Psalms 39, 42 - 44, 46

Psalms — Steve Gregg

Next in this series

Psalms 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 54, 55

00:00

Psalms 39, 42 - 44, 46

PsalmsSteve Gregg

In this segment, Steve Gregg provides an analysis of several Psalms, including Psalms 39, 42-44, and 46. Throughout his interpretation, Gregg delves into themes such as the transience of wealth, longing for God's presence, and the power of prayer. He highlights how the Psalms address the emotion of conviction and shows how individuals can take command of their souls through prayerful trust in God's faithfulness. Furthermore, he notes that suffering can result in the greatest victory and discusses the importance of prayer as a weapon against defeat.

Transcript

Okay, we'll turn to Psalm 39 right now. By taking various groups of Psalms, we've taken a lot of the Psalms all around this area. We've talked about Chapter 37 on one occasion.

Chapter 38 was with a different group of Psalms. Chapter 40 was with a different group of Psalms and so forth. The only Psalm in this general area that we haven't touched because it didn't belong to any group was Psalm 39.

So we'll turn there and when we've covered that we'll have to skip over a couple more Psalms that we've already covered and get down to Psalm 42. So it'll be interesting to just kind of fill in some of this space that we've left by our study of different groups of Psalms. Psalm 39.

I said, I will take heed to my ways that I sin not with my tongue. I will keep my mouth with a bridle while the wicked is before me. I was dumb with silence.

I held my peace even from good and my sorrow was stirred. My heart was hot within me while I was musing the fire burned. Then spake I within my tongue or with my tongue, Lord make me to know mine end and the measure of my days.

What it is that I may know how frail that I may know how frail I am. Behold thou has made my days as an handbreadth and mine age is as nothing before thee. Verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity.

Surely every man walketh in a vain show. Surely they are disquieted in vain. He heapeth up riches and knoweth not who shall gather them.

And now Lord, what wait I for? My hope is in thee. Deliver me from all my transgressions. Make me not the reproach of the foolish.

I was dumb. I opened not my mouth because thou didst it. Remove thy stroke away from me.

I am consumed by the blow of thine hand. When thou with rebukest us correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth. Surely every man is vanity.

Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear unto my cry. Hold not thy peace at my tears, for I am a stranger with thee and a sojourner as all my fathers were. O spare me that I may recover strength before I go hence and be no more.

Now, this psalm is obviously a prayer that is uttered in great emotions, so much so that the thoughts don't seem all that coherent to us and the train of thought is not all that clear to us. It's a little hard to pick it out. It's obvious in the first verses, the first three, we find the psalmist is refraining himself from speaking what's in his heart, apparently because what he was thinking was some kind of a, it might be construed as some kind of a complaint against God.

It's clear that he has suffered something. That's evident from verses eight and nine and ten, where it talks about God's stroke and his blow was upon him, meaning that God was disciplining him. And in the first three verses, we find that his reaction to that was bewilderment, but he didn't want to speak out that bewilderment because apparently in verse one says, while the wicked was before me, that is in the presence of wicked people, David didn't want to express his questioning and his confusion about this for fear that it might be constrained as disloyalty to God or as it might cause the heathen to have something more to use in their arguments against God.

So he held his peace. In verse two, he says, I was done with silence. I held my peace even from good.

It sounds almost like he's saying, I didn't say anything, even good things. Although it's very probable that even from good means to no avail or without success. That's how it has been translated by some of the newer translations, meaning that he tried to hold his peace.

He was going to just let it blow over without saying anything, but he couldn't refrain himself entirely. He did manage to refrain himself when he was in the presence of wicked men. Nonetheless, he couldn't totally tent it up forever without speaking it, which is what verse three says.

My heart was hot within me while I was musing the fire burned. Then I spake with my tongue and he calls out and asks God some questions. Now, this reference to his hot heart burning within him reminds us of Jeremiah when he said that he was when he was persecuted for speaking the word of the Lord, he decided that he wouldn't speak anymore in the word of the Lord because it was too much of a he got too much persecution for it.

And but he said even when he tried to forbear, he became weary with forbearing. He couldn't forbear to speak because he said the word was within him like a fire burning in his bones. And so there are times when you prefer not to speak at all, either because you're not sure quite what to say or because you know what you'd like to say, but you wonder whether that'd be wise to speak might be dishonoring to God.

Better to hold your peace altogether. But because of the stirrings within your spirit, the agitation you feel, you just have to speak out. There is a reference in the New Testament to men's hearts burning in them, but it must have been from another must be referring to some other phenomenon in Luke 24, 32, when the men who met Jesus after his resurrection, when they were walking on the road to Emmaus, heard him speak.

And later, when they recognized that it was Jesus, they said, did not our hearts burn within us when he opened the scriptures to us? But that obviously was not the exact same thing as here. This man's heart is burning and it's David burning in him because he's got some unanswered questions which he's just trying to put aside and not think about. But he can't.

They're burning within him. He needs to cry out to God and get some answers, at least ask some answers. This kind of language reminds us perhaps a little bit of Psalm 45, verse one, where the psalmist says, my heart is indicting a good matter.

The word indicting means bubbling up or bubbling over. My heart is just bubbling over with this good matter. I speak of the things which I've made touching the king.

My tongue is the pen of a ready writer. Again, the overflowing of the heart becomes a psalm, becomes a prayer. And so in the psalms, we see that these prayers are not just dead formal liturgies that were put together for some kind of formal worship.

But these are prayers that were forced out of a man's soul by pressure in his life, by pressure on his heart. And here we find this man when he can no longer forbear, no more keep silence. He says, Lord, verse four, make me to know mine end and the measure of my days, what it is that I may know how frail I am.

Now, his question, it's not it sounds like he's saying, let me know how frail and how mortal I am. On the other hand, it almost the following words indicates that he already knows how mortal he is and how frail he is. And he might be asking, why is he so frail? It's not fully understandable what his question is.

God, of course, would understand it because God can see beyond the words into the heart and see what the real question is. But there are times, as it says in Romans 8, 26, I guess it is, that we don't know how to express our thoughts, the things we want to ask. There are times when we know not what to ask for, it says, and the Holy Spirit helps us to do so.

But the Holy Spirit searches the deep things of a man. And although the words of a man might not quite fully express what's on his mind, God sees his heart. In this case, it's not real clear, at least from the wording he uses, what his real question is.

As I said, it appears that he's saying, let me become aware of the shortness of my life. However, in verses five and six, it sounds like he's already quite aware of how short life is because he says, behold, you have made my days as a hand breadth. A hand breadth is the breadth of the width of your hand, which was a short measurement.

Carpenters and other people would use different kinds of measurements than we do now. They didn't have the kinds of standards that we do. So they'd measure a cubit, which was from the fingertip to elbow, and they'd measure a hand breadth, which was from the, if your hand was stretched out the distance from your little finger, the tip of it to the tip of your thumb, that was another measurement.

A cubit was a slightly larger measurement, and then there were larger ones yet. But a hand breadth was one of the smaller measurements. And he's saying my life is about as short as the smallest measurement that is commonly in use, a hand breadth.

And mine age is as nothing before thee. That is, the length of my life, even if I live to old age, is like nothing compared to the eternity in which God dwells. For every man at his best state is altogether vanity.

