Sermon: Psalms: Book Four: He Is Coming!

Themes of Trumpets
#1233A

Given 25-Sep-14; 79 minutes

listen:

download:

summary: The Feast of Trumpets could be considered the opening salvo of the fall feasts, beginning with a blast of the trumpet or shofar, reminiscent of the event on Mount Sinai in which God visited His people, brought the Law, and brought righteous judgment—an event which depicts another judgment coming upon the earth following the Seventh Trumpet and the seven trumpet plagues or bowls of judgment in which God will shake the earth and destroy those whose goal has been to destroy the earth, and a time when Christ will claim His Bride and the Marriage of the Lamb will commence. Psalm 91 anticipates the Day of the Lord, the return of Christ coming for judgment, and destruction, but also putting a protective hedge around His people. Psalm 90, written by Moses, wistfully asks how long it will be before this condition of temporariness can be turned to eternal life. Psalm 91, perhaps also written by Moses, discusses a kind of place of refuge in which the protected saints can view the destruction of Satan's evil system. Psalm 94 seems to reflect the point of view of saints not in a place of safety, anxiously waiting for the end of times of tribulation. The key to weathering these fearful times is drawing close to God with a view of emulating His life and getting to know Him, preparing for rulership in His Kingdom.


transcript:

Under God’s system, the complexion of the fall season is totally different from that of other seasons of the year. It is special. It is a special time. And we have seen in some of my other sermons I have given about these seasons, the Israelites broke up their year into five (not four like we do) different seasons. These are the Passover season and the Pentecost season (we just have Spring, but they broke it up into those two times); and then there was summer, fall, and winter. And while the other seasons have their glories (there are great things happening in all of them), the fall festival season with its four holy days, more than any other season of the year, and all four of these in just a matter of a few weeks—about three weeks’ time—may well have been the most glorious time of the year for them. Not like people out there in pagan land who believe that Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year, right dead in winter! There is a scripture we will go over today that just shows how futile man is in their thoughts. But, for God, this time of the year, with the harvest in, is the most glorious time of all.

Now in the book of Psalms we have studied two of these seasons: Pentecost season and winter season. Over my next five sermons, meaning the sermons that will span all of these holy days (Trumpets, Atonement, Feast of Tabernacles, and the Last Day of the Feast, plus the one sermon in the middle, between those two at the end), we are going to be exploring Book Four of the Psalms. That will make three out of the five that I have done, and there are two to come. And we will see—maybe next spring I will do Passover, and someday I will get to the summer one. Ultimately, my goal is to cover the whole book of Psalms so that will be available for anybody’s use.

Book Four of the psalms has eighteen psalms that go with it. There are seventeen between Psalm 90 and Psalm 106, and then there is Psalm 149 which is the Summary Psalm. So we are going to focus on those eighteen psalms over the next five sermons, and we will see that these psalms really do focus on these fall festivals and the fulfillments of the prophecies that are inherent in those festivals. And I hope it will be instructive and helpful for you.

Now, because I only have a limited amount of time and I want to get to how this book of psalms applies to Trumpets, I am not going to go over the setup for the whole book in this sermon (I am going to put that off until we get to the Feast). But I want you to note a few things about book four so that we get a running start into it. I realize that most of you, probably, have been here for the other sermons, so this will be just a little bit of a review. But if there is anybody just listening in to these particular series of sermons that I have been giving, this will at least give you a little bit to start with.

As I have mentioned, the book of Psalms (or the Psalter, as it has also been called) is broken up into five books, and they parallel those five seasons that I mentioned above. So there are five books that cover those 150 psalms, and they correlate with the five seasons of the year. But they also correlate with the five books of the Torah or the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), and they also correlate or parallel with the five books of the Megillot which is the Hebrew term for ‘festival scrolls.’ There is the Song of Songs, which goes very well with the Passover season; there is Ruth, which goes very well with the Pentecost season; there is Lamentations, which goes with the Summer season; Ecclesiastes, which goes with the Fall season; and winter is Esther, which speaks about all that and goes to Purim which is the final thing that happens in the book, and Purim is just before the break of Spring. So all of those are parallel there.

The specific parallels for Book Four are, of course, the fall season, which we are in (or just could come in now), the book of Numbers (which, if you think about it, is all about the wandering of the children of Israel across the desert; there is also the idea of numbers in there; you will see that later on as we go through that in the sermon at the Feast and many other things as well); the book of Ecclesiastes (which is about our walk through life, and Solomon is teaching us to walk wisely through life); and Psalm 149 (which I mentioned before), which is the Summary Psalm. So we will look into the themes of Book Four more thoroughly at the Feast.

Right now, though, we are going to concentrate on the themes pertinent to the Feast of Trumpets because, of course, that is today and we need to stick with the themes for the day. So we are going to only focus on this particular time, this opening salvo on the fall feast—actually kind of an opening salvo on the whole opening up of God’s plan to the world.

So what are the themes of the Day of Trumpets? Let us go back to a scripture that we have already been to today: Leviticus 23. We will start in verse 23.That is a good way to remember it: 23:23 and that means trumpets in Leviticus. We are going to read down through 25.

Leviticus 23:23-25 Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the children of Israel, saying: ‘In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall have a sabbath-rest, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation. You shall do no customary work on it; and you shall offer an offering made by fire to the Lord.’”

