Psalm 83 – Psalms In The Summer

A song.

A psalm of Asaf.

Oh God, do not keep silence.

Do not hold your peace or be still, O God.

For behold, your enemies make an uproar.

Those who hate you have raised their heads.

They lay crafty plans against your people.

They consult together against your treasured ones.

They say, Come, let us wipe them out as a nation.

Let the name of Israel be remembered no more.

For they conspire with one accord.

Against you, they make a covenant.

The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites, Moab and the Hagrites, Gabal and Amon and Emelech, Philistina with the inhabitants of Tyre.

Asher also has joined them.

They are the strong arm of the children of Lot.

Selah.

Do to them as you did to Midian, as to Sisera and Jabin at the river Kijon, who were destroyed at Endor, who became dung for the ground.

Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb, all their princes like Ziba and Zalmuna, who said, Let us take possession for ourselves of the pastures of God.

O my God, make them like whirling dust, like taff before the wind, as fire consumes the forest, as the flame sets the mountains ablaze, so may you pursue them with your tempest and terrify them with your hurricane.

Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek your name, O Lord.

Let them be put to shame and dismayed forever.

Let them perish in disgrace, that they may know that you alone, whose name is the Lord, are the most high over all the earth.

And so reads God's Word.

Good morning.

You're very welcome.

It's good to be together worshiping God.

My name is Peter, and I'm the assistant pastor here at City.

This morning we're starting our summer series, which is picking up where we left off in the Psalms at the end of last summer.

Today we're looking at Psalm 83, and we'll look at each uh we'll look at one each week for the next couple of months until we get to Psalm 89 at the end of August.

The Psalms, their collection of songs and poems that help us respond rightly to God, and so it's good that we spend time in them.

And as we enter the Psalms again, you might think we'll be spending time in green pastures or in exuberant praise, but no, it's straight to the chaos of conflict.

Many of the Psalms deal with hardship and trouble.

And the very fact that the Holy Spirit inspired so many of the Psalms to be about the difficulties we face in life, giving voice to some of our deepest cries, shows that He is a God who knows us and cares for us.

This Psalm is one that shows it shows us that again.

It shows us that in the midst of threat and attack, we can and should cry out to God that He will act even if He seems silent, and He will be glorified even by His enemies.

In this Psalm, there's threat all around.

It's coming from every corner.

Nations are conspiring against God and his people, and they're feeling it.

And not only that, but they feel like God is silent.

There's a roar from enemies over there, from over there, over there, and over there.

But God seems to be still.

Is he unmoved?

The threat of invasion, loss of life, hardship and pain is looming, and it seems like God doesn't hear.

Yet the people turn to God.

That's where this Psalm begins.

Oh God! It's a desperate cry to God for help in time of great need.

The first two words of this Psalm are actually incredible.

They require an immense amount of faith.

When God seems silent, to call out to him shows great courage.

The psalmist cries out to God, Say something, do something.

Here's someone at the end of themselves with dread, but who still has hope.

That's hope not in themselves but in another.

Hope in God.

And so he cries out to God to act.

Where do you turn when you face trouble?

Who do you cry out to when threat is just there and trials come at you?

Maybe you're not facing it now.

Maybe life seems okay at the moment.

But you know that it's not always like that.

Maybe you are in the middle of a really difficult time.

Let the words of verse one be the cry of your heart.

I've been praying that that this Psalm would be the healing balm for your soul.

Life is hard and troubles come.

So where do you turn?

I've been hugely convicted by that question this week.

Where do I turn when I'm struggling?

When the pressure is on and there are threats all around.

Do I turn to God?

Is he my first port of call?

Sadly for me, often he's not.

Here's the confessions of the pastor from the front again.

I often turn to myself.

I I turn inward and try to summon the strength to get through by myself.

Now that doesn't seem all that bad, but I'm like, shouldn't we put effort in?

Shouldn't we engage challenges face on ourselves?

Don't mishear me.

Effort is good, but where that's independent of God or where we try to go it alone without reference to him, that's not good.

We weren't made to face these things without him.

Even if you think you've been able to get through difficulties on your own steam before, eventually the opposition will get too big.

Or maybe you're someone who, when difficult things come, you try to escape those feelings of dread.

When you're under pressure or stress, where do you go to get away from it?

To relieve the pressure a bit?

What do you do to forget about what's going on?

Sometimes those things are good.

And in fact, most of the things I could think of are they're not inherently bad.

It's just what we do with them.

It's about what's going on in our hearts when these things come.

Do you find yourself scanning the Ryan scanning Ryanair, their website for cheap flights to anywhere when you've had a rough day?

