SPEAKER_00: This is the Word of God, Psalm 68.
SPEAKER_00: It's the choir master, a psalm of David, a song.
SPEAKER_00: God shall arise, his enemies shall be scattered, and those who hate him shall flee before him.
SPEAKER_00: As smoke is driven away, so you shall drive them away.
SPEAKER_00: As wax melts before fire, so the wicked shall perish before God.
SPEAKER_00: But the righteous, they shall be glad, they shall exalt before God, they shall be jubilant with joy.
SPEAKER_00: Sing to God, sing praises to his name, lift up a song to him who rides through the deserts.
SPEAKER_00: His name is Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: Exalt before him, Father of the fatherless, protector of the widows, is God in his holy habitation.
SPEAKER_00: God settles the solitary in a home.
SPEAKER_00: O God, when you went out before your people, when you marched through the wilderness, the earth quaked.
SPEAKER_00: The heavens poured down rain before God, the one of Sinai, before God, the God of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Rain in abundance, O God, you shed abroad.
SPEAKER_00: You restored your inheritance as it languished.
SPEAKER_00: Your flock found a dwelling in it.
SPEAKER_00: In your goodness, O God, you provided for the needy.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord gives the word.
SPEAKER_00: The women who announce the news are a great host.
SPEAKER_00: The kings of the armies, they flee, they flee.
SPEAKER_00: The women at home divide the spoil, though you men lie among the sheepfolds, the wings of a dove covered with silver, its pinions with shimmering gold.
SPEAKER_00: When the Almighty scatters kings there, let snow fall on Zalmon.
SPEAKER_00: O mountain of God, mountain of Bashan, O many peaked mountain, mountain of Bishon, why do you look with hatred, O many peaked mountain, at the mouse that God desired for his abode?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, where Yahweh will dwell forever.
SPEAKER_00: The chariots of God are twice ten thousand, thousands upon thousands.
SPEAKER_00: Then the Lord is among them.
SPEAKER_00: Sinai is now in the sanctuary.
SPEAKER_00: You ascended on high, leading a host of captives in your train and receiving gifts among men, even among the rebellious, that Yahweh, God, may dwell there.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears us up.
SPEAKER_00: God is our salvation, Selah.
SPEAKER_00: And our God is a God of salvation.
SPEAKER_00: And to God, Yahweh, belong deliverances from death, but God will strike the heads of his enemies, the hairy crown of him who walks in his guilty ways.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord said, I will bring them back from Bashan, I will bring them back from the depths of the sea, that you may strike your feet in their blood, that the tongues of your dogs may have their portion from the foe.
SPEAKER_00: Your procession is seen, O God, the procession of my God, my king, into the sanctuary, the singers are in front, the musicians last, between them virgins playing tambourines.
SPEAKER_00: Bless God in the great congregation, Yahweh, O you who are Israel's fountain.
SPEAKER_00: There is Benjamin, the least of them in the lead, the princes of Judah in their throng, the princes of Zebulun, the princes of Napptal.
SPEAKER_00: Summon your power, O God, the power, O God, by which you have worked for us.
SPEAKER_00: Because of your temple at Jerusalem, kings shall bear their gifts to you.
SPEAKER_00: Rebuke the beasts that dwell among the reeds, the herd of bulls with the calves of the people, trample underfoot those who lust after tribute, scatter the people who delight in war.
SPEAKER_00: Nobles shall come from Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: Cush shall hasten to stretch out her hands to God.
SPEAKER_00: O kingdoms of the earth, sing to God, sing praises to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Selah.
SPEAKER_00: To him who rides in the heavens, the ancient heavens.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, he sends out his voice, his mighty voice.
SPEAKER_00: Ascribe power to God, whose majesty is over Israel, and whose powers in the skies.
SPEAKER_00: Awesome is God from his sanctuary, the God of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one who gives power and strength to his people.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed be God.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: This is one of those rare passages in scripture that tell the story of the Bible all the way through.
SPEAKER_00: It was a few years ago that uh a man named Frank, perhaps you remember he went to be with the Lord this past summer, but he was converted older in life, soundly converted, radically converted.
SPEAKER_00: If you knew him before his conversion, which I did, and after his conversion, different person.
SPEAKER_00: And he came to me one Sunday and said, I really want you to preach a sermon on the Bible from 30,000 feet.
SPEAKER_00: He said, I said, I didn't grow up reading the Bible, and now I'm a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: What?
SPEAKER_00: And he he holds up his Bible.
SPEAKER_00: What is this whole book about?
SPEAKER_00: Help me.
SPEAKER_00: It's one of those questions that a new believer asks, and it's just like filled with joy.
SPEAKER_00: You know, what is this about?
SPEAKER_00: Please tell me the Bible, like I don't know what I'm talking about, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Go.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, I never did it.
SPEAKER_00: I wrote on my whiteboard Bible from 30,000 feet, and it's been on the board in my office ever since.
SPEAKER_00: And now Frank has died even since I got that request, and he's in heaven, so he doesn't need the sermon anymore.
SPEAKER_00: But I came across Psalm 68 recently.
SPEAKER_00: I discovered Psalm 68, like Columbus discovered America.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it was there all along, but it's always been in my Bible.
SPEAKER_00: But it's like a brand new discovery for me.
SPEAKER_00: And you get this feeling as you read the psalm, like this is that sermon.
SPEAKER_00: This is the psalm that describes the Bible from 30,000 feet.
SPEAKER_00: This is the psalm that brings you through the grand narrative of the Bible, which the Bible is about God's redemptive plan in the world, how God is going to redeem people, what God's doing in the world.
SPEAKER_00: And I love how it describes God as one who stands up and goes to war against the world and then ultimately receives worship forever and ever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: It takes you from God standing up and acting all the way through.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, really, the first part of this is God bringing his people out of slavery, bringing the Israelites out of Egypt, through the book of Exodus, through the desert, into Israel.
SPEAKER_00: It goes through Judges and Joshua as God defeats his enemies and establishes the people in the land.
SPEAKER_00: And then you see the hope they have while they're living in there, and you see in the psalm how they fail to live up to that hope, and God kicks them out.
SPEAKER_00: They're exiled.
SPEAKER_00: And then God brings them back to the land a second time and settles them again, and they still don't worship him.
SPEAKER_00: And then in the middle of the Psalm, God comes Himself.
SPEAKER_00: God comes as a king himself and moves into the land and moves into the temple and becomes the righteousness for his people.
SPEAKER_00: And then God blows the doors off the place and brings the gospel to the nations, and all the nations surround him, and all the nations worship the king in his temple in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: And the psalm ends with praise forevermore in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's the story of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And we're going to look at it more closely today as we work through this psalm.
SPEAKER_00: To get to the psalm in a reasonable amount of time, I'm going to have to move faster than the Israelites in the wilderness wanderings.
SPEAKER_00: And so we will begin in verses 1 through 3 where it says, Yahweh marches to victory.
SPEAKER_00: When you hear this psalm read, and maybe less so in English, but I listened to it several times this week in Hebrew, and it has a like a marching beat to the psalm.
SPEAKER_00: In Hebrew, there's a cadence to it.
