Psalm 80, tonight, Psalm 80. This psalm is a very dear psalm
to me. I've read this psalm, I don't
know, for many years, and always found it to be very comforting,
and you can see why, if you're familiar with it, and if not,
perhaps tonight it will become dear to you by the Lord's grace. It says in Psalm 80, I'll just
read through these 19 verses, He says in verse one, give ear,
O shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a flock,
thou that dwellest between the cherubims, shine forth. Before Ephraim and Benjamin and
Manasseh, stir up thy strength and come and save us. And that's
why I like this psalm, because of those words, come and save
us. Turn us again, O God, and cause
Thy face to shine, and we shall be saved. O Lord God of hosts,
how long wilt Thou be angry against the prayer of Thy people? Thou
feedest them with the bread of tears, and givest them tears
to drink in great measure. Thou makest us a strife unto
our neighbors, and our enemies laugh among themselves. Turn
us again, O God of hosts, and cause thy face to shine, and
we shall be saved. Thou hast brought a vine out
of Egypt. Thou hast cast out the heathen
and planted it. Thou preparest room before it,
and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land. The hills were covered with the
shadow of it, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly
cedars. She sent out her boughs unto
the sea, and her branches unto the river. Why hast thou then
broken down her hedges, so that all they which pass by the way
do pluck her? The boar out of the wood doth
waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it.
Return, we beseech thee, O God of hosts, look down from heaven,
and behold and visit this vine, and the vineyard which thy right
hand hath planted, and the branch that thou madest strong for thyself. It is burned with fire, it is
cut down, they perish at the rebuke of thy countenance. Let
thy hand be upon the man of thy right hand, upon the son of man
whom thou madest strong for thyself. So will not we go back from thee? Quicken us, and we will call
upon thy name. Turn us again, O Lord God of
hosts, cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved. Now it's
clear from this psalm that it is a song of grace. It's a song
of grace because the psalmist is saying in this psalm, he's
pleading with the Lord and asking the Lord to turn us which obviously
is something he is depending on God to do, turn us, and turn
us again, because it's not the first time, and he calls him
the Lord of Hosts, not just the God of Hosts, but at the end,
the last verse, the O Lord God of Hosts, meaning O Jehovah,
God of hosts, of heaven's hosts, heaven's armies. So the one that
is the Lord, the one he's speaking to here, is the Lord, the God
of the armies of heaven. And that, of course, is why he's
praying to him. And he also says to the Lord
of hosts, cause thy face to shine. And so we see in verse 16, he's
talking about how the vine, representing the entire nation of God's people
here, is burned with fire. It's cut down. They perish at
the rebuke of thy countenance. So in contrast to that, he asked
the Lord, cause thy face to shine. Not a countenance that would
be a rebuke, but a countenance of favor and blessing. Cause
your face to shine. And this is the result. We shall
be saved. So you can see what a blessed
psalm this is. A psalm of grace to the Lord,
depending on the Lord to do for us. what we cannot do for ourselves,
but what we need Him to do. And since it is a psalm, a scripture,
we know it's inspired by the Spirit of God, and therefore,
God has given His church these words, given every sinner who
trusts Christ, these words, to go to the Lord with these words,
borrowing them in our own prayers and trusting that since it is
the revealed will of God, we can ask according to God's will. And what a blessing it is to
know that Jesus told his disciples, ask whatever you will in my name
and I will do it. And so here we have words that
we can take and borrow for that very purpose. Now this psalm
we can see is the sighing and the crying of the sheep. He says
in verse one, give ear, O shepherd of Israel. The one he's talking
to, he asks him to hear give ear, and he asked him as the
shepherd, O shepherd of Israel." So the Lord is my shepherd, Psalm
23. So we know that Jehovah God is
the shepherd of his people. And then again in John chapter
10, Jesus said, I am the good shepherd. So he's the good shepherd.
The Lord Jehovah is the Lord Jesus Christ, the good shepherd. He says, I'm the good shepherd.
