We are in Psalm 68 and I want
to begin in verse 14 where we left off last time. In verse
14 it says, And let me preface this, I should probably give
you just a one minute overview of this psalm before we begin.
If you had taken notice that in verse 18, this verse of this
psalm is quoted in Ephesians chapter four and verses eight
through nine. And in those verses in Ephesians
four, God, the Holy Spirit, applies this psalm to the Church of God
for the benefits of the church by the resurrection and the ascension
of the Lord Jesus Christ. So this psalm is about the resurrection
and the ascension of Christ and the benefits that Christ earned
for his people in his ascension and in his exaltation and glory
because of his work to fulfill the will of God in our salvation.
So that's what the psalm is about. And when we look at this psalm,
God uses, as I mentioned before, he uses intense pictures or colorful
pictures of the truth of our salvation in many ways and pulls
references for that picture from the Old Testament. and also speaks
of it in prophecy. So here in verse 14, what we
have is it says, when the Almighty scattered kings in it, it was
white as snow in Salmon. I'm not sure exactly how to pronounce
that. That's the way it's pronounced in my pronunciation key in my
Bible. Salmon. It's a place, according
to John Gill, it's a place that is mentioned in Judges chapter
9 and verse 48, and it was near Shechem, S-H-E-C-H-E-M, Shechem,
a place, if you remember, Jacob and his sons came to a place
called Shechem on their sojourn. So Salmon was near Shechem, and
the name Salmon, according to John Gill, comes from The geography,
the way that it looked, there were shade trees growing on the
mountain and it made it a shady place and it was dark then. And so naturally, it was a dark
place. And John Calvin also notes that
Salmon was known because it had snow on it frequently. So it
was known for the snow and for the shade. Now, historically,
it means, therefore, that it emphasizes this comparison of
this place called Salmon. It'll be white as snow in Salmon
when the Almighty, the Almighty, of course, is God. scattered
kings in it, that means there was a routing, there was a victory
in it was white as snow in Salmon, or just as snow in Salmon, because
it's showing that the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Almighty,
put to flight those who were great, who were kings, and he
did it in the victory of his cross, which made his people
as white as snow, even though our sins had made us dark. had
made us red like crimson, as Isaiah 1, verse 18 says, the
Lord Jesus Christ has made us white as snow. So here, again,
in the psalm, in the context, being the resurrection of Christ,
his victory over our sin, and every enemy, and his ascension,
whereby he gave us the gifts that he earned for his church,
in order to build his church, in order to deliver them by His
victory at the cross and also to destroy their enemies. That's
the theme of the psalm. We see that in this verse, we
see the scattering of kings and we see the victory of Christ
in the purging of our sins and how this was to His honor and
glory as the Almighty. So, if you see that, then you
can see here the meaning of this verse. It goes along with the
context of the psalm as Christ's ascension and resurrection. John
Gill puts it this way. He said, the design here is the
purity of the church and the people of God through the imputation
of Christ's righteousness to them, which is as fine linen,
clean and white. and through his pardoning blood,
whereby their scarlet and crimson sins are as white as wool, as
white as snow, and through the sanctifying grace of the Spirit
of God, by which they are washed and cleansed and made all glorious
within. So that was John Gill's comments,
and to that, and considering this song, this particular verse
in this psalm, I think of how much reason we therefore have
to find in this scripture such an adoration and admiration for
the Lord Jesus Christ as we stand in awe of what he has done for
us. Though we are defiled by our
sin against God, Christ, who is God, in our nature has purged
our sins And then he did this by coming in humility to take
away our sins in our very nature and joining us into union with
him so that in his death we died, in his resurrection we rose,
and in his ascension we were given all the gifts that God
had given to him. All right, so let's go to the
next verse. In verse 15 it says, the hill of God is as the hill
of Bashan, and high hill as the hill of Bashan. In this verse,
you'll notice in the King James Version, the words is as the
hill of Bashan, the words is as are italicized, and also as,
in the next phrase, as the hill of Bashan is also italicized. And you know that means that
in the King James Translation, the translators were indicating
to us, they put that word in there to help clarify the verse.
but it isn't there in the original, and so you can read it both ways.
