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Psalm 67: Nations Singing for Joy

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Introduction

It may be tempting to summarize this psalm as saying something like “praise God, everybody!” While it is certainly saying more than this, it is absolutely not saying anything less than this. And even this glorious exhortation has to have the ramifications fleshed out some more.

The Text

“God be merciful to us, and bless us; and cause his face to shine upon us . . .” (Psalm 67:1-7).

Summary of the Text

We begin, as sinners always must, with a plea for mercy (v. 1). May God be merciful and bless us, and make His face to shine upon us (v. 1). This is a plea for the Aaronic blessing to be realized (Num. 6:25). The result of God’s blessing is that His way becomes known on the earth (v. 2), and His salvation spreads through all nations (v. 2). Let all the people praise God (v. 3). The nations should be glad and sing for joy, because God governs righteously (v. 4). The exhortation to praise God from v. 3 is then repeated (v. 5). As a result, the earth will yield her increase under the blessing of God (v. 6). God will in fact bless the world, and all the ends of the earth will fear Him (v. 7).

This psalm is clearly a seven-part chiasm:

A prayer for God to bless (v. 1);
God’s ways will be known (v. 2);
Let the people praise Him (v. 3);
Let the nations sing for joy (v. 4);
Let the people praise Him (v. 5);
God’s ways will be fruitful (v. 6);
A prayer for God to bless (v. 7).

His Face to Shine

God is personal. Salvation is personal. The world around you is governed personally. You are not in the midst of impersonal machinery, grinding away. The Aaronic blessing sees blessing as God beaming at you (Num. 6:25). This is a common way of understanding blessing in Scripture. A plea for salvation is cast in the form of a request to have God’s face shine (Ps. 31:16). The sovereignty of God in turning us back to Him is described three times in a row as Him making His face to shine upon us (Ps. 80:3,7,19). Teaching one of His servants His holy statutes is said to be an instance of making His face to shine (Ps. 119:15). The restoration of His sanctuary is described this way (Dan. 9:17). And never forget that when the Lord Jesus was discussing His great redemptive work that was approaching in Jerusalem, on the mountain of transfiguration, His face was shining. May the Lord’s face shine upon you.

Jews Up in Front

It is not the case that the Old Testament was for Jews, and then God decided to be a little more expansive in the New Testament, letting everybody worship Him. There were changes in the New

Testament, but that was not the nature of them. What changed was the potency of the international invitation, not the reality of it.

The Jews were the chosen nation, not in the sense of election to Heaven, but in the sense of a chosen pupil, selected to come to the front of the class to show the rest of the class how the problem was to be solved. When that student does well, he is blessed. When he messes up, he messes up in front of everybody. But the whole class is involved. Remember Melchizedek, and Jethro, and Namaan, and the residents of Nineveh, and all the Gentiles who were invited to the court of the Gentiles in the Temple.

Fruitful Knowledge

If God does not make His ways known to us, we will walk in our own ways. But our own ways are covered in darkness. We are blind and lost. We no longer know the difference between up and down, black and white, male and female, or positive numbers and negative numbers. If God does not make His ways known to us, then we will not know them. If God does not reveal Himself to us, then we are shrouded in darkness—we are struck with a stupor, with a judicial blindness. This is not a matter of intelligence or mental rpms. This is a relational and moral reality—remember that the universe we live in is personal. Remember that you cannot like the world as it is without liking the one who made it that way. Remember also that you cannot reject Him without trying to turn the world into something else. That something else is, ultimately, the outer darkness—the one place where the Lord’s face does not shine at all.

So look at how these two parts in the chiasm match up. May the Lord make His ways known (v. 2). May the earth yield her increase (v. 6). This shows us how the right kind of knowledge is fruitful knowledge—not the vain kind that puffs up, but rather the knowledge of love, which builds up. Sin caused God to curse the ground in the first place, and grace causes God to ameliorate the effects of the curse. I had the privilege this last week to ride a combine for a bit over the Palouse hills—and had an up-close perspective on the goodness of Jesus Christ. And this is not limited to the blessings of earthly harvests either (although we should not exclude those). Educational harvests, vocational harvests, financial harvests, and spiritual and covenantal harvests are all included.

