Psalms Lesson 39

Psalm 89:5-20

Again Psalm 89, to refresh your mind, is an individual lament Psalm but it’s also a Royal Psalm, when you look at it from the standpoint of form an individual lament Psalm, and when you look at it from the standpoint of content it’s a Royal Psalm. I gave the outline in its 5 parts: verses 1-4 is the psalmist declaring his praise because he trusts in the Davidic Covenant. Verses 5-18 is that God is praiseworthy because of His uniqueness, His acts, His ownership, His nature, and His blessings. Verses 19-37 the psalmist repeats God’s declaration of the content and duration of the Davidic Covenant. Verses 38-45 is that in the present time, however, David’s house is experiencing defeat. Verses 46-52 is the psalmist petitions for the intervention of God on the basis of the Davidic Covenant.

We went through verses 1-4, which is the praise section, noting that “mercies” and “faithfulness” are used in parallel in this Psalm. Notice verse 1, “I will sing of the mercies of the LORD forever; with my mouth will I make known Thy faithfulness….” Then verse 2, “…Mercy shall be built up forever; Thy faithfulness shall Thou establish in the very heaven.” Mercy and faithfulness, mercy and faithfulness. And “mercy” here was chesed or covenant love, and it has to be a love that is measured by covenantal agreement. It’s always a measurable thing of love, chesed love.

Something to remember, and I believe if you think about it for a minute, I think this is one real reason why more people are really not very gung-ho about the Old Testament, is that in the Old Testament you can’t get away with as much as you can with just a cursory knowledge of the New Testament. A cursory knowledge of the New Testament can get you started in saying well, I love Jesus and Jesus tells me to love everybody so I’ll love everybody, gooey, gooey, gooey kind of thing. But you don’t really have any content to measure what this loving everybody really is. And in the Old Testament the whole Law defines what that love is; that’s what the Law does, the Law’s job is to define something. The Law is a yardstick and it’s true, in the New Testament we’re not under the Old Testament law, but that doesn’t mean that New Testament love can’t be measured. It can be measured and tested. So this is something to keep in mind as we go through her. Everything is carefully measured in the Bible; these people aren’t just believing in thin air, they’re believing in something they can get their hands on and really trust.

We stopped with verse 5; we started with the section verses 5-18, we’re on this large section, and the first sub section of that, verses 5-8. And verses 5-8 say that God is trustworthy because He is unique; and verses 5-8 represent the way monotheism is taught in the Old Testament. Now don’t let somebody snow you here, every once in a while, in fact, just read some text books or if you’re a parent pick up a history textbook of your child, and just look on what they do with Israel, if they mention Israel. There you will find they make some crack about monotheism developed and it slowly evolved out of an old primitive superstitious polytheism, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. Then when you ask these people to substantiate that hypothesis they always pull out some passage like this, it’s talking about God among many gods, such as in verse 5, “And the heavens,” used in parallel with “the congregation of the holy ones,” [6] For who in the heavens can be compared unto Yahweh? Who among the sons of El,” and in the Old Testament the “sons of El,” it looks like this, beni Elim, sons of Elim, the sons of the gods, and in the Old Testament you would designate somebody by his character, and this is the way you do it. Sons of gods” are gods, see, that’s just another way of saying “God.” “Sons of gods” it means they have the character or nature of God and that’s why all men are called the “sons of men.” It’s an idiomatic expression used throughout the Bible, so when you see the phrase, “sons of,” “sons of the righteous,” what does that mean? That means righteous people, and they call them sons of the righteous because they bear the character of righteousness. In the Old Testament in 1 Samuel, son of a rebellious woman, what does that mean? A rebellious person. It’s not talking about the mother, the son of a rebellious woman, that’s not talking about the mother, it’s talking about the son, but that’s just the way the Bible phrases it, much to the chagrin of some people.

But “beni Elim” is a way of describing those who are called gods. Now we’re going to just briefly go through this thing because not only will you find it in liberal textbooks that are always trying to derive monotheism from polytheism, but if some of the Jehovah’s Witnesses come knocking on your door someday they’re going to hang you on the same text. So you have two good reasons why you want to learn this and learn it so when it comes to you you’re not going to be thrown and fall apart when somebody drops this in your lap.