This is rather brief. If you look at some of these others, you will see that the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost) gets about seven or eight verses. Even the Day of Atonement gets six or seven. Tabernacles gets, I think, 11 or 12. But Trumpets only gets two which makes it rather enigmatic.

But we have a few clues in here. Of course, the big one is it is a memorial of blowing of trumpets which we know, as mentioned in many sermons in the past, is, literally, in the Hebrew, a remembrance of shouting. So it is a time of looking back, as it is presented here, of some great event that occurred where there was a great deal of shouting, whatever the shouting is.

Now it is thought that this word ‘shouting’ is a shortened form, or a shorthand form, of the Hebrew phrase ‘shout of the shofar,’ the shofar being a ram’s horn that was blown at certain times and certain occasions for certain reasons. So, a remembrance of shouting has to do with a remembrance of this horn being blown. It was something that was so big, so awesome it jangled the senses to such a degree that you clearly would remember it, if you had been there to see it.

It seems to me that what it is actually pointing back to is God coming down on the mountain of Sinai. Now that did not occur on the Day of Trumpets, as we know it; it occurred probably on Pentecost. But it is given its own day because of that particular thing: God came down on the mountain, and it was heralded by trumpets.

The Day of Trumpets not only has this idea of the shout of the shofar, but it has the idea of God coming down and visiting His people and giving His law; and with the giving of the law comes judgment. So we are already starting to see themes of the Day of Trumpets pop up here. Obviously, there is the great theme of trumpet or shofar itself. There is the theme of God coming and visiting His people. If we go back to Exodus 19 and see all that happened there, there was smoke and fire, and if anybody came close the mountain they were to be shot through. So there is this threat of death and just awesomeness in what was going on here.

So these ideas start pouring in about what this day is all about, that we are supposed to remember that God came down and visited His people and gave them His law and came down in judgment. Because what happened immediately after that, there was judgment occurring because of what the Israelites did. That was just right about the time of the Golden Calf and their idolatry, and there had to be a judgment that took place right after that.

All these ideas are flowing through what the Day of Trumpets is all about. So we have various themes already that we have seen just from this and hooking it up with what happened on Mount Sinai when God came down to visit His people.

We could have perhaps gone through Psalm 81, which is thought to be a psalm of the Day of Trumpets. But it is not in Book four; it is actually in Book Three. So I decided to go ahead and skip it. But it does say there, in Psalm 81:3, that you blow the trumpet on the New Moon. And so this idea—that we call this day the ‘Day of Trumpets’ rather than the ‘Day of Shofar’—is fine. The shofar is a trumpet. It is just a trumpet made of horn rather than metal. So it is just fine that we call it the ‘Day of Trumpets.’

We could also go to Numbers 10:1-10. This is where Moses sets down God’s instruction on how the trumpets are to be used in Israel, when they are to be blown, how many toots mean this and how many toots mean that. All those things are listed there. So when you call assembly, there is a certain way to blow the trumpet; when you want the people to move, there is a certain way to blow the trumpet; but when you want the people to stop, there is a certain way to blow the trumpet. You blow the trumpet in the New Moon, at the beginning of months. You blow it for war. You blow it for a coronation. You blow it for this, that, and the other thing. And there we find other themes of the Day of Trumpets pop up, like the one I just mentioned—coronation, the day when the King is crowned. So the idea of kingship, rulership, and authority is also in the Day of Trumpets.

There are a lot of things that we could look at as themes of this day, and you will see a lot of these pop up in Book Four of Psalms. So I just wanted to give you a general overview of some of these themes.

Now let us go to Revelation chapter 11. I am following the theme of trumpet (the actual shofar or a trumpet blast) here. Here at the end of Revelation 11, starting in verse 15, we have New Testament prophecy that starts to bring this all together.

Revelation 11:15 Then the seventh angel sounded [What did he sound? He sounded a trumpet]: And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!”

So now we have God—Jesus Christ—coming down, and He is taking up rulership over the world.

Revelation 11:16-17 And the twenty-four elders who sat before God on their thrones fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying: “We give You thanks, O Lord God Almighty, the One who is and who was and who is to come [there is ‘who is to come’—that idea that this is going to happen] . . .

Revelation 11:18-19 “The nations were angry, and Your wrath has come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that You should reward Your servants the prophets and the saints, and those who fear Your name, small and great, and should destroy those who destroy the earth.” Then the temple of God was opened in heaven, and the ark of His covenant was seen in His temple. And there were lightnings, noises, thunderings, an earthquake, and great hail.

So here we have the seventh trumpet which announces the seven last plagues which are also called the seven bowls or vials of God’s wrath, depending on the translation you have. So what this is doing is proclaiming the return of Christ, proclaiming His taking over of governance over the earth. It is proclaiming that He is coming. It is proclaiming that judgment on the nations will occur, and also, on a better note, that His servants will finally be avenged and rewarded for their patience and their loyalty to God.

A lot of these things come out in these few verses that parallel what we saw back there in the Old Testament—specifically Leviticus 23, Exodus 19, and many other places. There is an awful lot there about this day because this is what we are looking forward to. And God wants to keep it top of mind for us because this is our goal: To be there as one of His servants when Christ returns, and be given this reward for the faithfulness that we have shown Him through the years.