Nations Singing for Joy

The center of the chiasm highlights the point of the psalm—what is the psalmist wanting us to make central?

The nations should sing, not for amusement, not formally, and not for show. The nations are invited to sing for joy. This means that you sing because you are afraid you might burst a blood vessel if you don’t. You sing as a means of venting your heart. You sing to keep from blowing up.

And what is the cause of this kind of joy? What is the cause of this kind of joy throughout all the Gentile nations? It is the fact that the Lord governs. God judges the people righteously. When we use the word judge here, think of the book of Judges. When judges arose, it was to deliver the people. When judgment comes, the earth is put to rights. When God governs the nations upon the earth, the result is not described as mayhem for sinners, but rather as goodness, and mercy, and forgiveness, and peace, and kindness for sinners. The hills drip fatness.

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Psalm 66: Refined Like Silver

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Introduction

God is the Lord of our hearts, and He is the Lord over the world. He acts within us, and He acts outside of us, on our behalf. He does things for us, and He does things to us. He does things in the world to shape us, and He does things in us in order to shape the world. Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward, as Job says, but—despite appearances—it is never mindless trouble. To say that the world is “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” is the observation of an unbelieving man sliding down into damnation.

The Text

“Make a joyful noise unto God, all ye lands: Sing forth the honour of his name: Make his praise glorious. Say unto God, How terrible art thou in thy works! Through the greatness of thy power shall thine enemies submit themselves unto thee . . .” (Psalm 66:1-20).

Summary of the Text

This psalm begins with an introduction, inviting all nations to praise the Lord (vv. 1-4), suggesting what a suitable song of praise would consist of. In the second section (vv. 5-7), the people are invited to come and see the terrible works of God, with the crossing of the Red Sea listed (and a possible reference to the crossing of the Jordan). The people alive at the time of the psalm were perhaps in similar straits, and they are invited to see the outcome of their trial by faith (vv. 8-12). And the last section finds the psalmist confessing his personal responsibilities, and concluding with a burst of praise (vv. 13-20).

All nations should make a joyful noise (v. 1). His name should be honored, His praise glorious (v. 2). The people are invited to acknowledge directly to God how terrible He is (v. 3). The whole earth will worship Him (v. 4). Come and see how awe-inspiring the God of Scripture is (v. 5). He turned the sea into dry land—Israel entered the wilderness dry-shod through a body of water, and they left the wilderness the same way (v. 6). God rules in His power (v. 7). Make sure your praise of this God is loud enough to be heard (v. 8). He holds our soul in life, and He keeps our feet from moving (v. 9). God tests us, as silver is tried (v. 10). That testing includes the net (v. 11), and the oppression of others (v. 12), but God brought them through. The psalmist will certainly pay his vows, those he spoke when in trouble (v. 13-14). He will offer up the best he has (v. 15). He now says come and hear where before he said come and see (v. 16, 5). This is his personal testimony to answered prayer. He had prayed to God, and praised Him (v. 17). Heart integrity is essential to answered prayer (v. 18). God heard him, which proves the prayer honest (v. 19). May the name of God be blessed, the God who answers prayer (v. 20).

Fire and Water

The trials that Israel went through (for their blessing) were trials that were like what happened to the spoils of war—purification by fire and water. “Every thing that may abide the fire, ye shall make it go through the fire, and it shall be clean: nevertheless it shall be purified with the water of separation: and all that abideth not the fire ye shall make go through the water” (Num. 31:23). We who have been brought to Christ are spoils of His warfare, and we cannot be just taken into the camp of the saints. We have to be purified, tested, cleansed, put right. We have gunk on us.

Refined Like Silver

The process of refining silver can teach us a lot about our afflictions. We tend to think of it in a very general way—heat is applied to silver ore in such a way as to remove the dross. But we can learn more than just this general truth.

First, the one who is doing the refining hovers over the process. It requires personal and undivided attention (Mal. 3:3). Second, the furnace for doing this is an intricately designed thing. Third, the heat is very carefully regulated—it cannot be too hot or too cold. And fourth, the process is repeated. In order to speak of the purity of Scripture, we are told that it is like refined silver that has been refined seven times (Ps. 12:6).