“Gods,” the word in the Bible, Elohim, has a variety of meaning; it is a noun of classification, not a proper name. So when you see the word “gods” it can have one of three meanings, actually four, the second and third meaning are tied together. It can equal the One true living God, the Trinity; it can refer to the Trinity, but it doesn’t always have to refer to the Trinity. Sometimes it refers to angels; sometimes it refers to idols that have been made in the image of angels, in the image of demons, the demons would inspire the priests and craftsmen of the ancient world to carve idols and make idols patterned after the picture they would dream about. And so that’s how idols came about in the ancient world. So you have the Trinity, you have angels, you have idols, and in one place you have men who are government rulers called gods. Now those are the four possibilities of the words “gods” in the Old Testament. That’s the way it was used. So when you hit some passage and it says that there are many gods, so what. The question is, from the context, how is Elohim being used?

Now let’s take those four meanings and plug into the context of verses 5-8. Suppose you’re doing a Bible study on this by yourself, you ought to learn how to study the Bible so that you can be self-sustaining spiritually if you have to. God has given the local church pastor-teachers to do the job we are not to do your job for you; you’re not to walk away from here and just say I said something. Don’t believe it because I say it, I’m just trying to communicate to you the Word of God and the reasons for it, but you have to do the other part and that is thinking it through for yourself and making it part of you. And to do this you’re going to have to study the Bible by yourself.

Now if you were studying verses 5-8 by yourself, and you see this constant parallel, “heavens” and “saints;” in verse 6, “who” among many, “in the heavens can be compared to the LORD? Who among the sons of the Elim,” and how do you know if you’re not a Hebrew student what “mighty” means? You get a concordance, a big concordance, Strongs or Youngs, get one that’s going to be fixed to your translation, if you’re doing all your Bible study in the New ASV don’t expect to use Strongs or Youngs concordance because it isn’t set up to the New ASV. A concordance has to be set up for the translation you’re using. So when you use your concordance use it with a translation that fits it or you’re going to wonder what is going on, it’ll misdirect you.

Suppose you have a King James Version, you’re studying that, you have a concordance in front of you and you look up “mighty” and you discover it is this “Elim” sons of the strong, so now you know it’s talking about divine beings in verse 6. In verse 7 “God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the holy ones, and to be had in reverence of all them 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?”

So verses 5-8 have to do with God’s presence in heaven. Now as you look at verses 5-8 how would you construct an argument for monotheism from verses 5-8; how do you suppose your argument would run, just generally. How would you defend that the Bible does teach monotheism, this is not talking about many gods, it’s talking about many beings called gods but it’s not talking about many gods in, say the polytheistic sense of the word. How do you suppose, just the general drift of the construction of the argument. How would you show verses 5-8 do teach that the Bible says there’s one God and only one? What are the steps in the argument. [someone answers] All right, at least you can establish there is one God above all the others, so the first thing you want to do is establish the uniqueness of the God of Israel. Certainly everybody would agree the passage teaches that. Now what are you looking for to move over into the area of monotheism here?

[someone says something] All right, the name, notice in verse 6, the name of God there, “LORD,” Yahweh, this fixes that this is the God of Israel and not another God. So once we’ve established the uniqueness it is a permanent characteristic; it is not a game of musical chairs. In classical polytheism you always have musical chairs. What do I mean by musical chairs? Musical chairs theologically means that you have one god and he’ll be in the driver’s seat for a while, he’ll step down and another god will replace him. Now just think a minute; if the Bible began, just pretend we’ve all been brainwashed by the liberals and at this point you really start to think that maybe it’s true what they’re saying, that the Old Testament began in polytheism. What other element that is so stressed in Psalm 89 shows you we’ve got a serious problem logically of explaining the origin of Old Testament faith if it really did come out of polytheism. [someone answers] All right, the thing about this liberal hypothesis is that it never can justify “covenant.”