This is proclaiming, you could say, the Day of the Lord. Now, the Day of the Lord, as we have said in the past, is not one day. There is ‘a day for a year’ principle in the Bible. When the Israelites decided to go against God’s orders about going into the land, and it was 38 days that the spies were gone, God said for each one of those days they were going to wander in the wilderness for a year. So it ended up that they were in the wilderness for 40 years—because it had been two years already, and then He added another 38. So you get ‘a day for a year’ principle.

We also have ‘a day for a thousand years’ principle, but I do not want to confuse you (I probably just confused some people). But ‘a day for a year’ is a principle of the Bible that I do not want to prove out right now, but this is what we think is occurring here with the Day of the Lord—that the Day of the Lord will actually be about one year long. But it begins with the First Trumpet—and this is the seventh trumpet, so it is not exactly that. But this idea of these trumpets blowing, one through seven, and then, right at the end here, we get a further announcement: “Hey, look, this is coming, and this is the really big thing that is coming.” The other stuff was just a setup for this because this is the great part of the Day of the Lord.

So this is the point I am trying to get to. We keep the Feast of Trumpets on one day, but it is not necessarily looking forward to just the one day of Christ’s return. It also looks forward to the entire year of the Day of the Lord. So it is a longer time than just the specific return of Christ on that particular day, but it covers also the lead-up to it.

This expands some of the themes that we have here which have to do with what the people of God are doing during this time—in this very severe time before Christ returns—and what the people of the world are going through during this very severe time of the Day of the Lord, and what God is doing with both groups during this time which culminates with His return, and what follows after that, in what He has to do to subdue the nations.

Let us go back to another place where we have been, but in song: Joel chapter 2. We want to use this to start our day off. We are not going to read the whole thing, but I want to get the flavor of this.

Joel 2:1-2 Blow the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble; for the day of the Lord is coming, for it is at hand [it is close]: a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, like the morning clouds spread over the mountains. A people come, great and strong, the like of whom has never been; nor will there ever be any such after them, even for many successive generations.

Let us drop down to verse 10.

Joel 2:10-11 The earth quakes before them, the heavens tremble; the sun and moon grow dark, and the stars diminish their brightness. The Lord gives voice before His army, for His camp is very great; for strong is the One who executes His word. For the day of the Lord is great and very terrible; who can endure it?

Here we get a little bit of a taste of what is coming, that this Day of the Lord is not going to be any picnic in the park—not by a long shot. It is a dark and gloomy day; and it is darker and gloomier than we just went through in the last couple of days. My attitude started to slip a couple of times during those last few days because I was thinking “When is the sun going to shine again?” Here I had just been wanting it to stop shining (it just shows you how fickle I can be). But, after a while, the darkness and the gloominess start to wear on you.

But this is going to be a whole year of just terrible plague and destruction and death and war. Anything bad that you can think of is going to be happening during this Day of the Lord when God vents His anger against the people of this earth who have ignored Him, and derided Him, and practiced idolatry and all the other stuff that they do to spite Him. So this is going to be a time that we do not want to be involved in, if we can help it.

It says here that Christ is going to come with great strength to execute His word. What it means is He gave some promises in times past that if you do good He will reward you, but if you do not do good then you are going to have to take the punishment. In this case, before His coming and on the day of His coming, it is mostly—except for what happens to the saints—the bad part of that. He is coming in great wrath, and it is not going to be pleasant at all.

Let us go back to the book of Revelation, chapter 16. This is the seventh bowl. So we have come through an entire set of plagues here—the seven last plagues or the seven bowl judgments, or whatever you want to call them. Here, in verse 17, we read about the seventh one, right before Christ returns.

Revelation 16:17-20 Then the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, “It is done!” And there were noises and thunderings and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such a mighty and great earthquake as had not occurred since men were on the earth. Now the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. And great Babylon was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath. Then every island fled away, and the mountains were not found.

Have you ever gone out there, let us say, someplace up toward Boone, NC; or maybe if you are in Denver and you looked a little bit to the west, what do you see? Mountains. You cannot miss them. They are huge. They rise up thousands of feet into the air. But it says here, in God’s Word, that at this time, right before Christ returns, the shaking and the violence of God’s wrath upon the earth and the people that are in it is going to be so great that when we look, we are not going to be able to see the mountains anymore. Now I do not know how literally we can take this, but God wants us to understand that when He comes back and does all these things in His wrath, this is how terrible it is—that He could, with a breath, lay everything flat if He wanted to. There is a verse that says that when God comes, He melts the mountains—they melt in His presence. Just think about that. His great wrath is going to be turned on those men who have rejected Him and done all those things to His people that they will have done. So verse 21 here.

Revelation 16:21 And great hail from heaven fell upon men, every hailstone about the weight of a talent. And men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, since that plague was exceedingly great.

Who cares about the mountains and the islands fleeing away, it is the stuff coming out of the sky and hitting them on the head and killing all these people. But just think of it. We cannot grasp the level of destruction that is going to occur in the Day of the Lord as a result of God’s wrath. Cities crumble like they are made of cardboard. All of man’s great works will come down to the ground. Nothing will stand. Babylon falls completely because God turns His fierce anger on Babylon and says “I’ve had enough of this nonsense,” and He just tears it all down. It is a time that is unimaginably horrendous.

And, like I said, we do not want to be on the taking end of this at all. We want to be in a place where we are safe from this, protected by God Himself. Let us go back to I Thessalonians chapter 4. I just want this thing about the trumpet here.