Now we should know—even with our limited knowledge—that murmuring or complaining under affliction is like throwing dross back into the silver while the operation is going on. That just ensures that the process is going to go on longer than it needed to. Grumbling under affliction is just perpetuating it.

But remember four other things. Know that God is watching your affliction constantly and without blinking. He is attending to it. Second, God made the furnace you are in, and it was not a haphazard affair. Third, know that God wants the temperature to be perfect. And fourth, these realities do not disappear simply because you went through the process once. So you are not forgotten, your affliction was designed properly, it is being run at the right temperature, and it may well have to happen again. The very best thing you can do for yourself is (with gladness and joy) to get under (Jas. 1:2).

Iniquity in the Heart

At the beginning of this psalm, it says that God’s enemies submit themselves unto Him. But the Hebrew here is literally lie unto thee. God’s enemies—note incidentally that He has them— acknowledge His power, but they lie to Him. One of the characteristics of unbelief is that it does believe that its interior thoughts and intentions are closed to God, invisible to Him. Unbelief feels that God can be gamed. But the psalmist excludes that possibility when he is talking about his own great deliverance. “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me” (v. 18). As Spurgeon put it once, if you are listening to the devil, don’t expect God to listen to you.

As we come to apply this message, make sure that your acceptance of trial and affliction is one that comes from an honest heart. Count it all joy when you meet your trials. Count it all joy when you are alone with God talking about them. This should not be taken as some kind of superficial happy, happy, joy, joy thing, like you have been drinking circus water, but rather as a transaction with God that begins with bone-crunching honesty and ends with joy unspeakable and full of glory.

 

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Psalm 65: The God Who Hears

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Introduction

Nothing about this world comes as a surprise to God. He knows what is in the heart of man, and He knows what His Spirit can do to the dry earth of sinful disobedience. As we look around us, let us never forget that God has the situation (our situation) well in hand. He governs all things, our century included, and He does all things well.

The Text

“Praise waiteth for thee, O God, in Sion: And unto thee shall the vow be performed. O thou that hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come . . .” (Psalm 65:1-13).

Summary of the Text

This psalm divides nicely into three sections. The first deals with how God is to be approached (vv. 1- 4). The second records how God rises up in deliverance (vv. 5-8). And the last section bursts into a glorious harvest hymn (vv. 9-13). The occasion for this psalm appears to have been a fortuitous combination of a great victory in battle and a remarkably bountiful harvest. The vow will be fulfilled in Zion, which is where praise awaits (v. 1). God is the one who hears prayer, and all flesh comes before Him (v. 2). Iniquities rise up, but God purges them away (v. 3). Blessed is every man who is elect (v. 4). God answers prayer in terrible (i.e. awe-inspiring) ways (v. 5). He hoops the mountains around with His power (v. 6). He stills the waves (v. 7), which is a type for the nations of men. The people who dwell in the outlands are afraid of His tokens (v. 8). The earth is watered because God visits it, and this is how God enriches the world (v. 9). God softens the world with His showers (v. 10). He crowns the year with goodness, and fatness is the name of His game (v. 11). He makes the pastures lush (v. 12). The pastures are covered with flocks, and the valleys with corn (v. 13), and all of it sings.

Dealing with Sin

When we approach God honestly, the first thing we must reckon with is the fact that we are sinners. There are two things that must happen here. The first is the realization that iniquities prevail against us. The second is that God purges transgressions away. The first is conviction of sin, and the second is forgiveness. To have conviction without forgiveness is to live a life of despair. To have forgiveness without conviction is to coast along in cheap grace.

Iniquities rise and transgressions are purged. When this is not happening, it is usually because we want to be little lords of the definitions. We want to define sin ourselves, which gives us (we think) control of how deeply the conviction pierces, and how much the forgiveness takes away.