If we choose to read it in the verse, then this verse is comparing
the hill of God to the hill of Bashan. And what is the hill
of God? Well, according to Psalm 132
and verse 13, it says, the Lord hath chosen Zion, he has desired
it for his habitation. So Zion was a mountain, God chose
Zion for his habitation and he dwells in it. And according to
Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 22 through 24, the church is
that mountain. Zion is a synonym for the church
of Jesus Christ, where he dwells. He dwells with his people. He
dwells in his people. And it is a high mountain because
Christ, who is God, who is exalted above all principalities and
powers, and kings in all places, heaven and earth. He is king
of kings and lord of lords. Therefore, this mountain, his
dwelling place, is exalted above all the other mountains." So
here, the comparison, if we compare it, use the words, is as the
hill of Bashan. Bashan was known for its fruitfulness,
according to what I read. And so he's saying that though
Bashan is known for its fruitfulness, the church, which is Zion, is
God's hill, and Bashan must yield allegiance and worship to Christ
because he was anointed as king of Zion and dwells there and
reigns over all things in Zion. So if Zion is the church, and
this is speaking as a comparison to Bashan, it's saying that the
church is above all other kingdoms in this world. It's the kingdom
of Christ. It's the kingdom of his people, the people of his
love, the people of his redeeming blood. the people in whom he
has put his spirit for their salvation, and so that they might
bring forth fruit to God. The fruit of Zion is much greater
than the fruit of any other place. There's only one place on earth
where God's fruit is born, and that is in Zion, in the church. And so, if you read it without
the words that are in italics, the is, as, the hill of Bashan,
and the as, the hill, of Beishan in this verse, then you can also
use it as a contrast and say that God's hill, Zion, is more
fruitful than the mountain, Beishan, which was known for its fruitfulness,
and it is above it. It's the place where God dwells.
All right. Let's go to the next verse. In
verse 16 it says, why leap ye, ye high hills? This is the hill
which God desireth to dwell in, yea, the Lord will dwell in it
forever. Now, in the Young's literal translation,
it reads this way, why do you envy, O high hills, the hill
God has desired for his seat? Jehovah also doth tabernacle
forever. So you can see this word leap
here refers to a desire on the part of God's people those who
oppose Christ and his people in envy to overthrow Christ and
his people. So it's a denunciation, it's
a pronouncement of God, of Christ, actually, against those who oppose
him and his church. Remember, he told Peter and his
disciples that the gates of hell shall not prevail against him
when he builds his church. So this verse speaks a rebuke
to all of the proud, especially proud religionists, who envy
God's choice of his son and of his people and has chosen them
above all others. Christ above all those who would
claimed to be Christ and his people above all those who would
think themselves worthy of God's blessings and love. It's because
of his choice, not because of ours. Now, he says here, as I
said in the Young's literal translation, you can find that in the Blue
Letter Bible, where it says, why do you envy, O high hills?
Envy is a very horrible sin. And what you see
here is that envy arises from a lust of of promotion, a lust
of recognition, a lust of self-promotion. And you know that lust is covetousness,
and covetousness is idolatry, because covetousness is a seeking
after what belongs to God. That's why it's called idolatry.
In the Old Testament, in the law, the first table of the law,
the first part of God's law was, in fact, the very first commandment.
Jesus said the most important one was to love the Lord, your
God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your
mind and with all your strength. So there was no room there for
anyone else but the Lord as the object of our love and adoration. But to envy is the exact opposite. To envy is just an expression
of our covetous desire to have honor for ourselves. And so we've
all felt this, I suppose. I think I've probably felt it
more than others, this hateful sin of envy, where someone is
recognized for doing something well, and we think, I didn't
get recognized for that, and so we want to somehow get into
the sharing of the credit or whatever comes from that. That's
envy. Envy also wants to bring down
and wants trouble and evil to come upon another person because
good was given to them instead of itself. And so you can see
this envy here is a very nasty sin against Christ and against
his people. But it's helpful to see here
also that this envy which arises from our sinful nature is really
just the fruit of that sinful nature because we have this notion
that by our obedience we can keep God's law and earn God's
favor. Now, the way that works out in
our experience is we hear what God requires of us and we imagine
ourselves to be able to do that, at least to strive towards that
goal. And we set about to do that.
