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

Psalms — Steve Gregg

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

PsalmsSteve Gregg

In this section of his presentation, Steve Gregg delves into Psalms 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 54, and 55, offering insights into their meaning and significance. He highlights the theme of God's sovereignty and the importance of singing praises to Him. Gregg also discusses the concept of the city of God, which he believes applies to the Christian community on earth rather than just Jerusalem. Other topics he touches on include the perils of material wealth, the need for understanding, and the bitterness of unresolved conflicts.

Transcript

Let's turn to the Psalms again, this time to Psalm 47. And I would like to move through these Psalms without too much unnecessary comment, but of course not skipping over any helpful comments. This one is short.

It says, Clap your hands, all ye people. Shout unto God with the voice of triumph. For the Lord Most High is terrible.

He is the King over all the earth. He shall subdue the people under us and the nations under our feet. He shall choose our inheritance for us.

The excellency of Jacob, whom he loved. God has gone up with a shout. The Lord with the sound of a trumpet.

Sing praises to God. Sing praises. Sing praises unto our King.

Sing praises. Sing praises. Sing praises.

For God is King over all the earth, or of all the earth. Sing praises with understanding. God reigneth over the heathen.

God sitteth upon the throne of His holiness. The princes of the people were gathered together, or are gathered together. Even the people of the God of Abraham.

For the shields of earth belong to God. He is greatly exalted. Well, this is obviously a celebrating song.

Celebrating victory, really. Although not a complete victory already won, but one anticipated. He says in verse 4 that God shall subdue our... or verse 3, He shall subdue the people under us and the nations under our feet.

Looking forward to the subduing of all the other nations under the feet of God's people. Of course, the Bible indicates we're going to reign with Him and that's why it speaks of them being subdued under our feet. That the people of God are going to reign with Christ apparently over the nations.

Now, this was of course the Jewish hope also. They looked forward to all the nations being subdued under them as a Jewish people. But we realize now that really it's under Christ that all the nations have to come under subjection, not under the Jews themselves.

When it says, clap your hands all you people, it could be a matter of celebrating the king becoming king. That is, God becoming the king. In 2 Kings 11-12, people clap their hands at a coronation of the king.

2 Kings 11-12. The clapping of the hands had to do with sort of clapping him into office or celebrating his coronation. And that is probably what's referred to here.

And shouting unto God with a voice of victory or of triumph. Now, that God is the king over all the earth is mentioned in verse 2. Not only over Israel, but over the whole earth, God is king. It says also in verse 8, God reigns over the heathen.

Not over the Israelites only, but over the Gentiles as well. So, this is a psalm about God's sovereignty and about His way of performing His sovereign purposes. It might have seemed strange in verse 2 where it says, The Lord Most High is terrible.

But the word terrible simply means awesome. Really, it's an awesome thing, His great sovereignty and the way He controls history as He does. And that really no one can challenge Him and hope to overthrow His will.

It's an awesome thing. And He's a great king over all the earth. He is in the process of subduing the nations under our feet.

I believe that is being done today through the preaching of the gospel. The nations, not necessarily as political entities, but the Gentiles as individual people are coming under the rulership of Jesus, which is, of course, expressed through the church today. The government of God is manifest in the church today.

So, in a sense, they're coming under our feet. When it says He shall choose our inheritance for us, the Excellency of Jacob, whom He loved, the term Excellency of Jacob probably refers to the land itself, the land of Israel. And saying essentially that God will choose in the sense that He will secure it for them, their inheritance.

Make sure that all their enemies don't challenge their claim to it. God has gone up with a shout. This is very possibly a reference to how God used to rise up in the cloud over the tabernacle when He was about to move them through the wilderness.

And the people would shout and blow the trumpet. And say, let God arise and His enemies be scattered. And they'd move on to follow the cloud through the wilderness.

Or it's also possible that it's a reference to the Ark of the Covenant ascending Mount Zion when David took the Ark from its former location in the home of Obed-Edom into Jerusalem. And it went up the hill. The Ark went up.

God went up in a sense. Because His presence was always associated with the Ark. That's what He intended for the Ark to represent.

So, He's gone up with a shout. Certainly when David brought the Ark into Jerusalem, there was a much shouting and celebration that took place. It says God, it says, then the repetition in verses 6 and 7, sing praises, sing praises, sing praises, and sing praises.

Four times. In the Hebrew, it's just one word that means sing praises. There's a single word which causes it to have more of a staccato kind of effect.

It's a real emphatic, real rapid sort of movement. Sing praises to God. Sing praises.

Sing praises to our King. Then it says, for God is King over all the earth. He's called our King in verse 6. Meaning the King of the people of God, of the Jews.

Sing praises, but He's also King over all the earth. In another sense perhaps, but nonetheless true. And the final sing praises in verse 7 is sing praises with understanding.

In other words, not just mindless praises. Not just verbalizing words that have no meaning to us. And that's why Paul, even when he was talking about praying in the Spirit and praying in the understanding, he was talking about tongues.

And he was talking about the need to both pray in tongues and in your own language. There's a value in both. He said, I will pray in the Spirit and I will pray with the understanding also.

I will sing with the Spirit and I will sing with the understanding also. Here it says, sing ye praises with the understanding. So he says, I will sing with the understanding.

That's in 1 Corinthians 14, 15. So there's a need to have intelligent worship. It's an intelligent thing.

It's not just something where we get ourselves into a frenzy by chanting certain formulas of praise. Praise God! Praise God! Praise God! Praise God! I've known a group that did that very thing. I won't name them because they're sort of a fringe group, quasi-cult and somewhat... They might have enough Christian characteristics to be considered true Christians, but they're very cultic in many respects.