The word vanity means emptiness, and it's a word that appears many times in the book of Ecclesiastes. In fact, the thoughts of verses five and six here are found in Ecclesiastes, which was written by David's son. David wrote this psalm.

Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes, and no doubt was influenced by this psalm in Ecclesiastes 2, verses 18 and 19. Maybe you'd want to just look there real quickly to see what I mean. Ecclesiastes 2, verses 18 and 19 says, Yea, I hated all my labor, which I had taken under the sun, because I should leave it to another man that shall be after me.

And who knoweth whether he shall be wise man or a fool? Yet shall he have rule over all my labor, wherein I have labored, and wherein I have showed myself wise under the sun. This also is vanity or emptiness. Now, what he's saying here is here.

What good is it to me to be wise? Because if I get certain gains and build up a greater state because of my wisdom, I'm just going to die and it'll be left to my son and maybe he'll be a fool. So, what good was it for me to exercise wisdom? As soon as I'm gone, my goods might be totally wasted by my son who is a fool. Well, the fact of the matter is that was not what happened to Solomon.

It's more like Solomon was the fool, even though Solomon in his early life had wisdom. The fact of the matter is that David, who was a wise man, did build up a great estate and left it to his son Solomon who wasted it all. So, it's kind of ironic that Solomon would be saying, what good is it to me to build up an estate if my son comes along and is a fool and wastes it all? That's exactly what Solomon did to the estate that his father left him.

And that's the thought in Psalm 39, verse 6. Surely every man walks in a vain show, surely they are disquieted in vain. He heapeth up riches and knoweth not who shall gather them. Now, you spend your life gathering up your estate, your treasures, but you don't know who's going to get them later.

Maybe the government will get them when you die or maybe your sons and maybe they'll be fools, as Solomon said. The same thought is expressed about 10 psalms later in Psalm 49 by different psalmists who also must have been aware of this psalm. Psalm 49 was written by the sons or written for the sons of Korah, singers in David's worship services.

And it says in verse 10 of Psalm 49, verse 10, for he seeth that wise men die like the fool and the brutish person perish and leave their wealth to others. So, again, a reference to the fact that so what if you gather wealth to yourself by being wise? It's vanity, it's emptiness. There's no satisfaction in it, knowing that even though you might build a great empire, yet your child can come and destroy it all.

Well, here David has seen this, what seems like the emptiness of life. And his statement at the end of verse 6, where he says, or at the end of verse 5, where it says every man at his best state is altogether vanity, Selah, is echoed just before the other Selah in verse 11, where he says, surely every man is vanity, Selah. So, the Selah, if Selah means stop and think about this before proceeding, then the thought that he wants us to really get out of this psalm is the emptiness of man and of what man can accomplish in himself.

He can build up treasures for himself, but his life is so short, soon he'll be gone, someone else will take those treasures, maybe waste them, maybe even use them for evil. So, what good was it after all? And, of course, the contrast would be a man who's dedicated to serving God, not to heaping up treasures, but to laying up treasures in heaven and serving God and trying to serve the purpose of the advancement of God's kingdom and God's interest, though his life is short. That would not be seen as equally vain, though this psalm doesn't bring that out.

Anyway, verse 7, And now, Lord, what wait I for? My hope is in thee. Deliver me from all my transgressions. Make me not the reproach of the foolish.

I was dumb, as he said in verse 2, I was dumb, I opened not my mouth, because thou didst it. Now, it's not clear in this verse what it is that God did, but in the next verse it makes it clear. Remove thy stroke away from me, I am consumed by the blow of thine hand.

In other words, he suffered some kind of chastisement from the Lord. He sensed that it was because of some sins, that's why he says in verse 8, Deliver me from all my transgressions. He sensed that there was something he'd done wrong, there's some crisis has come in his life, he's become aware of his own mortality, of the vanity of life, as many times we do when we're sick, or when we're looking at the possibility of dying, or when we're under the hand of God and we feel convicted for our sins, we begin to wonder whether anything we've done in our life was worthwhile.

Those are some of the thoughts, I guess, that were burning in him, that he had expressed, and he was dumb. That is, he didn't speak out, at least not rationally, because he knew that this thing was from God. God was the one who's bringing this thing upon him.

Now he says, I was dumb. At first, he held his peace, but eventually, as we know, he couldn't hold his peace anymore. But the reason he didn't speak sooner was because he was aware that God's hand was in it, and he didn't want to speak disloyally or disrespectfully about God and his activities.

In verse 11, it says, When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, which again suggests that the psalmist is suffering some kind of chastisement for some sin, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth. Surely every man is vanity. Selah.

Now, man's beauty, whatever that is, you might have a marginal reference there. My Bible does here. And the marginal reference, instead of man's beauty, it says that which is to be desired in him melts away.

So not beauty particularly, as in physical attractiveness, but more like anything about him that makes him enviable or desirable. When God smites him, it more or less takes away everything man can boast about, everything that makes him confident and makes other people envy and desire him. God can certainly strip a man of all those things.

And man's life is seen to be as futile and as fragile as that of a moth, which, of course, can easily be squished. And so can man before God. Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry.

Hold not thy peace at my tears, for I am a stranger with thee and a sojourner, as all my fathers were. Now, David wasn't actually a stranger and a sojourner at this time, as far as we know, unless he happened to be in the cave of Adullam, traveling around and hiding from Saul. Then he was literally so.

But it may be that he's saying that in this world, I don't belong. My life is short here. There must be something more.

My permanent home must be elsewhere. In this world, I'm a stranger and a pilgrim. And as my fathers were.

And that's, of course, what we're told in the New Testament, also in First Peter, chapter two and verse eleven, I think it is, we're told, I beseech you, therefore, as strangers and pilgrim, that you abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul. Oh, spare me that I may recover strength before I go hence and be no more. Apparently, his problem was a lack of help because he says, I want to recover my strength and not die.

So it would appear that at this point, the stroke of God was upon him for some unnamed iniquity. And that stroke was apparently realized in terms of sickness. And he was just really become aware of how short and how fragile his life is and was musing over it and didn't want to speak too rashly, didn't want to speak in the presence of evil men about his confusion at all or his despair, because he thought maybe that would just cast a bad light on God.

He knew that God was the one doing it and he didn't want to speak too rashly. But he did eventually have to speak at least to God about the matter. Whether he got an answer is not mentioned in the psalm, but we can be sure that eventually he understood more.

Now we have to skip up to Psalm 42 and 43, which should be taken together. The reason I say that they go together is because of some very obvious connections between them. For example, Psalm 42, verse nine and the last half of that verse, it says, Why go I a mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? In the next psalm, the last half of verse two says the same thing.

Why go I a mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? Psalm 42, nine and Psalm 43, two both have that statement in them. And what's more remarkable still is that there is a refrain that appears twice in Psalm 42 and once in Psalm 43. That's in Psalm 42, verses five and 11.

Why art thou cast down on my soul? Why art thou disquieted in me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance. In verse 11, Why art thou cast down on my soul? Why art thou cast down, disquieted within me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him who is the health of my countenance and my God. And in the next Psalm, 43, verse five, Why art thou cast down on my soul? Why art thou disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him who is the health of my countenance and my God.

You can see there's a refrain there. So apparently these two psalms at some point they were either written to be sung at similar times or else they were maybe one psalm at one time and later divided into two. The psalm seems to have been written by a person in exile or perhaps, if not in exile, then at least out away from his homeland for some reason, maybe out on a battle or something.

