PSALM 108 - The Warrior's Morning Song

Introduction

A long time ago in a world far far away, there used to be only one way to watch your favorite television series: On a particular TV channel on one particular timeslot in one particular night. If you wanted to watch it at a different time, you’d have to use a VCR (ask your parents) or something like that. (And you could only watch one at a time—no bingeing!)

Every once in a while, you’d sit down to watch your show on the appointed night, and realize a few minutes in that it was a rerun (ask your parents)—a show that had already aired that you had watched previously! That was always pretty disappointing. But worst of all was the dreaded clip show—an episode made up of clips of several short clips of previous week’s shows that were strung together into one episode.

Well, our psalm this morning is kind of like that—it is made up of “clips” from two earlier psalms: Verses 1-6 come from Psalm 57, and Verses 7-13 come from Psalm 60. And the psalmist took those two separate sections and sort of “spliced” them together to make up Psalm 108.

Now, showrunners and producers create “clip shows” of TV series because they have to fill out a season, or are trying to cover for production problems (and they’re cheap to make compared to a regular episode—but if God saw fit to put these verses together from two separate psalms and present them again, there has to be a good reason! As Charles Spurgeon said of these verses in his commentary:

The Holy Spirit is not so short of expressions that he needs to repeat himself, and the repetition cannot be meant merely to fill the book: there must be some intention in the arrangement of two former divine utterances in a new connection; whether we can discover that intent is another matter. It is at least ours to endeavour to do so, and we may expect divine assistance therein. Spurgeon, C. H. (n.d.). The treasury of David: Psalms 88-110 (Vol. 4, p. 425). Marshall Brothers.

So let’s take a look at these verses and see what we can discover about why the Holy Spirit decided to include them again here. The first thing we recognize is that the original context of both of these psalms were from periods of conflict in David’s life—Psalm 57 was written when David was hiding from Saul in the Cave of Adullam, and Psalm 60 was written during the early years of David’s reign when Israel was fighting for survival against the Edomites and the other nations that were circling them like vultures while he struggled to prevent the tribe of Benjamin (King Saul’s tribe) from revolting over his taking the throne from their kinsman.

So these verses were originally written as psalms of lament over the struggles of David’s life and reign. But they have been put together here as a psalm of victory of YHWH’s throne. Remember, these psalms were compiled in Book V to celebrate the merging of the Throne of the Anointed One and the Throne of YHWH together as one. Who else but God could turn lament psalms into a psalm of praise?

In their original settings, these praise verses came after long sections of lament over the trials and losses David and the nation had suffe8:1-2red—but here, the psalm starts with praise!

Psalm 108:1–2 LSB

My heart is set, O God; I will sing, I will sing praises, even with my glory. Awake, harp and lyre; I will awaken the dawn!

The psalmist starts with praise, before he does anything else. Spurgeon calls Psalm 108

the warrior’s morning song, with which he adores his God and strengthens his heart before entering upon the conflicts of the day (ibid.)

It’s been said that you can start your day two ways—you can say, “Good morning, Lord!”, or you can say “Good Lord, it’s morning...” Every morning when you wake up, you have a choice to make, don’t you? Because each day that stretches out before you has its own share of trouble and heartache and unknown pitfalls. Each day has enough trouble of its own, Jesus tells us. And for many of you, the troubles are real, they are heavy and they are unrelenting.

Broken relationships, broken down bodies, battles with loneliness, with temptation, with despair and depression; a difficult work environment, an uncertain financial picture, growing weakness and frailty of body and mind as the years pass—everyone in this room has their share of battles coming this week.

And so this is the message of Psalm 108 for you this morning—

Strengthen your HEART with the sure PROMISES of God each MORNING

The same God Who brought praise out of lament in this psalm is the same God that has sworn His lovingkindness to you! And so look at the first six verses of this psalm to learn how to strengthen your heart with

I. PRAISE of your LOVING King (Psalm 108:1-6)

Psalm 108:1–3 LSB

My heart is set, O God; I will sing, I will sing praises, even with my glory. Awake, harp and lyre; I will awaken the dawn! I will give thanks to You, O Yahweh, among the peoples, And I will sing praises to You among the nations.

