Sunday, June 16, 2024 Summer Session 3

Psalm 68 and Ephesians 4: Christ’s Ascension and the Spoils of Victory

Reigning our attention here, it sounds like you all made some great progress, and seeing as you spent so much time investing in looking at Psalm 68 and talking about the connection with Ephesians 4 and verse 8, I thought we'd start with the second point first.

And we're going to talk about the ascension of Christ to God, what that has to do with our salvation in Christ, our growing up into Christ, what is it, how is this important for us. So we're going to start in verses 8 -10, and then we're going to throw some light backwards on verse 7.

I think that'll be most helpful for our discussion here this morning. When we're thinking about Psalm 68, we find in verse 18 this statement, you have ascended on high, you have led captivity captive, you have received gifts among men, even from the rebellious, that the Lord God might dwell there.

If you had the opportunity to read the surrounding context, what would you say stands out? Is this a happy celebration time? Is there a whole lot of violence going on? The answer is yes to both. There's a great rejoicing in the expansive victory of God seen in his people as they utterly take out all of their enemies.

Did you notice that? When you read in verse 21 that God will wound the head of his enemies, the hairy scalp of the one who still goes on in his trespasses, the Lord said, I will bring back from Bashan, I will bring them back from the depths of the sea that your foot may crush them in blood, and the tongues of your dogs may have their portion from your enemies, you're suddenly reminded that you're in the Old Testament.

I thought this was the Psalms, this was the safe territory. Well, what goes on here? And why is Paul quoting verse 18 that is in the context of those verses? And he brings that verse, verse 18, into his discussion about church unity.

And we're reading about skulls getting crushed in Psalm 68. What in the world is going on here? So, I thought it was a very interesting thing, because I think for some people, they read the quotes in the New Testament by the apostles and by Jesus, and then they go back and they read the context in the Old, and they say, we don't know why they're quoting that, but you know, it's Jesus, so he gets to do that, or it's the apostles, they get to do that.

But, they're actually modeling for us a way of reading and interpreting the Scriptures. And we have to learn from the Savior how to read the Scriptures. And he taught his apostles, and that's how they display that by the power of the Spirit throughout the entirety of the New Testament.

So, let me go back to Psalm 68. Did anybody read a footnote, a study note, or get clued in to Psalm 68 and the meaning behind it from verse 1? It's awful tricky of me, I know. Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered.

Oh, VBS, let's go, right? Sing that with clapping. Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered. Of course, we don't sing the rest of the Psalm about skull crushing, but we start with that, and it's very rhythmic.

We like that song, but that phrase, let God arise, is liturgical, has a very special connotation.

And meaning.

In Numbers 10, verse 35, when it was time for the Ark of the Covenant to break camp, to strike the tents, time for God to be on the move, his throne on earth needs to be on the move, the priests, the Levites, were to give praise to God and say, let God arise.

And then the Ark of the Covenant would be on the move. All of the tents would be collapsed, and the people of Israel would move to the very next place. Now, remember, God had delivered them from Egypt, he brought them into the wilderness, he covenanted with them, made all kinds of promises to them, and said, here's how you're going to worship me.

And then they started traveling through the wilderness. And you know, one of the things that happened when they were going through the wilderness was that people didn't like them hanging around. Other nations said, you're a threat.

Remember, Balak's attempt to take down Israel was by using the prophet for hire, Balaam, to curse. And when that didn't work, then he infiltrated their ranks with sexual immorality. All these different types of attempts to take down Israel while they're tramping around in the wilderness on their way to the promised land.

But there was one person in particular that gets mentioned like 50-something times in the Old Testament as an example of God gave us victory. And it was King Og. Isn't that a great name for a king? Even better, he was a giant.

So Og is just the perfect name for a giant king, don't you think? I mean, I can't think of a better name. If I was going to name a giant king, I'd name him Og. His bed was 13 and a half feet long and six feet wide.

And he lived on the mountain of Bishan. He lived on the mountain of Bishan. And Bishan was renowned, as Lebanon was renowned for cedars, the mountain of Bishan was known for its oaks, the mighty oaks of Bishan.

And those became metaphorical for the giants who lived in Bishan. But you know what? God gave the victory to Israel over those giants, which makes it even more ludicrous that the spies would come back from Canaan and say, oh no, they're too big for us.

Hey, what about Og of Bishan? Didn't you take down Og of Bishan? How many times does he get mentioned? You can do a word search on him when you get home. Bishan is mentioned all over the place. It's evidence that God made a covenant with his servant Israel and gave Israel the victory.

What's proof positive that Israel was his chosen servant to have victory amongst the nations? Well, exhibit A, Bishan. Whoever thought that they could take out Og of Bishan, but God's servant Israel did.

