Psalms 25 - 31

Psalms — Steve Gregg

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Psalms 33, 36, 37

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Psalms 25 - 31

PsalmsSteve Gregg

In this lesson, Steve Gregg delves into Psalms 25-31, exploring themes of trust and faith in God, the importance of seeking fellowship with Him above all else, and the beauty of His holiness. Gregg notes the imagery used throughout the psalms, including references to the Temple and the Ark of the Covenant, and how they point towards a longing for God's presence. He emphasizes the need to avoid fainting in the face of adversity and to turn towards God with prayer and trust. Overall, Gregg's teaching encourages listeners to seek a deeper relationship with God and to find comfort in His love and grace.

Transcript

Let's turn to Psalm 25. In our last class, we took up to Psalm 21, and now we leap over 22, 23, and 24, because we covered them on another occasion when we were talking about Messianic Psalms. So now we get to Psalm 25, which if you have learned this song already to sing it, will be a very familiar friend.

It has many verses. It has many verses that are familiar because of the fact that this psalm has been put to music a long time ago, and it's fairly familiar in many churches. It has some really excellent verses which are drawn from it for the song.

Although not all the verses that are in it are as part of the song, but it certainly is full of rich stuff. One thing about this psalm that you can't tell just from the English version is that this is yet another acrostic psalm. That is, it goes through the letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

There are 22 verses. There are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and so each verse begins with a successive letter and goes right through the alphabet. It reads like this, So unto thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul.

O my God, I trust in thee. Let me not be ashamed. Let not mine enemies triumph over me.

Now, one thing we're going to find about the arrangement of this psalm, besides the fact that it's an acrostic, is that at least at the beginning, it tends to be a set of couplets, verses. That is, verses 2 and 3, I believe, belong together. Verses 4 and 5, verses 6 and 7, verses 8 and 9, verses 10 and 11, and possibly verses 12 and 13.

After that, they don't seem to be coupled together in thought like that. But, for instance, you'll notice in verses 2 and 3 the reference to being ashamed in both verses. O my God, I trust in thee.

Let me not be ashamed. Let not mine enemies triumph over me. Yea, let none that wait on thee be ashamed.

Let them be ashamed which transgress without cause. So, being ashamed in the Scripture has to do with being disappointed, trusting in God and Him not coming through, or trusting in anything and it not coming true. We know that the same word is used by Paul in Romans chapter 5, not the same Hebrew word, because he wrote that in Greek, but the same English word is found and is used in the same way in Romans chapter 5, where he says that we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

It says, and hope make us not ashamed. Hope does not make us ashamed. He says, for the love of God is spread abroad.

What he means is that our hope will not be disappointed. Here, where he says, don't let me be ashamed, he's essentially saying, don't let me be disappointed. I'm trusting in you.

O my God, I trust in you. Don't let me be disappointed. Don't let my enemies triumph over me.

In fact, he extends his prayer to include everyone who trusts in him. Let none that wait on you be ashamed. But as far as the enemy is concerned, go ahead and let them be ashamed.

Let them be disappointed. Those who are desiring to bring damage to those who hate and transgress against God's law without a cause, he says, let them be ashamed. Then the next two verses go together, I believe.

Show me thy ways, O Lord. Teach me thy path. Lead me in thy truth and teach me, for thou art the God of my salvation.

On thee do I wait all the day. So, these two verses talk about God leading and guiding and showing the right path. So, he's not only wanting to be defended by God, he's not just unconditionally expecting God to bless him.

But on the basis of his obedience and his desire to follow God, he believes he has the right to ask for God's protection along the way. And also for his guidance on the way. Notice the second time the term waiting on God appears here in verse 3 and in verse 5. Both in verse 3, yea, let none that wait on thee be ashamed.

In verse 5, at the end there, on thee do I wait all the day. This expression waiting on God is common in the Psalms and elsewhere in the Scriptures, in the prophets and elsewhere. And it has to do with, well it has a variety of meaning, but basically it has to do with being patient.

Wait patiently for him, we're told, elsewhere. And in Psalm 27, in verse 14, it says, wait on the Lord, be of good courage and he shall strengthen thine heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord.

Waiting on the Lord means, of course, just to be trusting in him, resting. Resting in the fact that he will take care of things in his time and you are at ease waiting for him. Taking courage, just waiting for him to act.

There's very much in the Scripture about waiting on God. In fact, who was it, Andrew Murray wrote a book called Waiting on God in which he had 30 devotional writings, each of them based on a different verse of Scripture that had something to do with waiting on God. And he brought up just about every angle of waiting on God in that book that could be imagined.

But there's very much in the Isaiah and in the Psalms and other places like that, exhort us to wait on God, which shows that we need to have patience. Patience is a fruit of the Spirit. And we can see that if we run ahead of God, or if we try to effect a deliverance before God has done so, then we can only foul things up.

We need to be waiting on God's release. You think, for instance, of how Jesus from childhood knew that he was the Messiah, that he was come to save the world. Now, with that knowledge, do you think it would be easy for him to just sit around in a carpenter shop? I mean, not sit around, he was working, but to spend 30 years of his life working as a carpenter.

When he knew that his destiny was to preach the Gospel and to die for the sins of the world and to do all those things. It seems to me like he'd be very inclined to be impatient and say, well, this carpenter business is meaningless compared to what I'm really called to do. What sense is there in this? And yet he had to wait for God to call him to go out.

The Apostle Paul also was called the moment he was converted to be a witness to the Gentiles. But he wasn't really separated for that and sent out for it until Acts chapter 13, which was probably at least 14 years after his conversion. And when the Holy Spirit said, separate unto me Paul and Barnabas for the ministry that I've called them unto.

So, there's a need to wait on God for release to the ministry and for the realization of the dreams and visions that God has given us. And also in terms of waiting for just answers to prayer and deliverance from our enemies and the removal of our problems. Making it through the trials, you just have to wait, wait them out sometimes because God will deliver and get us out of them.

But there's a need for us to have patience. And so, there's twice already we've encountered references to waiting on God and we will find more of them. Now, verse 6 and 7 go together.

Remember, O Lord, thy tender mercies and thy loving kindnesses, for they have ever been of old. Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions. According to thy mercy, remember thou me for thy goodness' sake, O Lord.

These verses are linked by the common word remember. He says remember this, but don't remember this. Remember your mercies, remember your loving kindness, remember how you have set a precedent of showing mercy to sinners like myself.

But please don't remember, when you remember me, don't remember the sins of my youth. Now, he's very aware that if the sins of his youth were taken into account, he'd be in big trouble and he's asking God to forget them. Well, it's not all that easy.

I mean, God can forget sins, you know. He says that in Jeremiah chapter 31, and I think it's verse 33, where he says, I will remember their sins and iniquities no more. But that would be under the terms of the new covenant, because that's two verses after the statement where he says, I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah in those days, sayeth the Lord.

He goes on to say he'll write his law in their hearts and so forth, which is fulfilled in Christ. And he says at that point, and I will remember their iniquities and sins no more. So God has found a way that he can remember not the sins of our youth.

Now, going on, verses 8 and 9, Good and upright is the Lord, therefore will he teach sinners in the way. The meek will he guide in judgment, and the meek will he teach his way. So these two verses have to do with God teaching people his way.

He teaches sinners and he teaches the meek. Usually that can be the same group. If people don't view themselves as sinners, they usually see themselves as self-righteous and they tend to be arrogant and not the kind of people who cry out to God for help, because they don't see their own sin.

Jesus said, I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repent. Those who thought themselves righteous would never come to him, just like those who don't know they're sick don't go to a physician. And so those who meekly and humbly acknowledge their sin, those are the ones that God will teach his ways to.

So you can see so far the verses have been coupled by some thought. Verses 2 and 3 by the thought of being ashamed or being disappointed. Verses 4 and 5 by the thought of God teaching his path.

And then verses 6 and 7 by the word remember. Don't remember the sins of my youth, but remember your mercies and your loving kindness. And verses 8 and 9 by the concept of God teaching his ways and teaching his path to those who meekly submit themselves to him.

