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Psalms 128 - 134

Psalms
PsalmsSteve Gregg

In this discussion, Steve Gregg provides an analysis of Psalms 128-134. He discusses the themes of prosperity, humility, and unity in these Psalms. Furthermore, he emphasizes the importance of sowing seeds and maintaining fellowship with God. Ultimately, he suggests that permanent fellowship and unbroken worship with God will be achieved when the Lord returns.

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Transcript

We'll turn now to Psalm 128. Now, this is obviously such a blessing as Jews would appreciate receiving in the days of the Old Testament the idea of long life, prosperity, a lot of children, living to see your grandchildren and so forth. In Zion, receiving the blessings of God, living under these kinds of blessings sort of states the ideal that a Jew under the Old Covenant would desire.
For us, it might speak more generally of general prosperity and fruitfulness to
our labors. When I use the word prosperity, of course, I don't use it in the sense that prosperity teachers use that word where they indicate financial prosperity necessarily. Though, that was certainly implied in some of these verses too.
But for us, there are
great spiritual fruit that God brings forth in our lives. There's productivity. There's results of our labors.
That's what's spoken of in verse 2. For thou shalt eat the labor
of thine hands. That is, you go out and work in the field and you'll get to eat the fruit of it as opposed to if you didn't have the blessing of the Lord, you might go out and work and the crop failed and you never get to eat of it. The idea being that your works will be rewarded with fruitfulness, satisfying fruitfulness.
Your wife will be fruitful.
Of course, in those days, wives were not so much for the purpose of companionship as much as for just having children because that was considered to be the most valuable service they could perform to a family was to bring forth many children. So, he stresses that the wife would be like a fruitful vine.
It says on the sides of the house. The actual
word in Hebrew means inside the house. Some translations say on the inside wall of the house.
But the point is that the wife will be in the house unlike the unreliable woman
I mentioned in Proverbs whose feet are always outside her house. But this woman is not out looking for other relationships. She's in the house dedicated to her work.
She's a blessing
to her husband. She's raising her children. And this is the picture of tranquility and blessing and fruitfulness.
And as we see this as fitting its particular place in the Psalms
of Degrees, if we go with our assumption that the Psalms of Degrees trace a progress from a man's conversion to the ultimate destiny in heaven or in glory, we might say, of being brought into the image of Christ, coming to the full realization of the benefits of our walk, the end of our life, or at the coming of Christ. If we trace our progress through the Psalms of Degrees as we're changed from degree to degree in our development, then we see that what is added at this point would be seen as fruitfulness. We saw already that what began with discontent moved into trusting God and then into entrance into fellowship, then offering oneself to God for service, experiencing deliverance from enemies, sensing the security of having God protecting you, the experience of faithfulness in labor, even through tearful times.
And then, of course, the principle of reproduction and discipling
others we talked about in Psalm 127. Now we see that fruitfulness, we might see this as being, in our case, referenced with fruit of the Spirit, changes in our character, improvement in the direction of Christlikeness in our character. Those could be the things that speak to us from this psalm.
Next we have trials and afflictions. This psalm, by the way, we covered half of it on another occasion because the latter part of it belongs to the imprecatory psalms. Just about the last half, in fact, is imprecatory.
And we looked at that last half when we were
studying the imprecatory psalms as a group. But the first half is talking about how much suffering and trials the psalmist has experienced. We know that you don't go very far in your Christian walk before such things overtake you.
You encounter afflictions, you encounter
testings and trials. This is a regular part of our growth. This does not mean that suddenly we've gotten on the wrong path because we're suddenly experiencing resistance and trials.
It's in fact, in many cases, a confirmation that we're doing the right thing because, in Hebrews 12, we're told that God chastens those whom he loves and whom he accepts and every son that he receives. It says, Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth. May Israel now say, Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth, yet they have not prevailed against me.
The plowers
plowed upon my back. Describing his trials as being like if he was laying on his face and someone just ran a plow over him. And it says, They made long their furrows.
The Lord is righteous. He hath cut asunder the cords of
the wicked. Then we have this imprecation, Let them all be confounded and turn back that hate Zion.
Notice, it's not a call for an
imprecation upon his personal enemies, but on those who are enemies of God's project, of God's people, of God's community. Those who are God's enemies, in other words. Let all those be confounded and turn back that hate Zion.
Let them be as the grass upon
the housetops, which withereth before it groweth up. Wherewith the mower filleth not his hand, nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom. Neither do they which go by say the blessing of the Lord be upon you.
We bless you in the name of the Lord.
Now, what's being wished here for the evil doers who are the enemies of Zion is that they would be short-lived and rootless like such grass grows on housetops where there's no soil. We often, I'm sure, have seen grass growing in the cracks of sidewalks where it's not supposed to be growing.
No one has planted it there, but it just happens that
some seeds have managed to work their way up through there. But it soon withers. If it's growing, especially on a housetop, it would in no way be able to send its roots all the way down to the ground in order to get moisture and nourishment.
It springs up quickly, but as soon as the sun comes up, like the seed that fell on rocky ground that Jesus spoke of in Matthew 13, it withers away. And he's wishing that for his enemies, that they might have no roots, but that they might wither away and disappear like the grass. The reference to the fact that no mower fills his hand with it and those who bind sheaves, which is bundles of wheat, those who bind them will not gather them into his bosom, meaning that this grass on their rooftops is not of any value.
People don't
collect it for anything. They don't burn it in their ovens. They don't bind it.
They
don't reap it, harvest it. It's just worthless grass. It grows in the cracks of the house.