Or maybe when difficulties come you reach for food.

If you find yourself taking comfort in food rather than in God, then you should just give yourself a moment to stop and turn to Him instead.

Maybe it's alcohol for you.

When treated rightly, alcohol can be good, but if you try to find comfort in a bottle, it'll pull you down.

When troubles are coming at you and you want to escape from them, then alcohol is not your friend.

Some of us bury our heads in busyness and work.

That's the acceptable form of dealing with problems in our culture, isn't it?

When we give ourselves so much to do what we that we don't have to we don't have time to think about the difficulties of life coming at us.

Maybe it's social media, entertainment or the news.

These things offer our brains and hearts and out from the realities we're facing rather than bringing them to God and asking him to act.

Like I said, not all these things are bad.

But when these good things are the first things we turn to instead of God, then we're replacing him with them.

We're making them gods.

Some of us look to others to help us.

We want someone else to get us out of the situation or to deal with the trouble we face.

Again, it's not a bad thing, but if you're only looking to them, if you're not first coming to God, then they're going to fail you.

And you're probably going to place too high a burden on them at the same time.

Some of us we look to circumstances.

We say things like, things are just going to get better, I know it.

Sometimes they don't.

If our hope is in these threats just going away with the passage of time, then one day we'll end up facing them and succumbing.

Let me give you a Christian version of what this might look like.

I I was away for my seminary course recently, and we we always get to share prayer requests together.

And so I was thinking about what I would say, what I would share.

And reflecting on the year that's just gone, it's been hard at times.

There have been discouragements, and I thought it would be helpful to describe them as clouds that roll in and block the sun.

Now there have been good things to come from those discouragements.

There have been silver linings to those clouds, and that's a good thing.

And there are other things that have gone on that have been really encouraging.

It's like there's some blue sky over there.

But what I what I've realized is that though these things are good, like the silver linings and the other encouragements, I can't put my hope in these.

I can't rest in them.

Hardships and difficulties are going to come again like clouds.

And they might be darker and bigger the next time.

So what do I do?

Where do I turn?

As I was thinking about these prayer requests, we sang Cornerstone together, and there's the lyric When darkness seems to hide his face.

And before you finish it, think about think about it for a second.

I was thinking to myself, how would I have written the next line?

I'd say I see the silver lining over there, or I look for blue skies over there, but no.

It's when darkness seems to hide his face, I rest on his unchanging grace.

I don't put my hope in things just changing, though that's not a bad thing to hope for.

I don't put my hope in these things bringing about some good, though that's not an inherently bad thing.

In fact, I think it's a good thing in general, and it is a really hard thing to see in the midst of trial, but I need to put my hope in God.

I need to turn to Him.

Come with me in your minds to a stormy night on the Sea of Galilee a few hundred years after this psalm was written.

Jesus and his disciples are crossing the sea when a great storm arose.

The wind and waves are bashing against the boat and it's starting to take on water.

If this continues, they're likely to sink.

You can imagine how desperate the disciples were trying to bail out the water while holding on for dear life.

And yet, where do they find Jesus?

And what is he doing?

He's asleep in the stern of the boat on a cushion.

The disciples wake him up and he goes on to calm the wind and the sea with a word.

They cried out to Jesus in the middle of a storm, thinking that he didn't care, but he acted to save them.

What's raging around you like the winds and waves?

What's roaring like the enemies in Psalm 83?

Jesus, along with the psalmist here, would have you turn to him first, to cry out to him in time of difficulty and threat.

The next question this Psalm asks us is, do you know who you are?

As the tumult of the enemy can be heard, and as their crafty plans become clear, the psalmist doesn't forget who he is.

He doesn't forget his identity.

He could feel very alone and isolated, but he knows that's not true.

And it's not true on two fronts with one leading to the other.

Firstly, he remembers that he belongs to God.

Though he's facing this trouble, in verse 2 he says that these enemies are against God.

Asaf, the Sama, sees the threat coming at him, yet he says to God, Your enemies make an uproar.

Those who hate you have raised their heads.

This is great comfort.

He's not alone in his trouble.

Not just because he's called out to a God who cares, but because he identifies with God.

He knows that an attack against him is an attack against God.

He knows that he is God's, that he belongs to him.

It's a bit like Article V of NATO, where an armed attack against one member is considered an attack against all.

Whoever attacks one member is not only the enemy of that nation, but an enemy of every member of NATO.

Here, the psalmist identifies with no mere geopolitical organization, no mere NATO.

He identifies with God Himself, not just calling on him to act, but saying that the threat he's facing is an attack on God.

When these troubles come, do you know who you belong to?

Do you know who you are?

