WWUTT 1164 My Heart is Steadfast O God? (Psalms 108, 109)

You are always just a breath away from death. God will save us.

There's always going to be some sort of thing that will disrupt our lives, but God is still on His throne when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible commentary to help encourage your time in the

Word. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we feature New Testament Study, an Old Testament book on Thursday, and our

Q &A on Friday. Now here's your teacher, Pastor Gate. Thank you, Becky. Well, in our study of the

Psalms, we're picking up where we left off last week. That would put us in Psalm 108. If you want to open up your

Bible and join with me there, we just started Book 5. The Psalms are broken up into five books, and Book 5 began with Psalm 107, which we looked at last week.

The three Psalms we look at today, 108, 9, and 10 are all

David Psalms. In fact, this particular Psalm, 108, is made up of two previous

Psalms. We have Psalm 57 and Psalm 60, portions of those two

Psalms that are quoted here in Psalm 108. Psalm 57 was an individual lament, and Psalm 60 was a community lament.

But both of these two Psalms brought together to emphasize trusting in God in the midst of danger.

I think that's particularly relevant, considering some recent news. Let's look at Psalm 108, a song, a

Psalm of David. I will sing praises to you among the nations, for your steadfast love is great above the heavens.

Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens.

Let your glory be over all the earth, that your beloved ones may be delivered.

Give salvation by your right hand and answer me. God has promised in his holiness, with exaltation

I will divide up Shechem and portion out the valley of Succoth. Gilead is mine,

Manasseh is mine. Ephraim is my helmet, Judah my scepter.

Moab is my washbasin. Upon Edom I cast my shoe. Over Philistia I shout in triumph.

Who will bring me to the fortified city? Who will lead me to Edom? Have you not rejected us,

O God? You do not go out, O God, with our armies. O grant us help against the foe, for vain is the salvation of man.

With God we shall do valiantly. It is he who will tread down our foes.

That's a fairly short Psalm compared to some that we've looked at recently. And Psalm 109 that we get to next will even be a little bit longer than this one.

But let's go through Psalm 108 again. We begin with, my heart is steadfast,

O God. We really begin and end in the same way, putting all of our faith and trust and hope in the

Lord. Therefore we are steadfast. We are not moved, though enemies will come against us.

Though our way may seem uncertain, yet we remain in Christ and trusting in the

Lord for all things. At the end of the Psalm, verse 13, with God we shall do valiantly, for it is he who will tread down our foes.

So the trust is in the Lord from the first verse and the last. I will sing and make melody with all my being, trusting in the

Lord with all your heart, your soul, mind, and strength. As Jesus said, this is the first and greatest commandment.

So this is what is being even announced here with I will sing and make melody with all my being, worshiping

God with our whole selves. Romans 12, one, in view of God's mercies, present your bodies as a living sacrifice unto the

Lord. This is your spiritual act of worship. Verse two, we continue worship in song.

Awake, O harp and lyre. I will awake the dawn. This is as though the psalmist is saying,

I'm going to begin singing even before the sun comes up. So the dawn is not waking me up. I am waking up the day with the praises that I sing unto

God. I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples. I will sing praises to you among the nations, a testimony not just to Israel, but to all peoples of the goodness of God.

For your steadfast love is great above the heavens. Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.

And that's the portion of this particular psalm taken from Psalm 57, verses seven through 11.

I think you could add in verse five in there as well. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens. Let your glory be over all the earth.

And then starting with verse six through verse 13, this is taken from Psalm 108, but it's taking two songs and putting them together, kind of like a psalm mashup, to emphasize putting trust in the

Lord our God, even in the midst of the danger that may come upon us. In this particular case, it's the enemy of a foreign land.

But, you know, consider our modern context. As I said, this psalm may speak to us concerning recent news that we may have heard.

Think of pandemics and outbreaks and talk of disease and traveling is being ceased and things are so uncertain.

What's it going to look like 30 days from now? Am I going to get this illness? Is somebody I know going to get this illness?

How many people are going to die? You know, the panic is setting in. And so it can cause people to wonder, how bad is this really going to get?

We're looking different places for answers and not getting the answers that we're looking for because nobody knows the future.

Nobody knows how bad this thing could be. But look at verse 12. O grant us help against the foe, for vain is the salvation of man.

Now, the foe in this context, of course, is a nation or another city. But you consider for us, the foe might be a disease.

The foe could be a philosophy that is seized hold of a group of people. The foe may seriously be somebody who is causing great anxiety in our lives.

And it just seems like that person's heart's just never going to change. They're always going to be a problem for us. Maybe it's a group of people that is causing that for us, whatever it might happen to be.

We look to God for help and deliverance from those things that would press against us. Vain is the salvation of man.

Mankind cannot save us from our earthly woes. For a time, maybe the things that afflict us or that bother us or oppress us or just cause us anxiety.

For a time, those things may go away, but it's only a matter of time before something else begins to press in on us like that.

So the salvation that we look for in this life, whether it would be salvation through better health, salvation through more finances, a salvation by living somewhere else.