But the appearance from verses one through four would seem that the man writing was maybe one of the temple singers that used to lead the people in singing on festival days into the temple and to just lead in the festivities. But now he misses it because he's not there anymore. He's not in Jerusalem.

He's in fact somewhere up north of Jerusalem. What he's there for we don't know, but it's evident that he wishes he could be home and he can't. And so he's panting.

He's longing for the presence of God, which he remembers having experienced in Jerusalem. He's homesick, really. And this refrain that comes up in verses five and eleven and in the next psalm in verse five, this refrain is basically his means of encouraging himself.

He's longing for something that he can't have. Nonetheless, he has confidence that his hope is in God and he shall yet see satisfaction of his desires. God shall eventually fulfill his desires and take him back home.

That's expressed especially in chapter forty three and verses three and four, where he expresses his confidence that he will return to the tabernacles in Jerusalem and he will have that same joy again. In the meantime, he finds himself cut off from his homeland. He misses the celebrations.

He misses God because God, of course, largely was to be approached at the temple and not elsewhere so much, though it's evident that he can pray while he's away. But to to enjoy the festival days that the Jews put so much stock in, he was in to sing with the congregation, which we know is so much of a joy. He missed those things and he wishes that he could be there.

And instead of having all the congregation around him singing praises with him, instead he has his enemies reproaching him, saying, where is your God? Why has he abandoned you now? And so he's really grieving. He's really heart sick. And he and he speaks to his own soul three times, says, why are you cast down on my soul? Well, it would seem his circumstances give the answer to that question.

My soul is cast down because I'm away from home and I'm homesick. But he basically, by asking the question, is suggesting that in spite of those reasons, there's still no reason to be cast down. You still don't have a good reason to be cast down.

Why are you disquieted within me? Hope thou in God. In other words, you should be able to have your soul buoyant and happy in spite of these circumstances because of your hope that God will take care of things, that your hope is not in necessarily being in Jerusalem at this moment, but just that God is still with you. God has got plans for your life.

God is going to bring you through this one and he's got something good on the other side. And in this case, the psalmist is convinced that that something good is a return to Jerusalem. Now, for ourselves, applying this psalm or these psalms, those that refrain in verses five and eleven and verse five of the next psalm is is quite a good one for us to memorize and to call the mind, because it is actually a conversation between the two elements in man, between his emotions and his convictions.

Really he's in his emotions. He's up and down. That's his soul that's being referred to there.

His soul is up and down. He goes. It's cast down.

And on other occasions, he remembers times when it was elated because he was going with great joy to the temple with other people singing the songs of Zion and all and all excited. But his soul goes up and down. But there's something deeper in his spirit, which has convictions.

And basically, his spirit is addressing his soul. His it's the part of him that is stable and has strong faith and convictions about God's faithfulness that addresses the more fluid part of him, his emotions that go around in circles and up and down and and are so changeable. And of course, we know this experience very well.

We have our ups and downs. We have times of irrational depression and times of elation and times when we don't know why we feel so good and times when we don't know why we feel so bad and times when we do know why we feel so bad because things are going so badly. Yet we know that we shouldn't feel badly because we have even better reasons for being glad because God has promised to work all things together for our good.

That's our conviction. Our conviction is that God is on our side. Our conviction is that whatever our present circumstances, God can change them and will change them and make them for good so that the day will come when we will find it easy to rejoice again.

Therefore, we can speak to our soul now and say, listen, the voice of our conviction, speaking to our emotional side, say, listen, soul, cool it, you know, be lifted up. Don't be cast down. Why are you in this state? Don't you hope in God? Come on now.

And it's his convictions encouraging his his emotional man. Now, this we need to learn to do instead of letting our emotions dominate our personalities, which I mean, there's certainly nothing wrong with emotions. Emotions are wonderful things.

And what a dry world it would be if we didn't have any. But for the emotions to dominate us is to make us very unstable because the emotions change up and down so much, sometimes without any rational cause. And it's necessary for us to control our inner man by our will.

We need to say, listen, God's in control. Snap out of it, you know, and God's still on the throne. Why are you so upset? It says in one of the Proverbs, he that has no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down and without walls, which means that if you don't have control over your inner man, then you're defenseless against the enemy.

The enemy can just manipulate you and manipulate your emotions and make you feel good or bad, depending on whatever circumstances he happens to bring along, where you actually have the right to demand of your soul that it respond a certain way. Now, that doesn't mean that you can just psych yourself up or should just psych yourself up. If if if you're really feeling grief that you should just put on plaster on a phony smile and I'm going to be happy and keep a stiff upper lip.

It does mean, however, that you should take stock of your emotions and say these emotions are either right or wrong. And if these are wrong emotions, I'm going to choose to overcome them. I'm going to command them.

I'm going to take authority over them. That scripture I gave you in Proverbs 25, 28, he that has no rule over his spirit is like a city that is broken down and without walls. Some Proverbs 25, 28.

There's many places in the Psalms that talk about commanding our soul to do various things in this songs we're looking at now. The question is asked to myself, why are thou cast down, indicating stop being cast down in another song, Psalm 62, 5. The psalmist, Psalm 62, 5, commands his soul to wait on God, in other words, to return to your rest. Oh, my soul, wait thou on God.

You know, in other words, don't be so anxious. Don't be so agitated. Just calm down.

Be patient. That's Psalm 62, 5. Also, Psalm 116, verse 7. That's 116, verse 7. He actually tells his soul, return to thy rest. In other words, calm down.

Be patient. Don't get agitated, soul. In Psalm 103, verse 1, he says, bless the Lord, oh my soul.

He actually commands his soul to start blessing God and don't forget all his benefits. That's the rational side of man speaking to the more irrational side of himself and saying, listen, let's behave rationally here. We should not forget all the benefits we have from God.

Therefore, there's every reason to bless the Lord, regardless of how we're inclined to feel at this moment. In Psalm 146, verse 1, 146, verse 1, it says, praise the Lord, oh my soul. In Psalm 35, in verse 9, it says, my soul shall be joyful in God.

That's a decision he's making. I'm going to be joyful. My soul is going to be joyful in God.

And one other Psalm of significance that has to do with making decisions about your emotions and about your soul life and ruling over your soul, basically, is Psalm 25, in verse 1. Psalm 25, 1, unto thee, oh Lord, do I lift up my soul. Basically, I offer my soul up to God. I command it.

I give it orders. I reason with it, because many times my soul is not reasonable. And even it sometimes seems reasonable.

The Psalmist, in this case, believes he has a reason to be cast down, but then he feels like he has even better reasons not to be. His reasons for being cast down are obvious enough. He's homesick.

He misses the old days. His heart sinks when he remembers the festivals that he used to enjoy, leading the people in song and so forth. But now that's all gone.

But then again, he has hope. He knows that God is faithful, that God is good, and that he's trusting God and prayerfully putting his case before God that things are going to work out for the good. Therefore, he commands his soul to basically hope in God, to be hopeful, to be joyful, to bless the Lord and so forth, as these other songs were mentioned.

Let's look at these ones before Psalm 42 and 43. As the heart panted after the water brooks, so panted my soul after the oh God, my soul thirsted for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my meat day and night while they continually saying to me, where is your God? When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me, for I had gone with the multitude.

