Book of Psalms - Psa. 9, Vs. 1-20 (12/04/2022)

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Park Meadows Church Online. This is

Dave Huber, and we are broadcasting to you live from Mahea and also from Corsicana.

We have shut the church down for the weekend just because we have had a lot of people who are sick.

So the prayer requests are long. Lots of prayer requests. Lots of David Mitchell's family is sick.

My wife included. Grandbabies, some of my kids, some of Ben's kids, some of Jenny's kids,

Matt's kid. It's just lots of stuff going around. So we'll make sure when we do prayer requests a little bit later that we'll add all of them to the list.

But we're going to do Sunday school here. And and then

David will join us a little bit later for main service. So if you would.

Good morning. Yeah, it's OK. I'm refusing to participate. Right. Thanks for for saying that, though,

Tom. Yes, we could use some perfect healing. Since I'm online,

I'll actually be able to see the chat while we go, which is kind of fun. So, yeah, we we

I'll be drinking some medicine type stuff.

It's really just a ton of vitamin C. Just drinking my my Kool -Aid while I'm doing

Sunday school this morning. But Katie is joining us from being sick in bed.

Glad you're on here, babe. And yeah, it's it's never fun when we got to cancel the gathering, but we don't truly cancel it because we get to be online with each other, which is a huge blessing.

This technology is, I guess, both a blessing and a curse. Right. Because technology can can have a bad side to it.

This is the good side of technology. So today we're going to get into Psalm chapter nine.

We've just kind of been going through all the Psalms and we've been trying to knock out one chapter a week. Doesn't always happen that way.

May not happen that way this time because it's a little bit longer. It's about 20 verses long and we'll be getting into a totally different kind of Psalm here, because what we've we've looked at in the past is we've seen penitentiary

Psalms. We've seen Psalms of prayer and of regret almost from David.

And this time we see him in a Psalm of victory, which is cool.

We've seen a few of the Psalms where he goes from a low place to a high place, ending up in a place of victory, coming out of a place of defeat.

And this one is really neat because this one just kind of starts from the place of victory.

And so what we're going to see is we're going to see David praising the Lord for just his deliverance.

And let's go let's go ahead and get into it. We'll start with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you for this day and thank you for everyone who's able to join us today.

We just ask that you help us to learn a lot from the Psalms and help us to apply them to our lives.

Help us to model our own prayer life after David's, because he's great at it.

And we just ask that we will consider the words that you give to us today and just help us to make any changes in our lives required to more closely match your word.

It's in Jesus name we ask these things. Amen. OK, so we're going to start here in Psalm chapter nine and there's a little title.

We like to kind of go through the title and do a little bit of a word study in the title first. So it says to the chief musician upon Methloven, a

Psalm of David. Now, Methloven, if you do a word study on it, at its root, it means death.

Now, we don't know what a Methloven is, but we're supposed to play the Psalm upon it. Some say it's an ancient instrument.

Others say it's a type of hymn. Apparently, there's just been a lot of speculation about this word

Methloven. And I'm seeing a recurring theme in the Psalms. There are quite a few of these ancient words that no one really knows what they mean.

But David certainly did. And when you study it enough, you find out that even though the word means death, it's supposed to denote a tone of victory.

So think of it kind of like this, as if when the Lord defeats your enemy. Right. When the enemy is dead, that is victory.

Right. That's victory for us and the Lord when the enemy has been vanquished.

So that's how we want to read through this Psalm. Read through it as if the enemy has been defeated and as if we have victory.

OK, the battle is won. Now, I do think this is very interesting placement for this

Psalm, because in chapter six, we see David very, very penitential.

Right. It's the first of the penitential Psalms. He's coming from a place of repentance and asking the

Lord to kind of restore his relationship with him. And chapter seven.

Oh, and well, keep in mind, when he asked the Lord to to restore that relationship, one of the most striking things was that he didn't ask

God not to rebuke him or not to chasten him. He just asked him to do it out of love for him.

So there is a certain acceptance of the judgment of the Lord there. Right.

Like he wanted to be judged by the Lord or to be to be corrected by the

Lord or even rebuked. But he wanted it to be done. So from his position of I'm a child of the king, he loves me.

I would rather be corrected by my daddy than somebody else. Right. And so that was where we saw

David in chapter six and chapter seven. He brings his battle to God. So now the relationship has been restored.

And now he's going to he's going to go and win his battles. But he's going to do so by bringing the enemy in and letting the enemy fight

God instead of him. He makes the battle very personal to the Lord in order to stir up God in his judgment.

And after some waiting, David does see God in his mind's eye, so to speak.

He sees him return to his throne of judgment. So in chapter eight, we see this is where we were last weekend.

We see David in utter amazement, realizing that his worth, much like ours, was nothing until God made it something.

Right. But because of what God has done, our value surpasses all of creation.

God, whose glory cannot be contained in 92 billion light years in every direction by the known universe.

