Psalms Lesson 38

Psalm 89:1-5

Psalm 89 is one of the Royal Psalms and a very long one but it’s “the” classic Psalm on 2 Samuel 7. See, 2 Samuel 7 is the Davidic Covenant, that’s where all these Royal Psalms come from and out of that you get Psalm 2 and now Psalm 89. These are called Royal Psalms, not because they have a particular form but simply because their content deals with the King of Israel. They are important to you because they’re going to show you how Israel viewed the office of kings and therefore you’ll understand more about the Lord Jesus Christ who is the greater son of David. Please understand that in our generation people cannot appreciate Jesus Christ truly because they do not have the proper Old Testament background.

A Jewish person who had an Old Testament background in the book of Acts could have become a Christian, and had a tremendous ministry almost overnight; the reason is that the Old Testament Jesus Christ in the book of Acts had a tremendous background; he had hours and hours and hours of teaching and the people today that are won to Jesus Christ simply do not have the background. And therefore we’re not seeing the rapid results we saw in the book of Acts. This is to be expected, after all, the people in the book of Acts, if you figure they had three or four hours a week religious instruction over a period of 20 years you have to go a long way to catch up to that. So don’t be dismayed because today we can’t reproduce all the results of the book of Acts. The reason is that we don’t have the people with the background.

Now this Royal Psalm is royal because of its content, but it’s form is something we have seen before. It is an individual lament Psalm. Can you give one or two parts of an individual lament Psalm. [someone answers] Okay, the address, lament, petition and praise the trust section. That’s it, complete; that is the form of an individual lament Psalm, and all individual lament Psalms have basically this structure. Why is this important for you? Because the men who wrote the Psalm had this structure in mind when they wrote it. They wrote it according to the rules of the game, just like if you play football you have certain rules you follow. When these men wrote these Psalms they had rules they followed and to judge their work and to get the maximum thing out of it you just don’t read the Psalm, you understand what kind of Psalm it is.

Now let’s see if we can identify the parts of the Psalm. The Psalm is a very, very long one but as you look at Psalm 89 let’s see if we can spot some of the parts. Just skim the first couple of words and then drop down to the next one, just kind of skim with your eye and watch for changes in person, changes in emphasis, subject matter, etc. [someone says something about 38-45] Okay, how did you spot it? [can’t hear] So we can at least say that 38 starts the lament and it goes to 45, and 46 starts the petition. Now remember these parts of the individual lament Psalm don’t have to occur in this order, don’t get snowed. Remember, the man’s an artist that is writing these Psalms and as an artist he has the right to combine these elements if he wishes, for emphasis in his piece of art. So don’t get into a mold on this thing, it’s more flexible than that, it’s a piece of art. And as all good art, creative art, it changes form as the man wants to produce what he wants to produce. [someone says something] Very good observation, this is the only one we’ve dealt with that it looks like the vow of praise section is actually starting it, verse 1, look what he’s doing in verse 1. Doesn’t that sound to you like vow of praise? And it isn’t just a quick one because it keeps on going. And then it kind of peels off into declarative praise.

Now this is hard so we’ll just leave it as a question where that vow of praise section stops. We at least know verse 38 marks off the lament, it terminates at verse 45, the petition section starts at verse 46 and you can actually say the petition goes all the way to the end. Now we’ve got a problem; we start with verse 1 and it starts out with a vow of praise. By the time we get to verse 38 we’re into a lament. Now something has happened in the first 37 verses; you start out with a vow of praise and all of a sudden you wind up in the lament section. Now what are we going to do about pinning this thing down. What’s the Psalmist done here? He started out with a vow or praise but what section is obviously missing? The trust section. Will that help to separate the trust section from this vow of praise section, what about that? This is hard but maybe by thinking in those two terms it will help you divide in your mind this Psalm up into its parts.

Do you notice keeping on in verse 2, verse 3, verse 4, what happens in verse 5? There’s a transition of some sort there; see it between verse 4 and 5. What I have done in my analysis of this, I have run the trust section from verse 5 to verse 37; I have done dumped the address and made it a vow of praise, verses 1-4. And now we’ll explain and justify this outline.