I give my life for the sheep. That's how good he is, that he
would give his life for the sheep. And then also in Hebrews chapter
13 and verse 20, he says, now the God of peace that brought
again from the dead, our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of
the sheep. So the Lord Jesus is not only
the Lord Jehovah, our shepherd, but he's the Good Shepherd and
he's the Great Shepherd. And finally, in 1 Peter chapter
5 and verse 4, Peter calls him the Chief Shepherd because he's
the one who is over all other under-shepherds in the flock.
So this is the Lord Jesus Christ. All of the sheep were given to
him by the Father. His people are His own, but they
are the Father's people. And the Father's sheep are His
own, but they are Christ's sheep also. And so the prayer is to
our Triune God, but specifically it's in the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ, who is the Shepherd of Israel. So that's a very comforting
thing at the very outset of this psalm is that the Lord Jesus
Christ is Jehovah God, the Good Shepherd who gives his life for
the sheep, the Chief Shepherd and the Great Shepherd of the
sheep. The second thing we see here is in the first verse, Give
ear, O Shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a flock,
thou that dwellest between the cherubims, shine forth. The cherubims
were these two angelic creatures that were depicted by these golden
figures that were placed over the mercy seat, which was on
the lid. It was the lid of the Ark of
the Covenant in the Old Testament. And their wings would just touch
each other in that depiction, that golden depiction of the
cherubims. And their faces were downward
looking toward the mercy seat. And on the Day of Atonement,
the high priest would come in and sprinkle the blood on the
lid or on the mercy seat there, and the cherubims would look
down upon that. And inside of the Ark, there
were three articles that God had given to put in the Ark. The first were the two tables
that God had written on with his finger, the Ten Commandments,
and the second thing in there was the pot that had manna, and
the third thing was the rod, Aaron's rod, that budded to prove
that Aaron, representing Christ, was God's chosen high priest.
and the manna, of course, represented Christ, the one that God had
given, the bread of life, the bread from heaven, and the eternal
life for his people, and the two tables which were in the
ark represent the law of God that was in the heart of Christ
that he did. But his blood was shed, his blood
was sprinkled, represented by the high priest sprinkling the
blood of the goat on the Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16,
and the cherubims would look down on that, and the Lord said
he would dwell between the cherubims, and that's what's said here.
He dwells between the cherubims. So what are these cherubims then
doing? Well, they're looking at the
blood, the mercy seat. And what this shows us is that
God is the one who provided a propitiation to himself. He provided propitiation
to himself in the blood of his own son in order that he might
be gracious to his people who were sinners. That's why the
blood had to be shed. When we think about God, we think
about his attributes, his justice, his truth, his righteousness,
his grace, his long-suffering, whatever his attributes are.
And in all those attributes, we think of God as... as he is, because that's the
way we know him. He's one God, and all these attributes
make up God. We can't say one is isolated
from another, it's all God, but it's these attributes of God
that cause God to be who he is. He is, I mean, God is his attributes,
is probably a better way of saying it. So why is God, why does God
require this blood? Well, because he's just. And
his justice requires punishment of the sinner. And so the attribute
of God, his justice, requires that punishment. But yet he has
this other attribute, mercy. And his mercy desires, delights
in mercy towards those who don't deserve mercy, that don't deserve
kindness. And then he has this attribute,
not only mercy, but truth. And this attribute of truth is
that he won't do anything to compromise himself. But all of
it really is God himself, is really God himself. And so we
see that even in this, he is the God who dwells between the
cherubims. He is the God who provided to
be favorable to his people, he provided a propitiation he provided
what was necessary to propitiate himself in the blood of his son
for his people." And that, I think, is enough. We could just end
the Bible study there and we would have enough to chew on
the rest of the week, the year, and the rest of our lives. That
Jesus Christ is the propitiation. First John 4.10 it says, Herein
is love, not that we love God, but that He loved us and gave
His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. So the propitiation
was God's Son and God's Son made propitiation by His own blood.
Romans 3.25 says, He is the propitiation for our sins through faith in
His blood. We come to God on the basis of what Christ has
done. We come to God expecting or asking Him and expecting Him
to receive us because of the blood of Jesus Christ alone.
And that is the gospel. That's the gospel, isn't it?
