Psalm 80, this is to the chief
musician upon Shoshanim, Edith, a Psalm of Asaph. 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. 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. And thou hast brought a vine
out of Egypt. Thou hast cast out the heathen and planted it.
Thou prepared strewn for it, and didst cause it to take deep
root, and it filled the land. And the hills were covered with
the shadow of it, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly
cedars. She sent out her beasts, She sent out her boughs unto
the sea, and her branches unto the river. Why hast thou then
broken down her hedges, so that they all 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 in 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 of God of hosts. Cause thy face to shine, and
we shall be saved. Well, this psalm begins here,
Psalm of Asaph, and it's to the chief musician. And of course,
at one time, Asaph was the chief musician. And so, I'm not sure
if, you know, this is having reference to another chief musician
or whatever, but nonetheless, I guess Brother Al's our chief
musician, but. And this word, Shoshanim Edith,
I'm not sure exactly what that is. I've read a couple things
that various people you know, say about it, and it doesn't
really matter to us. There's a lot of controversy
about a lot of these words, and of course, you know, scholars,
they can argue among themselves, content in the knowledge that
nobody else can contest what they say, because you know, if
I say I'm an expert in something, then who's around to dispute
that? You know, like all these experts
on the coronavirus. I mean you know you've got one
expert says one thing and one expert says another. Now what
that tells me is that either one or both of them are not experts,
wouldn't you say? I mean you can't have two differing
understandings of how these things work and whatever and both of
you be right. And so it is that in many cases
in the scriptures that men often you know, set forth what they
know about something in order to quell anyone else from saying,
well, wait a minute, is that really what that is? But the
Bereans were not like that. But they searched the scriptures
daily to see if these things were so. And so it is, we hope,
that you do the same thing. But anyway, so we won't spend
a lot of time on that particular but it says, give ear, O shepherd
of Israel. Now, isn't that interesting that
the prayer, of course, is addressed to the one who's the shepherd
of Israel. And of course, this Psalm speaks about the flock
that he has led. And of course, we know who the
shepherd is. He's the chief shepherd. He's
the great shepherd. He's the mighty shepherd. He
is a faithful shepherd in all things. He said that he knew
his sheep by name, and he calleth them out. And he said, my sheep
hear my voice. I know them, and they follow
me. And so it is that if you would
know who the sheep of Christ are, then you can see them by
the fact that they follow Him. They don't follow men, they don't
follow the ways of men, but they follow Christ. And that's who
we hope to be following today. I don't want to be found following
a religion, or following a tradition, or following something that somebody
told me was the way to go. I want to be found following
Christ. and he said that we would know his voice. And I do believe
that's true. I believe that God does teach
his children and he leads men. He gives men a measure of faith. Now, that's not the same measure
in all men. Some men have great faith and
some men have weaker faith as according to what Scripture says,
but nonetheless we all have the same faith because there is but
one faith. And that is Jesus Christ. He
is our faith. We're not those that have faith
in Christ as though we're going to operate in faith unto Christ, but rather Christ
is our faith. In other words, our faith is
Christ. We're not trusting in anything
else. Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.
It wasn't his faith. that the Lord was pleased with,
it was the fact that Abraham's faith was God. I mean, what if
Abraham had to believe Baal? Would that have been counted
to him for righteousness? No, because the object of faith
is that thing that's important, and Christ is the object of our
faith, and we have no other, and we will not listen to another
shepherd. Give ear, O shepherd, but this
is addressed to the shepherd, And it is, as all prayers are,
the people of God crying out to the Lord. Now, some people
have said, well, if you believe God predestines all things, then
why would you pray? And my answer to that is twofold. Number one, if the Lord has sent
the Spirit of His Son into our hearts crying, Abba, Father,
it's impossible that we would not pray. because that is what
prayer is. It is the heart of a man crying
out unto the Lord, unto that one whom he has put his spirit
in, that they may cry out unto him. So first of all, it's just
the supernatural language of the people of God that's wrought
in them by the Spirit of God. That's why we pray, because we
can't do anything else. But then on the other hand, If
we didn't believe that God predestines all things, then why would we
pray? I mean, why would you pray to somebody who may or may not
be able to do anything about your situation? I mean, that
would be pretty foolish. I mean, if you knew that a doctor
had never healed anybody's disease and had never prescribed the
right medicine or had never done anybody any good, why would you
go see him? No, you wouldn't. You'd seek
out the one that you've heard about that does good. He's a
good doctor. You go to him. And so it is. That's the reason that we pray,
because we do believe that he is the one who does according
to his will an army of heaven and among the inhabitants of
the earth, that there's none that can stay his hand or say
unto him, what doest thou? So we do cry out unto him, even
as the psalmist does here. O Shepherd of Israel, thou that
leadest Joseph like a flock. Now isn't that interesting that
he picks out Joseph and then he's also going to speak here
in the next verse of Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh. Now all
of those characters there all have a direct connection to Joseph. Because you know that Joseph
and Benjamin were both the only natural children of Rachel. who
was Jacob's first love. She was barren for many years
of their marriage and didn't have any children, but the Lord
gave her Joseph. So Joseph came up, and of course
his brothers despised him, because Joseph was one ordained of God,
to be their leader, their Lord. They didn't like that. And he
is, in that way, a type of Christ. I mean, he is typical of the
way that the men of the world treated Christ. They cast him
out because he told them the truth. He said, The Lord gave
me a dream, and he said, Every one of y'all is going to bow
down before me. And they said, Well, we ain't going to bow down
before you. And so we know what happened.