I Thessalonians 4:16-17 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

As these plagues are happening—the bowls of God’s judgment are put on this earth and upon its people—it ends with the return of Christ, with a blast of His trumpet, this voice of the archangel; and the dead saints, who faithfully went to their graves believing in God and His way and doing what was right, will be raised incorruptible, as Paul says in I Corinthians 15. And those of us who are alive at that time will then be changed in the twinkling of an eye, which he also says in I Corinthians 15. And, as it says there in I Thessalonians 4, from that point forward we will always be with the Lord. It cannot get any better than that, to always be in the presence of our Lord and Savior and Husband Jesus Christ.

Let us go back to the book of Revelation and let us see what this trumpet announces.

Revelation 19:1-2 After these things I heard a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying, “Alleluia! Salvation and glory and honor and power to the Lord our God! For true and righteous are His judgments [hang on to that], because He has judged the great harlot who corrupted the earth with her fornication; and He has avenged on her the blood of His servants shed by her.”

So He has judged her and He has avenged His people.

Revelation 19:3-5 Again they said, “Alleluia! Her smoke rises up forever and ever!” And the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who sat on the throne, saying, “Amen! Alleluia!” Then a voice came from the throne, saying, “Praise our God, all you His servants and those who fear Him, both small and great!”

Now remember that too because the praise comes in force in the book of Psalms. It is a book of praises to God. That is part of its purpose.

Revelation 19:6-7 And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, as the sound of many waters and as the sound of mighty thunderings, saying, “Alleluia! For the Lord God omnipotent reigns! Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready.”

This is also a theme: that His wife is ready for His return.

Revelation 19:8 And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.

So they have worked to become righteous—with God’s help obviously, by His Spirit. But they have done their part, under the covenant, to be ready to marry Christ at His return.

Revelation 19:11 Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True [remember that], and in righteousness He judges and makes war.

We are seeing all these themes just pop up.

Revelation 19:12-16 His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen [which had just been talked about, in terms of His saints; it is good clue that those are the ones that are on these horses following Him], white and clean, followed Him on white horses. Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.

And then we know, as the chapter goes on, He puts down the armies of the beast and He puts the beast and the false prophet in the Lake of Fire. Then, of course, if we go into chapter 20, He binds Satan and reigns with His saints for a thousand years.

So we have here a whole bunch of activity that revolves around Christ and His return, and these trumpets that we keep hearing about—these trumpets that blow—announce Him in various ways. First, in this chapter, He is announced as righteous judge and avenger of His people; then He is announced as our God and our King; and then He is announced as the husband of the church. He is also the Lamb of God (we actually did not read that verse, but He is announced as ‘The Lamb’ because we are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb, it says there). And then, we see, as verse 11 and the rest of the chapter shows, that He goes on and shows us what He is going to do as both warrior King coming back to strike the nations and also as Judge, particularly of the beast and the false prophet but also those who follow those two. So we see a lot of these ideas flowing through this chapter.

I have gone through these because these are the same things that come up in Book Four—these same ideas—that there is going to be a time of great destruction and it is going to be wearing on the saints, that they are going to have to be doing something to prepare for this time. There is obviously Christ’s return, coming in judgment, that He is our King, that He will reign, and many others. Trumpets are even mentioned a few times in Book Four. But I just wanted to give you kind of the whole panorama of what we are talking about when we talk about the Day of Trumpets, and what will come up in Book Four—because they reflect one another.

Let me just try to summarize this for you:

The return of Christ is the primary theme of all of this. Christ is coming. Our Savior will return. We need to remember that. Not that it gets too far from our minds as it is (or it should not), but we need to keep this focus before us all the time. Every year, we go through this particular holy day to remind us that He is coming. That is first and foremost.

But then we get into the other themes that pop up under that. Why is He coming? He is coming for judgment. It is time to judge the earth. He is also coming to display His wrath. There will be great destruction and devastation and death. We think of all that happening as being very harsh and cruel; it is not. It is actually just.

But there are softer themes too, particularly, which comes out in Book Four, that despite all of this that is going on in the world—all this death and destruction—God will be with His people, will protect His people, and will deliver His people. So even though all hell is breaking loose in the world and His people are right smack-dab in the middle of it, He is also there, and He is putting a hedge about them and getting them through this time to the good times ahead. So we will find these themes popping up all over the place in Book Four of Psalms.

Now I need to stress one point as we go into Book Four, and that is, the perspectives of the psalmists are like our own. David has several psalms in here. He lived 3,000 years ago. Obviously, it was before the return of Christ. So his perspective of what happens in the fulfillment of the Day of Trumpets is future—he is looking ahead to it happening. Moses, who lived 500 years before David, is looking at these things as a future occurrence. And we, reading them, obviously are reading them before this future occurrence happens. So our perspective is the same, but sometimes we get thrown by the verb tenses that the psalmist uses. Sometimes they write in past tense as though they have already happened. Sometimes they write in the present tense as though they are happening right now. And sometimes they write in the future tense realizing that these things are yet to happen. But they all fit the theme.

So what I am just saying here is do not be confused by something that seems like it is looking back to the past. This is going to come up a great deal when we get to the end of Book Four when the psalmists are actually looking back at what the Israelites were doing. But I want you to understand that these things all apply.

God did not just throw these psalms in here willy-nilly. They all fit the theme. They all have lessons that we can use now to help us get through this fall time, and get the lessons out of it that we need. So I just wanted to let you know that if you see something that looks like it is in the past tense, and here we are talking about a future occurrence, do not let that throw you because it is applicable. We just have to figure out how. So just keep that in mind.

