Psalms Lesson 32

Psalm 74:12-23

Next time we’ll do Exodus 15 which is a national declarative praise Psalm. So if you’ll read Exodus 15 in preparation for that. I’d like to do Exodus 15 for several reasons, not only is it a very dynamic declarative praise Psalm, it is a praise of a particular act of deliverance which is a mirror or our salvation, and I’d like play part of Handel’s rendition of Exodus 15 so you can see how a competent musician has set one of these pieces to music.

Psalm 74; we broke Psalm 74 up into four parts, verses 1-3 was the address and introduction, Israel asked God what purpose there can be to the disaster. In verses 4-11 Israel laments, the enemy has destroyed the temple, and we ended with that section last week. Then verses 12-17, Israel confidently reflects upon God’s past deliverances; verses 18-23, Israel petitions God to remember his covenant in the light of the blasphemy of the enemy. So we have these four parts to the Psalm. This Psalm deals with the problem of suffering in the era of the beginning of the silence of God, and therefore there’s tension in this Psalm. Last time we got to verse 11 and we saw one of the ways that the Jews had of addressing God, which would be guaranteed to get you kicked out of most groups if you dared to pray to God in the same way the Psalmist prayed to God in verse 11. Remember he asked God to please get His hand out of His pocket so that He might do something in their behalf, a very audacious kind of praise, but nevertheless, the kind that the psalmists regularly engaged in.

Beginning in verse 12-17 we have the confident section. And as I have said, faith in God’s Word is always pictured as trusting in the evidences of God’s historic revelation. God never, never, never asks anyone to believe for the sake of believing. He asks people to study what He has told them in history, what He has done for them in history, and therefore Biblical faith is faith in fact, not faith in feeling. And if you’ll get this concept down it’ll keep you from all the crazy things that are going on in conservative Christianity today.

Verse 12, “For God is my King of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth. [13] Thou didst divide the sea by Thy strength; Thou didst break the heads of the dragons [serpents] in the waters. [14] Thou breakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gave him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness. [15] Thou didst cleave [break open] the fountain and the flood; Thou dried up mighty rivers. [16] The day is Thine, and the night also is Thine; Thou has prepared the light and the sun. [17] Thou hast set all the borders of the earth; Thou hast made summer and winter.”

You see therefore this is basically studying the character and essence of God. It begins with verse 12 and in the Hebrew instead of having “for” we have “and.” We don’t have “for.” The “and” is indicated by a vav, and this is what is called a vav adversative, which means a shift of mood from the previous section; the previous section was the lament and therefore if you’re going to stop the lament and stop worrying about the problem and move on to the solution to the problem, there must be a radical change of mentality. You know that as a believer, you’re complaining and griping and so on about what God isn’t doing. Before you can trust there has to be in your mental attitude a shift, and the shift is indicated by this vav, which lacking anything better has been translated as “For” in the King James. “For” or “But,” it would be better translated “But,” this is how it usually is translated in the King James. “But” meaning I now change my attitude, I now shift from concentrating on my problem to concentrating upon the Lord and His nature. Now this is the application of the faith technique at the point of pressure in the life, and this is obviously what is not done when the believer faces a problem and instead of resting in the Lord he continues to worry about the problem. He never gets to this vav adversative, he never changes it.

Therefore, to study the faith technique for a moment we’re going to review the seven points of the faith technique and show how this psalmist is applying the faith technique. First, you recall that the faith technique says there are certain prerequisites for faith in Scripture. These prerequisites include first that the universe is a creation, not an evolution or something, that you have to have a literal Genesis or you cannot have the kind of God the Bible says God is. The kind of God you have got is a kind of impersonal process, there is no way of getting around it, you can sit there and argue hour after hour but in the final analysis all you’re doing is dressing up an impersonal process with the word G-o-d. That’s all you’ve done and you can write books, you can write themes, you can argue, you can debate but after it’s all said and done, all you’ve really done is said God is a process, not a person. So the first prerequisite is that the universe is created.

The second thing, and notice this is brought out in verse 16, “The day is Thine, and the night also is Thine; Thou has prepared the star and the sun,” literally. So this references to God’s creation.

Another prerequisite that you have to have is a piece of the mind of God, because you have to have some content to trust in, something other than feeling, something other than experience. Now it’s true God’s Word comes to us in the flow of history so that it is historical experience. However, there’s a tremendous difference between historical experience and the mere subjective feeling of a believer. So the Psalmist goes back to a piece of God’s mind when he says, for example in verse 20, “have respect unto the covenant,” he had some concrete, something God has promised, something that is beyond his feeling. He doesn’t go on the basis of feeling or how he feels or doesn’t feel about something; nothing to do with feeling.