They sold him into Egypt. Now what they meant for evil,
God meant for good. Just like men took Christ and
by wicked hands slew him, but it was according to the ordained
purpose of Almighty God. And it had to occur that way,
and it must occur, it did occur, and according to the purpose
of God. And so we see this with Joseph. It says, Thou leadest
Joseph like a flock. Now, the natural man says, well,
wait a minute. I mean, you caused Joseph to
be sold into slavery into Egypt. Well, he led him to Egypt. Why did he lead him to Egypt?
He led him to Egypt for the benefit of Jacob and his other sons. That Israel might not be destroyed,
might not die in the famine. The Lord made provision for them.
So the Lord led Joseph into Egypt for the purpose of the redemption
of Israel. Why did He put Israel in Egypt? So that He might bring them into
slavery. Well, that does not sound quite
right, does it? Wait a minute. Lord, this is
your flock. You're going to ordain the one
that you are going to lead the children. You're going to make
provision for the children. You're going to sell him into
slavery. And then, on top of that, you're going to bring the
rest of these people into Egypt where they're going to have a
few years of enjoyment, and then all of a sudden, over time, they're
going to be led into darkness and slavery. And so it is that the Lord led
Joseph like a flock. He led him there for that purpose. Before
Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh stir up thy strength and come
and save us. And so it is that the Lord singles
out Joseph and the children of Rachel because they were special
in his eyes. Now, you know, you can look in
the scripture and you see the choice of God of people. There's hardly anybody that would
not, hasn't read the Bible and would not come away with the
carnal understanding that the nation of Israel are the chosen
people of God. And most people don't really
have a problem with that per se. You know, in the carnal sense,
well, they were a special nation, you know, and all this. And of
course, it persists even today that a lot of people still think
that is the agenda of God, is that He has this chosen nation,
and that it's over there and Benjamin Netanyahu is the head
of it, and this is the Israel of God. Well, we believe the
Scripture teaches something different than that. And while it is true
that the Lord did indeed choose a carnal people, I called them
the nation of Israel, and he said that he would set his love
upon them, but he did that for the purpose of showing us who
the true Israel is. To bring these things to pass,
just like he brought them down into Egypt, that he might show
them, show the deliverance of God, of His people out of darkness,
He brought them into darkness to take them out of darkness.
In the same way, the Lord has made Israel to be an illustration
of the true Israel, the people of God which He loved from the
beginning, before the carnal people. Before He called Abraham
out of Ur of the Chaldees, the Lord had a people whom He loved
in Christ. from before the foundation of
the world. And he called Abraham out of
Earl of the Chaldees in order to demonstrate his grace that
he would one day show in a more broad sense of that people which
he loved in Christ and whom Christ would come as the Redeemer. But
it is interesting that he chooses these, or that these names come
up, because they are closely related. Ephraim and Manasseh
being the sons of Joseph, and Benjamin being his brother, whom
he singled out when he gave his brothers the food. You remember
the story of that, how he gave him a double portion. Turn us again. And he says, stir
up thy strength and come and save us. You've shown your love
to Joseph, to his people, to your people. You led them out
of Egypt. But now here we are in a mess.
