Several things drew me to this
psalm. As you can see, it's much about
a cry from the church for her husband
to come and restore her. And the greatest joy of God's
people is when God shines his face. Cause your face to shine, shine
forth, cause your face to shine. cause your face to shine. One
of the wonderful things, there were two great things that happened
at the Presbyterian Church where I was raised. One was that they
still retained the old hymn book because they couldn't get rid
of the traditions and I used to love reading the old hymns.
I spent hours working out how old the people were and how young
they were and how many hymns they'd written. But the hymns
had the gospel in them. The other thing they did at the
Presbyterian Church which was delightful, just in the way it
was sung, is they used to sing the blessing of Aaron when they
had I suppose they call it christening
or baptising babies and they used to sing and they sang it
beautifully I can't do that of course but they're saying the
Lord bless you and keep you the Lord make his face to shine upon
you and be gracious to you The Lord lift up His countenance
upon you and give you peace. Speak to Aaron and his son, saying,
This is the way you shall bless the children of Israel. And Aaron
was to say those words in Numbers 6, 24 to 26. And then in verse
27, So shall they put my name on the children of Israel and
I will bless them. In Nehemiah we are encountering
a situation where it seems from all the world's perspectives
that you can imagine that the blessing of God upon his people
had been taken from them. They were just a remnant. They
were a remnant of scattered people. And the psalmist cries out in
verse five, you have fed them with the bread of tears. You
have given them tears to drink in great measure. It means four
times the size of a normal cup. You have made them know And then
in verse 12 it says, Why have you broken down her hedges? the protection around them. They
used to have thorn hedges around the fields to keep the wild animal. Now why have you broken down
her hedges? So that all who pass by pluck
her fruit. The boars out of the wood uproots
it and the wild beast of the field devours it. In verse 16,
it is burned with fire. It is cut down. They perish at
the rebuke of your countenance. And all of this has happened
to work that was manifestly seen to be God's work, wasn't it?
Verse 8, you have brought a vine out of Egypt. You've actually
picked up a vine that had grown in Egypt and you've transplanted
it. You have cast out the nations
and you've transplanted this vine in a fruitful land. You prepared room for it. and
caused it to take root, and it filled the land. The hills were
covered with its shadow and the mighty cedars with its boughs. So it was bigger than the biggest
of the mighty cedars around. She sent out her boughs to the
sea and her branches to the river. God had fulfilled His promise
to nation Israel. And in Solomon's day, for just
a little while, they reigned over a huge tract of country,
basically from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates. And it was all God's work. Verse
15, and the vineyard which you plant, which your right hand
has planted, and the vineyard and the branch that you made
strong for yourself. And here the Psalmist cries out to God. Is that not
a description of the Church in our day, isn't it? The Church
of God, and I mean the real Church of God, seems like a vine that
was strong and has had times of great strength throughout
history. And now, in the eyes of the society
around us, in the eyes of the world, it seems broken down. And I think the more God's children
see the gospel and the power of the gospel and the truthfulness
of the gospel, the more they see even the things which look
pleasing to the natural religious eye. become even more depressing. So much of what I was incredibly
excited about in Christian things 15 or 20 years ago is stuff about
which now I despair. I thought Bible colleges were
the closest place to heaven that you could possibly have on this
earth. I thought going to Hebron in India where you were surrounded
by missionaries and you were caring for the children of missionaries
would be even closer to heaven than a Bible college. And yet
we have found, all of us and all of God's children will find,
that all that glitters is not gold. And God's flock in this
world is a small remnant flock. And they are spoken of in the terms you have, as verse
six, you have made us a strife to our neighbors and our enemies,
laugh among themselves. They mocked Nehemiah. They mocked Israel. They mocked the people rebuilding
the house of God. And ultimately, of course, they
were mocking God himself. But here in Psalm 80, we have
the heart cry of a man who witnessed things that we have witnessed
and experienced things that we have experienced. And here we
have him in his closet, talking to God. And in verse one, he
has this wonderful description, doesn't he? Give ear, O shepherd,
of Israel." The children of God just love the names of God, don't
they? And here is this man crying out