As you listen to the sound of the enemy roar, hear that they are roaring against your God.

As you see them get bold and raise their heads, see that it's God they hate, and they hate you because you're his.

And in knowing that you're his, you also know that you're one of his people.

Belonging to God means belonging to his people.

The Psalmist not only says that these enemies are against God, but that they're against his people.

It's not just Asaph by himself, there's a people.

And on top of this, the people he's a part of are they're not any old group.

They're God's treasured ones.

Isn't that such a joy?

In the middle of trouble, in the middle of hostility and strife, there's this gem expressed by Asaph.

We're treasured by God as his people.

Though they say, Come, let us wipe them out as a nation, let the name of Israel be remembered no more.

God is with them, and they can know that they're his treasured possession.

But notice again what it is that's pointed out as the focal point of what the enemy is trying to do.

They're trying to wipe out God's people.

They're trying to get rid of them, even their name.

And that's significant.

They are clearly very proud and want to oppose God by destroying his people.

The fact that it talks about the name of Israel, it's like again identifying with God.

Israel was the name given by God.

And you, if you belong to God, belong to his people too.

You belong to his church.

As his people we are treasured by him and can know the strength and comfort of his hand with us as we face trial, as enemies come at us.

Together with his people we care for one another and remind each other of our identity, helping each other to know his love and care more and more.

Do you know who you are?

Finally in this first section, what threats are you facing?

Asaph continues into verses five to eight with a list of those who threaten Israel.

He gives this relatively long list of names which may seem somewhat meaningless to us, but it communicates a few things.

First of all, Asaph is confident that God wants to hear the details of the threats he's facing.

God wants to hear what's going on in our lives, from the good to the bad.

Maybe you're like, well, he knows anyway, so why say it to him?

Well, yes, he does know, but he invites us to talk to him and to tell him.

He delights to hear his treasured ones come to him, even in the difficult times.

Perhaps especially in the difficult times.

Secondly, the list shows the scope of the threat faced.

He lists nine nations or tribes in verses six to seven, and then, as if that's not enough, Asher also has joined them in verse eight.

There's ten nations against them.

It's like Asaph is counting them on his fingers as he looks around at the borders and he counts them up Edom and the Ishmaelites, Moab and the Hagrites, Gebal and Amon and Amalek, Philistia and Tyre.

Asher.

There's ten.

It's a complete set.

And not only is it a lot of enemies, but many of them are relatives.

They're cousins of the people of Israel.

They're all descended from people related to their ancestor, Israel, Israel the man.

That seems to be what's going on in verse 6.

The enemies there are the nearest and dearest.

Edom came from Esau, Israel's brother.

The Ishmaelites were descended from Israel's uncle, Ishmael.

Moab came from Lot, who was Abraham's nephew.

And if you're trying to keep track, that makes him first cousin once removed to Israel.

The Hagrites were probably descendants of Hagar, who bore Abraham's first son, Ishmael.

All these nations have ties to Israel and are now conspiring against them.

Verse 7 makes it even worse.

The nations mentioned here are all around, basically every compass direction except for directly west where the sea is.

Gibel was probably in the northwest.

Amon was in the east.

Amalek was in the south.

Philistia was in the southwest, and back around full circle to Tyre in the northwest.

God's people are encircled by their enemies.

And Asher in verse 8 isn't just incidental.

It's the newest threat.

The Amalekites in verse 7 were the oldest enemies of God's people, being the first to attack them after coming out of Egypt.

And now there's fresh enemies coming from a distant land.

God's people are facing enemies who are near and dear from every direction, both old and new.

God invites his people to tell them about the difficulties around them.

And as they bring it to him, they find some rest.

You see the sela at the end of verse 8.

That's probably a pause and a rest.

It's probably for the music.

The psalm is a song after all, but it fits here in the sense of meaning.

As we rely, as sorry, as we relay these things to God, as we open up our hearts to Him, calling on Him to act, identify with Him.

And we find some rest.

We give these things to Him and rest in Him.

When you're facing trouble from all around, from those close to home, from the old enemy and the new one, name those things before God in prayer and trust Him to hear.

For a moment I want to press a little into the fact that this is about God's people.

This Psalm is a communal Psalm.

Like we said already, Asaf the writer is identifying with the people of God.

It's the whole people who are under threat.

And for us, since the New Testament, God's people are the church.

What threats are we as God's people facing?

The sense of God being with and for individuals is here, but I don't want us to miss how this is for us as a body.

It could be a need for a defense of the faith against other beliefs and worldviews.

That's apologetics.

Many of you will have people you read and listen to who are great resources for this, like Gavin Ortland or John Lennox, for example.