Let me give you an example. Psalm 90 is a prayer of Moses. If you go through it, you will find that it has past, present, and future tenses in it. I do not want to go through Psalm 90 because that is a big one for another sermon. But each one of the parts where he changes tenses has a particular point that he is making for us to understand this time of the year and the fulfillments that will be happening, what we should be doing, etc.

Psalm 90 is a prayer that Moses gave to God asking for wisdom, and he asks for wisdom to help him (or the godly person) to have a proper perspective on his own life: “Teach us to number our days, so that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” He is asking God to give him that heart, give him that wisdom, so that he can look at things in the proper way. He could see that God has been around forever and He is in total control; that God must act in wrath against sinful mankind; that mankind itself has a very short life (we only live 70 or 80 years and it just seems like a snap of the fingers), and we have got to get everything done that we need to get done in this short amount of time. So we need to have the right perspective on things.

Then, he ends his prayer agonizing about how long it is going to be till Christ returns, and he is just yearning for the work of his hands to be finished (‘established’ is the word that he uses).

Right now, we are transitory: We are here today and gone tomorrow. That is not ‘established’; that is just a breath.

But Moses is saying “I can’t wait until my character, my life, my plans, my goals, and everything is firmly established in the Kingdom of God.” And that is why he asks for the wisdom, so that he can make his life conform to God and to the goal so that the work of his hands will be established—the work that he had done along with God to become like Him.

So you see how it works. There are past things that come into play. There are present things that come into play. We are all going toward these future things. And they all work together. So do not be thrown off by the past tense or the present tense or the future sense. Whatever it happens to be, it fits. God is a master at making things fit.

Let us go to Psalm 91. This is one of my favorite psalms. Psalm 90 is actually my favorite psalm, but I also like Psalm 91. I also like the idea that some have brought out, that Moses may have written this one too (some say David). But the Bible does not say anything. It just goes on from Psalm 90. It does not give us an author so we are left to guess. But I would like to think it is Moses. That is probably because I watched ‘The Ten Commandments’ movie too many times, and Aaron was singing this while the plague of the firstborn was going on outside.

Psalm 91:1-2 He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress; my God, in Him I will trust.”

Before we go any further, I want to mention something here. Did you notice here that he is talking about God, and then he says: “I will say of the Lord.” These first two verses use the pronouns ‘I’ and ‘my.’ But notice verse 3:

Psalm 91:3 Surely He shall deliver you . . .

So then we get a set of verses that talk about ‘you’—the pronouns change. He starts with himself, and then he goes to ‘you,’ and by the time we get down to verse 14 it changes again and now it is ‘Me’ and ‘My.’ But the ‘Me’ and ‘I’ is God. So it starts with the psalmist, it goes to the reader, and then it ends with God. I just want you to understand this is how it is set up.

Psalm 91:3-16 Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the perilous pestilence. He shall cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you shall take refuge; His truth shall be your shield and buckler. You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day, nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness, nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; but it shall not come near you.

Only with your eyes shall you look, and see the reward of the wicked. Because you have made the Lord, who is my refuge, even the Most High, your habitation, no evil shall befall you, nor shall any plague come near your dwelling; for He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways. They shall bear you up in their hands, lest you dash your foot against a stone. You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra, the young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot.

“Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him on high, because he has known My name. He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him, and show him My salvation.”

At first blush, if we were not thinking of this particular time of year, this psalm would seem to be a general declaration of trust in God during difficult times and God’s promise of protection—just like a blanket one—for all time. But when we look closely at the language of this particular psalm, we see that it is far more than this. This is talking about a time that is extra dangerous.

Years ago, back in Worldwide days (must have been in the 70s, or probably the 80s, when I was starting to really listen), I heard this psalm described as the ‘Place of Safety’ psalm, meaning that it seems as if this psalm is designed, or was written, specifically for those who are in a place of safety.

Look at the first words: “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High.” It is God’s own secret place, a place He prepared, and there are certain ones who He decides can dwell there. Now whether you think of it as the ‘Place of Safety’ psalm or not, it fits very well with the idea that God has secreted away some of His people, and He has given them special protection from this very dangerous time. So He has given them a place where they will be protected from harm.

And what it seems to describe here is the perilous state of the world during the Day of the Lord. Just think of all the things that are going on in this psalm. I should also say that not only are these terrible things going on outside, but that the people are safe and protected on the inside. That is the main thrust of this. Despite all of these things going on in the outside—the world being torn apart with the war and the plagues and all the other things that are going on—His people can watch without being affected. They can see all these things going on around them, and none of them come near. The psalmist promises the faithful person God’s complete protection and help. There is not one sign in this psalm that anything affects them at all.

The ‘snare of the fowler,’ which is mentioned in verse 3, are the entrapping plots and schemes of people who are trying to persecute, capture, and put the people of God to death. We have got to think that this is going on at this time—that there are those out there who have not been brought to this place of refuge, but who are believers, and they have to prove themselves. And so there are these things going on to catch them and to kill them.

He describes plague and pestilence. He talks about terror (terrorism—things to make us afraid), war, and destruction in spades. He mentions huge numbers of people dying right and left (“ten thousand on your right hand,” “a thousand at your side”). It is just like whole fields of people just blown away, maybe whole cities, with nuclear bombs or whatever is happening—just people dying by the thousands. And this construction of thousand and ten thousand, you are not supposed to look at this specific number; you are supposed to understand that it is a great deal, and it is increasing. It is going on all over the place.