We don't bring a sacrifice. We come on the basis of Christ
offering of Himself, sacrifice made to God for our sins. we
can't do anything. All we can do is behold this,
to behold it by faith and to trust that what God has done
in making a propitiation in Himself by the blood of His Son for His
people is all of our hope. And this is the way we know God
in His love, in His justice, in His mercy, in His truth, in
all of His perfections. Okay, so that's the first thing
we see in verse one. God is the shepherd. He leads
His people. and he is their propitiation,
and he's the one who received the blood, provided and received
the blood, and therefore receives them because of the blood. This
is all of our hope. Hebrews 9, verse 5 uses the word
mercy seat. Luke 18, 13, the same word is
translated mercy when the publican said, God, be merciful to me,
the sinner. Be propitious. Be the mercy seat
for me. be that which propitiated God
for me, that God might be favorable, He might deal with me in grace
and in justice and receive me as holy for Christ's sake. And
so that text of scripture here in the outset of this psalm,
you can see how Again, the theme that we always come to God asking
Him to do His will, pleading His own cause, that these are
the principles of prayer, these are the principles by which a
sinner comes to God, it's all through the blood of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Okay? So there's a next verse here,
verse two. It says, before Ephraim and Benjamin
and Manasseh stir up thy strength and come and save us. Now, Ephraim
was the son of Joseph. Benjamin was the son of Rachel,
the brother of Joseph. Manasseh was the twin brother
of Ephraim. Manasseh was born first, barely,
since they were twins. but he was considered the firstborn
because of that. But Ephraim was always preferred
before Manasseh. Remember when Joseph brought
his two sons to Jacob to bless them when Jacob was old and he
had come to Joseph in Egypt and Jacob was sitting so that when
Joseph placed his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, before Jacob, his
father, that Joseph intended for his oldest son, Manasseh,
to be on Jacob's right hand, because that would show Jacob's
greater favor for the eldest. But what Jacob did was he crossed
his hands. He put his right hand on the
left and he put his left hand on the right. And that was to
show that God had chosen Ephraim before Manasseh because God would
use Ephraim as a representative of his chosen people. Now, Joseph,
we know, was the beloved son of Jacob. And Benjamin was also
the beloved son of Jacob through Rachel. Both of them were the
only children Rachel ever had. And Rachel was, of course, Jacob's
favored wife. He loved Rachel first, and he
loved and served for Rachel. First, he served seven years,
but was tricked by Laban, his uncle, who gave him Leah, the
eldest, but then Jacob was happy to serve another seven years
for Rachel for the love he had to her. And when Benjamin was
born, Rachel died in childbirth, and Jacob named Benjamin, that
name, Benjamin, because it meant son of my right hand. And that
was an indication of his high regard for Benjamin. And it was
Benjamin that Jacob had to send down to Egypt when Joseph demanded
that Benjamin be brought. And it was Judah who stood up
to fulfill Joseph's request by pleading with his father to accept
him, Judah, as a surety for Benjamin so that Jacob would allow Benjamin
to go with Judah down to Joseph as Joseph had requested. And
remember that whole pleading account where Judah did not plead
the innocence of his ten brothers in the cup being taken from Joseph
or in all that happened to Joseph because Joseph had been thrown
in a pit and left for dead and sold as a slave. But Judah did
not worry, he didn't try to plead their innocence, but rather he
pleaded his father's love for Benjamin, and he pleaded his
own surety ship engagements with his father for Benjamin, and
then he pleaded himself to Joseph as the substitute for Benjamin.
And in all these pleadings, of course, he was a type of the
Lord Jesus Christ, because he pleaded himself. He said, take
me instead of the lad. He gave himself, Judah, gave
himself to Joseph, the governor and the judge of all the land,
and he answered Joseph's demands on Benjamin with himself, with
Judah himself. And that's what the Lord Jesus
Christ did. As our intercessor, he doesn't plead our innocence.
He pleads the love, the eternal love of God the Father. And he
pleads his own eternal surety ship engagements for his people.