And as we are laboring and striving in that direction, our sinful
nature, our sinful self-righteous pride may commend us for making
progress And if we're honest, what that results in is that
we have a greater degree of self-pride or self-righteous pride, a sense
of accomplishment in spiritual things. And that sense of pride
is actually the very opposite. It shows that our motive all
along was for self. So this is demonstrated in our
experience, and it is taught to us in Romans chapter 7, where
the Apostle says that when he was in the flesh and under the
dominion of sin, that the law actually made him
sin more. So when the law is given to us
as the requirements of God and we, in our foolish pride, think
that we can make ourselves holy by keeping the law and obtain
life and recognition from God or praise and honor from men,
or that we can avoid punishment from God, or that we can do anything
that the law holds out as a reward, or avoid anything the law holds
out as a punishment by something we do. All of that is just the
evidence of a very sinful attitude of self-righteous pride. And
self-righteousness is that great sin Jesus spoke against during
his ministry on this earth. He spoke against that more than
anything else. Matthew 23 is devoted to a pronouncement
of woe on the Pharisees because they were full of this pride
of self-righteousness. And pride is just another flip
side of the sin of covetousness. So that really, when we're under
this sense of being able to fulfill what God requires for our good,
And it puts us in control. It makes God our debtor. It causes
honor owed. It makes honor from God owed
to us. And all of this is just really
just another way of saying in this sinful nature that we have
naturally, we have broken God's law completely in the worst possible
way. We have broken the first table
of it in its idolatry against God, seeking the honor that belongs
only to Christ. And we've broken the second part
of it because everything that the law in the second part forbids
us to do, such as lying and stealing and cheating and and covetousness,
we have committed against the Lord Jesus Christ, because he
is the one who alone has kept the law, and we're trying to
rob him of that truth. In our envy, we're trying to
take some credit for it. And this is very insidious, isn't
it? This is a very, very deep and
dark place within us. And then the thing is, What this
leads to is when we can't fulfill the law and we find out that
we are actually worse because we thought we could and tried
to, then we become despondent. So the despondency is just another
evidence of our pride because all the while God has declared
that Christ is the only one good, the only one who has fulfilled
the righteousness of God. And so you can see then how this
verse, why do you envy, O high hills, the hill of God? that
the hill God has desired for his seat, Jehovah, also does
tabernacle forever. The Lord Jesus Christ came in
our nature and in our nature reigns forever because he did
fulfill the law. And why are proud men, especially
us, in our sinful nature, envious and proud and covetous against
the Lord Jesus Christ? That's what this is saying. It's
a very humbling thing. And we find that when we understand
the gospel, then that all of our salvation is accomplished
by Christ. It leaves no place in us for
pride, envy, covetousness, or despondency, because we think
that some part of our salvation we have to fulfill. And this
is a great comfort, and yet it comes to us in a way that humbles
us greatly. But because this is what we're
taught by the Spirit of God in our new man, then the new man
actually loves this and we need to know this. And day by day,
through the afflictions of our life and through the application
of the gospel, we learn it continuously and we grow in it. And that's
what's described in Romans chapter 7. All right, let's go on to
verse 17. In verse 17 of Psalm 68 it says
the chariots of God are 20,000, even thousands of angels. The
Lord is among them as in Sinai in the holy place. Now the word
here twenty thousand or thousands, it's just a myriad of angels. It just means a large number,
a number that's large and without number. So it's a myriad of angels. And so this is teaching us that
the army of Christ is a myriad of extremely powerful servants. Remember in the book of First
Chronicles chapter 21, a single angel killed 70,000 in Israel
when he brought judgment on Israel for a sin that David had committed
in numbering the people. And again, if you remember, when
the king of Syria had sent his armies to surround a city where
Elisha was, then Elisha prayed to the Lord that he would open
the eyes of his servant. And when Elisha prayed for him
and his servant's eyes were opened, he saw around that city chariots
of fire, which are the Lord's angels, his army. And so through
all this, the point is that God's armies are beyond all measurable
strength on earth, because they're the chariots of God. His armies
are each soldier in his army has strength far beyond any human
strength. And they are with Christ, and
they serve Christ. They are the servants to Christ. They're actually servants to
the heirs of salvation on behalf of Christ. They serve Christ,
but in serving Him, they serve the heirs of salvation. This
