Psalm 144
Notes
Transcript
Prayer has become such an interesting thing in this culture that we live in.
I in no way will come before you and try to portray myself as the person who has arrived in my prayer life with our Lord.
I at times will come to the end of a week only to look back only to have regret at the time I spent just seeking the Lord in prayer.
And as I reflect on those times where I have come to the end of my week with regret of how much prayerful time I spent with the Lord… I realize now that I failed to look at my life at times in the light that scripture tells me to see it.
The lens in which I had viewed my life most often in that week was one of self indulgence, comfort seeking, Western Christianized thought that this faith life is all about me. (of what a lens in which we must take off)
This is directly opposed to what scripture tells me about my life as a Christian… Scripture tells me that I am in the middle of a war.
A war for my own life,
a war for my closest friends and family
and even a war for my neighbors
Scripture says that I’m in a fight against EVIL SPIRITUAL FORCES, COSMIC POWERS and AUTHORITIES, WHO RESIDE OVER THIS WORLD’S PRESENT DARKNESS. (Eph. 6)
John Piper helped me think through this in his book, “Let The Nations Be Glad.”
In his chapter entitled “The Supremacy of God in Missions through Prayer”, Piper reminds us that LIFE IS A WAR.
I wish I could read all of this chapter to you… It’s incredibly convicting. But for now I will only read a short bit…
In writing about the reason in which prayer so often malfunctions in a westerner’s faith, Piper writes,
Probably the number one reason prayer malfunctions in the hands of believers is that we try to turn a wartime walkie-talkie into a domestic intercom. Until you know that life is war, you cannot know what prayer is for. Prayer is for the accomplishment of a wartime mission. It is as though the field commander (Jesus) called in the troops, gave them a crucial mission (go and bear fruit), handed each of them this personal transmitter coded tot he frequency of the General’s headquarters, and said, Comrades, the Gener has a mission for you. He aims to see it accomplished. And to that end he has authorized me to give each of you personal access to Him through these transmitters. If you stay true to His mission and seek His victory first, He will always be as close as your transmitter, to give tactical advice and to send air cover when you need it.”
But what have millions of Christians done? We have stopped believing that we are in a war. No urgency, no watching, no vigilance. No strategic planning. Just easy peace and prosperity. And what did we do with the walkie talkie? We tried to rig it up as a intercom in our houses and cabins and boats and cars - not a call in firepower for conflict with a mortal enemy but to ask for more comforts in the den.
Such a convicting piece from his book that pushes us to think about our failure in so often using our prayer time with our Commander merely as some peace time intercom.
Our prayers at the dinner table,
Our prayers with our children,
Our prayers with our spouses,
Our prayers in the still of the night when its just us and the Lord…
Let us begin to fight against this compelling draw within our culture.
Allow us to correct our lenses in which we look at prayer through these Psalms that we have been reading together.
AND SO…
Within Psalm 144 we see the reality at play in which the God of Heaven is viewed as our Wartime Commander, Equipper and Protector as His servant David and His people are using prayer as their war time walkie talky
praising Him for who He is,
pray for His involvement,
And voice their confidence in His action and Blessing.
**Expository Structure from VanGemeren and Akin Combined
A. Hymn of Praise for Who God is (vv. 1-2)
A. Hymn of Praise for Who God is (vv. 1-2)
1 Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle; 2 he is my steadfast love and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield and he in whom I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me.
Within any communication between a Commander and a person on the front lines… it often helps for there to be an understanding of who the HE is… and why He has the credentials for the man on the front line to trust and obey his Commander.
When there is an understanding of this… there can often be more of a willingness to listen and obey to the commands because of a reverence for who HE is…
HERE… David reminds us of these realities in this PRAISE to begin the 144th Psalm by listing out several names in which this HE can be referred and WHY PRAISE IS DUE HIS NAME…
These names really point to the fact that the Lord God, Creator of the Universe is the one who hands the victory and success to His servant David.