Whom He Causes

There is a whole course in theology to be found in verse 4. A particular kind of man is pronounced blessed. Who is blessed? That man is blessed if God chooses him. But God never chooses a man out of a crowd just to put a little x on him, showing that he has been chosen. God’s choice is not an end in itself. No, God’s choice of sinners is always directed toward a particular end. He chose us to be holy

and blameless (Eph. 1:4). God drafts us with a purpose in mind. There is a mission involved. It is the same here. He chooses this man in such a way as to enable him to dwell in His courts, and to be satisfied with the sufficiency and goodness of dwelling there. God gives the initial attraction (He causes the man to approach Him), and He gives the ongoing attractiveness of His own courts. He makes His own courts altogether lovely. Another way of saying this is that He gives conversion and He gives perseverance. God will complete what God has begun (Phil. 1:6).

Fearful Answers

God is the one who hears our prayers. That is how He is addressed at the very beginning of the psalm. All flesh comes before Him because He is the one who hears prayer (v. 2). This is the reason we come, but when He rises up and answers those prayers (in the way He loves to do), we are then startled and fall back. We pray earnestly for something and then say yikes when we get it. Those who dwell in the uttermost part of the earth are “afraid at His tokens” (v. 8). And earlier in the psalm it says that God answers our petitions “by terrible things” (v. 5). These terrible things are not horror story terrible, but rather awe-inspiring answers, numinous answers to prayer that will make our knees go loose.

The Coming Harvest

Where do we get all the flocks and the crops? The answer given here is that these are gifts from God. Without Him giving the gift of refreshing water, the earth would be desolate and brown. When He gives, He gives abundantly.

When we are struggling (with wealth, crops, profits, etc.), our unbelieving temptation is to think that it is because we have “run out.” We see this in the language of “conservation.” Let’s husband our resources carefully, we think, because we believe that the universe is a zero-sum game—anything we use will therefore be used up. But this is simply unbelief, and not prudence at all. Everything we use (under the blessing of God) is available for continued usefulness in the future, thirty, sixty, and a hundred fold. God created a universe that can bear fruit.

And these things are a type. Why are there evangelistic droughts? God’s people often think of evangelism the same way the conservationists think about coal, or water, or soil, or you name it. We think we serve a stingy, tight-fisted God. But read through this psalm again. God brings a blessed man into His courts, and God makes our paths drip fatness. This is the same God, and He has the same style —whether we are talking about the grain harvest at the time of Pentecost or the people harvest as the result of Pentecost. Look, Jesus said. The fields are white unto harvest (John 4:35). Pray that the Lord of the harvest would send out laborers (Luke 10:2).

This means that our evangelism ought not to be ecclesiastical subsistence farming. Why does our conservative theology, with its thick fertilizer manuals and high tech equipment and state of the art barn and shops, be growing what can only be called Third World corn? Something is wrong—but it not the stated desire of God.

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Psalm 64: Poetic Justice

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Introduction

The child’s retort about “sticks and stones” is entirely misguided. Words really can hurt; words can be cruel, and words can be savage. One of the things we must do is learn how to guard our own tongues (in the first instance), and learn how to deal with the slanderous accusations of others. This is equally true, incidentally, in the world of children. Words are weapons which children have, and which children know how to use. Their father Adam taught them where the trigger is—you must teach them where the safety is.

The Text

“Hear my voice, O God, in my prayer: Preserve my life from fear of the enemy. Hide me from the secret counsel of the wicked; From the insurrection of the workers of iniquity . . .” (Psalm 64:1-10).

Summary of the Text

David usually mentions his enemies in his prayers, but this prayer is entirely about them. This is made apparent in the first petition, where he asks God to hear him and preserve his life from fear of the enemy (v. 1). He asks to be hidden from the “secret counsel of the wicked” (v. 2). These are the people who sharpen their tongues on the grindstone (v. 3), dipping the arrows of their words into the poison of bitterness (v. 3). They take counsel in secret, and they shoot from secret places (v. 4). Their target is the righteous man. The wicked get discouraged from time to time, and so they take care to encourage one another (v. 5). They look for dirt like they were on a treasure hunt (v. 6). Theirs is not a superficial malice (v. 6). But vengeance belongs to the Lord, and He is not absent. God will shoot at them (v. 7). The work of their tongues will recoil upon them (v. 8). When this happens, men will see and declare that God was at work in this (v. 9). Poetic justice is therefore the hand of God (v. 9), and so the righteous are glad in how the story ends (v. 10).