And he also pleads himself as the substitute. And he says,
take me and let these go their way. And God the father was not
only happy, but delighted to take his son. Thou art my beloved
son. Now all these things are contained
in the names of these men and they're named this way to show
us the love that Jacob had for Joseph and Benjamin and obviously
the love that Joseph had for Ephraim and Manasseh to show
the love of God for his people and how that they were delivered
from certain death and slavery in Egypt because of the love
of the Father who accepted a surety, who delivered them from the demands
of God's justice and release them with not only a simple release,
but the release of their own brother who loved them, Joseph,
who was the governor over all the land and exalted by the king
of the land, so he was able to give them everything that was
his. This is all the Lord Jesus Christ offering himself both
as our substitute and reigning for us as our King and Judah
also as the surety and Jacob as the father. You see the father's
love for Benjamin was the love of an old man, the love of his
old age, the son of his old age, as God the Father's children
are all the children of his eternal adoption. What a wonderful account
that is that God has given us so graciously to teach us about
Christ. Alright, so here we have the
people of God pleading these things. It's bringing to God,
the cause of God, to honor the Lord. In other words, it's pleading
God's cause for their salvation. It's pleading God's name for
their salvation. That's what this prayer is about.
And that's why it's so powerful. That's why the Spirit of God
gives this as the words to bring from the heart of His people.
And notice the way the prayer opens in verse three. Turn us
again. Turn us again. There's no way
we can turn ourselves. if it was necessary, I mean,
if it was required for us to turn ourselves, then this would
have said, we will turn and then you can save us. But that's not
what it says, does it? He says, turn us again. Turn
us, Lord, turn us. We know that God alone can turn
a sinner. In Jeremiah, for example, in
Jeremiah chapter 31, He says, I have surely heard
Ephraim bemoaning himself thus, Thou hast chastised me, and I
was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke. See, he's saying
that God's chastisement on him was like a young bull, strong
and stubborn, that would not yield to the yoke. And the master
had to chastise that bullock, and he said, that's what I was.
He says, I was as Ephraim bemoaning himself, thus thou hast chastised
me, and I was chastised as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke. Turn
thou me, and I shall be turned, for thou art the Lord my God. Do you ever pray that? Do you
ever think, Lord, turn me. You are the Lord my God. He goes
on in verse 19, surely After I was turned, I repented, and
after I was instructed, I smote upon my thigh. He loathed himself. when he was turned and God did
the turning. That's what it says. It doesn't
say in Romans chapter 2 verse 4 that it's the goodness of God
that leadeth thee to repentance. It's God's goodness that brings
us to repentance. And then also in 2 Timothy, listen
to these words in 2 Timothy about God being the one who turns us. He says in 2 Timothy chapter
2 and verse 24, notice the humility of Paul exhorting Timothy. He says, the servant of the Lord
must not strive. You're not going to win anybody
by arguing with them, fighting with them doctrinally. It won't
happen. He says, the servant of the Lord
must not strive, but be gentle unto all, apt to teach, patient
Waiting on the Lord, of course, that's what patient means. Patient
with others for their sins, because you're a sinner and God has forgiven
you. And patient because the Lord has been patient for all
the years of your life with you. He says, patient in meekness,
instructing those that oppose themselves. if God, per adventure,
will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.
So this text tells us where the source of repentance is, God,
gives it, and what it is, acknowledging of the truth. and that they may
recover themselves out of the snare of the devil who are taken
captive by him at his will. Until the Lord turns us, we are
under another master. And God has to deliver us from
the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of his dear Son. We're
either in one kingdom or the other, not both, one or the other. We're either servants of Christ
or we're servants of the devil. and so he says here that the
Lord is the one who does that and the way he does that is through
the instruction of a meek servant of the Lord who with patience
instructs others and it's God's grace if peradventure God would
give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth. That's faith. Repentance
is always to faith. Faith in Christ. Acts 20, 21
says repentance toward God and faith towards our Lord Jesus
Christ. So that's the summation of what
repentance is. It's a change of mind It's a
change of natures. God gives us a new nature. That's
the way He does this. All right, back to Psalm 80.
