Psalms Archives - Page 27 of 35

Psalm 73 – Nevertheless

Joe Harby on August 16, 2015

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.

On Christian Disobedience #1

Joe Harby on April 12, 2015

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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.

Surveying the Text: Psalms

Joe Harby on January 25, 2015

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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.

Gospel Presence V: Taste and See

Joe Harby on April 28, 2013

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Introduction

We worship God the Father through Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit. But in order for this to work, He cannot be a distant Christ. Remember that in Christ God came near, God became our neighbor. We worship God through a close Christ, a near Christ, an indwelling Christ. The point of the message today—taste and see— requires that we serve God through an experienced Christ.

The Text

“The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them. O taste and see that the Lord is good: Blessed is the man that trusteth in him” (Ps. 34:7-8).

Summary of the Text

A wonderful theme of this psalm is that God is the great Deliverer. God is the one who saves those who have faith in Him, and whose lives are living indications of that faith. That theme is very much present in the two verses that constitute our text. The angel of the Lord places the one who fears God in the midst of the camp, and entirely surrounds him. He delivers him (v. 7). This is a glorious promise, and anybody is invited to come in order to participate in it. The invitation is to taste and see (v. 8). What do we taste? The goodness of the Lord. We taste the blessedness of trusting in Him.

Notice also the parallel between fearing Him and tasting His goodness. And notice too that being delivered is the blessing that results from trusting Him. Tasting is fearing and blessedness is being delivered.

An Experienced Christ

We identify ourselves as evangelicals, but by this we mean historic evangelicals, or confessional evangelicals. This is to be distinguished from that pop evangelicalism that has commodified the whole thing in order to be able to print it on a T-shirt, available at a Jesus junk store near you. Jesus Himself said that the experience (which is absolutely necessary) is not an experience that we can successfully manipulate. We cannot bottle the wind of the Spirit. We cannot manufacture this because we are talking about the sovereign motions of the sovereign God.

At the same time, we insist that a man must be born again if he is to see the kingdom of God. As I have taught before, you don’t have to know what instant the sun rose in order to know that it is up. And neither may be conclude from the fact that we know that it is up that we have the authority to command it to rise.

God is Good

We serve the God who invites. We serve the God who summons, and who goes out of His way to summon. “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, And he that hath no money; Come ye, buy, and eat; Yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? And your labour for that which satisfieth not?” (Is. 55:1-2).

Apart from Christ, we feed on little bits of refuse. We bake bread made out of sawdust. We mix our drinks with used dishwater, and we sneer at those pitiful believers who do not know what it means to live the good life. We turn everything into gruel. We clutch at driveway pebbles, calling them diamonds. We collect wisps of straw to make an arrangement for the middle of the table. When God pronounces a woe on those who call evil good and good evil (Is. 5:20), more is involved than simply a mistake in ethics. It all comes down to what you have to eat, what you have to chew, and what you must swallow. And if you consume the meager pickings of self, you are in dietary training for the outer darkness.

Consistency and Variation

God is not locked into the same kind of tight strictures that we are. A vineyard in France, and one in California, and another in Louisiana, can all produce a bottle of Cabernet, and this is completely different than the effect you get when it is a diet soda bottling plant in all those same locations. But no one remarks on the terroir of the Diet Dr. Pepper. No one stands at the drink dispenser, swirling the plastic cup under his nose.

It is the same with the fruit of the Spirit—fantastic variation and remarkable consistency. Legalists want the experienced Christ to taste like it all came from one bottling plant. Antinomians want to pretend that there is no difference between a fine wine and stump water. Never forget that the triune God, who is growing us all up, is holy. And never forget that the triune God, who is growing us all up into a splendid array—of different kinds of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control—is not a ball-bearing manufacturer.

A White Stone

A commonplace in Christian circles is the phrase “a personal relationship” with Jesus. However clichéd it may have become, there is an important reality there that we must preserve. We preserve it because it is precious.

“He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it” (Rev. 2:17).

God the Father, through the Lord Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, has a relationship with you that only He and you know. This is for the one who overcomes, and what is it that overcomes? Is it not our faith? The one who tastes, the one who sees—which can only be done by faith—is the one who knows the goodness of God as it has been evidenced in their relationship. Just the two.

Now this does not eliminate the need for the body of Christ. Every cell, every member, being alive is the prerequisite for living participation in the living body. You want to be a living finger, not a dead fingernail. Don’t be covenantal keratin.