I went with them to the house of God with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holy day. Why are thou cast down on my soul and why are thou disquieted in me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance. Now, that's the first piece of this of these songs.

We see that he compares himself to a thirsty deer, perhaps at a time of drought where he's running through the water brooks, but they're all dried up and he's thirsting, he's panting. And that's how he feels in his spirit. He feels like he just longs for those old days when he could appear before God.

As he says, when shall I appear before thee? In the end of verse two, that means when shall I come and appear in your temple and come before you there? He says, I've had nothing but tears to eat. I've been thirsty for water, so to speak, but the only water I've had is my tears. And I've had an abundance of those because people are mocking me and saying, where's your God now? If you've got a God somewhere, why is he letting you go through this? And it grieves him not only because he misses the good old days, but because he doesn't have a good answer.

He doesn't know how to answer the heathen. He feels like, well, God's getting reproached out of this too. And so his grief is the more severe.

And he mentions in verse four what it is that he misses so much. When he remembers how he used to go with the multitudes to the house of God on holy days, festival days, and sing with a voice of joy and praise. What good old days those were.

But he says, it just, when I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me. That is just the memory of those good things only makes his present situation seem the more bitter. And then he commands his soul to cheer up and to be confident in God in verse five.

Then in verse six, he changes his metaphor. He talks about himself actually being over like a man, uh, tossed to and fro out in the sea, out beyond his depth with great waves going over him. Uh, another description of his present trials.

Uh, but he says, Oh God, or, Oh my God, my soul is cast down within me. Therefore, will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, from the Hermonites, uh, and of the Hermonites and from the hill of Mizon. Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy water spouts.

All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me. Yet the Lord will command his loving kindness in the daytime. And in the night, his song shall be with me and my prayer unto God of my life unto the God of my life.

I will say unto God, the God, I'm sorry. I will say unto God, my rock, why hast thou forgotten me? Why go I am mourning because of the oppression of the enemy as with the, with a sword in my bones. Mine enemies reproach me while they say daily unto me, where is thy God? That's what keeps bugging him both in this stanza and in the earlier stanza.

Then he says again, why art thou cast down on my soul? Why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him. Now you're saying, I missed the old days when I used to praise him. Well, I'm going to yet see those days again.

I shall yet praise him who is the health of my countenance and my God. There are a few verses here that are a little difficult to understand versus eight and, uh, or six and eight, really, where he says, um, oh my God, my soul is cast down within me. Therefore, will I remember thee from the land of Jordan? This is the land north of Israel.

And he mentions the land of the Hermonites. Well, Mount Hermon was, uh, basically where Jesus took his disciples off when he was trying to escape the publicity that he was having in the latter part of his ministry. When he went to Caesarea Philippi and asked his disciples, whom do men say that I am? That was at the, uh, about halfway at Mount Hermon, as I understand it, Caesarea Philippi.

And that was near the place where Jordan's fountainhead is. The, the river Jordan actually starts there in Mount Hermon and the mountain range there. And the fountains, uh, that merged to make the river Jordan begin there.

And that's probably what's referred to in a verse seven, where it says, deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy water spouts. Or in other words, the fountain heads of the river. He hears the fountain heads that, that are the origin of the river Jordan.

And he remembers how that when he was in the land of Israel, how the river Jordan was such a familiar symbol of, of home, really. It was the border of his own land, the border of his, of Israel. And now he's at the place where that river begins, but he's far from home and he hears the water spouts.

And he remembers where that water flows to. As he hears the fountains bubbling up and here's the water trickling down, he can just picture in his mind where it flows to. It flows right past Jerusalem, further down South.

And, uh, there's something where the deep is calling unto deep. Whatever that means is not totally clear. Uh, it's possible that he's saying there's something deep within him that, uh, there's some deep longings calling to the deepest part of his soul, though that is not certain that he means that because the deep could be a reference to the ocean, in which case the meaning is not quite as clear.

We know that he does talk about waves and billows gone over him as though he were in the ocean in the latter part of verse seven. So it's not entirely clear, but it's clear. One thing is clear that he's up in the land north of Israel in the Mount Hermon at the fountain head of the Jordan.

And the sound of the fountains of the Jordan just bring to his memory and to his grief, the remembrance of the river Jordan flowing by his hometown. When it mentions the hill Mizar in verse six, the last word in verse six, Mizar might be one of the mountains in the range of Mount Hermon, or it's possible that it's an ironic reference. Mizar actually means the little hill.

And although Mount Hermon is a very high mountain compared to Mount Zion, yet in significance, Mount Hermon is a little thing compared to Mount Zion. Mount Zion is not maybe as tall as Mount Hermon, but it's much greater in stature as far as its relevance and its significance, because that's where God has set his dwelling place in his temple. And he might be speaking ironically of this great mountain that he was standing on, calling it that little hill by contrast from his own hometown, which is built on the Mount Zion.

At any rate, the question, why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy, doesn't have an answer immediately. And he just ends up having to conclude that he must hope in God. Then in verse forty three, we have him a little more resilient.

The word judge me actually means vindicate me. Oh, God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation, probably the one that had him in their in their power at that moment. Oh, deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man, for thou art the God of my strength.

Why does thou cast me off? Why go I a mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? The same question he asked in verse nine of the previous chapter. Now, here's where his hope of return is expressed. Oh, send out thy light and thy truth.

Let them lead me. Let them bring me unto the holy hill, thy holy hill, meaning Zion, and to thy tabernacles. Then will I go on to the altar of God, unto God, my exceeding joy.

Yea, upon the harp will I praise thee, oh God, my God. So he's looking forward to a time when he can go back to the altar in the temple again to the holy hill of Zion and to play the harp and sing again with the others. So he is basically saying, send out your light and truth and send me home.

Now, the light and truth apparently make reference to God's faithfulness and his and the fact that he keeps his word in your faithfulness essentially. Send the expression of your faithfulness by sending me home. And then he cries out again to his soul in verse five.

Why art thou cast down? Hope thou in God. I will yet praise him. All right.

Valuable lesson for us to learn there about commanding our soul to face the ultimate realities rather than being cast about on the waves of our present temporal experiences. Now, chapter 44 is very meaningful. It was apparently a prayer that was offered at a time of national defeat.

And it is a quest for an answer, a quest for a reason. So many times we wonder why were we defeated? Well, usually the glib answer that's given is, well, you sinned and therefore you've had these troubles and you're being punished or chastened. That, of course, is the answer that Job's comforters gave to him.

The reason you've got these problems is because you have some sin in your life. But Job knew that wasn't true and he was looking for a deeper answer. There must be something more than that glib, trite, sin, punishment principle involved here.

And in this psalm, the writer is quite sure that he and his people are innocent of any particular sin. They've not been involved in idolatry. They have not declined their steps from God's ways, they say.

Therefore, they figure why did we suffer this crushing defeat, which is described in verses 9 through 16, the defeat of the nation? Probably some particular battle where they had high hopes of victory, but where they lost and were demoralized. The psalm begins by saying, God, we remember the days of old where we've heard the stories about the great heroes like Joshua, for example, and the days where you just did wonderful, marvelous victories for the people of God. So what's different now? The only thing different is the result of the battle, because we're still looking to you.

We're still keeping our hands clean, trying to keep from offending you. There's no reason we can imagine why you haven't come to our aid. And I know that we, at least anyone who reads church history, or especially the history of revivals, has questions like this all the time.