is what it says in Hebrews 1, 14, that the angels are ministering
spirits sent by Christ to minister for them who shall be heirs of
salvation, meaning God's elect, the people who are believing
the Lord Jesus Christ. Now these graphic descriptions
of a myriad of mighty angels who are as God's chariots in
his army are meant to comfort us and to assure us as the people
of the Lord Jesus Christ that everything in heaven and everything
in earth and everything under the earth are under God's holy
and sovereign rule. All that he does, all that he
wills to do He does do, and all that he wills to do is for the
good of his people, and he has an army that can't be measured. When we think of powerful things,
we think of weapons like nuclear bombs. Those are nothing compared
to the strength of an angel. And God's army is made up of
a myriad of angels. So this should give us unbelievable
comfort. Now, the Lord Jesus Christ descended
in almighty power, and that was a power of his love. His descent
from heaven was an exemplary demonstration of his love, because
it required his humility. And it was his almighty love
and his almighty grace in that humility that was was deployed
or was exercised to do the will of God for those who had sinned
against God but were chosen to salvation. And in that descent, he became the least in the kingdom
of God. But because he was the least
of the kingdom of God, God exalted him as the greatest. And God
gave him a reward A reward that he obtained by his shed blood
in his obedience to God in the salvation of his people. Now
that is the reward that God gives to his people. The Lord Jesus
Christ gives the reward he earned to his church. And that's what
this is speaking of here in the next verse. Listen to this in
Psalm 68 verse 18. Thou hast ascended on high. That's
the ascension of Christ after he accomplished our redemption.
Thou hast led captivity captive. Those who were God's people and
held in captivity, he led them out of their captivity and he
put their captors in captivity. That's what this is saying. Thou
hast received gifts for men. That's the reward God gave to
his son. Yea, for the rebellious also, that's me, that's you,
who have sinned against God in our proud and covetous and envious
hearts when we thought we could make ourselves right before God.
And when the gospel came, we were made to submit then to the
Lord's righteousness alone. And then he says, that the Lord
God might dwell among them. Because Christ justified us by
his righteousness in his blood that he offered to God for our
sins in order to remove our sins and to take away the wrath of
God against us for our sins, when he did that, then he earned
for us the right He had made us holy in His blood. He therefore
earned the right to send His Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God,
to dwell in us to give us spiritual life, even everlasting life with
faith and all the fruits of that grace of the Holy Spirit of God.
And so this is being spoken of here in this verse. It was because
of Christ's great stoop and His obedience and His faithfulness
in fulfilling the will of God. All right. Because Christ obtained all these
things in obedience to God, out of humility and love, he serves
as the greatest possible example for us, doesn't he? If he's so
stooped to save his enemies, bearing their sins, bearing all
the accusations that were justly against them for their sins,
and bearing all of the slander of the worst kind of enemies
on earth, and the pain that they devised in their hearts to inflict
upon him, if he suffered all of that for our sins, and he
did it in silence, even though he himself had not done those
sins, he bore it entirely without any defense, any self-defense. He did it all in order to answer
God for us as our surety. He offered himself in answer
to God as a surety that we might be released and go to our Father
in peace with our brethren. This is the love of the Lord
Jesus Christ and this love By virtue of the fact that Christ
is our life and Christ is in us, this love must spring from
us towards those who we live with and encounter in our lives,
especially those who we are offended by, by nature. The Lord teaches
us through the gospel not to be offended. but to remember
to commit ourselves to the keeping of our faithful creator and our
savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who endured so much for us. All
right. Let's go on to verse 19. He says,
Blessed be the Lord who daily loatheth us with his benefits,
or with benefits, even the God of our salvation, Selah. So this
verse is giving praise to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the
Lord. Blessed be the Lord. Praise to
the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our God and Savior. And
His blessings are continual. He loads us with these benefits
daily. Notice that word, daily. Daily
loadeth us with his benefits. And he is not only the Lord,
but he is our God, even the God of our salvation. So in this
verse, we see here that the Lord is our salvation, that He is
our God, and that He continuously loads us with the blessings because
He has saved us as our Savior. Now, these blessings, of course,
include all that's involved and that's included in our salvation.