Another prerequisite is that you must have revelation that is visible; visible revelation, that means open to historical considerations and you’ll notice verse 13, 14, 15, all refer to historic events, not to speculations, to historic events. And the Psalmist is trusting in the God of history.

And the fourth prerequisite is that there must be a considerable amount of personal investigation. You have to believe with your own conscience, not mine, not someone else’s, but you have to learn to believe all by your lonesome. And sometimes it is a lonely process; this is something your husband can’t do for you, this is something your wife can’t do for you, this is something your pastor can’t do for you; in the final analysis you have to believe after personally considering it yourself. And that is where the basic decision is made on your personal investigation and Psalm 74 is the account of Asaph or whoever wrote it for Asaph, studying the problem; the problem was a genuine one, why do we have this kind of suffering, I can’t reconcile it with the kind of God I know. So the Psalmist is working through; if you’ve ever tried to write yourself you know that this Psalm wasn’t knocked out in two minutes; there was a lot of thought that went into Psalm 74.

That’s the first thing about the faith technique and you’ll notice all four of those prerequisites are visible in the Psalm.

The second thing the faith technique is what the definition of faith is, that is an assurance of God’s eternal gracious plan in the life of the believer, which allows his own rational submission to it in the present moment. A very detailed definition of faith and very necessary one if you are going to avoid the errors that are being made all over the place today. An assurance of God’s eternal gracious plan; God’s plan, not yours, you don’t have faith in what you are doing for the Lord or what great plans you have to do for the Lord. That’s not the issue. In fact, it isn’t even ultimately the issue of what you think God’s plan for your life is. It goes bigger than that, all the way back to God’s eternal plan for the cosmos. That’s the foundation of foundations; the assurance of God’s eternal gracious plan in the life of the believer which allows his own rational submission to it; that’s put in there so you’ll understand that faith is not closing your mind; you do not close your mind when you believe.

The only people that close their mind when they believe are unbelievers, or the Christian who is rejecting grace; the person who is truly believing according to Scripture is the only person living today that has an open mind in the true sense of the Word. The person who professes to have an open mind does not really have an open mind, and if you have extended discussions with this kind of person, it’ll always come out in the wash somewhere in the conversation that there’s some area which they will not, under any circumstances, consider. There’s some part of the Christian faith that they will not accept, period, over and out, even if you sat here for six hours and gave them evidence after evidence after evidence, their mind is made up, don’t confuse them with facts. And that is the situation with everybody who rejects the Word of God. That’s the second thing about the faith technique.

The third part about the faith technique, besides the definition, is the difference between doing and resting. This varies, by doing we don’t mean legalism, we don’t mean salvation by works; by doing a better word is functioning. Now sometimes in an act of faith while you’re applying the faith technique it may be nothing more than breathing and thinking. So to exercise the faith technique it might be 5% functioning and 95% resting in the grace of God. Under other situations it might involve more functioning, for example it might involve job hunting, putting a resume forward, etc. It might involve 10% functioning and 90% resting, but this is not salvation by works as I am using it. This is not mixing and compromising grace; I just simply put that in there to show you that you still function under the first divine institution. What is the Psalmist doing in Psalm 74? He’s thinking, so he’s doing something, he’s not just passively sitting there waiting for God to write the answer in a neon sign in the ceiling. He is actively using his mind on the material at hand. So he is functioning as a creature, using his God-given capacities. But he is resting; he’s resting because he knows the solution to the problem is unavailable by his works; he can’t get at the solution. By thinking he knows where the solution is, but he can’t get it so at this point he has to rest 100%, it’s all rest; rest in what God’s going to do to solve the problem.

The fourth thing that you want to remember about the faith technique that makes it the most important area of the Christian life is that this is the only way God is pleased with you personally. God is never pleased with any of us when we are not using the faith technique. The only time God is pleased with us in a subjective sense, an immediate sense, is when we are using the faith technique and if we’re rejecting the faith technique, if we’re in panic palace some place, and if we’re rejecting God’s offers in His promises, He is not pleased. And Christians have all sorts of ways of very righteously and piously rejecting grace. But nevertheless, God is not pleased and God is not fooled, so the faith technique is the only thing that we have that pleases God. And all the faith technique is, it’s non-meritorious, it’s just give me; that’s the only thing God’s pleased with, just give me, come on, You’ve got grace, give me some. And that is basically the attitude, the mental attitude that God is pleased with. He’s a giver and we are the receivers.