He sacrificed everything that he had for us because of him, even though our our value was nothing apart from him because of him.

It's everything and more. Right. And it's infinite and growing. Our value is infinitely growing to the

Lord. And that's just a mind boggling thought. But this infinite God who can't be contained by the universe when he sacrifices everything.

Think of what everything means to an infinite God. He sacrificed everything for us.

So our value isn't just surpassing the known universe, which is 92 or actually last week was 92 billion light years in every direction.

This week it's bigger because it's ever expanding. Our value is growing beyond that.

It's pretty cool. So after that realization, what do we have now? We have a song of victory and a song of praise.

How appropriate is that? Right. That's what that is, what chapter nine is all about. And what can we do but praise him for it?

So let's get into the first part of this psalm. It says, I will praise the

Lord with my whole heart. I will show forth all my marvelous works.

Let me ask you a question. What does it take to do anything? And you can put it in the chat, by the way, since I'm able to see the chat.

Feel free. Those of you all are joining us. Answer the question in the chat. What does it take to do anything with our whole heart?

That gives me a moment to take a drink, which is important. What does it take?

Just sit for a moment. Think. What does it take to do anything with our whole heart?

We give you the answer. It takes a singular focus. A precisely directed energy.

Like putting blinders on and walking only toward what you can see. The word for all in this verse is kol, which means the whole, totality, everything.

So when David says, I will praise the O Lord with my whole heart, he means with every last piece of his heart, he's going to praise the

Lord. Now look at this next part. I will show forth all thy marvelous works.

Okay. So the word for heart, I meant to say this too. The word for heart, when

David says he's going to use his whole heart, that word means like the innermost parts, like what's in the midst of a man.

It encompasses everything that is inside him, right? His inner parts.

It's the kind of the visceral part of man, the physical part of man, his heart. It means that.

It specifically means his heart, his soul, even his mind. Okay. So when

David uses this word for heart, it's encompassing his heart, his soul, and his mind.

As if every conscious thought is of praise to the Lord. I will praise the

O Lord with my whole heart. Now the next part is interesting because we're going to see one of the same words pop up.

It's going to be the word for whole. It's going to pop up again. I will show forth all thy marvelous works.

Now show means he will count or take account of. Like a scribe would do with all historical facts.

So if a scribe is taking down all the facts, he's going to write down every single fact that can be written down.

David is promising to take count of all of God's marvelous works.

And in case you're wondering what all means, that's the word, the same word he used for describing how much of his heart he's going to praise him with.

It's the word coal. So when he says he's going to take count of all God's marvelous works, it means he is going to take count of the totality of God's works.

The word all in the original is the exact same word. Okay. So David is saying he will,

I guess he's saying he will, but really you and I know he will attempt to number every marvelous work of the

Lord. So let me ask you this. Okay, that's good,

Brian. I do not see how that is possible in our own flesh. And you're so right,

David. It is actually impossible in our own flesh, which we'll see here in a minute.

Yeah. So we've got to turn away from all other things in order for this to happen, not just to praise with our whole heart, but then to begin to take account for every single thing that the

Lord has done, every marvelous work he has done. How much effort do you think that would take to literally count every single good thing and every single marvelous thing that God has ever done and ever will do, all the totality of all his works?

It would take a supernatural strength to accomplish. It would take every effort you have, and you still wouldn't be able to do it.

But in order to commit yourself to that kind of undertaking, you have to be willing to use your whole heart, your whole mind, your whole soul, every inner part of your being and all your strength.

Does that sound familiar? Luke 10, 27, love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself.

Right. So that's it's reminiscent of what we're going to learn later in the

New Testament. This is an Old Testament look at the same concept. So the way in which we're told to love

God in the New Testament is the way in which David praises him in the Old Testament with his whole heart, his whole mind, his whole soul, and his whole strength.

Let's go to verse two now. Psalm chapter nine, verse two.

I will be glad and rejoice in thee. There it is,

Brian. You said, I do not see how that is possible in our own flesh. Well, look at how he's doing it.

I will be glad and rejoice in thee. He's not going to do it within his own flesh. He's going to be doing it within the spirit of the

Lord. I will sing praise to thy name. O thou most high.

Notice how happy he is. The feeling here is one of joy and the importance of that cannot be understated because he has started so many of his psalms from a low place, from a place of despair, from a place of almost hopelessness.

And then he's reminded of his position with God and his righteousness that God has placed on him.

He doesn't start this psalm this way. He is in a very happy place. And it's so important for us to remember this when we go praising the

Lord because joy is a fruit of the spirit. And if we're going to praise the

Lord, if we're going to be glad and rejoice in him, in the spirit, we should be displaying such fruit.

Some of these other psalms show David coming out of the place of the flesh and into the place of the spirit.

Here he's already in the spirit. It's something that we should be cultivating in our life.

We should be cultivating joy. We shouldn't come to the Lord and try to praise him in sadness.