Why isn't there revival now? Why isn't this now? We read the book of Acts, and we see all the miracles. Why aren't we seeing the miracles now? Why do we pray for the sick and the devil just laughs in our face some of the times? Or we try to cast out a demon, and sometimes they come out, and sometimes they just sneer. Why? Why, why? Why the defeats? What's different? We've heard about the old days when it seems like the demons were always in flight from the face of the church.

But what's different now? Well, again, there's all kinds of glib answers can be given. Lack of faith, sin in the camp, or things like that. And some of those, in many cases, may be the right answer.

But I have to say there have been times when I've asked this question, Lord, why wasn't the person healed? Lord, why didn't the demon come out? When I knew that the answer was not lack of faith, the answer was not sin, because those were not present in the situation. There had to be a deeper answer. Why the defeat on this occasion? And I believe this psalm maybe hints at an answer by the time you get to the end, but most of the psalm is describing the crisis and asking the question, why? It goes like this, We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us what work thou didst in their days in the times of old, how thou didst drive out the heathen with thy hand and plantest them, that is, planted the Jews in their land in the days of Joshua, how thou didst afflict the people and cast them out, for they got not the land in possession, that is, the Jews did not get the land in possession by their own sword, neither did their own arm save them, but thy right hand and thine arm and the light of thy countenance, because thou hadst favor unto them, okay? He says, I understand now from the stories I've heard from the past that you gave great victories to our fathers in battle, and we know it was not because they were just great heroes or that they were just great warriors, it was not their sword, it was your sword, it was your hand, it was your favor upon them that caused them to do it, okay? What about today? Verse 4, You are my king, O God, command deliverances for Jacob.

Now, I said, what about today? We need some victories too. The word command deliverances in the Hebrew literally means ordained victories. I'm saying ordained victories for Jacob or Israel.

You're our king, just like you were our father's king. Why don't we have the victories they have? It says, Through thee we will push down our enemies, through thy name we will tread them under that rise up against us, for I will not trust in my bow, neither shall my sword save me. In other words, just like our fathers didn't win by their own sword, I'm not trusting in my sword, I'm trusting in you, so why are we so defeated? It says, But thou hast saved us from our enemies, this is only temporarily because the defeat is described in verse 9, thou hast saved us from our enemies and hast put them to shame that hated us, probably meaning in the past.

In God we boast all the day long and praise thy name forever, Selah, but thou hast cast off and hast put us to shame and goest not forth with our armies. Thou makest us to turn back from the enemy and they which hate us spoil for themselves. Thou hast given us like sheep appointed for meat and hast scattered us among the heathen.

Thou sellest thy people for naught and dost not increase thy wealth by their price. It's like we've been sold into slavery and yet there's a difference. Usually when people are sold into slavery, at least the person selling them gets some profit out of it, but you've sold us into slavery and you haven't benefited any by it, you've just given us away, so to speak.

He says, Thou makest us a reproach to our neighbors, a scorn and a derision to them that are round about us. This is the result of defeat. The defeat is described in verses 9 through 12, but because of defeat, the enemies laugh and mock, which is also the case with the church in many cases.

Many people are mocking the church that appears to have very limited power, though we make great claims about the power of God and great boasts in God, even as he does here in verses 6 through 8. In verse 8 it says, In God we boast all day long. Tremendous, but what's the problem? God didn't go out with our armies this time. We've been boasting about him, but he didn't show up.

And now the heathen just mock us and we've been put to shame. And that has been the case with the church on many occasions. We make certain boasts about God, but he doesn't show up.

What's the problem? Thou makest us a byword among the heathen, that is a mockery, a shaking of the head among the people. My confusion is continually before me, and the shame of my face hath covered me. For the voice of him that reproacheth and blasphemeth by reason of the enemy and the avenger.

So actually, basically, in verse 15 he's saying that the mocking and the reproach that the heathen have offered against him have kind of stuck and kind of made me feel the same way about ourselves. He's not only defeated, they're actually demoralized. They're just about as cast down as they can be.

And in verse 17 says, And all this has come upon us, yet we have not forgotten thee. Now he's saying, essentially, if we had departed from you and worshipped idols, then we could understand this situation. That would make sense if we sin.

Sure, we're going to be defeated by the enemy. You're not going to come with us. But that's not the case here.

He says, We we have not forgotten. They neither have we dealt falsely in my covenant. Our heart is not turned back.

Neither have our steps declined from thy way, though thou has sore broken us in the place of dragons, meaning out in the desert and covered us with the shadow of death. If we have forgotten the name of our God or stretched out our hands to a strange God, shall not God search this out? For he knoweth the secrets of the heart. Yea, for thy sake, we are killed all the day long.

We are counted as sheep for the slaughter. It's very clear that he's saying we have not departed to idolatry. We've not broken your laws.

We haven't sinned in this matter. In fact, verse 22 says the whole reason we're slaughtered is for your sake, not because of our sins, not because of anything we've done, but just for your sake. That is because we've been loyal to you.

That's the strangest thing. It would seem that our loyalty to you would get us your assistance and would keep us from being slaughtered. But it's because of our loyalty to you that we're being slaughtered.

And that begins to touch on a deeper part of the problem than has been suggested earlier in the psalm, and that is that God does not always come to our aid just because we're on his side. He doesn't always come in the way that we expect or the way that we would ask or demand because we might be quite loyal to him. And because of our loyalty to him, we suffer when we would think that that shouldn't be our case.

And this verse, by the way, verse 22, is quoted by Paul about the suffering of the Christians in the church. It's in Romans 8, 36 and 37. He quotes this about how we are slaughtered like sheep for God's sake all day long, meaning the church was suffering persecution.

Yet, unlike the psalmist, Paul follows it up by saying, yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. That is, the psalmist says this statement, we're slaughtered for your sake, but all he can experience is confusion about it. Paul says, yes, we're being slaughtered for Christ's sake all day long like sheep, but we are more than conquerors in it.

Why? What's the difference between Paul and the psalmist? Both of them have the same circumstance. Both of them are experiencing slaughter at the hand of the enemy and persecution and hardship, but one is demoralized and the other is confident in conquering in it. The difference is, of course, that Paul had the advantage of knowing about the cross.

The psalmist, of course, knew nothing about the cross. He didn't know anything about Jesus dying on a cross or about the power that comes through suffering and the way that God uses suffering to conquer the violent men. Paul could reflect back on the cross of Christ and see that in dying, Jesus conquered the enemy, and so that death was not a defeat in itself, because death, by the way, only ushered in new kinds of victories.

If we die, then we become inaccessible to the enemy. We die and we go to be before the Lord. That's the ultimate victory.

The enemy can no longer ever come near us, and so we have a view of a more spiritual reality than the psalmist had access to. We understand that through what appears to be defeat, namely the death of Jesus on the cross, actual victory takes place. He conquered death by dying, and we conquer the powers of death often by dying as well or by martyrdom.

You remember, of course, how that almost every time a martyr died in the Colosseum, there were spectators who were converted to Christ because of it. So much so that Tertullian, one of the early church writers, said that the blood of the martyrs falls down, 12 converts are made to come and fill the ranks, and pointing out that the church was actually conquering the world by suffering, conquering by laying their lives down, even as Revelation 12, 11 says. Revelation 12, 11, talking about how Satan persecuted the church, it says, but they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives even to the death.