SPEAKER_00: You can almost hear the hoofbeats in the background as the horses are galloping off to war, and that's how this psalm begins.
SPEAKER_00: God shall arise, and his enemies will be scattered.
SPEAKER_00: This is a quotation of Numbers 10 where Aaron and Moses start the march of the ark into the tabernacle in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: God will stand up.
SPEAKER_00: When the ark moves, God moves, and here God is pictured, standing up, and his enemies will run every which way.
SPEAKER_00: Those who hate him will flee before him, verse 1 says, but it will not do them any good.
SPEAKER_00: For those who are enemies of God, they will not escape.
SPEAKER_00: They may flee this way or that, but it will be to no avail.
SPEAKER_00: Despite their flight, the Lord catches them, verse two, as smoke is driven away, so you shall drive them away, except they won't disappear like smoke.
SPEAKER_00: Look what it says.
SPEAKER_00: As wax melts before fire, they will perish before God.
SPEAKER_00: Picture the long, tall candlestick, and you light it at night, and it burns down through the night.
SPEAKER_00: And in the next morning, it's it's a mystery.
SPEAKER_00: It's gone.
SPEAKER_00: It's nowhere to be seen.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the way the wicked will be.
SPEAKER_00: They may raise their fists against God in this world here and now.
SPEAKER_00: They may rebel against him now and live for themselves and live for sin, but ultimately they will not be remembered.
SPEAKER_00: They will disappear from the earth, they will disappear from this world, they will stand before God from judgment and be dispensed with forever.
SPEAKER_00: They will perish, is the word in verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: What a contrast with the righteous in verse 3.
SPEAKER_00: The righteous, they won't perish, they won't melt away.
SPEAKER_00: Rather, the righteous will be filled.
SPEAKER_00: They'll be glad.
SPEAKER_00: They shall exalt.
SPEAKER_00: And the word exult, it's slightly different than the word exalt.
SPEAKER_00: Exalt is to lift up, exult is to fill up from the inside out of joy.
SPEAKER_00: Like there's this joy coming in through your feet all the way up to the hairy crown of your head.
SPEAKER_00: You just get filled with joy.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what the righteous will experience.
SPEAKER_00: Not from their circumstances, but from their relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: And so right away, this kind of drumbeat psalm, this marching psalm, this battle psalm, right away it starts with this dichotomy.
SPEAKER_00: There are those who hate God and they will perish.
SPEAKER_00: And there are those who are righteous and they will find refuge in him.
SPEAKER_00: That's the same dichotomy the book of Psalms itself begins with.
SPEAKER_00: If you remember Psalm 1.
SPEAKER_00: The righteous man, he's like a tree.
SPEAKER_00: He's planted, the roots go down and deep and drink from the water, and he's not going to be moved anywhere.
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, the wicked are like shaft.
SPEAKER_00: They just blow away.
SPEAKER_00: The wind comes and they're scattered and they're forgotten, and you don't even remember their names.
SPEAKER_00: So which one are you going to be?
SPEAKER_00: The righteous or the wicked?
SPEAKER_00: Because there's two very different destinies.
SPEAKER_00: And then Psalm 2 is the same theme.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 2, the the wicked raise their fists against God and they complain about God's king, and they they reject his king, and they reject his son, and the the wicked, they plot vain things, and the one in heaven, remember, laughs in Psalm 2 and says, As for me, I will set my king on Zion, where he will rule forever and ever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: He will be my son.
SPEAKER_00: I will appoint my son the king, and then you will kiss the son.
SPEAKER_00: And so Psalm 2 has this, again, this dichotomy between the unrighteous who shake their fists at God and they will be crushed, versus the righteous who are righteous, not based on how they live.
SPEAKER_00: They're righteous because they kiss the sun.
SPEAKER_00: They're righteous because they kneel before the sun.
SPEAKER_00: They honor Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And so the whole book of Psalms begins with that fork in the road.
SPEAKER_00: The way of the righteous is one of prosperity, not earthly prosperity, of course, but spiritual prosperity, a depth in your relationship with God, a peace and a fullness of joy.
SPEAKER_00: And the unrighteous, they wither.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to see they'll be in a parched land.
SPEAKER_00: They're going to be spiritually dehydrated.
SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, they will perish.
SPEAKER_00: They melt like wax.
SPEAKER_00: And they're gone.
SPEAKER_00: This is the tune of the song.
SPEAKER_00: And so as we get into this Psalm, Psalm 68 here, understand that that is the introduction to the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: There are basically two ways to live through faith in God or through your own rebelliousness.
SPEAKER_00: There's not a middle ground there, you know.
SPEAKER_00: It was Cain who murdered his brother, Abel, because Abel wanted to approach God through sacrifice, and Cain wanted to approach God his own way.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that fork has split there and it goes throughout the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And so as you read the Psalm or you hear it read again as we work our way through it a verse at a time here, ask yourself, which road are you on?
SPEAKER_00: Are you on the road of faith?
SPEAKER_00: Are these promises for you to embrace, worship for you to express, or are you on the road of despair and judgment where you will perish despite any kind of self-righteousness or any actions or goodness in yourself, you will perish before God.
SPEAKER_00: That's how the Bible describes it.
SPEAKER_00: That's how Psalm 68 begins.
SPEAKER_00: We move with this heading of Yahweh's as he marches to victory, we move to liberation.
SPEAKER_00: Liberation described in verses 4 through 10, where God brings his people out of slavery.
SPEAKER_00: He brings them out of Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: If you're familiar with the Bible, God chooses Abraham out of the nations, this person who is from a different nation, and he makes a whole new people group out of Abraham, the Jews, and he promises that he will settle them in Israel.
SPEAKER_00: But first, 400 years have to go by, and Abraham's got to leave, and all the patriarchs have to move, and Abraham's descendants move, and they go into Egypt, and they kind of settle in Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: They go little roots in Egypt, not too deep, but they do have to be dug up to get moved out of there.
SPEAKER_00: 400 years go by.
SPEAKER_00: And they're in Egypt and they're slaved in Egypt, and God's gonna rescue them and bring them back to the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: And he rescues them by parting the Red Sea, if you recall, brings them out of Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: They walk through us on dry ground.
SPEAKER_00: The Egyptians pursue, they're drowned in the river, and God has rescued his people and puts them in the desert.
SPEAKER_00: That's the rescue out of slavery.
SPEAKER_00: It's described here in verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: Sing to God, sing praises to his name, lift up a song to him who rides through the deserts.
SPEAKER_00: And I love that phrase, he rides to the deserts.
SPEAKER_00: It's almost the word, you know, like he surfs through the desert.
SPEAKER_00: That's how I picture it.
SPEAKER_00: He's uh in Isaiah, he's surfing on the clouds.
SPEAKER_00: Later today, we'll see him surfing in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And it's this image of he's just skating through the desert.
SPEAKER_00: How do you ride through the desert?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you just skate right on through there.
SPEAKER_00: It's in contrast, the Canaanites said Baal, the rain god, rode in the clouds.
SPEAKER_00: The rain god rode in the clouds, which is ironic because you remember what happened to the Canaanites.
SPEAKER_00: They withered because of drought.
SPEAKER_00: They worshiped the rain god and so they got no rain.