It includes our election. It includes our sanctification
by the Father. It includes our justification
by the Son, by His redeeming blood. It includes our regeneration
by the Spirit of God. It includes the life we live
by the power of Christ living in us by His Spirit that we might
be enabled to believe Him and continue to believe him, to walk
in the faith that he's given to us. He upholds us in that
faith. He preserves us and he causes
us to persevere in faith. And then he presents us to himself
without blame, holy in the presence of his glory and in love with
great joy. All these things are true because
these are the benefits of Christ who accomplished our salvation. He is our God, He is our Lord,
and He is the one to whom belong the issues from death. Now, the
phrase here, the issues from death, is in the next verse,
actually. Let me read verse 20. He says,
he that is our God is the God of salvation, and unto the Lord
belong the issues from death. Notice, again, the words of the
psalm in verse 20, our God. This was the language of the
new covenant, isn't it? God would be a God to his people
and they shall be his people. They would call him our God and
he would call them my people. There's this bi-directional relationship
God has established in the everlasting covenant made by Christ's precious
blood. And we see that here in this
verse, our God, our covenant God, our God by covenant promise,
our God by election, our God by predestination, our God by
the everlasting covenant made in Christ's blood. Everything
in the covenant God made with us was made by the blood of Christ. That's what Hebrews 13, 20 is
saying, by the blood of the everlasting covenant. And so, since it's
the blood of Christ that made this covenant, and since the
covenant is everlasting, therefore Christ has to be the Lamb slain
from the foundation of the world. And he tells us here that our
God is the God of salvation. There is no other God. there
is no other salvation. And there certainly is no other
God who can save. And so it's all piled up to give
us the greatest, to direct us to the Lord Jesus Christ with
the greatest adoration that He is our God, the God of our salvation. And notice He says here, to Him
belong the issues from death. And so, This is, in particular,
the benefits Christ earned for us in his life and death and
his resurrection and his ascension. The benefits are deliverance
from death, resurrection to life. In fact, he said in John 11,
25 and 26, I am the resurrection and the life. So the Lord Jesus
Christ himself is our life and he is our resurrection. Therefore,
there's no doubt that we live and shall live and that though
we die, we shall be raised because Christ is our resurrection and
our life. But he is that because of a covenant,
and it's by a covenant promised on the grounds of his shed blood
and also on the grounds of God's faithfulness. God cannot lie.
God, who promised also for our comfort, not because it needed
to be done, but just for our comfort, He took an oath and
swore upon himself as God. He staked his self, his own person
as God to the keeping of this covenant. He says this in Hebrews
chapter six, verse 13 through 20. And so we see here the greatest
possible comfort to the Lord's people because of Christ having
risen from the dead and ascended on high. The issues from death,
include all of the issues from death and all that's included
in life. So whatever brings us into death,
that issue has been dealt with, which is sin. What about the
other issues? Well, we know Satan is a deceiver
and a murderer from the beginning, so that issue's been dealt with.
What about our own unbelief and our deadness and spiritual deadness? That issue also is dealt with
for his great love, wherewith he loved us, even when we were
dead in sins, he has quickened us, given us life with Christ
from the dead. All the issues from death. What
about the issues of our present life? Those issues are also taken
care of in the issues from death. Everything. This is talking about
resurrection and all the issues that would bring us to death
or hold us in death or keep us from our Savior. In other words,
nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which
is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Nothing. not death, not life,
not things present, not things to come, not persecutions or
famines or pestilence or sword or principalities or powers,
nothing in heaven, nothing on earth, especially our sins because
Christ died for our sins and no one can condemn us, no one
can charge us. Everything is taken care of.