We should praise him in gladness. And if we lack that joy in our lives, we are not tilling the garden of our own heart.

We are coming to him maybe from the place of the flesh, which is okay to do too, by the way.

Don't get me wrong. It's never wrong to come to Jesus in whatever state you are. Just like David shows he comes to Jesus in the flesh, it's okay for us to come to him feeling fleshly and asking him to cleanse us.

But if we're going to come to a place of praise, how much greater is praise when we do it in lightness of heart instead of in heaviness of spirit?

When we come to the Lord and we praise him, it's okay to do both. David makes it a point to make sure that his praise comes from joy though.

So why does he do that? Well, that's the natural state of the new man. The natural state of the new man is joyfulness.

That's where we're supposed to reside all the time. So if we're not there, our goal certainly should be able to get there.

We should be trying to get to the place of joyfulness if we're not already there.

Notice that that's what he says, I will be glad and rejoice in thee. So maybe he doesn't even feel that way himself.

Maybe he doesn't currently feel like he's joyful, but he's going to make sure he is in that place as he begins to praise the

Lord and sing about his name. So that's so important.

The Psalms are considered music. These are musical verses, which means it's often accompanied by music.

The mafleben is probably a musical instrument. I would guess that it's a musical instrument of some sort.

Many of the other Psalms start by telling us what musical instrument to play with the song.

That's because music is a powerful force, especially in our minds.

We use it to express our feelings when we make music, when we write songs.

Some of us have tried to write songs. Some of us are terrible at it, but you may have tried to write a song.

Maybe you just sing your thoughts sometimes when you're driving in the car. We sing music to express our thoughts.

It's an expression of our thoughts and our feelings. When we listen to music, we use it to magnify those thoughts and those feelings.

How many times have you heard someone say, this is my song, or this song is so me, this song is my life.

I love this song. This is exactly how I feel. Have they said things like that? If you have heard those words, that is showing you that they are listening to a song that perhaps someone else wrote in order to magnify their feelings.

I had a friend in college who went through a really dark time of depression.

He wouldn't have told you that at the time. Now he'd probably tell you that. He began to listen to music that was really quite depressing.

I remember I walked in the room, and he was listening to this rock music that the person singing didn't sound very human.

They sounded almost demonic. It's this demonic -sounding music that was actually, at the same time, very depressing sounding.

It was just very dark. When I walked in the room, I was like, whoa, what is this? He looked at me, my friend, he looked at me, and he said, this song is the story of my life.

That just hit me like a ton of bricks. I was like, what? It's the story of your life? See, I knew this guy since we were kids.

I knew the story of his life. That music wasn't it. What it was was that that music magnified the feelings that he was experiencing.

Because it magnified the sadness he was experiencing in his life, he began to identify with that music and take on this new identity that was not his.

It was not him. It's very important that when we think about the music that we listen to, remember the whole be careful little ears what you hear?

Music has a lot of power to it. It has the ability to sway people. It has the ability to influence even ourselves.

And we may begin to identify with the things that we're hearing. So we've got to be very careful about the things that we're listening to.

Yeah, Tom, that's a great point. Satan was the chief musician before he fell.

He uses music to deceive in a lot of ways. But at the same time, we know on the flip side that music is not satanic, right?

Like David played the harp. And we know that there are instruments in heaven, some of which we've never heard of.

Maybe it's the Muthlaban. Maybe we've never seen it, right? Maybe we're going to get to see it in heaven. This victorious sounding instrument that denotes that the enemy is dead.

The enemy has died, right? Like it's all about whose music are we listening to.

That's so right, Tom. Yeah. And so my friend, he just identified with this music.

That's not who he was though. And praise the Lord, after this very dark road he went down, the

Lord pulled him out of it, and he's way better now. He's back to listening to the music that we listened to as kids.

We listened to a lot of the oldies music, a lot of the oldies songs. And some of them, you know, some of them are good to listen to.

Some of them are bad to listen to. They're not all good. So the point is we often use music for expression or we use it for magnification.

But I want you to see something here that David does. Because he uses it for a totally different purpose.

Not just to express how he's feeling. He doesn't use it just to magnify whatever feelings he has inside him.

He actually uses it for direction. He uses it to direct how he's going to feel.

I mean, look at what he says. He says, I will be glad and rejoice in thee.

He's going to use this song to direct his feelings and his emotions towards the

Lord. He's going to take himself out of whatever place he's in and ensure that he's in a place of joy.

That's the proper use of music, by the way. It should be used in a way to magnify your relationship with the

Lord. And so if you ever wonder, is it okay for me to listen to this or that or the other, all things are lawful, as Paul said.

All things are lawful, but not all things are expedient. Not all things are going to bring you closer in relationship with the

Lord. So those are the things that you probably shouldn't be listening to. It's the things that edify your spirit, that take you.

And I say edify your spirit. I mean, edify the spirit, right? The spirit of the Lord. It should be edifying, which you have, in a sense, ownership of because he's given it to you.