Proof positive. And that's why this psalm is so full of joy about the skull crushing, because they took down the enemies of all these nations who were going to eliminate them and eradicate.

Them.

But look, Israel, the servant of God, is leading all of these captives in their wake. Look how victorious they are. And of course, the parade that they're enjoying is the one where the Ark of the Covenant, rise up, oh Lord.

Oh, here goes the Ark of the Covenant here, and it goes over here, then it goes over here, and all the way through, victory, victory, victory, victory, victory. This was a psalm that was sung on Pentecost, at the culmination of the Feast of Weeks, and trumpets are blowing.

They would sing this psalm at Pentecost. Jesus Christ himself being the Ark of the Covenant, in the new covenant, bearing in himself the covenant, has ascended up to the mountain of all mountains, which you read about in Psalm 68, the mountain above all the other mountains, the mountain that all the other mountains are jealous of.

And who did he send at Pentecost? The Holy Spirit, correct? The Holy Spirit. And who is Paul talking about in Ephesians 4? The gift of the Holy Spirit to the church, okay? So, this is the way in which connections are being made.

Christ is the Ark of the Covenant, ascending up to the mountain, the peak above all peaks, leading the captives into his generous spoils of victory, graced to us by the Holy Spirit. So, in the old covenant, Israel, the confirmation of the old covenant was that they brought, they made captives of many nations.

The confirmation of the new covenant in Jesus Christ is that he makes captives of many nations. I turn your Bibles to 2 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians chapter 2. And in 2 Corinthians chapter 2, after talking about travel plans and how things have been going in the gospel preaching to the nations, in verses 12 and 13, we come to verse 14 of 2 Corinthians 2, where Paul writes, Now thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of his knowledge in every place.

For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life.

And who is sufficient for these things? For we are not, as so many, peddling the word of God, but as of sincerity, as from God we speak in the sight of God in Christ. When Paul says, he's always leading us in triumph in Christ, he's referring to that well-known picture of the Roman emperors coming back in victory over their enemies, and in the great parade filled with fragrant offerings being sent up, there are captives in the wake.

Some of the captives are heading to execution. Some of the captives are being brought in to be made sons of the emperor who are going to help him rule his empire. And so both types of captives are in the parade, and for some of them, they're smelling the smell of death.

I'm heading to my execution. The others are smelling the smell and saying, I'm the son of the emperor. So Paul says, wherever we go, we go in triumph, and we're preaching this good news of the kingdom.

Now to some people, they hate this news. This sounds awful that Jesus of Nazareth is king of kings, but to others who are being saved, this is the best news I've ever heard in my life. So when we read that Christ is leading captivity captive, the term captivity is being used to describe the group of captives, like the term the circumcision is used to describe the group of the circumcised.

So he's leading this whole host captive, and it's a sign of his victory. And Christians are to count themselves in among the captives of Christ, or as Paul likes to put it, the prisoner of the Lord. Verse 1 of chapter 4, right?

Verse 1 of chapter 4, he calls himself the prisoner of the Lord. So Paul is clearly connecting the ascension of Jesus Christ to this giving of gifts, that to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift, and he said, how is that connected?

Because of Christ's ascension. And Jesus said, it's better if I go away from you, because I'm going to send to you another comforter, and it's good that I will go to the Father, and then we will send that promised gift from the Father to you.

Remember that Jesus said, go to all the nations and wait in Jerusalem until the Spirit comes. So the going has to be preceded by the waiting on the power of God to do that work, which is, of course, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the sign of the new covenant.

Now you may have noticed that in Psalm 68, 18, that the servant of God, being Israel, received gifts from men, all the spoils of war coming in as they conquer, as they conquer, as they conquer. But Paul takes up that language and rightly interprets the servant of God in the new covenant as Christ, and notice that he says that he gives gifts to men.

Do you see that change in the quotation from the old to the new? This makes perfect sense for royalty, that the spoils of victory are received by the king for the express purpose of handing it out to his own.

We see this pattern all the way back to Genesis chapter 14, where Abram goes to war against Chedder-Laramore and the northern coalition that came down and did battle against Sodom, Gomorrah, Abimezeb, Oim, and Zoar, and took a lot captive along with all the people and all the spoils of war, and Abram goes and conquers with his buddies, with his partners.

They win the battle. He makes sure that those with him get their share. He gives the tithe to Melchizedek, priest of God Most High, in the city of Salem, or in the Hebrew, Ereishalom, Jerusalem. He gives that tithe to the priest of God Most High.

It doesn't keep anything for himself. Abram's the conquering one. He receives all the spoils for the express purpose of giving it all away. We also see this pattern with David. When David was fighting against the opponents of his people, and he would go and conquer, he would receive the spoils from those he conquered for the express purpose of giving it away to those who were with him, his men who were faithful to him.