like a bleeding lamb. And what shepherd, what a shepherd
we have. What shepherd would ignore the
cries of his people? So he has these petitions, doesn't
he? He says, give ear, O shepherd of Israel. not that God doesn't
hear he's saying please this is my heart cry to you a shepherd
of Israel you who lead Joseph like a flock and in a sense Joseph
was like a a second Abraham, it was under Joseph's care and
protection that the children of Israel were taken down to
this land of Egypt. And they were there, the planting
of God. And they grew, according to verse
8, they grew into this vine in Egypt. Then he talks about God,
not just being a shepherd, but God being a shepherd who keeps
his covenant. See, you who dwell between the
cherubim, he's of course referring to the place where God dwells
with his people and meets with his people. See, this is the
place of meeting. This is the only place God meets
with his people. He meets with his people at the
mercy seat, on the ark, between the cherubim. And as we've seen
so often, all of the elements, all of the aspects of the tabernacle
are just representations of the Lord Jesus. There is just one
meeting place between man and God, and that is the man Christ
Jesus. And the cherubim are beautifully
made, aren't they? The whole thing is just the most
exquisite work of art. in gold and in that mercy seat
is that broken law written with God's hand on stone showing that
it's inflexible, showing that God in holiness is going to have
that law honoured and that law is honoured by one, is honoured
by one who shed his blood so that that law would be honoured
not just by him but by all his people. And the cherubim just
gaze upon this mercy seat. It was really a bowl that held
the blood. Their gaze was fixed upon the
sacrifice of the Lord Jesus. Set in gold and fixed. They have their eyes fixed in
amazement upon the sacrifice. And God calls on us to come to
Him, to come boldly to the throne of grace, that we might obtain
mercy and find grace to help in time of need. It is the meeting
place, isn't it? where God's holy law meets with
God's sacrifice for that broken law. We meet bringing our sin
to get his forgiveness. We meet bringing our guilt to
receive his pardon. We meet, as the psalmist does
here, with our need Knowing that if anything is going to happen,
God's going to have to respond in grace. We bring our misery,
He brings mercy. We bring our heaviness and the
impossibility of the task before us and He brings His strength. We bring our darkness and He
brings His light. We know the way to go, but he
gives us wisdom and direction. And we bring, as the psalmist
does, to this place of meeting, this place of covenant, he brings
his sorrow and his heartaches. And from God, he looks to receive
his solace. So it's the place of covenant,
the place of the covenant man, where God's promises, God's grace
is honoured. The tabernacle itself represents
our Lord Jesus. On the outside it was the skins
of badgers, but inside it was just glorious, humble, without
and glorious within, like the Lord Jesus and His people. And
the brazen altar represents Christ's suffering and His death. And
that great sea, the labor, is Christ our fountain, open for
cleansing. The candlestick is Christ, the
light of the world, the table of showbread, is Christ the bread
of life, the altar of incense is Christ our intercession, the
veil is Christ the door, and the ark of the covenant is the
reconciliation. Christ is our reconciliation. And so it's not only a picture
of God's covenant, it's a picture, in a sense, of a king upon his
throne. And the psalmist is saying, remember
your covenant in which your glory shines. Remember your covenant. Look upon the Lord Jesus and
shine forth, shine forth in the perfections of his work. the Son, who is the brightness
of His glory. And when this ark was moved through
the desert, the tribes of Israel were assembled, three on each
side around that tabernacle. This huge company of people,
two million people marched in strict formation. And the ark
was there, and right behind the ark was Ephraim, Benjamin and
Manasseh, Rachel's children, the sons of God in formation. And the psalmist is saying to
God, you shine forth, show us your glory again, stir up your
strength and come and save us. They are surrounded by wild beasts. The walls look broken down. The
hedges seem to have gone. You stir up your strength and
come and save us. Restore us, those three, O God. Or turn us. Turn us, O God. Not only turn us, but
you turn to us. There are two aspects of salvation,
isn't there? God brings us to turn back to
Him, to be restored to Him, and then He comes at the same time,
and in reality He's come first. He's come to us, and He's caused
His face to shine. Turn. Restore us, restore us to the
knowledge of your glory. When you have time, it's really
good to read those opening 10 or 15 chapters of Ezekiel and
similar chapters in Jeremiah and see how the glory of God
was compromised and compromised to the extent where in this temple,
And where this ark was, God himself could no longer dwell because
of the sins of the people. People who thought in Jerusalem,
