Sermon: Psalms: Book Four: A New Day Dawns
The Divine Warrior and Salvation
#1673-PM
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 26-Sep-22; 68 minutes
description: God's plan of salvation as revealed in His holy days has two basic components-a spiritual (encapsulated by the Passover and Pentecost) in which our Lord and Savior emptied His divinity in a sacrifice for the penalty of our sins and then gave the gift of His Holy Spirit (His very mind—I Corinthians 2:16) to His called-out ones (the first fruits I Corinthians 15) to train for leadership positions in His Kingdom. The physical component (the defeat of the enemies of God and His law) will not occur until the Day of Trumpets (Yom Teruah), when the resurrected saints, including those changed at his coming (I Corinthians 15:52; I Thessalonians 4:13-18), now as spirit beings, will join their warrior king in putting an end to the evil anti-God, anti-law human governments which have defiled the earth for 6,000 years. After the great harvest of the Millennium, God's resurrected saints will be called upon to put down one more satanic insurrection at the end of the Millennium, leading to the Great White Throne Judgment, after which Jesus Christ will turn over the entire enterprise to God the Father. Psalms 97 and 98 describe the military exploits of Jesus and the Saints cleaning up the defiled earth preparing for a future glorious event described in Revelation 21:2-13 when the New Jerusalem comes down from heaven, ushering in the end time when Christ will turn the Kingdom over to God the Father, having destroyed every ruler, authority, and power, including death (I Corinthians 15:24). As God's people ponder these unsettling, but joyful events, they must faithfully zero on the mandate to love God with all their heart, diligently keeping His holy and spiritual law, while intensely hating evil and lawbreaking with everything in their inner core.
transcript:
If you please would begin turning in your Bible to Matthew the 16th chapter, where we will read verses 13 through 16. Most of us know what this chapter is all about—where Jesus asked His disciples some very compelling questions.
Matthew 16:13-16 When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, "Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?" So they said, "Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter answered and said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."
This passage, only four verses here, reflects some of the most significant questions that have ever been asked on Planet Earth. As Christians, our lives revolve around the second question: "But who do you say that I am?" And Peter's answer is clearly correct, that He is the Messiah, the Son of the living God, because Christ commends him for it. We did not read there in verse 17 but He said that this is something that was inspired directly by the Father. He had given them the ability to know this.
The answer here that he gave to the question signifies that we must first identify Jesus as our Messiah, as the Savior, the Christ, the Son of God. That is the starting point for all thought and belief for us as Christ's disciples. Without Him being our Savior, without Him being our Messiah, God in the flesh, or we can also call him God in the Spirit now because He is in us alive and at work, if we do not think of Him in these ways, then our faith is in vain because without that belief He is simply a man, a good man.
But let us think about these two questions together. "Who do men say that I am?" and "Who do you say that I am?"
Men have various answers to the question: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets. Think about that. They are all men. They are prophets, they are fairly godly men as far as we know, they preached God's Word across Old Testament history. So they were very good men. But men can only think that high. They cannot conceive of a man—they actually scoff at it because they disbelieve it so much—even the Son of Man, can be more than a man, actually the Son of God. Certainly not divine by any means. They looked at Jesus and they said, "Well, He's like other men and only like other men, even good men." So they answered that He is, at best, a prophet or strangely, the reincarnation of a prophet. Where did they get that? Have they ever had an example of a person being reincarnated? Sounds like some Eastern philosophy coming in.
Now as simply answering, a prophet, the answer is correct. Certainly not the reincarnation part, but that Jesus was a prophet was true. He was a prophet. He was THE prophet, just as Moses had prophesied to come, back in Deuteronomy 18:15-19. Jesus is that prophet that would be like Moses and that would teach them all the things that they needed to understand about God. And we could, if we wanted to, make a survey of the Scriptures and find out that He is also THE Son and He is THE High Priest and He is THE Mediator and He is THE Savior, THE King, THE Lamb of God, THE Bridegroom, THE Branch, and so many other things besides. He has got a lot of titles and roles and He is the pinnacle of all of those types. He is the personification of those things.
The Day of Trumpets, which we are keeping today, highlights Christ as the Savior or the Deliverer. And as we have heard from a couple of the past sermons and other messages, He is the divine Warrior. Now this view of God as the divine Warrior was one of the primary perspectives of the Israelites. They saw Him as their mighty warrior King. He was the royal Protector of Israel and its people.