It dies. It comes quickly. It disappears quickly.
It's short-lived. No one pronounces the
blessing of the Lord upon it. It's conceivable that this last verse refers to the practice of going by someone's field, a friend's field, and asking God to bless it, pronouncing a blessing on his field, because there's reference there to this grass will not have that blessing upon it, just as it will not be harvested.
It will not be valued at all.
No one will pay any attention to it at all. They won't bless it.
They won't gather it.
It's just something that grows and is of no consequence and disappears. So he wishes the enemies of Zion to be.
The early verses that I mentioned talk about being afflicted,
like someone's driven a bulldozer over you, and the tread has just gone right up your back and left its imprint. They've run a plow down my back, and they've made their furrows, which is the groove left by the plow, long furrows down my back. That's how he views his afflictions.
It's been painful. It has been a trial. But his testimony is that the
Lord is righteous.
In verse 4, he hath cut asunder the cords of the wicked. Also in
verse 2, many a time have they afflicted me for my use, yet they have not prevailed against me. So victory through testing, victory through trials and afflictions.
The man has gone through
it. He's been through the wringer, but he has seen the faithfulness of God in it. He is declaring it.
It's turned for a testimony, in fact. He's been able to now, because he's
been through trials, the whole situation has turned out to be a testimony that he can give to others to encourage others. So we see a man who's gone through trials.
It's perfected
him. It's improved his testimony. It's improved him.
He's seen the hand of God. It's improved
his faith. The various benefits that come through enduring hardship and suffering afflictions are all implied here, I believe, and certainly we can see that as one of the stages, one of the degrees that a person must come into.
Now, we might see that this is not a separate
thing, as though a person goes through part of one of these degrees and then leaves that behind and goes on to another, then leaves that behind and goes on to another. Really, each of these things is added to the previous ones. When the first one has trust in God, you trust God all the way through.
You never stop trusting God to go on to the next one.
You only add to that involvement in the fellowship. You add to that, you don't leave the fellowship in order to offer yourself as a servant to God.
These are not stages that one goes through
and then leaves one behind to go to the next. It's more that he grows into each one successively, retaining the benefits of the previous ones, so that he's adding to his faith virtue and to his virtue knowledge, into knowledge temperance, into temperance patience, adding these things one after another in his life. It's obvious that you don't just go through one period of trials at a certain point in your Christian walk and then you don't go through them anymore.
This just is something added that comes into our lives and comes and goes as God allows it, that it becomes a working element in our lives, bringing us into the divine image. Psalm 130 is a psalm that we already talked about on another occasion. It was one of the penitential psalms, that is a psalm of repentance for sin.
The very opening verse is,
Out of the depths I have cried unto thee, O Lord, meaning that this is coming from a deep place. The man is groaning very deeply unto God. In Romans chapter 8, in verse 26, it says, There are times when we don't even know how to express in words our prayers.
We don't even know
what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit intercedes with us through groans and utterances that are too deep for articulate speech. This man is groaning from a very deep place. I believe it's because, if we would compare this with our lives, that even though he's had his victories, even though he's secure in the Lord, even though he is fruitful and he's reproducing himself, discipling others, even though he's been through afflictions and trials and comes through victorious on the other side, yet he finds he's not yet sinless.
Anyone who is making progress spiritually will become particularly sensitive to this fact. A person who feels that they have become sinless is probably not very spiritually sensitive to the real state of his heart. It may be true that a person has lived a period of time free from known sin.
It is not necessary for us to live in sin. But as Paul, in Romans chapter 7, explains that there is a knowledge of what is right, he has a very high standard he sets for himself that he wants, but the power to perform it, he says, is often absent. He said, very often he finds he does the things he hates.
Now, this is not because he's living in sin. He's not doing that. Paul didn't live in sin.
It's simply that he finds that even though he has a very high standard of perfection, in fact, the more so, the more he has a high standard of perfection, the more he is aware that he doesn't live up to it. He still has his sinful nature that nags at him, which needs to be overcome, of course, but which remains with us long, long, long into our spiritual development, no doubt, for the most part, until we die. Though I certainly believe that we can get victory over it, I believe that God will give us little reminders no matter how old we get in the Lord.
He'll show us our heart from time to time, show us that we
don't have anything to be confident in except Him, that our own sins are still ever with us. We're still capable of falling into the worst kinds of sins if we don't trust in the grace of God. And victory, I believe, comes from learning to establish a pattern and a habit of trusting in the grace of God to overcome sin so that we can live, I believe, we can live above sin.
We can live free from sin.
But that freedom from sin is only there insofar as we're continually and habitually leaning on the grace of God. And insofar as we might begin to have some self-confidence or begin to think ourselves to be somewhat victorious over sin rather than trusting fully in the grace of God for overcoming sin.
I believe that God will show us that our sin nature is still quite capable of showing itself greater than us apart from the grace of God. And this person seems to have discovered sin in his life, not necessarily surface sin, not necessarily sin that is overt and acts such as other people might recognize in his life, but sins that he discerns in the deepest places of his character. He still sees failure there.
Out of the deep places he groans and cries unto the Lord. He says, Lord, hear my voice. Let thine ear be attentive to the voice of my supplications.
If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?
But there is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared. I wait for the Lord. My soul doth wait.
And in his word do I hope. My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning. I say more than they that watch for the morning.
Let Israel hope in the Lord. For with the Lord there is mercy.
And with him is plenteous redemption.
And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.
Notice how that almost all of these, not in every single case, but in most cases, they end with some kind of a blessing or a prayer for Israel. As in the end of verse 28, it ends with peace be upon Israel.
