20th March 2005

Jonny Elvin

All Bible references in this sermon transcript are taken from the English Standard Version. This can be found at www.biblegateway.com

You can imagine how encouraged I was when turning to the commentaries on this Psalm and reading “almost every commentator begins this psalm by complaining that it is the most difficult of all the psalms to interpret”! (Kaiser, p130). One writes this “It may not improperly be termed the torture of critics and the reproach of commentators”. This gave me great confidence in proceeding! But there are real gems to discover if we’ll only do some careful digging.

You’ll have noticed when we read the psalm that it’s not short. We can’t hope to do the psalm justice in every part, so I’m going to cherry-pick to some extent, hoping that we get the sense of the whole. The big picture is that this is a hymn of praise celebrating God’s power to save. Remember that this is the last in the series on ‘The Messiah in the Psalms’, so we’ll try to find the bits that point most directly to Jesus and his great victory and how we respond to it.

1. The victorious Lord ascends on high – verses 1-18

This psalm is one of great rejoicing in the victory of God. The psalm opens with an echo of the words which accompanied the ark on its journeys as the people of God prepared to go into battle: it’s the triumphant shout that was heard when the priests lifted the Ark of the Covenant up on their shoulders. Remember that the Ark of the Covenant was a powerful sign of God’s presence among his people. As the people set out for battle here we catch a glimpse of their expectant hope. ¹God shall arise, his enemies shall be scattered; and those who hate him shall flee before him!

Any sportsperson will tell you that confidence is a great contributor to victory. As the people of Israel face their enemies they need to be confident that being on the Lord’s side means certain success. As the enemies of the people of God gather round in their armies even the bravest Israelite might have reason to fear. ‘They look so numerous and we look so small!’ But the psalmist shows that the people of Israel have every reason to be confident. The Lord is so strong and his victory is so certain that he makes the enemy look anything but solid and the invisible God anything but absent. ²As smoke is driven away, so you shall drive them away; as wax melts before fire, so the wicked shall perish before God! ³But the righteous shall be glad; they shall exult before God; they shall be jubilant with joy!

It’s the same for us when the world seems so strong and the church seems so weak. But God is among his people accomplishing his purposes.

The people’s confidence is not mere bravado hiding insecurity and fear. It’s well-placed; God will come to his people’s aid, riding on his chariot through the desert. So God’s people need not cower in the corner, but come out singing. ⁴Sing to God, sing praises to his name; lift up a song to him who rides through the deserts; his name is the LORD; exult before him!

V5 gives us a wonderfully touching picture of God, who is judge and conqueror. But he’s more than that. His power is seen in his compassion and care for the vulnerable ones in society who have no one else to look out for their basic rights and needs. The poor were utterly dependent on acts of charity by compassionate individuals. During the time of the monarchy it was the responsibility of the king and leaders of society to ensure justice for them and oversee their welfare. But his psalm shows that God himself will take on that role. The vulnerable will know the Lord as their protector, as the one who will find them a home and a future. ⁵Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation. ⁶God settles the solitary in a home; he leads out the prisoners to prosperity, but the rebellious dwell in a parched land.

Doesn’t this compassion for the marginalised remind you of the Lord Jesus? It was Jesus who sought the lost, lifted up the lowly, gave hope to the downcast, set prisoners free, rekindled the smouldering wick and bound up the bruised reed. Do you remember Jesus’ own comment on his reason for coming in Luke 4.18-19? ¹⁸"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, ¹⁹to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour."

Verses 7-17 reflect on how God delivered them in the past. This acts as the lens through which David views the future. ⁷O God, when you went out before your people, when you marched through the wilderness, Selah ⁸the earth quaked, the heavens poured down rain, before God, the One of Sinai, before God, the God of Israel. ⁹Rain in abundance, O God, you shed abroad; you restored your inheritance as it languished; ¹⁰your flock^[a] found a dwelling in it; in your goodness, O God, you provided for the needy. God granted them victory against the odds and the rain he sent helped them. This is rather like a lower league football team cheering because the rain helped them to victory over Premiership opposition. The rain is what the commentators (footy commentators, not Bible commentators) call ‘a great leveller’! it’s clear that looking back David sees that God will use all means to rescue his people, especially the poor.

When news of the victory comes telling how the enemy kings have fled in panic there’s great rejoicing, verses 11-14. It’s almost too good to be true.