But it should build up your new man. It should be building up a right relationship or a right emotional state of being between you and God.

And we've used it before this way, right? Sometimes we use music to direct our feelings.

Have you ever used a song to cheer yourself up? I have, right? So sometimes we do use it in that manner.

We just probably should be using it more in a way to do that, right? To get more right with the

Lord. So use music for direction, not just expression or magnification of your feelings, but to direct your feelings.

And that's what David does. He says, I am. He doesn't say, I am glad. He doesn't say,

I am rejoicing. He says, I will be glad or I will be rejoicing in thee.

He will use this victorious song to direct his spirit towards one of praise and of worship.

But the only way this works is to do it in the spirit, like Brian said in the chat, right? Like to do it in the spirit because we can't really do it in the flesh.

And so that's why he says, in thee, right? I will rejoice in thee. I will be glad and rejoice in thee.

I will sing praise to thy name. O thou most high. All right.

So that's verse two. Now we think this to be a psalm of victory. That's what it seems like.

And it is. It is a psalm of victory. But here's my next question. When does victory come? When does victory come?

When do you have victory in the Lord? The next verse kind of gives us a clue.

When my enemies are turned back, they shall fall and perish at thy presence.

See, our victory comes when our enemies are turned back, when they fall, when they perish.

And that happens in a single place. There's one place that it will always happen.

And 130 ,000 % of the time, it always happens in the presence of God.

Word studies will show that these words for turn back, fall, and perish, they mean that the enemy will retreat.

They'll go back to where they came from, from whence they came, as someone like Spurgeon Might would say, right?

They stumble or receive injury. And the word for perish means they die or are exterminated or they simply vanish.

In any case, the result in the enemy is that they no longer pursue us.

The enemy is done. This is because they're met with the mighty God of the universe, who happens to be our defender.

There is zero chance of an enemy victory in the presence of God. Who does the enemy usually pursue?

Does he pursue God or does he pursue God's people? The enemy doesn't typically try to pursue

God. God will just completely rip him apart. But sometimes the enemy tries to get to God's people.

He pursues God's people. And so we often struggle. And when we struggle, we're struggling against principalities and the powers and the rulers of this dark world, spiritual wickedness in high places.

And we call out to God to come to our aid. We know the enemy runs when

God comes. We know this. We know the enemy stumbles at his presence. But we call out and we wait for God to come to us.

Right? David will not be so complacent. He's not going to wait for the Lord to come to him.

He's done this before. And it nearly killed him. He has had the Lord come to his rescue.

And truly, God does that. He will do this for us. Just like he did for David. He comes to the battlefield.

And he scoops us up. And he lifts up our head like he did for David. But David will run into the presence of God.

Because there he is safe. There he has hope. And he has victory. Brian, our eternal victory was from the beginning.

Absolutely. Why? Because that's the presence of God. That's where God was. He is before time and after it.

He is outside of time. He is all -encompassing. He's outside of the universe. He's within it and outside of it.

It can't contain his glory. But in temporal space, yeah. So we are talking about our perception, our viewpoint.

That's the word I was looking for. We're looking at it from man's viewpoint. It seems very linear. Right? And so David, instead of waiting for God to come to him, he runs to the

Lord. And yes, it does. It seems like it would take forever. Sometimes we just, when we get to the place where we feel like that, though,

Brian, when we feel like, oh, it's taking forever for God to deliver us, what a great place to be.

Because what does that mean? You are, that is what your desire is. So it should cause us to change or to do something.

Like what do you want to have happen when things are taking too long? You want to speed them up, right? Well, that's what we're seeing happen in David here.

He wants to speed it up. So he's going to run to the presence of God. He says, I will be glad and I will rejoice in thee.

I'm coming to you. I'm coming to you for my gladness, my rejoicing, my praise.

I'm going to have the right kind of attitude by getting, I'm going to use this music. I'm going to get myself into the right place.

And I'm going to start praising you because that is the joy that I'm supposed to have.

That's who I am. So I'm going to connect to the spirit and be in your presence. Now, truly, because God is omnipresent, we are always, in a sense, in his presence.

But we don't always connect to the presence that we are in. We don't always connect ourselves. We get into the old man.

We get into the flesh. We don't connect to the God who's standing right there. We sit there and we wait.

We call out to him. We're like, come on, God, when are you coming? But he's already there. He's already there.

And we're supposed to grab a hold of his hand. And so that's what we see David doing here.

Verse four, for thou hast maintained my right and my cause. Thou saddest in the throne, judging right.

It's kind of almost a throwback to the last couple of chapters when we saw David asking

God to ascend to his throne of judgment and to judge the people and to judge his enemies.

And he says to do it for the sake of your people. In chapter seven, David was asking for that.

He said, do it for your people. If not for me, do it for them. And then as soon as he sees God start to move to the throne of judgment, he's like, okay, judge me too.

Do me too. So fallen man, when he looks at us, he tries to judge us.