SPEAKER_00: They said their God rode in the clouds, but he didn't bring water with him.
SPEAKER_00: Pity the rain god forgot his water.
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, Yahweh is surfing through the desert.
SPEAKER_00: He has no short supply of water.
SPEAKER_00: He can create water, he can just ride right through the desert.
SPEAKER_00: His name is, the SV says, his name is the Lord, but the Hebrew here, it's his name is Yah.
SPEAKER_00: It's an even, it's not even Yahweh, it's an abbreviation.
SPEAKER_00: David here is using a nickname for God.
SPEAKER_00: He's describing God surfing through the desert and says, That's my God.
SPEAKER_00: Bala's riding in the clouds without water, but my God surfs through the desert.
SPEAKER_00: His name is Yah.
SPEAKER_00: And he's gonna come melt your face off.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's this picture here.
SPEAKER_00: So you better exalt before him.
SPEAKER_00: Have joy in this.
SPEAKER_00: Be stoked about this that your God is riding through the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: And you think, what kind of God is that exalted?
SPEAKER_00: That he can surf through this world?
SPEAKER_00: What kind of God is so exalted that he creates the world?
SPEAKER_00: As we go through the Psalm, you'll see He has ten thousands and thousands and thousands of angels wherever he moves.
SPEAKER_00: You know, he moves and angels move with him.
SPEAKER_00: That's an incredible statement of the sovereignty and the power of God.
SPEAKER_00: He speaks and the world comes into existence.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he is transcendent.
SPEAKER_00: He's above us, beyond us, so far, he's not like us.
SPEAKER_00: He's so far removed from us that we can barely comprehend him unless he revealed himself to us.
SPEAKER_00: That's how transcendent he is.
SPEAKER_00: You would think I could never relate to that kind of God because how could that God care about me?
SPEAKER_00: I'm a person with a finite lifespan.
SPEAKER_00: And you get to verse five.
SPEAKER_00: He is, by the way, father of the fatherless, protector of widows.
SPEAKER_00: He settles verse six, the solitary in a home.
SPEAKER_00: That word for solitary, some translations say lonely.
SPEAKER_00: It's a person whose family has moved on for whatever reason.
SPEAKER_00: I heard this week of somebody who was married for almost 80 years, who's a guy who's married for almost 80 years and his wife died, and you think, how is he gonna live out the rest of his life?
SPEAKER_00: He's he doesn't remember probably life without his wife.
SPEAKER_00: That's lonely.
SPEAKER_00: Or the person who's a widow who wanted to grow old with her husband and her husband died unexpectedly, or maybe her husband left her and she raises the kids herself, and now her kids have moved on, and she's just alone.
SPEAKER_00: You think that person's forgotten, forgotten by the by the world, forgotten by her family, maybe even some circumstances, or the prisoners is the in verse six.
SPEAKER_00: A person and uh usually when the Bible's talking about prisoners, it's spiritual prison.
SPEAKER_00: That's how this verse is used in the New Testament, but slave to sin.
SPEAKER_00: But just think at a human prisoner level, uh a guy in prison for life, for some horrible crime, gets converted in prison, comes to faith in prison, and the decades go by and his family has moved on, his family doesn't write anymore, his family's ashamed of him, they don't visit, they don't they don't care.
SPEAKER_00: And he spends the rest of his life like that, forgotten.
SPEAKER_00: That's this word here, and you think that person is there's no there's no fellowship for that person, they are forgotten by the world.
SPEAKER_00: But you know who has not forgotten them?
SPEAKER_00: The one who rides to the desert, the one who commands 10,000 angels, he knows every one of them, and he knows them by name.
SPEAKER_00: He knows the widow by name, he knows the fatherless person by name.
SPEAKER_00: Your your dad died, and you're you're being raised without a father, and you think, I who's gonna help me?
SPEAKER_00: God will.
SPEAKER_00: God knows you.
SPEAKER_00: He is a father to the fatherless, he will care for the widows, he will establish the lonely in a home, it says.
SPEAKER_00: Certainly not speaking of this world.
SPEAKER_00: You know that because of verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: God's sitting in his holy habitation, he's gonna bring you to him.
SPEAKER_00: You'll be, in a sense, isolated throughout your life.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, your family perhaps has forgotten you, or yes, the world and society has forgotten you, but God hasn't, and he has a home for you in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: You want a better mailing address on earth or a better home in heaven, and God's making it.
SPEAKER_00: He remembers, this is what I love about the Psalm, the transcendent glory of the infinite God who creates the world and makes all of moves through the pages of scripture to the end of his own worship, and yet through every era remembers the poor, remembers the widows, remembers the prisoners.
SPEAKER_00: This is the liberation.
SPEAKER_00: God delivers Israel from an actual slavery in Egypt, and he delivers those who are spiritual slaves from their sin and loneliness and life for a better land.
SPEAKER_00: Oh God, verse 7 says, You went out before your people, you marched through the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: We're back on the march again with God, and the earth quaked.
SPEAKER_00: This is an image of when God huddled all the Israelites through the Red Sea into the desert.
SPEAKER_00: He brought them around Mount Sinai and he gave them his law.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, if God didn't reveal himself to us, we would have no way of knowing him.
SPEAKER_00: He encamps them there, and the earthquakes.
SPEAKER_00: An earthquake comes, the heavens shake, and the there's lightning and there's tornadoes going through the camp, and the Israelites are losing it.
SPEAKER_00: They begin pleading with God to stop talking.
SPEAKER_00: They grab Moses.
SPEAKER_00: They were ready to rebel against Moses five minutes ago, but now the earthquake comes.
SPEAKER_00: They're putting Moses forward, and they're like, God, talk to Moses, not to us.
SPEAKER_00: He's our leader.
SPEAKER_00: Go to him.
SPEAKER_00: They beg, Paul describes this in Hebrews 12.
SPEAKER_00: They beg that God would stop talking and that no further word would be spoken to them because they could not endure the nature of the command that if even an animal touches the mountain, it should be stoned.
SPEAKER_00: And so you're figuring out pretty quickly here, if a rabbit can't bounce on the mountain without being killed, how can a person approach this God?
SPEAKER_00: And so the people are terrified.
SPEAKER_00: And God responds to their terror by restoring their inheritance as it languished.
SPEAKER_00: He gives them life, it says in verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: He gives them rain in verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: The God of Sinai in verse 8 becomes the God of Israel, becomes the God who gives them rain, as the Canaanites are dying of thirst.
SPEAKER_00: God comes with his law, he comes with the rain.
SPEAKER_00: He gives them manna.
SPEAKER_00: For 40 years in the wilderness, food just appears in the ground.
SPEAKER_00: He gives them water from the rocks, he gives them fire to guide them, he protects them from their enemies.
SPEAKER_00: He provides all things to them.
SPEAKER_00: This psalm is really tied together by the theology of who God is: that he is sovereign and he is transcendent and yet he is caring for the poor and is near.
SPEAKER_00: He is far away and he's close.
SPEAKER_00: He's powerful and yet he loves the powerless.
SPEAKER_00: He gives reign to those who come to him in faith, and he withholds from those who rebel.