I’m going to stop this argument for a moment to hop over here; this is another point. If, let’s just suppose that the liberals are true, oftentimes learn to think this way, don’t try to oppose your opponent directly, use a little judo, let him throw the punch and just carry it further than he intended to take it. This is always a way you have of disarming your opponent. So if it really is true that God, if there is polytheism, then here you have a bunch of chairs in heaven, a bunch of thrones and you have god on this one, god here, god here, god here, then you have a big throne here and he’s the god for the hour, and then there’s another god. Let’s label them, a, b, c, d, e. Now, god d makes a promise to you, and he says I will establish your throne. So here’s a promise. If you have polytheism and you have the god hopping, suppose tomorrow god e replaces god and god d is over here, what happens to the promise that god d made to you? That goes down the drain, doesn’t it.

All right, one of the key characteristics of the Bible is that it’s a covenant book; it’s covenant faith, that means that the people from ages, all the way back to Abraham, had faith in what? That God was going to sovereignly pull something off in history. How can that faith get started if you have polytheism? You see the two concepts are just in collision, you can’t have the two, you’ve got to have one or the other but you can’t have both of those. So it’s foolish, very, very foolish and very, very unthinking to ever try that. The more sophisticated liberals, what they try to do is then tear the covenant portions of the Bible and late date them because they’re well aware of the problems, but then you’ve got them on other grounds.

So developing the argument for monotheism from verses 5-8, learn to think through this for yourself, you’re not going to always have your notes around so learn to think, get it upstairs. You’ve got the uniqueness of the God of Israel. From what we’ve just talked about, the next step is to define the uniqueness, just exactly where is the God of Israel unique above all the other gods? Think Psalm 89 in the context is saying what about this “Lord of hosts,” for example, when verse 8 is stated, if you were there and had a chance… suppose I’m Ethan and I wrote Psalm 89, and you were asking me, now what did you mean by that? And one of you raised your hand and said Ethan, when you wrote 8a and you said “O LORD God of hosts, who is a strong LORD like unto Thee?” and you asked me, Ethan, what did you mean by that, what do you suppose I would answer you, just guessing from the general context of Psalm 89. What was on my mind when I penned those words, “O LORD, who is a strong God like You.” Judging from verse 5-8, the whole context of the whole Psalm, what did I have in my head when I wrote verse 8. There’s no other God like Israel’s got and in particular, what about Israel’s God? No other God establishes a covenant that works, because beginning in the next verses what is the whole discussion; historical acts, what God did in history.

Now this is a safe challenge to make any opponent and it fits. If you don’t catch the force of the argument challenge your opponent at this point to say go to the library, read Prichard’s Ancient Near Eastern text, which is the standard authority, it pulls into one book all the other types of Ancient Near Eastern texts, and so on, read it for yourself and after you’re through reading show me one theology from the ancient world that has their god making a covenant and verifying the covenant with historical act after historical act after historical act. Just show me, I’m waiting. You’ll be waiting a long time because they’ll never find it. This is an utterly unique thing in history.

Now let’s catch the argument and make sure what we’re talking about. First what have we shown: that Israel’s God is unique above the other kings called gods. Second, the way He is unique is that He makes a covenant, and He pulls it off. And that’s how He’s unique. Now why does that show He’s monotheistic. Going backwards in the argument we just had, why do those two steps show that the Old Testament teaches monotheism? [someone answers] All right, if polytheism is true the polytheistic deities could never pull the covenant off because they never stay in the driver’s seat. Right. You always have them switching, today one god is on, tomorrow some other god is on, and don’t think that I’m being facetious when I call this musical chairs. You can read these texts for yourself, I’m not pulling your leg about this thing, this actually goes on in these ancient documents. This is how they explained history because they would have a god that was the protectorate or the protectoress, depending on the sex of the god, the protectorate or the protectoress would be the god or goddess of a city and when the city would fall in war, the way they would explain that is that their god got bumped out of the chair and that was their explanation for military defeat in history, their god got defeated. It’s interesting, it’s one of the earliest Freudian methods of palming responsibility off on somebody else, is that the military defeat wasn’t our fault, it was our god’s fault, we couldn’t help it, too bad. See, nothing new.