And it is interesting, “at your right hand”: That is to the south. You have to understand the way the Israelites looked: They always looked at their land with their backs to the Mediterranean. And so behind them was the Mediterranean; before them was the Dead Sea; to the south was their right hand, the Negev; and then the north was their left hand. So there may be an indication here of things happening to the south of wherever this place of safety is. But that is just a little offhanded comment.

It says there that “with your eyes shall you look, and see the reward of the wicked.” It gives the impression that the people of God in this place of safety will be able to view what is going on. Some have thought that this might mean that we will be inside of Jerusalem, and all the things that are going on around there. But we are able to see what is going on outside and understand that we are being protected from that.

So all of these horrible events are swirling around the faithful and they can see all of it happening—they see the wicked getting their due—but none of the destruction reaches them because God has set His angels about this place and given them a great hedge of protection so nothing gets in. Now I am not going to say nothing gets out. There are other people who have speculated that it may be the Two Witnesses can go in and out, I do not know; but it is very interesting that the people there will be able to see all of this and know that they are being protected by God and His angels.

He talks about lions and cobras. Maybe these are real lions and real cobras, but other people have thought that perhaps these are symbolic types of enemies. They are the brash, strong, maybe even rulers, powerful enemies like a lion would be. But then there are the more devious, cunning, slippery, and all that a snake would be. And he is showing that it does not matter—you cannot get in by strength, you cannot get in by cunning. We will be able to trample such people under our feet, as it were. They will not be able to harm us.

But verses 14 through 16 switch the perspective here. After all this has been said by the psalmist about how protected these people would be in this place of safety, God jumps in and gives His two cents. And what He gets across here is that He tells us why He does this for these particular people. And then He also piles on additional blessings. From just this particular psalm, you can get the impression that these people have impressed Him. We will read it again.

Psalm 91:14-16 “Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him on high, because he has known My name. He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him, and show him My salvation.”

God gives us the reasons for why these people are there and why He does what He does. There are two elements that are set in parallel clauses here, and that is in verse 14. The first is the faithful person is in this place of refuge because he has set his love upon God. Now we need to know, as we think about this, that the word ‘love’ here is ‘chesed’ in Hebrew. The word is often translated as ‘mercy’ or ‘lovingkindness.’ It is also translated as several other things. But I believe we should get the idea of covenant loyalty from this. You could almost say the word ‘faithfulness’ fits in here—because we have been faithful to God, we have set our love on Him.

So, God is saying that the faithful person is holding up his end of the bargain, meaning he is keeping the covenant—that he is doing his part in the agreement between God and the saints about how he is to live his life. He is being faithful to God. So he is keeping God’s covenant. He is showing covenant loyalty and, of course, the loyalty is to God Himself.

The second thing he says here is that “he has known My name.” Now if we would go back to Psalm 9:10, that verse suggests that knowing God’s name is related to seeking Him. And then, of course, we know that John 17:3 talks about knowing God is eternal life.

Psalm 91:14 implies that these faithful people were very diligent in coming to know and understand God and His way of life. They were growing. They were seeking Him. They were staying in contact with Him. They were responding to God. They were doing all that they could do to stay close to God.

We could say, using more modern language, that they had devoted themselves to going on a lifelong discovery adventure to learn more about God. And as they learned more and more, they began to live more and more like God does. And so what God was seeing was a pattern of life from these people—a pattern of life that they would be zealously trying to make themselves more like Him. They were seeking Him. They were trying to come to know Him better and better and better.

And thinking about the fact that it was His name that they had known means that what they had been concentrating on was His character, His attributes—because His names identify Him for what He is and they identify His qualities. So these people had come to understand what His character is like, and they had become intimately familiar with those attributes and, thus, with Him. So, if you want to put it in a nutshell, they had maintained the relationship with God and they had grown in that relationship until they were as much like Him as they could be.

Of course, we know from I John 3:2 that that was the right way to go because it says when we shall see Him, we will be like Him. They had done their part to get as far along in this journey to be like Him as they could, as physical human beings. And, of course, those type of people have eternal life. That is what Jesus says. If you abide in Him—if you continue in Him and stay in the vine and produce that fruit and that growth—then you already have eternal life in you. And that is what He promises here.

There are eight things He says here: He promises them deliverance; He promises them exaltation; He promises them responsiveness (“they will call, I will answer”); He promises them support; He promises them honor and long life and satisfaction and, finally, salvation. That is a lot of things to give for this effort that these people put into coming to know Him.

Now long life here is literally length of days and it probably denotes eternal life. Length of days can be as long as you think about it. It is just going to go on and on, day after day, forever. It is interesting too that the faithful will be shown God’s salvation.

Now there are a couple of different ways you can look at it. You can think that God will guide them to salvation—He will show them the way. But it also could be very particular to this time and this particular place in history that what he is saying here is that these people will see the return of Christ. They will be shown salvation in the person of Jesus Christ returning. I do not know, it is up to you to decide whether you think that is the way it is, but it is a minor possibility that that is what he is alluding to here.

Let us finish here with Psalm 94. This is a longer psalm, but I will read it quickly.

Psalm 94:1 O Lord God, to whom vengeance belongs—O God, to whom vengeance belongs, shine forth!

