Age. We’re the watchmen, the watch-women, the watch-children.

Our Captain is Jesus. He could come to resurrect the dead believers of the Church Age, and to rapture we who are alive, at any moment.

If He needs to chastise me for slumbering, I know that Jesus only chastens those He loves, for our own good.

Commentators see a devotional insight in Psalm 134. They compare the night watches with afflictions, sufferings, troubles of all kind.

I came across a quote attributed to C.S. Lewis that is appropriate. “Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken.”

When you find yourself in a difficult night watch, be encouraged by Paul and Silas singing praises while in the disgusting, dismal, dreadful, dank, deep, dirty, dreary, dark, Philippian dungeon.

Transform your troubles into a sanctuary in which you bless the Lord.

Human history is a drama being played-out. It’s been called The Romance of Redemption. God’s love was spurned by our original parents. But they had no idea the length, the breadth, and the depth of His love. He would redeem them, restore them.

God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. The drama is one story, told in 66 books, that progressively reveals how God sent Jesus to woo us back to a relationship with Him.

There are a kind of end credits in the Bible. It’s the Book of Life. If you’re saved, your name is found written there.

If you die in your sins, without Jesus, your name won’t be found in the Book of Life. It will appear in other books, pertaining to the lost.

Rev 20:12 And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books.
Rev 20:15  And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.

The Lake of Fire, and an eternity of conscious suffering, need not be your end-of-credits scene.