Secret Counsel

The first lesson to learn is that slander of the righteous is not something that happens by accident. It is the result of “secret counsel” (v. 2). The words are sharpened beforehand, with malice aforethought (v. 3). They give one another pep talks if they start to lag in the work of tearing a righteous man down (v. 5). They lay traps beforehand (v. 5). They do “opposition research,” looking for something that will stick. And if they heap on enough calumny, something from it is sure to stick. Jesus says that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks (Matt. 12:34). The psalmist here says that this malevolent abundance runs very deep (v. 6). This kind of thing is not the result of a half-thought-through throwaway line.

The fact that such things come from a secret place does not mean that you know where it came from. Remember the laws of justice, which apply to us as much as to anybody.

Vengeance Belongs to God

Scripture teaches that vengeance belongs to God (Rom. 12:19). We are not to seek out personal

vengeance, not because it is wrong, but because it belongs to the Lord. It is fully appropriate to ask the Lord to take up your cause (as David does here). It is fully appropriate to plead with Him to do so—we see this in both the Old and the New Testaments (Rev. 6:10). In some instances, it is appropriate to take action yourself when you have been invested with the office that is responsible to do so (Rom. 13:1-7). And when God intervenes, it is important that your satisfaction in this not be a form of ungodly gloating.

“Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth: Lest the Lord see it, and it displease him, And he turn away his wrath from him” (Prov. 24:17-18).

Poetic Justice

You have often been urged to “read the story you are in.” This means at least two things. In the first place, it means being steeped in the stories of Scripture. Tell them over and over—get them down into your bones. The serpent is crushed by the seed of the woman that he led astray (Gen. 3:15). He was crushed because he stirred up a crowd to cry “crucify Him.” If the rulers of this age had known . . . Haman built a gallows for Mordecai, and wound up being hanged on it himself, just as the inventor of the guillotine died by his own device.

In the second place, it means honoring and obeying direct instructions like this one. When the wicked cut themselves with their own tongues, when they fall into their own pits, when their plots collapse, all men are supposed to “declare the work of God.” A man reaps what he sows. We are supposed to look at the story and see what is happening in it. “They shall wisely consider of his doing . . .” This means you have to be able to tell the difference between the protagonist and the antagonist, and you have to be able to tell which one you are.

Having read the story, you must know how to glory in the wisdom of the storyteller (v. 10). There is sin in gloating over His endings, and there is sin in just sitting there as though He hadn’t told His story at all.

Faith Embraces the Suspense

A small child, playing hide n’ seek, will often give himself away, running out of hiding. Why? The answer is because they can’t handle the suspense. You have heard before that God loves cliffhangers. That means we need to adjust our thinking so that we come to love them too. Count it all joy . . . On the mount of the Lord it will be provided . . . This is true when it comes to physical threats and circumstantial trials. But it also true when it comes to slander. God will vindicate you, sure enough, but He will do it in the right chapter.

Thomas Sowell once wisely said that charges of racism are like ketchup—they go on anything. I have been accused of misogyny and racism so many times I have lost track of them all. But Jesus says that we should rejoice when this sort of thing happens (Matt. 5:11-12). No, wait . . . He actually said that when this kind of thing happens, we should be exceedingly glad. But don’t you want to get in there and explain to them one more time that it just isn’t true? Look at the first part of this psalm again. They know that.

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Psalm 63: The Marrow and the Fat

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Introduction

John Donne says of this psalm that it is one of the imperial psalms—suitable for every occasion, and one with universal applications. Christians can resort to it under all kinds of circumstances, and according to Chrysostom, a portion of the ancient church would not let a day pass without singing it. All the various challenges of modern life have made even more suitable for regular use.

The Text

“O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is . . .” (Psalm 63:1-11).