And one of their things that they do is they chant the word and say, O Lord Jesus! O Lord Jesus! And they'll do that over and over again 20, 30 times or they'll chant some other scripture or something like that. And to them that's powerful, but to me that sounds like it could be vain repetitions at least could get dangerously close to it. And it becomes something where they work themselves up into a frenzy by chanting rather than really intelligently uttering praises that have to do with God's goodness.

Our praises are supposed to have something to do with reality. That is to say, if we're praising God, we're praising Him for some specific reality, because He's good or because He's done some wonderful thing. But there's a mental awareness of God's praiseworthiness that should be behind our praises.

And the words of our praise should be something that have meaning to us with the possible exception of when we pray in tongues. And of course the Bible indicates our understanding is unfruitful in such cases. But if we were only praying in tongues and never in our own language, then we would lack something too.

That's why Paul said, I will do both. I'll pray with the spirit and I'll pray with the understanding also. Because God wants our minds and not just our spirits.

He wants our whole man. He wants us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind. And so when we praise God, it's good to have our mind praising Him as well as just our mouths or maybe our emotions or something.

It refers again to Him reigning over the heathen, sitting on the throne of His holiness. And then it says in verse 9, the princes of the people are gathered together. Now this probably means the princes of the people that have been mentioned earlier, that is the heathen.

Though sometimes the word people is a specific title for the Jews. It says, even the people of the God of Abraham. Now that would seem to mean that the people were the Jews.

However, not necessarily. Since God is the king over all the earth, then the God of Abraham is the God of all peoples. And certainly this thought is developed more fully in the New Testament by Paul in Romans chapter 4 and in Galatians chapter 3 where Paul tells us that really all who believe like Abraham believed are the people of Abraham.

They are the children of Abraham. So that the people, the princes of the earth really could be referred to here rather than just the princes of Israel are gathered together and all the people of the earth who gather to God are the people of the God of Abraham. The people of Abraham and His God.

For the shields of earth belong to God, which simply must mean that He has conquered His enemies and taken their weapons and their shields away. He's taken their defenses away. He's greatly exalted.

So just a psalm about sovereignty. About God's total power over the heathen, over the whole earth and His great victories which no one could stop Him in. Now Psalm 48, like Psalm 46, is about the city of God.

Psalm 46 talked about the complacency and confidence in the city of God in spite of it changing and turbulent world, but this is talking about the beauty and the awesomeness of the city of God. And how that it puts the enemies to fear when they behold the great defenses of the city of God. Now this was uttered of course about literal city of Jerusalem and its great walls and its great fortresses and so forth.

But we could also see spiritual applications perhaps to how the enemy trembles. The Bible says the demons believe and tremble. I believe the devil is terrified by the great defenses that the church has.

Namely, God is our defense. The name of the Lord is our strong power. The weapons of our warfare are the shield of faith and so forth.

These things which are our defenses, the city of God today, the church, has tremendous weapons which can put the enemy in fear and put him to flight even as the enemies here are described as being put to flight by just the strength, the obvious strength of the walls and the bulwarks of the city of God. I'm not saying the enemy flees all the time from the church because sometimes the church isn't even aware of its own security. Sometimes Christians are totally unaware of their resources in God.

But I believe the devil trembles at the thought of a Christian who is in the spirit and is aware of what his resources are against the enemy. And the enemy can see them clearly enough and I believe he trembles in fear about them. It says, Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God.

In the mountain of his holiness, beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth is Mount Zion. On the sides of the north, the city of the great king. This expression, the city of the great king, is used by Jesus in Matthew 25, 35.

I'm sorry, Matthew 5, 35. In the Sermon on the Mount, when he said you should not swear by heaven because that's God's throne nor by earth because it's his footstool, neither by the city of Jerusalem because that's the city of the great king. So Jesus identified Jerusalem as the city of the great king.

That is in his day. He had not yet set up the spiritual Jerusalem. He had not died and rose from the dead.

But later on when he anticipated really, even in the same sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, he anticipated a time when the church would be the city of God because he said to his disciples, you are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid, implying that they were like a city that was set on a hill. His disciples were the heavenly community and perhaps there was a hint there that they would become the city of the great king themselves, although at that time Jerusalem was.

Later on, of course, we know from other New Testament texts, Galatians 4, which says, but Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all, and Hebrews 12 22 talks about Zion and the city of God being the church. We know that what is said of the city of God here, though it applied to Jerusalem at one time, applies now to us as the Christian community in the earth. Now, this is familiar to some of you because the words have been put to music.

However, I know there's a real naiveness about some who've read this where it says, beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth. Some have believed that's talking about God. God is beautiful for situation and the joy of the whole earth.

As though it were saying, you know, God is in every situation, He's beautiful. But that's not what it's talking about. It's talking about Mount Zion, as it's clearly said.

Is Mount Zion is what it says there. It's talking about, it first tells us how great the Lord is and how greatly to be praised He is, and it ends up on that note too in verse 14, for this God is our God forever and ever, and He will be our guide even to death. The greatness of God is at the beginning and the end of the psalm.

But the psalm itself, the body of it, is about the city in which God resides. Today He resides in His church. He dwells in His people.

In those days He was viewed as living in Jerusalem. So, it first speaks of Him, then of His city, and then it speaks at length of His city. It says, God is greatly to be praised in the mountain of His holiness, in the city of our God.

Now, the city of our God is beautiful for situation, or some translations have changed that to elevation. It's Jerusalem, built on Mount Zion, is in a beautiful, elevated spot, and it's the joy of the whole earth. Not yet, but He views a time when the whole earth will be flowing into the city of God, which is spoken of more clearly in Isaiah chapter 2, which we'll study before very long.