He tries to label us. And we see that. They look at our churches. They look at God's people.

They say bigot. They say racist. They say hateful. And that's what they scream at us as if that's who we are.

But that's not who we are. That's not our right. That's not our cause. The world, because they have fallen short and they have sinned, our message is that.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. That's our message. It's one of truth and it's one of love.

And if we get to the point where we're prideful when we say that, then we have not tilled the garden of our heart like we're supposed to.

Because we forget that we were one of those. We were one of those who were included in all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Our message is that love isn't a feeling. Our message is one that it's not something that's just a feeling shared between two people.

Therefore, it can't be just between. It's not a feeling that is because you have some sort of feeling.

You have true love between a man and a woman. Or the world would say between a man and a man or a woman and a woman.

They don't even know what love is, guys, because they don't have love. They have something they call love that is a counterfeit love.

We are the only ones who have actual true love, agape love. How do we know that? Because Jesus told his disciples, you will know them by their love one for another.

So we're the only ones who know what love really is. And if you think about what that means, that means we're the only ones who really know how to show what love really looks like.

And so if we're disguising our pride as righteous indignation and we're saying, oh, this world is evil and shame on y 'all.

And we are not meekly instructing those who oppose themselves that God per adventure would give unto them repentance.

If we're coming at them as angry Christians, then we're not going to be showing the love that God has called us to show.

Any time that the world spits in our face and mars our bodies and slanders our reputation, we should be thinking of Jesus in his walk to Golgotha.

We should be remembering him because that was a picture of what we're supposed to go through and how we're supposed to go through it.

Who humbly bore his cross and bore the shame and walked up the hill to Calvary.

And he did that while his enemy was spitting and cursing him.

And he did it so that he could save his enemy. While we were yet enemies, Christ died for us.

So he did it to save the enemy. He didn't see Jesus screaming and yelling and flipping the curse on those who were spitting and cursing on him and pulling out his beard and putting a crown of thorn on his head.

You didn't see that, right? You didn't see that. Jesus looks at our hearts, right?

He maintains our right and our cause when the world spits at us and calls us bigot and racist.

Jesus says, no, I still see you. I still know who you are. I still know what's in your heart.

He's maintaining that right. He's maintaining the cause that we have, the whole purpose that we have in this world.

When the world wants to label it as something evil, God says, no, it's good. And I see that it's good.

And that's enough for you. That's all you need to know is that he is maintaining you. Even in the times when the world is completely trying to obliterate you or cancel you,

God is maintaining you and your right and your cause. He is our judge. He sits on the throne judging the true intent of the heart of man.

That's why God can sit on the throne and judge right. Every judgment he makes is perfect.

Every judgment he makes is true. It's right. It's good. And he sees when we are being oppressed, when we're being downtrodden by others, he knows who we are.

And that should remind us a reason to be happy. It should bring us back to this place of joy.

Thou has rebuked the heathen. Thou has destroyed the wicked. Thou has put out their name forever and ever.

This is verse five. When the Lord judges, he starts with a rebuke. And if the enemy persists, he destroys them entirely.

No traces left of the ones we have feared. Like the ones that we have looked at and said, oh man, how are they going to ruin my life?

Right? God utterly obliterates them. Completely out of existence. When a person dies, we bury their remains.

Right? When someone dies, I want you to think about this for a second. We bury what's left, the body.

Right? And we say things like loving husband and father.

Right? But when the enemy is so destroyed by God that there is nothing left to remain, there's not even a name to mention.

So when God destroys, when David says thou has rebuked the heathen, thou has destroyed the wicked, thou has put out their name forever and ever, you have to understand, and this should help us when we're trying to walk this life and we begin to experience persecution.

Right? Unlike the angry Christians out there that want to say, we deserve better.

This is terrible. We should be looking at Jesus walking up the hill and bear that shame humbly, meekly instruct those who oppose themselves, and we should do it also in fear that if this person doesn't come to know the

Lord, if they're not one of God's, they are going to be so utterly destroyed that there won't even be a name to be remembered.

We'll be in heaven and we'll be saying, who was that that was persecuting us?

The name escapes me. I can't even remember that guy's name. He made my life on earth absolutely terrible.

I can't even remember who he was. That's how far God is going to completely obliterate these people.

And that's a terrifying thought. He's going to utterly decimate any thought of them.

And so we, in fear for them, should be coming meekly to them, not in anger but in love, and asking them to reconsider their ways, to hear

God's word, and then we should be praying that God will light upon them and give unto them repentance.

But this next verse is very interesting because this next verse is reserved for those who never come to that repentance.

David in verse 6 says, Thou enemy, destructions.

It says, O thou enemy. That word, O, it's like what we saw in chapter 8 when he says,

O Lord, my Lord. Like it starts off with this awe -inspiring feeling in verse 6.

O thou enemy, destructions are come to a perpetual end, and thou hast destroyed cities.