Then it says in verses 10 and 11, All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth, under such as keep his covenant and his testimonies. For thy name's sake, O Lord, pardon mine iniquity, for it is great. The reference to mercy and truth in verse 10 is matched with the reference to pardon mine iniquity.

In other words, show mercy and truth to me because of my iniquities. Now, verses 12 and 13, What man is he that feareth the Lord? Him shall he teach in the way that he shall choose. His soul shall dwell at ease, and his seed shall inherit the earth.

Now, at this point we don't really have as clear a connection between the two verses as we have in the first half of the psalm. You see that verse 11 marks the halfway point. And this is, as I said, an acrostic psalm.

The first half seems to be in couplets of verses, whereas the latter half doesn't. It says, The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him, and he will show them his covenant. Now, notice some of the recurring themes here.

We've got the waiting on God. We've got the fear of the Lord mentioned in verse 12 and verse 14. We've got the reference to the covenant in verses 10 and 14.

These are some of the thoughts that are on the psalmist's mind. He keeps the covenant of God. God made certain covenants, promises to his people.

Those who fear the Lord and those who wait on God will experience the benefits of that covenant. Mine eyes are ever toward the Lord, for he shall pluck my feet out of the net. Turn thee unto me and have mercy upon me, for I am desolate and afflicted.

The troubles of my heart are enlarged. O, bring thou me out of my distresses. Look upon mine affliction and my pain, and forgive all my sins.

Consider mine enemies, for they are many, and they hate me with cruel hatred. O, keep my soul and deliver me. Let me not be ashamed, for I put my trust in thee.

Let integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait on thee. There he is waiting on God again. And then, in the last verse, he turns from his own personal problems.

He's speaking in the first person, singular, all this time. Save me, deliver me, help me. Now he turns this opportunity to pray, not only for himself, but all of the nation as well.

And since this is David praying, according to the title of the psalm, he, as king, serves as intercessor for the nation. He prays for himself first, and then, as the king, he prays for the nation as well, to enjoy the same fortunes that he's asking God to bestow upon him. Redeem Israel, O God, out of all his troubles.

His, being a singular word, is just showing that the nation Israel is seen as one man. Remember, the nation Israel was named after the man Israel, who is now long dead, of course, and so there was no way he was talking about the man. He was talking about the nation Israel.

But God would frequently speak of Israel as an individual, even as he speaks of the church as one new man, because he sees this as one. He sees this as one person. He sees this as one person, unified.

Now, chapters 26, 27, and 28, the three chapters have one thing that links them in common. And that is adoration for the house of the Lord. Now, these are psalms of David.

He wrote all three of them. And David lived at a time when God didn't have a temple. There was no temple yet built.

Remember, David wanted to build the temple, but God wouldn't permit him to. And later, after David's death, Solomon built the temple. So, yet, he does speak of the house of the Lord, and it's clear he's not talking about heaven or something ethereal like that.

He's talking about the habitation of God, the house where God's honor dwelleth, in verse 8 of this psalm. In chapter 27, verse 4, One thing have I desired of the Lord, that I will seek after. I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire at his temple.

And in chapter 28, verse 2, Hear the voice of my supplications, when I cry unto thee, when I lift up my hands toward thy holy oracle. Oracle, in this case, is a reference to the Holy of Holies in the temple. In the Old Testament, especially in the book of Exodus, the word oracle was used as a synonym for the Holy of Holies.

So, though David didn't live at a time when the temple was built, yet he did live, of course, while the tabernacle was still standing, and the Ark of the Covenant being there and all, represented God's presence. So, to him, the house of the Lord was the tabernacle, later to be replaced by Solomon in the temple. And so, these psalms express a common adoration for the temple.

They don't all speak about it exactly the same. In Psalm 26, it would seem that he is calling out for God to vindicate him, to search his heart, to qualify him, basically, to make his petition in the temple, or in the tabernacle. In Psalm 27, we find him saying that his whole craving is to spend his whole life in the presence of God, in his tabernacle, in his temple.

And in Psalm 28, we find him actually offering a petition at the Holy of Holies, lifting his hands up toward God in worship at the Holy of Holies, or the Oracle. Now, it may be that at this time, David was talking about the tent which he'd thrown up in Jerusalem for the Ark of the Covenant, and that he might have been calling that the Oracle, too, because that was where the Ark was present. We know that David was more fascinated with the Ark than with the tabernacle itself.

The tabernacle was in Nob, in the days of David, not in Jerusalem. And the tabernacle was never brought to Jerusalem, but the Ark was, because David wanted it close by. And he brought the Ark to Jerusalem, and he set up a temporary booth or tent to put it in.

And that may be what he's referring to in every case here about the temple, too. He might not be referring to the actual tabernacle that was made in the days of Moses, which was standing at Nob in his day. But he might have been referring to this other tabernacle that he had pitched to put the Ark in, in Jerusalem, prior to the time that the temple was built.

At any rate, we see that he adores the temple. And the reason he adores it is not because he's just religious and has a fascination for relics and for just religious paraphernalia, but because this is where God dwells. He wants to dwell in the temple so he can behold the beauty of the Lord and to make his requests there before God, and to lift up his hands there and worship, according to the 28th Psalm there.

So we can see that in the Old Testament times, God's presence was specifically associated with the temple, and more specifically with the Ark, which again leans me in the direction of thinking he was more concerned in these psalms about the Ark and its probable location at this time in Jerusalem. So it could be at the home of Obed-Edom at this time, but probably he's talking about the tent that he pitched in Jerusalem, housing the Ark. And that in the Old Testament times, God's presence was clearly considered to be associated with the Ark of the Covenant.

Now that doesn't mean that they didn't view God as being transcendent. They did. They knew that God was not in just one place at one time.

Solomon, when he built the temple, said, Who am I to build a temple unto you? The heaven and the heaven of heavens can't contain you. So what houses can I build unto you? Indicating, of course, that he realized that the temple was not really where God was confined. Nonetheless, because of the particular economy under the Old Covenant, God could only really be approached, it was felt, at the temple, at the Ark.

That's where God had set to really meet with man. That was, you know, if you wanted to meet with God, you had to go there. Now you could pray to God elsewhere and he would hear, but as far as really worshipping and offering your sacrifices to God, the only place you could do that was the temple or wherever the Ark was.

So that was considered to be especially where God's presence was manifest and was available for man to approach. And we know, of course, that the New Testament tells us in John 1.14 about Jesus, that the Word was made flesh and tabernacled, as the Greek reads, among us. And that Jesus was, in fact, the place where God located himself geographically in the first century, where Jesus came to the earth, God's Spirit was upon him.

And those who wanted to approach God, though God was transcendent and filled his whole universe, yet those who wanted to approach God must come through Jesus, because he is the one place that corresponds to the tabernacle. The Ark was a type of Christ, and Jesus in a physical body was tabernacling with us. That is, the glory of the Lord, such as had filled the temple and the tabernacle in the Old Testament times, was manifest in the body of Jesus.

Because John says, the Word was made flesh and tabernacled with us, and we beheld his glory. So, what the house of God was to David, Jesus, and subsequently his body, the church, give similar delight to the worshippers today. And if people wish to contact God, they contact him through his people, through the church, usually.

It's not saying that God can't be prayed to, but those who really want to serve God, really want to offer their sacrifices to God, and really want to enter into God's program, must do so through the church. The same as David and those of his that had to do so through the tabernacle. Well, let's read these three Psalms.

Some points will require a comment, some will not. Judge me, O Lord, for I have walked in mine integrity. This resembles, by the way, Psalm 17, in that he's protesting his innocence so much, and actually calling on God to pass sentence on him.

Because he knew that God's sentence would be posited. Judge me, O Lord, for I have walked in mine integrity. I have trusted also in the Lord, therefore I shall not slide.

Examine me, O Lord, and prove me. Try my reins and my heart. Again, the reins representing the kidneys, or the motives.

For thy loving kindness is before mine eyes, and I have walked in thy truth. I have not sat with vain persons, neither will I go in with dissemblers, or rioters. I have hated the congregation of evil doers, and I will not sit with the wicked.