Here he says, God shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities. And so we find references to Israel of this kind in a number of these. At the end of Psalm 125, peace shall be upon Israel.
Obviously, Israel is the concern of these
psalms, the safety and peace of Israel. It's not just that the individual is concerned about himself. He's concerned about God's people as a whole.
He's concerned for the blessing of the church in general.
Of course, the man is an individual himself, but the things he's going through are being endured by all his brethren. And his wishes are not only for his own progress, but for the benefit of the nation and the people themselves.
When we get to Psalm 131, we have a very short psalm, but very strongly it emphasizes the humble state of the heart of David. David wrote this one, and he actually says, I'm not proud. And of course, as the result, once you've discovered that regardless of your spiritual progress and growth and maturity, that you still have a sinful nature.
You still have a nature that is capable of leading you astray if you allow it to. It humbles you really. If you get victory over sin consistently enough, there may be a temptation to be proud and feel a bit cocky and a bit self-righteous.
But when you discover again in the deep places of your personality, there's still sin lurking about, and there's still the possibility of falling quite low. It humbles you. And so, having discovered that sin is still ever-present, though also in the previous psalm, Psalm 130, it also stresses that God's forgiveness is ever-present as well.
There's forgiveness within.
But that's a humbling thing to realize. And David expresses his humility like this, Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty.
Neither do I exercise myself in great matters or in things too high for me.
Surely I have behaved and quieted myself as a child that is weaned from his mother. My soul is even as a weaned child.
Let Israel, there's the wish for Israel again, let Israel hope in the Lord from henceforth and forever. Actually, apart from the blessing on Israel or the exhortation to Israel in verse 3, we only have two verses of David's testimony. And he's basically expressing that his personal attitude is not a haughty one.
We might see in this a statement that he's not haughty in the sense of seeking for lofty positions that God hasn't offered to him. He was offered the kingdom, of course, but you remember how he didn't grasp at it when Saul was still king. And David had been anointed the new king.
David didn't seek to overthrow the old one.
He didn't seek to be ambitious and force his way to the throne. He waited on God.
He says, I don't exercise myself in great matters or things too high for me. He described himself as being like a child that is weaned from his mother. The way the Old English here in the King James Version read, it's not all that clear what's being said.
But in some of the newer translations, and I've checked a few recently, the Jerusalem Bible and the New American Standard Bible both bring it out. What he's saying is that he's contented like a child in his mother's arms having just nursed. Having finished nursing, the child's stomach is full and he's contented and goes to sleep in his mother's arms.
And that's basically David saying that's his attitude, that he's like a contented, well-fed child who's ceased to nurse and is now resting securely in the mother's arms. In other words, he doesn't feel a need to push himself forward. He's got all he needs.
He's satisfied in God.
We might see this as a place where a man has come to a place of being fully satisfied with God and humbled in the sense that he's content and not seeking lofty things for himself. At this point in our walk, we come to the place where God is our whole joy.
He's all of our satisfaction.
I shall be satisfied, said David, when I awake with thy likeness. And it is the likeness of God that we are satisfied with, just like a child is satisfied when he's been fully fed.
There are, by the way, Christians who I think violate this spirit of verse 1 here, who do. They are haughty. Their eyes are lofty.
They do exercise themselves in great matters and things too high for them. I know Christians who feel like they must get to the bottom of every doctrinal mystery. Things that God has not even clearly explained to us.
Some people are not content until they feel they can explain them all.
I've known some people who can never be at rest until they feel like they can explain everything. I had a man actually tell me that once about himself.
He couldn't rest until he felt like he knew everything. I just believe there are certain things that are too high for us and we won't have a rest of the soul if forever we're seeking things that God hasn't divulged. Mysteries that God has not explained to us.
We need to be content to leave some mysteries in the hands of God and leave all matters to Him and just rest like a contented child, satisfied and provided for in God's arms.
The next psalm clearly is about the ascension of the Ark of the Covenant on Mount Zion. It was apparently not actually sung on that occasion, as near as we can tell.
The reason I say that is it appears to have been written by Solomon. It doesn't say that it was written by Solomon in the title, but in verses 8-10 we get a hint that it was probably Solomon who wrote it. In verses 8-10 it says, Arise, O Lord, into thy rest, thou and the Ark of thy strength.
Let thy priests be clothed with righteousness, and let thy saints shout for joy. For thy servant David's sake, turn not away the face of thine anointed.
Now the statement, For thy servant David's sake, turn not away thy face from thine anointed, indicates that David is a man who has lived and died.
This is not in David's lifetime. There is currently another king on the throne who is called thine anointed.
Remember that God had made certain promises to David and to his seed so that the followers of David, that is his sons who took the throne after him, could actually call upon God to show mercy on them according to the promises made to David.
For thy servant David's sake, turn not away the face of thine anointed, meaning of the present king. There is an anointed one on the throne now, one of David's sons or descendants who is a king. Now that tells us, if we understand that verse correctly, that this was after the time of David.
One of his sons was on the throne, probably writing this. The way it's worded, it sounds like the one who speaks of thine anointed is the anointed himself.
Because that's the way the kings usually wrote the Psalms.
They said, Lord show mercy to your king and so forth, even when it was the king speaking. And I believe that this is saying that there was a man writing this who was the anointed, the king, at the time, after the time of David.
Now we know that Solomon was the next king after David, but there were a lot of other kings after that who could have written the Psalms.
But the reason I say it was Solomon is because the Psalms seems to have been written in Solomon's day.