The celebrations are made even greater by the fact that their enemies were so confident of victory – they were like mighty mountains in comparison with ‘mount’ Zion, which is only a small hill. Compared to the nations around her Israel looked like pipsqueaks in the playground of the school bully. But this pipsqueak people had God on their side. Do you remember how in 2 Kings 6 (v8-17) Elisha responded to news that the king of Aram had gathered his chariots and was preparing to capture him? He said that he saw a host of invisible chariots of fire sent by God to protect him. Here in psalm 68.17 we’re reminded that the Lord’s army is not to small to save his people.

It’s very a similar picture when we look at the Lord Jesus. On the cross he looked weak and insignificant in comparison to the world, but he was winning the victory over our great enemies sin and death.

So against the odds God led his people and give their flocks pasture in the desert (vv7-10). Against the odds he gave them the victory (vv11-14), scattering his enemies before him. Against the odds he led David’s troops to conquer Mount Zion (vv.15-17), and made Jerusalem his dwelling place (v18).

God’s saving action leads to praise of God for granting them victory. ¹⁸You ascended on high, leading a host of captives in your train and receiving gifts among men, even among the rebellious, that the LORD God may dwell there.

Picture a parade. Not the floats of the Exmouth festival! But the kind of parade that the armed forces have after a victorious battle. The streets are lined with people 10 deep. All the balconies of the houses are packed with people. When the victorious king enters into the city he comes with a whole victory procession. Those whom they have captured are part of the parade. This was a common occurrence in the ancient Near East. There were two main reasons for doing this:

First was to show the king’s power in victory. The more captives the greater the victory. Secondly, it was a warning against people rebelling against the king. Even rebels aren’t foolish enough to go against a victorious king. Knowing that anything else would be suicide they too pay tribute to him.

Did you notice that the place where the conquering king ascends to is ‘on high’. This means more than just going up to Jerusalem. The term for on high ‘maron’ never means anything less than heaven in the Hebrew. So this king ascends into heaven after conquering. So it must be referring to more than King David. Having ascended this victor receives gifts, which in this case are men and women.

It doesn’t take a great deal of Christian understanding to see how this is fulfilled in Christ. He conquers sin and death on the cross, then rises from the dead and ascends victoriously into heaven. But what about the gifts he receives?

Paul quotes v18 in Ephesians 4.8. What’s striking though is that in the psalm the conquering king receives gifts from his people. But in Ephesians 4 God gives gifts to his people. God gives prophets, apostles, evangelists and pastor-teachers, who have been given by the Father as gifts to the church in order to equip the saints (i.e. Christians) for works of ministry. His ultimate goal in giving these gifts is that we become mature Christians, united in our faith, growing in love, knowing Christ and growing up into him, and able to discern and stand against the false teachings of the world

We are the beneficiaries of Christ’s victory! How should we respond to this?

2. The victorious Lord rightly receives the praises of the nations – verses 19-35

The Lord’s people are filled with praises for their rescuing king – but they’re not looking at David now – they’re looking at God. ¹⁹Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears us up; God is our salvation. Selah ²⁰Our God is a God of salvation, and to GOD, the Lord, belong deliverances from death.

Our conquering king Jesus is worthy of our daily blessing because of his rescue of his people from their enemies. God’s enemies are those who habitually carry on in their sin and rebellion. They will not bow the knee, and they won’t know the Lord’s blessing. That is a great tragedy because God isn’t aloof and uncaring. As well as saving us from the enemy he cares for his people daily, bearing our burdens. He wants to do us good. He loves to show his care. Isn’t that why 1 Peter 5.7 encourages us to cast our anxieties onto Jesus, because he cares for us?

Do you ever use evangelistic pamphlets? Psalms 60-67 form a sort of evangelistic pamphlet to the surrounding nations, encouraging them to submit to God and enjoy the blessings of being under his rule. In this light Psalm 68 praises God for defeating his enemies and describes what their submission will look like if they remain unwilling to bow to his gentle and just rule. The question is how will the nations who worship false gods and engage in cruel practices understand what will happen if they refuse to turn to God? How will they understand that they mustn’t mess about with God?