In other words, through experiencing martyrdom and allowing their lives to be laid down, they actually gained the victory. So Paul can say, even though we're being slaughtered for being Christian, and though we could say it's not because we've sinned, it doesn't confuse us because we see that Jesus didn't sin and he was slaughtered, yet his death spelled out some very mysterious victories that in the natural we wouldn't understand, but they had to do with the spiritual realm. Therefore, though we are experiencing outward slaughter, outward defeat, it would appear, yet we are experiencing inward victories, and spiritual victories are happening in all these things.

That is, in all this persecution that we're experiencing, we are nonetheless conquerors. We're more than conquerors, because we're conquering the tendency and the temptation to be discouraged, for one thing, and besides that, we're conquering the world through our laying down our lives for the gospel's sake. So he says in another place, which is, by the way, 2 Corinthians chapter 4, and verse, so let me see, probably verse 16, but let me check it out here.

2 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 16, he says, for which cause we faint not, but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. So, in 2 Corinthians 4, verses 16 and 17, he says, even though our outward man is perishing, we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter every day, nonetheless, even though every day our outward man is perishing somewhat more, our inner man day by day has been renewed.

There's something positive happening in this spirit, and even though we have a light affliction, now he was being optimistic when he called it light, because he described some of his afflictions in 2 Corinthians as being rather severe, but by comparison to the glory that they are working for us, he said, they are quite light, and therefore he could speak of our light affliction being only for a moment, or for a short period of time, and they work for us an eternal and exceeding weight of glory. So, Paul has the answer to this question here, why are we suffering like this? Not because God is displeased with us, but because this is one of God's ways of getting other kinds of victories. God has mysterious ways.

My ways are not your ways, he said in the Old Testament, but he explained what his ways were through Jesus. He said, I am the way, the truth, and the light. In the Old Testament, they didn't understand the ways of God quite as much.

There were some great mysteries to God's dealings, and this psalm expresses some of the confusion over it. Why, even though we're righteous, are we not having the victory in the external? Because there was a deeper one of the ways of God, the way to spiritual victories through the blood of the martyrs, through the death and apparent defeat of righteous men. Those who suffer for righteousness' sake have something to rejoice about, Jesus said, and are blessed.

And that is a spiritual reality which was not demonstrated clearly to man until Jesus died on the cross, the ultimate righteous man being slaughtered and suffering what appeared to be defeat, but was actually getting the greatest victory that could ever be imagined for humanity. And the principle of the cross, then, is the principle of conquering through dying, conquering through suffering. And it's a mystery, but Paul explains it.

He quotes this very verse, which, of course, by quoting this verse, he's calling to mind the whole issues in this whole psalm. What are the issues here? The issues were that the Jews at this time were suffering for God's sake, even though they were not doing anything wrong, and there were questions in their minds as to what this all means. Why is it happening? Searching for deeper answers.

Paul, in quoting this about the church, shows that what was true of Israel in the past is now true of the church. The church has taken up the baton, so to speak, or the torch, to carry it on where Israel left off, and we are now suffering for his name's sake. But unlike them, he says, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

Now, that's Romans 8, 36 and 37, that he quotes this and says that in it we're more than conquerors. So, I find that an interesting development on this psalm that Paul makes in Romans, and it shows that there are some deeper issues, some other kinds of victories God is gaining by what appears to be outward defeats among his people. Now, as far as we could say, well, what kind of victories was God getting through the defeat of the Jews in this case? I don't know, but we know that when Paul quotes this about the church, that there are some very solid things that are gained by the suffering of the church, and by their laying down their lives, and loving not their lives unto the death.

That's how they overcame him. That is the devil. Now, the last four verses of the psalm are a petition to God, and may also give another answer to the question, perhaps one that we need to consider for the church as well.

The last four verses say, Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord? Arise, cast us not off forever. Wherefore, hidest thou thy face, and forgetest not, I'm sorry, forgetest our affliction and our oppression. For our soul is bowed down to the dust, our belly cleaveth unto the earth.

Arise for our help, and redeem us for thy mercy's sake. Now, what they're saying here is, Wake up, God. Now, how do they wake him up? By crying unto him.

Now, it's not true, of course, that God is really asleep. The Bible says, He that keeps Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps. But the idea is that God seems to be asleep, and many times the metaphor is used in the scripture of God actually being asleep.

And though he's not asleep, yet it's as though his activity toward us has ceased, even as a man's activities cease when he goes to sleep. And to stir him from his sleep, or that is to stir him to activity by prayer, is what's suggested here. There is an interesting corollary to this.

Verse 23, Awake, why sleepest thou, Lord? Arise, cast us not off forever. Reminds us perhaps of Mark 4, 38, where the disciples had Jesus sleeping in the boat, and the great storm was overflowing them. He said, Wake up, Lord.

Don't you care about us? Awake, O Lord. Deliver us. Same kind of plea here, in a similar kind of situation, where they were facing possibly death, and yet God, who was close enough to help, seemed to be asleep, and they couldn't figure out why he was asleep.

And so they stirred him, and it worked. When the disciples woke up Jesus, he said to the storm, Peace, be still. And it was still.

And so their calling on him and arousing him, basically stirring him to activity, was fruitful. Here, we don't know what the result of the whole thing was, but it's clear that they are stirring God. They're waking him up.

And I believe that sometimes, well, if we take this along with Isaiah, there's a scripture in Isaiah that gives, I think, an interesting corollary to this, if I can find it quickly. Isaiah 62, verse 1, and also verses 6 and 7. Isaiah 62, 1, and verses 6 and 7. Verse 1, the prophet says, For Zion's sake I will not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth. Then it says in verse 6, God is speaking.

He says, I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night. Ye that make mention of the Lord keep not silence, give him no rest till he establish, until he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. Now, what is that talking about? It's saying that God has set up watchmen, or people who are intercessors, is really what it is.

People who keep awake. People who give themselves no rest. They stay awake at night like watchmen on the walls.

And the prophet himself was one of them. He says in verse 1, I will not rest. I will not hold my peace until God accomplishes what I'm desiring to do.

That is that he makes the righteousness of Jerusalem go forth as brightness, until he makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth. Now, and then the command is given by God. God says in verse 6, I have set these watchmen in your midst, Jerusalem, who will pray.

They will not give me any rest. They won't let me sleep, in other words. They're going to keep asking until I do it.

And he actually says to those watchmen, ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence and give him no rest until he establish, until he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. That is until God's victories are complete and until the city of God has taken dominion and all the foes have been put down and all God's enemies are put under his feet. Until that time, there must be prayer warriors.

There must be intercessors who don't keep silent. They don't stop praying. They give God no rest.

They keep stirring in factivity. And the indication there is that if these watchmen stop praying, then God will sleep. Not really sleep, but you know, he won't act.

It'll be as though he's sleeping. So he's saying, stir me, wake me. Don't let me have any rest, God is saying.

Now when we get back to Psalm 44, where we were, we find him saying, wake up Lord. And they cry unto him. And perhaps part of the answer to the question, why are we suffering when we haven't done anything wrong, is that it's not just that they haven't done anything wrong, but there's something right that they haven't done.

It's not that they've done something that was sinful. It's that they've neglected something that was needful. And that was to stir God by prayer, to intercede, and to give him no rest.

