Psalm 76 – Psalms In The Summer

Our reading today is from Psalm 76.

And our question for the week is who does God state?

The question is, who does God state?

The choir master with stringed instruments, a psalm of Asa.

A Psalm.

In Judah, God is known as his name is Grace in Israel.

His abode has been established in Salem.

His dwelling place in Zion.

There he broke the flashing arrows of the shield, the sword, and the weapons of war.

Salah.

Glorious are you, more majestic than the mountains full of prey.

The stout-hearted were stripped of their spoils.

They sank into sleep.

All the men of war were unable to use their hands.

At your rebuke, O God of Jacob, both rider and horse lay stunned.

But you are to be feared.

Who can stand before you when once your anger is roused?

From the heavens you uttered judgment.

The earth feared and was still when God arose to establish judgment, to save all the humble of the earth.

Surely the wrath of man to praise you.

The remnant of wrath you will put on like a belt.

Make your vows to the Lord your God and perform them.

Let all around him bring gifts to him who is to be feared, who cuts off the spirit of princes, who is to be feared by the kings of the earth.

And so reads God's word.

And again, it's great to be it's great to be together.

It's wonderful to be worshiping with other brothers and sisters to express that unity that Stefan was talking about and praying about earlier.

And we're united, and and Ben was um was speaking about it.

We're united in Christ.

Um and so we express that in so many ways, uh, including sitting under his word together now.

And yeah, I I pray uh that as we look at Psalm 76 this morning, that we would see Christ and we would behold uh his glory, we would behold his beauty uh more and more.

So have Psalm 76 opened up there in front of you as we follow along.

So we're beginning.

Uh this is only our first week of our Psalms in the Summer series.

Uh we do this every summer, and so we're on to Psalm 76, we're just over halfway through the Psalms.

So about 10 years ago, we started in Psalm 1.

I wasn't even here.

Was anybody who does anybody remember Psalm 1?

I'm looking at one person, maybe Orin.

Do you remember Psalm 1?

Possibly.

Um but we're all the way to Psalm 76 now, and in about another 10 years, uh, if we get through Psalm 119, uh we might get to Psalm 150, uh, which would be wonderful.

But um it's not just about getting through them, is it?

Because uh the Psalms uh they're great because they're they're songs like this.

One's a song.

Uh if you see there in this in the superscript, it's a song, it's a psalm of Asaf.

Uh he wrote lots of songs uh appointed by King David to do so.

And they help us uh like songs do uh, you know, songs that that are written these days, and uh songs since since uh this psalm was written, they help us to express emotion.

And so they help us to respond rightly to God in terms of our emotion.

And in this Psalm, it helps us to express uh express our emotion rightly to God's glory and how we should respond to his glory.

We'll see in some of the other psalms, and and I suppose in this one as well a bit, but but more in other ones, um, they give words to our longings and our failings, our joys and our sorrows.

Uh, many people have found such wonderful comfort in Psalms uh in times of need, uh, but also then in in times of triumph and victory and joy, uh, giving word to those feelings.

And again, helping us to respond rightly to God.

And like I said, in the in the superscripts, so the you might have um you might have a title at the top.

So that title actually wasn't there, but then the superscript, so where it says to the choir master with stringed instruments, a psalm of asaph, a song, that's actually uh scripture.

The title there is just something that the translators have put in.

But you'll see in that superscript that this is a song, it's meant to be sung as a corporate body responding to God together.

So again, have Psalm 76 open uh so that you can see anything that I'm saying that isn't uh isn't from here, that you can uh either shout out, maybe not shout out, but come to me after and say, I was I just wondering, I don't think that's what it's saying.

Uh, but hopefully, um as I as I try to expose, I'm trying to expose the text and see what the tech what is the text saying, and then we can hear what God has to say to us and that his spirit might be working in us as we do that.

So this psalm helps God's people to come together to relate to him as our glorious God.

We're gonna see four things today, all to do with glory.

First, and and we're gonna go through in the stanzas there, so verses one to three, four to six, seven to nine, and ten to twelve.

That kind of helps the structure us, so uh that's that's where we're going.

Uh but the first the first thing is God is glorious and present.

Second, God is glorious in judgment.

Thirdly, God is glorious in salvation, and finally, all this comes together.

And how should how should we respond?

We should we should respond by glorifying Him.

So again, that's where we're headed.