It could be the threat of materialism or consumerism, atheism, nihilism, or any number of the isms.

These are genuine threats to the church, and people are being swayed by these, with souls being lost to them.

But as you survey scripture and as you look at what threatens the church in the New Testament, disunity is at the top of the list.

A lack of love and forgiveness threatens the very essence of being the body of Christ.

Bitterness and resentment towards one another is detrimental to the church.

Bad character in church leaders and false doctrine are threats to the church.

Pray for all these things.

Pray fervently for unity in the church.

Pray that your brothers and sisters would know God's love more and more.

Pray for your church leaders that they might maintain good character and grow in it.

Skills and competency are important, but godly character is what's required.

Without it, churches won't be healthy.

As you face trouble and threat, turn to God.

Cry out to Him in prayer.

Know that you're His and you're part of His treasured possession.

Bring your needs and the needs of His people to Him and find rest in doing so.

We move on to the second point.

In the next part of the Psalm, verses 9 to 12, the action shifts to the past to look back and remember what God has done.

The key questions ASAF asks in drawing us back like this are, do you remember?

And how do you remember?

Firstly, do you remember?

We're looking out at the enemies around us.

We hear them roar.

It could be easy, as we've said already, not to turn to God to look for a sav but to look for a savior in other things.

One thing that the Psalms teach us over and over again is to remember what God has done in the past.

Asaph looks back to what God did in their history and trusts that he can do the same in the present.

He remembers when God dealt with his enemies before.

This is another reason that naming the threats is so helpful.

As Asaph listed off the enemies around him in verses 6 to 8, he can then look back to similar enemies who did not see succeed before.

Can you see the similarities between these threats in verse 4 and verse 12?

These are prideful nations who set themselves up against God and his people.

It's kind of like a child being worried about going back to school in September.

Her parents might help by listening to what she's afraid of and encouraging her to remember how she overcame those things the previous year.

She might be worried about making friends, and her parents help her remember that she made friends in no time last year.

Or maybe it's the workload.

The reminder that she's always able she last year she was always able to get her work done on time, and the teachers said it was good.

Looking back at times when we faced hardship before, remembering how we got through them is so important.

In the middle of difficulty, it can be really hard to see anything else, but we need to remember.

But this by itself could be flawed.

You see, verses 9 to 12, like I said, refer back to a time in Israel's history when God acted to save them.

And the crucial thing is how Asaph remembered.

How do you remember?

These verses talk about God's victory over their enemies in Judges 7 to 8 and in Judges 4.

I'll mention the details of those accounts in a minute, but I want you to see what's not there.

Do you notice what's missing?

That's why I'm waiting to tell you about those stories from history.

Maybe you know already.

It's glaringly obvious that the only enemies that are mentioned are the enemies.

There's no hero who saved the day except God.

Aesov looks back at these times when enemies threatened the very existence of the people, and it was God who acted.

God gave the victory.

It wasn't by human effort or genius.

I was going to leave it at that and just give the references to drive home the point, but that it's not about the people who led Israel during these camps, but the way they're recorded in the book of Judges make that point too.

God defeated Midian and basically invited Gideon to sit in the audience with 300 men to watch him do it.

They didn't even have a sword in their hand, but God confused the Midianites and they turned on each other.

Gideon pursued them and captured Oreb and Zeb, Ziba and Zalmunna, who are mentioned here in Psalm 83, the rulers of the Midianites.

God clearly defeated his enemies, and Asaph remembers this.

It's similar in Judges 4.

Reluctant Barak goes up against the enemy with Deborah and has success given by God.

But even at that, Barak doesn't kill the commander of the army, Sisera, who again is mentioned in Psalm 83 here.

What happens is that Sisera is fleeing.

He happens to meet Jael, the wife of someone he thinks he can trust, and he hides in her tent.

When he's there, he he falls asleep.

And she drives a tent, a a tent peg into his temple.

Barak wasn't the hero of the story, neither was Deborah.

God is the clear hero.

And at the end of that chapter, Judges 4, it says, So on that day God subdued Jabin, the king of Canaan, before the people of Israel?

How do you remember the past?

Do you see it as a set of circumstances, or do you see God's hand clearly at work?

When you look back at difficult times, when you when you face trial and hardship, how do you attribute getting through it?

Who do you attribute that to?

Was it you?

Was it someone else?

Was it God who rescued you?

Take the parents trying to help their little girl who's worried about going back to school.

It's good parenting to get her to remember that she got through similar things before.

But it's important to look back with the eyes of faith and see how God was with them and helped them.