The fifth thing, every time you use the faith technique you express allegiance to Christ and you express defiance of Satan because Satan’s arch position is that God is untrustworthy, therefore you should not use the faith technique; you should not use the faith technique because God doesn’t merit it, God is not trustworthy, you’ve got a problem that is bigger than God’s grace; you have a problem that God will not work with you on; you have some problem that is beyond hope. So Satan wants you not to use the faith technique and when you decide to use the faith technique that is an act of rebellion against the god of this world. So every time you use the faith technique you are expressing your faith in the character of Jesus Christ and every time we fail to use the faith technique and try to substitute our own human works we are agreeing with Satan, God is not trustworthy.

Now look at this for a minute; so far I haven’t mentioned one thing that would be considered immoral by standards of society; you can very morally and very piously be satanic. Listen, Thomas Aquinas once made a distinction in his writings between two kinds of sin. Now we’re not agreeing with Thomas’s theology; we can agree that Thomas had a point here. And the point that Saint Thomas made was this: there are angelic type sins and there are human type sins; the human type sins, Aquinas said, are sins that only people can do, only men with bodies can do, as for example, the sexual sins, as for example other sins involving the physical body. Now those man alone can do; angels can only do them when they take on bodies in Genesis 6 but that would be an exception. However, Thomas said, what are the sins that both men and angels can do together? Pride, mental attitude sins, and if that’s the case, then which sins are the most satanic? Aren’t they the pride and the mental attitude sins, the same kind of sins that the angels and demons can do that we can do? Of course; so when we express ourselves in mental attitude sins, pride, anti-grace, self-righteousness, rejection of the faith technique, we are committing sins that the demons do regularly. We are demonic at that point, we are lining up with their whole mentality, their whole thought world. So man though not an angel in the sense that he’s body-less can, we all can, commit sins that Satan himself does, pride being the root of them. So remember that the faith technique expresses allegiance to Christ, rebellion against Satan.

The sixth thing about the faith technique, you have to exercise it. Hebrews 5:13-14. The faith technique must be exercised by usage and there is no other way to grow, unfortunately. This is one of the things I never like to deal with as a pastor in a counseling situation, people say well how long will it be before I can master this type environment that I’m in? And I say I don’t know how long it will take, it’ll take as long as you are spiritually weak, until you exercise this much faith and then next week a little bit more and a little bit more, etc. And even after you think you’ve arrived, like exercise of the body, you take a break and you lose all the benefits. You take a break away from regularly using the faith technique and you’ll find yourself right back where you were before it all started. So the fastest way to take a tailspin is just take a vacation from the faith technique and you will be back where you started before and you’ll have to go all the way back again. Some of you that are on a regular exercise regime know that when you get out of shape the pain and the agony of getting back in shape again and how much easier it is to just keep at it a little bit each day than to take a four week break and then ugh, all over. That’s exercise, spiritual exercise and it has to be done by using the faith technique over and over and over and over and over and over.

Then the final thing about the faith technique is, and it follows out from the sixth point, is not to use it means you are going to harden your heart. That is taught in Hebrews 3 and 4; if you reject the faith technique you’re not only going to not grow, you’re going to retrogress and eventually go into compound carnality. You have no choice in the matter, none! You must use the faith technique or you will harden your heart. There is no in-between at this point.

So that’s what the psalmist is going to begin in verse 12. So as we study verses 12-17 and we study his use of the faith technique, study and imitate how he does it. You’ve got to master, the Holy Spirit has okayed this man’s use of the faith technique by putting it in the canon of Scripture. So since the Holy Spirit has seen fit to record this for us, let’s look at it and let’s see if we can learn by imitation. We can do this, you’ve got a model, this man didn’t panic though he was faced with a disaster; a disaster of national proportions and he didn’t go to the funny farm because he couldn’t take the pressure. He stayed with it.

Verse 12, his allegiance, “For,” “But God is my King of old,” now I said that the individual psalmist switches from the singular to the plural, back and forth, back and forth. When you see the singular in a national Psalm he is taking on the character of the nation, Jacob. And so he sees himself as the personal representative of Israel, “You are my King,” this expresses his position. But it expresses more than position. As a believer we have two circles, when we become Christians God puts us in union with Jesus Christ forever, this is the circle of our eternal fellowship. Then we have the circle of our temporal fellowship and we can be in the circle or out of the circle at any given moment. Now in the Old Testament they had this doctrine too; in the Old Testament the top circle was the Abrahamic Covenant, that said the nation was the elect nation. That was an expression of God’s sovereign election of Israel over all the other nations. Their bottom circle was the Law. Under this circle they would be submitting to the King or they would be rebelling against the King.

So in verse 12 when he says, “God is my King of old,” he is saying I submit to the King, I bow my knee to Jehovah, I submit to His will in my life and this would be analogous in your experience to 1 John 1:9 and back in fellowship. When you use 1 John 1:9 you’re submitting to God’s gracious way of restoration instead of coming out with some crazy gimmick of your own, you say all right Lord, I just put aside all the phony stuff and get back to grace, 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” That is your saying “God is my King.” You’re submitting to Him.