So, turn us again. Notice the word again. You see,
when the Lord speaks about His people, He doesn't say, well,
they were not... Well, He does in one place, but
here, the emphasis is, in other places, that they were always
His. So they have to be reconciled
to him when they first come to the knowledge of the truth, but
then they have to be turned again after that, and again, and again,
and again, and again, until they leave this world. They're constantly
being turned by God. Repentance is a lifelong continuous
process. God is always turning his people
and it's a good thing that he does, doesn't he? It says we're
saved by the power, we're kept by the power of God through faith
unto salvation. So it's God's power that does
this and the way he does it is through faith and it's unto salvation. So this faith that's in the Lord
Jesus Christ needs to increase, it needs to grow. We need to
be turned away from our unbelief. We need to be turned away from
the mind of the old man and more and more be conformed to the
image of Christ by the work of God himself. So this is the prayer,
turn us again. It argues a former friendship,
doesn't it? It argues a former possession
by God. A people that already belong
to the Lord are turned again. In Luke chapter 15, the shepherd
goes out to find the one sheep that was lost. He was his sheep,
but he was lost. So then the Lord left the ninety
and nine, and he went out into the wilderness to find it. When
he found it, he put it on his shoulders and then carried it
back and put it in the fold safely. And that's what the Lord Jesus
does for all of his people. They're all his, and that's why
heaven rejoices over each one of them. And then in the next
parable in Luke 15, the coin that was lost, the woman swept
the house to find it. It was her coin, but it was lost,
so she had to find it. So God's people are His before
they were lost, and then they're found, they're reconciled to
God at the highest price, the death of God's Son. And then
also in Luke 15, around, I don't know, verse 14 or so, he picks
it, or maybe it's verse 10, he picks it up with the prodigal
son, because all of God's people are also sons of God by adoption
before they realized their sonship before their sonship was openly
made known. And so the son, the prodigal
son, leaves his father in rebellion and pride and goes off to a faraway
country where there's nothing he can live on because he's his
father's son until he comes to himself and he says, I have sinned
against heaven. and I've sinned before my father
and I will arise and go to my father and confess this to him
and he did he did arise he did go back he did say those things
to his father I've sinned against heaven and before you and he
says he didn't even get the words out I'm no more worthy to be
called your son and his father said bring the best robe and
put it on him and bring the ring for his finger and shoes for
his feet and kill the fatted calf of course all these things
point to Christ The fatted calf killed is the preachers of the
gospel, sending forth Christ and him crucified to the Son,
who's returned by God's good grace. And the ring on the finger
is the ring of sonship, the ring of preeminence, the ring of royalty.
And the robe, of course, is the robe of Christ's righteousness.
And the father did everything for his son. He was more happy,
it seemed, with him on returning. than he was even before he left
him. And that's because God is pleased
to save his people through the blood of his own son. And with
that, it's not only an eternal salvation, but an everlasting
righteousness. in the blood of his son. So we
see these things turn us again. And then he says, O God, and
cause thy face to shine. The word cause there means make
it shine. We can't. We can't make God's
face shine. And the shining of God's face
is the revelation of the knowledge of his glory. in the face of
Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians chapter 4 verse
6 says, God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness
has shined in our hearts to give the light. The light is this,
the knowledge of the glory of God, and where is it? In the
face of Jesus Christ. When we look in the face of Jesus
Christ, meaning when we understand who he is from the gospel, and
what he has said, what the truth, the words that he has spoken,
and what he has done, when we understand who Christ is that
way, then we see the glory of God. This is the knowledge of
the glory of God, and this is light. This is light that was
never given to us until we see it in Christ. And that's the
only place you'll ever see this light. It's all of God's perfections
set forth in the highest possible display of honor and majesty
in the Lord Jesus Christ. So cause thy face to shine, and
notice, and we shall be saved. That's what we need, salvation.
And this is the certainty of it. If God causes his face to
shine to us in Christ, we shall be saved. Now notice all these
things. Turn us again. O God, and cause
thy face to shine, and we shall be saved. Not one of these things
is ever present where all of them are not present. They're
all always present together. God always turns his people and
causes his face to shine on them to show his favor and grace to
them in Christ, and then he saves them in that. So you can't really
separate the one from the other in terms of its application.