I will wash mine hands in innocency, so will I compass thine altar, O Lord. This is probably a reference, at least to the formalities of the tabernacle. Whether David actually literally did this or not is open to question.

Because actually the priests alone were supposed to do this. As a priest would offer a sacrifice on the brazen altar outside the tabernacle, he would next go to the labor of cleansing and wash his hands. Having shed the blood at the brazen altar, he would then go and cleanse his hands, and then he would go into the tabernacle itself, where he would ultimately offer incense upon the golden altar in the tabernacle.

And where he's making reference here, I will wash my hands in innocency, so will I compass thine altar. Only after I've washed my hands will I approach your altar. So David probably literally didn't go through these motions in the tabernacle, which was only for priests to do.

He was not a Levite, and the law said that no one who was not a Levite could come near those things. Yet spiritually he saw himself doing that. He saw himself offering himself as a burnt sacrifice on the brazen altar, washing himself by obedience to the Lord, and coming before God to offer the sacrifice of praise at the golden altar.

Nor my life with bloody men, in whose hands is mischief, and their right hand is full of bribes. But as for me, I will walk in mine integrity. Redeem me, and be merciful unto me.

My foot standeth in an even place. In the congregations will I bless the Lord. So he spends the first part talking about how he's confident, if God would pass sentence, that he'd come out all right, because he's walked in his integrity.

His foot, he says at the end, is standing in an even place. That is, he's not behaving crookedly. It's sort of a reference to actually standing in a secure and righteous position.

But in verses 4 through 5, he talks about how he had hated evil people. Therefore, he prays in verses 9 and following, Don't gather my soul with those. I don't love those people.

I hate those people. What I love, he says in verse 8, is your house. I have loved the habitation of your house, and the place where your honor dwells.

He just loves to be in that place where God is honored. You know, it's really true. When you love the Lord, you really want to be where he is being honored.

You want to be among people who honor him. And in his church, he's supposed to be honored, of course. Now, sadly, you can go to some places that are called churches and not see God being honored at all.

Instead, maybe men are being honored, and applauded, and seated. Or maybe there's some tradition that's being honored rather than God being honored. There's many things that are sadly honored in churches today rather than God.

But one thing that we love, I think most of us could testify, is when we go into the congregation, and God is really being honored there. And that's the place where we really want to dwell. We don't want to be gathered with the wicked people.

We don't want to be lumped together with them. There's no pleasure in the fellowship with such people as that. What fellowship has light with darkness? What agreement has the temple of God with Delio? But we do delight to be in the temple of God, in the habitation of his house, which we are told today is the body of Christ.

We are his habitation. We are the stones built into a holy temple, a holy habitation in the Lord. So, I love to be among Christians who are honoring God in a place where God's name and his honor dwells.

Going on to chapter 27, we see the same thought, especially in verse 4, but we have much more of an outburst of joy and so forth at the beginning, or at least great confidence and faith, where he says, The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? Now, David again is writing.

He has had many people that he might have feared. He certainly had to run from some in his past. But he's saying here, God is my salvation, which means deliverance or safety.

And he's my light. Therefore, he doesn't have to be afraid in the darkness. He doesn't have to be afraid of danger.

And therefore, he says, Who shall make me fear, really? The Lord is the strength of my life. God is my strength. If God's muscle is on my side, then there's really hardly anything I could imagine being afraid of.

Paul expressed similar words in the 8th chapter of Romans, where he said, If God be for us, who can be against us? If God is my strength, then of whom can I be afraid? He's on my side. Then it would seem that anyone who's against me would be rather insignificant by comparison. Then he explains.

He testifies how God has given him safety in the past. He says, When the wicked, even mine enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell. Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear.

Though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident. That is, my confidence will not be shaken even though an army, a host, comes against me. And if war breaks forth against me, even in that situation, I'm still going to maintain my confidence.

It reminds me of another psalm of David, Psalm 3, which we already read on another occasion. Psalm 3, verse 6 says, I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people that have set themselves against me round about. On that occasion, we're told by the psalm title, in Psalm 3, that this was when he fled from Absalom, his son.

But he was in danger, but he said, I won't be afraid. Even if ten thousand people after me, because the Lord takes care of me, really. And here he says the same thing.

If a host, an army, should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear. Though war should rise up against me, in this will I be confident. We should be able to make this same profession in a day where a lot of people of our generation are just running scared.

They're scared about the prospects. If I was not a Christian, I suppose I'd either be scared or drunk myself. Because you either have to be scared or drunk, or otherwise insane, if you're in the world.

Because there's much to legitimately be afraid of. If you don't have salvation, if you don't trust in God for all your safety, then the world's situation is so bad that you would have much to fear. And war would be one of the greatest things you'd fear, especially the kind of war that we'd be likely to have in our time.

Yet we can say, because we do trust in the Lord, and He is our strength, He's our light, He's our salvation, therefore, even if war should rise up against us, we'd still have the same confidence we have now. I hope that's true of you. He said, there's only one thing I've really sought after.

Verse 4, one thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple. You really only have to seek after one thing. Jesus said that in Matthew 6.33. He said, seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all the other things, all these things, meaning food and clothing and necessities, will be added unto you.

It's not necessary to seek after many things. You know, there's one other place where a fellow, a writer in Scripture named Agur, in Proverbs 30, said that he was seeking something from the Lord. In Proverbs 30, in verse 7, he says, two things have I required of thee, deny me not them before I die.

Remove far from me vanity and lies. Give me neither poverty nor riches, but feed me with the food that's convenient for me, lest I be full and deny thee, and say, who is the Lord? Or be poor and steal, and take the name of my God in vain. And note the difference between David and this man.

This man said, there's two things I require. David said, there's one thing I have desired. There's only one thing David wanted, and this man required two, and both things this guy wanted had to do with his circumstances.

He wanted to, first of all, have all liars removed from his company. He wanted to live his life free from the attack of slanderers and from just being around people who couldn't be trusted. That's not a very small request.

The other thing was, he wanted to be middle class. He didn't want to be too rich, because he figured that damaged his relationship with the Lord, because he'd start to trust his riches. But he didn't want to be poor either, because then he figured he wasn't morally strong enough to avoid stealing.

This man was a moral weakling, and he did not seek first the kingdom of God. He said there's two things he wanted, and neither of them had anything to do, really, with fellowship with God. They had to do with making his life more convenient and removing temptation from him.

But David said, there's only one thing I've desired. Now, we know from some other places, for instance, in Psalm 34, that those who seek the Lord need seek nothing more. It says in Psalm 34, verse 10, The young lions do lack and suffer hunger, but they that seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing.

Psalm 34, verse 10. Those who seek the Lord will not lack any good thing. So, all you have to do is seek the Lord.

Now, seek the Lord means, of course, seek to be constantly in fellowship with Him, which requires a certain amount of obedience and faith. In fact, it means full obedience and faith. Now, a person could say, well, I'm not going to work a job then, because I'm just going to seek the Lord.

Well, what does seek the Lord mean? I don't know. I guess it means I have to pray and fast a lot. Well, maybe so.

I suppose there's some of that in seeking the Lord, too. Maybe a lot of it. But seeking the Lord means seeking to remain in unbroken fellowship with Him, which requires obedience.

Now, it may be that God will lead one to go out and get a job, or go out and get an education, or go out and start a family, or go out and do one thing or another that doesn't seem in itself like a religious activity or a spiritual activity. But if that's what God leads a person to do, then His seeking of the Lord would include doing that. He's seeking to be obedient in all things so that his fellowship with the Lord might not be broken.

So, Jesus said, if you seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, all other things will be added to you. In Psalm 3410 it says, Those who seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing. Sometimes it's because when you seek the Lord, He calls you away from your job, and He'll provide supernaturally for you, and you won't lack any good thing.

Otherwise, it may be that He calls you even to work at a job, and you're doing it not because you're seeking money, but because you're seeking the Lord, and you know He wants you there. But in the course of doing that, He supplies every good thing, too. You get a paycheck, and you have all you need.

So, one way or another, God will provide for us. Sometimes it'll be miraculously when His call is away from the opportunity to support ourselves. And other times it'll be in very normal ways when His call takes us into the marketplace and takes us into the regular places of business so that we can be a witness for Him there.