We're gonna take each stanza, and obviously they overlap, and there's gonna be uh things that that kind of meld through them, but uh that's kind of where we're headed.

We've all experienced uh maybe, well, I'm I'm presuming you've experienced this where uh or you can imagine this, or maybe you've this if it hasn't happened you, which it probably has, um you've definitely it's it's it's definitely happened, you you've you've witnessed it happening, which is you're telling a story, uh, and then somebody jumps in with a better story.

I have a friend who got hit by a taxi in New York, and it was as he was so he's crossing the he's crossing the street and uh he put his arm out and his arm actually went through the windscreen.

But as he was telling this to someone else, they jumped in and were like, oh, I was hit by a bus in New York, you wouldn't believe it.

And that just his story just then is what's the point in him telling his story?

This other person just jumps in, steals the limelight, steals his glory.

For a lot of Irish people, it might actually maybe it's from the culture that you're from as well, but for Irish people it's actually boasting in how bad things are.

It's like you think you've had a bad day.

But wait till I tell you what happened to me.

It's kind of stealing that glory we pride ourselves on suffering.

That's called being Irish, it's because of the weather.

That's why we go on so much about the weather, I think, isn't it?

But what do you do when you come across someone else's glory?

Often we're happy to celebrate other people's achievements, but it's always been a problem for humanity.

Always.

It's always been a problem for humanity that we seek our own glory and we take away from others.

And in this Psalm, God is shown as most glorious.

But we as humans, we don't always honor him as such, we don't honor him as the great, the majestic, and glorious God that he is.

Psalm 76 shows us God's glory and his presence with us, his judgment, his salvation, and then it urges us to glorify him in response.

So our first point is that God is glorious and present.

It opens in verse one with such wonderful words of comfort, such wonderful words of grace and comfort and glory.

Follow along as I read in verse one.

In Judah, God is known.

His name is great in Israel.

And these are words of comfort because God, the great God of the universe, he's known, he's personal, and he's close.

And where is he known?

Who is he known by?

He's known amongst his people.

That's what the psalmist is saying in when he says in Judah and in Israel.

It's amongst God's people.

God has made himself known to his people, he's revealed himself to his people.

The Psalm speaks of a number of ways that he's done this.

In just the next verse, we see that he's chosen to dwell with his people.

And then in verse 3, he's made himself known in protecting his people.

In verses four to six, he makes himself known in his majestic actions and his words as he deals with his enemies.

In verses seven to nine, he's made himself known in his judgment and how he saves the humble of the earth.

We'll get on to those, but just what I just wanted to outline through this Psalm how God has made himself known and how he's present with his people.

So we're going to stay in the first stanza here for now.

We'll get back to those other things.

So we're going to stay in verses one to three.

God has made himself known to his people.

He's the one, he's the one who moves towards us.

It's not the other way around.

Ben started the service with a call to worship from God's word.

It was God calling us to worship.

God called Sophia.

She didn't make the decision to save herself.

It's God who saved her.

And that's what we see today.

And that's always the way God does it.

He is known by his people because in grace he comes close to us.

And his people know that his name is great.

His identity.

His name is great, that's his identity.

His identity is of a great and glorious God.

His name is great in Israel.

And as we move on to verse 2, we find that there's such certainty in these words, too.

His abode has been established in Salem, his dwelling place in Zion.

Salem is an older name for Jerusalem, and actually one that comes from the word Shalom, which is the Hebrew word for peace.

And Zion is another name for Jerusalem, too.

And it might seem like the Psalms is basically saying the same thing as in verse 1, that God is with his people.

And there's a sense in which that is true.

And in Hebrew poetry, when something is repeated, it's to reinforce it and to drive it home.

So there is that sense in which verse 1 and verse 2 are communicating the same thing.

But there's a steadiness and unshakableness that's added in verse 2.

That God has set himself like a rock among his people.

He has established himself there.

It's where he's decided, he's decided to stay, to set himself and not be moved.

God is a refuge and strength.

A very present help in trouble.

Or Psalm 27.

The Lord is the stronghold of my life.

Of whom shall I be afraid?

God's presence with his people isn't something that's going to be changed or taken away.

Nothing is going to move him away from where he's decided to dwell.

What a comfort that is for his people.

Take comfort from that.

Let that sink into your heart.

And you know, you know if you've lived any amount of time that we can feel alone and we can feel like God is not with us.

We can feel like everything is crumbling.

