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October 31/November 1, 2015
Jason Meyer | Psalms 9:1-10:18
I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart;
I will recount all of your wonderful deeds.
I will be glad and exult in you;
I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.
When my enemies turn back,
they stumble and perish before your presence.
For you have maintained my just cause;
you have sat on the throne, giving righteous judgment.
You have rebuked the nations; you have made the wicked perish;
you have blotted out their name forever and ever.
The enemy came to an end in everlasting ruins;
their cities you rooted out;
the very memory of them has perished.
But the LORD sits enthroned forever;
he has established his throne for justice,
and he judges the world with righteousness;
he judges the peoples with uprightness.
The LORD is a stronghold for the oppressed,
a stronghold in times of trouble.
And those who know your name put their trust in you,
for you, O LORD, have not forsaken those who seek you.
Sing praises to the LORD, who sits enthroned in Zion!
Tell among the peoples his deeds!
For he who avenges blood is mindful of them;
he does not forget the cry of the afflicted.
Be gracious to me, O LORD!
See my affliction from those who hate me,
O you who lift me up from the gates of death,
that I may recount all your praises,
that in the gates of the daughter of Zion
I may rejoice in your salvation.
The nations have sunk in the pit that they made;
in the net that they hid, their own foot has been caught.
The LORD has made himself known; he has executed judgment;
the wicked are snared in the work of their own hands. Higgaion.
The wicked shall return to Sheol,
all the nations that forget God.
For the needy shall not always be forgotten,
and the hope of the poor shall not perish forever.
Arise, O LORD! Let not man prevail;
let the nations be judged before you!
Put them in fear, O LORD!
Let the nations know that they are but men!—Psalm 9:1–20
Why, O LORD, do you stand far away?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?
In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor;
let them be caught in the schemes that they have devised.
For the wicked boasts of the desires of his soul,
and the one greedy for gain curses and renounces the LORD.
In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him;
all his thoughts are, “There is no God.”
His ways prosper at all times;
your judgments are on high, out of his sight;
as for all his foes, he puffs at them.
He says in his heart, “I shall not be moved;
throughout all generations I shall not meet adversity.”
His mouth is filled with cursing and deceit and oppression;
under his tongue are mischief and iniquity.
He sits in ambush in the villages;
in hiding places he murders the innocent.
His eyes stealthily watch for the helpless;
he lurks in ambush like a lion in his thicket;
he lurks that he may seize the poor;
he seizes the poor when he draws him into his net.
The helpless are crushed, sink down,
and fall by his might.
He says in his heart, “God has forgotten,
he has hidden his face, he will never see it.”
Arise, O LORD; O God, lift up your hand;
forget not the afflicted.
Why does the wicked renounce God
and say in his heart, “You will not call to account”?
But you do see, for you note mischief and vexation,
that you may take it into your hands;
to you the helpless commits himself;
you have been the helper of the fatherless.
Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer;
call his wickedness to account till you find none.
The LORD is king forever and ever;
the nations perish from his land.
O LORD, you hear the desire of the afflicted;
you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear
to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed,
so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.
—Psalm 10:1–18
Introduction
You may wonder why we read all of Psalms 9–10. Why not just preach one sermon on Psalm 9 and one sermon on Psalm 10 like we have done with the other Psalms? The answer is that I believe they are one psalm.
There are several reasons for reading these two psalms as one. I will just give you three very briefly. First, the Greek translation of the OT (the LXX) connects them together as one Psalm. Second, Psalm 10 lacks a title, unlike the other Psalms in Psalms 3–41 (but this would be natural if the title of Psalm 9 was the title for both). Third (and most important to me), both psalms together form an acrostic. (Psalm 10 picks up where Psalm 9 leaves off—the Hebrew letter lamed.)
Does everyone know what an alphabetical acrostic is? At staff meetings, it is common to honor a staff member by using an acrostic with their name. To demonstrate this dynamic, I chose to use Pastor Sam as an example. And the fact that his name has only three letters may or may not have had something to do with why I “randomly” chose him.
Sharp wit: Master of the one liners—sometimes you groan and sometimes you laugh out loud, but you always smile.
Ardent: Sam is so warm-hearted and flat-out silly sometimes that it may surprise you how doggedly he holds to the doctrines of our Elder Affirmation of Faith. He defends them strongly yet winsomely. He represents us well when he engages with others in our denomination.