Finally, they get down to it, they say, wake up. And we might suggest from Isaiah's point of view, that if they'd been waking God up more, if they'd been spending more time in intercessory prayer, that perhaps their results of their battle would have been different. It's not that they've done any particular thing for which they need to be ashamed.

It's simply that they did not prevail in intercession, and in prayer, and keeping God stirred and aroused to their aid. God waits for us to cry to him. And I believe that if we don't cry to him, he'll wait a long time.

In the meantime, we'll be experiencing defeats on every hand, and the church will be suffering the reproach of the heathen. And they'll be saying, where is my God? And they'll be causing the church to not only be defeated, but demoralized. And we'll look at ourselves and say, well, what am I doing wrong? I'm not doing anything wrong.

My life is clean. I pay my tithes. I don't commit sins.

I'm not out stealing or committing adultery. Why is not God coming to our aid? Perhaps because we aren't stirring him and rousing him by our incessant prayers. Watchmen are people who lose sleep, people who pray day and night.

And that's exactly what the New Testament tells us we're supposed to be doing. In Ephesians chapter 6, in fact, which is the description of our spiritual armor in our spiritual warfare, prayer is mentioned as a significant weapon. And there's something said about it that connects it to the thoughts we're talking about right now.

In Ephesians 6, beginning with verse 17, it says, And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Now, he's begun to talk in this way. First, he gives the last bit of armor.

Then he starts talking about weapons, spiritual weapons. The sword of the Spirit is the word of God or the preaching of the word. The next weapon is in verse 18, Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit and watching thereunto.

Watching means losing sleep, being a watchman. Watching thereunto, that is losing sleep for prayer. Watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplications for all saints.

That's one of our weapons, incessant, watchful, sleepless prayer. Now, he doesn't indicate that just saying our prayers before we go to bed or saying our prayers before our meals is the kind of praying he's talking about here in warfare. Those prayers have validity.

To say a prayer, to thank God before your meals or to pray in short prayers about different things, there's nothing wrong with that, but that's not warfare praying. He said we take the sword of the Spirit to slash at the enemy. And the next piece of weaponry we need is our praying, but it's not just ordinary shooting up a prayer now and then, but it's incessant, it's continual.

It's praying at all times and watching thereunto, that is losing sleep for it. Nights of prayer, watchmen on the walls who give themselves no rest so that they can give God no rest until he establishes Jerusalem of praise in the earth. And that is perhaps one of the other answers to the question of why no victories? So, I believe the psalm suggests possibly two answers, at least when we compare them to New Testament counterparts.

The psalm 44, which asks the question, why are all the defeats in spite of the fact that we're living a clean life and we're trying to be loyal to God, is answered partly by Paul in Romans 8, as we mentioned, 8, 36, and 37, that our outward defeats are in a sense another kind of victory at times, but that doesn't refer to all the kinds of defeats we're talking about. Another thing is that there are defeats that are not in the will of God for us. There are defeats that aren't really victories, and those defeats could be perhaps avoided if we would do more warfare in prayer, more incessant praying, and commit ourselves to lose sleep and meals and other things in order to do it.

You know, as long as prayer is just convenient for us, it doesn't cost anything, we really don't become all that fervent about it. We do become fervent in time. I know myself that I can have a real fervent hour of prayer, and then I go and eat, you know, or just go to bed, and it's almost like that fervency just kind of dissipates, but if I spend an hour of prayer, and then it comes time to eat, and I say, I'm not going to eat, I'm going to keep praying, or it comes time to go to bed and say, I'm not going to go to bed, I'm going to just keep on praying.

That makes the prayer the more fervent, because it's the more costly. It costs us something to continue praying that way, and it's just like in war, you know, you make sacrifices. No man that warreth, Paul said, entangles himself in the matters of this life, so that he might continually please Him that has called him to be a soldier.

That is to say, when a soldier's out at war, he doesn't get involved in civilian pursuits at the same time. He dedicates himself solely to the battle, and so warfare praying, I believe, requires certain sacrifices to be made, and when God sees that we're willing to put aside some of our fleshly indulgences in order to devote ourselves to prayer, then He sees that something that should be taken seriously by Him, because it clearly is taken seriously by us. But when He sees that we don't take our prayers that seriously, then why should He? Why should He take our requests seriously when He doubts that we take them seriously? And even though we might have a lot of emotion in our praying on occasions, if our prayers never cost a thing, or if we're never willing to miss some kind of bodily indulgence in order to spend a night in prayer, or whatever, a day in prayer, then God can see exactly how much these prayers mean or don't mean to us, and by the amount of sacrifices we're willing to make to prevail in it.

And that perhaps is one of the great lacks that we have today, and I'm no exception. I don't very often lose a night's sleep to pray. It's not even as often as it used to be that I even fast all day and pray, although I'm trying to get back into that on a more of a regular schedule.

Okay, well maybe we can see a deficiency that needs attention there, and some give us some hope for more victories. Let's go to Psalm 46. Psalm 45 we covered almost the first day.

In fact, it was the first day when we were talking about Messianic Psalms, and we skip now to Psalm 46. This psalm is fantastic, at least depending on how much of a vision you have for the city of God. There is a refrain in this one also, a refrain that repeats itself in verse 7 and verse 11.

The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge, Selah. And also in verse 11, the Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge, Selah. So, this is the repeated theme.

God is our place of safety. Now, the word refuge there, by the way, is not the same word in the Hebrew in verses 7 and 11, it's not the same word as in verse 1, where it says God is our refuge. God is our refuge in verse 1 simply means He's our safe place, but the word refuge is a different Hebrew word in 7 and in 11.

And the Hebrew word for that in those places, it means an inaccessible height. We might say a high tower. The New English Bible translates it, our high stronghold, but speaks of how God has elevated us to a place that's inaccessible to the enemy.

He is our hiding place. He is our high tower, our high refuge, inaccessible to the reach of the enemy. And it reminds us perhaps of Ephesians chapter 1, verses 20 through 21, which describes Jesus as being exalted to the right hand of God far above all principalities and powers and the rulers of this world and so forth.

Jesus has been exalted to a high place out of the reach of the principalities and powers. And then in the next chapter of Ephesians, in Ephesians 2, in verse 6, we're told that He has raised us up and caused us to sit with Christ in heavenly places, which means that if Jesus has been taken and seated in an inaccessible height above the powers of the demons and so forth, and if we are seated with Him in heavenly places, then we are also experiencing the invulnerability that He experiences. God is our inaccessible height that is inaccessible to the enemy.

Those verses in Ephesians, if you didn't get them in your notes and if you want them, are Ephesians 1, verses 20 through 21, and Ephesians 2, verse 6. This, by the way, was the psalm that inspired Martin Luther to write his great hymn, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. Now, there's not a whole lot of that hymn in this psalm, but at least the psalm was sprungboard from this. This psalm inspired him to write it.

And what this psalm actually is, as I read it, it is a description of the confident composure of the city of God in a tumultuous world. At the beginning, we have the world turbulent, turbulent like the waves of the sea, yet we see placidness, peacefulness in the city of God, which, of course, in the Old Testament, the city of God refers to Jerusalem. In the New Testament, the same term is used in Hebrews 12, 22 to refer to the church.

So, it's a spiritual community. The city of God is not just the earthly Jerusalem, it is the spiritual community of God's people, which we are all a part of. And so, we see the world in tumult, a world in turbulence, like a raging, stormy sea, but the city of God sitting safely, securely, confidently in great composure, in great peace, in the midst of all this turmoil.

