God My (Otherworldly) King

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you enjoy this sermon. God bless. Let's pray.

Oh God, you are our King. We desire you above

all things. We ask that you would speak to us

today by the Word. Help us to have hearts and

ears open and ready to receive. Touch us, oh

Lord, by your Spirit. Do your work and your will,

we pray, in the name of Christ our Savior. Amen.

For about 30 years, in the late 19th and early

20th centuries, there was a brutally horrible

regime in the Congo, as a European rule in the

Congo. The Congo territory is very large, but

a relatively small amount of people were able

to take it over because they had vastly superior

weapons, and they would treacherously side with

one tribe against others and then switch alliances.

Historians estimate that somewhere between five

and ten million Congolese died during that 30

-year span, either from outright violence or

from starvation. And what's sort of horribly

interesting about this is that all of these deaths

weren't, at least in theory, based in race hatred

or governmental expansion. It was merely greed.

These were commercial interests, not state interests.

The nation of Belgium's King, Leopold II, sort

of hoodwinked the international community of

his day into thinking that the Congolese needed

protection from Arabic slavers, and that he was

benevolently willing to provide that protection.

And if everybody got some nice ivory out of the

deal, so much the better. Well, a few years into

this noble experiment, An English journalist

was at the docks and watching trade ships sail

out to Belgian -controlled Congo and he realized

that the ships weren't loading anything to trade.

They were only loading boxes and boxes of bullets.

Therefore, all of this ivory and later... rubber

that came out of the Congo during that time was

not sold by any stretch of the imagination by

the African people, it was merely stolen. A nasty

irony in the story is that the Belgian for -profit

company, which was doing the dirty work here,

the main investor in which was King Leopold himself,

employed forced labor of all of the natives that

it could catch. That is, the king claimed he

was going to protect the natives, from slave

traders and then functionally, even if not legally,

made them slaves himself. Why do I bring this

up? Well, the first spoken line in Joseph Conrad's

1901 book Heart of Darkness is as follows. And

this also has been one of the dark places of

the earth, which is an allusion to Psalm 74 and

verse 20. Have regard for the Covenant for the

dark places of the land are full of the habitations

of violence Habitations means living places environments,

right? The psalmist says that violence lives

in the darkness Heart of darkness is a famous

little book which describes the massive ivory

grab From the perspective of a guy who went out

there to join the noble cause to be a steamboat

captain. The narrator was one of the employees

of the company collecting the ivory and now he's

telling the story and the first thing he wants

to do is to say that London, where he is currently

at the beginning of the book, is not really very

different from the Congo. Why would that be?

Because the people's hearts are the same everywhere.

Remember the title of the book, it's Heart of

Darkness. Conrad implies, and using the language

of this psalm, that in each of us is a place

which, if we are left to ourselves in unhealthy

ways, can become full of the habitations of violence.

So I've taught Heart of Darkness to 10th graders

for the last five years, so I was sort of obliged

to make that connection. Flora, did you see that

coming? Yeah, she did. But while Heart of Darkness

is important, it's not a fun read. It's a real

downer of a book. I don't enjoy it. And this

psalm is kind of a downer too, isn't it? It's

a lament psalm. And as Peter has pointed out

to us, that's the largest genre of psalm in the

Psalter. And that makes sense. I opened the sermon

today by talking about a genocide which was largely

ignored in its own day and largely forgotten

today. There's a lot to lament in our world.

But I think if we are willing to read the Psalm

in its very broad context, which is to say its

place in the whole of the Bible, we will see

that this is not just a downer of a poem. It

looks like it's just lamenting a catastrophe.

But if we zoom way out, we can see that this

is the grounds for a painful but real celebration

of the goodness of God. So let's get some context.

Let's get some observation here. So as we talked

about last week, Psalm 73 begins Book 3 of the

Psalms. The Psalms are divided up into five books

and scholars suggest that those five books mirror

in some way the five books of Moses, the Pentateuch.