At any rate, both parties could be seen as seeking the Lord if they're really doing what they're doing because they're desiring to be close to the Lord as David was. He says, I'm only going to seek one thing. I'm going to seek to have unbroken communion with God.

That's essentially what He says. I want to just dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. I want to meditate in His temple.

I want to behold the beauty of the Lord. He just wants to have an unbroken vision and an unbroken fellowship with God. Verse 5, For in the time of trouble, He shall hide me in His pavilion.

That is, if I seek God, He'll take care of the rest. If trouble arises, because I'm seeking the Lord, I'll be safe. He'll take care of me.

In the secret of His tabernacle, shall He hide me? He shall set me upon a rock. With reference to God hiding me in the secret of His tabernacle, there's a probable reference for the same thing in Psalm 91, which is all about security. And the Psalm 91 begins, He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

Dwelling in the secret place of the Most High. Then going on through the rest of Psalm 91, it talks about the security of such a person. Well, that's what David's talking about.

Here in Psalm 27 also. He says, in the secret of His tabernacle, shall He hide me? He shall set me upon a rock. And now shall mine head be lifted up above mine enemies round about me.

Therefore will I offer in His tabernacle sacrifices of joy. I will sing. Yea, I will sing praises unto the Lord.

Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice. Have mercy also upon me. And answer me.

When Thou saidst, seek ye my face, my heart said unto Thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek. Hide not Thy face far from me. Put not Thy servant away in anger.

Thou hast been my help. Leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation. Now, he says here, in verse 8, his heart heard God calling.

And what he heard God saying was, seek my face, seek my face. I would venture to guess that every one of you at some time or another has sort of heard that voice in your heart saying, seek my face. God's speaking to you.

Seek me, seek me, seek me. And there's a certain amount of frustration that that can cause at times if we don't know what it means to seek Him. Where do I seek Him? Well, of course, we seek Him, as I said earlier, in seeking to be obedient to Him in all things.

Seek His favor. Seek His favorable countenance upon us by believing Him and trusting Him and doing the things we know to please Him. It also means, of course, in prayer and waiting on Him.

All these things are part of seeking the Lord. In other words, it makes your whole life as a pursuit after God rather than a pursuit after something else. That everything you do, you're doing because you're pursuing God.

You want to seek after Him. But, a lot of times, we don't know where to find Him. And that's why He says, when you said, seek my face, my heart responded.

My heart said, thy face, Lord, will I seek. Okay, I'll be obedient. I will do what you say.

But, He says, don't hide your face far from me. Because, I can seek and seek and seek, but I won't find Him unless you disclose yourself. Remember, one of Job's counselors said, can any man by searching find out God? Searching in the flesh is not going to cause someone to find God.

He's invisible. How do you search for an invisible person? The only way you can find Him is if He reveals Himself. Therefore, I say, Lord, I know you've told me to seek your face.

I am agreeing to do so. However, you've got to do something about this too, because I can't find your face if you hide it from me. Don't hide your face from me.

In other words, reveal yourself to me. Now, verse 10 says, when my mother and my father forsake me, then the Lord will take me up. This is a good verse for anyone whose relations with their parents have not been good and who have been rejected, experienced rejection from parents.

We need to learn to find our sense of acceptance and our sense of security in God's acceptance. The Bible says that we, in Ephesians chapter 1, that God has caused us to be accepted in the Beloved, that is in Christ. We are accepted in Him.

We're not accepted because of our righteous deeds. We're not accepted because of our parentage. We're not accepted because of our successes.

We are accepted only because we're in Christ. Because He is accepted, we are accepted in Him. And as long as we are in Him, God accepts us fully.

Now, men may not accept you. And if you don't learn to find your security in God, then you will very often be dashed to despondency and rejection and so forth. But you need to find your self-worth and your sense of identity and your sense of security in the fact that God accepts you.

And that's what David is here saying. When my father and my mother forsake me. Now, we don't know of any time when that happened, when David's parents actually forsook him.

But he might be speaking hypothetically here. As though to say, if my father and mother forsake me. Even if they did.

Now, those are the people who ought to be the most committed to me. Say nothing of others. But if parents are not committed to you, that's the epitome of rejection really.

But he says, even at a time like that, he says, the Lord will take me up. So that I needn't be cast down with rejection. Because the Lord has accepted me.

He's found me outcast and brought me into His banqueting table. Now, we have a prayer. Teach me thy way, O Lord, and lead me in a plain path because of mine enemies.

Deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies, for false witnesses are risen up against me and such as breathe out cruelty. I had fainted, or in other words, I would have fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart.

Wait, I say, on the Lord. Now, fainting has to do with running out of strength. Of course, everyone knows what it means to faint.

Though most of us probably have never fainted. But we've all seen in the cartoons and in the movies women faint when they see a mouse or something like that. Of course, it means they totally lose all strength and they just collapse.

And he says, I would have fainted. And he's not talking about physically fainted in that sense so much as just giving up hope. Just totally lost heart.

Lost all courage. If he hadn't had a hope that sustained him. He believed that he would see the Lord.

He believed he'd see at least the goodness of the Lord, meaning God's providence and God's deliverance in the land of the living as opposed to the land of the dead. He knew, of course, that if he died that he'd someday see the goodness of God in resurrection. But he believed that even in this life he would see God come through for him.

And it was that belief that sustained him and kept him from fainting. The Bible says, Jesus said that men ought always to pray and not faint. That is, not give up.

Paul said we should not be weary in well-doing for we shall reap in due time if we do not faint. That's in Galatians chapter 6. It says that we must not be weary in well-doing for in due time we shall reap if we don't faint. So we need to not faint.

There are times, I'll tell you something, there have been times even not so long ago that I was feeling a little faint about some things. You know, when you've got a lot of vision and everything and it looks like things are going really well and you're starting to get your hopes up that the ministry is really going to flourish. And then a crisis happens and you really have some serious letdowns.

Once you've been through a lot of those, and I've been through some, probably not as many as a lot of people have, but I've been through quite enough where my hopes have been really raised that this is really the time where we're going to see the ministry come to fruition. And then it's dashed down by some kind of a discouraging circumstance. There's a temptation to lose hope.

The Bible says hope deferred makes the heart sick, which means that when you have your hopes in something, if it's deferred or if it's put off, you can start to get bitter about it. You can start to get your spirit affected by it. And we need to just make a decision that when we are tempted to give up hope, we're tempted to faint, we're tempted to lose courage, that we will still believe to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

If I hadn't believed that, he said, I would have fainted. Paul in Galatians 6, 9 says, Let us not be weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. So we need to beware of fainting.

David said the secret to not fainting is to hope in the Lord, believe that you'll see the goodness of the Lord again in the land of the living. His final statement, Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart. Again, it has to do with others.

He says, I would have fainted. Now, I'm telling you how not to faint. You wait on God, you take courage in God, be of good courage, and you'll find He'll strengthen your heart, so you won't faint.

And He'll strengthen your faith. Now, the reference to God strengthening your heart when you're waiting on the Lord, for many of you will call to mind maybe even a more familiar verse from Isaiah 40, which is not unfamiliar at all. Isaiah 40, in verse 31, which says, But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.

They shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk, and guess what? Not faint. So, David agrees with Isaiah on this point that the secret to not fainting is to wait on the Lord, and He will strengthen. David says, He will strengthen your heart.

Isaiah says, in Isaiah 40, verse 31, You wait on the Lord, and you will renew your strength. Now, the word renew there, actually, in the Hebrew, means to change or to exchange your strength. Meaning, one of two things.

It even means that you'll exchange your little strength for God's great strength. You'll be living an exchanged life. You'll give up your life with its weaknesses and take His life with its power and its strength, which is possibly what it's meant, because the word renew actually means to change.

Or, it may be a reference to the eagle itself. In another place in the Psalms, Psalm 103, it says that the Lord renews your youth as the eagle, so that the youth is renewed like the eagle. It was believed in ancient times that eagles, every time they molted and lost their old feathers and got a new coat, that they were young again.