So verse 12 is a declaration of the fellowship, the psalmist is in fellowship in verse 12, even though he has pressure, he makes sure that he is in fellowship. He declares, “God is my King of old,” and the “of old” describes the kind of King God is. He is not just the King of the present moment, He is the king that is related to historic revelation, stretching out over the centuries, “King of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.” It’s a Hebrew participle, it’d probably be adjectival use, meaning the character of God. God is the One who works salvation in the midst of the earth; that is my King. Under the Mosaic Law, according to Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26, if the nation was on positive volition God was obligated to work salvation in the midst of the earth, and God would work salvation in the midst of the earth every time the nation was on positive volition. Just like when we are on positive volition, God works salvation for us. And when we are on negative volition He will not.

Verse 13 is a testimony, verses 13-14 refer to the Exodus event. Here is a historic event he goes back to. He doesn’t go back to the past things in his life; he goes back to history, to grounded faith. Now some have said well, you can’t ever prove an event in history for certain and therefore it’s stupid for you Christians to go around saying I ground my faith in history because history is never totally certain. Beware of this little argument, it sounds cute until you think about it for a minute. Let me ask you a question; can you imagine a doctor operating in the operating room who refused to use any data from history. What would happen to a doctor operating in an operating room who refused to learn from history. How would he ever learn how to operate? Isn’t all his data and training out of the past. Of course. Extending it further, you make decisions every day… every day that completely on the validity of history…completely on the validity of history.

The next time you hear somebody that’s trying to be cute and say well, we don’t believe in history because history is uncertain kind of thing, say now just a minute, within the past five minutes that very same person has had to rely upon history in order to exist. Imagine for example sitting down to a table and you see a set of different kinds of food laid out in front of you, how do you know which food is poisonous and which is nonpoisonous if you can’t rely on history. You’re trusting the cook, that’s a matter of history. You’re trusting your past experience that when you eat that you get sick, when you eat that you don’t. That’s past history, you can’t even eat three times a day without relying upon history. So how foolish to say that it’s weak to place your faith in history. Pray tell, where else are you going to place your faith. If you can’t place your faith in history, where can you place it. If you can’t place your faith in history, where can you place it. Try like the Greeks did; they learned, they tried to place faith in their mentality and it lasted about a hundred years. So we place our faith in history and we do not get red in the face or embarrassed about it simply because all men place their faith in history. The question is, what in history do you place your faith in, that’s the only question.

Verse 13, the psalmist places his faith in the Exodus of history, “Thou didst divide the by Thy strength, and you broke the heads of the dragons in the waters.” Now the dragons is a motif which we’re going to get into in a moment but I first want you to see “Thy strength” in verse 13a. “Thy strength means,” and here, according to Exodus 14:21, “Thy strength” refers to the strong east wind that God used to divide the waters of the Red Sea. God used secondary physical processes, so “Thy strength” refers back to the character of God first. Here is God, God is sovereign, God is righteousness, God is just, God is love, God is omniscient, God is omnipresent, omnipotent immutable, and eternal. All right, here’s God’s omnipotence. God’s omnipotence designed creation; God’s omnipotence is eternal, God’s omnipotence is infinite, this is why we always draw God with an open box, not a closed one, meaning that God is infinitely spread out. Creation drawn with a circle to show it’s limited and in here He uses the east wind, the east wind over the Sinai area. It was a control of nature forces. And so the psalmist is believing that the east wind was controlled by God. Notice the presupposition in all this, it goes back to the divine viewpoint framework, in other words, the Psalmist was accepting the fact that the universe is a creation of God, so that when he looked at the east wind it wasn’t a chance phenomena. When he looked at the east wind it was due to the strength of God Himself. That is his presupposition from which he operates. So “You divided the sea by Your strength,” he recognizes that it didn’t happen by chance. “You divided the sea by Your strength.”

Now he starts to engage in symbolism and to understand the symbolism we must go into some background a little bit about two words and get a little big of Egyptian history and also some history on the angelic conflict. “You broke the heads” plural “of the dragons” plural “in the waters. [14] You broke the heads” plural “of leviathan in pieces, and gave him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness.” Two words are used here. The word translated “dragons” looks like this, tanniym, the tanniym refer to poisonous snakes, that’s the primary meaning of the word tanniym, poisonous snakes. That’s the every day use of tanniym. It was a common noun in the vocabulary, poisonous snakes. But it wasn’t just snakes, he’s not talking about snakes swimming around in the water, this is not shooting water moccasins or something.