So if this is true, Book 3 is in some way mirroring

Leviticus. That's the book in the Bible that's

most about ceremonial holiness and how you get

it. How do you live with a God who's holy if

you're not holy yourself, right? And the way

that works in the Psalms is that this book is

particularly about the temple, right? The temple

is the place that you go to be with God. The

New Testament scholar Michael Byrd says this,

quote, the temple in this period was of course

the heart and center of Judaism, the vital symbol

around which everything else circled. It was

supposed to be where Yahweh Himself dwelt, or

at least had dwelt, and would do so again. So,

this whole section of the Bible is dealing with

the temple and this poem is dealing with the

fact that the temple had been destroyed. God

had said in Deuteronomy, as we read this morning,

that He was going to give His chosen people a

promised land. And he was going to choose a particular

place there and he would make his name dwell

in it and he did that. That was the temple. We

see that in verse 7 of this. And when the temple

was built and Solomon, David's son, prayed over

it, this is a quote, fire came down from heaven

and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices

and the glory of the Lord filled the temple.

That's second Chronicles 7. God Himself had ordained

the temple, gave specifications for the design

and the decorations even, and He set His name

on it and He filled it with His visible glory.

And now bad guys break it down? Let's look at

the outline of the poem. First, you have a section

that starts with concern over the anger of God

for Israel and lament at what that anger looks

like. then it asks God to redirect his anger

against Israel's enemies. That's in verse 11.

Destroy them. The bad guys are out there, God.

They've smashed all our stuff. Don't you care?

The question is, why do you withdraw your hand,

even your right hand? What are you waiting for?

And the implied question behind this question,

of course, is if God isn't working, to vindicate

his people and his holiness, is he able to? Is

God powerless? And then the psalmist answers

this unspoken question in verse 12. He says,

yet God, my King, is from old working salvation

in the midst of the earth. God is real. His power

is evident in creation and the ordering of the

natural world. That's verses 13 through 17. I

wish I had time to talk about Leviathan." Then

he goes back to pleading with God to stop the

wicked people. Verse 18 and verse 21 both say

that the bad guys scoff against God and the poem

ends in verse 22 with the unacceptable clamor

of God's foes. So, how do we see God's goodness

in this psalm? It's a fair question. Follow my

interpretive reasoning here and we'll see if

you agree. First, the main point of this poem

is this. The temple is smashed and what are you

going to do about it, God? Are you even there?

Second, what we call covenant theology, which

the Reformed tradition broadly follows, says

that the whole Bible is about Jesus in one way

or another. It says that because Jesus says that.

And if that is true, this psalm is therefore

about Jesus in some way. Third, as we read this

morning from our Gospel text, Jesus speaks about

his body as the temple. So that means it's probably

fair to read Old Testament references to the

temple as being part of what Jesus understood

about himself and his mission. So the question

is, what can this poem teach us about Jesus?

And if you have followed me till now, perhaps

you will be happy to write down my main points,

which I will share with you. Alright, I think

that this text can teach us about, first, the

amazing providence of God, which we can understand

in his preparing the temple in Israel's history

as a type of Christ, the providence of God. Second,

the amazing humility of God, which we can see

in his willingness to let his temple be destroyed.

And third, we can see the amazing, unpredictable

benevolence of God, which we can see in the way

he deals with his people and also with his enemies.