Now they had this as a primary view of their God because of the situation that God Himself put them in. He gave them the Promised Land and it was a beautiful land of land of milk and honey. You know, it had mountains and sea coasts and everything in between. It was a fine land to live in. But its location—realtors tell us location, location, location—was a doozy because it was smack dab in the middle of everything. It was right on the land bridge between Africa and Asia, and armies and empires were going back and forth and back and forth over this land, and poor little Israel was always the one getting ground into the dirt.
But that happened when Israel was not very faithful. Had they been faithful these great empires would not have caused them much of a problem. But whether it was the Egyptians or the Assyrians or the Babylonians or the Persians or whoever else came here there and everywhere along the routes that crossed Israel, they brought their armies and they first had to get through Israel and a lot of times they did that quite easily, because they were not faithful and did not call upon God for deliverance.
What I am saying here is that the people of Israel lived in constant fear of enemy invasion. All of their neighbors seemed to be stronger than them during long periods of their sojourn there. But God had placed them there specifically as a test of their faith. Would they turn to God and trust Him to fight their battles for them as the divine Warrior, as the great Lord of hosts, as the Captain of the armies of heaven?
Let us see a little bit more about this divine Warrior. It actually appears very early in Israel's history. Let us go back to Exodus the 14th chapter, the crossing of the Red Sea. And this is one of the first indications of Yahweh or the God of the Old Testament, the one who became Jesus Christ being their divine Warrior.
Exodus 14:13-14 Moses said to the people, "Do not be afraid. Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will accomplish for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall see again no more forever. The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace."
Just be quiet. Be still. Let God fight for you.
This is Moses at one of his most faithful periods of his life. Here is the Egyptian army coming up on them with all those chariots, Pharaoh probably out in the lead with a spear in his hand, and all these Israelites are terrorized at the shore of the Red Sea. And he says, "Calm, people. Our God will take care of this. Just watch." And then God has to say Moses, "What are you saying? Tell them to move forward!" and He opens up the sea for them. Now let us look in chapter 15 because this episode is over and this is how the Israelites looked upon what God had done for them.
Exodus 15:1-10 Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to the Lord, and spoke, saying:
"I will sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously! The horse and its rider He has thrown into the sea! The Lord is my strength and song, and He has become my salvation; He is my God, and I will praise Him; my father's God, and I will exalt Him. The Lord is a man of war; the Lord is His name.
Pharaoh's chariots and his army He has cast into the sea; his chosen captives also are drowned in the Red Sea. The depths have covered them; they sank to the bottom like a stone. Your right hand, O Lord, has become glorious in power; Your right hand, O Lord, has dashed the enemy in pieces. And in the greatness of Your excellence You have overthrown those who rose against You; You sent forth Your wrath which consumed them like stubble.
And with a blast of Your nostrils the waters were gathered together; the flood stood upright like a heap; the depths congealed in the heart of the sea. The enemy said, 'I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my desire shall be satisfied on them. I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them.' But You blew with Your wind, the sea covered them; they sank like lead in the mighty waters."
Exodus 15:14-16 "The people will hear and be afraid; sorrow will take hold of the inhabitants of Philistia. Then the chiefs of Eden will be dismayed; the mighty men of Moab, trembling will take hold of them; all the inhabitants of Canaan will melt away. Fear and dread will fall on them; by the greatness of Your arm they will be as still as a stone, till Your people pass over, O Lord, till the people pass over whom You have purchased."
That is an example of the rhetoric, the metaphors, the illustrations that they came up with to describe what God had done for them. They saw Him as a great Lord, a great General whose commands in front of His army caused the destruction of their enemies with very little problem—no problems at all. God is just so strong. He is undefeatable. There is no way that any nation gathering all their people to come and fight against Israel could ever prevail. Because this nation has God on its side and He can do all this. He uses nature as His soldiers.
Let us go to chapter 23. Also, this idea is just constant in the Bible.
Exodus 23:20-23 "Behold [this is part of the covenant], I send an Angel before you to keep you in the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared. [so far, it just sounds like a guide, an angel to help us in the way] Beware of Him [oh no! Now this Angel is to be feared] and obey His voice; do not provoke Him, for He will not pardon your transgressions; for My name is in Him. But if you indeed obey His voice and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. For My Angel will go before you and bring you into the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites and the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I will cut them off."