They could speak with reference to that particular belief, because if the readers believed that, they could use it as an illustration, saying, just like you think of the eagle renewing its strength, renewing its youth every time it molts, so if you wait on the Lord, your strength will be exchanged, your old worn out, you'll get your second wind, really, basically. You know how you're running real hard and you say, man, I'm just really going to collapse, but then you just press on, you keep going, and then you get second wind, you feel like you haven't even been running, and you just feel fresh and new at it. Everyone's had that experience, I imagine.

That's probably what it's, I believe that's what it's saying. It says you'll renew your strength. You'll come into a second wind, like an eagle getting rid of its old feathers and coming into its youth again.

Your youth is renewed like the eagles, or as Isaiah says, they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength, that they shall mount up with wings as eagles. They'll run and not be weary and not be faint. So, David tells us here, Isaiah tells us later, the same thing.

You're running out of faith? I should say, are you, if you're having a hard time believing to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living, are you about to faint? Well then, wait on the Lord. Wait patiently on Him. Encourage yourself, in other words.

Just encourage yourself in the Lord. Just say, well, the Lord is on the throne. The Lord's going to do it.

He's going to take care of things. It's Him and not me that's going to be the hope here and He's going to save the day. Therefore, I will wait on Him.

And as I wait before Him, I bring my spirit into an attitude of repose rather than agitation. Instead of being frustrated and flustered and worried and wondering what's going to happen, just resting in the Lord, just reclining, spiritually speaking, on Him. Just knowing that He is going to take care of things in His own way, whether I worry about it or not.

Then I come into the state of waiting on the Lord, resting in the Lord. And then new strength comes. And fainting becomes an impossibility.

Alright. Psalm 28, the third of the three psalms in a row that talk about the house of the Lord being the delight of the psalmist. Unto thee will I cry, O Lord, my rock.

Be not silent unto me, lest, if thou be silent unto me, I become like them that go down into the pit. In other words, I'll die. I'll be like those who have died if you're silent unto me.

I need to hear from you. If you don't talk to me, I'll die. Or else I'll at least be like a dead man.

I'll be spiritually dead, not hearing from you. I wonder sometimes how so many churches seem to go on without ever hearing from God. I guess they don't really.

They're sort of like those who go down into the pit too in some ways. I've been in churches and I'm always concerned that we might someday become like that if we're not always listening to the Lord. Because if God doesn't speak, then there's no continuing life of the organism because God's voice is what gives us life.

He says, Hear the voice of my supplications when I cry unto thee, when I lift up my hands toward thy holy oracle, or toward the Holy of Holies, or possibly toward the Ark of the Covenant wherever it was housed at this time. He says, When I hold up my hands toward thy holy oracle. This probably refers to him being right outside the tent door where the Ark of the Covenant is, though it may refer to even if he's somewhere outside Jerusalem.

If he turns and holds his hands up in prayer toward in the direction where God's presence has been manifest, that is toward Jerusalem where the Ark is, then he expects to be heard. We know this at least that Daniel, when he was taken away into Babylon and into Persia, would still pray facing Jerusalem every day, several times a day. He would face Jerusalem because that's where he considered he knew God lived in heaven and not in Jerusalem, of course, but that's where God had manifested his presence.

Therefore, when he prayed, he prayed in that direction. Of course, we don't pray that direction anymore because we're in the new Jerusalem and there's no particular geographical boundaries to this Jerusalem. Verse 3, Draw me not away with the wicked and with the workers of iniquity which speak peace to their neighbors, but mischief is in their hearts.

They talk as though they're friends, but in their hearts they're enemies and seeking to do damage. They're just flattering. Give them according to their deeds and according to the wickedness of their endeavors.

Give them after the work of their hands. Render to them their dessert. Because they regard not the works of the Lord nor the operation of his hands, he shall destroy them and not build them up.

This is an interesting verse. Those who do not regard the works of the Lord nor the operation of his hands shall ultimately be destroyed and not built up. When we consider that it is the desire, our desire, and the goal of the church to be built up because the body precisely edified or built up, we can see how needful it is that the church regard the work of the Lord and the operation of his hands.

Because if they don't regard the work of the Lord and the operation of his hands, they will not be built up. And that means that we must be aware of what God is doing. What operation is he involved in right now? We need to have a current awareness of God's current strategies and plans and his activities and his operations.

We need to consider his works and we need to consider his operations else we also will not be built up. And ultimately if the church isn't built up, it will be destroyed. Now the church as a genuine entity, the true church will never be destroyed.

But any given manifestation or expression of the church like ourselves here, or like a church that meets in town in a building with a steeple on top, any organization like that could come to destruction if it fails to be edified and built up through consideration of God's present working and his present operations. I can personally think of, though I will not mention, churches that seem to be trying to hide their eyes from the present operations of God. And to me it doesn't seem very optimistic for such groups.

They're not going to be built up if they don't move with God when he moves and become his hands for him to do his works through. Blessed be the Lord, because he hath heard the voice of my supplications. The Lord is my strength and my shield.

My heart trusteth in him and I am helped. Therefore my heart greatly rejoices. And with my song will I praise him.

The Lord is their strength and he is the saving strength of his anointed. Save thy people and bless thine inheritance. Feed them also and lift them up forever.

So while he's got his hands up toward the Holy Oracle, he prays for his own safety, declares that God is his shield and his safety, and he prays for the people, that they'll be saved, blessed, and fed by God. Now going on, we come to Psalm 29. I'm of the conviction that the title under Psalm 30 belongs to Psalm 29.

I mentioned before when we were talking about the titles of the Psalms, that sometimes the titles in the Hebrew manuscripts belong to the chapter above them rather than the chapter below them. In our Bible, the translators have usually put the chapter number above the titles in every case so that it looks like the title always belongs to the chapter that follows it. But in the Hebrew, the chapter numbers are not found in this way.

You just have the chapter and the title and the chapter and the title and the chapter and the title without the numbers. And therefore it's impossible to know just by looking whether the title belongs to the beginning or the end of a passage. In fact, we saw in the example of Habakkuk, chapter 3, which is a psalm.

Habakkuk chapter 3 is just one psalm. It has a title and part of the title is at the beginning and part is at the end. The part at the beginning is the part that tells the author.

The part at the end is the part that tells it was on stringed instruments and so forth like that to the chief musician and all that kind of thing. That was at the end. So, well, notice that the title of chapter 30 here, psalm 30, says a psalm and a song.

It doesn't tell who did it. It says a psalm and a song at the dedication of the house of David. Now, that seems to be more a statement of a purpose than a statement of authorship so that it would be likely it would fall at the end of a psalm if Habakkuk chapter 3 is taken as sort of a pattern for understanding such matters.

And it would make much more sense. Psalm 29 sounds much more like a psalm that would be uttered at the dedication of the house of David than psalm 30 does. In fact, if you read psalm 30, it's mainly just rejoicing over the recovery from sickness.

The author has been sick and God caused him to recover and he says, you've turned my mourning into dancing. I've been healed. I'm happy now.

I was sick. I was actually at the point of death and now you've restored my health. It doesn't sound like the kind of psalm you write at the dedication of the house.

And yet, psalm 29 does because psalm 29 is all about the voice of God and the might and the majesty and the splendor of God and giving the right kind of glory due his name to God. Those are the kinds of things that might be said at a celebration, at a dedication, feast of a temple or of the king's palace in Jerusalem or something like that. And I believe, therefore, that psalm 29 owns that title.

It is a psalm of David, according to psalm 29, the title there, and then the other title at the end tells us that it's a psalm and a song which was apparently sung at the dedication of David's house. And this is a psalm that has a lot of repetition. For instance, quite a few of the verses start with the expression, the voice of the Lord.

The voice of the Lord, the voice of the Lord, the voice of the Lord. That's what we're going to hear again and again and again and again. It's talking about the power of God's voice.

Now, it appears that it's talking about the power in terms of the loudness or the forcefulness of His voice. But though those kinds of images are used, of course, the real power of the voice of the Lord has nothing to do with how loud it is or how booming it is. Because in that case, it wouldn't be any more impressive than a sonic boom or something like that which also is loud and booming.