Their memorial is perished with them. This verse has a tone of mockery to it.

When the enemy pursues you and you fear his power, you need to remember that that is going to change.

His power is going to be completely destroyed. Maybe it's the world you fear.

Maybe it's their influence, right, to make your life hard, to cancel your business, to persecute your churches, to call you names and to slander you and to drag you through the mud.

Maybe the world system is something that you fear. I know there are times when

I fear it. I see the way the world is going. I know things are going to get worse. I see cancel culture, and I go, when is that going to affect me and my family and our paychecks, right?

When is that going to affect our ability to freely share the word of God? And we'll have to be more cognizant of the enemy.

I worry about it sometimes, but we have to realize that that's temporary.

You go, wow, that is a scary dude. He has been practicing destruction for thousands of years, and he has used the same tricks on millions and billions of people for thousands of years.

And he's, you know, lurking about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.

That's a pretty scary thought. Maybe you fear the other enemy, the flesh, the one you can't get away from, at least in this life, right?

You can't escape it in this life. Like Paul said, from this body of death.

All these enemies, guys, they're very formidable. But like David does here, we should stand victorious over them.

Even now, but sometimes we don't. Sometimes we succumb to the enemy.

We allow ourselves to be affected by the enemy. What we should do is we should look forward to the time when

God returns, and we will only stand victorious over them. God will wipe them out.

We will say to them that they are brought to an end, and that the influence they use to tear up civilization will no longer be remembered.

We will taunt the taunters, and we will forget their hateful deeds, and their names will escape us.

That's the victory that we have currently. From the beginning of time, like Ryan shared in chat, from the beginning of time, we have that victory in Christ.

We just need to connect to that victory more. Verse 7, See, in contrast to the eternal disappearance of David's enemies is the eternal presence of his

God. He is prepared to judge the earth. We must ask ourselves, are we prepared for that judgment?

Are you in a place right now where you know that when the Lord comes, yeah, He's going to say some things that you've done, but He's going to stamp you as approved by Him because you have

God's Son's blood on your life. You are covered in the blood of the

Lamb, and you are ready for that judgment, like David begging for that judgment in chapter 7.

Are you ready for that? It's interesting that it was chapter 7, and this is verse 7. Interesting.

Okay, so Psalm 9, verse 8, See, there's no political sway with Jesus.

There's no partiality in application of His law. He's just. He's fair.

He is right in all His judgments. He never makes a mistake. The guilty always lose.

The righteous always wins. You'll never have an innocent party receive wrongful punishment, and you'll never have a guilty party get away with it.

He's the perfect judge. Spurgeon said that this thought that Jesus shall judge the world in righteousness,

He shall minister judgment to the people in uprightness. Spurgeon's thought on this verse is that it should act as a check for us when we are tempted to sin and as a comfort for us when we are slandered or oppressed, which, by the way, is where David goes with the

Psalm next, is this idea of it being a comfort. Verse 9, The Lord also will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble.

This same all -powerful judge who condemns the enemy with perfect punishment is there to provide refuge to those who are oppressed.

That's us, right? We are made perfect in Him and are therefore perfectly innocent in His presence.

No slanderous work or word can stick to us. Let the enemy, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

Those words cannot stick to you. No sinful thought or deed can condemn you, and those are coming sometimes from within you.

Think about that. Even the things that come from the flesh, that is one of your enemies. It's trying to stick it to your spirit.

You'll hear the accuser. You'll hear Satan say, oh, look what you just did. You can't possibly be a Christian, but that's not who you are, guys.

You are a Christian. If you have accepted the Lord as your personal Lord and Savior, if you accepted

Jesus Christ and you accept that He came from heaven to earth to die for your sins and that He rose again on the third day, if you believe that, then you are one of His.

And if you're one of His, even the sins in your life can't stick to you. They can't condemn you because God has forgiven it all and He has put it as far from us as the east is from the west.

And what's interesting about that, I saw this really interesting thing online where somebody was holding a globe, and they were taking their finger and running their finger around the globe, and they said, watch what happens.

You can go north, and you can only go north for so far on earth until you get to what we call the

North Pole. And when you get to the North Pole, if you keep trying to travel in the same direction, you begin going south until you get to the

South Pole. And once you get to the South Pole, then you're going to keep going in the same direction, and you begin going north again.

And he says, well, here's what's weird. When you go east around the globe, there's no such thing as an

East Pole, and there's no such thing as a West Pole. So you go around the globe, and you can go as far east as you want, and no matter how long you travel east, you will always be traveling east.

It never meets with the west. Yes, you might keep going east, and you start in what we would refer to as the east, right, maybe over in China, the eastern countries.

And if you keep traveling east, you will end up in the west, right, as we call it.

But there's no East Pole or West Pole, and really you have to travel east to get here.

And then you keep traveling east. You can either travel east or you can travel west, and that continues in perpetuity.