Exodus 23:27 "I will send My fear before you, I will cause confusion among all the people to whom you come, and will make all your enemies turn their backs on you [meaning they are going to skedaddle for all they are worth].
So, this kind of imagery that we see—Exodus 14, Exodus 15, Exodus 23—it fills the psalms. If you go and read the psalms, you will see God as the divine Warrior pop up again and again because Israelites wanted deliverance from their enemies. And you go through the history books, all the way from Joshua to II Chronicles and even beyond, you will find that this same kind of metaphorical treatment of God as a warrior exists.
Now, to us, looking at it from our perspective from way in the future to these people, we do not think of God in this way. It is not our first thought when we think of God. And that is because of the New Testament's emphasis on Christ's, what we might call, softer or spiritual virtues. Like, that He is a loving God, that He tells us to make peace, that He is kind and He is gentle and lowly, and those sort of things. Those are the things that come to mind first.
But His martial qualities, those harder virtues we might call them, are still present. Things like His wrath, His judgment, His justice. Those are things that we often think of in a harsher light, but they are not usually the first things we think of when we think of our God. So we tend to see Him as a spiritual Savior before Him as a physical Savior. But we have to remember that in the same being is the Lamb of God and the Lion of Judah. Despite being a God of love and grace and forgiveness and kindness and all those nice things, He can still be the God of wrath and judgment and not break character.
Let us go to Psalm 18 and we are going to see another one of these divine Warrior descriptions. This is probably the longest one in the whole book. We are going to only read a portion of it, starting in verse 1. But I want you to notice the metaphors that David uses here to describe God, which is kind ironic because of the way he starts this. His first words, and maybe he started it like this because he saw himself in God or God in himself. David was a man after God's own heart, but he is talking about a God of war here and he says,
Psalm 18:1-19 I will love You, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised; so I shall be saved from my enemies. The pangs of death encompassed me, and the floods of ungodliness made me afraid. The sorrows of Sheol [or the grave] surrounded me; the snares of death confronted me.
In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried out to my God; He heard my voice from His temple, and my cry came before Him, even to His ears. Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations of the hills also quaked and were shaken, because He was angry. Smoke went up from His nostrils, and devouring fire from His mouth; coals were kindled by it. He bowed the heavens also, and came down with darkness under His feet.
And He rode upon a cherub, and flew; He flew upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness His secret place; His canopy around Him was dark waters and thick clouds of the skies. From the brightness before Him, His thick clouds passed with hailstones and coals of fire. The Lord also thundered from heaven, and the Most High uttered His voice, hailstones and coals of fire. He sent out His arrows and scattered the foe, lightnings in abundance, and He vanquished them.
Then the channels of waters were seen, the fountains of the world were uncovered at Your rebuke, O Lord, at the blast of the breath of Your nostrils. He sent from above, He took me; He drew me out of many waters. He delivered me from my strong enemy, from those who hated me, for they were too strong for me. They confronted me in the day of my calamity, but the Lord was my support. He also brought me out into a broad place; He delivered me because He delighted in me.
It is an amazing psalm if you go through it in detail. But he looks at God in a particular way, maybe even a peculiar way; certainly because of his own background. Like I said, he was a man of war and he looked on God in that way. But he emphasizes here His strength. He calls Him, what was that? How did he put it there? My strength. He is a rock. He is a fortress. He is a deliverer. A shield, a horn of salvation, a stronghold. What he is saying here is that God gives us a backbone, even though we may be quaking in fear, if we will use Him that way, if we trust in Him. He's an unmoving or an unyielding, immovable object to all the forces that are coming against us. He is an unbreachable refuge. You go to God and no enemy could break through.
He is a sure rescuer. He does not just rescue you a little bit or partway. He makes sure He rescues you all the way. And as he says here later, puts you in a broad place, puts you in a way that puts you in a peaceful valley where you can see everybody coming from a long distance. He is a shield against every attack. He is a powerful divine force against all enemies, foreign and domestic, as we say.
David says that God acts like this for us. He is a mighty warrior that stands before us, between us and the enemy because He likes us. He delights in us, He loves us, so He saves us. He does it all out of the goodness of His heart because He has chosen us. And he says, "I kind of like these people I've chosen and they are in distress. And so I'm going to show My love to them by saving them, by delivering them." And that is what the divine warrior does. The divine warrior's chief aim is salvation, saving people, delivering them, being their guard and their leader, bringing them to the goal that He has set out before all of us.