We'll get to Isaiah in a couple of weeks. Okay. Then it says concerning, in verse 3, God is known in her palaces for a refuge.

That is, in the palaces of the city of God, God is known. For, lo, the kings were assembled. They passed by together.

They saw it, and they marveled. They were troubled and hasted away. Fear took hold upon them there, and pain as of a woman in travail.

Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish with an east wind. Now, He's saying, essentially, that the enemies, when they see these great bulwarks, these great fortresses of the city of God, they tremble, and they flee in fear. Whether that literally happened to anyone or not is questionable, but basically, it's just verbally praising the great awesomeness of the city itself, and how the enemies must, their hearts must sink at the thought of trying to defeat that tremendous fortress from Citadel.

It says in verse 8, As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord, of hosts, in the city of our God, God will establish it forever. That is, He's saying the enemies flee from it, even as we've heard, so we've seen. Remember back in Psalm 44, they were talking about having heard.

I have heard what God did in times past, but in Psalm 44, they weren't seeing it. And they were wondering why they weren't seeing it. Why have we heard it, but we haven't seen it? We've heard that God did these in the past, why don't we see Him doing it today? Well, here, the psalmist has a different perspective.

They have not only heard of God doing such things, they have also seen God doing such things. Maybe not literally, people running away from the walls when they see them for fear of them, but literally, the walls and the fortress of Jerusalem deflecting enemies in battle, and the enemies having to eventually flee. Then it says, verse 9, We have thought of thy loving kindness, O God, in the midst of thy temple.

According to thy name, O God, so is thy praise unto the ends of the earth. Now, God's name could refer to His character, or His own self, really. And just as God is Himself in all the earth, so also said His praise shall be in all the earth.

This reminds us that His glory and the knowledge of His glory is going to fill the earth as the waters cover the sea. Just as God is present in all the earth, so His praise is uttered throughout the earth. Thy right hand is full of righteousness.

Let Mount Zion rejoice. Let the daughters of Judah be glad. The daughters of Judah probably refers to the cities of Judah.

The daughters of the capital city, Jerusalem. Daughter cities. Because of thy judgments.

Walk about Zion and go about her. Tell the towers thereof, or count them, really. Mark ye well her bulwarks.

Consider her palaces that she may tell it to the generation following. For this God is our God forever and ever. He will be our guide even unto death.

So, finally we're told that we ought to walk around Jerusalem and take a look at those fortresses. Take a look at those walls. Just see how secure that city is.

And I suppose if we want to add the spiritual side to that for us, it would mean that we have to take stock of the great resources God has given to us and the great safety. Our safety against the enemy is not literal walls. Although, in Isaiah it does talk about the city having walls that are called salvation.

In the New Testament we are told of having a helmet of salvation and the breastplate of righteousness and the shield of faith. And these are the defenses that God has built for us against the enemy and handed over to us. And we need to walk about or take stock of them.

If we're not aware of them, we obviously won't be able to use them. We will be terrified when there's nothing to fear. We will be cowering and retreating when we should be advancing and confident because we have not taken inventory of the walls and the towers and the great defenses that God has provided for us.

Now we're going to go on to Psalm 49. Hear this, all ye people. Give ear, all ye inhabitants of the world, both low and high, rich and poor together.

My mouth shall speak of wisdom, and my meditation, or the meditation of my heart shall be of understanding. In other words, this is going to be another wisdom psalm. We saw that Psalm 37 was what we could call a wisdom piece of wisdom literature like Proverbs is.

So this is going to have a lot akin to Proverbs. We're going to in fact see a lot akin to Ecclesiastes in it as well. But he says, My mouth shall speak of wisdom, the meditation of my heart shall be of understanding.

I will incline mine ear to a parable. I will open my dark seine upon the harp. Wherefore should I fear in the days of evil, when the iniquity of my heels shall come past me about? They that trust in their wealth, and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches, none of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him.

For the redemption of their soul is precious, and it ceaseth forever. That it should still live forever, and not see corruption. Now this is an interesting statement.

It's saying basically if you are trusting in your riches, one thing you need to realize is that your riches can't save you from decay. They can't redeem your life from destruction. Being rich won't save you from death.

Riches don't save from death. And it reminds us of 1st Peter 1, 18 and 19 which says that God has redeemed us, which is the same word used here. God has redeemed us not with corruptible things as silver and gold from our vain conversation, received by tradition from our fathers, but by the precious blood of Jesus Christ.

Man cannot redeem himself with riches. He can't arrange for his eternal life by riches. And God didn't even arrange for our eternal life through riches.

He didn't redeem us with silver and gold, such things as that, but he did so with the blood of Christ. And the recognition of the inadequacy of riches to redeem a man's life is very nicely put in verses 6-9 here. And the passage in 1st Peter that I mentioned was 1st Peter 1, 18 and 19.

Verse 10, For he seeth that wise men die likewise the fool and the brutish person perish and leave their wealth to others. We saw that this resembles Ecclesiastes and also it resembles Psalm 39, verses 5 and 6. Their inward thought is that their houses shall continue forever, and their dwelling places to all generations. They call their lands after their own names.

Nevertheless, man being in honor abideth not. He is like the beasts that perish. This their way is their folly, or their foolishness, yet their posterity approve of their sayings.

Now what it's saying here is that those who trust in their riches are living in a fool's paradise. They're deceived. They are incapable with their riches of redeeming their brother's soul, or even their own soul from death or from corruption.

