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Psalm 73 – Nevertheless

Joe Harby on

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Introduction

This Psalm marks the first of 11 Psalms that are attributed to Asaph (along with Psalm 50). Asaph was one of the Levites appointed by David to lead the Israelites in singing (1 Chron. 6:39). And he presided over the singing at the dedication of Solomon’s Temple.

The Temptation 1-3

The Psalmist begins with a basic statement of faith. God is good to his people (Heb. 11:6). But then Asaph confesses how his own faith in this promise was challenged when what he saw in this life did not square with what he understood God’s promise to be. He was caught by an envy of the “peace” that the wicked seemed to have.

The Luxury of the Wicked 4-9

He describes for us now the effortless luxury of the wicked. They seem to have no fear of death. And troubles do not touch them as they do others. Note the “therefore” in verse 6. Because of this apparent ease, they become proud, wearing their arrogance like a badge. And this pride drives them to mock God and his people.

Is My Obedience in Vain? 10-14

The wicked live lives of rebellion and then mockingly asks if God even notices them. Then the righteous begin to wonder the same question. What is the point of obedience if the reward for obedience is a trial, and the reward of disobedience is prosperity? The complaint sounds very similar to that of the prodigal son’s older brother (Luke 15:29-30).

The Sudden Realization 15-20

But the faithful man catches himself and sees that he is reasoning like the ungodly man (v. 13 cf v. 11). The turn comes, however, when he goes to worship. Worship opens our eyes and gives us a different and more eternal perspective. The temptations that Asaph had wrestled with were temptations that come from having a very momentary perspective. God brings a sudden change. This is why we are regularly called to wait on the Lord.

Nevertheless 21-28

“Nevertheless” means despite all that I see around me at this moment, I know this to be true about God. He is my portion and I trust him. He takes me by the right hand and receives me to glory.

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On Christian Disobedience #1

Joe Harby on

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Introduction

The state is the great idol of modernity, and so of course Christians have to think through what things are lawful to render to Caesar and what things are not. This week we will consider the nature of our problem—the corruption of the system and the corruptions of those who oppose it. The next installment will address civil resistance in the Bible (Ehud, Gideon, Paul, Peter, David, el al.). But we must also remember civil submission in the Bible, and so passages like Romans 13 will be considered after that. Next, we will review an aspect of this subject infrequently considered, which is the nature of “established authorities” and the meaning of common law. The week after we will address common problems of conscience among Christians—Social Security taxes, registering for the draft, building inspectors, EPA regulations, licenses, and so forth. And last, we will look at the only possible solution to our civil woes, which is the genuine reformation of the Church. Any call for societal transformation must begin in the household of God.

The Text

“O Lord God, to whom vengeance belongs—O God, to whom vengeance belongs, shine forth! Rise up, O Judge of the earth; render punishment to the proud. Lord, how long will the wicked, how long will the wicked triumph?. . . Shall the throne of iniquity, which devises evil by law, have fellowship with You? They gather together against the life of the righteous, and condemn innocent blood” (Ps. 94:1-3, 20-22).

The Corrupt System

The Bible does recognize what we might call de facto rule. But the Bible also teaches the concept ofmoral legitimacy. “It is an abomination for kings to commit wickedness, for a throne is established by righteousness” (Pr. 16:12 : cf. 20:28; 25:5; 29:14). And so where do we stand? Here is just a brief review.

Abortion—since Roe v. Wade, we as a nation have maintained, for a full generation, that the dismemberment of an infant in the womb is morally legitimate. But the Bible says that murder is evil and defiles a land (Ex. 20:13; Num. 35:33- 34), and that the unborn in a just society are to have full legal protection (Ex. 21:22-25).

Moral filth exalted—from pornographic and federally-funded “art,” to twisted sex ed courses, to sodomite “marriages,” to vile behavior tolerated by our leaders, our culture defies God (Rom. 1:28-32 ). And so we as Christians must defy the culture.
Hatred of the truth—from the central lie of our government school systems—that the living God is, at best, irrelevant— to the lying ways in which we handle the law, wanting it to be as slippery as our hearts, we have turned from truth. “How can you say, ‘We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us’? Look, the false pen of the scribe certainly works falsehood. The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken. Behold, they have rejected the word of the Lord; so what wisdom do they have?” (Jer. 8:8-9)

Bogus crusades—because we will not learn our morality from the law of God, we find ourselves inventing our own lists of things to be indignant about, including, but not limited to, tobacco, sexism, wine and beer, climate change, and the history of western Europe. But remember the words of Mark 7:9.

In summary, our modern rulers cannot be dismayed when we deny that they have moral legitimacy, because they want to insist that in the final analysis, there is no such thing a moral legitimacy. And so the preachers of the Word of God can have only one thing to say to such wickedness in high places (Is. 5:20-21).

The Corrupted Opposition

It would be wonderful to be able to say that the corruption in our centers of power has nothing to do with us, but God gives rulers in order to chastise a people. “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people” (Pr. 14:34).
The state of the church—how can we expect the civil magistrate to conduct his affairs according to the Word of God when the church won’t conduct her affairs according to the Word of God? Consider the importance of salt in Matt. 5:13-16.

The idol of personal comfort—why do we yell when they want us to pay for the privileges we greedily accept? “I spoke to you in your prosperity, but you said, ‘I will not hear.’ This has been your manner from your youth, that you did not obey My voice” (Jer. 22:21). If you hear the word of righteousness when you are not afflicted, you do well. Lack of preparedness—when we are finally provoked to action, it is foolish and ill- considered action because of our prior sloth (1 Chr. 12:32). The school of resistance to lawless thrones is the same as the school of submission to the Lordship of Christ within the church. And this school is not a three-week course.