In Old Testament Hebrew, this word salvation is yeshua, which means "help," "aid," "salvation," "deliverance," "victory." Even prosperity is one way that can be translated. It is used 78 times in the Old Testament. And of course it is the word that was made a name given to the Son of God, whom we call Jesus. A little bit of etymology here, just so you understand, yeshua is the Hebrew word. The Greeks have a different way of saying those letters. It had to be transliterated from Hebrew to Greek. And so it became Iesous, in Greek. So Yeshua became Iesous. And going from that point, from Greek to Latin to our Germanic languages, it went from to Iesous to—we changed the sound of Ye to Ja—so it became Jesu. And then as it got mongrelized through English, Jesus.
So do not let anybody out there tell you that the word Jesus somehow comes from the word Zeus. It is not there. It is linguistically impossible. You know, there is a lot of sacred namers out there who say you should not use Jesus. You should use Yeshua because Jesus comes from Zeus. and you are using the name of a false god for the true God. Not true. Yeshua and Jesus, even though like I said, it has been mongrelized coming through several languages, is still the same person. It is still the same word. So feel free to use the word Jesus for Him. If you want to use Yeshua, that is fine, go ahead and use Yeshua. I mean, He has a name in Greek as well. So, just understand that that claim that the word Jesus comes from Zeus is just pure linguistic ignorance.
Anyway, in Matthew 1:21 the angel says there, "You shall call His name Jesus," Yeshua, Iesous, Jesu, "for He will save His people from their sins." So when He came as a man, He was incarnated into flesh. The name that He was given was Salvation, Savior. And as I said before, we tend to understand Savior spiritually. He saves us from our sins. And obviously Matthew 1:21 emphasizes that, that He will save us from our sins, but that is not the only thing He saves us from. And the Feast of Trumpets has a lot to do with that other salvation. We will get into this as we go.
Let us go back to Isaiah 59, one of the prophets that he was compared to back there in Matthew 16. We are going to read about eight or nine verses here, starting in verse 12. Now what you need to think about as we go through this is what salvation He is performing for us here. And what we see is that there is a combining of both His first coming and His second coming. The two kinds of salvation that He performs for us are kind of blended as we go through this.
Isaiah 59:12-16 For our transgressions are multiplied before You, and our sins testify against us; for our transgressions are with us, and as for our iniquities, we know them: in transgressing and lying against the Lord, and departing from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood. Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands afar off; for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter. So truth fails, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. [sounds like today] Then the Lord saw it, and it displeased Him . . .
Remember He delights in us, He does not want us to wander off the way, He does not want His people to be full of sin. He chose these people to represent Him and so looking at all this iniquity and deceit and murder and all the things that were happening, He decided He had to do something. He had to save them from their own foolishness and iniquity.
Isaiah 59:16-20 . . . it displeased Him that there was no justice. He saw that there was no man [there was no leader], and wondered that there was no intercessor [so there was no one else to do this thing that needed to be done to deliver His people, to save them]; therefore [it says] His own arm brought salvation for Him; and His own righteousness, it sustained Him. For He put on righteousness as a breastplate [here is the divine Warrior], and a helmet of salvation on His head; He put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad with zeal as a cloak. According to their deeds, accordingly, He will repay, fury to His adversaries, recompense to His enemies; the coastlines He will fully repay. So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the west, and His glory from the rising of the sun; when the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him. "The Redeemer will come to Zion, and to those who turn from transgression in Jacob," says the Lord.
Now, first, what Jesus did was that He came Himself to His people. You know, He came into His own and His own received Him not. But He accomplished the salvation that the Father had sent Him to do by living a sinless life, by being the example and by sacrificing Himself, and becoming the sacrifice for sin. Redeeming us or redeeming all those who would accept that sacrifice and become the children of God.
The second thing that He did was He will come to deliver His people from their enemies. He did not do that the first time. He did not come to deliver people from their physical enemies. He did not come, like the Jews wanted Him to, to kick out those hated Romans and to give them back a kingdom. Nope, did not do it. Even though He was their King and pronounced Himself their King before Pilate, He said He did not come to do that sort of thing at this point. If He had, His servants would fight, but He had not come for that kind of salvation at that time. That kind of salvation belongs to His second coming.