SPEAKER_00: And so he gives them deliverance.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, some that he led out of Egypt do rebel, and they will die, verse 6 says, in a parched land.
SPEAKER_00: For those that come to him in faith, they receive rain.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, we're talking by analogy here.
SPEAKER_00: Those that come to faith receive a sense of spiritual rain.
SPEAKER_00: It's authenticated by the fact that God opens up the rock and they really do drink literal water, but it becomes an image of how God provides for his people.
SPEAKER_00: Man does not live on bread alone, but by every word from God's mouth.
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, those who were delivered, who reject God, they will die, verse 6 says, in a parched land.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember what happened to those that got rescued from Egypt?
SPEAKER_00: They all died.
SPEAKER_00: And not in Israel.
SPEAKER_00: There were two exceptions.
SPEAKER_00: But other than those two exceptions, they all died because they did not they they came from their liberated prisoner into the rebel.
SPEAKER_00: So they did not get to see the land.
SPEAKER_00: But for those who put their faith in God, God went before them, verse 7 says.
SPEAKER_00: Rain as they languished.
SPEAKER_00: Notice he compares them to sheep, verse 10.
SPEAKER_00: Your flock has done a dwelling in it.
SPEAKER_00: And we are God's sheep.
SPEAKER_00: He is our shepherd, he cares for us, he leads us, he provides for us.
SPEAKER_00: In your goodness, we see the same.
SPEAKER_00: Contrast again.
SPEAKER_00: In your goodness, you provided for the needy.
SPEAKER_00: The one who creates rain cares for the needy and the poor.
SPEAKER_00: It's remarkable.
SPEAKER_00: Remarkable.
SPEAKER_00: This is the way God takes over the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: He liberates us, and then from there we go to the invasion.
SPEAKER_00: He liberated them from slavery.
SPEAKER_00: And verse 11 picks up the invasion of the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: Here's where the book of Exodus goes in the rearview mirror.
SPEAKER_00: Now we get in the Joshua and Judges, and God's moving into the Promised Land.
SPEAKER_00: This is a long quotation here from Judges chapter 5, which is Deborah and Barak's song.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord gives the word.
SPEAKER_00: The women who announce the news are a great host.
SPEAKER_00: It's often the women who announce the battle victories because the men are out fighting and the news reaches them they won, and the women announce the victory.
SPEAKER_00: The kings of the armies, they flee.
SPEAKER_00: They flee.
SPEAKER_00: In Hebrew, that's an idiom.
SPEAKER_00: If you repeat the verb twice, the second one becomes like an adverb.
SPEAKER_00: We don't use that in English, but you would translate it this way.
SPEAKER_00: They flee fleeingly.
SPEAKER_00: Kind of has a cool ring to it, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: And you can do that in Hebrew with any verb.
SPEAKER_00: You can say, you know, that guy runs runningly.
SPEAKER_00: You know, he thinks thinkingly.
SPEAKER_00: It's just a way of like making it kind of humorous.
SPEAKER_00: That's how it's used in Hebrew.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the women are doing that here.
SPEAKER_00: They're mocking the armies that just lost.
SPEAKER_00: They're saying, oh, look at those people.
SPEAKER_00: They flee fleeingly.
SPEAKER_00: They're skipping off when God is chasing them down.
SPEAKER_00: The kings of the armies, they flee, they flee.
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, the women who are at home, they're dividing the spoil.
SPEAKER_00: Their husbands are off at war.
SPEAKER_00: They're left home with all of the spoils, all the victory.
SPEAKER_00: Though you men lie among the sheepfolds, the wings of the dove, and it describes the beauty of the dove and the eagle that is protecting Israel.
SPEAKER_00: The Almighty will scatter kings there.
SPEAKER_00: Snow will fall on Zalmon.
SPEAKER_00: I mentioned this as a quote from Judges 5 and then Judges 9.
SPEAKER_00: Judges 5 is Deborah and Barak's victory, which did not even come from Deborah and Barak.
SPEAKER_00: You remember?
SPEAKER_00: It was the evil enemy Cicero who fell into a trap because the Israelites wouldn't fight.
SPEAKER_00: God said their victory will go to a woman, and it wasn't Deborah, it was Jael.
SPEAKER_00: And remember, the king seeks refuge in Jael's tent, and Jael gives him a warm glass of milk and something for his headache.
SPEAKER_00: The tent peg right through the skull.
SPEAKER_00: And then the army is outside.
SPEAKER_00: Their king has just, you know, been nailed to the ground.
SPEAKER_00: And then God floods the ground and their army is swept away in a flood.
SPEAKER_00: That's how that ended.
SPEAKER_00: And so they're remembering this in this song.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, this is how God gives victory.
SPEAKER_00: He'll destroy his enemies and they'll be washed away as if in a flood.
SPEAKER_00: Judges 9, Abimelech is Israel's king, and he's an evil, rebellious king, but they're fighting evil, rebellious people.
SPEAKER_00: So it's not, it's Judges 9 is not a war where there's good guys and bad guys.
SPEAKER_00: It's bad guys against bad guys.
SPEAKER_00: And Abimelech takes all the wood and stacks it against the tower where his enemies are hiding and lights it on fire, and all his enemies are going to die in a fire.
SPEAKER_00: But before that happens, a woman launches a millstone out the tower and it crushes Abimelech's head.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone loses, except God.
SPEAKER_00: This is the song they're celebrating here.
SPEAKER_00: That happened at Mount Zalmon.
SPEAKER_00: Zalmon is just a word for black.
SPEAKER_00: It's a dark mountain, not a lot growing on it.
SPEAKER_00: There's a tower on it, the tower's on fire, everybody's dying in the fire, and a guy gets his head crushed in from millstone.
SPEAKER_00: There's this image of snow falling on a black mountain and bodies everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: That's how this stanza ends.
SPEAKER_00: God delivers his people by invading the land and crushing his opponents.
SPEAKER_00: This is the way that God marches.
SPEAKER_00: And now we move a little bit from this invasion metaphor to God speaking here in verses 15 through 17.
SPEAKER_00: This is kind of anthropomorphism here.
SPEAKER_00: God's speaking to the mountains, or David, the one who wrote the psalm, is speaking to the mountains.
SPEAKER_00: I love it in the Bible when Bible writers talk to the mountains.
SPEAKER_00: It happens like Ezekiel does this often.
SPEAKER_00: It's usually pretty humorous.
SPEAKER_00: Here David is talking to the mountains as they have just fallen.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, mountain of God, mountain of Bishon.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you mini-peaked mountain, mountain of Bishon.
SPEAKER_00: He's he's using flat mini-peaked is awkward in English, but he's flattering the mountain.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you handsome mountain, you.
SPEAKER_00: You have lots of peaks, and they got snow caps, and you are such a strong, magnificent looking mountain.
SPEAKER_00: But I detect a note of sadness in you, my little mini-peaked mountain.
SPEAKER_00: What is wrong?
SPEAKER_00: Why are you so forlorn, you mighty mountain?
SPEAKER_00: Now, these mountains, Mount Bashan, this Mount Hebron, it's the north part of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: It's uh you know, up on the border there.
SPEAKER_00: There are many peaks on them.