But, you know, we have a sense of the differences in these things
because of the experience of them in our lives. When we first
see the gospel, it's like we see light that we've never seen. Or we've been completely, our
mind is completely changed to the way we thought about ourselves
and God and holiness and righteousness, and yet there's this constant
renewal. Even in these things where we
once had such a radical change, now there's still an ongoing
change. And so all these things are working
constantly together. God turning us, God causing His
face to shine, and God showing us His goodness in Christ and
saving us by these things. It shows us also that we're saved
by grace through faith. And that faith is given to us
by God, and that salvation is in Christ, because faith is in
Christ. Faith is in Christ, faith in
Christ is God's gift, and faith in Christ is the way in which
God brings us to the saving knowledge of the work and the person of
the Lord Jesus Christ. And when we have that, then we've
been turned. then we've been saved and God's
favor is on us. We see it in his son. He's propitious
to us. What a blessing that is. Verse
4 of Psalm 80 says this, O Lord God of hosts, how long wilt thou
be angry against the prayer of thy people? Thou feedest them
with the bread of tears, Thou makest them, I'm sorry, and givest
them tears to drink in great measure. Thou makest us a strife
unto our neighbors, and our enemies laugh among themselves. Now, the question that comes
up when you look at verse four is this. Is God angry with his
people? Is he? Well, we know from scripture
that God himself has taken away his wrath. That's what propitiation
means. God himself took away his wrath
by taking away the cause of his wrath in the death of his son
when he took away our sins. In Psalm 85, in verse 1, it says,
Lord, thou hast been favorable unto thy land. Thou hast brought
back the captivity of Jacob. Thou hast forgiven all their
iniquity, or forgiven the iniquity of thy people, thou hast covered
all their sins, Selah, thou hast taken away all thy wrath." Okay,
well anger of course is tied up in God's wrath. So then also
in Romans chapter 5 it says, therefore being justified by
his blood we shall be saved from wrath through him, through the
Lord Jesus Christ. So is God angry with His people?
Well, we know that God's wrath against His people has been removed
by God in the propitiation of Christ, in His sacrifice to God
for our sins. God's wrath is the response,
it's not an emotion in God, it's the response of His character,
His justice against sin. But God, through the blood of
Christ, also in truth and in righteousness and in justice,
received Christ's sacrifice of Himself for our sins and took
away our sins and His own wrath. So there's no more anger from
God against His people because of the blood of Christ. But what
happens is that when we lose the sense, when we lose the the
experience of soul comfort and the fresh revelations of Christ
in the gospel, and our faith wanes, it seems to decline, then
it seems as if God is not speaking to us and we wonder if he's angry
with us. And so we feel like in our experience
that God is angry. But there's that assurance that
nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ
Jesus the Lord. And where God's love is, there's
no anger, not an anger of vengeance and wrath, but there is the chastisement
of a father to his children. And that chastisement, of course,
brings with it this discomfort. It's not pleasant. is uncomfortable
in our souls, and that's what makes the psalmist and us also
feel this and cry. But what this brings to us is
tears, tears in our soul. That's why the next verse, we're
after verse four, it says, How long will you be angry against
the prayer of thy people? Now feed us then with the bread
of tears. Bread is for the body. Tears are not bread, are they? But yes, they are, because it's
through the tears that cause us to cry out to the Lord to
save us, to cause your face to shine and to save us. Turn us
again, cause your face to shine, O Lord, God of hosts, and save
us. So, he says in Psalm 119, Before I was afflicted, I went
astray. Before I was afflicted, but now
have I kept thy law. This is a comfort. He says also
in Psalm 119, this is my comfort in my affliction, for thy word
hath quickened me, has given me life. So it's a great comfort
that in the affliction that God brings upon us, he gives us life,
And that life that he gives us causes us to call on him and
all of that because of his word. He quickens us by his word. He
causes us to see Christ, to rest on him, and to call on the Lord
Jesus Christ through the means of tears, the tears of affliction. And that's why he's saying here
he fed them with tears of He fed them with the bread of
tears and gave them tears to drink in great measure. That's
why it was uncomfortable, to say the least. He says in verse
6, Thou makest us a strife unto our neighbors, and our enemies
laugh among themselves. They're laughing at us. they're
reproaching us, just like we saw last week in Psalm 79. We have become a reproach because
it seems that God's hand is turned against his people. Where's your
God? Oh, well, he's afflicting us.