Nonetheless, they act and think as though they're going to live forever. Now it says in verse 10 that they do see that wise men die just like foolish men die. They do see people dying.

Nonetheless, in spite of what they see around them, they seem to ignore that fact, and their inward thought is that they will be the exception. You know, people tend to think that way, especially people who take risks, but even people who don't. They seem to think that even though others have died, it just seems like it'll never happen to me.

Now no one really rationally thinks they'll never die. Everyone knows that they'll someday die, but it just never occurs to them that they'll die any time soon. Other people die young.

Other people get in car accidents. Other people's sins catch up to them early or even late. But usually the sinner is the one who's taken the gamble that it won't happen to him.

And here the wisdom rider is saying they see other men die. They see that wise men and fools alike die, and they end up having to leave their money to other people. But they don't think it's going to happen to them.

Inwardly, they just are living under the conviction that it won't happen to them. Their houses will continue forever. They're dwelling places to all generations.

They even call their lands by their own names as though that's going to keep them alive, that the lands bear their names and the lands obviously will continue. Nevertheless, it says even though if a man is in honor, he does not last. He abides not.

He's like the animals that perish. Animals and people perish alike. And it says this, their way is folly, in verse 13.

That is, they are foolishly ignoring reality. Nonetheless, it says, yet their posterity, their children approve of their sayings. That means their children don't learn from their mistakes.

The rich man should be able to learn from other people's mistakes. He could see that other people have died before him and had to leave their money to others. Their money didn't save them.

But he doesn't see that. He ignores that fact and he lives out his life and he perishes too. And his children who should have seen that and learned from it, they don't learn from it either.

They just approve of his whole lifestyle and go the same way he did. So, he's showing the unteachableness of man, how that man doesn't learn from other people's mistakes as he should and ends up making the same ones himself. Then it says, like sheep they are laid in the grave, death shall feed on them and the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning and their beauty shall consume in the grave from their dwelling.

Then there's reference to the resurrection of the dead. But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave. He shall receive me.

Selah. That is, he'll call me back from the grave. Be not thou afraid when one is made rich when the glory of his house is increased.

For when he dieth, he shall carry nothing away. His glory shall not descend after him. The apostle Paul must have been thinking of this Scripture when in 1 Timothy 6-7 Paul said for it is certain that we brought nothing with us into this world and it is certain that we can carry nothing out.

He's pointing out that we shouldn't love money. We shouldn't seek after money. We should be content with food and clothing, he said.

And he said, because if we get anything more than that, it's not anything that will do us any eternal good anyway. We can't take it with us. He must have gotten it from this psalm.

Verse 17 says, for when he dieth, he shall carry nothing away. His glory shall not descend after him. Though while he lived, he blessed his soul, and men will praise thee when thou doest well to thyself.

He shall go to the generation of his fathers, and shall never see light. Man that is in honor and understandeth not is like the beasts that perish. Now it's saying that even though in his lifetime he seems to be the picture of a man experiencing blessing.

He blesses himself with every kind of luxury, with every kind of privilege, with every kind of indulgence. And other men seem to go for him too because everyone's a friend to him that has money, it says in Proverbs. As long as you have money, you're going to have a lot of friends, phony friends anyway.

It says, men will praise thee when thou doest well to thyself. That is, you just live for your own interest, and men will praise you for it. You start living a self-sacrificial life, and for some reason people are going to criticize you.

Your family especially. I mean your parents and people like that. When you do well for yourself and just live a selfish, self-indulgent life, people will praise you and say, boy, you've really made it.

You were really smart. But if you give up everything to follow God and serve him in relative poverty or whatever, people think, wow, what a jerk, what a stupid fool. You really blew it in life.

Look at your wasting your life away. And that's what's being said here, that if you do well to yourself, people will praise you for it. However, such a person who lives for himself and indulges himself rather than walking in the light will perish just like his fathers did.

He should have thought of that. He saw his fathers go into the grave before him, and now he's going to go there too, and they will not see the light because they didn't commit themselves to living in the light when they were alive. And so he's saying, essentially, even a man who is honored by other men, verse 20, if he has no understanding, he's not much better off than an animal who doesn't have understanding either.

Even men who are honored in society are not better off than animals if they don't have understanding. Okay, let's go on to chapter 50. Chapter 50 has some good stuff in it.

Most of it is just an oracle uttered by God. There's a certain statement about God's glory being seen in his city, Zion, which could be a picture of the future glory of the church because the glory of the Lord is going to arise upon us, and some of the same images are used in the first three verses. But after verse 3, we get an oracle spoken by God which has some powerful words in it.

The first three verses, Psalm 50, the mighty God, even the Lord, hath spoken and called the earth from the rising of the sun into the going down thereof. Now, the rising of the sun refers to the east, and the going down thereof refers to the west. So, from east to west, God has called the earth, and perhaps right now is what's exactly happening.

From east to west, throughout the world, God is putting out his call to people to respond to the gospel. And it says, out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God has shined. This could be seen of the church also, that the church, Zion, God's people, he shines forth from us.

He shines forth from our lives. His glory is seen upon us. Our God shall come and shall not keep silence.

A fire shall devour before him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about him. At the second coming, we know this is true, that he'll come in flaming fire, taking vengeance upon them that know not God and that obey not the gospel. That's mentioned in 2 Thessalonians 1.8. He shall call to the heavens from above and to the earth, that he may judge his people.

And here's what he says. Gather my saints together unto me, those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice. And that would be the sacrifice of the blood of Jesus that has caused us to come into the new covenant.