So please think next time somebody hits you with this thing about there are many gods, there aren’t many gods, there are many things called gods, yes, if you understand the way the word is used, and then show 1, 2, 3, 4 meanings and just go through here and check off, what is verse 5, talking about men here? It’s not talking about men in verses 5, 6, 7 and 8, so that meaning is out, you can’t use that meaning. Is it talking about idols? There’s no mention of idols here either, so that’s out. And so it’s got to be one of these other two, the God of Israel or these angels, and it’s obviously the God of Israel that’s being compared to the angels so therefore the Trinity is mentioned here.

Now let’s go to the next section, verses 9-10, pay attention as we go through these verses to increase your skill in sympathizing with the way the Old Testament thought. Today we draw our little essence box and say God is sovereign, God is righteous, God is just, God is love, God is omniscient and so on. And we put these attributes in there and we summarize it. Now no Jew would ever have drawn this chart and no Jew ever had those words; he had equivalent terms but he wouldn’t do this. This is the way we do it because we think after the Greeks; nothing wrong with this incidentally, the Greeks made a genuine contribution, systematic thinking. It is a contribution to humanity. But the Jew, not having the tools that the Greeks gave to the world, he didn’t have those tools to express all these truths, so the way he expressed himself is by drawing pictures and that’s why in the Framework series we are trying to recreate the Semitic mentality of tying the doctrine to a historic picture.

Now in verses 5-8 we have basically God’s sovereignty taught; it’s basically God’s sovereignty at stake here, and they don’t use the word “sovereignty” in verses 5-8, they give you a picture of a council with one man who leads the council. Now if you think of sovereignty for a moment, when you think of the word sovereignty what picture does your mind conjure up? Do you have a picture that comes to your mind, what does sovereignty…just an ideological category. [someone answers] All right, you think about a king, in concrete terms sovereignty, not the word, means something; it means the ability to rule but don’t you have a picture of somebody doing the ruling. What do you have in verses 5-8, isn’t that somebody doing the ruling. You see the picture? Learn to read the pictures of God’s Word.

Let’s look at it for a moment. Let’s visualize it as a stream; God reveals Himself down inside history, in concrete acts. All of history is a revelation of Him but let’s just focus on certain points in history. Suppose this is creation, that’s the fall, the flood, the covenant, Babel, there are specific events in the flow of history. Do all men share in history? Do believers and unbelievers partake of the flow of history? Of course they do. If you learn to think this way you’ve got your common ground with the unbeliever for your conversation that you’re seeking to lead him to Christ. You’re seeking to lead the unbeliever to Jesus Christ, how do you do it? You’ve got to talk to something that’s common to you both and if you’re both members of the human race and breathing at this point, you do have history in common.

Now out of the history God will reveal something; say God reveals in connection with this event of creation He reveals a lot about Himself as the Creator. Now with our minds working, what we’re doing logically is we’re abstracting from history, say a definition of creation. Now we do that and that’s right for us to do that but always remember where we got this. This wasn’t something that we were chewing bubble gum one day looking at the clouds and came up with a definition. The definition came out of our awareness of the event in history. And so our mind interacted with history and produced thought, and that’s what it produced. So this is why I tell you to look in terms of pictures, it will help you. Suppose you get in a jam about creation, what does it mean? Don’t think of some definition first; if you’re in a jam and you can’t think your way through it, you’ve got a problem, you’re struggling with this in your own mind, think wait a minute, what historic event can my mind go to to run this through and get a picture. All right, you work this way, you go back and think through the creation act itself. Pretend it’s a motion picture in front of your mind, that you can recreate, you’re a dramatist writing a play and you have to picture this event, how would you picture it from what you know of Scripture and history. What would you do? Run that even through your mind and then come back to the problem of creation. Get used to thinking that way and you won’t get hung in these things, it will always root your mind back to the flow of history that started the whole thing off.

Now that’s what the psalmist is going to do, let’s watch what he does in verses 9-10. He’s going to deal with another attribute, here he’s praising God for his acts in history, and you can argue here that he’s stressing sovereignty and omnipotence. But look how he does it. “You rule the raging of the sea; when the waves thereof arise, You still them. [10] You have broken Rahab in pieces, as one that is slain; You have scattered Your enemies with Your strong arm.”