We can feel weary.

But no matter what, God has established himself among his people.

And being where he is, knowing him, that brings peace.

I think that's that's why the psalmist uses that that word, that name for Jerusalem, Salem.

His abode has been established in Salem, that older name for Jerusalem, which means peace.

Knowing God and being with him brings peace.

Knowing God, it's not just a thing we think about.

It's not just a mental or a cognitive thing.

It's a matter of the heart and it's a matter of the spirit, and so we can have peace.

How wonderfully comforting and certain the start of this psalm has been.

And that's all while showing God's glory.

Verse 3 then reveals more of God's glory and how he has dealt with his enemies.

But not only that, it serves to increase our sense of security, knowing that he is with us and seeing how he has established that.

Maybe Paul was thinking about this Psalm when he wrote, If God is for us, who can be against us?

In writing this Psalm, Asaph the writer, um, he may have had a particular historical event or a few events in mind when God was triumphant in battle, and that's probably more the case in the next section.

But here in verse 3, it's more general.

And Asaph is telling us and encouraging us to remember that God has gloriously established his abode among his people in power.

Those who came against him by whatever means, like flashing arrows, the shield, the sword, or any weapons of war, they found themselves on the wrong side.

He broke their weapons, he didn't just scare them off and repel them.

They're not coming back to challenge him, to compete with his glory, or to try and remove his people.

If they try, they won't stand a chance.

And so we can be confident that God is present with his people and he won't be moved.

And so we won't be moved.

And these verses they do speak to those who are not part of his people, too.

If you're here and you don't know him, there's a sweet invitation to know God and to be with him because with him there is peace, there is security.

But equally, outside, there is no opposing him.

So God is glorious and present.

Aesoph, the psalmist, the writer, then sort of springboards off the first three verses and ranks thing, ramp he ramps things up in the next two sections, which the next two sections go hand in hand.

And they're actually uh they're bookended, you'll see, by the term selah, which is just probably a phrase in Hebrew poetry and song for a pause.

But you'll see these next two sections they go together.

God is glorious in judgment and God is glorious in salvation.

We're going to focus on how God is glorious in judgment first by looking at verses uh four to six.

But we do we do see it as well in verses seven to nine.

And in fact, uh the word judgment doesn't even appear in verse four to six, and I'm calling it God is glorious in judgment, but you'll see that it's coming up through uh verses four to six, and then actually it the word judgment comes up in verses seven to nine, but there's more of a focus, especially towards the end, on that salvation.

And like I said already, judgment and salvation they always go hand in hand.

So coming off the back of verse three, so we're looking at verse four, off the back of verse uh three, where God shows his power and glory in dealing with his enemies, the psalmist directs his word, he directs his words to to God, declaring that he is glorious and majestic.

It's worth remembering here that this is a song that's been written for people to sing.

So when when Asaph directs his words to God like this, he's he's actually leading us to do the same, to direct our words to God and sing, glorious are you, more majestic than the mountains full of prey.

But what is God more majestic than?

The mountains full of prey.

It's a bit of a strange image, and it's actually puzzled uh translators and commentators.

There's a few explanations that start to make sense of it, but in any case, the image is supposed to show God's majesty and his glory.

It could be that the prey are literally animals that could be hunted, and that the mountain is full of that life and provision, and God is certainly more majestic than any mountain, even if that mountain's teeming with life.

Another suggestion is that the prey are those enemies of God that we've just uh looked at in verse 3, that they've been defeated and now they lie in the mountain dead.

Either way, God is shown to be majestic, and he's glorious in his judgment of them and his defense of his people and his provision for them.

God's glory is displayed then in verse 5 in how he deals with proud warriors who come up against him and his people.

The stout-hearted are those who are valiant and brave.

Can you imagine them from a medieval story or something?

They're not any mere soldier.

These are proud warriors who know that they can take what they want.

Maybe you don't need to think of a medieval story to think of those who take what they want and are proud.

These uh these stout-hearted are those who've taken spoil from those they've defeated, and they claim that honour for themselves.

And it's these very warriors that God has stripped of their spoil.

There's quite a clever line, isn't it?

There's great poetic justice here in that the ones who are proud and take what they want were themselves stripped of their prize and their pride.

And not only that, they sink, they sank into deep sleep, an image of death, or at least being useless for the wars that they were waging and the battles that they fought.

Then the second half of verse 5 picks up on this with another fairly bizarre image.