We might think of those things as salvation, but it's just vanity. You're just storing up things for yourself to make the situation better for you.

True salvation that we have is in Christ. It's in glorifying God. And by drawing near to God, he draws near to us and will lift us up from that pit and guarantee us an eternal inheritance with him in glory.

This is not vain because it is to God's glory. It's just one of the wonderful benefits and treasures to that relationship that we have with God that he has granted us eternal life.

He has granted us a place to live with him forever in his kingdom. That's not why we do it.

We glorify God for God. But as that wonderful treasure blessing of his grace, we have this guarantee of eternal life, the forgiveness of sins, peace with God through Jesus Christ, our

Lord. Vain is the salvation of man, but in God, our help against the foe is an eternal promise that we will live with him one day in a place where there is no disease, there is no famine, there is not going to be any evil or temptation or sin or anything else that would plague us anymore.

The greatest disease and plague that we're fighting every single day is the temptation of our own wicked hearts.

And yet even that will be taken away from us as we live in perfection and glory with our God forever in his kingdom in the place that he is preparing for us.

Jesus promised, I am going to prepare a place for you and I will come again to receive you unto myself.

And so we read in verse 5, Be exalted, O God, above the heavens. Let your glory be over all the earth that your beloved ones may be delivered.

Give salvation by your right hand and answer me. And then very briefly, these other verses in between here, verse 7,

God has promised in his holiness with exaltation I will divide up Shechem and portion out the valley of Sukkoth.

God is perfect. That's the statement being made there in declaring God's holiness.

And so as a perfect God, he can do as he wants, as he wishes, and we can trust what it is that he says.

With exaltation, I'll divide up Shechem and portion out the valley of Sukkoth. Gilead is mine.

Manasseh is mine. Ephraim is my helmet. One of the tribes of Israel. Judah, my scepter.

That's a declaration of royalty. And we know it was the tribe of Judah that the Christ would come from.

Moab is my wash basin. That's a Gentile city. Upon Edom I cast my shoe.

That's quite an insult that's being said there. Edom is the descendants.

They were the descendants of Esau, but they became enemies of Israel when they betrayed

Israel and turned them over to the hands of their enemies. And so then you have the book of Obadiah, which threatened the judgment of God upon the

Edomites. So here you have this declaration of God saying, I cast my shoe upon Edom. That was a grave insult to say something like that.

Over Philistia, the Philistines, I shout in triumph. They've already been conquered.

The Lord has declared victory over them. Who will bring me to the fortified city, being the city of God?

Who will lead me to Edom? Have you not rejected us, O God? You do not go out,

O God, with our armies. O grant us help against the foe. And this is a declaration of penitence, of humbling themselves before God, as we should all humble ourselves before God.

Is God with us? Humble yourself. Draw near to the Lord. He will be with you, and he will never leave you, nor forsake you.

Let's go to Psalm 109, to the choir master, a Psalm of David. Be not silent,

O God of my praise, for wicked and deceitful mouths are opened against me, speaking against me with lying tongues.

They encircle me with words of hate and attack me without cause. In return for my love, they accuse me, but I give myself to prayer, so they reward me evil for good and hatred for my love.

Appoint me a wicked man against him. Let an accuser stand at his right hand. When he has tried, let him come forth guilty.

Let his prayer be counted as sin. May his days be few. May another take his office.

May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow. May his children wander about and beg, seeking food far from the ruins they inhabit.

May the creditor seize all that he has. May strangers plunder the fruits of his toil.

Let there be none to extend kindness to him, nor any to pity his fatherless children.

May his posterity be cut off. May his name be blotted out in the second generation.

May the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the Lord. And let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.

Let them be before the Lord continually, that he may be cut off, the memory of them from the earth.

For he did not remember to show kindness, but pursued the poor and needy and the brokenhearted to put them to death.

He loved to curse. Let curses come upon him. He did not delight in blessing.

May it be far from him. He clothed himself with cursing as his coat.

May it soak into his body like water, like oil into his bones. May it be like a garment that he wraps around him, like a belt that he puts on every day.

May this be the reward of my accusers from the Lord, of those who speak evil against my life.

But you, O God, my Lord, deal on my behalf for your namesake.

Because of your steadfast love, it is good. Deliver me, for I am poor and needy, and my heart is stricken within me.

I am gone like a shadow at evening. I am shaken off like a locust. My knees are weak through fasting.

My body has become gaunt with no fat. I am an object of scorn to my accusers.

When they see me, they wag their heads. Help me, O Lord, my God. Save me according to your steadfast love.

Let them know that this is your hand. You, O Lord, have done it.

Let them curse, but you will bless. They arise and are put to shame.

But your servant will be glad. May my accusers be clothed with dishonor.

May they be wrapped in their own shame, as in a cloak. With my mouth,

I will give great thanks to the Lord. I will praise him in the midst of the throng, for he stands at the right hand of the needy one, to save him from those who condemn his soul to death.

There are some similarities between this psalm and Psalm 69. But the difference between the two is that in Psalm 69,

David knows that the reason why his enemies are afflicting him is because of punishment against his own sins.