Now verse 9 is a participle, “Thou continually rules the raging of the sea; when the waves thereof arise, You still them.” It’s conjecture exactly what is on his mind here; my own guess that verse 9 is something more than just the storms and the sea; my sense about verse 9 is that in the early centuries after the flood the oceans were unstable, that there were tectonic disturbances and for many, many centuries after that the oceans were disturbed and you had tidal waves, and these were terrifying to the ancient world. You have the so-called lost continent of Atlantis that just disappeared, which apparently someone who had the sense that perhaps Plato and others who mention Atlantis might possibly be right, started researching and digging in the place where Plato said it was and lo and behold, it turned out they found some columns, and so forth. And the lost continent may be found in our own day; what was this strange civilization that disappeared …

[tape turns] …, whereas the ancient civilizations would be terrified of something like this.

So this expressed their confidence in verse 9 of how God controlled it and what great physical power would a low-lying geographical area face. There are not that many volcanoes in Israel, though apparently in the early days there were some. But most of them around the Dead Sea area if that was a volcanic disturbance it’s long since gone. So what do you suppose would be the most awesome physical power that they would face? For them it would be the water; for us in Lubbock probably the greatest awesome nature power would be a tornado. So whatever the most powerful potent nature force is in your geographical area, this would be how you would make a concrete illustration of God’s sovereignty and His omnipotence. That would be the picture that God’s in control; God’s in control, no need to fear, you don’t have to go out and sacrifice to placate some deity of nature that’s run loose because he’s mad at you. God is in control.

Now verse 10 is past tense and refers to a specific act rather than a process. “Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces,” now that’s not the prostitute Rahab, this is [sounds like: Rachab], it’s a hard “h” and it is a special symbolic name for the nation Egypt. Rahab is a Satan symbol in God’s Word. The other one is leviathan; leviathan. Leviathan and Rahab are both Satan names for Egypt, they tie Egypt in with the forces of Satan. Now what do you suppose the historic incident is? The Exodus. And they’re mentioning a concrete event. [someone asks a question] Egypt, it’s a Satan symbol for Egypt, Rachab and leviathan both are used for Satan and for Pharaoh. And when you see Rachab like this the intent of the author is to tell you something more than just the Exodus. It is to tell you that the God of Israel triumphed over what? Think of what we’ve gone through in verses 5-8, what was uppermost, as the Jews went across and as Moses cheered at the smashing of Pharaoh, it wasn’t just cheering over the defeat of a human army; what was the cheering over? It was a contest between the gods. Who was it that enchained Egypt. It was the gods of Egypt. Where did the magicians get their power? From the gods of Egypt. Remember the deal with the serpent and all the plagues and so on; what do you think those plagues were for? To break the power of the gods of Egypt, and it was an empirical historic proof Yahweh gave that He took on the most potent gods of the ancient world and He smashed them.

So when you read verse 10 it’s not just talking about the crushing of Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea, it’s saying ha-ha, our God beat your god. That’s exactly the way it is, it’s a brag, it’s a bold confident brag in the power of the God of Israel. “You have scattered Thine enemies with Thy strong arm.” So there’s the picture of omnipotence in action. You see, going back to history again, what have we done? We’ve taken an event, the Exodus event, and what have we abstracted with our minds from the Exodus event? God’s sovereignty and His omnipotence. But we don’t end with the word sovereignty, and we don’t end with the word omnipotence. When the Jew confessed omnipotence what did he do? Did he say thank you God, You’re omnipotent. Well, sometimes he used that kind of language but most of the time when the Jews said thank You God, You’re omnipotent he would say thank you God because You smashed Pharaoh. That would be his way of saying thank you God, You’re omnipotent. Do you see what he did? He’d take a attribute of God and he’d link it to a historic event and say see….

Now what do you suppose this will do for you if you will consciously habitually link attributes of God to historic events. What do you suppose that does to your faith? What do you suppose that would do if you would always, automatically run, there’d be a circuit established in your mind to link doctrine with history over and over and over and over again. [someone says something] Yes, and this connects the doctrine to your personal experience. This is why I think in the past we’ve had Christians that know doctrine but they have trouble applying it. I’m running an experiment here, it’s going to take many, many years to really test it for its validity but I’m guessing part of my ministry, my style and the way I’m working here is all worked out on a hypothesis that I’m proceeding on and the hypothesis I’m proceeding on in my ministry is that if we teach doctrine linked to history we are going to help people apply the doctrine better than they have in the past; they’re going to learn the doctrine but they’re going to learn it so they can apply it; they will never live in the schizophrenic world with doctrine over here and my experience over here. This is a guess that I’m working on, I’m not saying it’s going to cure everything but this is the vision that I have behind this method of teaching.