Because verses 8 and 9 were quoted when Solomon completed building the temple and they brought the Ark of the Covenant into Solomon's temple. They quoted these verses, 8 and 9. The record of them doing this is found in 2 Chronicles 6, 41 and 42.
2 Chronicles 6, 41 and 42 shows that they quoted this Psalm when they brought the Ark into Solomon's temple. Now that would mean, if we put the two pieces of information together, that the Psalm came into existence in the days of Solomon, after David's death. That would mean in the early part of Solomon's reign.
And if the writer is the anointed one, in verse 10, then that would be Solomon himself who wrote it. If it were not written by Solomon, then we could assume it was written by someone else, probably in his day. So, it is remembering the going up of the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem, though later it was quoted and used at the time when the Ark was taken into the temple that Solomon built.
Because when David took the Ark to Jerusalem, it didn't go into a temple, it went into a tent. And it was in the next generation that the building was actually constructed and the Ark found a home in the temple. Now this, well we'll read the Psalm and then we'll talk about the thoughts that are in it.
Now that's what David had resolved. He actually was talking to Nathan the prophet. And he said, I live in a house, a beautiful house, but God's Ark is out there behind curtains in a tent.
And he was implying, I'm going to set about to build a temple.
And Nathan at first encouraged him, but then later the Lord showed Nathan that that wasn't good to encourage him in that. So, Nathan came back and said, no, you should not do that.
But Solomon then, his son would do it.
But here, the writer is remembering that David had desired to find a habitation for God's Ark, to build a temple actually. And then he says in verse 6, Lo, we heard it at Ephrathah.
Now Ephrathah is another name for Bethlehem, which is David's hometown.
We found it in the fields of the wood. We will go into his tabernacles.
We will worship at his footstool. Arise, O Lord, into thy rest, thou and the Ark of thy strength.
Let thy priests be clothed with righteousness, and let thy saints shout for joy.
For thy servant David's sake, turn not away the face of thine anointed.
The Lord hath sworn in truth unto David, he will not turn from it. Of the fruit of thy body I will set upon thy throne.
That's what God had sworn to David.
If thy children will keep my covenant and my testimony that I shall teach them, their children shall also sit upon my throne forevermore. For the Lord hath chosen Zion, he hath desired it for his habitation.
This is my rest forever, says God. Here will I dwell, for I have desired it.
I will abundantly bless her provision.
I will satisfy her poor with bread. I will also clothe her priests with salvation, and her saints shall shout aloud with joy.
There will I make the horn of David to bud.
I have ordained a lamp for mine anointing. His enemies will I clothe with shame, but upon himself shall his crown flourish.
Now, we could break this into pieces, this psalm.
It's the longest one of the Songs of Degrees, and it has a few different thoughts.
First of all, it remembers that David had wished to build a house for the Lord, to bring the ark into, but he was not permitted to do it. That's what the early verses are about.
Then, of course, in verses 7-10, it talks about the fact that they are now going to realize David's dream, that the ark is going to arise now from its place in the tent and go into the temple. And it will actually fulfill David's desire, though David did not live to see it. Then, in verse 11, it talks about how God had made a promise to David.
And his promise was that he would set one of David's descendants on his throne in his place.
And insofar as his descendants were faithful to God, God would be faithful to never cause them to lose the position of the throne in Jerusalem. And then, in the remainder, it talks about how God has chosen Zion.
He's chosen the city of Jerusalem.
And therefore, he's chosen that to be the place of his rest. Now, the mention of God's rest here, both here in verse 14 and also earlier in verse 8, seems to present the main theme for us.
It's a resting place for the ark. The idea being that the ark has never really been able to be at rest. It's never come home yet, until now.
The ark came out of, well, shortly after the Jews came out of Egypt, it was made at Mount Sinai. It wandered through the wilderness with the people, leading them around. It dwelt in Shiloh.
It dwelt at Obed-Edom. Now it has dwelt in Jerusalem in a tent for a certain period of time.
Finally, it's making its last move.
It's moving into its permanent resting place.
It's never been able to fully rest, because it always had another move to make. But now it can rest.
The work is finished, and the ark is able to enter into its rest.
Associated with this event is the reference to priests being clothed with righteousness. In verse 9, let thy priest be clothed with righteousness.
Also verse 16, I will also clothe her priests with salvation.
In both those verses it says, and her saints shall shout aloud for joy. So the priests put on their garments, but they're spiritual garments of righteousness and salvation.
Also, there's the crowning of David's horn, whatever that would refer. The reference to David's horn is budded in verse 17. It means that David's authority has been continued through one of his sons.
It's budded through him.
But it says, his enemies, in verse 18, will I clothe with shame, but upon himself shall his crown flourish. So we see the many things associated with the coming of the ark to its final rest.
We find the reference to the priests being clothed with salvation and righteousness. We see reference to the crown resting upon David's seed. And we might see these things as having relevance to us, in that God is leading us.
Even as the ark led the children of Israel through the wilderness, through our whole long life, however long it may be, God is leading us as he led the children of Israel. We know that's true because Paul said so in 1 Corinthians 10. In 1 Corinthians 10, in the opening six verses, Paul recounts many of the things that God took the children of Israel through in the wilderness.
And then he says, all these things happen for examples to us, to teach us lessons. In other words, the wanderings and the experiences of the Jews in the wilderness were a type of our experience as Christians. The Jews were wandering, looking for a home, looking for a resting place.
And the ark was wandering with them. But now that the ark was coming to its final resting place, it could be said that the people were entering into rest also from their wanderings. Now, the Jews had already entered into actual rest before this time in the sense that they had taken possession of their land.