When Jesus passed around that cup at the last communion, he had with his disciples, he said, this cup is the New Testament in my blood. So the new covenant is through the blood of Jesus Christ. At this point, the cassette tape was stopped and turned over to record on the second side.

I will speak, O Israel, and I will testify against thee. I am God, even thy God. I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or for or thy burnt offerings to have been continually before me.

I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he goats out of thy folds. For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. In other words, on all hills.

I know all the fowls of the mountains. This is true because Jesus said that even when one bird falls dead, God knows about it. And so he says, I know all the birds personally.

And the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, would I not tell thee? For the world is mine and the fullness thereof. This is responding to the false notion of the heathen that when they offered animal sacrifices, that they were feeding their God.

Their God, it was like serving meat to the gods to eat. And the Jews may have had some of that kind of go over into their thinking, too. After all, there were times when the smell of the sacrifices were described as a sweet savor in God's nostrils and so forth.

They may have had, some of them may have begun to think that God was like the heathen gods, viewed him as eating the sacrifices because he was hungry. And God is saying, here, listen, all the animals in the world belong to me. If I was hungry, I wouldn't come to you and ask you to give me an animal.

I own all the wild animals in the world. Every bird, every beast in the mountains, all the cattle on a thousand hills. If I were hungry, I wouldn't come to you about it, he says.

For the world is mine in the fullness that is everything in it, which is a quote also from Psalm 24, 1. The earth is the Lord's in the fullness thereof. Verse 13, God says, Will I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? Offer unto God thanksgiving and pay thy vows unto the most high and call upon me in the day of trouble. I will deliver thee and thou shalt glorify me.

Now he's saying there, he's not so interested in eating animals. That's not what he's into. If people think of him in that way, that you can satisfy God just by offering him some meat, just like a man can be satiated by giving him a steak dinner or something.

God's not going to be so easily satisfied. He's looking for something else. He's looking for the sacrifice of thanksgiving.

Offer unto God thanksgiving, verse 14. And pay thy vows to the most high. Offering to God thanksgiving, actually the offering of thanksgiving and praise is specified as a spiritual sacrifice in Hebrews 13, 15.

The fruit of our lips, the sacrifice of praise. Hebrews 13, 15 talks about that as the sacrifice that we offer as a spiritual priesthood. The believer in Christ is a priest, but not of the physical type, not like Aaron.

We don't offer physical sacrifices, but we do offer spiritual sacrifices. And one of those sacrifices that we offer is the fruit of our lips, praise and thanksgiving to God. And this was even called for in the Old Testament, verse 14.

Now it says, verse 16, but unto the wicked God saith, what hast thou to do to declare my statutes or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth? This is to wicked men. He says, who are you to talk my words to people? Think of how many preachers today are preaching God's words, but are wicked men themselves. God's saying, you don't have the right to teach my words.

Who are you, wicked people taking my covenant into your mouth and speaking my words, declaring my statutes? Seeing thou hatest instruction and castest my words behind thee, when thou sawest a thief, then thou consented with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers. It's more literally so than you might think, but this could apply to a lot of people who are in public ministries, sometimes media ministries especially. People on television and the radio, certainly not all of them by any means, but a large number of people who have this kind of a non-personal ministry, where their ministry is basically based on their personality being saleable by the sound of their voice or something over the radio or on TV, where they can get a big following that way, but no one really knows them.

No one really knows how they live. A lot of these people live covetously. A lot of them are involved in less than honest practices of raising funds and so forth.

They consent to thievery. Many of them are even adulterous. This is sadly a reality that almost all traveling ministers learn, because when we travel and preach, of course we are hosted by different churches, and then we learn whether we want to or not, we learn of other traveling ministers who've been through before us who have left a bad name for themselves and for the gospel by their immoral and dishonest and thieving conduct.

It's a sad thing. There's so many charlatans and phonies who do take God's statutes into their mouths in His covenant. But God says, Who are you? Or what hast thou to do to declare my statutes, you wicked men? You don't keep my words, therefore you don't have the right to speak them, He says in verses 16 and 17.

And if that's the case, then we should make sure that when we're speaking the words of God to people, that they are words that we keep as well, and we don't just expect them to do as we say and not as we do. It says, Thou sittest, verse 20, well, no, verse 19, Thou givest my mouth, thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit. Sounds like a letter that the Bucks said they got recently about his mouth framing deceit, deceitful practices on the part of certain people who preach the word of God.

Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother. Thou slanderest thine own mother's son. These things hast thou done, and I kept silence, God said.

Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such in one as thyself, but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes. Now, he says, you did all these wicked things, and I didn't jump on you. I kept silence.

And because I kept silence, you thought I was just like a man who might forget such things. People forget. You thought I was a person like yourself who would forget these things.

He says, I'm not going to forget. I'm going to reprove you for it. I'm going to recompense you for it.

And the same principle is mentioned in the book of Ecclesiastes how that men, because God doesn't judge immediately, men think that they're going to get away with it, and they just get more and more evil because God doesn't judge immediately. That's in Ecclesiastes 8 and verse 11. Because the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.

Ecclesiastes 8.11 Because God doesn't judge immediately, people think they're getting away with it, and therefore they get more and more set in their evil ways. That's what he's saying here in verse 21. Although you've done these wicked things, he says, I have kept silence.

You thought I was altogether such one as yourself. Now, did you thought maybe I'm going to kind of forget it or overlook it like a human person might do? But he says no, I'm going to reprove thee and set them in order before thine eyes. He says, I'm going to call all these things up before you on the day of judgment or even before that.

Just make you give an answer for all these actions and pay the penalty for them. Now, consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces and there be none to deliver. Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me and to him that ordereth his conversation aright, I will show the salvation of God.