And if you think about that, it brings a new meaning to when God says, I have separated your sin from you as far as the east is from the west, because the two never meet.

It's interesting that he never put as far as the north is from the south, because for whatever reason, those two meet.

But you can travel east forever and never be traveling west. You'll always be traveling east.

You can travel west forever and never be traveling east, and that is how far God has separated you from your sin.

It's eternal. Really cool. Verse 10,

And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee, for thou,

Lord, hast not forsaken them that seek thee. I like the way David puts this.

They that know thy name will put their trust in thee. I have a name, right? In fact,

I have a bunch of names. If you don't really know me, then I'm probably David Huber, right?

If you kind of know a little bit about me, you know that I'm David Huber II. I'm number two.

Pop. Some of you all know him from like tradeway events and stuff. My dad, he's David Vincent Huber I.

But if you really know me, you know me as Dave or as Vincent. Some of my family calls me

Vincent. Some of my family calls me Dave. Or if you really, really, really know me,

I'm Daddy, right? That's what Katie and the kids, they call me. Like I call Katie and the kids call

Katie Mommy, because that's her identity in our own little family unit. And the closest, most close -knit family we have, which is me,

Katie, and our children, I am Daddy. And you know what? The family, those who are closest to me, if they go outside in the dark, they're going to be pretty scared, all of them,

Katie included, right? They're all going to go outside. If they go out in the dark, they're pretty scared.

They want someone to go with them. Guess who they want? They want Daddy. In fact, sometimes they can't go outside unless Daddy goes with them, because they just can't handle the fear of going out into what they can't see, the unknown, right?

But if I'm with them, then they're fine. It's no big deal. It's nothing to go outside in the dark.

If I go out there, they'll go right out there with me. There's not an ounce of fear in my kids because Daddy's with them, right?

See, I'm Daddy, and they trust Daddy to keep them safe. And I think that's the name that David is referring to here.

It doesn't say it explicitly, but he says, those who know your name,

I read it this way, those who know you as Daddy, they will put their trust in you. Why? Because it's the only logical outcome for a child of the king, right?

When Daddy's out there, I'm fine. I'm good, right? I will put my trust in him.

And so I think when David says, when he says, and they that know thy name will put their trust in me,

I imagine the name there is Abba, Father. It's God's, he has so many names too.

And Spurgeon, if you read his commentary, it's pretty cool. It actually talks about all about, he said, he refers you to another one of his writings and says that,

I think it was called Hints for Preachers. He says he discusses all the names of Christ in there because each name is designed.

Each name of God is designed to bring you back to a place of rightness with God. Very interesting thought, which makes me just want to go study the names of God.

But if you think about the name of God being Father, in this case, if you remember him as Father, if you see him as Father, it most certainly will put you in a better place for trusting him, for putting your trust in him.

And so I think that's a really cool thought that Spurgeon shared there. Those who know you as daddy, they will put their trust in you because that's what kids do.

Right? And we are God's children. Verse 11, sing praises to the

Lord, which dwelleth in Zion, declare among the people, his doings. David implores the reader to do like he did at the very beginning of this song.

He said, he's like, praise God. This is almost like when the worship leader, right?

When the worship leader is singing a song and it gets to the chorus and he's like, sing it with me now. Right? Like that's what David's doing here.

It's like, okay, sing it with me now. That's the feeling of this verse is that David is now inviting the reader to do what he's doing.

Right? Sing praises to the Lord, which dwelleth in Zion, declare among the people, his doings.

Do so with all your heart, with all your mind, all your soul, and all your strength, direct your feelings through musical worship of God.

Remember that you have victory in the presence of God, you have victory.

And so come into his presence with thanksgiving in your heart, enter his courts with praise. Say this is the day the

Lord has made and rejoice for he will make you glad. Remember that song here, your enemies are turned back.

They will stumble. They will, the Lord will rebuke them. And if necessarily, if necessary, he will utterly destroy them so that even their name will not remain.

You will stand over them. You will mock them in a sense like Jesus did to victory.

Oh, death, where is thy sting? Oh, grave, where is thy victory? Right? When Jesus did to death, when, when he make it inquisition for blood, this is verse 12.

He remembered them. He forget it's not the cry of the humble. See God will exonerate those who have been martyred and those who have been slandered.

He will, he will, he has us in his mind continually. So when we start to feel like we are being forgotten,

I'll tell you who's forgetting us. The world, the world is forgetting us. The world is putting us out of their mind because they want to put

God out of their mind. And they're, they're looking at us and they're seeing that right now we're not that influential.

Christians aren't, that's our own fault, our own doing. So they've decided they're going, the salt has lost its savor.

We're going to cast them out and trod, trod them under our feet. That's what the world is currently actively doing to the

Christian, the Christian society. And so we have to understand that when we go through this,

God's going to exonerate us, right? He's going to remember those who've been martyred and remember those who are being slandered, even as we speak.

So next we see a prayer of summation from David, right? And then after that, it's almost like he kind of does a similar thing.

