All right, we're going to get
started. We're in Psalm 68 in verse 1. Let God arise. Let his enemies be scattered.
Let them also that hate him flee before him. As smoke is driven
away, so drive them away. As wax melteth before the fire,
so let the wicked perish at the presence of God. Now this is
God speaking. We know that whatever God says
is right and true. But we find ourselves timid at
best, I think, to state such words knowing that only the Lord
can say what's true and it be true unless we're speaking his
word. And so here what we've just read
is that God himself is saying to his enemies, those that hate
him, the wicked as they're called in verse 1 and 2, that they would
be driven away like smoke and melt like wax before the fire.
But then in verse 3 he says, but let the righteous be glad,
let them rejoice before God, yea, let them exceedingly rejoice. Now last time, I think we got
this far, and we saw here that in the opening verses of this
psalm, the psalm is speaking about the Lord Jesus Christ,
and based on what we read in Ephesians chapter 4, And here,
in this psalm, in verse 18 especially, we see that this psalm primarily
has to do with the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ. He
came into the world, the Son of God, without the human nature,
came into the world and took on a human nature. He lived in
that body, that soul, body and soul, as man. And yet as God
and man, and then as God and man, he lived in this world in
humility. He was cloaked, as it were. His reputation as God was hidden. Men couldn't perceive that he
was God, except by the message that he brought, his claims,
and the miracles that he did, and the fact that the Spirit
of God descended upon him, and the Father spoke from heaven,
those outward signs. But just looking at him, He appeared
to be no different than any other person, and He suffered the same
weaknesses that we suffer in our bodies, and that's why He
appeared to be so much like us, because He was like us, except
for sin. He did not sin. He knew no sin. He did no sin, and in Him there
is no sin. He is holy, harmless, and undefiled
as man. And because he was so holy, harmless,
and undefiled, he was able to offer himself in his entire person
as the God-man. He was able to offer himself
to God. And that's a mystery, how God, the Son of God, could
offer himself to God in his human nature. and yet it have the value
and the merit of God himself. But it is true, and God speaks
of that throughout scripture. For example, in Acts 20, verse
28, it says, God purchased the church with his own blood. And
so we know that the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ is the
blood of God, but God doesn't have blood, Yet the human nature
of Christ was joined to his divine nature in one person so that
he is both God and man in one person. That's an unfolded mystery. That means God has made it known
to us. He's convinced us of it. And though we can't understand
it as we might like to, we certainly can't understand it in a way
that we could explain it to somebody else except by restating what
God has said in scripture. Yet we believe it with our whole
heart. And this gift of faith in the truth of what God has
revealed concerning Christ is the work of the Holy Spirit in
us. And so we'll see more of that
in a minute. But in these three verses, what we see is that God,
it says, God rises. Now, we know the Lord Jesus Christ
is God from all that we've talked about in our first lesson on
this chapter. And just to rehearse a few of
those things in 1 Timothy 3, verse 16, it says, great is the
mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh. And so, we know right away that
God was in the person of the Lord. The person of the Lord
Jesus Christ is God, and He is man. God was manifest in the
flesh. And in John 1.14, the Word, the
eternal, uncreated Word, who was with God and was God, was
made flesh. And in Matthew 1.21 it says that
His name is Jesus, and that means Jehovah, salvation. Jehovah is
salvation. That's His name, Jesus. And then
in verse 23, Immanuel, which is God with us. That's in Matthew
chapter 1. And then in Jeremiah 23, 5 and
6, it says that the Christ who would come of the seed of David
would be the Lord, our righteousness, Jehovah, our righteousness. And
we could go on and on, but the point here is that Jesus Christ
is God. He is God. He is man. He is truly
God and truly man. He is not entirely God or entirely
man, he's both God and man, but he is fully or truly God and
truly man in that sense. Okay, so God rises, and when
did the Lord rise? Well, he rose in the resurrection,
and that's another part of 1 Timothy 3, 16, where it says, not only
was God manifest in the flesh, but he was justified in the spirit. And what that means is that the
spirit of God has evidenced, has given evidence to the fact
that everything Jesus said and did was true, and God justified
him by what he said and did. He had the Spirit of God on him
without measure, John 3 verse 34, and he was able to do things
that only God could do. and such as forgive sins, and
such as raise the dead, and those were things that he did by the
power of the Spirit of God, because the Spirit of God justified him.