All the men of war were unable to use their hands.

These soldiers and warriors, they would have been pretty reliant on using their hands, to put it lightly.

And God, in his majesty, in his glory, he prevented them carrying out their actions of war against him.

And it wasn't just one or two who were unable to do this, it was all the men of war.

None escaped.

And this might be uh somewhere that the psalmist is actually referring back to a uh uh another to an actual uh event.

Uh it may be recounting a story from 2 Kings chapter 19 when Sennacherub, king of Assyria, he came up against Israel, defying God.

2 Kings 19 · chapter mention

But he was defeated, and he was defeated by God alone.

God didn't even use the armies of Israel to carry out his justice, he did it in an amazing way.

So 2 Kings 19 says, That night the angel of the Lord went out.

It was just the angel of the Lord, the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians.

And when the people arose early in the morning, that's the people of Israel, when they arose in the morning, behold, there was all dead bodies.

It was God, a God alone, who defeated his enemies.

God shows his glory in his judgment.

And this is true in his actions, but also in his words, as we see in verse 6.

In verse 6 in Psalm 76, Asaph says, At your rebuke, both rider and horse lay stunned.

God speaks judgment, at his rebuke.

He speaks judgment and he's shown to be glorious.

He rebukes advancing armies and they're stopped in their tracks.

A tame illustration to imagine this is if you're running late to meet a friend and you're running down Grafton Street and you're stopped in your tracks because you hear a beautiful busker singing.

You stop, you're stunned by the beauty of what you're hearing.

And later you'd have to tell your friend, I'm so sorry, I was running late.

This is why I'm late.

Now, that doesn't really capture what's going on here, but it gives at least a sense of what's going on here.

And it's not 100% clear again what what ASAF is uh referring to, if he's referring to a particular event, but it's probably a reference to a specific moment in the history of God's people when they crossed the Red Sea in the book of Exodus.

They were being chased by the Egyptian army.

They were being chased by the rider and the horse, and God saved them by bringing them through the Red Sea, but by his word he allowed all the Egyptians who were pursuing them to be drowned in the sea.

The rider and the horse definitely lay stunned as they saw these walls of water on both sides coming in on them.

This is how God's glory is shown in his justice, as he speaks with authority.

Maybe you can think of someone else who spoke with authority that this Psalm might be looking forward to.

We move on to the next section now in verses 7 to 9, which goes hand in hand, as I said, with our previous point, as we continue to see that God is glorious in justice, but now that He's also glorious in salvation.

Judgment and salvation, again, they always go together.

And it was in judging these other these enemies that God was saving his people.

And the natural response to verses 4 to 6, which we've just looked at, it would be fear and terror, though, for those who oppose God.

To come up against this Almighty God is to be left dead, to be left stunned, to be left unable to use your hands, to be left asleep.

But God's people look on in awe at his power and glory.

There's no one who can face up to God and come off the winner.

Neither is there anyone who can stand next to God and claim that they have equal power or authority.

The answer to the rhetorical question, who can stand before you, is pretty clear.

There's no one, no one who surpasses God in glory and honor, or who even comes close to equaling him.

There may be moments when we look at the world, either just around us or in the news or whatever, there may be moments where it seems as if that people are standing up to him and taking his rightful glory and honor.

But that's only because God is holding back.

None will be able to stand when once his anger is roused.

This psalm is starting to move from looking back at the past through to the future, to the final day of judgment.

And we see that in verse 8 and the first half of verse 9, where we can imagine the heavenly courtroom where God, the eternal judge, declares his word and arises to carry it out.

The whole earth stands still and looks on in fear, like that rider and horse from earlier.

Everyone is stopped in their tracks, awaiting the judgment of God to fall.

And Aesaph continues to press into how glorious God is in his judgment.

The whole earth stands still and looks on in awe.

None can stand before him and compete with his glory.

But then verse 9 turns to show clearly how God is glorious in salvation.

It's in saving the humble of the earth.

Those who stood still before him awaiting judgment in verse 8, they find that he's actually their savior.

The humble of the earth are those who know that they need God and they rely on him by faith.

It's completely opposite to those proud warriors who came to take what they want in verse 5, and the enemies of God throughout history who tried to show their power and authority.

And this is where God's judgment is headed.

It's to save his people.

He enacts judgment on his enemies for his glory, and in order to save his people who humbly come for salvation, they humbly come to him.