Let's read the psalm, then I'll make certain comments about it. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore, will we not fear, though the earth be moved, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea, though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.

Selah. There is a river, the streams of which shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the high tabernacles of the Most High. God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved.

God shall help her in that right early. The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved. He uttered his voice and the earth melted.

The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge, our high tower, our inaccessible height. Selah.

That's the refrain. Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations he hath made in the earth. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth and breaketh the bow and cutteth the spear in sunder or in half.

He burneth the chariot in the fire. Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the heathen.

I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge.

Now, there's a lot in this. Let me just break it down into pieces for the sake of better understanding. He states his confidence that God is our refuge and our strength and our help in time of trouble in verse one.

Then he describes how we are composed and without fear in spite of the great changes that take place in the world around us. He describes it metaphorically as the removal of the earth or as the mountains being thrown into the sea. So these things don't really happen literally.

Nonetheless, although of course such things will happen, it's the second coming of Christ. But figuratively, such things happen. Kingdoms rise and fall.

Great changes happen in the political and the social arena of the world's affairs. And with all the changes, there's one thing that never changes. The city of God that it says shall not be moved in verse five.

It won't be moved in spite of the fact that the earth is moved. The city of God doesn't move with the earth. The city of God is more stable than the earth.

The city of God is eternal. The Bible says the world passeth away, but they that do the will of God abide forever. That's 1 John 2, 17.

So though the world be removed, the city of God is not moved. The waters of this sea roar and are troubled and shake the mountains with the swelling thereof. But it doesn't scare us, it says in verse two and three.

Therefore, we will not fear in spite of these things. Why? Because God is our refuge. We are trusting in him.

And it says there is a river. Now, the water that's been mentioned so far has been the raging waters of the sea, representing probably the tumultuous world around us. But the water in the city of God is like a river, a peaceful river.

The sound of it just brings cheer and gladness to us. Now, this river could be referred to in Revelation 22 in the description of the new Jerusalem with a river that comes out from the throne of God. Throughout the Old Testament and some of the prophetic passages of the New, there are references to a river of peace or a river of God's blessing or one thing or another.

Rivers are sometimes used as symbolic of one thing or another. Peace like a river is referred to in Isaiah, and there's other things that rivers may symbolize. It's referring here to the fact that God refreshes his people.

There's water raging outside the city like torrential waves of a stormy sea, but inside the city, the water is the refreshing springs that God gives us to give us refreshment and joy. There's a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High. Our bodies are tabernacles, our temple is the Holy Spirit, and the city of God, the church, is the holy place of the tabernacles that we are all parts of, of the Most High God.

God is in the midst of her, that is, in the midst of the church, in the midst of the city of God. She shall not be moved. God shall help her in that right early.

In the Hebrew, literally, it means in that when the morning appears, perhaps meaning the second coming of Christ, which is sometimes compared to a morning, or perhaps just meaning sorrow endures for an evening but joy comes in the morning, meaning that there's trouble for a little while, but God comes to the aid before long. The heathen rage, the kingdoms were moved. This reminds us of Psalm 2. Why do the heathen rage? Why do the kings of the earth, they imagine a vain thing and seek to overthrow God.

Well, we see the nations raging and bringing all their wrath against the city of God, but God, all God has to do is utter his voice and the earth melts. That's why we can be composed. It doesn't even look like God has to just, you know, muster all his armies and run out to battle against the heathen.

All he has to do is speak, and not only do they get defeated, the whole earth they stand on melts. This is a picture that is drawn for us also in Revelation 20, where at the end of, or about the middle of Revelation 20, there's a description of Satan leading the armies of the world against the city of God, the beloved city, which I take to be the church in that passage, and it speaks of the persecution of the church at the end of the age, in my opinion, and it mentions that though they gather around the city of God, fire from heaven comes and consumes them, and then the earth passes away and melts away, and that could be referred to here also. The heathen were raging, the kingdoms were moved, that is, they're coming against the city of God to try to overthrow it, the persecution of the church is here mentioned, but when God utters his voice, even the earth melts.

Fire from heaven at the second coming of Jesus Christ melts the enemies and their earth, and then comes a new heaven and a new earth. Then we have the proclamation of God being our refuge in verse 7. Now, in verse 8, he actually is inviting the reader to behold what God has done in the victory. It's as though he stands on the other side of the judgment.

God has judged. Now, God has uttered his voice. The earth has melted.

Now we can look back and see the desolations that he has brought. We can see how the nations have been totally conquered, how their swords have been beaten into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks, as Isaiah tells us in Isaiah chapter 11, Isaiah chapter 2, talks about how they will beat their swords into plowshares, that is, their weapons are transformed into implements of farming. Here we see the destruction of the weapons of war.

He makes wars to cease, verse 9, unto the end of the earth. He breaks the bow, he cuts the spear in half, he burns up the chariot, the various weapons of war he destroys them. He causes an end to war.

That's what Jesus actually does, both ultimately at his second coming, and in a sense, even among us, he's done that already by his first coming. He is to us a prince of peace. He's caused us to lay down our weapons.

We're now not fighting, we're farming. We're not out to kill, we're out to heal. We're out to cultivate, to cultivate people, to plant seeds of the kingdom of God.

So he has already taken our swords and beaten them into plowshares. He's taken away the aggressive, warlike nature that we had and made us those who want to cultivate others and spread the kingdom of God like seed throughout the whole world. So there's a sense in which this has already been accomplished in the church spiritually at the first coming of Christ, but will be literally, physically, taking place when Jesus returns.

Then a real end to all wars and an end to all weapons will be seen. Now, verse 10 is often quoted, be still and know that I am God. We usually quote it with reference to our own hearts, like we need to still ourselves, quiet our hearts before God just to sort of meditate on him.

In fact, that probably isn't the meaning here, though it could be applied that way secondarily. Here it seems to be like this is God speaking to the turbulent waves of the nation. He's telling them, be still, just as Jesus stood up in the boat and said to the waves in the wind, be still, peace, be still.

He spoke to the waves and they subsided. Here the nations and their turbulence has already been described metaphorically as waves of the sea and billows and so forth, moving the mountains and shaking the earth. And now he comes and he speaks a word.

Remember, he spoke the word and the earth melted. He has full control over the situation by the very power of his spoken word, the same power that created the heavens and the earth. He can dissolve them with the word and he can speak to those nations and say, be still, just like Jesus spoke to the waves of the sea and they had to obey him.

When Jesus comes, he can calm and still the turbulent nations from their riotousness. He says, I'm going to be exalted among the nations. The word heathen could be translated nation.

So be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the heathen. I will be exalted in the earth.

That is God's determination. God is going to get glory in all parts of the earth. And that is his boast and his command to the nations to be still and to know that he is God, to stop their churning.

Now, as I said, secondarily, that could be applied to us, to stop the chaotic turbulence of conflicting emotions and so forth that race around in our heads and to just calm down and wait on God and know his power, meditate on him in the stillness of quiet meditation on him. At any rate, we see here that there is confident composure in the city of God in spite of a tumultuous world. And that I believe is the theme of this psalm.

So we're going to have to take a break. I'm already running late on that. So we'll just break at this point and come back to Psalm 47 afterward.