In other words, spoke of him openly as the Christ of God,
as the Son of God, as the Lamb of God, as we read throughout
the New Testament, in his own testimony and in the testimony
of those who spoke of him. All right, so it says here, let
God arise. In other words, Christ rose from
the dead. He also rose when he went from
this earth to heaven. That was in the ascension, which
is mentioned later in verse 18 in this chapter. So he says,
let his enemies be scattered, because when the Lord Jesus Christ
was on the cross, his enemies had their day. This is your hour,
Jesus said, and the power of darkness. So this was the case
at the cross. It was God's will that Christ
submit in obedience to the humiliation, the torture, the cruelty, the
false accusation, and the slander, and the beating, and the spitting,
and all that they did to Him in His sufferings and in His
death. And he was laid in a rich man's grave, but he rose again
from the dead. And that was by the power of
God, not only by the power of the Father, but the power of
the Spirit and the power of the Son of God. He said, I lay down
my life and I take it up again. I've received this commandment
from my Father in John chapter 10, verse 17 and 18. So we know
that Jesus Christ is God, we know he rose from the dead, and
this resurrection of Christ was the open declaration of the truth
of who he is and what he said and all that he did. And this
is not only a declaration of that truth, but it's also our
salvation because Jesus Christ didn't act for himself alone. He acted for his people. He died
for our sins. He was buried and he rose again
the third day. It was for our sins and for our
justification. He was delivered for our offenses. He was raised again for our justification
or because of our justification. We're justified by His blood.
We're reconciled by the death of God's own Son. We live because
the Son of God died, and He died in order that we might live.
These are all statements from Scripture, and we find them to
be the most, the dearest and the most comforting and life-giving
words. We've never heard these words
before as the officers that were sent by the elders and the rulers
of the people returned to them. They said, never man spake like
this man. So the Lord Jesus Christ is God,
He rose, His resurrection proves the fact that not only was He
justified by God, but all of His people were justified with
Him. And that is the gospel. He was
delivered for our sins. He was raised again because of
our justification. And that's what verse 1 and 2
are about. And verse 3 says, let the righteous
therefore be glad. We have every reason to be glad.
All of our salvation All that God requires of us and all that
God promises to us has been given to us in Christ. And he now sits
at the right hand of God. Therefore, he has it. It's already
been given to him. In Romans 8, 32, he who did not
spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall
he not with him also freely give us all things? What God gave
to Christ, He gives to His people. That's what this is saying here
in the amazement of it, in the greatness of this blessing here,
is that Christ rose. He's God. And His enemies are
scattered. They're going to melt as wax,
driven away like smoke. They'll be destroyed. They'll
flee from Him. But the righteous, let them be glad. Let them rejoice
before God. Yea, let them exceedingly rejoice. because Christ is risen from
the dead. And their justification has been
accomplished in all of the blessings of God's eternal covenant have
been given to them in Christ. He didn't act privately. He was
a public representative for his people. He did everything for
them and they are All that he did is considered theirs, is
counted to them as their own righteousness, and his blood
was shed as the washing of their own sins, and all that he obtained
was the reward given to him, not only for him, but for them
and with him. And this is amazing grace. That's
what we find from this. Amazing grace. Amazing everything. Amazing power that God would
be so inclined in His wisdom and in His goodness to exert
His almighty power to forgive the sins of those who offended
Him. And to find a way not only to
remove their sins but to exalt himself to the highest pinnacle
in the person of his son by removing their sins in the death of his
son. And to raise him from the dead and set him at his own right
hand in the highest place of glory and honor and power. And
that's what this is talking about. Therefore the righteous are to
rejoice. They're righteous in the righteousness of the Lord
Jesus Christ. There's no one righteous in himself. There is only one righteousness
before God. It's the righteousness of God,
which the Lord Jesus Christ has worked out in his obedience,
in the precept, and in enduring the penalty of God's holy law
and that his resurrection from the dead proves that. All right.