David recognizes this…
David as King of Israel here… has witnessed the God of the UNIVERSE SHOW HIMSELF TO BE THESE THINGS IN HIS TIME AS GOD’S FRONT LINE KING AND HE PRAISES HIS NAME FOR IT…
He is our Rock
God is immovable, objective in His Word of which Jesus calls us to build our houses upon.
Matthew 7, in which Pastor Nathan just last week preached wonderfully from, Jesus says…
24 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.
It is by His Word that He…
He trains our hands for War
Strengthens and trains my fingers for battle
He is our Steadfast Love
This is the idea of God’s LOVINGKINDNESS toward His people.
Not only is David referring to His Wartime COMMANDER… but thisCommander is one like no other in that He cares for us and love us with only a love that He can provide.
This is a fundamental attribute to HIS DIVINE NATURE…
Brings into view here Ex. 34:6 where Moses describes YAHWEH as merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin while at the same time being KEEPING ACCOUNTABLE THE GUILTY.
Our God is a good, just, loving Commander.
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David now continues to list all of the different ways in which God defends Him.
HOW COOL IS THIS… Not only do we have a loving and caring General who seeks to want to know us, we can depend on His commands to be sure and true in our training… BUT THIS COMMANDER ALSO WILL TO PROTECT US…
He is our Fortress
He is our Stronghold
He is our Deliverer
He is our Shield
David gives this collage of military metaphors to help the people of Israel understand who God is, what He has done for David and what He provides for God’s people.
Our God is a God who doesn’t just give us commands to follow, but He ensures our protection when we seek to listen and obey.
He is a place of safety when we are attacked and we are given a place of peace because of that protection.
The Lord helps us escape harm, He rescue’s us when we are in harm and in the case of David had returned him to his throne.
When we are abiding in His Word and in His commands it is like a whole armor that we have placed on for protection in this war that we are in. This is an armor we are to be putting on every day. (Eph. 6:16)
He is our Refuge
David again uses the reference of a refuge in relating to God and who He is to us…
36 times in the book of Psalms that God is said to be OUR REFUGE…
This is obviously an important piece of understanding that the writers of these Psalms are trying to fuse into these songs of praise and lament.
Yes He is our shelter and safety,
But He is also our comfort, and strength,
we can trust in Him completely in all situations, there is no circumstance that is out of His control. EVEN WHEN OUR FINITE MINDS SEEM TO THINK IT IS.
He is unchanging, and He understands our times of calamity, times of suffering, the entices of sin at every corner…
AND ALL OF THIS… THIS PLACE OF SAFETY IS OFFERED TO THOSE WHO WOULD ONLY SEEK BY LISTENING AND OBEYING…
David understood this… and I’m sure often wondered the question why…
David understood the falleness of his nature… He understood how weak and fragile He was… which is why in the next section David includes the reality of man after his declaration of praise to God saying…
B. Man’s Need (vv. 3-4)
B. Man’s Need (vv. 3-4)
3 O Lord, what is man that you regard him, or the son of man that you think of him? 4 Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow.
This is the only right posture to be in when considering the fallen nature of man, and the reality that God has called His people into this war.
WHO ARE WE LORD? Is something that we should be asking at every turn as David would often portray in His writings…
The nature of man is brokenness, weakness, sin, and death… TOTAL DEPRAVITY
The nature of God is love, compassion, forgiveness, strength, wisdom , TOTAL SOVERIGNTY…
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
WHO ARE WE LORD THAT YOU REGARD US??
And yet… God is a covenant keeping God,
We know this by His Word in
9 Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations,
And so we still come to Him in prayer…
We come to Him in petition and ask Him to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves in the midst of this war… DAVID UNDERSTANDS THAT HE NEEDS GOD’S INVOLVEMENT…
C. A Prayer for God’s Involvement (vv. 5-8)
C. A Prayer for God’s Involvement (vv. 5-8)
5 Bow your heavens, O Lord, and come down! Touch the mountains so that they smoke! 6 Flash forth the lightning and scatter them; send out your arrows and rout them! 7 Stretch out your hand from on high; rescue me and deliver me from the many waters, from the hand of foreigners, 8 whose mouths speak lies and whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood.