Verses 11-12, here is another attribute of God, or a characteristic of God and it’s talking about His ownership, I suppose you could tie it to His Creatorship, His sovereignty, His omnipotence again, verses 11-12, “The heavens are Thine; the earth also is Thine, as for the world and the fullness thereof, Thou hast founded. [12] The north and the south, You created them; Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in Thy name.”

Now verse 12 is a smash at pagan nature religions because the word for “north” in the Hebrew is tsaphon, and Baal had his home on Mount Zaphon, that was the location of Baal’s home. So when the psalmist says “the heavens are Yours… [12] North and south You created,” what’s he slapping in the face? He’s saying ha-ha, You created Baal’s house. He probably said it extra loud hoping the sound would carry out to Tyre and Sidon so they could hear it. Yahweh, You created north and south! See, there’s a lot of digs in here to the opposite position, you just have to know a little bit to see that these Psalms are a two-edged sword and they’re sharp.

Verse 13-14, something else about God. “Thou hast a mighty arm; strong is Thy hand, and High is Thy right hand. [14] Righteousness and justice [justice and judgment] are the habitation of Thy throne; mercy and truth shall go before Thy face.” Now what do you suppose this is a picture of? What attribute and what is the actual art picture; if you were an artist and you were drawing the guys thinking and you had the little thing like in a comic strip, verses 13-14, what would you put in there. What was he looking in verses 13-14 and what attributes is He talking about. He’s got a picture in his mind, what’s he looking at. It’s a military picture here, notice what he says, “You have a mighty arm,” that’s power, there’s your omnipotence, and in the Hebrew it works this way, the word “arm” is shoulder, it’s the word that means everything from the shoulder down to the tip of the finger. The next word that’s translated “hand” means everything from the elbow to the tip of the finger. And the last word means the right hand. You see, it’s a poetic way, first he says your whole arm, then from your elbow out, and then from your wrist down; this is the way it’s structured. So he’s talking about somebody that has power but then verse 14 is brought in conjunction with 13, so if verse 13 talks of God’s omnipotence verse 14 talks of His justice, His righteousness.

Now put those attributes together and what have you? God is righteousness, God is just and God is omnipotent; tie all those attributes in one package together and you’ve got the picture of a judge executing punishment. Now if you had righteousness and justice without omnipotence what would happen? You would have the standard but you could never enforce the standard. If you had omnipotence without righteousness and justice what would happen. You’d have the power to enforce justice but you wouldn’t have the norms and standards to guide you in the enforcement; so you pull it together, the norms and the standards and the power to execute and enforce the norms and the standards, and that is judgment. Now we, true, in our logical way we separate these attributes but you see, here is the beautiful illustration in verse 13-14 of how the Semitic way of thinking will help you not make a mistake because if in your mind you can think of a judge with a sword chopping somebody’s head off, he’s got the authority, the norms and the standards and he’s got the power. And if you have that as your picture of God then you won’t separate, you’ll always tie these two together, that God’s righteousness and justice can’t be separated from His power. Now the reason I make such a deal about this is that’s exactly what’s going to happen at the end of this Psalm. The psalmist knows, and that is his picture of God, and that’s why he’s got a problem here at this juncture of history. So let’s go on, remembering that picture.

Verse 15-18, this last group of verses, this is God’s blessing. “Blessed are the people that know the joyful sound; they shall walk, O LORD, in the light of Thy countenance. [16] In Thy name shall they rejoice all the day, and in Thy righteousness shall they be exalted. [17] For Thou art the glory of their strength; and in Thy favor our horn shall be exalted. [18] For the LORD has our defense,” literally, it’s not “is,” it means “has,” He is the one that possesses our defense, “and the Holy One of Israel possesses our king.” Our king is His and our defense is His, it’s a possessive construction in the Greek grammar. Notice, incidentally, in verse 17-18 you see the shift back to the first person. Remember we said in this Psalm series you read everything third person, third person, third person and then bang, all of a sudden you’re talking about first person, and then it switches back and forth. Here’s another case of that.