SPEAKER_00: Many of them are covered with snow, some year-round covered with snow.
SPEAKER_00: They're very magnificent, handsome mountains.
SPEAKER_00: And David's asking, why are you so sad?
SPEAKER_00: Well, you find out why they're sad, because they just got owned by God.
SPEAKER_00: The people that were all over them worshiping their idols just got routed by Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: He's, you know, skated in from the desert, destroyed their kings, humiliated Baal, and then God didn't even stay there.
SPEAKER_00: They fall and he keeps moving.
SPEAKER_00: And where is Yahweh moving to?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 16, why do you look with hatred, oh you mini-peaked mountain?
SPEAKER_00: At the mounts that God desired for his abode?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, well, Yahweh will dwell with ever.
SPEAKER_00: God is moving to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: He's moving to Mount Zion.
SPEAKER_00: Now, to compare Mount Zion to Mount Bashan is humorous.
SPEAKER_00: But it's possible for Americans to get this because Virginia has mountains.
SPEAKER_00: And Colorado has mountains.
SPEAKER_00: They're not in the same category.
SPEAKER_00: Like if they were animals, there'd be two of each on the ark.
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00: Like they're not.
SPEAKER_00: The Virginia Mountains and the Colorado Mountains are not the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: So what if God conquered the Rocky Mountains but says, I'm not gonna build my kingdom here.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go to those tiny Virginia Mountains.
SPEAKER_00: You can picture the Rocky Mountains going, hey, wait a minute.
SPEAKER_00: We're the ones with snow.
SPEAKER_00: We're the ones with mountain peaks.
SPEAKER_00: You don't got any mountain peaks, uh peaks.
SPEAKER_00: This is what God does.
SPEAKER_00: He marches through the north.
SPEAKER_00: He marches through Jordan and Syria and Lebanon, and he marches through the northern part of Israel where the ten tribes were, just bypasses all of that and goes right to tiny Mount Zion.
SPEAKER_00: Mount Zion is small.
SPEAKER_00: It's inside a little bowl there, like around the Mount of Olives and these other little hills that are around there.
SPEAKER_00: Mount of Olives is bigger than Mount Zion.
SPEAKER_00: So they build the temple on top of Mount Zion, but you can't even see it.
SPEAKER_00: If you were one mountain ridge away, you wouldn't even be able to see Mount Zion.
SPEAKER_00: But that's where God is headed.
SPEAKER_00: And so, of course, David is not really thinking the mountains are sad.
SPEAKER_00: The mountains aren't shedding mountain tears.
SPEAKER_00: This, again, is it's anthropomorphism.
SPEAKER_00: And what's David communicating here?
SPEAKER_00: He's communicating the nations of the world are standing in awe about God settling in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: The nations are looking at this, going, that place is nowhere.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing remarkable about them.
SPEAKER_00: There's not even a highway that goes by Jerusalem in David's day.
SPEAKER_00: He took it because it's away from the road that goes along the Mediterranean, away from the Jordan River.
SPEAKER_00: And this again is all the middle part of the Bible, Kings and Chronicles.
SPEAKER_00: God settles there.
SPEAKER_00: And the nations of the world shake their head.
SPEAKER_00: Egypt, Cush, looks at that and goes, Why, if your God is the real God, why wouldn't he buy in a better market?
SPEAKER_00: What's Jerusalem offering?
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing there.
SPEAKER_00: And David says, Oh, no, don't get discouraged, you nations.
SPEAKER_00: It's God who wants to be there.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 132, verse 13.
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh desired Mount Zion for his habitation, saying, This will be his resting place forever.
SPEAKER_00: There is where he resides.
SPEAKER_00: He has desired it.
SPEAKER_00: So God moves right through the nations.
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, this is this should affect your thinking today.
SPEAKER_00: This is the nations of the world going, why would God choose something as weak as the church to dwell in?
SPEAKER_00: Certainly, if God was looking for a strong, wealthy, vibrant, handsome kind of nation or people group, he would choose this nation or that nation.
SPEAKER_00: He would make this nation his favored nation or that nation his favored nation, or he would work through that people group or this people group, but that's not how God operates.
SPEAKER_00: He's not working through a nation or a people group.
SPEAKER_00: He's working through his own people, his own temple, the church, where he's sealed people with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: That's whom he's working with in a special way.
SPEAKER_00: And the nations of the world shake their head and they say, The church is weak.
SPEAKER_00: The people of God are weak.
SPEAKER_00: Why would God work with them if he's the real God?
SPEAKER_00: And David replies, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh will work with them forever, verse 16 says.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, Yahweh doesn't need to borrow the armies of the nations, verse 17.
SPEAKER_00: The chariots of God are twice 10,000, thousands upon thousands.
SPEAKER_00: As Yahweh is invading the promised land, he has a massive army of thousands of angels with him.
SPEAKER_00: Some of the best military victories were brought about by the angels, if you're familiar with the story of 1st and 2 Kings.
SPEAKER_00: And God defeats them all.
SPEAKER_00: And then verse 18 is where he ascends on high.
SPEAKER_00: He goes up from, well, sorry, verse 17, he will establish in the sanctuary.
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh will be among them.
SPEAKER_00: Sinai will now be in the sanctuary.
SPEAKER_00: God will build his temple in Mount Zion.
SPEAKER_00: The law that came on Mount Sinai will now take residence in the temple in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, he's combining the two.
SPEAKER_00: The law that he gave in Egypt in their wilderness will now be incarnate in Israel, in the tabernacle.
SPEAKER_00: Sinai moves into Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: And it can do that, verse 18 says, Because you ascended on high, leading host of captives in your train.
SPEAKER_00: And you received gifts from men, even among the rebellious, Yahweh God may dwell there, there being the tabernacle, the sanctuary.
SPEAKER_00: Now in English poetry, the you know, the introduction is important and the conclusion is the last piece.
SPEAKER_00: That's where it's all tied together.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrew poetry doesn't work like that.
SPEAKER_00: In Hebrew poetry, the most important part is the center.
SPEAKER_00: And that's verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: This whole psalm funnels to verse 18 and out of verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: And the key of this psalm is that Yahweh has moved into Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: He's moved into his sanctuary.
SPEAKER_00: He has led captives free.
SPEAKER_00: People were in captivity.
SPEAKER_00: We'll find out in a few verses, they're in captivity to the fear of death, and God rescues them from their fear of death, and he just obliterates his enemies.
SPEAKER_00: They're so thoroughly defeated.
SPEAKER_00: God's enemies in the book of 1 and 2 Kings are so thoroughly defeated, they begin paying God.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, how bad did they get beat?
SPEAKER_00: They're offering God gifts.
SPEAKER_00: That's what's described in verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh has humiliated his enemies and receives gifts from them and will dwell in Jerusalem forever.
SPEAKER_00: That is the image here.
SPEAKER_00: This is the watershed moment of the Psalm.
SPEAKER_00: From this point forward in the Psalm, we're going, looking future from David's perspective.
SPEAKER_00: God has moved into Israel, and now we're going to turn our eyes into the future, and that leads to the possession of the land.
SPEAKER_00: The Yahweh will move into Israel, he'll move into Jerusalem, and he brings hope with him.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 19, Blessed be the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He daily bears us up.