And you might have been thinking how this Psalm I alluded to it already, that it's it's pointing forward to someone else.

It's pointing forward to Christ.

But this is where we see the Psalm most clearly pointing forward to Christ.

He's the one who saves us.

Maybe you've uh maybe you're a very self-reflective person, and you've, as as we've been reading this Psalm, you've been able to see that like me, that often I'm proud and I want to pursue my own glory and honor instead of God's.

And I often want to rescue myself instead of resting in God's presence with me and his salvation.

I tried to do things my own way.

But instead of me bearing the punishment for my pride and sin, as these proud warriors did, Christ bore it on the cross.

He took the judgment, and I humbly come to him by faith, seeking salvation.

And if you haven't already come to be saved by him, then I encourage you to come humbly to him by faith now.

Trusting the truths of who he is and what he's done.

Christ was crowned on the cross, showing God's glory in both judgment and salvation.

And this is actually what we see in verse 10.

One of this final stanza, we move on to our final point, which simply is that we should glorify God.

Our response to this is to glorify him.

There's no other response but to come humbly to him for salvation and to glorify him.

Anything else is to oppose God like the one stout-hearted warrior.

So verse 10 continues on from verse 9 in a most amazing way in Christ.

Surely the wrath of man shall praise you.

It's another curious phrase in this psalm, but it actually points forward to the cross, which again is it we're getting clearer and clearer pictures of how Christ is seen here.

You see, at the cross, humanity, in all its wrath and opposition to God, carried out the greatest of injustices, crucifying the most innocent one, God Himself.

Yet this proved to be the way in which God chose to display his glory most fully.

Again in his judgment and salvation.

You see that?

The wrath of man shall praise you.

That the day in which humanity put all its wrath, as much wrath as possible, turned out to be the most glorious day.

Because God because God's sovereign and he's glorious.

He's so glorious that he does that.

God is praised even in the things people that do that go against him.

He's so glorious that he takes what man intends for evil and he uses it for good and for his praise.

All these things end up bringing honour to God.

He wears them like a belt.

Before we continue with the rest of this final point, just take a few moments to look back through the Psalm and how it's been fulfilled in Christ.

It's wonderful.

From the first stanza, he's the one who's made himself known among his people.

He dwelt with us.

He came with great power and authority, both in his actions and his words, like in verses five to eight.

People were amazed at the authority with which Jesus spoke in the Gospels.

And we've seen already that Jesus is the one who saves us, who bore the wrath and the judgment we deserved on the cross, which then turned to the greatest praise.

And so we glorify and worship God as Asaph tells us to do and leads us to do in verse 11.

Not out of a sense of duty, as it might come across on first reading, but as those who've been saved by a glorious Savior.

We are those who worship in gratitude for what he has done.

We praise him for being with us and keeping us secure eternally.

And not only do we glorify him with our words here on Sunday, as we gather, as we've mentioned a number of times, we're motivated to live lives of worship that bring praise to God, that bring glory to him, that honor him by what we do in every moment, whether you eat or drink, whatever you do, do all for the glory of God.

That's what ASAF is saying in the first half of 11.

He says, make your vows to the Lord and perform them.

Now, it's not that our worship is performative.

What he's saying is that we don't just offer lip service.

We actually follow through in our whole life.

Again, out of hearts that have been saved and transformed by him.

We're not performing that he might honor us and glorify us and save us.

He has saved us, and so we live lives of worship and we actually follow through on what we say and what we sing when we're together.

So we bring our gifts of worship so that he might be glorified.

We give our time, we give our skills, our finances to him to bring him praise and honor and glory, because he is our great God who has saved us in power and he's to be feared.

Finally, verse 12 points us forward to the fact that God will be glorified by all, even by the kings of the earth.

In cutting off the spirit of the princes, he's removing the pride of the leaders of this world and the kings of the earth.

They should humbly come before him.

And they will one day, whether they want to or not.

This is true of all people.

At the name of Jesus, every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

So worship God.

Glorify Him as you sing to Him here on a Sunday and bring glory to him during the week as you live for Him in your homes and your workplaces, and pray that as people see even your good works, that they would glorify your Father in heaven.

Bring Him praise by telling your friends and your colleagues of how he has saved you.

Teach your children why they should praise Him.

Honor Him with your time, your money, and efforts.

Glorify the great and awesome Judge who has saved you, and know that He dwells with you.