The poisonous snakes came to be a Satan symbol. It came to be a Satan symbol because in the Garden Satan chose to incarnate himself in what is called in your Bibles a serpent, which we would call a reptile. We do not know what the animal was that Satan incarnated himself in, though we know demons can indwell animals that have a central nervous system. So it was a reptile of some sort in the Garden, Satan incarnated himself and from that time forward the reptile has always been the Satan symbol of Scripture, all the way from Genesis back to the book of Revelation. It’s constantly used, it’s used outside of the Bible. If you study Assyrian culture, Babylonian culture, you’ll find this Satan symbol. So the Satan symbol came to be used for many things.

Now the Satan symbol was taken over by the Egyptians but when the Egyptians took it over they did not use the Satan symbol for evil; they used the Satan symbol for illumination. Here is a picture of cuneiform writing of the Egyptians and you’ll notice on the top there’s a set of wings. If you look carefully in the center you will see a round circle. That is the sun, most artists who comment on this say that means the sun and it’s a picture of illumination. What is surrounding the sun? To the left and to the right you see two heads. This is the python, this is a poisonous snake in Egypt, and the snake was used for the sign of wisdom and illumination. And so to the Egyptian the serpent was the sign of illumination and wisdom. To those who think biblically the snake is a symbol of Satan. Those who think anti-biblically, in they mythological motifs, the serpent is a sign of wisdom. So here you have the Egyptians willingly taking over the serpent symbol as a sign of wisdom. Here is another Egyptian work and to the left you see Pharaoh on his throne with the head of a falcon, this is a poster, you’ve got to learn how to read Egyptian art, the Egyptians weren’t naïve enough to believe that Pharaoh looked that way or even that he ever appeared that way; this is a poster which says that the force manifested in a falcon is the force manifested in Pharaoh, and they would draw Pharaoh with the head of a falcon. This means that Pharaoh is Horus incarnate, Pharaoh is god, he is god incarnate according to the Egyptians, but on his head, showing his wisdom, again we see the symbol of the sun and around the symbol of the sun is the snake, the snake means the source of wisdom and life.

So you see, by this point in history Egypt had willingly taken upon itself a Satan symbol in the guise of wisdom. This is why in the Bible you see passages, if you’ll turn to Isaiah 51:9, the prophets pick up the theme. And when they refer to Egypt they use the Satan symbol that Egypt voluntarily took upon itself. I wouldn’t be surprised, in the light of this, that finally in the latter days on earth, when antichrist assumes control during the Tribulation, that antichrist in his art forms will again resurrect the symbology of Egyptian art. I think there will be a revival of Egyptian art and by it the demonic forces that are operating around the person of antichrist will be able to pawn themselves off into the culture and twist and warp men’s minds in the area of culture to cause a resurrection of the great Satan symbols of history. Those who know the Word in that day will be alert, the tribulational saints who study the canon will recognize the satanism in the art.

Verse 9, Isaiah says, “Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; Awake,” he’s calling Christ the “arm of the LORD” is the Messiah, “Awake as in the ancient days, as in the generations of old. Was it not Thou who has cut Rahab, and wounded” now Rahab is not the harlot of Judges, this is another word, it’s spelled differently in the Hebrew, pronounced the same in English, “thou hast cut Rahab,” which is a proper noun, “and wounded the tanniym.” So here you have the tanniym used of Egyptian power. “Are you not He who dried the sea, the waters of the great deep, that made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?” So you see the word tanniym translated in King James as the dragon, is identified with Pharaoh.

Now it’s identified not just with Egypt but with Pharaoh. Why is it identified with Pharaoh? The reason is that under Egyptian power Pharaoh was the state; Pharaoh did not have law, there is no law code in Egypt; amazing thing, Pharaoh ruled by direct command. Pharaoh was the state, there wasn’t any state if Pharaoh wasn’t there, there was no Egypt; Pharaoh was the state. No politician in the history of mankind has ever attained the allegiance that Pharaoh did to himself. For thirty centuries Egypt survived without a revolution except one, led by Moses. But there was never a revolution internal to Egypt. They were invaded from the outside, yes, but it’s an amazing fact of history that will bear up under a very detailed study, that the Egyptian man and the Egyptian woman traded security for freedom; security under Pharaoh for their freedom to be independent and free from what Pharaoh said. They worshiped Pharaoh as God incarnate and therefore Egypt is the ideal kingdom of Satan and always pictured as such in history of the Bible. Egypt is the archetype or the type of the future role of antichrist.