So let's talk about the providence of God. When

Jesus talks about the temple of his body, as

we heard in John 2, he's not making this huge

break with the Old Testament. He's not saying,

forget all that old stuff, I'm here now. We didn't

read all of John 2, but the context in which

he says that he's going to raise the temple again

in three days is Jesus has just gone into the

actual rebuilt temple in Jerusalem and what he

does there in John 2 is remarkable. Jesus, who

is gentle and lowly in his own estimation, he's

not given to lashing out as we say, makes a whip

and he literally lashes out the money changers

from the temple. Jesus cares deeply about the

temple and its honor. His disciples then remember

the verse, zeal for your house consumes me. Jesus

was zealous for the temple, as were all pious

Jews. Why? Well, on the most basic level, you

could say, the temple was beautiful. If you look

at 1 Kings chapter 6, you'll see that the entire

1 Kings 6 · chapter mention

inside of the temple was covered in cedar wood

and all of it was elaborately carved. In the

form of gourds and open flowers, it was like

a huge garden representing the garden of Eden

that had all been whittled. And if you look back

at one of the sad verses of Psalm 74 verse 6,

Psalms 74:6

it says here. All its carved wood they broke

down. Right all the stuff that we worked so hard

on to make beautiful it's gone. We should remember

the time here that we're talking about wasn't

like ours with life was much harder. Beauty,

in the sense of artistic creation, was a much

rarer thing. Just an instance. In my classroom,

at school, I have a famous portrait of Gertrude

Stein done by her friend, Pablo Picasso. I have

this because I could print it off the internet

and frame it for low, low prices. This was not

an option for the Psalmist. Artistic beauty was

something precious, something comparatively hard

to come by. So hand in hand with the beauty of

the temple is the cost of the temple. Of course,

the man hours it took to whittle all of that

would have been staggering, but consider the

mere materials. First Chronicles 29 says that

5 ,000 talents and 10 ,000 derricks of gold were

used in the temple. I don't know how to do that

math, but one website I found said that would

be worth $200 billion. That's with a B, billion.

dollars today. So the point here, so the temple

was hugely costly, hugely beautiful, and when

we think that Jesus is in some way the truth

the temple was pointing to, we will see that

he is more beautiful, more costly even than the

temple itself, and we will gaze on him with wonder.

1 Peter 1 says that we were quote, ransomed by

the precious blood of Christ. Friend, His blood

is precious. It is costly. To put it in flat

economic terms, it had enormous purchasing power.

It bought Him the souls of all the redeemed.

So, we're talking about Jesus' blood. Let's go

to our second point, which is the humility of

God. So, the temple, which is the place in His

providence where His name dwells, that's verse

seven again, the dwelling place of Your name.

It gets smashed by the pagan bad guys. And then

Jesus, who is the true temple, who has been given

the name above every name, gets smashed by the

pagan bad guys. This is a pattern. And it's a

pattern of intense, unbelievable humility in

God. Think about it. Psalm 74 is recounting the

fact that God allowed the destruction of his

temple, which doesn't make any sense. Going into

a temple, and smashing it is a sort of demonstration

that the god the temple is associated with is

actually powerless. This is Indiana Jones stuff.

If I don't believe in the god of the temple,

I can go in and steal the stuff because it belongs

in the museum. Or consider the more Christian

story of Saint Boniface who lived in the 8th

century. He is known as the apostle to the Germans.

He is said to have, as part of his missionary

journeys, chopped down the sacred oak of Thor.

He wasn't smited for this act or smitten or smote.

No tense of smite occurred to him. And therefore,

he proved his point that the old gods had no

power. And the people, that's the pagans that

he was preaching to, converted en masse to Christianity.

It's a crude kind of apologetics, but it worked

for him. So think about this. The God of the

Bible in Psalm 73 allows the Boniface treatment

against himself, right? The pagan bad guys are

saying, your God doesn't have any power, let

me smash his holy stuff, and God allows it. He

doesn't smite them back. So the question is,

can we trust him? Simply put, is he strong enough?

Is he even real? God has chosen to look weak,

but the weakness of God is stronger than men.

1 Corinthians 1. The theological answer to this

is kind of startling. It's that God does not

just let his temple be destroyed. He causes his

temple to be destroyed. And the psalmist knows

that this unthinkable problem has to do with

God's anger. Verse 1, oh God, why do you cast

us off forever? Why does the anger smoke against

the sheep of your pasture? This is powerful language,

isn't it? The Solomonic temple was destroyed

about 200 years after David himself was alive,

which means that at this time, the people of

God had been singing David's Psalm 23 for 200

years. The Lord is my shepherd, Psalm 23, I shall

not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures.

And now 200 years later, this Psalm seems to

reach directly back to be in contrast with that

one. Why does your anger smoke against the sheep?

God, I thought you were a shepherd. Doesn't the

shepherd protect his sheep? Aren't your rod and

staff supposed to comfort me? This is a real

question, is it? What is God doing? How are we

supposed to trust that he's good if he won't

protect his people? What evidence do we have

that he is worth our time in our worship? What's

the answer here? We're in a Christian church.