But the fact is that God's work was finished now. The whole time that God had been moving, he had been moving toward a goal. Now he has reached his goal.
The promises of God are realized. The priesthood is closed in its royal garments. The king is crowned.
And I believe that we see this as the ultimate that God is seeking to bring us to, coming into God's rest. That we're functioning in the priesthood, but the priesthood is not one of hard labor. Because in the priesthood in the Old Testament, it was a laborious thing, and that's what Hebrews chapter 10 tells us.
That every priest in the Old Testament always was standing, offering sacrifice after sacrifice, without ever getting a chance to stop and rest. But we're told that Jesus, after he offered one sacrifice of himself, once and for all, he sat down. Unlike the priests in the Old Testament, who are always seen standing, in the New Testament, Jesus offers one sacrifice and sits down at the right hand of God, according to the statements in Hebrews chapter 10.
So that Jesus has offered the complete priestly office, and we are now priests with him, kings and priests, but there's not a lot of sacrifices. Not a lot of hard labor to do, because Jesus has entered into his rest. He's seated at the right hand of God the Father.
And we enter into his rest too. That is, he said it is finished, when he died on the cross. There is a priestly office to fulfill, but it's entered into its spiritual character.
The labor that we offer to God is spiritual work. It's not hard physical labor, as the priests in the Old Times did. But Jesus put an end to that kind of priestly work.
We're now priests of another kind. We offer spiritual sacrifices.
Our robes are righteousness and salvation.
Those are spiritual robes. So it's a spiritual priesthood that's being described here, not a physical priesthood that wore physical robes.
And the thought being here that we have come into complete rest.
We're resting in the Lord.
I don't know how to explain this to tell you the truth, because it seems to me like Christians ought to be at rest right from the beginning of their walk. But it's been my experience, it seems, that most Christians go through a lot of things before they actually come to the stage where they really have learned to just rest in the Lord.
They go through a legalistic stage a lot of times, not every time. They go through times of confusion, times of doubt, times of, I don't know, maybe going off on the wrong track in many cases. But there comes a time when they just come to put their whole trust in the Lord and rest in Him.
That's what I believe Hannah Whitehall Smith is talking about in The Christian Secret of a Happy Life. It's just a life hidden with Christ in God. Jesus is seated at the right hand of God.
We're seated with Him in heavenly places. That is, we're at rest with Him.
He's finished with His sacrificial office, offering Himself one time, He sat down.
And we enter into the finished work with Him when we sit at His side. We enter into His rest. Now there's work that we do, but it's spiritual work we're involved in.
And it's not a laborious office anymore. It's something that flows from a position of, a relaxed position. We're relaxed in the sense that we're not striving to save ourselves, as the Jews constantly had to worry about doing.
But we're actually resting in the fact that Jesus has done the work and now we work as an act of gratitude for Him, but not as a meritorious thing to earn credits or anything like that. So entering into God's rest, I think, there's reference twice to God's rest, in verses 8 and verse 14, could be seen as possibly what the theme of this psalm is about. And in Psalm 133, there's no question what the theme of that psalm is about.
It's glaring. It's obvious. It hits you right in the face as soon as you get into it.
It's the need for unity, unity among Christians, among brethren. And I'll read the psalm and make some observations about it. It says, Behold how good and how pleasant it is for the brethren to dwell together in unity.
It is like the precious ointment upon the head that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard, that went down to the skirts of his garments, as the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion. For there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life forevermore. Now, all of this is about unity.
When it says, There the Lord commanded the blessing, it means there where brethren are dwelling together in unity.
When it says, It is like, in verse 2, it means unity. Unity among brethren is like this.
So, the whole theme is stated in the first verse. How good and how pleasant. From whose point of view? Man's or God's? I believe both, of course.
I believe there's nothing more pleasant than experiencing complete unity with brethren.
There's hardly anything less pleasant than having strife in the family. And if it's unpleasant to us, know that it's also unpleasant to God.
So much so, that in Proverbs chapter 6, we're told that the man who causes discord among brethren is one of the ones that God hates. It says there's six things, no seven, that the Lord hates. And the last one on the list is, He that sows discord among brethren.
So, God hates discord. It's obviously very good and pleasant to Him when men, brethren, live together in unity. Brethren and sisters dwell together in unity.
Now, certain comparisons are made to this situation. When the brothers are in unity, it's like the precious ointment upon the head of Aaron that ran down through his beard to the skirts of his garment. Well, what does that mean? It's obviously drawing a picture from the days when God first instated Aaron into His high priestly office.
Moses poured oil over his head and it ran down, of course, over his head, down through his beard, down all over his body. And that was the anointing of the high priest to his high priestly office. And I believe that Aaron was a type of Christ, because Jesus is our great high priest.
And as Aaron went once a year into the Holy of Holies to make intercession and atonement for the people, so Jesus eventually did and put an end to such practices. But Aaron began, Jesus completed. Aaron was a type of Christ.
And the anointing of Aaron we might see as a type of the anointing of Jesus. Now, it says here that when brethren dwell together in unity, it's like that. It's like the anointing of the high priest.
Now, the specific details are given that the anointing oil, which represents the Holy Spirit, flowed down off the man's head onto his body. Now, this is not too hard a concept to grasp, I think. But, you know, the members of a body have probably as their primary function the purpose of holding up the head.
I think that's the main reason you have a body, is for the sake of your head. Your head is what does the thinking. Your head is what makes you who you are, gives you your own personality.