But the real power of the voice of God is that it emanates from Him and it's a voice of authority. That when He speaks, the creation responds. It doesn't say so here, but we remember in Genesis chapter 1 that God spoke and it was so.

He said, Let there be light and the whole darkened universe had no choice but to be lightened. When He said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly every living creature, they had no choice. They had to do it.

The creation responds to the authority of that voice. When God speaks, all the creation listens. Only man has the right, doesn't have a right, but has the power to ignore that voice.

And it's always been to man's hurt whenever he has ignored it. But we find here the description of God's voice which really speaks of the authority of His word. And it's described in terms of a great wind or a great storm that goes and strips the forest bare and does all kinds of damage.

And it's just sort of trying to picture the voice of the Lord in terms of the most powerful force known in nature. Not because it is equal in force to that, but because it is greater than. And no greater force in nature could be imagined to compare it to.

So the voice of the Lord is of course more powerful than anything in nature because all nature sprang to existence because of God speaking His voice. So His voice is certainly superior to the things that it created. But this fantastic storm and gale and this wind that just destroys everything in its path is the most powerful thing in nature that could have been imagined.

And therefore it would have to stand, it was chosen as a symbol to stand for that which is indescribable, for that which is incomparable, for that which is greater than anything in nature. And in the same way we might suggest that the descriptions of hell in the Bible, fire and all, we don't know whether it's literal fire. We know that consistently the descriptions of hell describe fire being there.

But it's quite possible of course that what hell is is far worse than actual fire. And that being burned up is just the most terrible thing that humans can relate to from which an illustration could be drawn. It could be that hell is far worse than being in a fire.

But nothing worse could be thought of to liken it to. And the same thing with the voice of the Lord here. It's certainly more powerful than the wind and the storm that is used to describe it.

But nothing greater could be thought of to compare it to. And besides, there's something sort of appropriate about it because sometimes the voice of God is equated with the breath of His nostrils, the breath of His mouth. He breathes out His word, so to speak.

And when He breathes out, it's not just a little fizz. It's a hurricane. For instance, I'll show you an example there.

In Psalm 33 and verse 6 where we have the regular Jewish parallelism in this poetry. Psalm 33, 6 is, By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. So that in that parallelism there, the breath of His mouth is equated with the word of the Lord.

That is, you do let out a little air when you speak. And that's basically saying when He speaks, the air that comes out of His mouth is here described in chapter 29 as like a gale, like a tempestuous storm. Okay, well this is how it goes.

Given to the Lord, O ye mighty, given to the Lord glory and strength, given to the Lord the glory, do His name. Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. These two verses have been put to music in a real nice worship song which we'll probably learn sometime here.

But notice how the parallelism is developed here. There's three steps to it. Given to the Lord, O ye mighty, given to the Lord glory and strength, which adds to the first statement, given to the Lord the glory, do His name.

So you can see how the thought develops in Hebrew poetry. The first thing just says, given to the Lord, and addresses the listeners, O ye mighty. And ye mighty could refer to the angels or it could refer to mighty men.

Maybe princes and kings. But given to the Lord, given to the Lord glory and strength, given the glory, let's do His name. Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

Now the beauty of holiness is an expression that comes up a lot of times in the songs. Quite a few times anyway. I don't know exactly the number of times.

But let me see if we have a cross reference here. We've got, no we don't have one that gives us that information. I know there's at least three or four or five different places in the Psalms that speak of the beauty of holiness.

In Psalm 27, which we read a moment ago, it talks about the beauty of the Lord. I want to behold the beauty of the Lord. And the beauty of the Lord is the beauty of holiness.

He is a holy God. And there's something beautiful about that. In Psalm 110, I mean, where it talks about, it was a Messianic Psalm, it says that your people will be willing in the day of your power, in the beauties of holiness, you have the dew of your youth.

You might remember when we studied that verse. That's in Psalm 110. Well, the beauty of holiness means, of course, the splendor of holy character.

If your character is holy, then it's a beautiful thing. And God, His character is holy, so He's beautiful because of it. You know, once you can catch a glimpse of the beauty of holiness, it'll change a lot.

It'll change everything, I suppose, in your life. Because most people think of holiness as something rather boring. I mean, worldly people do.

Holiness is something that really doesn't... nothing very attractive. Perhaps they have the wrong view of what holiness is. I'm sure they do.

They think of it in terms of wearing gray clothing, and wearing no jewelry, and never smiling, and wearing your hair in a bun, and things like that. That's what some of the holiness churches, I guess, have depicted it as. But, obviously, that's not what holiness is.

Holiness is being pure, like God. Being pure. And people who are not pure can't appreciate that.

Remember, to the pure, all things are pure. But to the defiled, nothing is pure. Nothing... There's no attraction to purity to those who are defiled.

But once you've experienced a certain amount of holiness, then you can really appreciate holiness. It's a delightful thing. It's a beautiful thing.

It's something that attracts you more than anything else. That's why David said, there's only one thing I'll seek after. That's so I could behold the beauty of the Lord.

That's worthy of all my attention and all my pursuit, because it's so delightful. And so, worship the Lord and the beauty of holiness indicates that worship of the Lord is not just a labor, a grudging thing that's done, offering certain sacrifices, and wishing you weren't doing it, and wishing you could be somewhere else instead of there, wishing you were watching the football game instead of sitting in church, singing the hymns. But worshiping the Lord should be something that is done out of appreciation for His beauty.

We are naturally attracted to that which we find beautiful. And if we don't find the Lord, or holiness, beautiful, we won't be attracted to Him. Though we will worship, perhaps, outwardly, there won't be a joy in it.

There won't be an enjoyment of it. There will be a wishing for it to be over, so that we can really get about the business that we really enjoy. But saying here that we should have the same appreciation and attraction for the glory and the holiness of God, that is really appropriate.

And once you have been, tasted a little bit of the holy life, and have put away your sins, and so forth, you begin to wonder why you ever chose to sin. You begin to wonder why holiness never attracted you any sooner. And of course, the reason is you never saw it before.

You never saw the beauty of it. Now, we talk about the voice of the Lord. The voice of the Lord is upon the waters.

The God of glory thundereth. The Lord is upon many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful.

The voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars. Yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon.

Lebanon was known for its strong and giant cedar trees. And very frequently, the Bible speaks of the cedars of Lebanon as the epitome of strength, and the epitome of beauty, and the epitome of height and greatness. Cedars of Lebanon.

But the voice of the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon like a strong wind blowing trees over. He makes them also to skip like a calf. That is, He causes the big cedar trees to just skip along the ground before this mighty torrential wind.

He maketh them also to skip like a calf. He maketh Lebanon and Syrian like a young unicorn. The voice of the Lord divided the flames of fire.

The voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness. The Lord shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve.

Now, hinds would be mountain goats or deer or something of that type. And causing them to calve, actually literally in the margin it says to be in pain. And probably what it means is the voice of the Lord is so tempestuous, so fearful, so powerful that it causes the wild animals even to go into labor prematurely.

It's such a terrifying thing that it causes their labor pains to come up on them early. Apart from that, there is another interpretation that has been suggested. The word hinds there in the Hebrew, one thing I've never mentioned perhaps before is that in the Hebrew, for the most part, the vowels are missing.

And it's only consonants. Why this is, I'm not sure. But there's... I don't know much about Hebrew to tell you the truth.

But the Hebrew Bible is written largely with just consonants. We've mentioned before that the name Yahweh is spelled Y-H-W-H without any vowels. And you can pretty much add different vowels to make it Jehovah or Yahweh.

But it depends on which vowels you add to how it's pronounced. Well, there are some words in the Bible which could be different words if you add different vowels. In this case, the Hebrew word that's translated hinds here, if you put different vowels in it between the consonants, you could have the word oaks.

Does yours say oaks? Okay, see, that's an alternate translation. It depends on which vowels are chosen by the translator to stick into the word. So that instead of talking about the hinds calving, it could be talking about having an effect on the oaks.