Joy and Sin

Joe Harby on September 16, 2012

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Introduction

This message is the first of three on the subject of joy. I want to consider, each in turn, three basic challenges to a believer’s joy. The first challenge will be sin—disobedience. The second challenge will be suffering or affliction. The third challenge we will address will be melancholy, the blues, or what our generation frequently calls depression. It is important for us to avoid the easy trap of a pious assertion that personal sin must be the reason for everything bad. At the same time, let us not kid ourselves either. Sin does bring in lots of troubles.

The Text

“Make me to hear joy and gladness; That the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice . . . Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit” (Ps. 51: 10, 12).

Summary of the Text

The Bible teaches us that God chastises every son that He receives. If we do not receive discipline, then we are not true sons (Heb. 12:8). But what form does this divine spanking take? How does God deal with us when we have slipped or fallen into sin? Joy is a function of our unimpeded relationship with Him, and when our misbehavior disrupts that fellowship, the most evident thing about it is our loss of joy. We see that in David’s case here. This psalm is a great psalm of confession, where he is putting things right with God. What does he ask for in that restoration? He asks for joy and gladness (v. 10), that the spiritual bones which God has broken may be restored. He asks, not for his salvation to return, but for the joy of it to return (v. 12). Restore unto me the joy. Unrepented sin and joy cannot be companions. They don’t travel together at all.

The Solution

The solution to unrepentant sin is, not surprisingly, repentance. We should take care not to over-engineer this:

“I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin” (Ps. 32:5).

“He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy” (Prov. 28:13).

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn. 1:9).

The central reason we don’t do this is pride. Pride has various shifts and evasions which we will get to in a moment, but the attitude that seeks out such shifts and evasions is the attitude that does not want, under any circumstances, to humble itself. It causes no end of trouble, and is the true enemy of all joy.

Traits of True Confession

In the verse from 1 John, the word for confess is homologeo, which means to acknowledge, to “speak the same thing.” If we confess, God forgives. If we confess, God is faithful and just in His forgiveness. If we confess, God cleanses us from all unrighteousness. If we confess, God restores us in our joy. So what are the traits of true confession?

First, true confession is honest, brutally honest. The wages of spin is death. Saying the same thing that God says about it is not the same thing as saying something different from what God says. Sometimes we say “different” in a way that is harder on ourselves than God is being, but this is rare. And when it happens, it is because we are being softer on ourselves with regard to the true sin that has us tied up. So confession asks God what it should say, and then says that.

Second, true confession is not something you get to apply to the sins of others. You can confess other people’s sins all day long and your joy will not be restored. Unwillingness to forgive, reluctance to let go of resentment and bitterness, and every other form of “contextualizing” your sin, is a good way to remain joyless.

And third, true confession occurs in the present. Today if you hear His voice . . . A man can know that his sin was sin, he can know that it was not the sin of another, and yet not confess it “yet.” He can say that the time for confession is “next Sunday,” or “soon,” or “after the circumstances are better.” In other words, there is a difference between standing on the high dive, knowing what you have to do, and actually doing it.

What Becomes Visible

We tend to believe that if we confess our sins, then others will know all about the sin and will think less of us. With the exception of hidden scandalous sins (like adultery or embezzlement, say), this is usually not the case. Usually, the people we are refusing to confess sin to are the people who know all about them already.

Confession would not bring them knowledge of your sin. It would bring them knowledge of your sorrow and repentance. Are you an angry person? Petty? Inconsistent? Vain? Dictatorial? Greedy? Lustful? What on earth makes you think that other people can’t see this? If you snap at your employees, or children, or spouse, and tell God how sorry you are about it in the middle of the night, how is it that you don’t see that it is your repentance that is invisible? The sin is right out there. Repentance humbles us, but not by making the sin visible. Repentance humbles us by making the humility visible.

What God Does

Scripture teaches us that God lifts up the humble, and He opposes the proud (Jas. 4:6). Those who refuse to confess their sins are proud, and this means that God is opposing them. He trips them up. He puts obstacles in the way. He makes things go wrong. He takes away their joy. Those who confess their sins are humble, and God exalts the humble. He lifts them up. He restores them. He blesses their endeavors. And measure these things by the video, not by the snapshot.

We think (in the carnality of our hearts) that confession takes us down a peg or two. We think that our sin put us in a hole, and confession would just dig the hole deeper. But this reveals our unbelief. God says the opposite.

What has happened to all your joy? Do you remember what it was like when you were first converted? Why would God want week-old Christians to experience that, but deny it to the older Christians? The answer is that He wouldn’t.