God himself has made himself our God and we are his people.
He's the God of the living, not the God of the dead. The issues
from death belong to him. And in John 10, verse 10, Jesus
said, I am come that they might have life and that they might
have life more abundantly. Just think of the abundance that
there must be in the life that Christ gives. Abundance, not
a little stream, not a little pond, not even an ocean as we
measure oceans on earth, but the everlasting river that flows
from the throne of God and of the Lamb for the salvation of
His people. All right, now in verse 21 it
says, but God shall wound the head of his enemies in the hairy
scalp of such a one as goes on in his trespasses, goes on still
in his trespasses. Now this verse answers God's
people with this, that all of their enemies shall be put to
death and all who hold, stubbornly hold to their self-righteousness
shall be also put to death. Notice, I'll read it again, God
shall wound the head of his enemies. All of our enemies will be put
to death, the head. And the hairy scalp of such a
one as goes on still in his trespasses, We go on still in our trespasses
when we don't turn to the Lord Jesus Christ as the only Savior
of sinners and commit the keeping of our souls and the salvation
of our souls to Him. And that's all by God's grace,
of course, but it shows an exceedingly egregious pride and envy and
covetousness if hearing the gospel we turn from it as those Jews
did in Romans chapter 10 who refused to submit to the righteousness
of God because Christ is the end of the law for righteousness.
So that's who goes on still in their trespasses. The blood of
Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin. God will look on His
people and He shall find no sin in them because He has washed
them from their sins in His own blood. Jesus said in John 8,
24, you shall die in your sins, for if you believe not that I
am, you shall die in your sins. So that's the hairy head of the
man or the woman who goes on still in their trespasses, refusing
Christ, who is declared by God to be the Christ of God, the
savior of his people, the one who came from God and accomplished
that salvation and rose again and is ascended to glory. All
right, but all those who do believe Christ is I am shall not die
in their sins. That's the other side of this.
Okay, now the next verse is verse 22. Okay, verse 22, I'm trying to speed
up a little bit here. He says, the Lord said, I will
bring again from Bashan, I will bring my people again from the
depths of the sea. Now, there's two different things
here. One is Baishan, one is the Red
Sea. And God says, I will bring them
again from Baishan and I will bring them, my people, again
from the depths of the sea. So what is this talking about?
Well, Baishan was the place where a king ruled whose name was Og,
O-G. Og, the king of Bashan. And he
opposed Israel when they were coming near the end of their
wilderness sojourn. And because it was God's will
to destroy him, Moses sent the Israelites and they did. They
destroyed all of his kingdom. They destroyed all of his people.
They were utterly destroyed. Now, why is this significant? What does it mean here? Well, Og was a formidable giant. He was a king of people who were
giants. And these people who were giants
attacked Israel. while they were making their
way to the land of their inheritance, the promised inheritance, God's
promise of inheritance to them. All right, recite that a couple
of times and I think you get it. The enemies, the giants,
the strong giants, attacked God's people, Israel, while they were
on their way to their inheritance that God had promised to them.
And isn't this just a parallel of what the believer experiences
in this world? The king of this world and the
giants of this world are out to destroy God's people and God's
Christ, if they could, as they make their way to the land of
salvation, the land of Christ's purchase and his promised inheritance
to them. But the Lord is our shield, the
Lord is our reward, so no one can take it from us. And so God
speaks of that here. He says, the Lord said, I will
bring again from Bashan. Now, in history, God utterly
destroyed Og, the king of Bashan, and all of his people. And he
did it by the Israelites. But the Israelites who fought
against and destroyed Og, the king of Bashan, were actually
the children of the parents who refused to go into Canaan at
the first coming to the borders of Canaan because of unbelief. They spoke against Moses and
God said, because you have refused to do that by your unbelief,
then you will not go in. You will die and your children
will go in. And these parents had said to
God one of the reasons they made the excuse that one of the reasons
they couldn't go in was their parents would become a prey,
would become victims of the giants in that land and they would die.