Now, let's read through verses four through 17. He says, I'm
about to sneeze here, so I'm pausing. He says, sing unto God,
sing praises to his name. That means all that God is, all
of his attributes. All that God is known to be,
that's his name. Sing praises to his name. When we pray, we ought to thank
God for who he is, for who he has revealed himself to be to
us in the gospel. And this is phenomenal, what
He is as God. And this is not just God in the
abstract, this is the Lord Jesus Christ, our God and Savior, our
great God and Savior. Sing to God, sing praises to
His name, extol Him that rideth upon the heavens by His name,
Yah. Now that name Yah is a contraction, like we sometimes make contractions. Do not becomes don't, cannot
becomes can't and so forth. Well this is a contraction and
it means the same thing as Jehovah, but in a song they sometimes
collapse the word into a way so that it can be sung. And that's
what this is, Yah. It just means Jehovah. His name
is Jehovah. Jesus Christ is Jehovah God. And this is where the Jehovah's
Witnesses go into a whirling dervish because they can't tolerate
to hear that. Jesus is Jehovah. And if they
were Jehovah's Witnesses, they would believe that, but they
can't be Jehovah's Witnesses or they wouldn't deny it. Okay, so he says here, sing to
God, sing praises to his name, extol him that writeth upon the
heavens by his name, Yah, and rejoice before him. A father
of the fatherless and a judge of the widows is God in his holy
habitation. And if God is for us, who can
be against us? Beware if we are not on the same
side as God is for the widows and for the fatherless. He goes
on, verse six. God setteth the solitary in families. He bringeth out those which are
bound with chains, but the rebellious dwell in a dry land. Oh God,
When Thou wentest forth before Thy people, when Thou didst march
through the wilderness, Selah, the earth shook, the heavens
also dropped at the presence of God, even Sinai itself was
moved at the presence of God, the God of Israel. So the Lord
Jesus Christ is the God of Israel, isn't he? He's the one who was
with them in the wilderness, according to this verse. Thou,
O God, didst send a plentiful rain, whereby thou didst confirm
thine inheritance when it was weary. Thy congregation hath
dwelt therein. Thou, O God, hast prepared of
thy goodness for the poor. The Lord gave the word, great
was the company of those that published it. Kings of armies
did flee apace, and she that tarried at home divided the spoil. Though you have line among the
pots, yet shall you be as the wings of a dove covered with
silver and her feathers with yellow gold. When the Almighty
scattered kings in it, it was white as snow and salmon. The
hill of God is as the hill of Bashan, and high hill as the
hill of Bashan. Why leap ye, ye high hills? This
is the hill which God desireth to dwell in. Yea, the Lord will
dwell in it forever. The chariots of God are 20,000,
even thousands of angels. The Lord is among them as in
Sinai in the holy place." All right. I wanna pause there in
the reading because I know that we won't get further than that.
And this is what I've marked in our notes as the end of part
two. So where I wanna begin here with,
let's see, where did I start here in part two? Find it in
my notes. I'm actually starting, we'll
start with verse four. One of the things you notice
when you read through this psalm is that the language is very
dramatic and colorful and it is descriptive in a pictorial
way. So for example, that last verse
we read there, the chariots of God are literally a myriad of
angels. Thousands, thousands upon thousands
of angels. That's very descriptive and it's grandiose, isn't it? It's
grandiose in the way that it's phrased there. Now, that's not
the only place in this psalm and in this first 17 verses where
it says things that are like that. For example, in verse 12,
kings of armies did flee apace and she that tarried at home
divided the spoil. So this is the way that God writes
scripture in these kinds of texts. Here what we have is the Lord
is speaking of spiritual things. but he's using the language of
a description of something that conjures up a picture which is
somewhat tangible. Thousands of angels or kings
of these armies running from the king of kings, and so on. And then in verse, for example,
in verse, Let's see, where's that? Oh, verse four. Sing unto
God, sing praises to his name, extol him. Notice, that writeth
upon the heavens by his name, Yah. Well, as a child, or even
as an adult, we sometimes take these words and we try to conjure
up an explanation to ourselves. What does it mean? Is God literally
writing? on heaven, I don't understand
the words. It's because God is taking these
things that are spiritual, and a prophecy of what would take
place, and he's using very colorful and descriptive language in order
to help us understand that as much farther beyond our understanding
these words are, so much further the reality is. So this is the
way we can read a lot of scripture. It's like, wow, I don't understand
it, but it sounds great. It sounds great. Well, it's far,
far better than we could even imagine. In Ephesians chapter
three, God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all you ask
or think. We can't really grasp the things of God, and that's
why we are so dependent upon Christ being our wisdom. because
Christ does understand. And if we know him and he's our
wisdom, then we can trust that whatever he's promising here,
it will be glorious and we can understand something of it. But
really, we sometimes feel like the angels desiring to look into
it and not really understanding much of it in comparison to what
we ought to. So I say that at the outset,
this psalm is very dramatic and it uses pictorial descriptions
that describe God's triumph for his people over his enemies at
his resurrection and at his ascension in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's
what it's about. And really, if we think about
it, if we stop and think about it, all of scripture is about
the glorious, achievements of the Lord Jesus Christ in our
salvation, isn't it? If we were to distill the gospel
as God himself has done in, for example, Hebrews chapter one,
verse three, he says, who by himself purged our sins, when
he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand
of the majesty on high. So we can see that the whole
work And the whole consummation of what Christ did was that he
would be seated at the right hand of God in all of the majesty
of God, because he is God. And yet he accomplished our salvation
by himself as man, depending on God for all of the strength
in order to do that. as a man walking by faith, living
upon God, on His Word, and being obedient to Him in such a way
that it was a righteousness that was given to His people for their
everlasting life. So, the Gospel is like that,
isn't it? It takes huge swaths of history
and events and people and words, and it distills it into the essence
that it's about the Lord Jesus Christ and His redemptive work
and His triumph in that work and in His glory that follows.