they called themselves the meat in the pot. We are the choice. We are the choice ones, we are
the meat. The bones and the gristle and
all the rubbish has been cast away to Babylon, Ezekiel and
Daniel and all those others. But we are here in Jerusalem,
we are the meat in the pot. And they bowed down to the sun
in the east and they worshipped Tamors. And at the same time,
they said that they were the servants of Jehovah God. God's people always need restoring. We're always in a place where
we need God to turn us. Sin, the world and the devil
will allure us all the time. Our flesh fights against us and
we need God in His strength to shine a light on himself, to
cause his face to shine. And when we see his face shining
upon us, we'll know that we are saved. Come and save us. In verse two, restore us, cause
your face to shine, and we shall be saved. And so in verse one,
he calls God the shepherd. and he calls him the covenant-keeping
God who dwells between the cherubim. In verse 4 he says, O Lord God
of hosts. It's really, O Lord God of armies. God as a general, not so much
as their creator, but as a general. It's a term referring to the
marshalling of the troops, a Lord God of hosts. Come as a general. Come and marshal your troops
together. Come and go into battle. And why? Why does God need to come and
do that? against the prayer of your people
Jeremiah is told twice by God don't pray for these people in
Jerusalem I'm not going to hear you I forbid you to pray for
them these people are God has reason as one who is
holy to find the prayers of so many people offensive to Him. But also His people need to be
mindful of what their prayers are about. So much of our praying,
as James says, is praying for something that we want to have
happen rather than praying for God's glory to shine and God's
will to be done. But his people have been made
to wait. For 70 long years they had to
wait. But longer than that, his people
had to suffer. the people of God who lived in
Jerusalem were those who were saved from eternity. But in living in the midst of
them, God's children are marked by God before it destroys that
city. In Ezekiel 9, verse 4, he says,
the Lord said to him, go through the midst of Jerusalem, the avenging
angel angels are there to pour out God's wrath on Jerusalem.
He said, you go through and put a mark on the foreheads of the
men who sigh and cry over all the abominations that are done
within. For those who grieve and lament,
you have fed them with the bread of tears. You have given them
tears to drink in great measure. You have made us, your people,
a strife to our neighbours, and our enemies laugh among themselves. Look what we have. Look what
we are doing for God. Look how many there are with
us. Look how easy it is to get on
with everyone when you compromise and tolerate all sorts of things. But when God's people stand up
and proclaim God as the Lord of hosts, and proclaim that covenant,
that covenant God who dwells between the cherubim, The people
are stirred up, our enemies laugh among themselves. And the response
of God's children, isn't it, of this psalmist, is, restore
us, our God of hosts. Cause your face to shine. And
we'll be saved. We'll be saved from their laughter. We'll be saved from that strife. And we'll find you have kept,
as the psalmist says elsewhere, you have kept our tears in a
bottle. You know the pains and the hurts
of your people. Your face will shine. As we read
earlier, he talks about what he has done. Just think about
what God, our Creator God, has done. What a remarkable 6,000 years or so, however long this
creation has been around. Just think and stop for a second
and think about how amazing the workings of God have been. how this word has been preserved
for us. When did Moses write it? Three and a half thousand years
old. We live in a house that's 170
years old, and it's remarkable in Australia. 170 years is a
blink of an eye. God has preserved it, preserved
it perfectly. He has been perfectly faithful
to his covenant people. Has he lost one? Is there one
missing? Are there empty seats or cobwebby
crowns in heaven? He hasn't missed a thing, has
he? The church has seemed weak and pathetic. It's had times
of great restoration and revival, times of great earthly wealth
under Solomon and David, times of remarkable gospel activity. They say that half the Roman
Empire was Christian by the third century. Remarkable where the
gospel went. Thomas died on the east coast
of India. The Gospel spread in the most
remarkable way. And then we have all those dark,
dark ages. And yet the Gospel was there,
wasn't it? In the little isolated places as the Catholic Church
dominated and killed and persecuted. But God's Church survived. Despite all of that, God has
planted it. God has prepared room for it. God has caused it to take root,
like Israel. And there are times of great
revival, like the times of the Reformation and the Great Awakenings. And then there have been times
of deep, terrible decline. And the reality is that we can't
see our Christian world in anything other than one of those times