Basically what he's saying, turn us again. Stir up thy strength
and come and save us. We're in trouble. Now as long
as there are people of God upon the earth, they are going to
be in trouble and trials in order that they might call upon the
name of the Lord. There is nothing worse than when
men grow fat and happy and they got everything that they need. And I'm not talking specifically
about material things, although the Lord uses the lack of material
things to bring that to pass, but I'm talking about spiritual
dearth. I'm talking about feeling oneself to be dried up as a potsherd,
not seeing the light of God, not having the presence of God
in our lives, but just going through the motions. And as long
as God's people are in the earth, there's going to be a measure
of that. Now we long for the times of refreshing sent from
the Lord wherein He takes away those clouds and causes the sun
to shine upon us. But the truth of the matter is
we can't stand for the sun to shine on us all the time. Just
think about it even in the natural sense. And you know, when it's
rainy and overcast and everything, we're saying, oh man, we'll be
glad when the sun comes back out. Well, the sun comes back
out, and in about, you know, an hour or two, you're saying,
man, I wish there was a cloud up here. Because that's just
the nature of man. That's just the way that we are.
And the Lord sends the clouds, He sends the rain, and He sends
the sunshine, and we can't stand a whole lot of any of it. I mean,
we can't stand it to be raining all the time, and we can't stand
for the sun to be shining all the time. But God, in His wisdom
and in His mercy, leads His people like a flock. And we're speaking
in spiritual things. We can't stand the blessings
of God at all times. Because we would grow, we'd come
to the place where we'd say, well, you know, we're doing pretty
good. I mean, you know, we've grown
fat. We don't really need anything.
Take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. That's just the
nature of men. And that hasn't really changed
in us. But God has, by his mercy, given us a desire to seek after
him. And when he hides his face, which
he does, it causes us to desire his face more. and so that's
what this song is about harness again of god calls our face to
shine and we shall be saved say that is our salvation is when
the lord causes his face to shine on us most people when they think
about being saved i say most people uh... i'd say most people
religious world today They think of being saved as this thing
that happens to somebody. They're going along the road
in their life, and all of a sudden, they get saved. Well, brother,
I got saved. And you know, that's supposed
to be the thing. Say, you got saved. Well, have
you been saved, brother? Yeah, I'm back over there. I
got saved one time. Well, that's not what he's talking
about here. No, you see, God's people need
salvation every day. Now, it's not that we need Christ
to come and die again. He is our salvation. But what
he's speaking about here is the enjoyment of salvation. That
is, being able to touch it and feel it and taste it. That's
what we desire, Lord. We desire Your presence, O that
I might know Him and the power of His resurrection. See, that's
the thing that we desire. that Christ be formed in us.
Turn us again, O God, and cause our face to shine, and we shall
be saved. Now, the man who's taught of
God knows that that is the solution to his problem. Turn us again,
O God. Turn us. You know, you have turned
us. We've seen thy face before. We long to see thy face again
as we have seen thee in the sanctuaries, what the psalmist said. Jeremiah
said, thy mercies are new every morning, lest we should be consumed.
We desire to see thy mercy, O God, because we faint. We're famished,
we're naked, we're poor. Yesterday's manna is no good
for today. I mean, we can think back on
it and think how nice it was, but it won't help us now. It won't help us now. We need
the presence of God in the present time. And that's what he said,
Lord, turn thy face, shine on us, cause our face to shine,
and we shall be saved. See, our salvation's in the Lord.
It's not in what we can do. Lord, give us something to do,
and we'll go out here and we'll do a bunch of stuff for you,
and then we'll be saved. Is that what he said? Lord, give
us some activity, and we'll be saved. Lord, cause thy face to
shine on us, and we'll be saved. See, therein, the presence of
God is the only thing that will do the children of God any benefit
to them. O Lord God of hosts, how long
wilt thou be angry against the prayer of thy people? Now, this
is the manner in which it seems that the Lord is whenever... See, we know in
our mind the Lord has every reason to be angry with us, does He
not? I mean, you know, and I know, when we're walking in a bad fashion
that's not pleasing to the Lord, or we haven't sought Him as well,
we haven't... See, God's people's problem is
not so much in the things that they do in an active sense, it's
in the things that they neglect to do. We have not loved Thee
as well. We've not wept over our sin.
as we should. Now, the moralist says, well,
you better get busy then. But you see, the man who's been
awakened to the sin nature, he says, oh, God calls our face
to shine on us, and we shall be saved, because the only thing
that's gonna get us out of this dump, out of this doldrum, is
gonna be your hand of mercy and kindness. I mean, you can't repent
enough to get out of it. You can't perform enough activity
to get out of it. It's only as the Lord causes
His face to shine. O Lord God of hosts, how long
wilt thou be angry against the prayer of thy people? Now is
the Lord angry with His people? Well, if He was, then we'd be in trouble.