Ha, ha, ha, what kind of a God is that? Or, yeah, how's he doing
that? Well, he's turning us over to
our enemies. And, oh, but I thought he was the God of all the armies
of heaven. He must not really be your God,
or you must be failing him somehow. I mean, you see all the mocking
and all those things. They're painful, aren't they?
But the people of God don't defend themselves to their enemies.
What do they do? They pour out their tears to
the Lord. And they speak in this way, they say, our enemies are
laughing. They're laughing because we've trusted in you. Well, we
were sinful. That's why your anger deservedly
is upon us. It was our fault. and yet we're
trusting you, we're calling on you, and we're waiting for you
to deliver us by your great strength. So he says, in verse seven, he
repeats it, Turn us again, O God of hosts, and cause thy face
to shine, and we shall be saved. See how he appeals to the Lord?
Don't give us a bigger sword, or a sharper sword, or anything
like that. Don't make us faster runners,
or more clever than our enemies. He says, turn us to you, Lord,
and cause your face to shine towards us. Reveal yourself to
us in Christ, and your favor in Christ, and we shall be saved. You see, this is another way
of saying what it says in Philippians 3. The apostle Paul said, oh,
that I might be found in him, in him. Turn us again. Oh God, cause your face to shine
and we shall be saved in the Lord Jesus Christ. He goes on,
he hasn't actually gotten to that yet in the psalm, but he
will. Verse 8, Thou hast brought a
vine out of Egypt. That would be Israel being delivered
from Egypt. Israel is compared to a vine.
Thou hast cast out the heathen and planted it. That's Canaan,
where God overthrew the Canaanites and established Israel in Canaan. Verse 9, Thou preparest room
before it. And the word room is in italics,
it just means God prepared. He prepared in himself for his
people. And to prepare means to prepare
in advance. So he knew his people before
and prepared for them before. Jesus said in Matthew 25, 34,
come you blessed of my father inherit the kingdom that was
prepared for you before the foundation of the world. So that's being
prepared. Jesus said in John 14, I go to prepare a place for
you, to prepare you for the place and to prepare a place in God
for you by going to the cross. And here he's saying, thou preparest
for them, thou preparest before it and it cast it, the vine that
is, it caused it to take deep root and it filled the land.
In other words, the Israelites expanded when they got into Canaan,
they filled it and it refers to the church taking possession
of all of the inheritance which Canaan represented by Christ
taking it for them by his own blood and giving it to them in
the everlasting covenant. Everything in the everlasting
covenant is given to us because of Christ shedding his blood
and so the church fills, take up full inheritance and God showed
a distinguishing favor for them for the church because he cast
out, representatively, he cast out the Canaanites and gave it
to Israel, but he cast out the world and gave the world, the
entire world, to his people by promise. The heavens and the
earth. The meek shall inherit the earth. Remember? And so here
in verse 10, he says, the hills were covered with the shadow
of it, this vine, this plant that God had planted, which refers
to Israel, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars.
She sent out her boughs under the sea and her branches to the
river. Why hast thou then broken down her hedges so that all they
which pass by the way do pluck her? So here's the question. Why would God do all this for
his people and then abandon them? Remember what it says in Romans
11, 29? The gifts and callings of God are without repentance.