The answer is Jesus. John 10 verse 11, Jesus

John 10:11

says, I am the good shepherd, right? Jesus says

all that stuff about the shepherd. Can you trust

the shepherd? Yeah, that's me. And then what

does he say in the very next line, right? The

good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep,

right? I am going to take the destruction of

the temple. on myself, right? The answer is that

God has allowed his temple to be destroyed, to

show the depths of his wrath against sin. He's

willing to destroy his own holy place in order

to show how much he hates sin. And this destruction

points forward to Jesus, who endures the same

fate as the temple. For the very people God was

wrathful against. So the fall of the temple was

a tragedy, but it was a tragedy pointing forward

to the great rescue that God was going to make

for his people by the fall of the true temple.

The psalmist wants God to be a shepherd and protect

his flock. God does this, but in a very unexpected

way. He protects the flock from their deepest

enemy, which is sin and eternal death. And he

does this by humbly allowing the place where

his name dwells to be destroyed. On to my last

point. Look again at verse 11. Why do you hold

back your right hand? Take it from the fold of

your garment and destroy them. Why does God wait

to judge the evildoers? I think the answer is

the relentless unpredictable benevolence of God.

What would happen to the bad guys if the psalmist

were in charge? It's not much of a question,

right? Destroy them. There's an interesting textual

point here. If you're reading a different version,

particularly the King James, your text actually

doesn't have the phrase destroy them. That's

because the Hebrew here is really hard to read,

says a commentary. All Hebrew is difficult to

read for me. The Hebrew apparently is very disjointed.

It's almost like the emotion of the speaker is

too great and he can't even speak in complete

sentences. The Hebrew for verse 11 literally

just reads, From the midst of thy bosom destroy.

And different versions translate that in different

ways, but I think it's pretty obvious that what

the psalmist wants destroyed is the enemy. So

keep going in the text. Verses 18 and 22, both

ask the Lord to remember that the enemy scoff.

This is how you identify a biblical bad guy.

He scoffs. Think of Psalm 1. Blessed is the man

who does not sit in the seat of the scoffer.

This scoffing is intolerable to the Psalm writer

and he thinks it ought to be for God as well.

Arise, O God, he says, and I think the Psalmist's

judgment is right. His judgment is morally just.

The bad guys should be struck down, but there's

a problem with this, isn't there? The people

who smashed the temple, guys, that's you and

me. Without the grace of God and given the right

opportunity, we would have broken down the walls

of Jerusalem. We would have left not one stone

on top of each other. How do I know? Well, the

Bible's really clear that it's God's grace that

keeps us from being awful. It talks in Deuteronomy

about how, quote, tender and refined women will

fight each other over food if they're hungry

enough. And if you know the text I'm referring

to, you know that I'm soft -pedaling that a little

bit. Romans 5 says that we were enemies of God.

Without the grace of God, there is drastic evil

in our hearts. And without his preventative kindness,

we would express it in drastic ways. You and

I, friend, minus the grace of God, we would certainly

have crucified the Lord Jesus. Spiritually speaking,

we did. In Acts 2, in Peter's Pentecost sermon,

he says this, this Jesus delivered up according

to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God,

that's providence again, you crucified and killed

by the hands of lawless men. Even if you didn't

do it yourself, you did it through others. Remember

the words of the Getty hymn? Ashamed, I hear

my mocking voice call out among the scoffers.

We sit in the seat of the scoffers. We are the

temple breakers. It was our sins that held him

there until it was accomplished. And how does

the Lord respond to our violence against him?

He has every right to say just what the psalmist

does here, destroy, destroy them. Yet what do

we hear from the cross? Forgive them. Father

forgive them for they know not what they do.

We were enemies of God and without hope in the

world and in Christ, God forgives us and makes

us holy. And then what? There's more. We're more

than just forgiven. What happens to us temple

breakers and torch throwers and axe wielders?