The word conversation means, of course, behavior. So, he's saying anyone who offers praise glorifies God, but that is conditioned by the second part, those who live right. You can't really glorify God just by offering praise verbally, but you have to offer it by the way you live too.

Your life has to praise God, then your words will glorify him and not otherwise. So, we see here that God is speaking really here out of Zion. He's shining forth in this psalm and he comes with a great fire before him in a tempestuous situation and he speaks out and he first speaks to his own people.

He gathers his own people, his saints, he says in verse 5. And he talks to them about how independent he is of their outward religious formality. How he doesn't need their sacrifice, he's not hungry. What he wants is thanksgiving and praise from them.

Then he turns to the wicked hypocrites who are preaching the word of God but are wicked men and he says, you thought you were getting away with it all this time, but now I'm going to call you on the carpet and you're going to have to answer for everything you've done. And they said in verse 22, now consider this, that ye forget ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces. That's a message to people today who are thinking they're getting away with it.

They're forgetting God. He says, listen now, consider this, lest I come and tear you into pieces. Jesus said, and I wish I could remember exactly where it was but I think it was at the end of Matthew 24 so I'd like to turn there.

A statement very similar to this. You might think it doesn't sound much like God to talk about tearing people in pieces. Sounds rather nasty.

But even Jesus talked in similar language. Yeah. It says in Matthew 24, 48 through 51.

Jesus is speaking. Matthew 24, 48. But and if that evil servant say in his heart, my Lord delayeth his coming and shall begin to smite his fellow servants and to eat and drink with the drunken, the Lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him and in an hour that he is not aware of and shall cut him in two, really cut him asunder and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites.

There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. It would seem like Jesus had this very psalm in his mind. Because the psalm is God addressing the hypocrites.

The people who were professing to be servants of God. Yet they were living in luxury. They were eating and drinking with the gluttons and the drunkards.

They were not living righteously though they were professing to be God's servants and speaking his word. Yet he says if they don't repent, their Lord's going to come when they're not looking for him. Because again they think they're getting away with it.

They don't think he's going to take vengeance. But when he does come, he said he'll cut them asunder. Verse 51.

And appoint that person a portion with the hypocrites. Because they are hypocrites really. Pretending to be servants of Jesus and not really being servants of Jesus.

He says he's going to cut them in half. Here it says I'm going to tear you in pieces. In Psalm 50 and verse 22.

Okay. Not a very pleasant note to end that psalm on. So we'll go on to another one.

This psalm was spurred by a very sad situation. The title tells us, Psalm 52 we're in now. We've already covered Psalm 51 on another occasion.

Psalm 52. The title tells us when Doeg the Edomite came and told Saul and said unto him David has come to the house of the Himelech. Now the story here is that when David fled from Saul, one of the first places he went was to Nob, where the tabernacle was standing.

And he asked the priest if they had any food. And the priest didn't have any food except for the showbread, which wasn't lawful for David to eat, but he ate it anyway. And he took the sword of Goliath also, because he said do you have any weapons? And he said no only the sword of Goliath, which you collected, you know.

Your own sword. It really belongs to David because he's the one who defeated Goliath. And so David took the bread and took the sword and fled.

But there was a man named Doeg there an Edomite, not a Jew, who was one of the servants of Saul. And he went and told Saul that the priest had done this. And Saul called the priest up and said, why have you done this? Why did you help my enemy David? And the priest said, I didn't know he was your enemy.

I've never known anyone who's more of a loyal subject to you than David. And the king says, no you're a conspirator with David against me. And so he had the priest slain.

Not only the priest, but all his sons. I forget how many. There might have been, I think, 70 of them or something he had slain.

A whole lot of them. Saul murdered these innocent priests. When David heard about it, he grieved, of course, because only one of them escaped.

One of the sons of Ahimelech escaped and joined David. And when David heard the story, he wept and he said, I've become the cause for the death of your family, the priest, and so forth. And it was a real sad situation, because all these innocent men had been slain by the maniac Saul in his paranoia.

And David realized that it was partly his fault because he said, I realized when I saw Doeg there, I just knew he'd be up to some mischief. I knew he'd cause trouble. And it says here that he wrote this psalm at that time, when Doeg the Edomite came and told Saul that David had come to the house of Ahimelech, the priest.

And, of course, the horrible fate of those priests that followed was on David's mind when he wrote this psalm. And he speaks to one in verse one, he calls O mighty man, obviously speaking about Doeg, but probably sarcastically calling him a mighty man, because what happened was when Saul was angry at the priest, he spoke to one of his soldiers standing by and said, kill these priests. But the soldier wouldn't do it.

He wouldn't touch the Lord's anointed priest. He wouldn't obey Saul. So Saul was angry.

He said to Doeg, you kill them. So Doeg wasn't even a Jew. He didn't care anything about the priest or about God.

So he grabbed his sword and he slew all the priests. And he showed himself to be a mighty man. In fact, he was probably just trying to curry favor with the king to get promoted in the ranks and so forth.

And so David sarcastically speaks to him about a mighty man. Oh, it takes a big man to slay a bunch of unarmed priests with your sword. And he's very sarcastic when he speaks to Doeg as a mighty man here.

He didn't actually speak this in the ears of Doeg, but he wrote it as though he was able to speak to him. He says, why boastest thou thyself in mischief, O mighty man? The goodness of God endureth continually. Thy tongue diviseth mischiefs like a sharp razor working deceitfully.

Thou lovest evil more than good, and lying rather than to speak righteousness. Thou lovest all devouring words, O thou deceitful tongue. God shall likewise destroy thee forever.