So what effect it has on the oaks, what spins and topples the mighty oaks. That's the living Bible, right? Okay, so in other words, it's following along the same imagery of causing the cedars of Lebanon to skip along the ground. It's also causing, basically probably saying it's causing the oaks to skip like a calf if the Hebrew were read the different way.

So it's either talking about the wild animals coming to premature birth or else it's talking about trees still as it was formerly. It says it discovers the forests or actually strips them bare is what that's referring to there. And in his temple, does everyone speak of his glory? Now that's an interesting thing to put at this point because here he's talking about this tremendous wind blowing these trees along the ground and causing them to skip like calves and like wild animals along the ground.

Then all of a sudden, and in his temple, does everyone speak of his glory? Again, this was uttered by David before the temple was built. So it must have been a reference to the tabernacle or something along those lines. Then it says, The Lord sitteth upon the flood.

Yea, the Lord sitteth king forever. The Lord will give strength to his people. The Lord will bless his people with peace.

So if we see this as a dedication psalm for a house warming for David's palace, then we could see how basically what it's doing is calling to mind God's great voice, God's great authority to speak and how that the king, though he has a beautiful house to live in, still it's in God's house that everyone speaks of God's glory. It's not David who's to be glorified by his house, but God's house is the place where his glory is spoken of and God's voice is so tremendous that you'd better not ever forget it. You'd better not ignore it, kind of a thing, which a king is often inclined to do.

Many times kings get a little bit high-minded because they're the most powerful man in their kingdom and they forget God. But as a dedication of David's house, David wrote this psalm perhaps to remind himself or the people or just to honor God with a declaration of how great the voice of God is and how great his authority when he speaks. Okay, I would like to get as far as two more psalms, if we could, before we quit.

Let's get to Psalm 30. And as I said, the psalm title says it's a song of dedication at the house of David, but I believe that belongs to the previous psalm, which means that we don't have any title for this psalm. And we don't know who wrote it or when it was written.

But it's evident within the psalm that it's talking about a man who gets healed of sickness and praises God because of it. As we'll see in verses 2 and 3 especially. Verse 1, I will extol Thee, O Lord, for Thou hast lifted me up and hast not made my foes to rejoice over me.

O Lord, my God, I cried unto Thee, and Thou hast healed me. O Lord, Thou hast brought up my soul from the grave. Thou hast kept me alive that I should not go down to the pit.

Now notice this imagery. In one line in verse 3, it says, You have brought my soul from the grave. And in the next it says, You have kept me alive that I should not go down to the pit.

In one case, it makes it sound like he did die and he was brought out of the grave. In the other, it makes it sound like he didn't quite die. He was in danger of going into the pit.

Now notice that those two expressions could both be used of the same experience. And that brings us back to mind of the statements in chapter 16, which said, You will not leave my soul in the grave, or in Hades, neither let thy Holy One see corruption. It could be seen either way.

It could mean either that David was delivered from death and therefore did not end up abandoned to the grave. Or it could mean, as Peter and Paul understood it through the Spirit, that the man who went into the grave, namely Jesus, was brought out of it. This too could be a Messianic reference, though it's never quoted in the New Testament as such, so we couldn't be certain.

Because it does mention what could be taken, if taken literally, as the apostles often did some of these statements in the Psalms, could be understood as resurrection. O Lord, you have brought my soul up from the grave. What an ideal psalm for them to quote about the resurrection.

In fact, it's clearer than some of the ones they did quote on the subject. Sing unto the Lord, O ye saints of his, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness. For his anger endureth but for a moment, and his favor is life.

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. So, it's good to keep the right perspective, by the way. When you're weeping, of course, it's because everything seems to be going wrong.

At times like that, it's good to remember the transitoriness of our problems. How many problems have you had in your lifetime? Can you put a number on them? Probably not. You've probably had thousands of problems in your lifetime.

Well, hundreds anyway. Probably thousands of different kinds. And maybe several a day, even small ones or great ones.

But you've seen that they've all come to an end. If you happen to have a problem right now, it's probably not one that you had long ago. It's probably a new one, and it'll end too, just like the others did.

And it's good to keep that in perspective. Weeping may endure for a night, but by morning, everything's changed. I'll tell you, it's really literally that way sometimes.

There are times when I'm just feeling down about one thing or another, and it kind of ruins my whole day. That shouldn't be the case, of course, and it's not very often the case, in fact. But there are times that I can recall where I've let something get to me, and it just kind of makes my whole evening rotten.

I wouldn't exactly describe it as weeping for an evening, but really being down, really being discouraged, sometimes being depressed even. But then waking up, it's a new day, the sun's shining. I don't even remember what I was depressed about before.

Things haven't necessarily changed, but it's just got all kinds of new courage. And besides that, of course, a lot of times, God does change things overnight. So he's pointing out there that just as he was sick, and probably at the time he was sick, he was despairing of his life, which is suggested by verse 3, that he was possibly afraid even that he would die, but God delivered him from it.

Yet that too was yet a transitory weeping, and joy came in the morning. The Lord has given him cause to rejoice. And in my prosperity, he says, now this is apparently before he was sick, verse 6, in my prosperity I said I shall never be moved.

It reminds us of what some of the wicked men in chapter 10 said. In Psalm 10 it says that they said I shall never be in adversity, I shall never be moved. In my prosperity, I said the same kind of thing.

I thought I'd never be moved. Lord, by thy favor, thou hast made my mountains to stand strong. But they said, thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled.

So, in other words, God blessed me so much that I thought that I'd never have any adversity. I thought I'd never be moved by trouble because God had made me stand strong like mountains are strong. God's favor upon me had made me stand strong as a mountain.

But then I realized that it wasn't that way. All God has to do is blink and look away from me, and all of a sudden everything can go wrong. And that's what apparently happened.

He got sick. We don't know exactly what the nature of it was. He says, then I cried unto thee, O Lord, and unto the Lord I made my supplication.

What profit, he said to the Lord, is there in my blood? When I go down to the pit, shall the dust praise thee? Shall it declare thy truth? In other words, if I'm alive, I can praise you and I can declare your truth. But if I die, what profit is there in that for you? What can you gain by that? The dust isn't going to praise you, is it? When my body goes back to the dust. Hear, O Lord, and have mercy upon me.

Lord, be thou my helper. Now, he testifies that that's exactly what God did. Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing.

He was mourning over his sickness, but now he's able to get up and dance and rejoice. Thou hast put off my sackcloth and girded me with gladness that my glory may sing praise unto thee and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks unto thee forever.

Now, there is a possibility also, of course, that we must consider that the sickness described was not physical sickness. I believe that there are some of the psalms in which sickness is used as a metaphor for other kinds of trouble. There was one of the psalms we read and I believe, I don't remember exactly what psalm it was, it might have been Psalm 40 or Psalm 41, where he said his enemies thought that he was sick unto death, where in fact, it may be that he wasn't actually sick.

Yeah, it's chapter 41. I'm amazed that I remembered it because I'm not that familiar with this psalm. But, in Psalm 41, we already covered it before.

It says, Blessed is he that considereth the poor, the Lord will deliver him in time of trouble and so forth. Then it said, well, it could be about literal sickness, but it says in verse 7, All that hate me whisper together against me, against me do they devise my hurt, an evil disease they say cleaveth past to him, and now that he lieth he shall rise no more. Well, yeah, it's very possible he's talking about literal disease.

But it occurs to me as I read this psalm, though he speaks in terms of being healed of sickness, in verses 2 and 3 and so forth, that he could be thinking in terms of something other than literal sickness, as in verse 1 he mentions his foes, his enemies, that his condition is sick or his condition is ailing. Not necessarily a physical condition, but more like his political position possibly, if it's David, or maybe just his security in general. At any rate, it may be best just to view it as literal sickness.

That way we save ourselves trouble of interpretation. And he says, I'm no longer mourning, I've put off my sackcloth. Sackcloth was what was worn when people were in mourning and repentance sometimes.

And he says, You've taken my clothing of sackcloth off me and put on new clothing. It's the clothing of gladness. Similar to a statement found in Isaiah 61, which may have popped into your head also when we read that statement.