The vow of praise stuck at the beginning, when usually it’s always stuck at the end, verses 1-4; the trust section, verses 5-37, talking over and over what God has done. This is also, you could say, declarative praise. This is why you think of it as declarative praise but I’m going to try to show you that the reason he’s declaring the praise is for another reason, to trust. The declarative praise is turning around in a full circle into trust. Are there any questions on this part. There will be debate over this address and the first part of the trust section, but do you at least see the lament and the petition; that’s clear, right? The lament in verse 38-45, you know why the lament is there, you recognize as you read it that you’re inside a lament, he’s complaining, he’s describing a bad situation. You recognize from verse 46-52 that he’s moving on there to a specific petition about his problem.

Now let’s look at the outline. I’ve outlined it as follows: the first part, verses 1-4 is that the psalmist declares his praise because he trusts in the Davidic Covenant. Verses 5-19, I have broken that long one up for the sake of outline, verses 5-19, God is praiseworthy because… and then I list a bunch of things that will form sub sections to verses 5-19: His uniqueness, God is praiseworthy because of His uniqueness; because of His acts, because of His ownership, because of His essence, His nature, and because of His blessing. There’s a whole pile of stuff here. And then verse 20-37 the psalmist repeats the content and duration of the Davidic Covenant; he dwells on the content and duration of the Davidic Covenant. And verses 38-45, in the present time, however, David’s house is experiencing defeat. Here’s the lament; in spite of all the [can’t understand word] that’s gone on, in the present time David’s house is experiencing defeat. And then 46-52, the psalmist petitions for God’s intervention on the basis of the Davidic Covenant.

Now before we go any further let’s back up a minute and take an overview look at this so we don’t lose the forest for the trees. We just went over the parts of an individual lament Psalm; I told you before that when you see these pieces out of order in a Psalm it should raise questions in your mind; it should make you ask why? Why has the psalmist twisted it out of order? He’s done it for a reason and he’s trying to tell us something. And if we know the rules of the game, you see, you can really enjoy your Bible, much more than the person who doesn’t know the rules here, if you know the rules of analyzing these Psalms you can get deep enjoyment over watching what the psalmist is doing with you here. It’s a game and you can only appreciate the game if you appreciate the rules. And if you see what the psalmist is doing with you, he’s doing more to you than just giving you a pile of verses. He’s arranged this Psalm in a particular order. And it’s as though he’s trying to say “do you see what I mean?” What does the psalmist mean? What do you think is going on? Why do you think he put the vow of praise and the trust at the beginning of this thing. Remember when we did the individual lament Psalms how many times we hit an individual lament Psalm and it seemed like the guy was right in the middle of an emergency and bang came the petition, then came the lament, then came the vow of praise. He had to shoot that petition right off, but in this one it doesn’t seem to be that way.

In this one he takes lots and lots of time to get to his petition. He precedes his petition with gobs of time, but what does that convey to you, apart from any specific. [someone says something] All right, in this point, in this individual lament Psalm the thing that is uppermost in the mind of the psalmist is the Davidic Covenant. This occupies, almost totally preoccupies us and you almost get the impression going through this Psalm that he tacks on the problem as an afterthought, because he has his problem but then when he goes to the petition, bang, he’s right back to the Davidic Covenant again. [someone says something] Could you develop that further. She just pointed out that the psalmist is going through an argument here preparatory to his petition. From what we have seen, when the psalmist makes petition, remember as we’ve gone through the Psalms, have you noticed that they have a particular mentality that’s quite rational. I always have to laugh at these people that say these poor idiots in the ancient world that were superstitious; boy, if there’s anything that kills that idea, just read what they wrote. These people are very rational. In fact, their prayers are a lot more rational than modern man’s prayers, much more. They are much more reasoned out. And what he is doing here is he is setting you up for the petition.

Now, remember when we kept saying in the Old Testament that one of the things that strikes us is the boldness and the audacity of the prayer requests in the Psalms. I mean, when you have petitions like we have seen, “God, get Your hands out of Your pocket and answer my petition,” and that’s literal, this is what one of the Psalm reads. Now if you prayed that prayer, try that at a football game sometime when you’re asked to pray and see how that one goes over. But that’s the way these Psalms are engineered, and here it’s a national petition, isn’t it? It’s a national petition, it’s a petition about the nation, the nation is undergoing military defeat. Now in order to get leverage with God to answer a national petition he’s got to go back to some set of promises that are national in scope. So where does he go back to? The Davidic Covenant.