He shall take thee away and pluck thee out of thy dwelling place, and root thee out of the land of the living. Selah. The righteous also shall see in fear and shall laugh at him.

Lo, this is the man that made not God his strength, but trusted in the abundance of his riches, and strengthened himself in his wickedness. But I, David said, am like a green olive tree in the house of God. I trust in the mercy of God forever and ever.

I will praise thee forever because thou hast done it. And I will wait on thy name, for it is good before thy saints. A very short psalm, the first part of which is spoken to Doeg, the wicked murderer of the priests.

And basically said, even though you are trying to promote yourself through wickedness, God will punish you and he'll wipe you out from the land of the living. That is, he'll kill you. Then he says, but as for me, I'm like a green olive tree.

That is, I'm a young olive tree. I've got a future. You don't have a future.

You're going to be wiped out by God. But I have a future, like a young green tree just starting to sprout up. My career is ahead of me.

My future is ahead of me. Even though David seemed to be on the run, it seemed like David's short-lived career was over. David sees himself as having a long life ahead.

Unlike Doeg, who was going to be wiped out, David was going to live long, like a tree that's just new and green. And it's growing in the house of the Lord, so it's a protected place. You see in the courts, the outer court of the temple precincts, there were trees that were planted and kept up by the Levites.

They were protected. They were sacred trees. And David said, I'm like one of those trees.

I'm protected. I'm cared for by God. And I've got a long life ahead of me.

And I trust in the mercy of God forever. Then he turns to God and says, I will praise thee forever because thou hast done it. And I will wait on thy name, for it is good before thy saints.

He knows that he's got some waiting to do. He knows that though he's going to be in the house of the Lord again, he's going to be back in Jerusalem someday, he's got to wait a while. It's going to take some patience because it's not happening immediately.

So he says, I've waited. I will wait on your name for it is good before thy saints. Now another psalm that has a historic title under it is Psalm 54.

We already studied Psalm 53 and observed that it was identical to Psalm 14. We studied both those psalms together several days ago. Psalm 14 and Psalm 53 are just about identical with only a few alterations.

And we've already talked about that. So we move now to Psalm 54. And the title on it says that it was written when the Ziphims came and said to Saul, does not David hide himself with us? That is the people of Ziph.

One of the places that David fled from Saul was among a group of people who lived in a territory called Ziph. And the people from there went and reported him to Saul so he had to keep running. And so he was angry at these people and he cried out against them to God in Psalm 54.

Save me, O God, by thy name and judge me by thy strength. Hear my prayer, O God. Give ear to the words of my mouth.

For strangers are risen up against me. This would be the Ziphims, the ones who should have just taken him and hidden him. They turned him in.

They've risen up against me. And oppressors seek after my soul. That would be Saul coming after him.

They have not set God before them. Selah. Behold, God is mine helper.

The Lord is with them that uphold my soul. He shall reward evil unto mine enemies and cut them off in thy truth. I will freely sacrifice to thee.

I will praise thy name, O Lord, for it is good. For he hath delivered me out of all trouble and mine eye hath seen his desire upon mine enemies. Now, he hadn't really seen his desire upon his enemies yet.

He hadn't really seen the victory yet, but he says, my eye has seen it. In his mind's eye, the eye of faith, he could see that the victory was a reality. It was not present yet, but remember, faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.

By faith, he could see it, although it had not yet come to pass, because he knew that God was on his side and God would uphold those who even, not only would he uphold David, but he would uphold them that uphold him. It says in verse 5, or verse 4, the Lord is my helper. The Lord will be, is with them that uphold my soul.

That would be the 400 men who were running with David. They were giving him support, moral support and encouragement and all and assistance. And he says, the Lord's with those guys, but he's not with these other guys who are chasing me and these who are turning me into my enemies.

Now let's go to Psalm 55. This one is a description of wicked men and it has two imprecations in it. We didn't study this as the imprecatory psalm because it's not completely an imprecatory psalm.

There's only two verses in it that call down curses. Both of them are based on Old Testament stories. They're verse 9 and verse 15.

We'll talk about them when we get to those verses. Give ear to my prayer, O God, and hide not thyself from my supplication. Attend unto me and hear me.

I mourn in my complaint and make a noise because of the voice of the enemy, because of the oppression of the wicked. For they cast iniquity upon me and in wrath they hate me. My heart is sore pained within me and the terrors of death are fallen upon me.

Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me and horror hath overwhelmed me. Okay, so he's described his situation. It's kind of scary, in other words.

And I said, O that I had wings like a dove, for then would I fly away and be at rest. How many times, God, we wish that we had wings to fly away from our situation. There's a reason God hasn't given us wings like a dove.

He doesn't want us to be able to fly away from some of these situations. These situations are intended to change us, to put us through changes. One of the things about the wicked man described in verse 19 is that it says they have no changes.

They don't go through changes. And one of the reasons is that sometimes they do take wing and fly away from their problems. One person I had to have dealings with in my life, and this was very evident in that person's life because as a teenager their parents never made them do anything and they left home when they were young.

And every time they got into trouble anywhere, they'd call the folks and the folks would send money and that person would be able to just leave and go to some new situation where there wasn't trouble and start over. And when trouble would come up there because of that person's lifestyle, then they'd get more money from mom and dad and leave. So they had their wings.

In fact, they actually flew in most cases with the money. So it was literally they had the wings of a dove to fly out of their problems. But because they did find it easy to fly from hard situations, they never changed.

They never had to learn to deal with the problems in their own life that were bringing upon them the repeated crises. And so they never feared God. They never went through changes.