Isaiah 61 says in verse 3, To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they might be called the trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He might be glorified. Notice it says that God has appointed to give unto those who mourn, to give them beauty for their ashes. That is to say, they were sitting in ashes, which was a way of mourning, wearing sackcloth and ashes.

But to take away their ashes and give them beauty instead. Take away their mourning and give them the oil of joy. To take away their spirit of heaviness and put on a garment of praise.

Speaking figuratively, of course, it's like man was engulfed and overcome with sorrows, but now he's been clothed with gladness and praise. It says, You've put off my sackcloth and girded me with gladness. Psalm 30, verse 11.

To the end, or to reach this particular goal, that my glory may sing praise unto thee. My glory is a very difficult expression. It occurs several times in the Psalms.

And it's not always clear what it means. Some interpreters believe it means my tongue. Others believe it means my soul.

Others believe it means the highest and purest part of my humanity made in the image of God. But all of these things are just guesses. I suppose, since we don't know for sure what he's referring to, we might just suggest that it's talking about his tongue or his mouth.

May sing praise unto thee. It may leave us with some unsatisfied question about what he means to the end. That my glory may sing praise to thee.

Nonetheless, it's something that can't be fully decided on the basis of the evidence available. And he mentions, O Lord my God, I will give thanks unto Thee forever, which is his final resolve. Because God has given him cause to dance and given him cause to rejoice and taken away his sackcloth and put gladness on him instead and given him a tap in his toe and the desire to just leap and dance for joy.

He must have really been sick. He was despairing of his life. And he was just rejoicing to be delivered back into the land of the living again.

Psalm 31 is the last one we'll take in this class. We don't have very much time to do more than that. In fact, we don't have much time even to cover it.

But we don't need to say too much about it except that this is a psalm that was written under stress. You know how quite a few of the psalms begin with anxiety and end with assurance or end with confidence. This one does that twice.

In verses 1-8, we have a whole cycle of that very thing. We have the anxiety in the early part until verse 6. And then in verses 7 and 8, we have the assurance such as you might find at the end of the psalm. The confidence.

But then you have the anxiety again in verse 9. And it goes on until later on in the psalm where it gets a little bit more positive maybe around verse 14. But it's kind of interesting. It goes through that whole cycle twice.

It's despondent, then rejoicing, and then despondent again, and then rejoicing again. So it either means that this guy had two problems that came hot on the heels of each other. Or else perhaps that he states the case thoroughly in verses 1-8 and then goes back to look at it more deeply in verses 9-24 to give more detail.

One thing interesting about this is that this psalm found expression by other biblical people. That is, they used it and quoted from it a lot at times when they were in despair. It kind of shows how the psalms can be used in other times besides formal worship.

How they have application in so many situations. For instance, the first three verses are quoted verbatim in Psalm 71 by probably another writer. This was written by David, this one.

But the writer of Psalm 71, we don't know who it was, but it was at a later time anyway, quoted from this psalm because it expressed the feelings and thoughts that were going through his mind. Jonah, when he was in the belly of the flail, quoted from this. Or at least alluded to it from this psalm.

In verse 6 he says, I've hated them that regard lying vanities. In Jonah 2, verse 8, when he was in the belly of the false whales. False whales.

I'm getting ahead of myself trying to rush through this material. In the belly of the whale, he was talking about false gods. He was talking about idols.

And those who regard lying vanities he makes reference to quoting from this passage. Also, Jonah quoted from the latter part of it. Verse 22 here says, For I said in my haste, I am cut off from before thine eyes.

You'll find the words of Jonah in Jonah 2.4 uttered in the belly of the whale are quite closely akin to these words. So Jonah would have been familiar with the psalms, of course, having lived after the time of David. And quoted from it when he was in distress.

These psalms that spoke of David's distress, many people have found they could relate to it at later times. Jonah in the whale. Also Jeremiah quoted from it.

Not formally, but he sort of just repeated a line in it. In verse 13 where it says, For I have heard the slander of many. In Jeremiah 20 and verse 10.

We find Jeremiah saying something very similar to it which must have been based on this psalm. Jeremiah 20, verse 10. He says, For I heard the defaming of many.

Defaming is the same thing as slander. So, in psalms it says, I heard the slander of many. Here it says, I heard the defaming of many.

Fear on every side. And so forth. So, when David was in distress, by inspiration of the Spirit, he gave expression to statements that later were on the lips of others and going through similar situations.

So, it shows that the psalms can become prayers of ours too. When we're going through things that are similar to what the psalmist went through, we find God's inspired prayers. It's sort of a prayer book for us as well as a hymnal.

Sort of inspired prayers that are appropriate to the situation which other godly men took to them also. And the most amazing case, or the most significant case, is Jesus himself quoted from it. His last words on the cross were from this psalm, verse 5, Into thine hand I commend my spirit or commit my spirit.

Jesus quoted from this in Luke 23, 46, his final words on the cross. By the way, I'm told that that was also, it became a nighttime prayer for children. That little children were taught to pray this by their mothers when they were going to bed.

Sort of like, now I lay me down to sleep, that kind of a thing. As they were going to sleep, they'd get down and pray and they'd say, Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit. Because, of course, when you go to sleep, you never know what's going to happen to your spirit.

You put it in God's hands while you sleep. And it's probable that Jesus learned that prayer at his mother's knee, as well as every other Jewish boy. It was a common Jewish prayer for children.

And Jesus uttered that prayer also as he was dying on the cross. Let's read this psalm. I don't know that I'll make many comments because we have some of the same themes repeated again as in the former ones.

In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust. Let me never be ashamed. Deliver me in thy righteousness.

Bow down thine ear to me. Deliver me speedily. Be thou my strong rock for an house of defense to save me.

For thou art my rock and my fortress. Therefore, for thy name's sake, lead me and guide me. Pull me out of that net that they have laid privily for me.

For thou art my strength. Into thine hand I commit my spirit. For thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, God of truth.

I have hated them that regard lying vanities. But I trust in the Lord. I will be glad and rejoice in thy mercy.

For thou hast considered my trouble. Thou hast known my soul in adversities and hast not shut me up into the hand of the enemy. Thou hast set my feet in a large room.

Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am in trouble. Mine eye is consumed with grief. Yea, my soul and my belly.

For my life is spent with grief and mine year is with sighing. My strength faileth because of mine iniquity and my bones are consumed. Sounds like a line out of a penitential song.

I was a reproach among all mine enemies, but especially among my neighbors and a fear to mine acquaintance. They that did see me without fled from me. I am forgotten as a dead man out of my mind.

Or out of mind. You know, it's out of sight, out of mind. After a man's dead, people forget about him.

I am like a broken vessel. That is, once you break something, you just throw it away and forget about it. And so, it's like people have forgotten him.

Even his friends and acquaintances have deserted him. For I have heard the slander of many. Fear was on every side.

While they took counsel together against me, they devised to take away my life. But I trusted in Thee, O Lord. I said, Thou art my God.

My times are in Thy hand. Deliver me from the hand of mine enemies and from them that persecute me. Make Thy face to shine upon Thy servant.

Save me for Thy mercy's sake. Let me not be ashamed, O Lord, for I have called upon Thee. Let the wicked be ashamed and let them be silent in the grave.

Let the lying lips be put to silence, which speak grievous things proudly and contemptuously against the righteous. O, how great is Thy goodness, which Thou hast laid up for them that fear Thee, which Thou hast wrought for them that trust in Thee before the sons of men. Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy presence from the pride of man.

Thou shalt keep them secretly in the pavilion from the strife of tongues. That is, from the danger of slander God will protect us. Blessed be the Lord, for He hath showed me His marvelous kindness in a strong city.

For I said in my haste, I am cut off from before Thine eyes. Nevertheless, Thou heardest the voice of my supplications when I cried unto Thee. O love the Lord, all ye His saints, for the Lord preserveth the faithful and plentifully rewardeth the proud doer.

But be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart. Similar to the closing verse of Psalm 27, verse 14. All ye that hope in the Lord.

Okay. We're going to end right there. You notice probably that almost every line had something in it from a previous psalm.

That doesn't mean there was nothing original about it, but it just shows how many of the themes recur in the psalms.