So, as I mentioned before, the two sides of salvation co-mingle in this and other passages throughout the Old Testament and that is probably the reason why the Jews did not understand, because they saw it all happening at the same time. But God had written it so that if you had the understanding through the Holy Spirit, you could see that there were actually two different times, but they did not have that so they got it wrong.
But these kind of passages throughout the prophets tell us something about salvation. Yes, that it comes in two forms: a spiritual one and a physical one, if you want to put it that way. A salvation where sin is overcome and then a salvation when evildoers are overcome. Nations and kings and whole swaths of nations are cut down to save them and to save the world. We could put it on that level because it does say in Matthew 24 that if He does not come that second time to save things, all flesh would die. And so you have these two sides of salvation and only when both are accomplished—the first and the second—is there complete victory.
Yes, there is a victory in the first but it is not totally complete until the second. There is a spiritual victory that we win. And as Paul said, we are more than conquerors. We have achieved a wonderful victory by accepting Christ's salvation by faith. And now we are part of that Family. We are part of the host of God and have that victory, but we do not come into our inheritance until the second one is accomplished. The second salvation, if you will, when God puts down all enemies.
So, salvation is accomplished, yes. The first time when God's elect covenant with Him by faith and accept Christ's sacrifice, and, remember that it is not complete until they are both done, God overthrows all opposition. There is a spiritual and a physical, if you will, the physical has elements of the spiritual in it as well. But it is these two things, the first coming and the second coming are a complete salvation, if you will.
This idea surfaces in the resurrection chapter. Let us go to I Corinthians 15. Paul actually strings this out all the way to the end. That salvation is not fully complete until we are joined on Planet Earth by the Father. But we can understand that his thinking is similar here.
I Corinthians 15:20-28 But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ's at His coming.
Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death. For "He has put all things under His feet." But when He says "all things are put under Him," it is evident that He who put all things under Him is excepted. Now when all things are made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.
He is saying that this process of salvation continues. You think about it. We talk about the Millennium and the Great White Throne judgment and those things, there will be salvation happening all through that time and it will not be until all that is wrapped up, and the Son gives all authority over to the Father, that salvation will actually be complete. The whole process will be complete then. So we can put it in terms of the divine Warrior here; that salvation is fully accomplished when the divine Warrior King subjects all things to Himself and God is all in all. That is the process of salvation, it goes way into the future, and after Christ's return these two sides of salvation continue together. Jesus Christ as King continues to put all the enemies under Him until the end when even death is subject or destroyed.
So this complete salvation, if you will, is what the people of God look forward to. Not just being changed at the first resurrection. Not just the Millennium when Christ rules with His brothers and sisters over all the earth. Not just the second resurrection when we bring in the rest of the world. But actually New Jerusalem, when the Father comes down and He and Christ are the light of the world forever. That is when salvation is complete.
Alright, big breath, that was the end of my introduction and we are at 4:02. 0h boy. What I want to do today in the last half hour that I have is that we are going to concentrate on Psalm 97 and 98. I am going back to my Psalms series, Book Four, and we want to look at Psalm 97 and 98. (If you want to read them from your hymnal, they are pages 73 and 74.) These two psalms describe Christ's return in judgment on His adversaries in the immediate aftermath when He will establish His Kingdom and begin to rule with righteousness and equity.
I just wanted to just make a couple of little introductory comments here. We heard from Mark [Schindler], where he talked about David's [Grabbe] article, "The Shout of a King." And I agree with him that if you want to understand some of this, it is probably a good idea to go back and read that, because it is quite good in terms of giving us an understanding of how it applies to the Day of Trumpets. Because the shout or the shout of the shofar that is mentioned there in Leviticus 23:24-25, is a particular shout.
David's conclusion in that article was it is the kind of shout that is often accompanied by trumpets or other musical instruments that a king's subjects give when he suddenly appears. It is a tremendous hurrah, if you will. Just people going out of their minds and making a joyful noise because their king has arrived. So they make this huge shout. And if you go through the Bible and do a lexicon or whatever search and see all the different contexts in which this word teruah or its cognate rua appear, you find that it is this happening, it is Christ being there or the king being there or someone of great note that is now present and on the scene and the people give a great shout.