We are already seeing here what is going on.

Psalm 94:2-23 Rise up, O Judge of the earth; render punishment to the proud. Lord, how long will the wicked, how long will the wicked triumph? They utter speech, and speak insolent things; all the workers of iniquity boast in themselves. They break in pieces Your people, O Lord, and afflict Your heritage. They slay the widow and the stranger, and murder the fatherless. Yet they say, “The Lord does not see, nor does the God of Jacob understand.”

Understand, you senseless among the people; and you fools, when will you be wise? He who planted the ear, will He not hear? He who formed the eye, shall He not see? He who instructs the nations, shall He not correct, He who teaches man knowledge? The Lord knows the thoughts of man, that they are futile. Blessed is the man whom You instruct, O Lord, and teach out of Your law, that You may give him rest from the days of adversity [now that is an interesting point], until the pit is dug for the wicked.

For the Lord will not cast off His people, nor will He forsake His inheritance. But judgment will return to righteousness, and all the upright in heart will follow it. Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? Who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity? Unless the Lord had been my help, my soul would soon have settled in silence. If I say, “My foot slips,” Your mercy, O Lord, will hold me up. In the multitude of my anxieties within me, Your comforts delight my soul.

Shall the throne of iniquity, which devises evil by law, have fellowship with You? They gather together against the life of the righteous, and condemn innocent blood. But the Lord has been my defense, and my God the rock of my refuge. He has brought on them their own iniquity, and shall cut them off in their own wickedness; the Lord our God shall cut them off.

This psalm seems to have similar timing to Psalm 91: Before the return of Christ. You see that in verses 1 and 2 where he is saying “Shine forth,” “Rise up.” He is telling Him to come back and avenge us, put down the wicked, judge these people. The psalmist seems to represent a certain people that are under severe adversity. They are, as it says there, in “the days of adversity.” It is a time of great trial and tribulation. Perhaps that is what the time is here, that this is looking at the time of the Great Tribulation and the Day of the Lord. And these people, who are represented in this psalm, are those who are not among those who are in Psalm 91, that this is a different group that is out there within all of this bad stuff going on, proving their faith to God. They have to live through this tribulation and the Day of the Lord, and they have to place all their trust in God for protection.

Now the main thrust of this psalm is against the wicked, the evildoers, the lawless. They seem to be persecuting God’s people—the widow, the stranger, and the fatherless—who are being killed. You know from other places in the Bible that when somebody messes with the widow and the fatherless and the stranger, God takes vengeance. He does not like that at all. And so the psalmist is pointing this out: “God, we need Your help because they are doing the worst of the worse things. They are killing off the weak and defenseless.”

So, like I said, perhaps this psalm reflects a time before the place of safety, or perhaps the righteous that have to go through the tribulation and Day of the Lord. If this is the case, then this is a plea for Christ to hasten His return and to cut short the time in righteousness.

It says that a couple of places in the Bible, like Matthew 24:22, that if the time had not been shortened, all flesh would not remain alive. Romans 9:28 says that He will cut it short in righteousness. So this seems to be a psalm that parallels that plea for God to end this soon—“Please come back. Rise up! Do Your part. We are dying here, and we need Your help.” So the psalmist cries out for God’s vengeance which is a righteous plea. Remember, God says, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay.” And so these saints ask God to fulfill that promise.

Now “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay” comes out of Deuteronomy 32, specifically in verse 35. It is very interesting that this particular psalm—Psalm 94—and the song of Moses, particularly Deuteronomy 32:35-42, have parallel ideas there. I think the psalmist wanted the reader to reflect on the Song of Moses and bring in some of those ideas to what was going on there. Particularly, the passage, in Deuteronomy 32:35-42, shows the conditions that have to be met for God’s vengeance to be dealt out to those who are sinful. He is alluding to the fact that those conditions are present and he is requesting, then, for God to follow through and avenge His servants. “So, it's time” he says to God. “It’s time for You to wake up out of sleep,” as it says elsewhere. “It’s time for You to rise up and avenge Your people” because, as I said, they are dying. They are being slain right and left. It is reminiscent of Revelation 14:17-20 where the cup of God’s wrath has been filled to the full and it is now time for the nations to drink of it.

These verses show that it is God’s instruction that gives the people relief from what is going on. That is all they have to hold on to, what God has taught them—the words of the Book that they have to hold on to. Everything else has been stripped away. There is no place to hide. There is nothing that they can do. And so they have to turn to God’s instruction. In this particular situation, “Blessed is the man whom You instruct, O Lord, and teach out of Your law, that You may give him rest from the days of adversity [that You give Him relief from the days of adversity], until the pit is dug for the wicked.” They are going to have to hold on to God’s instruction until it is over. That is the only thing that is going to give them any comfort or relief. So they have to be faithful to God’s Word.

But God gives them assurance, through that Word, that He is faithful and He is with them. They do not need to worry. They are going to worry, but they need to be assured that He is with them. There is recompense and there are better times ahead. So “hold on” is what He is saying here. Our God is a God of justice. He is a God who is faithful to His promises, and He will do as He has said. Verse 20 should help us as we are living in a time now where the laws are changing to narrow us in.

Psalm 94:20 Shall the throne of iniquity, which devises evil by law, have fellowship with You?