“Come Down”: Expression used in Exodus 3:8 when the Lord came to to Israel’s aid to deliver them from hands of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land and into the land flowing with milk and honey.
Language of smoky mountains and flashes of lightning make you think of Ex. 19 where Israel is at Mt Sinai and the Lord begins to tell the people of Israel through Moses that after freeing them from heir bondage to Egypt, that Now
“if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priest and a holy nation.”
Later on Moses continues TO write that there were lightning and thunder and a thick cloud of smoke on the mountain…
17 Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. 18 Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly. 19 And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder. 20 The Lord came down on Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain.
David here is in effect calling on the God of the UNIVERSE to repeat this divine intervention in His life and in the life of His nation…
David CURRENTLY feels as though he is engulfed in waters not being able to get out and caught in the hands of foreigners in the midst of their lies and falsehoods…
Once again, if they’re are going to be delivered from this predicament that they’re in… it’s going to be by the hands of GOD THE DELIVERER.
If the people of God are going to fight in this war that we are in… it will only be by HIS PROTECTION
AND BY HIS PERSONAL INTERVENTION ON OUR BEHALF
AS WELL AS TO JUDGE OUR ENEMIES WHO ARE FIRST AND FOREMOST HIS ENEMIES.
GOD, THE COMMANDER AND CHEIF COMES TO DELIVER… HE COMES TO RESCUE… AND HE COMES TO SCATTER DAVID’S ENEMIES with His lightning and arrows… as he just about copies the same phrase from Psalm 18:14
14 And he sent out his arrows and scattered them; he flashed forth lightnings and routed them.
David has heard of and seen God do this in His life before and He has every bit of confidence for God to do this now as He prays for His intervention…
David is showing us what it means to use prayer as a WAR TIME WALKIE TALKIE instead of a PEACE TIME INTERCOM…
Because of David’s understanding of what God will do… he goes right back into praise…
A. A Hymn of Praise (vv. 9-10)
A. A Hymn of Praise (vv. 9-10)
9 I will sing a new song to you, O God; upon a ten-stringed harp I will play to you, 10 who gives victory to kings, who rescues David his servant from the cruel sword.
David… because of HIS CONFIDENCE IN GOD sings His praises expecting Him to be faithful in giving victory…
He calls God’s shot…
One of the most confident basketball players of all times by reports of his piers was Larry Bird…
As you know… I’m just a fan of sports in general and I have always heard about the confidence of Larry Bird because of the fact that he would call his shots against opponents…
One example comes from Horace Grant who was a power forward for the Bulls at the time…
Larry Bird’s Coldest Moment? Calling His Shot Against Horace Grant!
"I teased him a little. I told him, 'You’re not going to make it. You’re not going to hit this time.' And I remember him telling me exactly how he was going to make the shot. He said, 'I’m going to fake left, then I’ll go to the right and hit a hook over you.' And then, right after that, he did exactly that—and the worst part is, he made it."- Horace Grant
David has such confidence in God that He goes ahead… take a ten stringed harp and begins to play…
B. Prayer For God’s Involvement (vv. 11)
B. Prayer For God’s Involvement (vv. 11)
Praise (V. 1-2)
Man’s Need AND WHO WE ARE BEFORE HIM. (VV. 3-4)
Prayer for God’s Involvement (VV. 5-8)
Praise (VV. 9-11)
And more lament and prayer for His involvement … (VV. 11)
AGAIN… this is so much of what we see in the Psalms… this back and forth and we see it again from David.
David realizes that the threat is still before him and David continues to knock at the thrown of God for His involvement…
11 Rescue me and deliver me from the hand of foreigners, whose mouths speak lies and whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood.