In order to engage with their culture and use language that they can understand the psalmist uses imagery familiar to them. It’s pretty disturbing imagery. Earlier he used the imagery of God riding on the clouds – a familiar image to those who worshipped the Canaanite god Baal. Not too troublesome so far. In v14 the imagery is of defeated kings being so numerous that they are like snow on the hills. In v18 God drags his defeated enemies into town for public display. He crushes the heads of those who oppose him, v21. And here in v23 the people dance in the blood of their enemies. It’s as though the psalmist is saying ‘these are the things that you do to God’s people. If you want to oppose God, you’d better be aware of what will happen to you. He will pay back an eye for an eye. He will use your own violent practices to show that it’s stupid to oppose him, because when God comes big things happen.’

Admittedly the psalmist is using hyperbole – exaggerated language, but it’s a warning in a way they’ll understand.

But it does raise the question for us ‘is God right to judge and destroy his enemies like this?’ I think a helpful way to look at it is to ask ourselves what the alternatives are.

Could God just turn a blind eye to evil? That would make him amoral. In fact it would be immoral.

Couldn’t he just forgive it all? He can forgive and is eager to forgive, but there must be an acknowledgement of wrongdoing and repentance. If there’s no sense of people having done wrong and no sense of accountability then people will do what they wish.

Tell me, how would you feel if the child abusers and rapists and murderers got away with their evil and there was no justice? Or how do you feel when people con you by stealing using your credit card details? What do you think when you hear of old people robbed and terrified in their own homes and the person responsible shows no remorse, but just smiles as he’s being sentenced? What would you do with those in the Mafia gangs of Napoli who kill a 14 year old because he was in the wrong gang and in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Justice and appropriate punishment are all Biblical responses to evil. Of course in one sense this violence is what we might expect when God comes into a sinful and rebellious world. He must judge and destroy evil – and rejoices in doing so. Just as we rejoice when a Harold Shipman is caught or when a Peter Sutcliffe is put behind bars. What they did was evil and it cannot go unpunished.

When God comes to rule among his people, dwelling in their midst, the people rejoice because his rule is so right. And his enemies will know that they have made a terrible and foolish mistake in not making peace with God. Jesus said it’s better to make peace with this king before it’s too late. Luke 14.31-32³¹Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? ³²And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.

Well the people of Israel are retrieved from near and far by the conquering King. In verses 24-25 the Lord’s anointed King is joined in the procession by singers, musicians and tambourine-playing virgins! (which has hideous overtones of 1970s chiffon, and not a little hint of the Salvation Army!). And what do they sing? ²⁶"Bless God in the great congregation, the LORD, O you who are of Israel's fountain!"

When God arrives in Jerusalem as conquering king all the nations of the world will be quick to bring their tribute to him in his temple, v29 Because of your temple at Jerusalem kings shall bear gifts to you… ³¹Nobles shall come from Egypt; Cush shall hasten to stretch out her hands to God.

The psalmist makes it clear in verses 30-31 that Israel’s neighbours will be brought low. E.g. the bulls and calves probably refers to Israel’s eastern neighbour Bashan. (Apparently Bashan was notable for its cattle-rearing). So the last verses of the psalm are a prayer that Zion will be strengthened and all Messiah’s enemies destroyed (vv28-35).

This cosmic battle is reminiscent of Revelation 14, where the assembled throng praise God. They’re rejoicing because Babylon, which is representative of evil, has fallen. God’s judgement on evil is clear, V9 "If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, ¹⁰he also will drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger.

Now if you’re squeamish about blood then stick your hands over your ears. Because the ankle-deep blood of psalm 68.23 is nothing compared to Revelation 14.19-20 …¹⁹So the angel swung his sickle across the earth and gathered the grape harvest of the earth and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. ²⁰And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the winepress, as high as a horse's bridle, for 1,600 stadia. (That’s about 184 miles!)

Well as the psalm closes we see that this psalm has been painted onto a large canvas. It’s depicts a cosmic conflict where there is only one winner. The whole world is now invited to acknowledge that the God of Israel rules over all and is indeed an awesome God (v35). And we have every reason to rejoice, for in Christ he has brought us through the desert of our sin to the fruitful land of his kingdom, and from the battle fields of evil in the world to his peaceful sanctuary. He’s brought us from a place of self-concern to the community of praise where Christ is the focus. He has brought us to Christ who has given us gifts so that we might serve one another and bring glory to his name. So we have every reason to join in the songs of praise to God, who is alone worthy to be praised and blessed!