In fact, in 1 Peter 1, it says that the prophets of old spoke
by the Spirit of Christ. of the sufferings of Christ and
the glory that would follow." And so we see these words here,
and we're made to stand in admiration of the fact that what God is
describing here is, like I said, grandiose, and yet it doesn't
even begin in our comprehension of it to put us proportionally
in the right frame of mind so that we fall, as it says here,
and we sing and we exceedingly rejoice at what the Lord has
done. If God is telling us to exceedingly rejoice, then there
is a true and holy basis for that. We can take it to the bank,
if you would say it that way. All right, so I wanted to point
that out. First of all and foremost, the language here is given to
us to describe what Christ accomplished in all of his redemptive work,
the triumph in his accomplishment in our salvation and the glory
that follows that. And so that's one of the ways
we see that. And here we also see that the
one who is The one who is victorious, the one who is triumphant, is
none less than God. And as I mentioned perhaps last
time or the time before, the fact that God himself accomplished
our salvation in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ should
cause us to just sit in awe and wonder and amazement that God
himself, the one we offended, would take it upon himself to
accomplish our salvation. It was him that we sinned against,
so only he could take it upon himself to accomplish could initiate
or undertake or allow for the removal of our sin and devise
the work needed to be done and actually provide for that work
and give the strength to accomplishment and then receive the work. The
whole thing has to be of God. And therefore we take great comfort
in the fact that it is God who rises, God who ascends in the
person of the Lord Jesus Christ, because God has become our salvation. And if God is our salvation,
then who can keep us from that salvation? No one can. In verse
17, the chariots of God are a myriad, thousands and thousands, just
a big word, a big number, I mean. Thousands, beyond our understanding.
When one angel can destroy Who knows how many people, 70,000
in that pestilence of David in Israel. One angel destroyed 70,000
or the angels that Elisha the prophet prayed that his servant
could see that were surrounding them when the Syrian army had
closed them in. And the Lord gave his servant
eyes to see and he saw heaven's host. You can't number them. And yet God doesn't need an angel
to do his work. God's own power, excuse me, can
do it by himself, by his word. And yet he gives us this display
of his power. If he has such mighty servants,
then how great must the king of kings be, you see. And therefore,
how great and secure and certain is our salvation. If God is holy
and his angels are holy, And they won't do anything. They
won't go to battle. They won't lift a finger unless
what God says and does is strictly holy and right and good. Therefore,
you know that this is our salvation. It's holy, right and good, and
it's certain and sure. All right. So that's why I point
out the fact that it's God here who rises, God who ascends, God
who rides upon the heavens by his name Yah. And all this is
very important that we see the comfort in this and the assurance
of it. God is for us. All right. So these metaphors
here that are given describe things beyond our ability now
to comprehend, but they are of spiritual things and they are
things to come which were fulfilled in the times of the Lord Jesus
Christ when he came into the world, lived, died, and ascended,
rose again and ascended and went back to heaven. Now this first,
so I've covered that, pretty much what's in verse four, about
how the Lord Jesus Christ is God, and he has so many references
to this throughout scripture, but I think I read this hymn
to you, an excerpt from it, and I can't remember if I did, but
let me read this from John Newton. He says this, some take the Lord
Jesus a creature to be, a man or an angel at most. And then
he goes on, he says, it's sure that these have not feelings
like me, nor know themselves wretched and lost. So guilty,
so helpless am I. I durst not confide in his blood,
nor on his protection rely, unless I were sure he is God. Now that's John Newton, who's
saying the same thing that we're trying to, that we're understanding
here from this psalm, is that the one who saved us is God.