Of course, we remember that in Isaiah 53, verse 12, speaking of our suffering servant, that he divides the spoil. I think a great illustration of this in history is King Alfred the Great. King Alfred the Great was a Christian who was stalwart against the pagan influx of the Danes or the Norsemen, the Vikings, that came into Great Britain.

King Alfred was the King of Wessex. It was his descendants that united all of the different kingdoms into the United Kingdom or Great Britain. But he was a Christian, and amongst the many things that he did, he was known as the ring-giver.

All the kings were understood as ring-givers, because they were to always give out the spoils very generously to all of those who sat at their table. The greatest of all the Viking opponents that Alfred had to face, he had to fight him several times, he lost to him many times, overcome.

King Alfred was out in the wilderness, about lost his kingdom, but he finally came back and won the day against this Viking general. And in the terms of surrender, he insisted that this man be baptized as a Christian.

That was not uncommon in that day. And he brought this Viking chieftain to his table, and he feasted this man for seven days, and all those with him. And they did their stories, and they spoke of Christ, and they were generous to this enemy of theirs, whom they had conquered, and they brought him to baptism.

And that man walked away and never warred against the Christians after that. In this, Alfred took in all the spoils and then just gave it away. And that's how a king operates. And that's what we have here.

Jesus Christ is the Ascended One, he is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, he receives everything, he's the heir of all things, all authority in heaven and on earth was given to Christ in his resurrection from the dead.

And what does he give to us? He gives us all this grace by his Holy Spirit, that we would do the work that he has called us to do, which is nothing less than proclaiming his kingship to all the earth.

So I think that this is why Paul thinks of Psalm 68. He's thinking of the proof positive of God's special pleasure upon Israel was their conquering of everybody, especially Og of Bashan. And of course, in Christ, who was our King, the servant of God, fulfilling in a satisfying way the Old Covenant, he comes forth and he has conquered even that great enemy, death.

And he gives us life. And it's a life that unifies and grows and expands. And so this is where Paul is looking to the ascension of Jesus Christ and connects very carefully in verses 9 and 10 that his ascension necessarily means that he had come down and died in our place and was raised from the dead.

So he's saying, don't think of the ascension of Jesus Christ without thinking of the entire story of the gospel, taking all of that into account. Now, when we think about the measure of Christ's gift in verse 7, Paul has just talked about.

Unity, Maturity, and Diversity in the Gifts of Christ

Unity.

There's a sevenfold exhortation in verses 1 through 3 and a sevenfold oneness in verses 4 through 6. And all of this oneness could possibly swing the pendulum into a situation where we would think that we can abdicate personal significance.

Well, if it's all one, then there's no I in team, so I can abdicate my responsibility. In the emphasis on oneness, there's perhaps the opportunity for someone to say, well, it's not really significant to think of salvation in an individual personal way or to think about serving an individual personal way or growing in an individual personal way.

And so verse 7 starts off with this phrase, but to each one of us, right? It has the force of each and every one of us. You see how the individual is thus highlighted without any loss to the unity of the whole.

It's important that we begin to talk about this and the individual way to which to each of us, Christ has given us grace according to his measure. His measure, not one of our measurements, but according to his measure.

Now, what do we often say to children, especially our own children, who squabble about gifts given, about good gifts given? The children look around and say, well, she gets this and I only have this. And the son says, well, he gets to go there and I can't go.

And the children begin to compare themselves amongst themselves about all these good gifts that were given. They begin to squabble and fight, right? Ruins birthdays and Christmas and all the rest. What do we say to them when they begin to squabble about good gifts given?

We say, you need to mature. We say to them, you need to grow up. We say, you need to understand and appreciate the good gifts that you've been given, right? So after we speak of unity, now it's time to talk about maturity and it takes maturity to recognize that not everybody is gifted in the exact same way.

Not everybody is given the exact same measure of Christ's gift, even though we're all saved the same way, saved by the same Savior, welcomed to the Father in the same fashion. We do not all have the same gifts.

And that doesn't mean, therefore, we begin to squabble and fight and have disunity. So, Paul does not want us to our individual responsibility and accountableness before.

God.

We still need to walk worthy of the calling with which we have been called. He doesn't want that to be lost in this idea of oneness to where, oh, well, I'm not personally significant at all, okay? Or get the idea that if so-and-so has more than I do, then something's wrong, right?

So, he says, but to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift, according to Christ's gift. And so, we have the opportunity here to reclaim a word. We have to reclaim the word diversity, right?

This word, it's as gross as it is sad that the term diversity has been reduced to a socio-rhetorical device that enshrines racism and sanctifies sexual abomination. When we look at the text, we have the same God, the same grace, the same Savior, verses one through six, different giftings, different giftings.

The grace is measured out according to Christ's desire.