God had Israel exit from Egypt, not from Assyria, not even from Babylon, God had Israel exit from Egypt because Egypt alone of all ancient societies had this totalitarian setup. Turn to Ezekiel 29:3 we’ll see more of this, another passage dealing with the Satan symbols and Pharaoh. “Speak, and say, Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great tanniym, that lies in the midst of his rivers, who has said, My river is my own, and I have made it for myself.” There are some speculations that the reason Pharaoh got the name dragon was because of the Nile and its wandering-ness, but in the last part of verse 3 you notice what Pharaoh says, “I have made it for myself,” now this is one of those little verses that’s kind of intriguing to study if you really believe the Bible is the Word of God.

If you go back and study ancient history Herodotus says that when Egypt first began, the first king, whose name he says was Menes, this man, Menes, who began the dynasties of Egypt was known for one thing; all of Egypt was an extended marsh, Menes damned up the Nile and made it for himself. The Nile and its whole flood plain is an artificial creation of the first kingdom of man. The deposits that we see that have built up over the centuries since look very natural, of course, but the Nile at one time just spread out, where you see these rivers spreading out, this was a whole marshland. And Menes who was the first King of Egypt, was a man who by works established the basis for his society. He tamed the Nile.

Now it’s interesting that the Bible says Egypt was founded by a man by the name of Mizraim, now it turns out that Zaor [sp?] or Zoar [sp] is the Hebrew to embank, and “ym” or “im” is the sea, and this may be why Menes is called in the Bible “Mizraim,” or the grandson of Noah, because he led a group of people down into this area and embanked the sea. So Pharaoh then became proud, not only did he rule the state but he mastered the physical environment to cause the security for the state. And thus you see, Egyptian society is ideally suited for works, the perfect picture of Satan and his system. Now that’s tanniym; I hope by now you’re convinced first that tanniym was a poisonous snake, the poisonous snake is a symbol of Satan, we might as well get this… The first point is that tanniym is a poisonous snake. The second point is that tanniym therefore becomes a Satan symbol by Genesis 3. The third point is that the Satan symbol becomes identified with Pharaoh. So that’s the progress of what has happened here in these words.

Now we have a problem, going back to Psalm 74 it says not the single “dragon,” but plural, “dragons,” the heads of the tanniym, who are the heads of the tanniym? The heads of the tanniym are Pharaoh’s armies who became the symbol throughout the ancient world of Pharaoh’s power and God broke Pharaoh’s power; He “broke the heads of the tanniym.” Why does the psalmist picture Pharaoh’s army as poisonous snakes? Because consciously on the psalmist’s mind is the satanic inspiration behind Pharaoh and his kingdom.

Now verse 14, “Thou,” see how verse 13 begins with “Thou?” see how verse 14 begins with “Thou?” See how verse 15 begins with “Thou?” It’s all the character of God as shown by His historic revelation. “You’re the one that broke the heads,” plural “of leviathan” singular “in pieces.” Now what is “leviathan.” Turn to Isaiah 27:1, in Isaiah 27:1 we have a reference to leviathan and tanniym together, again showing this point, the Satan symbol. “In that day the LORD with His sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan, the piercing reptile [serpent], even leviathan, that crooked reptile [serpent]; and he shall slay the tanniym that is in the sea.” The tanniym that is in the sea we have defined from Ezekiel 29:3 to be none other than Pharaoh. Leviathan is used in apposition, therefore this passage proves leviathan is also a Satan symbol that refers to Satan and Pharaoh.

Now as with tanniym however, leviathan could have a perfectly normal straightforward meaning and was equated with an animal in the ancient world. That animal is pictured in Job 41; if you turn to Job 41:1 we’ll see what leviathan was in the normal world without it being invested as a Satan symbol. This is God challenging Job and in particular He’s pointing out man’s physical limitations and so he says look man, you think you’re so great, “Can you draw out leviathan with a hook?” It’s referring to fishing and the point is that leviathan, therefore, is an aqueous animal of a reptile, Isaiah 27:1 called him a flaming serpent so we know he’s in the reptile family, but “Can you draw out leviathan with a hook,” in other words, can you go fishing for him and the answer is no, he’s too big. “…or his tongue with a cord which you let down?”

Verse 2, “Can you put an hook into his nose, or bore his jaw through with a thorn? [3] Will he make many supplications unto thee? Will he speak soft words to thee?” Verse 7, “Can you fill his skin with barbed irons, or his head with fish spears?” In other words, can you go hunting for him if he comes up on land as reptiles often can. They can dwell in the water but they can come up on the land and when he comes up on the land can you go hunting with him with normal physical weapons? No. Verse 9, “Behold, the hope of him is in vain; shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him?” A ferocious animal. [10] “None is so fierce that dares stir him up; who then is able to stand before him?” Verse 12, “I will not conceal his parts, nor his power, nor his comely proportion. [13] Who can discover the face of his garment?” Verse 14, “Who can open the doors of his face? His teeth are terrible round about. [15] His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal.”