Judgment or Mercy

We serve the living God, the Holy One of Israel. He never changes; His attitude toward sinful nations is always the same. His wrath is visited upon all who defy Him, those who walk along spitting at the very clouds. The only way to flee from God is to flee to God. The only way to flee to God is through His Christ, our Lord Jesus.

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Surveying the Text: Psalms

Joe Harby on

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Introduction

It would be difficult to overstate the impact and influence of the Book of Psalms on the history of Israel, and on the subsequent history of the Christian church. As Luther once said, the Psalms are a “Bible in miniature,” and the way the Psalms are given to us, they are asconstructive as they are retrospective. But more on that shortly.

The Text

“Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: The sceptre of thy kingdom is a right sceptre. Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: Therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee With the oil of gladness above thy fellows” (Ps. 45:6–7).

Summary of the Text

Psalm 45 is a triumphal wedding day psalm, celebrating the marriage of the king. The author of Hebrews picks up on a phrase from the psalm, telling us that it represents God speaking to His Son, the Messiah. “But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom” (Heb. 1:8). Note that the Son is the bridegroom in the psalm, and that God the Father addresses Him as God. We will come back to the importance of this kind of thing shortly.

The Structure of the Book

The Book of Psalms is actually a collection of five psalters, each one ending with a doxology. Some of the psalms in the collection are ancient, going back to the time of Moses (Ps. 90), for example, but the majority are from the time of David and shortly after. The principal poet and musician represented is David (73 psalms are attributed to him), while other composers include Asaph, the sons of Korah, Solomon, Ethan, and Heman.

The five books are set up as follows: Book One (Ps. 1-41), Book Two (Ps. 42-72), Book Three (Ps. 73-89), Book Four (Ps. 90-106), and Book Five (Ps. 107-150). The doxologies that conclude each book are: Ps. 41:13, 72:18-19, 89:52, 106:48, 150:6. The first book is overwhelmingly from David. The second contains psalms from three sources—David, sons of Korah, and Asaph. The third is largely from Asaph and the sons of Korah. It is good to remember that the last book contains a section known as the Psalms of Ascent (120-134). Because of the murky history of how these books were assembled, we are not really in a position to use these divisions practically, although it is good to know that they are there.

A Translating Faith

A commonplace notion is that poetry cannot be translated. If a great poet wrote in a language not your own, then you are simply out of luck. Now certain things cannot be brought across with the same effect—that is true enough. We commonly signal the presence of poetry in hymns by means of rhyme, which the Hebrews didn’t do at all. We use meter, and other languages don’t. We use meter differently than do other languages that use meter, although Hebrew poetry didn’t at all, and so on.

Nevertheless…

Some aspects of Hebrew poetry can be transferred across the language barrier. One of the use of thought rhymes in the common use of parallelism. In English, this technique is used in the blues, but rarely elsewhere. The parallelism can have variations— synonymous, contrasting, constructive, and so on.

Another technique that carries across, and is actually common to all high poetic expression, is the use of metaphorical imagery. Some of this imagery is quite striking and indelicate. Consider the psalm where God is compared to a warrior who is awakened while sleeping off a drinking binge (Ps. 78:65-66). Now was that quite necessary? Three very common images for God in the psalms would be God as king, God as warrior, and God as fortress.

God is a king on a throne (Ps. 93:2), and He rules over much territory (Ps. 47:6-7). He is a maker of laws (Ps. 93:5), and one who makes covenants with conquered peoples (Ps. 25). And we clearly see the kingship of God in the psalm of our text. At the end of the day, all Christians are necessarily monarchists. Jesus is Lord, Jesus is King. God is a great warrior. His artillery is fearsome (Ps. 18:12, 14). He parts the heavens and comes down to fight (Ps. 18:9). He trains us how to fight (Ps. 144:1). We do not worship a pacifist God. God is a fortress, a shield, a great protection. He defends His people from harm (Ps. 18:1-2). This also is a military image, albeit a defensive one.

But we find more than just images of God. Here are some images for the wicked, those against whom we must stand. They are snakes (Ps. 58:4), bulls (Ps. 22:12), bees (Ps. 118:12), dogs (Ps. 22:16), and those are just a few of the images. What is being done in the use of imagery and metaphor? You are learning more about what you do not know from what you do know. This means carries over.

What It Means to Sing Psalms

One of the most obvious things about the psalms is how they were born in acutely personal circumstances. Their origin is individual. David wrote Ps. 52 in response to Doeg the Edomite. But when God used His servants to place these psalms in the corporate worship of Israel (and afterwards the Church), the result necessarily was two- fold: one was identification with the plight of the original author—he is our father, and we are with him. The second was application of these words to our own circumstances. Who is your Doeg? The meaning of the psalms, the import of the psalms, was therefore meant to expand. This hymnbook was intended to grow in meaning. What David used to refer to battles a thousand years before Christ (Ps. 68) was rightly appropriated by French Huguenots who made it into their battle hymn. “God shall arise and by His might, put all His enemies to flight.”

Another way of saying this is that the Psalter is alive. It is living and active. Take care not to fall into a destructive liberal/conservative dichotomy. The liberals love living documents—that’s how they kill them. Too often conservatives love preserving dead documents–Scripture is not under glass in a museum behind the velvet rope, with a brass plaque saying it is “alive.” Now we are not denying inerrancy here—that is the baseline minimum—but we are saying something much, much more than that. The Word of God is seed. What does that image mean?

The apostle Paul tells us that Christian churches are called to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16). Some Christians overstate the case when they say we may sing nothing but psalms, but that is not our most widespread error. The most widespread error is that of singing songs of our own invention, without reference to God’s model for hymnody. Singing should be one of our central vocations as disciples.

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