Mentor: I have known Sam longer than anyone here. He was a pastor at the church I grew up at in Brookings, SD. He has shown me how to fight the fight of faith and has been a model of humility and grace. Sam often says “Onward” at the end of his emails. He keeps the mission of God in mind. He was a model of that when we needed him as Small Groups pastor at the North Campus. I am enjoying affirming him because he wrote the book on affirmation (literally—you can find it in the book store). Some of the seminary guys said it was the book that helped them in pre-marital counseling more than any other. We thank God for you, Sam.
An alphabetical acrostic is a poem that begins lines at regular intervals with successive letters of the alphabet. So Psalm 9–10 is an alphabetical acrostic, but it is broken. Psalm 10 picks up where Psalm 9 left off (10:1 uses lamed). But six letters of the Hebrew alphabet are missing because 10:2–11 is a non-alphabet section and then 10:12–18 comes back to the alphabetical pattern as a conclusion. We will think about why this acrostic is broken a little later in the sermon.
Did you know the Bible had this kind of artistry? There are eight examples of acrostic psalms (four are found in the first book of the Psalter: 1–41; four are found in the last book of the Psalms 107–150). There is a super interesting pattern that stands out with these acrostics in Book 1. Only three psalms in book 1 mention creation (Psalm 8, 24, 33). But each creation Psalm is followed by an acrostic Psalm (Psalm 9–10; 25; 34).
Why this pattern of a creation psalm followed by an acrostic psalm? I don’t know. A commentator that pointed out these patterns was not sure either. He postulated perhaps a creation psalm followed by an acrostic psalm brought together the creativity of the Lord in making the world and in writing the word (O. Palmer Robertson, The Flow of the Psalms, pp. 80–81).
I stand in awe at the beauty of the Bible. Other books do not have this awe-inspiring miracle of coming from the mouth of God—breathed out by God. You never master it, but you reach a point where you are mastered by its majesty and authority. It has structural and artistic power.
But it also has an explanatory power. It explains us and the world we live in. The Bible is like other books in that we read it, but it is unlike other books in that it reads us. It is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, dividing joints and marrow and is a discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the heart. It discerns our thoughts and our intentions. It reads us.
It explains also why the world is filled with so much that shines and so much that stings. Why is this a bright, beautiful place and at the same time such a dark, painful place? Psalms 9–10 bring both of these perspectives together so that we get a fuller understanding of life and reality.
So how can we survive in a roller coaster world like this? Do you just pretend not to see the bad and just focus on what is bright and beautiful? So many Christians do not have spiritual honesty. I am not interested in plastic Christianity. We have something equally profound to say in the good times and the bad. Behold the beauty of the Bible’s balance in being able to address all of life.
Psalms 9–10 join the apostle Paul in picturing this life in Christ as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. There is always something to see that is broken. There is always something to see that is beautiful and hopeful. So how do we deal with this divide – this schizophrenic feeling like one minute your up and the next minute some tragedy happens and you drop like one of those rides at Valley Fair. Is there a constant?
Dale Ralph Davis borrowed an illustration from Maxie Dunnam. Dunnam spoke of a time when the novelist Lloyd C. Douglas was a university student. He lived upstairs in a boarding house. Downstairs on the first floor lived an elderly, now infirm, retired music teacher. According to Douglas, they had a morning ritual. Douglas would come down the stairs, open the old man’s door, and ask, “Well, what’s the good news?” The elderly gent would pick up his tuning fork, tap it on the side of his wheelchair, and say: “That’s middle C! It was middle C yesterday; it will be middle C tomorrow; it will be middle C a thousand years from now. The tenor upstairs sings flat, the piano across the hall is out of tune, but, my friend, that is middle C!” (Dale Ralph Davis, The Way of the Righteous in the Muck of Life, p. 121).
The unified picture Psalm 9–10 heralds is this: In good times or bad times, the One Constant—our middle C—is that God is King. The fact that God is King is the main theological point of the passage. The main action point of the passage is the plea “let your kingdom come”: the call for God to arise. Therefore, here is how I would state the main point: Because God is King, we pray let Your kingdom come.
Outline:
Psalm 9 has two main sections. Section one (verses 1–12) consists of four stanzas
David Praises (vv. 1–2)
The next two stanzas each have four verses each:
Remembering God’s Victory (vv. 3–6)
Praising God for His Justice on the Earth (vv. 7–10)
David Calls the People to Praise (vv. 11–12)
Praises (vv. 1–2, 11–12):
I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart;
I will recount all of your wonderful deeds.