Summary of the Text

The heading says that David wrote this while in the wilderness of Judah. He appears to have been king (v. 11), but in some danger, which would likely place this turning his brief exile during the revolt by his son Absalom. As such, it is a prayer of dedication and faith, with the object of that faith not yet realized. He will seek God early because of an intense desire to do so (v. 1). What he yearns for is to see God’s power and glory as he has previously seen it in the sanctuary (v. 2). He states that God’s loving-kindness is better than life (v. 3), and as a result David will worship the Lord, lifting up his hands (v. 4). He praises God in faith now, but will praise Him from a position of satisfaction later (v. 5). He will remember the Lord during the night watches, while he lies upon his bed (v. 6), remembering all the ways God has helped him (v. 7). David “follows hard” after the Lord, and the Lord helps him (v. 8). Those who seek David’s life will descend to Sheol (v. 9), falling by the sword (v. 10), only to be consumed by jackals (v. 10). But the king will rejoice and his followers will glory. Those who oppose him will have their mouths stopped (v. 11).

Lovingkindness Exalted

David exalts the loving-kindness of God, exalting it highly. Having placed it on the throne, saying that it is better than life itself, he then appoints seven retainers for that court, seven faculties of his body and mind. These are his lips (v. 3), his tongue (v. 4), his hands (v. 4), his will (v. 5), his mouth (v. 5), his memory (v. 6), and his mind (v. 6). The greatest commandment is to love God with all that you are and have and this is a good example of someone doing just that. David says that God’s loving-kindness is better than his life, and by way of showing this, he throws all the faculties of his life into praising God’s loving-kindness.

Marrow and Fatness

The Christian life is not a lo-fat business (v. 5). Godliness is clotted cream, not skim. Isaiah speaks of the new covenant era this way: “And in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined” (Is. 25:6). If you lived in a society which thought milk was a poison and honey was toxic—and you very nearly do—then you would be living in a society at odds with God’s descriptions in Scripture

of how He made the world. The promised land, famously, was flowing with milk and honey (Deut. 6:3). When Isaac blessed Jacob (unwittingly), he blessed him with fatness of the earth, and with plenty of

corn and wine (Gen. 27:28). Do not let those in high rebellion against the blessing of God become the arbiters and definers of what blessing is. The Christian life is a potato with melted butter all over it. The soul of the diligent is made fat (Prov. 13:4).

God in the Sanctuary

David is parched in the wilderness, and he wants to pursue God in order to see His power and glory, the way he has seen it before in the sanctuary. The ordinances of God are precious to Him, and ought to be precious to us. Remember that David was out in the wilderness, which meant that he could go out and look at a spectacular array of stars in the sky—but he wanted to see God’s power and glory in the sanctuary. It is better to be in the wilderness with God than to be in the sanctuary without Him, obviously. And the ordinances and sacraments of God without Him present for blessing are nothing but dry breasts and barren wombs. While we can rejoice in natural revelation (Ps. 19), and we can rejoice in private devotions in the houses of Judah (Ps. 87:2), the worship of God in the gates of Zion is greatly to be preferred.

Following Hard After Him

David says here that God is not always easy to find, and so he pursues hard after Him. There are two ways in which a chasm exists between God and ourselves, and true evangelical faith (given by grace) bridges it both ways. The first is the ethical divide, created by our sins, and by the fact that we live in a fallen world. We must seek God diligently, aware that moral traps are set for us on every side. We sin, when we sin, downhill. Isaiah is undone when he sees the Lord “high and lifted up,” but he is undone because of how aware of his sinfulness he has become. His lament should remind us of our spiritual leprosy (Is. 6:5; Lev. 13:45). We put a cover on our lip, and we cry “unclean.” But God cleanses with a coal from the altar.

But there is another aspect to it—which is the infinite gulf between the Creator and the created. This is not a transcendence that severs us from Him, for in Him we live and move and have our being. God does not have to overcome His “transcendence” in order to be near to us. But the Bible teaches us that we have to overcome it to be near to Him—this is another way of “following hard after Him.” God dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen (1 Tim. 6:16). We are to praise His great and terrible name, for it is holy (Ps. 99:3). The voice of the Lord is full of majesty (Ps. 29:4). He sits on the circle of the earth, and we are invited to view ourselves as little grasshoppers of the field (Is. 40:22). The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind (Job 38:1). But in another gospel irony, we overcome this chasm by embracing it—again, by faith.

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