This is not of God—God may be allowing it. But he is saying here that if there is an evil king, an evil president, an evil government who is doing stuff against the people of God, we need to hang in there. We need to take comfort that God is in control, that God is on mission, that God is sovereign. He will work things out. Do not stress too much about it. It says:

Psalm 94:22 But the Lord has been my defense, and my God the rock of my refuge.

And as it says there in verse 23:

Psalm 94:23 He [will bring] on them their own iniquity, and shall cut them off in their own wickedness . . .

So we have that assurance.

On to Psalm 96. This is a psalm of praise and rejoicing in the fact that He is indeed coming.

Psalm 96:1-13 Oh, sing to the Lord a new song! Sing to the Lord, all the earth. Sing to the Lord, bless His name; proclaim the good news of His salvation from day to day. Declare His glory among the nations, His wonders among all peoples. For the Lord is great and greatly to be praised; He is to be feared above all gods.

For all the gods of the peoples are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Honor and majesty are before Him; strength and beauty are in His sanctuary. Give to the Lord, O kindreds of the peoples, give to the Lord glory and strength. Give to the Lord the glory due His name; bring an offering, and come into His courts. Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness! Tremble before Him, all the earth.

Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns; the world also is firmly established, it shall not be moved; He shall judge the peoples righteously.” Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and all its fullness; let the field be joyful, and all that is in it. Then all the trees of the woods will rejoice before the Lord. For He is coming, for He is coming to judge the earth. He shall judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with His truth.

So we get this psalm of inspiration that God is coming, our Lord is going to return. And so what should we do? He says we should proclaim the good news of the salvation from day to day. He says, “Preach the Gospel.” Let people know what is going on, that He is coming. And this wonderful God, He is not any idol. He is the God that made everything and He is coming back to rule. He is coming back to establish a government that will not be moved. Once it is established, it is here to stay. And if you want to be on the winning side, this is the side you want to be on—you want to be on the side that is going to remain forever.

So He is coming. And not only is He coming, He is coming to judge sinners, coming to judge the whole earth. He is going to set up a standard of righteousness, which is Himself. And everyone will fail and then He will set things right, and start working again to bring the earth into communion with Him. So that is why the earth is joyful. Remember what it says there in Romans 8:21, that the whole creation will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. Paul was alluding to this particular set of verses, that the whole earth is going to be just so relieved when Christ returns.

This is something we can look forward to, in the meantime, while all these terrible things are going on. But it says that He is the judge, and He is the standard that will be set up to judge the earth.

Psalm 101. This will be our last psalm. It is a short one. I just want to go over this very quickly. This is a psalm of David, one of the few that is in here that has his name on it. We need to be aware that this reflects his life. It is one of those psalms that could kind of get us thinking “Well, this may not fit in here.” There are three ways that we can look at this psalm, and I will just give them quickly.

The first is that it is David’s personal resolution to God about how he is going to conduct himself as king.

The second is that it is not David, but it is actually the Messiah who is telling us how He is going to conduct Himself as King. So there is a present one, in David. There is a future one, in the Messiah Jesus Christ. But both of them are about how he is going to conduct himself as King.

The third application is to us, that this is how we should begin to conduct ourselves right now so that when we rule with Christ, this is how we will actually rule. That is how we need to take it.

I am just going to read through this psalm. The one other thing I want to mention here, it is divided into two sections. There is one section that says how he will act at home and the other is how he will act in public, and they are the same.

Psalm 101:1-8 I will sing of mercy and justice; to You, O Lord, I will sing praises. I will behave wisely in a perfect way. Oh, when will You come to me [gives you the timing here—when will You come?]? I will walk within my house with a perfect heart. I will set nothing wicked before my eyes; I hate the work of those who fall away; it shall not cling to me [He hates the work of those who apostatize, and it will not cling to him; he is going to stay faithful]. A perverse heart shall depart from me; I will not know wickedness.

Whoever secretly slanders his neighbor, him I will destroy [by the way, we cannot do this right now; this is a job for a king who is on his throne. So do not be destroying any slanderers, please. You will go to jail]; the one who has a haughty look and a proud heart, him I will not endure. My eyes shall be on the faithful of the land, that they may dwell with me; He who walks in a perfect way, He shall serve me. He who works deceit shall not dwell within my house; He who tells lies shall not continue in my presence. Early I will destroy all the wicked of the land, that I may cut off all the evildoers from the city of the Lord [You remember this psalm. We sing it fairly often, here at church].

He determines that he will be wise in his behavior (‘the skill in living’ which we talk about in Ecclesiastes). He will follow that skill that he has learned from God, to be wise, and he will be blameless and upright. So he is going to figure out, he is going to consider just how to live in this world without sin. He is going to put out all sin from himself. He is going to do what he can to create an atmosphere of godliness in his house and in his work—at home and in the office. Wherever he goes, he is going to conduct himself with righteousness. He is going to be a good witness in everything.

So we can take from it the principle that while we wait for Christ to return, as he says there in verse 2, we need to be busy putting sin out of our lives and making common cause with other believers, as it says in verse 6: “My eyes shall be on the faithful of the land, that they may dwell with me.” So that is what we need to be doing as we wait for Christ to come. So our waiting for His return is in no way passive, but it is active and zealous to have a walk worthy of our calling, as it says in Ephesians 4:1.

We will end with the plea of all of those who eagerly await the glorious return of our Savior.

Psalm 90:13 Return, O Lord! How long? And have compassion on Your servants.

RTR/pg/drm







 


 
Close
E-mail It