Verses 15-18, here it’s talking about God’s name, it’s talking about the people that rejoice in the name, notice verse 16 tells you what about the rejoicing? They are rejoicing in His name, what does that imply about the content of their hymns? The content of their hymns—centered on the essence of God. They are going to rejoice in God’s nature. What are you going to rejoice in all eternity? God’s nature. Well then shouldn’t we get a little training in time, practice, how to praise God for who He is. So verses 15-18 conclude this section. Notice the pictures involved for each one of these attributes.

The next section, verses 19-28, we can go through this quickly, the gist of it is quite simple although there are many verses to it. Actually 19-37 is this whole next section and then it’s split in half, but verses 19-37 is one large sector of the Psalm. It begins in verse 19 with “Then, “Then You spoke in vision to thy holy ones,” plural, “and said, I have laid help upon one that is mighty; I have exalted one chosen out of the people. [20] I have found David, my servant; with my holy oil have I anointed him. [21] With whom my hand shall be established; my arm also shall strengthen him,” etc. etc. etc. That is the Davidic Covenant, but question on verses 19-20, do you notice something that is omitted in verses 19-20 that is part of Samuel. What is omitted in verse 20? The subject, the prophet is missing. Who did the anointing of David in history? Samuel, remember, he went to the house, had to be rude to Jesse to get him in out of the sheep pen. All right, the prophet does it. What does verse 20 therefore tell you how God in the Bible views His prophets? When a prophet acts he is inseparable from God. This is why, when the little children curse Elisha he turns around and he kills them. People say oh Elijah is brutal, it’s because by cursing Elijah they were cursing Elisha’s God and anybody that curses God shall die, it’s as simple as that, kids or not.

Now the identity, the one to one identity is so powerful in God’s Word it is strange for our ears, and I’m pausing here, I’m making a point out of it, because I know most of you are not prepared in your mind to make this. I know it’s taken me months and years of studying the Word of God before I have got in my own mind this identity as strong and I hope to even get it stronger as I keep on growing. But it takes time, don’t think you’ve got it; it takes time, visualize the picture of that frail man, Samuel, just one man, this is an amazing thing about this, one man, Samuel takes an amount of oil that probably isn’t as much as the water in this glass and he throws it all over David, just that, and it was done in an instant of time, take five seconds to do it. Now just think of this, one man at one point on this planet takes a little oil for five seconds and dumps it on David’s head and that’s all, and God comes later on and says I did it. Fantastic, if you put the two together. Visualize first in the human picture, if you were there and watched it happen, just a man pouring oil on, like you’d put shampoo on your hair, that’s all it is. Then God comes back, the God of the universe says I anointed David.

Now if you will work with your mind, you’ve got to struggle with this, it isn’t going to come in five minutes tonight, but if you will struggle with these pictures of the one to one correspondence between God and his prophet you will no longer have trouble with the hypostatic union of Jesus Christ because Jesus Christ is true God and true man united in one person forever. And it’s awful hard to recognize that, but it isn’t if you’ve been prepared out of the Old Testament prophets. If you’ve constantly made the identification, what the prophet does God does, so when Jesus does it is the work of the Father; easy to get the two together when you do this.

Then in verse 19, who is missing in verse 19? Who was the prophet to whom the vision of the Davidic Covenant came one night? It didn’t come to David, it had to come through a prophet. What was his name? 2 Samuel 7:4, you’ve seen the Samuel incident, I want you to see the Nathan incident. Again, this is something you can think about, if you ever get 15 minutes to go walk in the park by yourself, just visualize these pictures in your mind that God the Holy Spirit has preserved for us in His Word. Now visualize this, here’s a guy out in the sack, in verse 4, he’s sleeping, just a normal man, he put his clothes on just like you do and he had to take bathes, he ate food, this is a normal individual here and he has a dream in verse 4. “And it came to pass that night, that the word of the LORD came unto Nathan, saying,” and it was probably more than a dream, “the word of the LORD” when it’s used this way probably means a full scale vision, it was probably mediated by the angel of the Lord, tapped him on his shoulder and woke him up and he gave him this message. [5] “Go and tell my servant, David, Thus saith the LORD, Shalt thou build me a house for me to dwell in?”