But David himself does not have opportunity to fly. God sometimes clips our wings and makes us unable to get out of our problems. And we just long for some opportunity to find a place of relief from the present pressures and trials.

But there's nowhere to go. And we just have to go right through them. And they are there for our help, for us to change.

Of course trials are meant to change us. But those who manage to escape their trials don't change. And therefore don't grow any nearer to God.

We'll see that in verse 19. Anyway, he says, Oh, that I had wings like a dove, for then I would fly away and be at rest. Lo, then would I wander far off and remain in the wilderness, Selah.

I would hasten my escape from the windy storm and the tempest. Now destroy, O Lord, and divide their tongues. This is one of the imprecations in this psalm.

For I have seen violence and strife in the city. Divide their tongues probably is a reference to what happened at the Tower of Babel where God divided the languages of the people so that they couldn't understand each other. They were militating together against God's purposes.

And so God disbanded them by causing them to be in confusion and to be unable to speak and communicate to each other. He's basically asking for a similar thing to happen to his enemies who are combining their efforts against him. He wants them to be driven into such confusion and strife also.

Verse 10. Day and night they go about it. That is, about the city.

Upon the walls thereof. Mischief also and sorrow are in the midst of it. Wickedness is in the midst thereof.

Deceit and guile depart not from her streets. For it was not an enemy that reproached me. Then I could have borne it.

Neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me. Then I would have hid myself from him. But it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide and mine acquaintance.

We took sweet counsel together and walked into the house of God in company. Now he's saying essentially, the person that's turned against me was not who I expected at all. Sort of like Judas, one of Jesus' friends, turned against him.

David was saying there's, you know, it's not as though it was one of my enemies. If it was, I would have known to avoid the guy. I would have hid myself.

I would have been able to bear it. It's not so hard to bear it when you know that the man who attacks you is the guy who you expected would. But when it's someone you were trusting, a friend, your equal, your acquaintance, one that you used to even worship with.

We used to go together in good fellowship together to the church. And now he's turned around and burned me. Therefore, he pronounces this imprecation in verse 15.

Let death seize upon them and let them go down quick or alive into hell. Literally, let them go down alive into Sheol might be a reference to Korah's rebellion, which was a case where Korah, a Levite, and several people that were with him, rebelled against Moses and Aaron's authority and the earth opened up and swallowed them down into the pit. And they went down alive into Sheol, as it was said of them later.

So, that's probably what's referred to here. In other words, these people who are rebelling against David, let their fate be like those who rebelled against Moses, God's other leader that had trouble with people. For the wickedness of their dwellings and among them.

Okay. As for me, I will call upon God and the Lord shall save me. Evening and morning and at noon will I pray and cry aloud and he shall hear my voice.

Here he mentions three times a day that he'll pray. Evening and morning and at noon. However, in Psalm 119, verse 164, it says, I will praise thee seven times a day.

So, prayer and praise were regular parts of his day. He'd take time out, apparently three times a day to pray and seven times a day to praise God. So, he was pretty busy about his devotions.

He says, He hath delivered my soul in peace from the battle that was against me, for there were many with me. God did bring some support. Remember, he likes to say to his servant, those who are with us are more than those who are against us.

Meaning the angels that God has on our side are greater in number and in power than our enemies. It says in verse 19, God shall hear and afflict them, even he that abideth of old. Selah.

Now, speaking of the wicked men, it says, because they have no changes, therefore they fear not God. They don't change. There are some people who just refuse to change.

God puts pressure on their life, but they just squeeze out of it somehow. And they never get to the place where they develop any fear of God or any relationship with God because the pressures that he puts on them to drive them to him, they manage to squeeze out somewhere or another and avoid going through changes. Now, this is a description of Moab that's given in the book of Jeremiah.

Jeremiah chapter 48. It's an interesting picture that Jeremiah gives us of Moab. Chapter 48 and verses 11 and 12.

Jeremiah 48.11 says, Moab hath been at ease from his youth, and he hath settled on his leaves. He hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither hath he gone into captivity. Therefore, his taste remaineth in him, and his scent is not changed.

Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will send him wanderers that shall cause him to wander, and shall empty his vessels and break their bottles. Now, what's that talking about? It's making an illustration from the practice of winemaking. When the grape juice was left to settle, of course, the skins and stuff like that, the dregs really, the bitter part of the grape that was not really conducive to the flavor of the wine, had to be filtered out.

The way they would do that would be by pouring the wine from one vessel to another, that is from one jar or one pot to another, and leaving the leaves, letting it settle so the leaves fall down to the bottom, then pouring it out and straining them out again. And so this pouring process from one jar to another was the way of really purifying the wine so that its flavor improves and gets more of these dregs out of the wine. Well, he says that Moab's like someone that settled on their leaves, or the dregs, really.

And they've not been poured from bottle to bottle, which means they haven't gone into captivity. They've been at peace. They've been at ease.

Their circumstances have never forced them into any hardship. They've never gone into captivity. It's like they've never been made to be poured from one place into another.

Therefore, the scum is still in them. Their flavor has never improved. Their flavor has never changed.

Because they have no changes, they don't fear God. And so God's saying, send someone along to push over their bottles and send them into captivity. In Psalm 55, again, just finishing it up, verses 20 through 23, says, He hath put forth His hands against such as be at peace.

That is the bad man has. And with him, and hath broken his covenant. The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart.

His words were softer than oil, yet they were drawn sore. So the man was a hypocrite. He'd speak smoothly, but he really had murderous intentions.

Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee. He shall never... Unfortunately, the last few minutes of this lecture were not recorded.