But here we have that those very children that were the children
of the parents who wouldn't believe God, they were the ones who destroyed
Og, the king of Bashan. So now can you see it? So we
are weak, we have no strength. God's going to bring us into
our inheritance because of Christ, not because of our own strength.
The Lord is our strength. And it's through faith that we
overcome, right? 1 John 4, verse 4, and 1 John
5, verse 4. He says that faith overcomes
the world. Whatever is born of God overcomes the world. So it's
Christ in us, not because of our strength, but by His righteousness
and by His strength, that we're given the victory, and we're
always given the victory. So we believe that the victory
is Christ, therefore it can't fail, right? He is not going
to fail to bring us to himself in eternal salvation and eternal
glory. And so all of these things are
used in metaphor here by this reference to Beishan. Beishan
was a strong place with a strong king and they attacked Israel,
God's little ones, and the Lord overthrew them at that time and
he says, I'm going to do that again. He's going to do it continuously. He's going to always in the life
of the believer, he's going to overthrow that monster of unbelief
that fiend the devil and this evil wicked world in order to
deliver us from those enemies of our souls, our own sin. All
right, and then he says also, I will bring my people again
from the depths of the sea, which he's referencing the Red Sea.
And to bring someone from the depths of the sea is clearly
a resurrection, isn't it? When you're at the depths of
the sea and you're brought up again, that's a resurrection.
Jonah was brought up from the depths of the sea while he was
in the belly of the whale. And Jesus said that was a resurrection
because as he was three days and three nights in the belly
of the whale, so the Lord would be three days and three nights
in the heart of the earth. And Jonah was spit out by the
whale, so Christ rose from the dead when he accomplished the
work God gave him to do. When he bore our sins and underwent
the flood of God's wrath for us, and he was raised again.
Okay, so the Red Sea has to do with the resurrection. And if
you remember, historically, the Red Sea was the place where the
Egyptians, who were the evil taskmasters, thought to destroy
Israel. They said, I will fulfill my
lust, I will satisfy my lust upon them. That's in Exodus 15
and verse 9. Pharaoh in his heart and his
armies, they saw Israel as puny and weak, and they were offended
because they were delivered by the blood of the Passover lamb.
So they came against them after God hardened Pharaoh's heart
again by his own inner sin. And he chased after them and
found them at the Red Sea. And he said, I will pursue and
satisfy my lust in their destruction. But what happened? They were
destroyed. Egypt was destroyed. And how
did God do that? Well, he brought them to the
waters of judgment and God opened. He parted the Red Sea and Israel
walked through those waters of judgment on dry land until they
all came through. And then as Pharaoh and the Egyptian
army chased after them, that God brought that judgment on
that army. And that's what he's saying here,
the same thing. I will bring again from the depths of the
sea. So God's people are delivered from judgment because the Lord
Jesus Christ underwent judgment for us. We walk through on dry
land, but all of our enemies, primarily our sin, but also Satan
and his kingdom are all destroyed in that death itself is destroyed
in that judgment of God that came on our Savior And so that's
what he's assuring us here is God the Lord will bring his people
from Bashan, these giant haters of Christ and his people who
thought to destroy them on their way to their inheritance and
bring them out of the depths of the sea, a resurrection from
death to life by the power of Christ who underwent judgment
for them and destroyed all their enemies in that judgment. Okay? All right, I just feel like I'm
probably going to be overwhelming all of us by continuing on. It's
only 20 after, but there's so much in this psalm that I feel
like I will actually be robbing you of the enjoyment of it by
trying to to go too quickly through it, but let me see if I can pull
out a Juicier a juicy verse here. Let's go to verse 27 because
that was I wrestled a long time It's been weeks now since we
started this song So I I struggled a long time with that verse that
we just talked about there in verse 22, but let's go to verse
27 and And I'll touch lightly on those others next time, but
let's just close with this one. He says here in verse 27, there
is little Benjamin with their ruler, the princes of Judah and