SPEAKER_00: This is a word play on Isaiah 46.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 46 describes the donkeys having to move the Baal idols.
SPEAKER_00: So there are these idols of the rain God.
SPEAKER_00: You got to move them from one place to another.
SPEAKER_00: You've got to rent donkeys, strap them down on the donkeys, the donkeys carry their idols.
SPEAKER_00: David finds that humorous.
SPEAKER_00: Because David says, Our God doesn't need to be carried.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the reverse is true.
SPEAKER_00: Our God carries us.
SPEAKER_00: He carries all things.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it means in verse 19.
SPEAKER_00: He daily bears us up because he is our salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Our God is a God of salvation.
SPEAKER_00: And to Yahweh, the Lord, belongs deliverances from death.
SPEAKER_00: And there's the key.
SPEAKER_00: There it is.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, Hebrews chapter 2 that the whole world is held in slavery, in captivity to the fear of death.
SPEAKER_00: Let me just pause here for a second.
SPEAKER_00: In the course of the Bible, this is the thread that is running through it.
SPEAKER_00: People don't want to die.
SPEAKER_00: And they don't want to die for one big reason.
SPEAKER_00: They're sinners and they will stand before God for judgment.
SPEAKER_00: So people are terrified of it.
SPEAKER_00: And people will spend a serious amount of time trying to avoid that end.
SPEAKER_00: Which is a silly way to lead your life.
SPEAKER_00: Because it won't work.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the reality is that everybody who is born will die.
SPEAKER_00: So if you make it your goal to avoid death, you are committing your life to failure.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think the idea of the the gerbil wheel, we have pet gerbils in our house and they run on the wheel.
SPEAKER_00: They run so fast and they go nowhere.
SPEAKER_00: Gerbils are from this part of the world.
SPEAKER_00: They're from Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Could you imagine telling David that one day in the future there will be a nation of people that will buy gerbils and get little wheels and put them in cages in their house?
SPEAKER_00: So their pet cat doesn't eat them?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, David would lose his mind.
SPEAKER_00: But that's the image of people trying to escape death.
SPEAKER_00: They run and they run and they run, and then they, like every gerbil, die.
SPEAKER_00: Except, unlike gerbils, when people die, we face judgment.
SPEAKER_00: And that terrifies us.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what David is saying here, that Yahweh, the one who surfs through the desert, who surfed through Mount Bishon, who settled in Jerusalem, that God, He alone can save you from the fear of death.
SPEAKER_00: Well, how can He save you from the fear of death?
SPEAKER_00: How can He deliver you from it?
SPEAKER_00: By defeating it.
SPEAKER_00: Look at what verse 21 says.
SPEAKER_00: God will strike the heads of his enemies.
SPEAKER_00: He will actually defeat them.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord said, I will bring them back from Bashan.
SPEAKER_00: Now he's talking about returning the exiles.
SPEAKER_00: Remember in the Bible, Israel gets exiled because they rebel against God.
SPEAKER_00: He scatters them, he sends them all over the world.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews get scattered everywhere because they rebelled against him.
SPEAKER_00: This is 2 Kings chapter 18 to the end of 2 Kings.
SPEAKER_00: They just scatter everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: And so now God brings them back.
SPEAKER_00: And he says he's going to bring them back here.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I will fetch them, verse 22.
SPEAKER_00: I'll bring them back from Bashan, meaning from the furthest mountain.
SPEAKER_00: I will bring them back from the depths of the sea.
SPEAKER_00: Some of them went to the modern-day Europe.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, some of the Jews scattered all around the Mediterranean basin, and God says, I'll fetch them from the other side of the sea.
SPEAKER_00: I'll go get them.
SPEAKER_00: I'll bring them back.
SPEAKER_00: This is the book of Daniel and Ezra and Nehemiah and Esther in the Bible, all describe the return.
SPEAKER_00: And they do.
SPEAKER_00: They come back to the land, but guess what?
SPEAKER_00: They come back to the land and they don't worship God anymore.
SPEAKER_00: They rebel against him again.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, they say they worship God, but it's only a perfection with their lips, not with their hearts.
SPEAKER_00: So why would God bring them back if he knows their faith isn't genuine?
SPEAKER_00: Well, he's going to bring them back to judge them.
SPEAKER_00: And verse 23 is graphic in English.
SPEAKER_00: It's even more graphic in the Hebrew, believe you me.
SPEAKER_00: I'll bring them back so that you may strike your feet in their blood.
SPEAKER_00: It's an awkward English expression, but it means the ground, I'm going to bring them back to a bloodbath.
SPEAKER_00: So they will walk in the blood of those that I'm destroying.
SPEAKER_00: And then the tongues of their dogs will have their portion from the foe.
SPEAKER_00: Their dogs will get more from coming back than they will.
SPEAKER_00: Their dogs will drink the blood of their enemies.
SPEAKER_00: Meaning God's going to bring them back, but they will keep rebelling.
SPEAKER_00: That's the possession of the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: There's a hope that you'll be delivered from death.
SPEAKER_00: There's the reality that the Israelites did not worship.
SPEAKER_00: And that leads you finally to verse 24.
SPEAKER_00: The procession.
SPEAKER_00: Well, not finally, the halfway point to verse 24.
SPEAKER_00: The procession.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 24, remarkable language.
SPEAKER_00: Your procession is seen, O God.
SPEAKER_00: The procession of my God, my king, into the sanctuary.
SPEAKER_00: So now we're looking at this parade that's coming into Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: The singers are in front, the musicians last.
SPEAKER_00: Between them, women, these virgins playing on tambourines.
SPEAKER_00: Bless God in the great congregations.
SPEAKER_00: Now there's this rejoicing that's happening.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you didn't realize this is telling the story of the Bible, you would think this is out of place because earlier the land was possessed, so didn't the king enter it before he possessed it?
SPEAKER_00: But we recognize in the Bible that's not the order it happened.
SPEAKER_00: God leads the Israelites out of Egypt, conquers their enemies, puts them in the promised land, but God does not come to the promised land himself.
SPEAKER_00: He puts the Jews there and he remains in heaven, and they are there in the promised land for 400 years until they're exiled, scattered around.
SPEAKER_00: God then gets them and brings them back to the promised land, and then he comes.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, when he comes, we're leaving the Old Testament for the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: This is the entrance of Jesus Christ to the world.
SPEAKER_00: And how does Jesus come?
SPEAKER_00: With a procession, with cheers and cries and celebration, led by the women, of course, and the musicians, and he's ushered in.
SPEAKER_00: And there is a great celebration.
SPEAKER_00: They call him in verse 26 Israel's fountain.
SPEAKER_00: That is my favorite biblical term for God.
SPEAKER_00: He's a fountain.
SPEAKER_00: It's unusual only a handful of times, maybe four or five times in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: It's such a profound description, though, because the fountain gives itself.
SPEAKER_00: From a water fountain, you get water, okay?
SPEAKER_00: From God, he gives himself.
SPEAKER_00: He gives life, he gives light, he gives love, he gives all things we need for an existence that comes from him.