And by the way, just to anticipate David, here shows the heart of David. You know what David said, verse 2, just to look at it for a minute. 2 Samuel 7:1, “And it came to pass, when the king sat in his house, and the LORD had given him rest round about from all his enemies, [2] That the king said unto Nathan, the prophet, See, now, I dwell in an house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells within curtains. [3] And Nathan said to the king, Go, do all that is in thine heart; for the LORD is with you.” Now David is a very grateful man, and in spite of the fact that when David blew it everybody saw what he had done, and David was the kind of guy that did screw up, but here’s his true heart, this is the regenerate nature of David. When God blessed him he wanted to give it back to God. And he recognized that God had blessed him and he said, you know, it’s interesting, I’m living in more luxury than God is, He’s out in that tent and I’m in here in a permanent shelter, and I’d like to build God a house that’s bigger and better than mine. Now that was just his gratitude and if you can just see David doing that, that’s David, that’s the real David, the believer, and that’s the believer’s heart. He just wants to do it? Why, because he’s going to get brownie points. No, because he’s going to get sanctified doing it? No. It’s just because he wants to, that’s all, he wants to give something to God.

And so God has a very interesting humor, He responds to this. This just touches God in a personal way so beginning verse 5 God responds to this, personally. David had a heart for God and God responded, “Go and tell my servant, David, Thus saith the LORD, Shall you build me an house for me to dwell in?” And the way it’s worded He’s not condemning David for wanting to do it, He’s just kind of amazed, David, do you really think you’re going to build me a house. And the idea that God has on His mind, of course, is the new heavens and the new earth. And he says David, do you really think you can do what you want to. But notice the tenderness at which God approaches David. See He doesn’t smash David; David, you clod, I’m infinite, you’re finite, you can’t do it. He doesn’t talk to David that way. He asks him in a very soft and a very tender way, He speaks to him.

In verse 6, “Whereas I have not dwelt in any house since the time that I brought up the children of Israel out of Egypt, even to this day, but have walked in a tent and in a tabernacle.” Notice how literal this is. God walking the face of the earth, it prepares you for Christ if you’ll see these categories. Verse 7, “In all the places in which I have walked with all the children of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribes of Israel, whom I commanded to feed My people, Israel, saying, Why build ye not me an house of cedar?” In other words, God is saying David, I recognize that this is not a response to the revealed will, this is something that you just wanted to do for me. And so the Davidic Covenant historically came about because a man wanted to give something to God for which he wasn’t asked, God never required it, he just loved God and wanted to give something to him. And this passage proves that you can’t give anything to God because God is so touched by David wanting to give Him something He turns around and gives David everything.

Now in verse 8, instead of accepting a gift from David, God gives David everything. “Now, therefore, so shalt thou say unto my servant, David, Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I took you from the sheepcote….” Verse 9, “And I was with thee wherever you went….” Verse 10, “Moreover, I will appoint a place for my people, Israel, and will plant them, that they may dwell in a place of their own, and move no more, neither shall the children of wickedness afflict them any more, as formerly.” Verse 11, “And as since the time that I commanded judges to be over My people, Israel, and have caused thee to rest for all thine enemies. Also the LORD tells thee that he will make thee an house.” So this is one of the great blessings, David because he loved God just wanted to give God something, and God took David’s gift and moved it right back to David. That’s God’s grace. Think of the difference between Saul, grasping, I’m going to have my son sit on the throne, that kind of mentality, versus David, God, I just want to build You a house, You’re probably lonely out there in the tent. So God says no, don’t bother David, I’m going to build you a house. And He gave David a present that no man on the face of the earth has ever had; he had an eternal dynasty; no man in politics ever ascended to the height David did. The greatest politician who has ever lived, the greatest political leader who will ever live is David. What made him great? That kind of an attitude, I just want to give something to God.

Next week we’ll finish Psalm 89, keep these pictures in mind as we go through these things.