And if it weren't God, then we could not have this assurance. What if the one, the angel or
the man or whoever God sent to save us didn't actually accomplish
the work to God's satisfaction and we end up in judgment before
the judge of all and he finds something lacking? But the one
who has done this and declared it to be done is God himself,
the Lord Jesus Christ, justified in the spirit. All right, so
verse five goes on. He says in verse five, he is
a father of the fatherless and a judge of the widows is God
in his holy habitation. Now, fatherless children are
orphans. They don't have a mother or a
father, and therefore they can't provide for themselves. And in
the land of Israel, those who inherited land were only those
who had a father. you had to be one of the tribes
of the children of Israel. And if you were a mother without
a husband, or if you were a child without a father, you would get
no inheritance. So orphans can't provide. They have no inheritance. And
they have no father, obviously, to comfort them. And so they
need someone who is able and willing to come alongside them.
and plead their cause and comfort them and provide for them. And
Jesus said in John 14, 18, I will not leave you comfortless. And it means, in the margin of
my Bible, orphans or bereaved, those who have been left without
a father and mother. I won't leave you as those who
have lost their father as orphans. I will come to you." In Isaiah
66, I think it's verse 5, he says, as a mother comforted her
children, so will I comfort you and you shall be comforted in
Jerusalem. Now that's telling us that the
Lord himself as our father provides all that we need as a father
and a mother to us. And the deepest and most pleasing comfort that we receive
when we're in grief is the comfort of our mother and our father. And so the Lord is our comforter
that way. And widows, widows have no standing
before judges. Remember in Luke chapter, 18, there was a widow who went to
a wicked judge, and she asked the wicked judge to defend her,
to set the matter straight, because she had an adversary, and the
judge was a wicked judge, so he ignored her, he wouldn't pay
any attention to her. Well, she was a widow. She had
no standing. But she kept going back time
after time, unendingly, and the judge finally got so tired of
seeing her, he said, though I have no regard for this woman, because
she's bothering me, I'm going to take care of this matter.
And he did. And Jesus said, now, How much
more will God hear his own elect which cry unto him day and night?
He will hear them speedily. So we see there that the widow
had no standing before the judge and she needed someone to represent
her in court and also to act as a judge on her behalf against
her adversary. And so fatherless, an orphan
can't provide. An orphan has no comfort. An
orphan has no inheritance. A widow has no hearing at the
place of judgment. She has no clout, no credit there. She's just a widow woman. She
has no husband to stand for her, to speak for her. And that's
the way scripture represents these. Now here's what God is
saying. He is the father of the fatherless. He is the judge of the widows.
In other words, He saves those who have no power to save themselves. He stands up for those who have
no one to stand for them in judgment. They're defenseless. They're
powerless. They have no resources. They can't hire someone because
they're poor. And so this is what the Lord
is for his people, a father of the fatherless. I will be a comfort
to you as a mother comforts her children. And you shall be comforted
in Jerusalem, in the city, in the church where the gospel is
preached, where God sends his spirit. and applies his word
to his people." All right, so that's verse 5 here. It says
in Proverbs 22, verse 22, Proverbs 22, verse 22, it says, Rob not
the poor, because he is poor, neither oppress the afflicted
in the gate. For the Lord will plead their
cause and spoil the soul of those that spoiled them. Now, it's
sad when we are inclined to mistreat those or to give short answers
or short attention or whatever it might be to those who have
no position in the world. You know, those who are really
nobodies. And God knows that that's native to the heart of
sinful men. And so he says, don't rob the
poor. And who are the poor in spirit but those who are blessed? He says in Matthew 5, three,
blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of
God. And so the poor here are those who have nothing in themselves.
In fact, they're debtors. and have nothing to pay, and
yet the Lord forgives them because He has chosen them according
to the Apostle James, as he said in James chapter 2. He says,
God has chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith and heirs
of the kingdom of God. So the Lord has chosen his people. In themselves, they have nothing.