God doesn't change. In Numbers 23, 19, the Lord spoke
through Balaam and said, God is not a man that he should lie,
neither the son of man that he should repent. Hath he said,
and shall he not also do it? So these things teach us the
immutability and unchangeability of God and his promises. So he
doesn't first give salvation and then take it away. He doesn't
give eternal glory and then take it away. He doesn't give rest
and then take away rest. But in the experience of our
life in this world with our old nature and our new nature, the
experience is this up and down. And that up and down is what
they're talking about here. The hedges that naturally protect
the vine were removed and those animals that destroy the vine,
like pigs in the next verse, the boar out of the wood, pigs
uproot the roots of the vine and destroy the vine, or some
of the animals just pluck at it, they bite at it and chew
at it and ruin it, and so this plant that was so extensive and
spread out over the entire land of Canaan was actually destroyed,
signifying the collapse, it seemed, of the church because of the
enemy. But then we see that nothing
can prevail against Christ building his church, and so that even
though the church seems to shrink at times in history, ultimately
they shall be more than conquerors through him that loved them.
Okay, so I'm looking at my clock here, it's getting very close
to the end. So let me get down here to verse 14, I'm reading,
it says, Return we beseech thee, O God of hosts, look down from
heaven, behold and visit this vine and the vineyard which thy
right hand hath planted. Remember what Jesus said, I am
the true vine and you are the branches. So this is referring
to the church, isn't it? thy right hand hath planted,
and the branch that thou made is strong for thyself, it is
burned with fire, it is cut down, they perish at the rebuke of
thy countenance. But, in verse 17, having come
to the end of all of their weakness, so that they have nothing to
plead except God do something for his name's sake. He says
this in verse 17, notice, let thy hand be upon the man of thy
right hand, upon the son of man whom thou madest strong for thyself. That's Christ. Christ is the
Son of Man. The high priest asked Jesus,
are you the Son of the Blessed? He says, I am. And hereafter
you shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of
power. That's in Mark 14 verse 61 and
62. That is talking about this verse. Let thy hand be upon the man
of thy right hand upon the son of man whom thou made as strong
for thyself." The Christ, God's anointed, God's appointed savior,
king, high priest, prophet. the surety and redeemer, the
substitute, the one who would offer himself for the sins of
his people, this man. God would put him on his right
hand. He's the king of righteousness, the king of peace, the prince
of peace, the mighty God, the everlasting Father. He's everything.
He's the Lord. Let your hand be upon him. We
have no strength against our enemy. You are the God of hosts,
the Lord of heaven and earth. So let your hand be upon the
man of your right hand, notice, whom you made strong for yourself. Do you see that? For thyself.
The plea here, again, is God's cause. Why did God raise Christ
up? For Himself? For His name? For
His glory? To the praise of the glory of
His grace? To bring His people whom He had chosen and set His
love upon from eternity? That's why, for His namesake,
for His glory in their salvation, in giving them eternal glory
with His Son, in giving them all things with Him. He made
His Son. In other words, it's in Christ that we plead. We plead
for God to deal with us in Christ, who is our propitiation, the
Son of Man God made strong for Himself. And then He says in
verse 18, so will not we go back from thee You see, we won't fall
away if we're in Christ, if we're made strong by the Lord in Him.
So will we not go back from thee? Quicken us, give us life again,
and we will call upon thy name. Why do we call? Because we live.
Why do we live? Because God has made us alive.
And why were we made alive? Because God gave us to Christ
and saved us in the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 19 concludes, with
all this in view now, that is in the Lord Jesus, turn us again,
O Lord God of hosts, Jehovah God of the armies of heaven,
the Lord Jesus Christ, the captain of our salvation, cause thy face
to shine, and we shall be saved. His name shall be called Jesus,
for He shall save His people from their sins. The answer to
this prayer is the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father, we
thank You for Him, the Lord Jesus, Your Son, our Savior, our High
Priest, the One who brings us to God, who offered Himself,
bore our sins, put them away, and they're no more remembered,
and now we are your people. We know the Lord through the
Spirit of God given to us by the shed blood of our Savior.
Help us, dear Lord, to come to you at all times and never fail
to come. We need your saving grace, yet
we cannot produce it. We need to be turned, yet we
can't turn ourselves. We need the strength that's described
here, and yet that strength is only in the Lord Jesus. So we
pray, Lord, let your hand be upon the man of your right hand,
the son of man whom you made strong for yourself, and do it
for your name's sake. Do it because you're the great
shepherd of the sheep, because you're the one who dwells between
the cherubim, and save us, O Lord, our God, and we will give thanks
to your name. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.