I will be glad and exult in you;
I will sing praise to your name, O Most High. …
Sing praises to the LORD, who sits enthroned in Zion!
Tell among the peoples his deeds!
David models for us what to do with “God sightings.” People get all excited about bird watching and whale watching and all the rest. These verses are about something altogether different—in a different class. It can be a thrill to get a sighting of something big or beautiful in creation, but what about a sighting of the Creator! His works must be recounted. His distinct acts should be distinctly recounted and he should receive specific praise for them. Each is precious! We can’t just lump them together like a pile of sand. Great are the works of the Lord—they are studied by all who delight in them. Do you have a pattern of praise in your life? When is the last time that you uncorked your praise and gave voice to your delight in seeing God work?
This second section of Psalm 9 has three stanzas (vv. 13–20).
Call for God to arise and deliver (vv. 13–14)
Assurance that God will act and bring justice (15–18)
Call for God to arise and deliver (vv. 19–20)
Listen to his earnest pleas for God to arise and deliver (vv. 13–14, 19–20):
Be gracious to me, O LORD!
See my affliction from those who hate me,
O you who lift me up from the gates of death,
that I may recount all your praises,
that in the gates of the daughter of Zion
I may rejoice in your salvation. …
Arise, O LORD! Let not man prevail;
let the nations be judged before you!
Put them in fear, O LORD!
Let the nations know that they are but men! Selah
The “God sightings” of the first half of Psalm 9 embolden David to ask for more. When you have tasted something amazing, the most natural thing is to want more and ask for more. We are not content with a few bites—we want a feast. This is such a clear dynamic in the Christian life. Past grace fuels trust in future grace. God’s work in the past stirs up a hunger to see God work in the future along with a confident conviction that he will.
I wish I could expound much more from these verses, but I must move on if we are to catch the balance of these two psalms together. The acrostic continues into chapter 10, but the theme seems to drastically change. In fact, the final phrase of Psalm 10:1 repeats the exact same phrase as Psalm 9:9, even though the contrast could not be clearer.
Psalm 9:9 – The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble
Psalm 10:1 – Will you hide in times of trouble?
Psalm 9 says he fights for his people as a fortress in trouble; Psalm 10 says he retreats in trouble. Psalm 9 praises him for his presence; Psalm 10 complains about his absence. Can you feel the brokenness?
Verse 1 makes a complaint to the Lord. Unlike Psalm 9 where David has caught sight of God, Psalm 10 complains that we have lost sight of God. Verses 2–11 then describes what the Psalmist sees (the wicked preying on the oppressed righteous and getting away with it). This seems to call into question God as King—or God’s character as King or seems to contradict God’s character as a good King.
The complaint of faith (v. 1)
Why, O LORD, do you stand far away?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?
The stanzas in the middle are two stanzas of six lines each:
People have noted that Psalm 9–10 is a broken acrostic. But I think it is broken in an intentional way because of where the break takes place. The six letters of the Hebrew alphabet are missing in the place that describes the wicked and the way they think. If verse 1 gives the reason for the distress of the psalmist, then verses 2–11 give the reasons for the distress—the wicked ambush, stalk, and murder the righteous. The righteous are like prey and the wicked are like predators (vv 8–9):
He sits in ambush in the villages;
in hiding places he murders the innocent.
His eyes stealthily watch for the helpless;
he lurks in ambush like a lion in his thicket;
he lurks that he may seize the poor;
he seizes the poor when he draws him into his net.
They are not only powerful predators—they overpower the righteous—they are also proud predators. They think that they are untouchable. Verse 11 has the wicked brashly bragging that God does not see:
He says in his heart, “God has forgotten,
he has hidden his face, he will never see it.”
But God’s people see the lies in the counsel of the wicked. Faith refuses to swallow the poison. Verses 13–14 affirm that God does see.
Arise, O LORD; O God, lift up your hand;
forget not the afflicted.
Why does the wicked renounce God
and say in his heart, “You will not call to account”?
But you do see, for you note mischief and vexation,
that you may take it into your hands;
to you the helpless commits himself;
you have been the helper of the fatherless.
Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer;
call his wickedness to account till you find none.
The LORD is king forever and ever;
the nations perish from his land.
O LORD, you hear the desire of the afflicted;
you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear
to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed,
so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.
Faith’s assurance is that God will arise and judge the wicked. We are back to middle C: God is king (vv. 12–18). That is why Psalm 9–10 keeps hitting that tuning fork that says God is King (9:4, 7, 8, 11, 19, 20; Psalm 10:16).