He's the king.

He gets to decide who gets what. And every time somebody gets something different from me, I rejoice with those who rejoice. Stand up and applaud. What a good gift from a good king to give that person those abilities and those talents and those giftings and those opportunities.

Praise God, right? There's no need for any kind of squabbling, is there? Because we're focused on the goodness of the king. How often in the parables that Jesus tells, is there a diversity which causes consternation?

The master hands out gifts at different levels and different amounts. Sometimes he gives the same wages for different hours worked. And there's squabbling and there's fighting. The disciples figured out pretty early that some of them were more gifted than others.

Some of them got more time with Jesus than others. And they began to fight for who would have the most privileged positions in the kingdom, didn't they? All this squabbling. Where do those fights come from?

Where does that warring come from? It comes from this immaturity. And Paul is outflanking that by putting the attention on the ascended glory of Jesus Christ. Not all disciples, not all the apostles, not all the saints are gifted, equipped the same.

1 Corinthians 12 tells us that. You can read that on your own time. But I want to look at two different passages to kind of close out our thinking about the measure of Christ's gift, how his aim is to mature us and to grow us for the sake of the.

Whole body.

That's the context of Ephesians 4, verses 7 through 16. But it's in the shadow of unity, it's in the shadow of unity. So let's think about this together. So the first passage is 1 Peter, 1 Peter chapter 4, verses 10 and 11.

Now, after speaking about unity, surprise, surprise, in verses 8 and 9, Peter then jumps into the diversity of gifts and the purpose of those gifts, 1 Peter 4, verse 10. As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.

If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God. If anyone ministers, let them do it as with the ability which God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever.

Amen.

So, 1 Peter chapter 4, verses 8 through 11, is like Ephesians 4 in miniature, okay? Notice that after saying, love one another, be hospitable to one another, it says now we have different gifts, don't we?

But remember that the gifts that you have are for one another and to be done by the power and the grace of God himself, because after all, Jesus gets all the glory. You see how it all comes together? If you find yourself in a situation where you are gifted and you are endowed with a special gift from the Lord to serve and to be a blessing to others, either in your family and your community, but especially as we're thinking about unity in the church, okay?

You have a gift to serve the church. The more focus you have on giving all glory and honor to Christ, the less you'll find yourself in any kind of conflict, right? Either in terms of, well, so-and-so gets more recognition, or so-and-so is not as talented as I am, or this is my territory where I serve and nobody should ever get in my way, right?

Because that's where a lot of the disunity comes in the church. But with maturity, there's going to be unity. And the last passage is Acts 2, verses 30 through 33. And again, there's a much longer version of this in 1 Corinthians 12 of what Peter was talking about.

There's our last passage to consider, it's Acts 2, verses 30 through 33, focusing in on the gift of the Holy Spirit connected to the ascension of Jesus Christ as the satisfying fulfillment of the promises of the Old Testament, all rolled up into a wonderful hermeneutical burrito right here in Acts 2, verses 30 through 33.

I love burritos, they're so efficient. After quoting from David in the Psalms about messianic themes, Peter says, verse 30, "...therefore being a prophet," this is talking about David, the king, "...therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his body, according to the flesh, he would raise up the Christ, the Messiah, to sit on his throne.".

So David knowing that God had said to him, I'm going to give you, Christ is going to come from your descendants and he's going to sit on your throne. So Peter says David knew that because he was a prophet.

Verse 31, "...he foreseeing this spoke concerning the resurrection of the Christ, that his soul was not left in Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption.". So David prophesied of the resurrection in the Psalms because he knew that God would raise up his descendant, you know, Jesus is the son of David.

So David knew that, he was a prophet, and he prophesied of the resurrection of Jesus. And this is in connection with Jesus being the descendant of David that sits upon David's.

Throne.

Okay, verse 32, "...this Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses.". Verse 33,. "...therefore being exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he poured out this which you now see and hear.".

David himself did not ascend to the heavens, but he says himself, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, shall I make your enemies your footstool. Meaning what? God promised David, your descendant will sit on your throne.

Therefore David prophesied of the resurrection of Jesus, Jesus was raised from the dead, and he ascended to the right hand of the Father, thus fulfilling God's promise to David that his descendant would sit on David's throne.

There's the fulfillment. And this includes the sending forth of the Holy Spirit to all who believe in him, to all who believe in Christ, that they may declare this same good news all over the earth. Okay, we'll leave it there.

Our plan is to continue through chapter 4 of Ephesians, verses 7 through 16, and continue down our acronym for maturity next week. Let me close this with a word of prayer. Father, we thank you for the time that you've given to us in your word.

I pray that it has been encouraging, that you would fill us with your hope, and help us to trust in you as we go about the tasks that you have not only commanded us, but equipped us to do. We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.