Why doesn’t he go back to the Mosaic Covenant, there’s promised blessings there. Why doesn’t he go back there? The Mosaic Covenant promised blessings okay, if you were a good boy, and the problem here in history is they weren’t good boys. So it doesn’t do much good, God, give me blessing, on the basis of the Law because they didn’t deserve the blessing on the basis of the Law, so that’s why the Law never comes in to this thing. By the way, that should also teach… you see grace in the Old Testament, when these guys got serious they didn’t make their petition to God on the basis of the Law. The Mosaic Law was not used in this way. The only people that tried to use that was the Pharisees but the real saints of the Old Testament never brought the Law into this thing. When they fell back at a time of adversity, in a time of disaster, they didn’t go back to the Law; they went back to God’s sovereign unconditional covenant, the Abrahamic Covenant and the Davidic Covenant. Just like when we get out of fellowship and we’re out of it, we can’t go back and say God you owe us a blessing. The only basis of petition we’ve got is our position in Christ, that God has sovereignly decreed that we will be predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ and since that is a sovereign decree, He can’t let us go, because if He lets us go down the drain He lets His character and His name go down the drain. So that’s the big idea behind this Davidic Covenant. God, if You let the Davidic Covenant slide You let Your name slide because You are the One that promised it.

Let’s look at the first four verses, the psalmist declares his praise because he trusts in the Davidic Covenant. Obviously verse 1, “I will sing of the mercies of the LORD forever; with my mouth will I make known Thy faithfulness to all generations.” The theme for this psalm is hit right in the first verse.

By the way, just a note who Ethan was, “Ethan, the Ezrahite.” Ethan, the Ezrahite, according to 1 Kings 4:31 and 1 Chronicles 15:19 was a singer; he was a male singer. He also was a very skillful composer. So we know two things about Ethan; he was not only a male singer but he was also a composer of music. The reason we know he was a very skillful composer is that the note in 1 Kings 4:31 compares Solomon to Ethan and says Solomon was even more skillful in composing than Ethan was. Therefore obviously inferring that Ethan was a very skilled individual for Solomon to consider himself superior to Ethan. And 1 Chronicles 15:19 also tells us that he was a male singer.

So Ethan had a great ministry in David’s temple choir. He was established in the temple choir, but this introduces a problem. Why is he lamenting the condition of David’s son; we can only explain this in one of two ways, both are orthodox and scholars have tried to explain it this way. Either Ethan wrote this Psalm directly and he lived into Solomon’s reign to the point where he witnessed the civil war of 930 BC or Ethan wrote the kind of form, the musical from for this kind of thing and somebody else wrote the words that were set to his music. We don’t know. These words, “Maschil of Ethan, the Ezrahite” don’t really pin it down like we wish they would. But Ethan was a real historical person, he was a musician of quite high stature and he worked with helping people worship God in music. That was his ministry as a believer, and so he wrote this. Now can you imagine a man who is a great composer, who’s helping people worship God through music, has the theological and historical knowledge this man has. It just spills out all over his piece; the guy has had tremendous in depth Bible training before he composes his musical pieces, so that when he does compose they just ooze solid meat.

Look at verse 1, “I will sing of the mercies,” “the mercies” goes back to the word for love, chesed, remember the other Hebrew word for love is ahav, and do you remember the difference between chesed love in the Old Testament and ahav love. Chesed love is loyalty to an agreement that you have made; it is faithfulness, loyalty. Ahav love is sovereign love, I choose to love because I choose to love, period. I don’t have to tell why and there are no terms to it, it is sovereign love. Chesed love is not that kind, chesed emphasizes there’s a framework for it, there’s an agreement to it and the chesed is conformity to that agreement, chesed love. So immediately now, knowing this, when you see the first line you should be able to predict what you’re going to read next. “I will sing of the cheseds of the LORD forever.” Plural, what’s that? It means His manifestations of His loyalty, the different historical times in which God has manifested His loyalty to His Word. That’s what I will sing about.