In this particular psalm, he declares his innocence. In fact, he even showed love and kindness and affection to his enemies.

And how did they repay him? By treating him with evil. And so then

David says, appoint a wicked man against him. That's verse 6. Let an accuser stand at his right hand.

In the book of Deuteronomy, the Lord told Israel, do not think that the reason why you're getting this land, the promised land that they were receiving, do not think it's because you've done anything great or you are a great and holy people.

It's because of the wickedness of the people in the land that you are going into and are going to drive out.

Their wickedness has reached an apex, and now you are going to be the judgment of God upon them.

And then we would later see the Canaanization of Israel. After they went into Canaan and conquered the land, they settled in Canaan, and eventually the

Canaanite ways would be the ways that the Israelites themselves would adopt. So they experienced a

Canaanization of their own, which we read about in the book of Judges. They start worshiping false gods. Then God judges them by sending an enemy to oppress them.

They ask God for forgiveness, and they ask for deliverance, and he sends a judge to deliver them from this enemy.

And then that cycle just kind of repeats itself over and over and over again. So the Lord will use an enemy to judge wickedness.

And so that's what David is asking for here when he says, appoint a wicked man against him. Now, you might have recognized some similarities between this psalm,

Psalm 109, and the way that Judas treated Jesus. Jesus showed him kindness.

Judas betrayed him and treated him with evil. But it would seem kind of odd then to look at the rest of the psalm and think that Jesus would pray this against Judas.

Would Jesus really pray for wickedness to befall Judas? Well, in fact, in the

New Testament, Jesus did speak very harshly of Judas. He called him a devil in John 6.

In Mark 14 .21, he said, woe to the man who betrays the son of man, because it would be better for that guy if he had never even been born.

And then in John 19, when Jesus is standing before Pilate, Pilate says to Jesus, don't you know that I have the authority to either release you or crucify you?

And Jesus' response to him is pretty harsh. He says, you would have no authority over me at all.

Unless it had been given you from above. Therefore, he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.

That's quite a condemnation even of the Pharisees. So Jesus' statement to Pilate and then the statement that he makes about the

Pharisees. And he might say, well, wait a moment. Didn't Jesus say in Luke 23 .34

when he was hanging on the cross, didn't he pray, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. That was in regard to the

Roman soldiers, folks. That was not regarding the Pharisees. Jesus had said of them and had warned them that they were committing the unforgivable sin because they should have known better than anyone who

Jesus was, what he was doing. And yet they accused him of having a demon. And so he says, woe to them for they commit blasphemy against the

Holy Spirit of God. They should know what it is that's going on here. Is the sign of God from the son of God, but they don't know that.

And they're blind guides leading people astray. So as they were standing there shouting their insults at Jesus on the cross, it was not of them that Jesus said,

Father, forgive them. They know not what they do. It was of the Roman soldiers who were casting lots to divide up his garments.

They didn't know what they were doing. That's whom Jesus was asking for forgiveness. My friends,

Jesus is the judge. He is the great judge who is going to strike down the nations with the sword from his mouth.

You see it in Revelation chapter 19 that he is going to come and make war on the nations when he returns.

Jesus will spill blood at his second coming. And with harshness, he will destroy his enemies brutally, unlike any enemy has ever been struck down before.

So do not think it uncharacteristic of God to say something like appoint a wicked man against him, let an accuser stand at his right hand.

This is the word of God that we are reading. I think we need to be very careful when we will take a

Psalm like this and ascribe it to people who are bothering us. You need to be a little more humble in that particular approach.

But we certainly see in this that God will be avenged against his enemies and he will deliver us from ours.

We need to trust in him and not take matters into our own hands, but know that the

Lord is in control and he is sovereign. He is on his throne. He will judge from his throne.

Those that he separates out and puts on his left, he's going to cast into eternal hell. Those who are on his right, he will say enter the kingdom that has been prepared for you by my father from before the foundation of the world for you have done the will of my father who is in glory.

You have loved the least of these brothers of mine and have done so unto me.

And so keeping the word of Christ, demonstrating that from the heart we have been transformed by him and sealed with his

Holy Spirit. We will receive the gift of eternal life that he has promised to all those who endure to the end.

It is by the grace of God that we've been saved. It is by his grace that we stay saved. He will strike down his enemies and he will deliver up his children.

So trust in the Lord. No matter what's going on in the world today, no matter what's going on in your own personal life, trust in God.

He will deliver you. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that we do not lose heart with bad news that we hear that's going on in the world today.

But we continue to trust that you are on your throne. You reign. You do have the nations under your thumb and you will be exalted above all the earth.

May we not lose heart or fall into despair when we see things going in the world an unexpected way or even things in our own personal lives don't go the way that we had planned.

But we continue to trust in God for all things. For you forgive sins by faith in Christ alone who died on the cross for us and rose again from the grave.

We have nothing even to fear of death for Christ will raise us from the dead and seat us on high in glory with him.

Help that to be our hope and our faith as we turn our eyes toward Jesus. In his great name we pray.

Amen. Thank you for listening to When We Understand The Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes.

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