Your body is, of course, distinct from other people's bodies as well. But your body is simply suited to carry out the desires of the head and to stand under and to hold up the head. And as long as all the members of the body of Aaron were standing under the head as they ought to be in unity with each other, instead of all going off different directions trying to do their own thing, as long as they were all standing harmoniously under the head, then the anointing that was on the head ran down onto all the members of the body as well.
So that the body experienced the anointing that ran down from the head. Now, on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was poured out, the Apostle Peter explained it by saying that this Jesus, whom you have crucified, he said, God has exalted and set at his right hand, and it is he that has poured out this which you now see in here. In other words, this pouring of the Holy Spirit on the church, his body, came from Jesus.
It was the anointing that had been on Jesus. He had walked in the Spirit. He had been filled with the Holy Spirit.
And now his Spirit and his anointing came upon his people. Why? Because they were with one accord in one place. It says in Acts chapter 2, On the day of Pentecost had fully come, the disciples, 120 of them, were with one accord in one place.
That is, they were in unity. They were standing together in unity. And this was a unity that was not only in their geography, they weren't only in one place, but they were also of one heart.
Now this kind of unity, when brethren dwell together in unity, I believe that what this psalm is saying, it brings the anointing that is on the head upon every other member of the body. The oil ran down off Aaron's head, off his beard, onto his whole body, all the way down to the skirt of his garment. Now that's where every part of his body got saturated and anointed.
And I think that one reason we don't see today the same anointing on the church in America, and in most of the world we don't see this anointing that we think was on the early church, and was on Jesus' life certainly, is that we're not in unity. We're not standing all under the head together. There are people who, almost every church feels that they're standing under Jesus, but they can't be if they're not standing with their brothers, who also think they're standing under Jesus.
If every church in town believes that they're standing under Jesus, but they're all standing on different principles, and standing on different vision, and different doctrines, and different circles of fellowship that they accept, and may exclude others, they can't all be standing under the head. There's division. And unity is the merging of all the members together, to work together, to stand together harmoniously, and in one place, in one accord, under the head, so that his anointing may come upon them.
And I believe God awaits the unity of the church before we shall see such an anointing again poured out, as he poured out on a unified church in the first century. And I believe that's what that's talking about in verse 2. And in verse 3 where it says, As the dew of Hermon, Mount Hermon that is, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion, that's what unity is like. It's like dew, it's a refreshing thing.
The dew is given to refresh the earth in the night, to re-water the earth after a day of heat and drying out the grass, and all the grass is revitalized by the dew that comes down and refreshes it. So, unity among brethren is a refreshing thing. It might even be seen to be like the dew which covers the earth and refreshes the whole earth.
That is, the whole earth will undergo a time of refreshing when the brethren come together in unity. It's interesting that in Acts chapter 3, the apostle Peter spoke to the Jews of his time about anticipating the times of refreshing coming from the presence of the Lord. That's in Acts chapter 3 and verse 19.
Acts 3, 19, he says, Repent ye therefore and be converted that your sins may be blotted out when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord. And he shall send Jesus Christ which before was preached unto you. Speaking of times of refreshing coming from the Lord just before God sends Jesus Christ, I believe those times of refreshing like dew on the mountains, dew on the earth, refreshing the earth is actually the time when the body of Christ comes into unity finally.
Now, that the body of Christ is destined to be unified is clear from many scriptures. I know that there are many people who don't have any vision for this at all. There are many people who believe that the church is simply going to be raptured out any moment maybe in its total disjointed state.
And that kind of a condition is, I don't believe, going to prevail until the end. I don't believe God is going to take the church out in this condition. We might see it then as the church retreating because of its failure, being removed from the earth and running away like a whipped pup that can't stand the pressure.
But I believe that God is going to win with the church. I believe the church is his eternal purpose. The church is going to shine.
The church is going to stand in unity. And it's not just a sentimental feeling I have about the church. It's actually stated in the scripture.
A couple of scriptures that come just to mind off the top of my head, though there are others, are, first of all, John 17, where Jesus was praying for unity among his people. John 17 and verse 21. John 17, 21.
When Jesus was praying, he prayed that they all may be one. As thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. Now notice that.
He implied that the world will believe that God sent Jesus if they see a unified church. He prays for the church to be made one so that the world may believe. Now, by the way, believing doesn't mean they'll be saved.
They might believe that God sent Jesus and still reject him. But they would reject him knowing who he was. Knowing that he was truly sent from God.
But the fact that the church is disorganized has caused many people to doubt whether Jesus was the Son of God. You witness to some people about the Lord and they say, well, if Jesus is really right on and Christianity is worth that, why are there all these denominations? You know, if Jesus really started the right thing and started a kingdom and all, why is it so divided? Didn't Jesus say a kingdom divided against itself shall not stand? And let's face it, it's a hard question to answer. It's not something that we can face without embarrassment.
The division in the church is a reproach to the name of Christ. And it has given many people an excuse for not believing in Jesus. But Jesus prayed that a time would come when the church would be in such unity that the world would no longer have such an excuse.
The church will be unified so that the world may know that God sent Jesus. That time has not yet come. Now, if we pray in faith according to the will of God, we believe that our prayers will be answered.
There are promises in the scripture to that effect. And we must assume that the same applies to Jesus. If he prays according to the will of God in faith, his prayers will be answered.
Now, do you believe that Jesus ever prayed anything that was not in the will of God? I certainly don't. Except maybe in the Garden of Gethsemane where he prayed that the cup might pass from him, but then he even surrendered that and said, not my will but thine be done. But the point is, I believe this prayer reflects the heart of God, that Jesus prayed according to the will of God in this prayer.