We become the temple of God ourselves. and know

you not that you are the temple of the Holy Ghost

which is within you, for you are brought with

a price." 1 Corinthians 6. God himself will come

to make his home in us, John 14. We are being

built together into a dwelling place for God

by the spirit, Ephesians 2. This is a relentless

benevolence in God. We were his enemies and he

defeats us by making us friends. He allows us

to destroy his precious things, and then he makes

us precious in return. How long will your anger

burn against the sheep of your pasture, the poem

asks, and the Lord responds by becoming the lamb

of God that takes away the sins of the world.

God's anger flared against the sheep, and Jesus

Christ was this sheep. And in doing this, he

leads us all beside still waters. Okay, that's

all over the place. That's landing very heavily

in the New Testament. I want to tie this back

to this text and to finish up with some applications.

The truth of this is complicated a little bit,

right? Because as Jesus says, his kingdom is

not of this world. God does not operate on our

rules or our timing or our sense of what's fitting.

One commentator says, sometimes even the staunchest

believer finds that the two really mystifying

things about the way God works are his reasons

and his timetable. We need to remember, even

as we look at Christ and adore Him for His otherworldly

goodness, that this is not a comfortable doctrine

in the world. The temple getting broken down

comes with massive loss of life and political

liberty for Israel. Jesus' followers do get persecuted.

Our own bodies, which the Bible says are the

temple of God, break down by age and sickness,

if nothing else. God will eventually restore

all losses, but in the meantime, the world can

be awful. As we see here in Psalm 74, God has

chosen in most of history, at most times, to

act as if He doesn't exist. I'll take this a

step further. Let's get even more uncomfortable.

I want to return to the horrible man -made loss

of life in the Congo that I started things with.

The Belgian commercial rule there? It was supposedly

a Christian thing. In Heart of Darkness, the

narrator says that when he's willing to go over

and help the noble cause, people think of him

as, quote, a sort of minor apostle. One of the

more heartbreaking things I read while I was

studying this was that during this period when

actual missionaries were over there trying to

tell the natives about the gospel, they would

often hear this, quote, Can this Jesus you tell

us about save us from the ivory trouble? Which

is to say, can Jesus Christ save us from the

Christians? And I think that is nothing less

than a desecration itself. The name of Christ

the Savior used to gain power and trample other

people down, it's another vision of the temple

being broken. And what I want to think for a

moment here, is how Psalm 74 contributes to our

vision of Christ's work. And I think it can make

us see how profoundly relieved we should be for

Jesus and his forgiveness. Look again at verse

22. the prayer of the solemnist, the prayer of

all his beaten down people. This prayer is in

this book for a reason. God collects the prayers

of his saints like incense, says the book of

Revelation. One day God will destroy all his

enemies, either by making them friends or by

removing them from the universe. And who shall

stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's

fire. Brother, if you're in Christ, thank him.

that he has taken the holy wrath of God for your

sins. If you have not trusted in Christ, if you

are not sure that you who were his enemy are

now his friend, I implore you to think about

this. Reconsider your standing with him. Draw

near to him and he will draw near to you. Friend,

Jesus who is dead at the hands of lawless men

is alive and one day he will make all things

new, but for now the temple is broken and the

world is confusing and sad. So, applications.

Let's pray for a faith that's strong enough to

endure sadness and confusion. If our faith only

makes sense when everything's going great, we're

in big trouble. Because as the psalm reminds

us, everything's not going to go great. then

let's praise the Lord that when we go into sadness

and confusion, we can meet Jesus there because

he goes there before us in otherworldly humility

and benevolence and he will never leave us or

forsake us. I want to close with a little part

of a poem from the great preacher Charles Spurgeon.

It says, for this long light, excuse me, For

this life's long night of sadness, he will give

us peace and gladness. Soul, remember in thy

pains, God or all forever reigns. Amen. Let's

pray. Oh Lord God, we praise you that you are

our King, that you are the lover of our souls,

that you come to comfort the weak, and the needy,

that you have a special place in your heart for

those that the world forgets and thinks are worthless.

Help us, Lord, to be more like you. Help us to

be forgivers. Help us to be compassionate. Help

us to run to you for sanctuary from the world's

woes and also from our own sin. Lord, be our

great King, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen. Thank

you for listening to Second City Sermons podcast.

We hope this sermon has encouraged you to worship

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