See, Ethan probably was thinking what can I compose a song about. I know what I’ll compose a song about, I’ll compose a song that will describe the historic acts of God. “…with my mouth will I make known His faithfulness,” notice “mercies” and “faithfulness” are used synonymously. They are used several times synonymously. In fact, look at verse 2, verse 2 is parallelism too. “Mercy” and “faithfulness.” And the Hebrew word “faithfulness” is something that you ought to know, it comes from the Hebrew verb “amen” that means steadfastness and refers to one of God’s attributes, immutability. God is an immutable God, He is trustworthy therefore. So “mercies,” you see, chesed love, and stability and reliability, and so on, all that wrapped up in one ball.

All right, “I will sing of the mercies of the LORD forever;” now we have to explain the “forever” and “to all generations.” What do you think about that? Ethan, does he think he really is going to live forever, on earth, and be singing forever, be an eternal song leader? Why do you suppose he says “forever.” This occurs again and again and again and again and again in this Psalm. Well, the Hebrew concept, as we’ll point out was that Ethan was well aware he had a short life, so when he says “forever,” “to all generations,” we have to realize that Ethan believed that a historic contribution in area of music would go down and remain in history; it would be a historical contribution. The Jews always emphasized the historical, so therefore if you could set your monument into history, unforgettably so that future generations would never forget, then you spoke with your mouth to all generations. Your contribution went down as historically noteworthy. And obviously it did because the Holy Spirit very wonderfully took the composition of this man and incorporated it in the book of Psalms. So verse 1 has been fulfilled.

Verse 2, “For,” “for explains why he is going to vow to praise, “For I have said,” now it’s perfect but in this case, it’s interesting because there’s one place, one time in the Hebrew when the perfect tense on verbs to say or speak with the perfect mean I say it, and they’re usually translated present. “For I say,” now it’s perfect because they viewed the idea that when the word came out of your mouth you finished, stopped talking, so it was always put in the perfect tense, I said it, but we would say in English, the way we talk we’d say “I say it,” (quote) …. (end quote). “For I say,” and here’s the content of what he is going to say, he summarizes his whole Psalm. “Mercy shall be built up forever; Thy faithfulness shalt thou establish in the very heavens.” Notice the parallelisms, “mercy” and “faithfulness.” “Built up” and “established,” pictures the idea that God’s mercy or His faithfulness is going to be built up in layers, like a building. He looks forward in history to that construction project.

Now can you read behind the artistic use of words here to what’s he’s talking about concretely when he says, “Thy mercies are going to be built up.” Don’t think abstractly, what has he got on his mind? “Thy mercies,” “Thy faithfulness will be built up.” Obviously where is it going to be built up? In the arena of history. What is going to be built up in the arena of history? [someone says something] A particular kind of revelation because what is the center of his focus? The Davidic Covenant. So what this man is looking at is, he starts out with a revelation, we call that the words of God, 2 Samuel 7, but then he says “Thy mercies will be established, established, established, established, established, established,” those are God’s subsequent works. See why the Jew was interested in history. It was the place where he showed his God was trustworthy; of course the Jew had an interest in history that the Egyptian never had and the Assyrian never had and the Greek never had. History to the Jew was the only place he could see his God work; history was the place where he could show that Yahweh, God of Israel was faithful to His Word. God’s works fit God’s words. That’s always the apologetic, over and over in Scripture. God is faithful to do what God says He is going to do.

So “I say, and I look forward to this,” so that’s the basis of his petition. And one further point in verse 2, notice it says, “You will establish these in the heavens” [tape turns] … a very important verse because that introduces us to a theme we’ll be on the rest of the time. Why do you suppose, if you look at verse 2, let’s break verse 2 down, it’s parallel, learn to read the Psalms this way. Many verses are parallel, if you don’t understand part of a verse, map it out. Let me show you how you can do this on a piece of paper for yourself. Just go through, divide the paper in half, take part of the verse and put it on top, part of the verse and put it on the bottom. Watch what happens; let’s just take verse 2, let’s forget “For I have said,” because that’s just introducing the thing. Let’s take “Mercy shall be built up,” so the subject of the top part, “Mercy.” The verb, “shall be built up;” adverb, “forever,” describing how this is going to be built up, an adverb modifying the verb, so “Mercy built up forever.” Now let’s take the other half, “Faithfulness,” there’s the subject, “established,” let’s just take this as a passive verb, “will be established,” this is kind of not kosher but it will illustrate the point, any English teachers in the audience please forgive me for this, my point still is valid; “in the heavens.” “Forever” is an adverb and “in the heavens” obviously is a prepositional phrase but “in the heavens” does modify this, it’s talking about where it’s going to be established.