Let us just look at one of these in the New Testament, however, that confirms that this idea moves forward to under the New Covenant. So let us go to I Thessalonians 4 and just read verses 13 through 18. This ties it in, then, with the return of Christ and with the Day of Trumpets therefore.
I Thessalonians 4:13-14 [Paul writes] But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus.
These are the saints that come back with Christ, will rise to meet Him in the air, and then we will come down and follow Christ in doing what He has to do at that time.
I Thessalonians 4:15-18 For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. 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.
And as Paul says, we can take great comfort in that.
So the setting is obviously Christ's return at the end of the age and therefore by putting all these different or disparate elements together right here in I Thessalonians 4, we understand that Christ's glorious appearing is the primary focus of Trumpets, of the day of shouting. That is the real antitype of the shouting that we are supposed to be looking forward to.
Psalm 97 and Psalm 98 have the same focus. They are also about the return of Christ. They belong to a set of psalms in praise of the Lord, in praise of the returning God, King, divine Warrior, Jesus Christ as we know Him. And this set of psalms either runs from Psalm 90 to 100 or from Psalm 93 to 100. Scholars and myself are at odds about this. They are all psalms that have this sort of thing in mind. The themes are all the same. None of them, from Psalm 90 to 100, have a named author except for Psalm 90. There is no, this is a song of David or Asaph or any of those other ones. They are all anonymous. And I speculated long time ago in a Bible study I gave on these eleven psalms, that Moses may have authored all eleven of them. Now, probably the scholars would laugh me to scorn, but it is something they cannot disprove nor can they prove the other way. It is just one of those things that it just seems that you have Moses' name at the beginning of Psalm 90 and there is not another author until you get to Psalm 101. So I do not know, just one of those things that I have gone off the deep end with.
But, in any case, they all exalt God's rule over the earth. The opening of Psalm 93:1-2 states the theme, that is, the Lord reigns. This is also found in Psalm 96, Psalm 97, and Psalm 99. Makes it a very strong theme throughout those eleven psalms. Psalm 96 and 98 use the phrase, He is coming, to give a specific time frame of when these psalms refer to. You will find, if you do a little bit of a read-through, the words holiness, judgment, and salvation figure prominently in these eleven psalms. And also, on the other hand, joy and gladness are also frequently mentioned. So even though you have Christ coming in judgment, there is great joy in the fact that He is coming to do what He is doing and that is to give salvation to His people.
Psalm 97:1-12 The Lord reigns; let the earth rejoice; let the multitude of isles be glad! Clouds and darkness surround Him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne. A fire goes before Him, and burns up His enemies round about. [sounds like Zechariah] His lightnings light the world; the earth sees and trembles. The mountains melt like wax at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth.
The heavens declare His righteousness, and all the people see His glory. Let all be put to shame who serve carved images, who boast of idols. Worship Him, all you gods. Zion hears and is glad, and the daughters of Judah rejoice because of Your judgments, O Lord. For You, Lord, are most high above all the earth; You are exalted far above all gods. You who love the Lord, hate evil! He preserves the souls of His saints; He delivers them out of the hand of the wicked. Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart. Rejoice in the Lord, you righteous, and give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name.
This psalm begins right after one of those "He is coming" appearances at the end of Psalm 96 and both of those times where it says, He is coming, at the end of 96 and at the end of 98, both of them say that He is coming to judge the earth with righteousness. And the sense is that He is coming to set right all the wrongs. That is what the implication of the word righteousness is there, that He is coming in righteousness to set right all the wrongs of the world.
What He will do is that He is coming in great power and might, and He will impose His standards and punish evildoers in justice for all the wrongs that they have committed. They deserve it. He is coming back as King of kings and Lord of lords and He is going to give them what they deserve. They have been fighting against Him, not just for the few years of the Tribulation and the Day of the Lord, but for 6,000 years of history, and all these sins have piled up against them and He is going to come back and set all things right—and eventually all things will be made new. But it is a long process and this first time He comes, that is, in the end time when He finally comes to earth, He is going to get rid of the worst of it and then work for many years to change the rest of it.
So, the earth rejoices, as we saw when we went through the psalm. The earth rejoices because its groanings, as Paul says in Romans 8, that has been done because it has been under bondage to corruption, will now be lifted. The earth will be glad that it will be used in righteousness, if you will, by the sons of God. What we have in verses 2-6 or what is called a theophany. It is a description of the manifestation of God at this time and verse 5 makes this plain with its repetition of the phrase "at the presence of the Lord," "at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth."