It's almost like he's rehearsing the first part of the Psalm again. He says, have mercy upon me.

Oh Lord, consider my trouble, which I suffer of them that hate me. Thou that liftest me up from the gates of death.

Just notice his humility there, the appeal to the Lord to take note of his suffering, right?

He's like, Hey, remember me, your servant. I'm suffering when I'm suffering at the hands of others.

He reminds God of God's own identity. This part is so cool. Thou that liftest me up from the gates of death.

You are the one who lifts me up out of the gates of death. So do the one, do the thing that the one who is the lifter of persons would do.

You're the one who saves. So do what a savior would do. That's what

David is essentially saying here. That I may show forth all thy praise in the gates of the daughter of Zion.

I will rejoice in thy salvation. This goes right back to what we studied in chapter seven, where David is asking for judgment so that he can praise the

Lord, right? So it's almost like, this is going to be great for you too, God. This is going to be great for you too, because I am going to bring you more glory, right?

You come and exonerate me, come and defeat my enemies, obliterate them, and I will sing praises to you.

The heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made, and the net which they hid is their own foot taken.

It's really cool how David not only appeals to the judge, but lets the judge know that he understands that he is just in his judging.

This is completely just for you, because look at them. They are not of you.

They are not yours. They have dug a pit, they dug it for me, but it is so fitting and proper that they fall in it, and then you cause them to do so.

Just like Haman hanging on his own gallows, he built those gallows for Mordecai and Esther's people.

He built it for them, and it was truly for him. These words here are meant to make us take pause and realize just how serious a business it is when

God judges our enemies. We're not just supposed to praise

Him for it, but we're also supposed to kind of almost in a sense be sad. Think about it.

I mean, it's not really sadness, it's gladness because God has judged sin, but almost a sense of heaviness like, whoa, they just experienced the wrath of God.

Whoa. Like, praise the Lord, I don't have to. Thank God I am not on that side.

Thank God that He has made me righteous, He has exonerated me, He has paid my sin debt, but whoa,

He didn't pay theirs. Ouch. The wicked shall be turned into hell and all the nations that forget

God. The nations are trying actively right now to forget

God, and they're doing so by canceling His people. Our nation, America, is currently trying to do that very thing.

They will be turned into hell. For the needy shall not always be forgotten.

The expectation of the poor shall not perish. Those who seem forgotten in this world will be remembered in the next.

Those who seem like God has just allowed them to go through so much persecution here and suffering, and it almost seems to the world that it would be better for that person just not even to live, they have eternal life already.

Some of them, the ones who know and love God, they have eternal life already, and they will experience that forever.

Even as the world tries to put them down, God is lifting them up. Arise, O Lord, let not man prevail, let the heathen be judged in Thy sight.

See, when David invited us in verse, what was it? Verse 11,

I believe it was. Was it 11? Yeah, I think it was.

Yeah, it was. In verse 11, when David invited us to sing praises to God and to do what

David is doing here, he does it again for our benefit. He rehearses again.

Remember who God is. Remember who He's judged. Remember who He has made justified.

And he does it for our benefit so that the reader of the psalm, who has now been invited to act as David is acting, can do so in the proper manner.

And so David does it again. The heathen are sunk down. Remember who they are and remember who you are.

For the needy shall not always be forgotten. You won't be forgotten. God is with you. Arise, O Lord, turn your praise to Him.

Take what you're saying and remembering about them and about yourself now and direct your words to God.

Arise, O Lord, let not man prevail. Let the heathen be judged in thy sight. We all do this together now.

And we ask the Lord to put them in fear, O Lord, that the nations may know themselves to be but men.

See, it's pride that causes a man to want to put God out of his mind. That is the ultimate, the ultimate sin, really, if you think about it, because pride leads to all those other sins.

It leads to, it's putting yourself above anything else.

You might say, well, I don't worship Buddha. I don't worship Allah.

But do you worship yourself? Because you're just a man, right? You're just, you're just man.

And God will cause the nations to remember that. Whoa. That's the word, salah.

Whoa. Anyway, so that's all of Psalm 9. I've gone a little too far, so I'm going to go ahead and close us in prayer.

And if you guys have anything else that you want to just throw in the chat, thoughts, feel free to do so.

And then we'll get started with our morning services here in just a minute. All right. Heavenly Father, Lord, we just thank you that you are

God and that you are just and that you are righteous and that all your judgments are true. We thank you that you will judge righteously the nations.

You will judge those who persecute your people. When they rise up against the

Lord and against his anointed, you laugh at them from heaven. And Lord, we thank you for that.

We thank you that we are the recipients of your grace and that we are made right in you.

And so because of that, we can joyfully turn to you and praise your holy name. We will sing and we will dance and we will remember only you and we will not remember those who persecute us.

So thank you for that, Father. Lord, we ask that you be with us today, help us to learn a lot, and help us to be in a right spirit with you throughout the rest of the week.