Now let’s just look at what kind of parallelism we’ve got. We’ve got parallelism between “Mercy” and “faithfulness.” Easy to see, no sweat there. “Mercy” is chesed, chesed is loyal to a covenant, agrees well with “faithfulness.” “Built up” and “established,” those two verbs fit, they’re very parallel, the actions fit one another. But now look what’s happened, we’ve got something that is temporal here, “forever” has something to do with time, “heavens” has to do with space or location. Now here’s where we’ve got to solve something, this is a problem, and that is, why does he set these things in parallel. And this is an interpretation problem, which if you miss it you’re going to miss a tremendous jewel of truth here. This is why you proceed very slowly and carefully when you hit these verses.

Why does he use time and why does he use heaven? Does anybody have a guess why? If God establishes His mercy forever it’s the same thing as establishing His mercy in the heaven. [someone says something] Are angels considered outside of time? You’re getting to it but be careful because if angels are created creatures they too are in the flow of time, because they can’t be eternal. But you’re getting hot. [someone says something] All right, God continues to establish His work in the heavens, because some people feel that you suddenly become omniscient when you go heaven, when I go to heaven I’ll know everything, you will not, what makes you think you’re going to know everything when you go to heaven. You’ll turn to God when you go to heaven, when you go to heaven you’re going to be learning just like now. You’ll know more, a whale of a lot more but you’re not going to know everything, that’d make you omniscient and only one person qualifies for that honor.

Let’s work on this a little bit more. The heavens are the locus in the Hebrew mind of where everything originates from. It’s the primary cause. And later on, in old Israel, when they got down toward Christ’s time, they just dropped out God and oftentimes in their language they just said “heaven says….” And so “heaven” became a synonym, almost for deity. But the idea is that heaven is the place where everything is caused from. Now if you’re going to… God is going to establish His faithfulness forever, doesn’t that imply that He has to establish His faithfulness so it will be secure. Now how is God going to secure His work if He doesn’t secure it in the prime place where everything starts, in the heavens. In other words, this Psalm makes a fantastic breakthrough that is unrepeated in Scripture until you meet the book of Hebrews. It’s hinted at many, many places, but the only other place I know of in God’s Word before the book of Revelation is the book of Hebrews, chapter 1. That’s the only other place I know of at the moment where this breakthrough occurs.

Here’s the breakthrough: in order to finish His plan on earth, God has to finish the plan first in heaven before it can be finished on earth. God’s plan of redemption has to be first worked out in the heavenlies before He can secure it on earth, because obviously when God created Adam, there’s the earth, there was Adam, Adam was king over the earth, but the plan wasn’t secure because Satan was [can’t understand word] and evil comes from heaven, it didn’t start on the earth, evil started in the heavenlies, that’s where Satan rebelled. So if God doesn’t secure the heavens He never can secure the earth. So what this Psalm is making a fantastic breakthrough… and this show you, by the way, right away, that these guys in the Old Testament were sharp, very sharp. They took 2 Samuel 7 which said certain things about the earth, nothing about the heavens mentioned in 2 Samuel 7, but these people were so spiritually acute in thinking through that in order for God to make 2 Samuel 7 come true on earth God first has to make something happen in heaven to secure it.

Now in the chart of the ages, down through the age of Israel, Jesus Christ died, Jesus Christ rose, and He ascended and went to be with the Father at the right hand, at which time something new was added and we call it the Church Age. The Church Age was added, it was unforeseen in the Old Testament. The Old Testament foresaw the death of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, the second return of Christ, the Old Testament foresaw the millennial kingdom but the Old Testament did not foresee in detail the Church Age. It did not foresee this, it’s a new mystery that was in the plan of God but wasn’t revealed back then.