For you have maintained my just cause;
you have sat on the throne, giving righteous judgment. …
But the LORD sits enthroned forever;
he has established his throne for justice,
and he judges the world with righteousness;
he judges the peoples with uprightness. …
Sing praises to the LORD, who sits enthroned in Zion!
Tell among the peoples his deeds!
Arise, O LORD! Let not man prevail;
let the nations be judged before you!
The LORD is king forever and ever;
the nations perish from his land.
Both Psalms warn that mere humans should come to grips with this fact (9:20; 10:18):
Put them in fear, O LORD!
Let the nations know that they are but men! Selah
to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed,
so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.
Faith ends up with the same destination or conclusion in good times and hard times. The only difference is whether the path there is smooth (good roads) or jolting (bad roads: bumpy and filled with pot holes).
Where are you this morning? Have you reached the conclusion that God is King? Are you in tune with middle C? Those who claim to not follow Christ, let me speak to you for a moment. As I get to know non-Christians, it seems like all of you have areas in your life that you are passionate about. You care about opposing oppression. You care about fairness and justice. Many of you stand for good causes—against sex-trafficking or oppression of minorities or oppression of women. I stand with you on these things. But let me ask you a question? Do your overall views allow you to stand against oppression?
How many of you buy into the dominant view today of our origins: that we all evolved from animals. Doesn’t it bother you that core to this view is the belief in survival of the fittest—only the strong survive and pass on their genetic code? If you limit yourself to nature (closed system with no interference from someone like God), then you see that nature is like a neon sign for survival of the fittest. It testifies clearly to the fact that the strong overpower the weak (lions and gazelle). If nature is our guide, then what this text talks about (the strong hunting down the weak) is just part of nature. You should just get used to it and not complain about it. It is built into the system.
Do you hear what I am saying? Your foundational beliefs about where you came from do not allow you to believe what you want to believe about fairness and defending the oppressed. Now let me be clear. I am glad that you are inconsistent. But it is much better to have good, core reasons to oppose oppression. It may surprise you that you have to borrow from the Bible just so you can believe what you want to believe.
Deep down what you want to believe accords here with chord struck by Psalm 9–10. God is middle C. He says that oppression is wrong. He is against injustice. That is the bottom line reason why Christians are against oppression. It is right in line with what we believe.
Some non-Christians actually look at a broken world and use it as an argument against God. They use circumstances to define God. You have a different approach to life that makes your changing circumstances middle C. But that just makes life one chaotic mess—up and down as the way it has to be—no hope for any change to come.
I plead with you to stand on the solid rock of God as King. Don’t use circumstances to define God’s character. When things are going good, then life is good and God is good. When things are hard, then life is hard and God is bad. Circumstances do not rule us or define us: God does.
If circumstances do not define us, then we can be real about how we feel about them. I am off the charts excited about some things in our church. God moved in global focus this year.
But I also felt the roller coaster this week with such heart-breaking, stomach in your throat kind of drops downward. I watched a leaked Planned Parenthood video where the crowd laughs when the abortion doctor talks about eyeballs falling out of the fetus. BTW, fetus is just Latin for “baby.” So it just is an attempt to obscure. That is a child! Laughing at what is appalling is even more appalling. It hit close to home because I found out that The U of M uses baby parts in their research.
I am grieved over statistics about the unreached, unengaged peoples of the world. I read about sex-trafficking (oppression of women and children), racism (oppression of minorities) and suffering all around us (We have dear beloved church members here who are dying of cancer—kids are preparing to live life without their parents. Oh, that hurts!).
Do you live in a world like the one I am describing? Are you feeling me? You all have your own list. You could easily cause my list to go on for pages and pages. You could all share you own stories of the roller coaster of life, of highs and lows. Do you know the worst part as we look at cancer and suffering and injustice in this broken world? We broke it.
God created the world good. We broke it. All this sickness and sorrow testifies powerfully and painfully to the presence of sin. Sin entered into the world and death through sin (Genesis 3; Romans 5:12). What is clear is that Psalm 10 speaks against all of us. The New Testament does not pick up Psalm 10 and say that some live holy lives and are accepted by God because of it, while others live wicked lives and are rejected by God because of it. When the apostle Paul quotes Psalm 10:7 in Romans 3:14, he applies it to all of us without exception (we are all under sin). We are all in the position of the wicked—sinning against God with our hearts and mouths.
“Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness” (LXX – Romans)
“Their mouth is filled with cursing and deceit and oppression” (Hebrew of Psalm 10:7)
Do you think of yourself this way? Think about what you do with your mouth for a moment. The call on our life as creatures made by our Creator is to use our mouth to boast in God (hll – see Psalm 44:9 as an example used to praise God) and to give him thanks. But the same word for praise appears in 10:3 with the clear contrast.
For the wicked boasts of the desires of his soul, and the one greedy for gain curses and renounces the LORD. In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him; all his thoughts are, “There is no God.”
Are mouths should be like a praise factory—with thanksgiving to God and boasting in God—coming one after the other on the assembly line of worship. But we don’t. We have a King, but we have often acted as though we are the king of our lives. We call the shots. We live for ourselves. God as King— middle C—is the farthest thing from our minds.
Sin is a worship problem. Sin is what happens when we worship the wrong thing, and we put something above God. We become so self-focused, just living our lives and enjoying what we enjoy. Boasting in what we want and get, greedy to gain more and more without God in the picture. Sin treats God and his way as something that just gets in the way of our joy. I want something and it is not You. Out of my way. We have all, at one time or another, lived this way or thought this way.
So away with the idea that we can earn our way to God by cleaning ourselves up so he will accept us. That door is slammed shut and locked and deadbolted. We hear the note of middle C that God is King and we realize that we have not been faithful subjects—we have all rebelled and gone our own way. The Psalms tell us we should perish because of the justice of God.
The LORD is king forever and ever; The nations have perished from his land.—Psalm10:16
When my enemies turn back, they stumble and perish before your presence.—Psalm 9:3
You have rebuked the nations; you have made the wicked perish; you have blotted out their name forever and ever.—Psalm 9:5
The enemy came to an end in everlasting ruins … the very memory of them has perished.—Psalm 9:6
The way of the wicked will perish.—Psalm 1:6
But the defining moment of all of history happened when the Son of God left his realm of glory and perfection. He entered this broken world. He experienced the full weight of this fallen world. He lived a perfect life in our place. He was the word of God in the flesh—God’s praise was always on his lips. He paid the price for all our cursing and sinning. He freed us from the curse of sin by becoming a curse for us in our place (Galatians 3:13). This was so surprising, so stirring. He didn’t come to condemn! When you feel crushed by the guilt of sin, I don't know anything more shocking than to see the Savior's arms open wide to take you back.
Jesus was tempted in every way like us. He tasted the pain of this broken world. Jesus wept at death (John 11:35). And he got angry at death. In anger he said, “Lazarus, come forth” (John 11:38). One day, what he did there on a small scale, he will do on a cosmic scale. Death will be thrown into hell too, not just sin.
The apostle John tells the story of Jesus speaking to those who have come to arrest him in a surprising, head-scratching way.
When Jesus said to them, “I AM,” they drew back and fell to the ground.—John 18:6.
When my enemies turn back, they stumble and perish before your presence.—Psalm 9:3.
Bible commentator James Hamilton says John 18:6 may reflect a loose allusion to the Hebrew of Psalm 9:3.
What is certain beyond all comparison is why God sent the Son into the world to die: so we would never perish.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.—John 3:16
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.—John 3:17–19.
It was at the cross that light and darkness crashed together—love and hate—good and evil. And here is the good news of the gospel of Christ crucified and risen. Light won. Love won. Good won. Darkness, hate, and evil were defeated at his first coming and will be destroyed at his second coming.
You don’t have to perish. Hear the words of Psalm 2:12 one more time: “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way.”
Nothing else matters more in this moment. God is King. That is middle C. That is the fact that defines everything else. Are you right with him? Have you received what Jesus did so that rebels could have peace with God? Non-Christians face a terrifying expectation of judgment: God as King has a throne of judgment for them. How different for a Christian. Our Father is the King. We come to a throne of grace and find help in our time of need. Nothing is more joyful or hopeful than to know that God is for us. Nothing is more fearful than to know that God is against us.
Middle C is all about what is constant. Where do we fix our gaze? From the shifting shadows, we fix our eyes on him. “Faith is the art of holding on to things in spite of your changing moods and circumstances” (C.S. Lewis).
Sermon Discussion Questions
Outline
Main Point: In good times or bad times, the One Constant—our middle C—is that God is King.
Discussion Questions
Application Questions
Prayer Focus
Pray for a grace to keep God as King as our constant—our middle C.