So God is here, He is not just coming in spiritually in doing something, He is actually here and the earth responds. The earth responds with joy and gladness because its Creator is now on site and renovations are going to occur. Things are going to go right. And this is very important to understand in Psalm 97 because what he is emphasizing is that God is truly coming into the world of humanity. No longer up in heaven, it seems so far away up there. But He is going to leave His throne and do active duty on earth. He is going to be there, He is going to be at the front of His host, He is going to be out front in doing, after that, all the ruling and the teaching and everything. He is going to be there and we have to understand that His presence is going to be overwhelming in its positive benefits to the earth and to the people as well.
And, as the New Testament writers, particularly the apostle Paul, says, it is a glorious appearing. Everything about Christ's second coming is glorious and wonderful and good and it is going to make all the difference. It is real and final. And Psalm 97 is talking about the moment He intervenes in human history and takes up personal rule over the whole earth. Please read Joel 2 and Joel 3 and you will see the same kind of feeling there that Joel experienced in the inspiration of the prophecies about Christ's second coming. Let us go, however, to Matthew 24 and we will read Christ's own description of His coming.
Matthew 24:29-30 "Immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all of the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory."
Similar language is found all over the New Testament about His second coming and it is going to be, well, it is almost beyond words: remarkable, majestic, overwhelming that our God will finally be here.
Back to Psalm 97, verses 7-9. The psalmist here gives us the reason why He has to come and He brings it down to one word: idolatry. "Let all be put to shame who serve carved images, who boast of idols. Worship Him, all you gods [or all you idols even]." There is even a indication that that word gods is kind of a stand-in for the demons. All the good angels worship Him, but all the false gods and the demons that have made themselves out to be gods of the earth, they need to worship Him. Who knows how many of them will change? Probably very few. But he gives them a warning here.
So the true God, whose existence and providence are everywhere to be seen, atheism is the dumbest thing ever because there is so many manifestations of God in this world in terms of what He has done and how things work. Anyway, the true God has been rejected from day one or whatever day that that Eve and Adam got together and decided to sin there in the Garden of Eden. And so He has finally had enough—6,000 years of rejection is more than anyone needs to stand—and so He has thought it is time to put all of these idolaters to shame. Because it is not true, it is stupid. They need to worship the great Creator God who is the only one that can give the people of the world any benefits and help them to live life in a way that is beneficial and good.
And it says here that for this, Zion praises Him. Who is Zion? In all the metaphors or the types, Zion is the church. These are the sons of God, these are the elect, and we are not of the idolaters. We have come into a relationship with God and we worship Him. And so we are the ones looking upon this situation and we praise Him that finally, God, You have come and intervened, and You are going to save us out of this mess and implement Your government. So, a long overdue wrong will be set right. In a way, you could say He will finally show the peoples of earth just who is the Most High God. And in human terms, we can put it this way: He will have the last laugh. And that is actually kind of how it is in Psalm 2 where it says that He holds them in derision. He says, "Kiss the Son," because that is the only way you will find salvation.
Verses 10-12 here in Psalm 97 are the meat of this psalm. "You who love the Lord, hate evil! He preserves the souls of His saints; He delivers them out of the hand of the wicked. Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart. Rejoice in the Lord, you righteous, and give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name." I will probably not get to Psalm 98 because I think this is important that we go over here. Maybe at some point I can go back to Psalm 98, but I want to emphasize what is here in verses 10-12.
What he is saying here is the Messiah's glorious appearing to right the world's wrongs is coming! Don't you ever doubt it! It is on the agenda. It has been programmed, it is going to happen. All we need to do is push a button, to put it in our own own way of thinking about things, either machines or in a computer program kind of idea, everything is ready, it is going to happen. Even though things outside in the world may not either seem like it is ready for such a thing to happen, maybe that might be some people's perspective, or that it is long overdue, some people think. And so they get this idea that oh, things are just going to keep going on and on and on, because if He did not bring Himself back at this point, then it is never going to happen. You know, what has happened from ancient times is going to happen tomorrow. That is how they think of things.