Now, why was the Church Age kept a secret? It was kept a secret because it pulled a fast one off on Satan, that in the Church Age now the battle is no longer political, it’s horizontal; the holy war is not men against men in the Church Age, it’s men against the spiritual principalities and powers that rule the darkness of this world. And so the Church Age has been placed into history in order to secure the heavenlies so that when the millennial kingdom comes the millennial kingdom can be secure from further eruptions. [someone asks what do you mean by secure the heavens] All right, God in the Church Age is preparing for the extermination of all evil from the heavenlies. We don’t know how this works out, I can give you a hint based on many, many people’s thoughts, not mine, people down through church history have thought this. Number one, the idea that God has a certain number of people in the body; the body equals a total number, n we don’t know what that n number is but the body is a peculiar thing in church history because Israel didn’t have a total fixed number of people; it was a race. But the body does have a fixed number of people.

Now the question is, why does the Church have a fixed number, that when the last person receives Jesus Christ the body is going to be finished. Now why is the body finished at a point in time? The possibility is that these number of believers equal in turn the number of evil spirits. And they will in some way replace these in the heavenlies, because the Church, basically doesn’t have earth as her home; the Church is with Christ in the heavenlies; that’s her royal position. So the Church is always linked somehow to the heavenlies. And so the inference, and this is not a dogmatic teaching because there’s not room to be dogmatic here, we don’t have enough Scripture. But this inference seems to be that the Church is securing the heavenlies by training people who will eventually, during the Tribulation, when the Church is raptured, you see before the Tribulation all believers in the body go face to face with the Lord with their resurrection bodies. They are purged and clean and then the bride is made ready for her wedding day, which will be when Christ comes again. But during this Tribulation Satan is cast down to the earth, all the demons from the abyss are released on the earth, and so all the evil spirits that were one time involved in the heavenlies are then concentrated down on the earth.

Now the question is why, why do they get bumped out of all their freedom; they suddenly become confined to this planet, this earth, this location. They have been legally and actually removed from their positions of heavenly power, which they still have in this age because Ephesians says they still have it in this age. So the Church in some way, which we do not know, answers and is the fulfillment, actually, of Psalm 89, that before David’s kingdom can really come to pass in history, the evil powers must be dealt with. [someone asks something] The Hebrews never thought in abstraction, they always thought in terms of [can’t understand word] I’ll show you where the vocabulary shows this.

All right verse 2, by “faithfulness” and remember it’s faithfulness in connection with what set of promises? The Davidic Covenant. “Thy faithfulness will be established in the heavens.” You see this takes the Davidic Covenant and blows it up like a balloon to encompass not just the earth but to encompass the whole heaven. This is a theological breakthrough that anticipates Paul’s doctrine of the Church in the New Testament. A tremendous breakthrough that’s made in this Psalm.

Now verse 3-4. This quotes God, and for the sake of abruptness, the psalmist doesn’t even introduce it, but the person has changed because this is not the psalmist talking in verse 3, God is talking. Verses 3-4 quote 2 Samuel 7, it’s just a rehash of 2 Samuel 7. “I have made a covenant with my chosen ones, I have sworn unto David, my servant: [4] Thy seed will I establish forever, and built up thy throne to all generations.” Now do you notice in verse 4 the parallelism. Let’s go back to the parallelism and think how the Jews thought concretely, not abstractly.

In verse 4 what do you notice? “Forever,” and in parallel with it, “to all generations.” Did that occur somewhere before so far in this Psalm? It occurred in verse 1. All right, compare verse 4 to verse 1. What parallels “Thy seed” of verse 4 in verse 1? If you were to make a parallel, what parallels it. In verse 4 you have the noun, “Thy seed will I establish forever.” And in verse 1 you have “the mercies,” the cheseds, the acts of chesed love. Now that links up for you in the mind of the psalmist that when he thought of the cheseds, or the merciful acts of God fulfilling His words, what specific acts of God is he looking for in history; acts of God that had to do with what? I want you to see how rationalistic these people were and how these people didn’t just accept anything, they were very tight, rigorous and disciplined thinkers. What were they looking for… imagine, you have all their historical records here, this record, this record, this record, this record, here’s Ethan and he’s looking through all the records, he wants to find something; what is he looking for in the records? [someone says something] Messiah, the ultimate King; that would be most of it but “Thy seed” would include the whole house of David, wouldn’t it? So if it’s, therefore, the word “mercies” and “faithfulness” in this Psalm, it’s not an abstract [can’t understand word] floating around some place, it’s something concrete that he’s looking at. He’s looking at the descendants of David, literally, the physical descendants of David and he’s measuring what happens to them. He has a ruler and he’s measuring, he’s measuring God’s Word against the real world. He’s not saying oh well, God really answers; how did He answer, well He just kind of answered. Where did He answer, show me, chapter and verse; show me the year, the place, the date where He answered it, well, I don’t know. No, Ethan isn’t like that at all. Ethan is ready with the facts of history to say here’s where the chesed is, there’s a chesed here, that’s what happened to that son of David, here’s one over here, here’s an act of deliverance to that son of David, here’s an act of deliverance to that son of David. This fact, this fact, and this fact vindicates the Davidic Covenant.