SPEAKER_00: He's giving himself to us ultimately by giving us his word, he is his word, and his son, he is his son.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it means when he's a fountain.
SPEAKER_00: And the fountain comes in a parade into Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: The parade is led by verse 27.
SPEAKER_00: Benjamin, who is the youngest of the 12 tribes, the youngest one, and so everything's reversed.
SPEAKER_00: God is letting the weak people lead again.
SPEAKER_00: The smallest one is in the front, followed by Zebulun and Napptal.
SPEAKER_00: What in the world, verse 27?
SPEAKER_00: Those are the forgotten tribes.
SPEAKER_00: They're up in the north.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody cared about them.
SPEAKER_00: But do you remember when Jesus came, his disciples were from Zebulun and Napptal?
SPEAKER_00: And he's ushered in with these forgotten people in a massive celebration.
SPEAKER_00: That's how God arrives in a sanctuary, in the person of the king.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the story doesn't end there, of course.
SPEAKER_00: The New Testament keeps going, and we see a kingdom expansion in verse 28.
SPEAKER_00: Summon your power, O God, by which you've worked for us, because of your temple at Jerusalem, kings will come to you.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, the kings of the world are going to come to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: They're going to come to his temple.
SPEAKER_00: This is also described all over the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Haggai, Hebrews chapter 12, Zechariah 14, the end of Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: God is going to establish his kingdom in the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is now in glory.
SPEAKER_00: He's ascended on high.
SPEAKER_00: He will return to the earth and establish his kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: He will conquer the nations of the world.
SPEAKER_00: He will destroy his enemies and establish and rule over his kingdom from Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Zechariah 14 says he will come and put his foot on the Mount of Olives and it will break.
SPEAKER_00: Zechariah says a river will flow out of the temple to the Jordan River, to the Dead Sea, back to the Mediterranean Sea.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it doesn't work that way now, but that will happen when he splits open the rocks there.
SPEAKER_00: The nations will have access to the temple.
SPEAKER_00: The nations will bring their worship to the temple.
SPEAKER_00: The nations will bring their gold and their silver, is what Haggai II says.
SPEAKER_00: It's their worship.
SPEAKER_00: They will come and honor Jesus Christ as he reigns over the world from Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: This is not now.
SPEAKER_00: I know that there are those that say this is filled like metaphorically through the church.
SPEAKER_00: This is not now.
SPEAKER_00: Because Paul in Hebrews 12 says this is future.
SPEAKER_00: He's looking for the day.
SPEAKER_00: He says, God's going to shake the earth, and the nations will come.
SPEAKER_00: And for those of us who have a kingdom that cannot be shaken, we will be spared.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, those who love the Lord will be rescued from that shaking.
SPEAKER_00: The nations of the earth will be reoriented, shaken like a snow globe.
SPEAKER_00: The earth will reorient itself around Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The earth will put its attention on Jesus Christ, and the kings of the earth will honor Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: This is the kingdom that is still future.
SPEAKER_00: We're looking forward to that day.
SPEAKER_00: And that kingdom comes with violence, of course.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 30 says he's going to rebuke the beasts, he's going to trample under feet his enemies again, like bulls would trample people.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 30, God's going to destroy his enemies.
SPEAKER_00: He will scatter the people who delight in war.
SPEAKER_00: And when that happens, nobles will come from Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: Cush, another word for Egypt, Ethiopia, that region, will hasten to stretch out their hands to God.
SPEAKER_00: The most unlikely people will get radically converted when that happens.
SPEAKER_00: That's the future kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: The future kingdom where God will bring his glory to the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Living waters will fill the earth, and we will reign with Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And that leads to our final section of the Psalm, Adoration.
SPEAKER_00: So we saw liberation from slavery, the invasion of the promised land, possession of the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: We saw the procession of the king to the temple in the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: We've seen the expansion of the kingdom, and now the eternal adoration of worship.
SPEAKER_00: This is 32 to the end.
SPEAKER_00: O kingdoms of the earth, sing to God.
SPEAKER_00: Sing praises to him.
SPEAKER_00: To him who rides in the heavens.
SPEAKER_00: Notice the language again.
SPEAKER_00: At the beginning of the Psalm, he was riding through the desert.
SPEAKER_00: Now God is riding in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: This is why I mean eternal worship.
SPEAKER_00: He's back up in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: He's reigning over the world and the universe.
SPEAKER_00: And it says it's as if he's surfing through the sky.
SPEAKER_00: Forget Baal surfed in the, you know, the clouds that never gave any rain.
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh is surfing in the sky surrounded by 10,000 angels.
SPEAKER_00: It's incredible.
SPEAKER_00: He's the majesty of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And his power is the skies.
SPEAKER_00: He sends out his mighty voice, verse 33 says.
SPEAKER_00: He's the one in his sanctuary.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 35.
SPEAKER_00: He's the one who gives power and strength to his people.
SPEAKER_00: He's still near, even though he's elevated and in his heavens and his voice is commanding all things, he's still near to his people.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 35 says, He gives us power.
SPEAKER_00: He knows us by name.
SPEAKER_00: And this is why we can say, Blessed be Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: This is how the book of Revelation ends, with worship for God for all time.
SPEAKER_00: So I hope to communicate to you this morning the big picture of the whole Bible, which is God establishing worship for himself through his people on the earth, initially rejecting him.
SPEAKER_00: Then he leads them from slavery into faith, he gives them hope, he destroys his enemies, he comes.
SPEAKER_00: Comes to earth in the person of the king incarnate and establishes a kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom expands in the future, ending in the book of Revelation with eternal worship.
SPEAKER_00: That is the Bible from 30,000 feet.
SPEAKER_00: But I don't want to end there.
SPEAKER_00: I want to zoom in a little closer on one particular part.
SPEAKER_00: This is the cool part of the psalm.
SPEAKER_00: The whole psalm is the story of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: But do you notice, looking at the list on the screen, do you notice that this is also the story of Christ?
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus comes to earth.
SPEAKER_00: He is the king who comes to earth.
SPEAKER_00: And he has to flee to Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 2, verse 15, he will be called out of Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: He comes back from Egypt through the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: He comes into Israel in the north part of Israel, settles in Nazareth, the northern tribe of Naphtali, the forgotten tribes.
SPEAKER_00: He goes there in a nowhere village.
SPEAKER_00: This is where he goes.
SPEAKER_00: Fights the devil, in a sense, in the wilderness, goes toe to toe as the devil tempts him, withstands the temptations in the wilderness, so that when he comes out of the wilderness, he proclaims Luke 4, verse 18, liberation for slaves.
SPEAKER_00: Speaking of those who are enslaved to sin, he can offer them freedom and liberation from their slavery.
SPEAKER_00: He then invades the promised land, starting in Naptae, starting in Galilee, that area.
SPEAKER_00: That's where he does most of his ministry.
SPEAKER_00: He invades Israel, starting there, just like God did in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And he takes the promised land by storm.
SPEAKER_00: He walks on water.
SPEAKER_00: Incredible sight.
SPEAKER_00: He rebukes the wind and the waves.
SPEAKER_00: He multiplies food.
SPEAKER_00: He declares to the woman in John chapter 4 that he has live rivers of living water.