So please notice what we’re talking about. We’re talking about a reptile; number one, we’re talking about a reptile that has tremendous scales, one who is just big, just plain big and terrifying, more so than any other animal in the ancient world. Now do some of you know some of the animals that would be large that you know definitely the ancients were aware of? [someone says something] Okay, crocodile was one. What are some normal animals outside of the reptilian group that you know that the ancients knew about? Just think of any large animal. Whatever leviathan is it’s going to be larger than the large animals that you can think of. [someone says something] All right, they knew whales. How do we know that? The book of Jonah, we know about the whales. The elephant was known because we have pictures archeologically of the elephant. [someone says something] I’m going to get to that, but I want you to see the line of reasoning because I don’t want to come too fast to that conclusion, so you see why we come to this conclusion.

The point is that the ancients were not naïve people, they knew what large animals were. Good night, Hannibal trained elephants in the Second Punic War, he just about zapped the Romans with them. He knew what elephants were. So therefore since the ancients knew large animals who can this animal be, that’s larger than the largest. Notice for example verse 16, the scales “so near to one another, that no air can come between them. [17] They are joined one to another, they stick together, that they cannot be sundered. [18] By his sneezings a light does shine, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the mourning,” in other words there’s some peculiar feature to his eyes, a sort of phosphorescent type glow to his eyes. We’ll comment on this strange attribute in a moment. Verse 19, “Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out. [20] Out of his nostrils go smoke, as out of a seething [boiling] pot or caldron. [21] His breath kindles coals, and a flame goes out of His mouth.”

Now what does that sound like? All through ancient mythology you have this strange motif of fire-breathing dragons. This is a reflection in the Bible of that, except usually the liberal will say aha, this is a mythical animal. But notice something, if you take the dimensions of this animal, for example, you can go on down in chapter 41, verse 27, notice this, “He esteems iron as straw,” in other words he’s so powerful that if you have an iron fence he just walks over it, just bends it like a piece of straw, a very powerful animal whatever this is. Verse 33, “Upon earth there is not his like,” this is truly the king of beasts, but it was a beast that was known in history.

Now we have in my theology the monster motif. Now the monsters, if you look at pictures sometimes, take one of these drawings, an artist’s conception of a monster, and on the other side take a dinosaur, certain kinds of dinosaurs and put them side by side; see if you notice something very similar about the bodily dimensions. Now I am suggestion, as Dr. Moore suggested that Job 41 actually is a historical survival of an observation that dinosaurs existed during the time of early civilization. They were regularly seen by men and men were terrified of them. You say yes, but dinosaurs didn’t breathe fire and smoke, etc. All right, two comments. First we know there are chemical processes of living things, such as the so-called firefly, that are phosphorescent type glows are possible chemically, cold light. All that would be needed would be a similar type of chemical action in the cells of the mouth and eyes of this animal. Remember, dinosaur remains are skeletal only; we do not know what a dinosaur looked like, we have no pictures, except the bones, therefore you cannot a priori say that there was not a phosphorescent type thing involved in the dinosaur’s body, and as a matter of fact, he did have these kinds of scales.

The second point about this is that you say well, yeah, the dinosaurs existed, yes on the evolutionary world view, not on the Biblical worldview; on the Biblical worldview dinosaurs and men were contemporary until the dinosaurs were destroyed. Do we have any outside extra-Biblical evidence? Yes, in the Supai Canyon of Arizona the Indians carved pictures of animals that are known in that area and they carved them on the side of this canyon and included in the carvings is a dinosaur. Now if you’re going to argue that it’s mythological, why is it that the Indians are carving animals that were known to inhabit the area and then all of a sudden get to a mythical animal and then go back to regular animals. Far better and easier interpretation and the artwork of the Supai Canyon is simply that the Indians were recording what they saw and as a matter of fact, they saw dinosaurs. This only becomes incredible if you accept the geological time scale of evolutionary geology, but if you don’t and work off a Biblical basis this is not surprising at all. All right, that probably is leviathan, that is the animal, he became a symbol of Satan.

Now we go back to Psalm 74:14, “You broke the heads” plural “of leviathan in pieces,” the “heads of leviathan” are simply the army commanders, Pharaoh’s army, and You “gave him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness.” Now there are two ways to interpret this, only one I think is satisfactory. One way you can interpret verse 14, what do you think this “giving the meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness” is? Can you think back to the Exodus? What happened to the Jews just before they left Egypt? What were they given and what did they take? They took gold and they took the belongings of the Egyptians, they spoiled Egypt. So one interpretation of the last part of verse 14 is that they spoiled the Egyptians and that the people inhabiting the wilderness are the Jews, that’s one interpretation. But that’s a little too symbolic, since all the rest of this passage is talking about literal things we would consider this literal food.