I mean, if He was angry with us. Now the script says He's
angry with the wicked every day. And his anger will one day be
demonstrated in a powerful and a final fashion against them
according to what the scripture says. But he's not appointed
us unto wrath according to what the scripture says. God's not
angry with us. Now it seems that way, and he
would even have us to ponder and consideration as the psalmist
did. Lord, why are you angry with
us? Well, he's not really angry with
us. But He has hid His face from us. And in the sense in which
as a father looks upon his children and he's not pleased with everything
they do, the Lord is not pleased with everything we do in that
limited sense. And so we have the knowledge
that it would only be right if God was angry with us. Would
it not? I mean, if He just cast us away
tomorrow, what could we say? I mean, we couldn't accuse God,
well, Lord, you haven't been fair. Boy, I don't want the Lord
to be fair, because if he was fair, he would cast us away.
You know, if he treated us fairly, but no, he treats us as his children.
He treats us as a father loves his children. And he desires
good for his children. And he does all things that he
does for the benefit of his children. Thou feedest them with the bread
of tears. Now see, we don't like tears,
do we? And tears wouldn't be tears if we weren't sad, would
they? I mean, it'd be something else.
And so the Lord does feed us with tears, but he doesn't do
it just so we'll have tears. He doesn't do it because he likes
to see us cry. He gets no pleasure out of seeing
his children weeping except that he knows that weeping may endure
for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. Because you see,
the Lord designs the tears to bring us to the place of joy.
But you can't come to the place of joy except you come through
the tears, because that's just the way the Lord designed it.
You can't bypass the heartaches of your life and everything just
go great. Wouldn't it be great, we think,
If we got up in the morning and everything that we did, just
everything worked out. Nobody got mad at us. We didn't
get mad at anybody. We just made more money than
we could even think about making. I mean, just everything went
great. We think that would just be wonderful, don't we? I mean,
that's just natural. You think that, I think that.
But that's not really true, because if it did, You'd be satisfied
with yourself. And you'd be going along and
everything would be all right. But everything really wouldn't
be all right. So it is the truth that He feeds His people with
the bread of tears and gives them tears to drink, oft times
in great measure. Thou makest us a strife unto
our neighbors and our enemies laugh among themselves. They
laugh at us. Men make a mockery of the gospel.
Now, you know, they might not do so to your face, but you know,
when they get together, you know, them guys, they are really a
bunch of quackers there. I mean, you know, they actually
believe that God's in control of all things. I mean, that he
sends a virus, and he sends everything to be according to his will. Now, how many people do you think
have died from the coronavirus that didn't die because it was
the will of God? I mean, that's just a fact. Well,
you like that or you don't. It fits in good, you know, of
your view of what God is. But listen there, brethren. He's the God of life and He's
the God of death. We're thankful that He is the
God of life and to His people. And He will lead us like a flock.
That doesn't mean we're not going to die from some disease in this
life. We may. But if he gives us the
disease, it will not be to our destruction, it'll be for our
benefit that we might call upon his name. I remember, I think it was Charles
Spurgeon said, the only thing that was a better blessing to
the children of God than good health was to be sick. Now the men of the world don't
understand that. In fact, there's a lot of people
that claim to be the followers of Christ. They say, well, wait
a minute, that couldn't be true. Especially these health and wealth preachers,
because all they're talking about is you gotta just, you're gonna
be well. Well, the only way that God's people are gonna be well
is when they have the understanding of what he says here in this
verse seven. Turn us again, O God of hosts,
cause our face to shine, and we shall be saved. See, when
they're brought to that place, then they're well. It doesn't
make any difference what happens in these bodies. Though he slain
me, yet will I trust him. Lord, cause your face to shine
on me. I mean, whether by life or by
death, Paul said, doesn't matter to me. He said, for me to live
is Christ, to die is gain. What a glorious place to be.
Lord, cause our face to shine upon us, and we shall be saved. because He alone is the Savior. There's nobody else can save
you in this life or in the one to come. Nobody can save you
but Christ because He is the Savior. And thanks be unto God
that He doesn't save the righteous, but He saves sinners. May He give us an eye and a mind
to understand and know that we are sinners. and that we need
his salvation.