of decline at the moment. But we don't know what God's
going to do. You see, when God, verse 12,
breaks down the hedges, when God takes away His care and protection,
when God removes is present, present because of the sins of
the people, then the church is just devastated, isn't it? All who pass by pluck her fruit,
and the boars of the woods uproot it, and the wild beasts of the
field devour it. When the hedges of the church
are removed by God, the consequences are shocking, aren't they? And
that's exactly what happened to Nation Israel. Because of
their sin and their idolatry and their presumption, God removed
the hedges and broke it down. And 400 years, 450 years later, This Son of Man that we read
about in verse 17 came and God removed those hedges from around
Jerusalem because of their sin and their idolatry and their
presumption. The people of Israel in Jesus'
time were incredibly proud and presumptuous. They thought, again,
that they were the meat in the pot, and these Galileans were
the outcasts. God's way of seeing things is
the opposite to ours all the time. And the wild beast of the
field of Bowsers probably could be a reference to Nebuchadnezzar
and the Babylonians. As you remember, Nebuchadnezzar
for a time lived like a wild beast. But also spiritually it
has reference to the enemies of the church, doesn't it? Paul
says that he fought wild beasts in Ephesus. But there's never
a mention in Acts of him fighting wild beasts. The wild beasts
that Paul was fighting about in Ephesus are the people he
refers to in Acts chapter 20. It's the false teachers and the
persecutors. They are fierce and they are
cruel. And what's the response of God's
people? Return, we beseech ye. 14. O LORD, O God of hosts, look
down from heaven and sea and visit this vine, this vine that
is broken down, this vine whose fruit is plucked by all who pass
by, this vine who has been dug up by wild beasts and pigs. Look down and visit this vine. the vine that your right hand
had planted, and the branch that you made strong for yourself.
Verse 16 is a reference, I think, to what happened to Jerusalem.
It's burned with fire and is cut down, and they perish at
the rebuke of your countenance. You see, the psalmist doesn't
attribute this to anything other than God acting in judgment. Then in verse 17, we have a wonderful
gospel petition, isn't it? Let your hand be upon the man
of your right hand, upon the Son of Man whom you made strong
for yourself. Of course, the Son of Man's a
title for the Lord Jesus. 71 times it's used in the scriptures,
that title. 67 of them by Jesus himself,
once by Daniel, once by Stephen, and interestingly twice by John
in the book of Revelation. Let your hand be upon the man
of your right hand. God's Son, by His incarnation,
was a man. You see, He joined with that
branch He joined with that branch in that vineyard. He took on
the flesh and blood of this ravaged and attacked vine. Everything the psalmist calls
for is going to be answered by God as he dwells between the
cherubim. The church's future And the saint's
perseverance is founded entirely upon the sufficiency and the
faithfulness of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, whom
you have made strong for what purpose? The Son of Man is made
strong to reveal the glory of God Himself. Made Him strong
for yourself. And if your hand is upon this
Son, if you lift up this Son, then what happens to God's children? Read it in verse 18. Then we
will not turn back from you. Revive us and we will call upon
your name. Restore us. O Lord God of hosts,
cause your face to shine, and we shall be saved. The psalmist
begins with the description of God as the shepherd of Israel. How much we need shepherding.
He then talks about him in verse 1 as being the covenant keeping
God who meets with man and only meets with man in the mercy seat
of the Lord Jesus. In verse 3 he calls him O God. In verse 7 and verse 4 he calls
him O Lord God of hosts. And in verse 14 he does the same. God who marshals his troops. And then now in verse 19, he
gives him that great name, doesn't he? Oh Lord, God of hosts. Oh Yahweh. He has grown. as the psalmist spends his time
in quiet meditation with his God and pulls out his heart and
says, this is the situation, I can't do anything about it,
this is the situation, you are the covenant-keeping God, you
must work, you must act, please, you come. and shine your face. Shine your face. Look down from
heaven and see. Visit this vine. cause your face
to shine. I don't know about you, but Christian
life for me seems to be a life where there's more and more calling
out as time goes on, that God would restore, that God would
return, that God would look down from heaven, that God would visit
this vine. God would visit this ravaged,
broken vine. God would revive this vine and
we would not turn back. We would not turn back because
He's come and He has shone and we've seen Him as He's shone
a light on His Son. as He shines that only light
that can shine on the Lord Jesus, and it shines in the one place
where we must see Jesus. It shines into our hearts, and
we shall be saved. Let's pray.