their council, the princes of Zebulun and the princes of Naphtali
or Naphtali, however you say it. All right. There, there is
little Benjamin. Who are these places? Who are
these people? Well, we recognize them, don't
we? Benjamin was the youngest son of Jacob. And Benjamin's
name means son of my right hand. Remember when he was born, Rachel,
his mother, died in the birth process and she called him son
of my sorrow. But Jacob said, no, his name
is son of my right hand, son of his strength. And then he
says here, there is little Benjamin with their ruler, the princess
of Judah. Judah means praise. Because when Judah was born to
Leah, she said, now I shall praise the Lord because he gave me this
son, Judah. And we know that Christ came out of Judah, so
that tells us why his name is Praise. And he says the princess
of Zebulun. And Zebulun is a name that means
exalted. And so, and naphtali means wrestled
and because that was where Leah and Rachel were wrestling in
order to have the most children by Jacob. Okay, so what does
all this mean? Well, remember in Galatians chapter
3, it says you are all The Gentiles, now this is God speaking to believing
Gentiles, you are all the children of God. And if children, if you're
Christ, he says in verse 29, if you are Christ, if you belong
to the Lord Jesus Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs
according to promise. Let me read that verse to you
in Galatians chapter three in verse 29, a very, very pivotal, significant verse. He
says in Galatians 329, if you be Christ's, then are you Abraham's
seed and heirs according to the promise. The promises God gave
to Abraham which he was really giving to Christ, we are heirs
of those promises if we belong to Christ, because they were
given to him. He's the heir, the seed to whom
God made the promises, and all those who are the seed of Abraham
are really Christ's. They belong to him. They're his
children. And so we are the children, the spiritual children of Abraham.
And guess what? There are no others. There are
no others. We have to get that solidly in
our understanding. We need to be fully persuaded
of this. It's not the children of the flesh who are counted
for the seed, but the children of promise. This is from Romans
chapter nine and verse six. It was not because you were physically
born to Abraham, but because you were spiritually born by
the spirit of God to Christ. Okay, so we are the children
of Abraham because we belong to Christ and we know this in
believing Christ. Faith is the evidence of it.
So what he's saying here is Benjamin and Judah and Zebulun and Naphtali,
these are just names for God's people, aren't they? And their
names for the elect of God, those redeemed by the blood of Christ,
those given the spirit of Christ to dwell in them and create Christ
in them so that they would be the work of God. They were justified
by his blood and they were given a new life, which is Christ in
them. They have a new man now. They
have the spirit of God, a new heart. They are the heirs of
salvation. They are those of the covenant
Christ made in his blood. And that's who is being spoken
of here. To them belong these names, son of my right hand,
because Christ is God's right hand and we are the children
of God through Christ Jesus. And Judah, praise, praise to
the Lord Jesus Christ, praise to the grace of God for saving
us. Zebulun, because we're exalted
in the Lord Jesus Christ, we have been raised up together
with him. And Naphtali, because we wrestle while in this life,
we wrestle, the flesh wars against the spirit, and the spirit against
the flesh, and we can't do what we would, but the Lord Jesus
Christ will give us the victory. We shall be delivered from the
wretched man that we are. All right, so that's what this
verse, I believe, is talking about. Thy God hath commanded
thy strength. Strengthen, O God, that which
thou hast wrought or done for us. We'll finish this psalm next
time, and I had hoped to get it done tonight, but I'm not
bothered by not finishing it. Maybe a little bit, but I'm also
glad that we get to go through it verse by verse like this.
Let's pray. Thank you, Lord, for your great mercy to us, for
being so gracious to us to give us your word to assure us and
reassure us over and over again that the Lord Jesus Christ is
all. He did all of the work of our
salvation. He redeemed us by his blood. He made We're complete in Him,
and He will give us everything that He earned. There's nothing
that will be withheld from us. Thank you for this great grace
that's in Him. Help us to live in this life in hope, and by
the power of your Spirit, to trust Him in everything. In Jesus'
name we pray, amen.