C. Prayer for God’s Blessing on God’s People (vv. 12-15)
C. Prayer for God’s Blessing on God’s People (vv. 12-15)
The psalm is divided into two parts:
the first (verses 1-11) is written in first person singular as we’ve seen and has focused on seeking rescue from foreign enemies while petitioning to God to be Israel’s protector and deliverer,
The second part that we see (verses 12-15) uses the plural (either first person plural from David, or as a nation speaking together… and describes blessings for a community
12 May our sons in their youth be like plants full grown, our daughters like corner pillars cut for the structure of a palace; 13 may our granaries be full, providing all kinds of produce; may our sheep bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our fields; 14 may our cattle be heavy with young, suffering no mishap or failure in bearing; may there be no cry of distress in our streets! 15 Blessed are the people to whom such blessings fall! Blessed are the people whose God is the Lord!
David continues in his war time walkie talkie petition to the Lord in asking unselfishly for the God of the Universe, to bless Israel’s people, their lives and their livestock… for a FULL MEASURE OF BLESSING.
He prays for God to grow their sons to be strong plants… nurtured and and mature. Makes you think of Psalm 128:3 where the writer ask for his children to be like olive shoots around his table.
He prays for their daughters to become like aesthetically pleasing pillars in the palace, to be this beauty into the next generations.
He prays for the Lord to allow their livestock, their flocks, their crops, by His grace to receive a SIGNIFICANT INCREASE without fear of foreign invaders to come and put it to ruins of any kind of further captivity, as well as no fear of famine.
He prays for His nation to be blessed by YAHWEH’S GRACE IN ALL PARTS AND WALKS OF LIFE… for there to finally be no cry in their streets.
These are in fact blessings that come from being God’s treasured possession as He tells them they will be in Exodus and these are most definitely blessings in which they would in part see at times here on this earth… even in the midst of their calamity and their trials…
We see this in 2 Sam. 7 where it says,
1 Now when the king lived in his house and the Lord had given him rest from all his surrounding enemies,
David and the nation of Israel certainly enjoyed a short time similar to this…
But just as 2 Sam. 7 begins to hint at a descendant who’s throne Kingdom would last forever…
This PSALM also becomes an eschatological yearning by King David and the people of Israel…
for God to bring into COMPLETION ALL THINGS…
For the COMMANDER to bring all the suffering of this world to a finish,
for His enemies to be rightly judged
and for Yahweh’s people to receive the full blessing of His presence.
I enjoy Daniel Akin’s take on this…
Exalting Jesus in Psalms 101–150 (He Blesses All His People (144:14–15))
- “there will be no breach in the walls, no going into captivity.”
- No army will break down the walls and invade our city.
- Never again will we be exiled to a foreign land and enslaved to foreign rulers (cf. Amos 4:3).
- Second, and as a result of this promise, there is “no cry of lament in our public squares” (cf. Jer 14:2).
- Never again will God’s people wail and cry out in lament and sorrow because foreign enemies have invaded the land and carried loved ones into captivity.
God has come down and rescued his people. And this rescue is permanent and everlasting.
V. 15: “Blessed are the people whose ELOHIM (god, deity) is the YAHWEH (The God of Abraham, Isaac, & Jacob).”
IN JESUS WE SEE THIS COMPLETION… THE COMPLETION THAT DAVID IS PRAYING FOR IN HIS WAR TIME PRAYER.
INDEED…
“BLESSED ARE THE PEOPLE TO WHOM SUCH BLESSINGS FALL.
BLESSED ARE THE PEOPLE WHOSE GOD IS THE LORD!”
CHURCH… LET OUR PRAYERS AND PRAISE BE AS SUCH…
NOT SOME PRAYERS AIMED AT ONLY OUR BLESSINGS WITH SHORT SITED PRIDE COMFORT AS OUR AIM…
LET OUR PRAYERS BE FUSED WITH A WARTIME UNDERSTANDING THAT WE AS GOD’S PEOPLE ARE AT ODDS IN THIS WORLD AGAINST THE POWERS OF DARKNESS…
LET US UNDERSTAND OUR LIMITS,
LET US PRAY FOR GOD’S INVOLVEMENT,
Let us have the confidence in Him that He’s going to do what He’s said He will do and bring His enemies to His feet with the eternal blessings of His presence to come thereafter.