It turns out the people inhabiting the wilderness is an expression that can be used for the vultures. And if you hold the place and turn back to Exodus 14:30 you’ll see a verse that describes this. “Thus the LORD saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the seashore,” their bodies floated to the seashore, the soldiers, the Egyptian soldiers, they drowned and they just floated ashore and later on the vultures and carrions would pick, pick, pick and eliminate them, God’s garbage men would come and eliminate them. That picture of the vultures coming to eat the flesh of the dead captains is a picture that where else in the Bible occurs? Armageddon, in Revelation 20, and the end of chapter 19, remember the angel, “Come and eat of the flesh of the mighty captains” and so on. All right, so that is the picture of Exodus 14.

Verse 15, “You didst break open the fountain and the flood, You dried up mighty rivers,” these are rivers that flow throughout the year, that is the conquest, Jordan in particular. Verse 16 refers back to creation, “The day is Yours, the night is also Yours; You have prepared the light and the sun.” Verse 17, “You have set all the borders of the earth; You have made summer and winter,” that’s the Noahic Covenant, the seasons. Do you see God deeply engaged in creation, a God deeply engaged in controlling the geophysical environment through the Noahic Covenant and a God deeply engaged in history in a mighty way.

Verses 18-23, here is the petition and the final conclusion of Psalm 74. “Remember this, that the enemy has reproached, O LORD, and the foolish people have blasphemed Thy name,” this refers to the people who came in and destroyed the temple. [19] O deliver not the soul of Thy turtledove unto the multitude of the wicked; forget not the congregation of Thy poor forever. [20] Have respect unto the covenant;” “the covenant” is the top circle, the Abrahamic Covenant. In our experience as Christians this would mean… here we are, we are predestined to be conformed to Christ. Remember the things that God the Father does, He foreknows you, He predestinates you, He calls you, He justifies you, He glorifies you and He disciplines you. Those are six things that God the Father does for every believer. One of those things is that He predestinates you to be conformed to Christ. If that is the case, then you can claim that in the middle of pressure, as this psalmist claimed his top circle, the Abrahamic Covenant. Now God, you promised I would be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, I hold you to that promise, I claim that promise so that I know that this works together for good, that’s the background of Romans 8:28, found in Romans 8:29 incidentally. So the prayer made in verse 20 goes back to the Abrahamic Covenant.

“Have respect unto the covenant; for the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty. [21] O let not the oppressed return ashamed; let the poor and needy praise Thy name. [22] Arise, O God, plead thine own cause; remember how the foolish man reproached Thee daily. [23] Forget not the voice of Thine enemies, the tumult of those who rise up against Thee increases continually.”

Now all throughout this petition, in conclusion, this whole final petition, what is true? What mentality pervades this whole final petition, do you notice? With whom is this suffering identified? [someone says something] All right, the righteous but what about the righteous? What thing do you read happening over and over in this petition? What is the compliant, how does the psalmist define his complaint. What is ultimately the issue as he sees it? The reproach of God’s character. Now this is what separates the mature believer from the immature believer. Now we all go through this stage but let me show you something. When you first begin to use the faith technique in the Christian life the tendency always is to look on it as some sort of an out away from pressure in the life, and truly it is. There’s nothing wrong with this as long as you control it, but the tendency is to just say this is a release mechanism away from trouble in my life. Now that is one possibility, that’s one part of the faith technique. Okay.

But when you mature and hopefully you arrive there as quickly as possible, when you use the faith technique you see it has a higher usage; you’re not fighting for you, you’re fighting with your Lord and the King of Kings to maintain the purity of His character through history so that your troubles take on a cosmic significance. They’re not just trivial little things that you need a psychological aspirin for; these are titanic issues in the background and the psalmist identifies the national woes of Israel with the ongoing cosmic struggle of the King of Kings, and that, when you are able to use the faith technique in the context of holy war, that fact that if you are impeded in your progress spiritually that is a blot on the person and character of Jesus Christ. The Christian who has maturity, I repeat, can never rest content while the character of Christ is being defamed. That is one of the hallmarks of a more mature use of the faith technique. I use it not just as a release of my personal problems but I use it because if I do not, Satan is able to reproach the character of my Savior.

Now it’s not that God needs our help, but rather that God is working through us by grace, but yet in God’s wisdom He has so designed the holy war so that in a way our actions are significant; they really are, and for us not to use the faith technique means that we sit here, stand here, hour by hour, day after day, and allow the character of Christ to be smeared, blotched and the world receives no empirical testimony that what we’re saying is really true. So this is how important, how tremendously important it is for you to by faith appropriate grace on a moment by moment basis. The life your own.