Do you see how historical and concrete these people thought? Do you see how tight they were? When God promised something they read the fine print. No wonder the Jewish people are good businessmen today. They’re reading God’s contracts for 30 centuries; they had good training. Now much to our shame… much is our shame that we don’t hold God so specifically to His words. How can you tell if God answers prayer? How do you really tell if God answers prayer. Only if you made a specific petition that can be checked, right. Otherwise how can you really tell God answers a prayer; you can’t really tell because you didn’t make the petition specific enough. Or you didn’t study God’s promise and get the details out of it.

Then in verse 4 again, “Thy throne,” so we have “seed” and “throne,” parallel “mercies” and “faithfulness.” See they just didn’t talk about, emuwnah, emuwnah, emuwnah, emuwnah, emuwnah, which is the Hebrew word for faithfulness, this guy, Ethan, wasn’t just throwing a word around because it fit with the music. His faithfulness has something in mind, what is happening to the political power, “Thy throne” means political power, that’s what it means, how powerful are the sons of David, that is emuwnah, under 2 Samuel 7. So how did he measure whether God answers prayer? By political power, simple. How do you measure political power? By military victory, by the amount of gold in the nation’s treasury, by the nations produce, you have concrete ways of measuring national power. And the prophets measured the national power specifically.

Now verse 5, our next section is verses 5-19 but we’ll only take part of that; God is praiseworthy because of His uniqueness, His acts, His ownership, His nature and His blessing. We’ll just take the first part of this, verses 5-8, God is praiseworthy because of His uniqueness. This really teaches the doctrine of monotheism as it can only be taught in the Old Testament. I always get a laugh out of some high school text book: monotheism developed real late because we can see all these other gods running around in the Old Testament. Now that’s wrong, monotheism developed in Abraham’s time, at least, it developed earlier of course, but on a noticeable scale developed in Abraham’s time. And how do you spot monotheism in the Old Testament. You don’t look for the statement, “there is only one God.” That is an illegitimate test for monotheism in the Bible because there were many, many creatures called gods too. So you don’t look, “there is only one God” and because you don’t find the statement you think there’s polytheism in the Bible. That’s not true, because the word “God” was used both for the real God and for angels. They used the word El or Elohim for both these. Now if you talk about many gods, how are you going to tell, is he talking about the real God, the infinite God or angels. Well, that’s an interpretative problem but you just don’t go bulldozing into the Bible and wonder why you don’t get a statement, there’s only one God. I don’t see a statement in the Bible. Well, it’s all over the place and here’s where it appears.

Verse 5, verses 5-8 teach monotheism in the Old Testament. “And the heavens shall praise Thy wonders, O LORD: Thy faithfulness also in the congregation of the saints. [6] For who in heaven can be compared unto the LORD? Who among the sons of the mighty can be likened unto the LORD? [7] God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints, and to be had in reverence of all those who are about Him. [8] O LORD God of hosts, who is a strong LORD like unto Thee? Or to Thy faithfulness round about Thee?”