In this world, we have nothing. But in the Lord's bank, we have
faith and we have an eternal inheritance. We have all that
Christ has. So we may look to men to be poor,
but we're very rich. I read a quote this last week
from a man who said, if you say, if you tell people that you have
the wealth of a million worlds, and yet you get angry over a
trifle, they're not going to believe you. Because that's the
way God has promised us eternal life and eternal glory, the wealth
of a million worlds, if you could say it that way. And yet, we're
so prone to get upset over something that's so insignificant that
it's not even worth mentioning. We're ashamed, if we think about
it very long, about even talking about it. Any offense in this
world is really nothing compared to the eternal weight of eternal
glory. But that's the way we are by
nature. But here he says, rob not the
poor because he's poor, neither oppress the afflicted in the
gate, for the Lord will plead their cause. I want the Lord
to plead my cause, don't you? I can't plead my own cause. I
can't answer God one thing. Job even said that. I can't answer
him one of a thousand. And so what do I need? I need
someone to plead my cause. That's what a poor man needs.
I need someone who has the clout with the judge, someone
who is respected, someone who has the wisdom, the wisdom of
God, who can go to court and argue God's holiness and my salvation. And that's the Lord Jesus Christ.
All right. And then in Proverbs 23 in verse
10 he says, remove not the old landmark, and enter not into
the fields of the fatherless, for their Redeemer is mighty.
He shall plead their cause with thee. To remove a landmark means
to remove an inheritance, and our inheritance is what God has
given us in Christ. This is what the devil seeks
to do, to take from us what the Lord has given to us in Christ.
And our Redeemer is mighty. He's going to, as Martin Luther,
I think, said, he's going to slay him by his word. He's gonna
knock him down and he won't have anything to answer because the
Lord will rebuke Satan. And so, whether it be religious
men who try to steal from us the promise of eternal life and
eternal glory that we have according to the gospel by faith, or whether
it be the devil who accuses us or slanders us in our conscience
or to men, or through men, or to God. It doesn't matter. If
God is for us, no one can be against us. The Lord Jesus Christ
will plead for us." Okay. So he's a father of the fatherless,
the judge of the widows. Christ pleads for the poor. He pleads for those who have
no spiritual currency. No spiritual money. They don't
have an account of spiritual wealth. They're bankrupt. Spiritually poor in spirit. And so he pleads for them. They
have nothing to pay and yet he has chosen them to be rich in
faith and has given them that faith and has given them a kingdom
that he promised to them and therefore they love him for it.
All right, then let's go on here in verse six. He says, God said
of the solitary and families, he bringeth out those which are
bound with chains, but the rebellious dwell in a dry land. Now, the
solitary, it means they are those who are like outcasts. They're
alone, they're lonely, they're homeless, they have nothing. And yet the Lord says that he
makes them dwell in the family, in families. And what is that
family? What is the family God makes
his people dwell in? It's his own family. It's the
household of God, isn't it? And that household of God is
Christ. We are his house. Remember in
Hebrews chapter three, it says that Moses was faithful in all
his house as a servant, but Christ over his own house. Whose house
are we if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope
firm to the end? So it teaches us that God has
a people. Those people are his children.
They're considered his household. And here in this psalm, in verse
six, God sets the solitary, those who have no claim on a family,
those who are alone and lonely and homeless, he puts them in
a family. He brings out those which are
bound with chains, but the rebellious dwell in a dry land." Now, in
Ephesians chapter 2, it says this in verse 11, Remember that
you, being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who were called
uncircumcision by that which is called the circumcision in
the flesh made by hands, that at that time you were without
Christ. being aliens from the commonwealth
of Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise, having
no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus,
you who were who sometimes were far off, that's a that's a solitary
person, are made nigh by the blood of Christ. You were aliens,
you were separated, but now you're brought near and it's by the
blood of Christ. For he is our peace who hath
paid both one and has broken down the middle wall of partition
between us, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even
the law of commandments containing ordinances, to make in himself
of twain one new man, and so making peace, that he might reconcile
both to God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity
thereby, and he came and preached peace. to you which were far
off, and to them that were nigh, and through him we both have
access by one Spirit unto the Father." That's bringing the
solitary into families. And then same chapter, Ephesians
2, verse 19. Now, therefore, you are no more
strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints
and of the household of God." You see? You see the fulfillment
of this? He sets the solitary in families. He also says he brings out those
which are bound with chains. Now remember when Peter was in
prison and all the brothers and sisters were praying for him
to be released and he couldn't get out. He was inside of prison
and he was with chains inside of the prison. He had a guard
on his left hand and his right hand. He was stuck. There's no
one. He couldn't get out. He couldn't
get out. And that describes us. in our condition, we can't get
out of our captivity. Here he says, God sets the solitary
in families and he brings out those which are bound with chains.