And as he sees her past like that, she'll grow to trust that God is with her as she faces new difficulties, and that she can turn to him when trial and hardship come.

Perhaps when we look at the state of the world around us, when we look at our dark city with its opposition to the gospel, when we hear about the moral failings of church leaders, we might think that the threats to the church are too great.

Those things are legitimate.

But we look back to the Lord Jesus having confidence that he will do as he has said, that he will build his church, and that the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

We move forward, remembering what he has done in the past, trusting him to be with us and to act in the presence.

Finally, after a somewhat dismayed prayer to begin with, calling on God to act because of the enemies, and then remembering how God acted in the past to save his people from similar enemies, we now come to a defiant prayer in verses 13 to 18, calling on God to bring justice and to glorify his name.

Call on God to bring justice and to glorify his name.

One question we're faced with in verses 13 to 15 is do you trust him?

After all that's gone before, do you trust him?

Do you believe in his power to change things and to bring about justice?

That's what the psalmist is praying for here.

He's praying that God would deal with the enemies who are against his people, bringing about justice in a mighty and powerful way, because he trusts that God is powerful and mighty.

Asaph takes what he remembered in verses 9 to 12 and applies it to the situation he finds himself in now.

He knows God can make his enemies like chaff.

Chaff is the stuff that blows away when you're harvesting grain.

You've done this, right?

Farmers would have gathered the crop, and they'd want to be left with the grain only.

So on a windy day they'd lay it all out and they'd toss it up in the air, and the heavy stuff, the grain that they wanted, drop back to the ground, with the light, unwanted material blowing away, never to be seen again.

God can make his enemies like that, or like tumbleweed that's just taken away by the wind.

Do you trust that God can deal with his enemies like this, where you face trial and opposition and threat?

Do you trust that God can act?

And as if the chaff blowing away wasn't enough.

ASAF asks God to rid them completely, like a fire consumes the forest.

He trusts God to deal with his enemies fully.

When enemies surround you, trust God like this.

And he asks God to pursue them and terrify them in verse 15.

He doesn't just see his enemies disappearing as the end of all his problems.

He wants them to know that it's God who's doing this.

He says, your tempest and your hurricane.

Do you trust God to deal with his enemies like this?

Pray defiantly, knowing that God is powerful and mighty.

Finally, we must ask why.

Why do we pray like this?

What's the motivation?

To what end?

Well, in in some senses it's it is because there's an exist existential threat.

Enemies are at the door, trouble and pain are just outside.

Surely the reason to pray like this is for God to bring an end to the threat to us.

But verse 16 is crucial, and we touched on it a moment ago.

This this isn't for our preservation.

That's not the main and primary focus.

What incredible faith that Asaph can pan around seeing all the enemies the people face and yet pray verse 16.

Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek your name, O Lord.

His desire in all this is that these people would seek the Lord, that they would turn to him, that being terrified and filled with shame, they would realize their only hope is Jesus.

That's what's most important.

These proud enemies have been posturing as if the God of Israel is nothing, and Aesap is so moved and worked up that he longs for them to be humbled before God and see him rightly.

Is that your prayer?

Do you pray that your enemies will be filled with shame, not necessarily for what they've done against you, but for their disregard of the Lord?

Do you pray that they would be filled with shame that causes them to cry out to the Lord for mercy, to seek his name and to seek relationship with him?

Is that our prayer for those who threaten the church?

Do we pray that they would just leave us alone?

Or do we pray for salvation?

Asaph drives this home in the last two verses.

He prays for God to deal with these enemies forever.

He wants them to see once and for all that the Lord alone is the almighty God of the universe.

He doesn't want those enemies to be able to go on claiming that they can do what they want against God and his people.

Can you see how remarkable this is?

Though there is threat from all around, Asaph's primary concern is not for himself, it's for God's glory.

It's not only that he seeks God to cast this evil away, he wants these people to turn to the Lord in repentance and faith, acknowledging who God is and praising his name.

In the midst of such trouble, this is remarkable faith, great humility, and a deep passion for God.

Who do you need to pray for like this?

God invites you to pray that dismayed prayer at the start.

He wants you to lay your worries out before him.

So call on him in your trouble.

He has worked salvation for you in the past.

Remember that.

And let that shape defiant prayers for God to act, to bring about justice and to glorify his name.

Let's pray.

Lord God, we cry out to you for help.

Enemies surround us.

There is threat to your people.

Be gracious and merciful to us.

Those enemies hate you.

Would you show them your majesty and glory, and would they be ashamed of their opposition to you?

May they seek your face and know that you alone, whose name is the Lord, are the most high over all the earth.

Be glorified in us, we pray.

Amen.

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