Now verses 5-8 have not to do with the earth, it has to do with the heavenlies, place. And the people mentioned in verses 5-8 are not human, they are angels. So verse 5, the heavens, what is parallel? 5a, 5b, learn to read the Psalms in parallel. In the first part of verse 5 it says “the heavens shall praise,” does that mean Mars is going to get out a guitar and praise? In parallel, what is said in parallel with “heaven” in verse 5? What do you suppose, it’s not strictly grammatical parallelism but what do you suppose? “The congregation of the saints,” now the word “saint” means holy ones. And in this case, this is a real odd use of the word “holy,” it shows you something, the word “holy” doesn’t always pronounce moral righteousness, it means separateness but not necessarily separated to +R. It means the separated ones, the ones who are different from us, the holy ones or the angels; the holy ones, the heavens, parallel. So now when you see the phrase in the Psalms, “the heavens will praise,” you know what it means.

Can any of you think of a concrete illustration that you could give a child, that would make sense to a child, that would show the heavens praising God. Think of the flow of history, can you think of a specific example, if some kid says I don’t remember seeing the heavens praise God, what do you mean the heavens praise God? What happened when Christ was born? The shepherds heard heaven praising God, didn’t they? Now that is an illustration of the praise of the heavenlies. Where were the angels that were praising God when the shepherds were standing there in the field, you know, going around at night, where were the angels, standing on the ground? No, they were in heaven weren’t they? They were up, they were close enough to be recognized, they weren’t out at Mars so the guy had to train his field glasses to find them, they were close.

Now this is what is hard to visualize but when the Bible talks about the heavenlies it is talking about something probably no less than three or four thousand feet above us. It’s not talking about something eight billion trillion miles away. It’s talking about something within hundreds of thousands of feet from where we are right at the moment, because what… do you remember the expression that Luke uses in the Gospel, the shepherds were in their fields by night, and then what suddenly happened? [someone says something] And suddenly, they didn’t kind of come in from a distance to the shepherds, did they. If they suddenly appeared, what is the inference; did they come from some place were they already there and suddenly became visible? The inference is that they’re always there to begin with. And what happened at that time was what happened on the Damascus Road, we don’t know exactly what happened, we can describe it, that when Paul was on the Damascus Road, when the shepherds were in their fields, when Jesus Christ was baptized it says the heavens parted. Now the word “part” means to open a garment. So we can only judge by the eyewitness to this phenomenon that happened several times in history that when the heavens opened it’s just like suddenly the sky just kinds of open up, it gives the visual impression, though obviously there’s a problem here, but visually it appears like the sky is literally ripped open and there in the place where there was air and clouds, all of a sudden are all these things. And that is “the heavenlies,” they are talking about something concrete and very close. So get out of your mind that heaven is some abstraction some place; it is not an abstraction, it is something there. In fact when you fly in an airplane you probably fly right through it, never crash but you fly right through them, gobs of them, all the time.

[someone says if this is true then you have to also assume that the heavenlies extend beyond that as well, can’t hear rest] Exactly, I don’t mean to imply that they’re not out in what we would call outer space too, but I’m saying that Christians tend to be very unbiblical and have the idea that it’s way off some place, and I’m trying to show you that ever time it appears in Scripture it’s close, and it appears suddenly, they don’t come in from a distance. The only thing that comes in from a distance is the New Jerusalem, and Christ when He comes again at the Second Advent comes in from a distance; the sign of the coming of the Son of Man is something that approaches the planet earth from a distance, it isn’t something that suddenly opens up. But with the angels, when they appear it’s something right there, which implies, obviously, that they were there all the time, masqueraded to our senses, our sensory perception does not perceive them, we’re cut off from them by God. But this is going on as battles, unseen battles going on all around; every time you pray you might have a [can’t understand words] right around you, within a thousand feet, a big fight goes on because you’ve petitioned the Lord for something, Satan didn’t want you to have it and now there’s a big fight going on, a free-for-all started by your prayer. Listen carefully, you might hear it….

All right, just quickly in verse 5, “the heavens shall praise Thy wonderfulness,” it’s not individual things, “Thy wonderfulness,” it’s His nature. “…thy faithfulness also in the congregation of the saints.” We’ll have to stop here but verse 5 implies that the Davidic Covenant, when it is fulfilled in its totality will have such a fulfillment that the angels all around are also going to be praising about something that is beneficial t them as well as what’s going on right on the surface of the earth. There’s something beneficial to them too, and this you see, takes the Davidic Covenant and lifts it off just the earth, just physical Israel and lifts it up to make it cosmic in its dimension.