Therefore, if he prayed according to the will of God, and we know he didn't pray in doubt, he certainly was an expert on faith, then it must be that he prayed in faith according to the will of God and his prayer will be answered. Now, almost 2,000 years have passed since he prayed it, and the prayer has not yet been answered. But I am convinced that his prayer shall be answered, that he will have his church brought into unity, and that will be the final witness to the world before the second coming of Christ.
The world will know that Jesus was sent by his Father, by the fact that his people have come into a mature kind of a unity. In Ephesians chapter 4, another important passage about the destiny of the church, in a passage which is not unfamiliar to us, Ephesians 4, 11-13, says, And he gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, until we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a mature man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Now, it says that God gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers for the purpose of perfecting the saints, or bringing them to maturity, so that they might conduct the work of the ministry, and the body of Christ might be built up.
And this process, he said, will be going on until we all come, or in a newer translation it often says, attain to, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect, or properly translated I believe, mature man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. This tells me that God's goal, toward which he's been working for two thousand years, through the ministry of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, working throughout the body, building up the body for the past two thousand years, his goal has been all along that we might eventually come into a unity of the faith and a unity of the knowledge of the Son of God, which to me speaks of a visible unity, of believing alike, knowing Jesus alike, coming to maturity as a church, as a whole, until we, plural, become a singular perfect man. This perfect man is the body of Christ.
We know that because earlier in Ephesians 2, in verse 15, he mentions that God took the Jews and the Gentiles and made of the two one new man, meaning the body of Christ. He made one new man, which is the body of Christ, the church. And here he says we're going to come to a mature man, that is the body of Christ as a corporate identity is going to come to maturity.
But how does, I mean you can tell when a human being becomes mature by the fact that, you know, he gets hair on parts of his body that he didn't have before, grows a beard or whatever, you know, that shows that they've come to puberty or they've come to some level of maturity or they've gotten larger or whatever. But how do you know if the body of Christ becomes mature? How is that to be discerned? Well, 1 Corinthians chapter 3 tells us the answer to that question. How can you tell if the church is mature or immature? It says in the opening verses of 1 Corinthians 3, And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.
That is, they're immature. For I have fed you with milk and not with meat, for hitherto you were not able to bear it, neither yet now are you able. They're still too immature to have meat.
How does he know that? Because he says, For you are yet carnal, for whereas there is among you envying and strife and division, are ye not yet carnal and walk as men? For while one saith, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos, are you not yet carnal? Now what's he saying? It's very obvious. He's saying, I know you are a baby church. I can't treat you like mature Christians.
You are an immature church. How do I know? Because you've got strife and envying and division. And some are saying, I'm of Paul.
Some are saying, I'm of Apollos. This is not the mark of maturity in a church. This is the mark of immaturity.
Therefore, when Paul says that we must, as a church, come into a mature man, then he's only saying again what he said earlier in the same verse in Ephesians 4, verse 13, that we must come into unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a mature man to the fullness of the measure of the stature of Christ. Now, let me ask you this. Do you believe that if Jesus prayed for all of us to be one so that the world would know that the Father sent him, and do you believe that if Jesus has given gifted men to the church for the past 2,000 years working toward this goal that the church would come in unity to a mature man, do you believe that after 2,000 years working on it, God is going to just sort of, all of a sudden, just rapture the church out before they get to that goal? After laboring toward this end for 2,000 years, do you think he's going to say, well, I give up and zap it out? No, he's invested too much time.
He's already determined what he's going to do. He's determined that the church is going to come into this unity. Now, how soon or how late that happens has a lot to do with us, has to do with each generation of Christians, which generation of Christians is going to respond to this and be brought into unity with other Christians of their generation.
That's the big question, but the point is that God's work is not going to be finished with the church until we all come in the unity of faith and of the knowledge that's put around. He's not going to abort his project when he's been working this long at it, that's for sure. If he was not interested in bringing this to fruition, he should have raptured the church a long time ago before a lot of people backslid.
It would have been better off. But the fact is, he's working for something. That's why he hasn't taken the church out.
That's why he's left us here, because we have not yet come unto that which he desires for us to come into. Now, the psalmist tells us in Psalm 133 that when that happens, that'll be like the dew on the mountains. It'll be the refreshing, the times of refreshing coming from the presence of the Lord, of which Peter spoke.
When the church is in unity, when the brethren dwell together in unity, this is certainly among the final stages of what we anticipate in our Christian walk. This is the great climax that God is bringing us to, where the body of Christ fully represents Christ as a unified witness, a unified whole. Brethren dwelling together in unity, the anointing coming down off the head unto every member of the body, and every Christian walking in the anointing like Jesus walked in it.
I believe restoration of signs and wonders to the same degree as before. I know there are signs and wonders in the church today, but certainly not as we hope, and I believe as God has planned for it to eventually be. This is our destiny, and this is one of the final stages that are mentioned here.
In the final psalm, well, I should say at the end of verse 3 of Psalm 133, it mentions it's there that God commands the blessing even life forevermore. Where? Where brethren are dwelling together in unity, God commands blessing. I think that we can agree that God has withheld certain blessings from the church.
There are many things we've prayed for that God would bless the church with, things that are good things, things that would be legitimate blessings. Asking for a revival, asking for more financing to get the gospel out, asking for more labors for the harvest, asking for unity, asking for gifts of the Spirit to manifest, asking for all kinds of things that are true, legitimate blessings. Well, why haven't they been given? Maybe partly because he's waiting, because he can't command the blessing, at least not fully, until the brethren are in unity.