SPEAKER_00: All of the things in this Psalm are fulfilled in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He becomes the fountain of living water.
SPEAKER_00: He becomes the one who gives food to his people.
SPEAKER_00: Moses hit a rock and got water.
SPEAKER_00: You come to Christ through faith, and he gives you rivers of living water, meaning the Holy Spirit in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: He takes the promised land by storm.
SPEAKER_00: He gives hope in Canaan.
SPEAKER_00: He tells people, you can defeat death through faith in him.
SPEAKER_00: That's his repeated message throughout his ministry.
SPEAKER_00: Turn from your sins and be forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: Put your faith in him and you will rise in the resurrection, he says.
SPEAKER_00: He offers that kind of hope.
SPEAKER_00: But if you reject him, you will be destroyed.
SPEAKER_00: He preaches that kind of message.
SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, the procession.
SPEAKER_00: This is the celebration of Palm Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: He arrives into Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: The whole procession starts up at Mount Hebron, remember, up in the north, where there's a transfiguration.
SPEAKER_00: He's in all of his glory, surrounded by the light from heaven and angels and Moses and Elijah and his three slacker disciples that don't even know what to do.
SPEAKER_00: And then he marches from there down from the mini-peaked mountain of Bishon above Mount Bishon.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus will not set up his tabernacle there, no matter what Peter says.
SPEAKER_00: We're leaving those mountains behind.
SPEAKER_00: And he marches all the way through Jericho, marches down to Jerusalem with the crowd growing and growing and growing.
SPEAKER_00: And by the time he gets to Jerusalem, it's a massive crowd made up mostly of women and poor and beggars and children.
SPEAKER_00: Not exactly the army of 10,000 angels that you were expecting, huh?
SPEAKER_00: And the Jews don't know what to make of this.
SPEAKER_00: There's a huge influx of people as Jesus marches in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: He's not riding on a war stallion either.
SPEAKER_00: What's he riding when he comes in Jerusalem?
SPEAKER_00: A donkey.
SPEAKER_00: Humble and low.
SPEAKER_00: It says in Psalm 68, verse 17, the chariots of God are twice 10,000.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, Oh, don't be fooled.
SPEAKER_00: I have thousands of angels with me.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm going to be ushered in by these women.
SPEAKER_00: The Mary who breaks the perfume and covers his feet in perfume and wipes his feet with tears and her hair.
SPEAKER_00: What a contrast.
SPEAKER_00: And God is coming into, look at verse 24, into the sanctuary.
SPEAKER_00: And how does he come into the sanctuary?
SPEAKER_00: He says in verse 25, with singers and musicians and tambourines.
SPEAKER_00: And everybody is shouting Hosanna.
SPEAKER_00: Hosanna means praise, and the Yah at the end is the nickname for God.
SPEAKER_00: Praise Yah.
SPEAKER_00: Praise Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: That's what everybody is shouting as the women are wiping his feet and the kids are cheering for him and the crowd is proclaiming him.
SPEAKER_00: And he walks right to the temple.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember that's where he goes?
SPEAKER_00: Straight to the sanctuary, right to the temple.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and he takes ownership of it, doesn't he?
SPEAKER_00: He marches right in and goes to war.
SPEAKER_00: He flips over to the tables, whips out the people, claims the place, and says, This is my father's house.
SPEAKER_00: I'm living here now.
SPEAKER_00: And throws everybody out.
SPEAKER_00: And then teaches there for days and days.
SPEAKER_00: Preaching the gospel of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Until he is finally arrested, betrayed in a sham, ridiculous trial, murdered.
SPEAKER_00: But in being murdered, our sins are placed on him.
SPEAKER_00: So that as he dies on the cross, he dies for our sins.
SPEAKER_00: He had descended from heaven to earth, ascended to the cross, descended to the grave, the realm of the dead, where he frees those that had died in faith, liberates their souls from death, brings them up to heaven, he resurrects on earth, tells the disciples, preach the gospel to the kingdom, and all nations will come, and then he goes to heaven, ascends to heaven, where he remains at this moment.
SPEAKER_00: We're still looking forward to these last two stops on this.
SPEAKER_00: We're still looking forward to the kingdom where he will come back.
SPEAKER_00: And for glory will we worship him forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see in Psalm 68 how Jesus filled every one of these prophecies literally, but often the opposite way you expected?
SPEAKER_00: He literally had an army of people with him, and they were women and children and blind Bartimaeus.
SPEAKER_00: He literally had a procession to the sanctuary, but it was not the king with the massive army invading it.
SPEAKER_00: It was Jesus on a donkey with words from God.
SPEAKER_00: This is the Palm Sunday Psalm.
SPEAKER_00: What do you do with a psalm like this?
SPEAKER_00: To recognize that Jesus is the King.
SPEAKER_00: He is God that was sent to earth in human flesh to make a way for you to be freed from the fear of death, for you to be freed from the penalty of your sin.
SPEAKER_00: There is no other way to be freed from it except by worshiping this king.
SPEAKER_00: This psalm makes it very clear.
SPEAKER_00: There are two ways to live, and it is not just a psalm, it is the whole Bible, makes the same point over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: You can trust yourself and live for yourself, and you will die, and you will stand before God for judgment.
SPEAKER_00: Or you can worship this king.
SPEAKER_00: You can exalt him, you can cling to him and ask him to forgive your sins, and you know what he will do?
SPEAKER_00: He will forgive your sins and free you from the fear of death because he conquered the grave.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we're grateful that you have turned this psalm upside down.
SPEAKER_00: You fulfilled it and reversed it.
SPEAKER_00: We see you at the center of this psalm.
SPEAKER_00: You are our conquering king, our victor who marched from the north to the south, from the wilderness to the mountains to the temple.
SPEAKER_00: And in your death, the temple was destroyed.
SPEAKER_00: The curtain was ripped, the rocks were ripped down.
SPEAKER_00: Today it's just a pile of rocks, really, with a ramp.
SPEAKER_00: You have reoriented the world around yourself.
SPEAKER_00: We know it's only a partial reorientation.
SPEAKER_00: We look forward to the day where you come back to earth and you establish your kingdom and will lead us all into eternal glory.
SPEAKER_00: I pray for anyone here today.
SPEAKER_00: I know we have many visitors today.
SPEAKER_00: I pray for people who are here today.
SPEAKER_00: I pray their hearts will be open to this truth.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that today, if they don't know you as their Savior, that today they would put their hearts in your hand, that they would trust you, they put their faith in you and believe that you died for their sins.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, if you didn't die, then you couldn't have resurrected.
SPEAKER_00: And if you didn't resurrect, you didn't ascend to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And our faith is pointless.
SPEAKER_00: But we know our faith is not pointless, and that you can forgive the sins of those who come to you in faith.
SPEAKER_00: We're grateful.
SPEAKER_00: This is the message of the Bible and of Psalm 68.
SPEAKER_00: We hope it will be the message of our life as we go into the world.
SPEAKER_00: We pray this in Jesus' name.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us today.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, I would love to meet you personally at Emmanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our service times and other church information is on our website at ibc.church.
SPEAKER_00: If you want information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to tms.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource has been an encouragement to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.
SPEAKER_00: May the Lord bless you.