You know what those chains are, don't you? It's the chains of
our guilt. It's the chains of our blindness
in our unbelief. It's the chains of our sin, our
old man, our sin nature. These things are chains. They
hold us and we cannot break them. We can't produce what God requires. We can't make it happen. We can't
free ourselves. The Son has to set us free. And
if He sets us free, then we are free indeed. And now the Spirit
of the Lord is the one who gives us that liberty by showing Christ
to us, as it says in 2 Corinthians 3.17. But here he says, God brings
out those which are bound with chains, but the rebellious dwell
in a dry land. Now the rebellious here, understand,
He's contrasting the righteous and the wicked throughout this
chapter, and as he does in other places, and as this is a gospel
psalm, he's speaking of gospel times, he's also speaking here
of the fact that in the preaching of the gospel, there are those
who hear it, and they immediately hear it with joy, and they lay
hold upon it, and they cleave fast to it. because they find
Christ and his righteousness to be all sufficient, and they
come to God by him and by his blood alone. That's the righteous. But those who are rebellious
have a different response. Their response is, as the Jews,
they stubbornly hold to their own righteousness, they refuse
to submit to the righteousness of God, which is Christ, And
so they are left as the rebellious here, it says here, the rebellious
dwell in a dry land. There's no moisture, there's
no water for those who refuse the only way, truth and life. They've turned away from the
fountain of life, the fountain of living waters, and there's
no life. And so that's describing the unbeliever here, those who
refuse Christ. And when you read that and you
know and you understand from the New Testament the reaction
that these people had, It makes me know that I need a Savior. Doesn't it? Doesn't it to you?
It makes us know that we need grace from God to believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ. We can't do it of ourselves.
And so we know this. I'm going to take you to a New
Testament verse before we close here. We're not getting through
these 17 verses tonight, but let me take you to this verse
as a springboard from this one. We can't trust Christ without
his grace. Now that's a claim that I'm stating
emphatically. And I want to give you a scripture
now that I have not considered before along this line. It's
in 1 John chapter 5. 1 John chapter 5. Not the gospel of John, but the
epistle of John the Apostle. 1 John chapter 5 and verse 1.
Listen to these words. He says, whosoever believeth
that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. All right, just stop
right there. If you take those words, you
can immediately see that we can't believe Christ unless we're born
of God. And if we do believe Christ,
then we have been born of God. Therefore, we can see from this
verse an infallible proof that faith is the gift of God, the
Holy Spirit, given to us by Christ on his exalted throne because
he accomplished our redemption and rose from the dead and ascended
to glory and sat down on the right hand of God in order to
give repentance to his people Israel and the forgiveness of
their sins so that we can believe on him. And the result of our
being born of God is that we believe that Jesus is the Christ. As John Newton said, this is
the test, to believe he is Christ, the God who rules this universe
came in our nature in order to bear our sins and to endure the
penalty his own justice demanded for our sins and then to rise
again from the dead but not by himself with all of his people
with him. This is the almighty power of
God. and to bring us into glory as our, not only our representative,
but as our forerunner, so that we also now rejoice in hope,
knowing that we shall receive what He has been given, since
He was given for us, then God is going to most assuredly give
us all things with Him. And this psalm is intended to
exalt Christ in the eyes of his people so that they would do
what it says in verse three, to exceedingly rejoice. And we need to ask the Lord to
give us that grace so that we would be enabled to believe him
and so exceedingly rejoice. Let's pray. Father, we pray that
as we know from your word and even in our own experience under
your word that we can't do anything without you. We can do nothing
apart from Your grace, and this grace must be given to us freely
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we pray that according
to the grace You've given us in Christ, You would also give
us this faith to believe Him, to exceedingly rejoice in His
work, in His victory, in His exalted place, in glory over
our enemies and for us, according to Your promises and Your word.
Help us to live day by day in hope, and also to live in dependence
upon your almighty power that we have the answer for our sins
in the Lord Jesus Christ in every way. In his name we pray, amen.