It's there that he commands the blessing. Even the blessing of eternal life, life forevermore. The final degree, the last degree, is Psalm 134, extremely short, and yet what it depicts is the people of God night and day in the presence of God, in his sanctuary, before him.
And I believe that it was in Revelation when John was caught up into heaven and saw the saints there day and night praising God, always before his throne, never having to part anymore. In our present life, of course, in a sense we could say that we live before God in his sanctuary. We're part of his holy temple.
We're part of his family. He is with us. It says in Hebrews 4 that he is with us.
But the fact of the matter is that we are very much in the world as well. And I don't mean of the world. I simply mean we are in the world and that fact means that we have to give attention to things that distract us from time to time.
Now, happy is the man whose worldly activities do not interfere with his communion with God at any point. I've always enjoyed, you know, scrubbing floors, cleaning toilets, sorting things, just something that was mindless work that a chimpanzee could do. That's the kind of work I like.
Not because I don't like to think, but because I like to choose what I'm going to think about. I like to think about the things of God and when you do that kind of work, of course, it doesn't have to interfere with your communion with God. But if you're a professional person, and you're doing these things for your work, obviously there's going to be times when your mind is distracted from the things of God, when you need to come back before the presence of the Lord again for refreshment and for revitalization.
And yet, this psalm looks at a time where there's no more departing from the presence of God. It's constant. And I believe this speaks of what Revelation talks about.
Behold, the tabernacle of God shall dwell with them. He shall dwell with them and they shall be his people and God himself shall be with them and be their God. And day and night will be before his throne.
No more absence. No more interruption to our communion with God when the Lord returns. Behold, bless ye the Lord, all ye servants of the Lord, which by night stand in the house of the Lord.
Lift up your hands in the sanctuary of the Lord. Again, very short and sweet but a reference to the servants of the Lord standing and worshipping by night as they also do by day, of course. But the fact is that they don't go home at night.
They stay in the house of the Lord late and remain there. The night doesn't come to break off their fellowship with God. Now, of course, in the New City, the New Jerusalem, the description of it in Revelation states that there'll be no night there.
But we don't need to be stumbled over the differences in imagery. We have different images given in different places. But here, of course, the idea being that the fact that it's nighttime doesn't change anything.
Whereas in our earthly life, we work during the day and at night we sleep. But in the New Jerusalem, we don't sleep at night. We don't really profess to know exactly what we're going to be doing in the resurrection.
When God creates His new heavens and the new earth and we stand before Him and serve Him day and night, I don't know if it'll be just always bowing and praising Him or, as the Bible does say, we'll reign with Him. So I don't know who will reign over or what we'll do. But there's a lot of things that God has left unsaid about these matters.
In 1 Thessalonians 4 and verse 18, I think it is, lest shall we ever be with the Lord. We'll always be with the Lord after the time that the Lord comes. Whatever it is we're doing is not totally clear to us at this point, but we know that we'll be with the Lord continually.
And so, if I might just run very quickly through the steps that we've covered and then we'll close with this. In the 15 degrees it begins with the man discontented in the world. And doesn't it seem like a long time since we studied that psalm? Seems like several days ago.
But that's because we've gone through so many steps since then. Then he has come to put his trust in the Lord in Psalm 121. Then he enters into fellowship with other believers in Psalm 122.
In 123, he's presenting himself before God for service, asking God to put him into a place of service in his kingdom. In 124, he is celebrating his deliverance. He has received deliverance from his entrapment, his captivity that he had formerly been in.
And we talked about deliverance from sin or from sinful habits that had arisen from demon bondage. And then we find him stressing his security in the Lord in 125. In 126, we talk about how that all our trials eventually turn to joy.
We need to keep plowing. We need to keep sowing the seeds, even in times of tears and in times of trial. In 127, we find the concept of reproduction and training up disciples, training up little children to carry on the work.
And so reproducing one's own spiritual life in that of another, fruitfulness, God's blessing upon our efforts and bringing forth fruit in our lives. In Psalm 129, trials and afflictions. In Psalm 130, purging the deeply ingrained sin in our lives, finding that sin is still there and the need for continual grace, really, from God in this area.
Psalm 131, humility and contentment. In Psalm 132, rest, entering into God's rest. In 133, unity with the brethren, which is one of the final stages, I believe, that the church must go through the sooner the better.
And finally, Psalm 134, permanent fellowship, unbroken worship and fellowship of God, which is realized only at the time that the Lord himself comes back. And so we've traced a spiritual pilgrimage. If these were pilgrim psalms sung by pilgrims who used to go to Jerusalem, well, they're also pilgrim psalms for us because we're on a pilgrimage also.
The Bible says that we should pass the time of our pilgrimage here, our sojourn, fear and trembling. And as pilgrims and strangers, we are to abstain from fleshly lusts that war against the soul. In this world.
And these are the songs of our pilgrimage. I believe it's in the 119th psalm. There's one that says, Thy testimonies have been the songs of my pilgrimage.
Meaning that God's words have become the things that we sing along our way as we're making our pilgrimage through life. And these psalms, well, can be that. And perhaps at different times in your life, at different stages in your walk, each of these psalms will have a different relevance to you.
And as you read them, they'll really come to life. Some of them, if you read them even now, may not have much life in them, but at another stage, another degree of your life, it may be very meaningful because of what you happen to be going through at that time. Well, at that point, we will close.
Thank you.

Series by Steve Gregg

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Gospel of John
In this 38-part series, Steve Gregg teaches verse by verse through the Gospel of John, providing insightful analysis and exploring important themes su
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How Can I Know That I Am Really Saved?
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