But he is trying to tell us here it is going to happen. Don't ever doubt it! And it is like He is talking to His people somewhere in the great Tribulation, perhaps, somewhere in the Day of the Lord. They are still amidst all the chaos of the beast power, there are still fighting and wars, the world is destroying itself and they are in the midst of it, and they say, "God, what do we do?" And the answer is very simple. He says, "You who love the Lord, hate evil!" That may seem awfully simplistic, but it is not.
Proverbs 8:13 The fear of the Lord is to hate evil; pride and arrogance and the evil way and the perverse mouth I hate.
Do you see in just one verse how we have expanded this idea of what hating evil is? That is part of the fear of the Lord; and all these other things we can start adding to it.
Amos 5:14-15 [God says] Seek good and not evil, that you may live; so the Lord God of hosts will be with you, as you have spoken. Hate evil, love good; establish justice in the gate. It may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.
So this idea of hating evil constantly expands into other areas, but He puts it in a very succinct way so that at least if we only get a little bit of it, we have a sharp, precise rejection of those things that are not godly. At least we can start there.
Let us go to Romans 12, verse 9. Here Paul is basically right at the beginning of his little tidbits of advice about how to act like a Christian. And so he says:
Romans 12:9 Let love be without hypocrisy. [I talked about that this morning, and then he says] Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good.
The word the apostle Paul uses here is apostygeo. It literally means to hate away from. Apo meaning away from or from and stygeo meaning to hate. It denotes the act of shuddering or shrinking back because of something detestable (like Bill when he sees blood. He shudders and shrinks away from the sight of blood). I mean other people might do it for different things, but it is something that you hate so much that you just want to run away from or at least shrink back, so are not affected by it as much. This word means to abhor, to a detest, to hate strongly or violently. It is a visceral hatred of a thing that desires to disassociate with it as much and as soon as possible. There is a violent reaction when you see whatever it is that you hate. So the hand flinches away from the stove when you touch a hot stove.
God wants us to do the same thing in the presence of any form of evil, where we just will not touch it. So God not only wants His saints to reject evil, He wants them to recoil from it like it is a snake and it is going to bite us. And our best defense is to put as much distance between us and it.
So he says, this is the way His people can endure those days—the Tribulation and the Day of the Lord. We must not tolerate evil in ourselves or in society, mostly in ourselves. That is what we have got to recoil from, the evil that we find in ourselves. We must reject it and flee from it. Remember, Paul also says, flee fornication. This is the same idea with any form of evil—flee from it, reject it, get away.
Then he says, going back to to Psalm 97, "He preserves the souls of His saints; He delivers them out of the hand of the wicked." This is better than where he says, "He preserves the souls of His saints" because we know that during the Tribulation, the Day of the Lord, there will be martyrdom. So He is not going to preserve everyone. But we should understand this in terms of watching over. He is watching over the souls of His saints. We do not need, if we are in that situation, to worry. He has got us covered. We could make our sacrifice or even go to martyrdom assured that He has got our back and that we will be there in the resurrection. So we do not need to worry about that. I know it is tough to die, tough to die violently, tough to die as a martyr. That is something that we would have to think through and take, but we do not have to worry about where we are going to end up ultimately.
And then verses 11 and 12 provide us some hope. "Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart. Rejoice in the Lord [even in this situation], you righteous, and give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name."
He says here, this "light is sown for the righteous." It is probably better understood (this would not be a direct translation), but the idea is that dawn is coming, light is not sown but shed. That is what happens when the sun comes up in the morning. It sheds light over all the earth. So he is saying when you are in this situation and Christ is about to come and terrible things are happening all around you, and you yourself are under duress, do not worry. Continue to hate, hate, hate evil!
And remember, dawn is coming, the sun will come up tomorrow. I know that sounds like Little Orphan Annie but it is something that we have to understand. The darkness will end! It will end soon and it will bring the glorious manifestation of God and the children of God.
We may be going through bitterness, bitter trial, hurt, and persecution, but gladness, he says, will soon fill us if we remain righteous and upright in heart. So the encouragement here is, do not give up, especially not at the very last minute. That would be terrible.
Rejoice even, and thank Him in those situations because we know that He fulfills His promises. That is why that is there. "Give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name." His name tells us in its many different forms what He is, what His character is like. And if we remember His holy name, we can thank Him even in the midst of horrible trials, even under the penalty of death, because we know that He always comes through.
So He will do as He has said. He will send His Son. He is coming! Yes, He is coming in judgment, but for us He is coming in joy.
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