In these opening verses, look at the psalmist’s

Eager DETERMINATION to WORSHIP (vv. 1-5)

He doesn’t wait for the sun to wake him up—he rolls his instruments out of bed to wake them up! And what is it that thrills the psalmist’s heart so thoroughly that he can’t wait to start his day in praise?

Psalm 108:4 LSB

For Your lovingkindness is great above the heavens, And Your truth reaches to the skies.

He has been so captivated by the steadfast love of God for him that he delights to praise Him. Our study in Sunday School has been tracing all of the statements of God’s lovingkindness and faithfulness throughout the Old and New Testaments. Over time, you begin to see that the word translated “lovingkindness” has such a depth and richness to it: That God not only loves us, but is kind to us; He delights in us; He takes joy in caring for us.

Christian, it is impossible to over-estimate the faithful, constant, delighted, happy love that God has for you! When the psalmist says it is “great above the heavens”, go ahead and understand that in terms of the James Webb Space Telescope—it can see objects thirteen billion light-years away, but it cannot see to the end of God’s faithful love for you!

And not only so, but His truth is a reason to praise Him—He has not lied to you about how much He loves you! Unlike so many people here on this sorry planet, He has no hidden agenda for loving you; He is not exaggerating His love or making promises He cannot keep; you are not someday going to discover some hidden flaw in Him or something that He has been hiding from you. He is Truth itself, and the truth is that His love for you is eternal. THAT is a reason to praise Him! If true—THIS IS BIG!!!

Strengthen your heart in that truth, Christian—preach it to yourself every morning. Let it fuel your eager determination to worship Him, and let it be the ground of you

Confident HOPE for RESCUE (vv. 5-6)

in the middle of those battles coming at you this week!

Psalm 108:5–6 LSB

Be exalted above the heavens, O God, And Your glory above all the earth. That Your beloved may be rescued, Save with Your right hand, and answer me!

It’s as if the camera has been pulled in for a tight shot of David’s praising God, and then it zooms back to reveal that he has been awakening the dawn and singing with his harp and exulting in YHWH’s staggering steadfast love in the middle of a war-zone! “Lord, I am your beloved! Your lovingkindness toward me extends beyond the most distant galaxies—You will certainly rescue me! You have sworn your never-failing mercies for me; You have promised never to forsake me, and You cannot lie or break Your promises! Strengthen your heart, Christian, with the sure and steadfast hope that you have in the God Whose love for you cannot fail; Whose rescue you are sure to have, Whose mighty right hand will never be too short to save you!

Strengthen your heart with the sure promises of God each morning—strengthen your heart with praise for your loving king, and strengthen your heart for the battles ahead with

II. CONFIDENCE in your SOVEREIGN King (Psalm 108:7-9)

Look at verses 7-9 with me:

Psalm 108:7–9 LSB

God has spoken in His holiness: “I will exult, I will portion out Shechem And measure out the valley of Succoth. “Gilead is Mine, Manasseh is Mine; Ephraim also is the helmet of My head; Judah is My scepter. “Moab is My washbowl; Over Edom I shall throw My shoe; Over Philistia I will make a loud shout.”

So what is going on here? First of all, notice that we see a change in the speaker—always a good Bible study practice to pay attention to who is speaking or writing in a particular passage. Verses 1-6 were the psalmist (David), and now God Himself is speaking. He is speaking “in His holiness”—the Hebrew word can also mean “sanctuary”—God is speaking in all His holy authority, He is speaking in that unalterable truth that David has been exulting in.

And what is God saying in His holy sanctuary? He goes on to name nine different places, tribes and nations along with the nature of His reign over them. Let’s work our way through them to see how they demonstrate His sovereign reign.

The first two places on the list are Shechem and the Valley of Succoth. When we go back to Genesis we find that Shechem was the place Abram was living when YHWH first called him, and the first altar he ever built to YHWH was built in Schechem. The Valley of Succoth was the place Jacob settled after he came back to Canaan after he reconciled with his brother Esau. From the very beginnings of Israel’s story, YHWH has been there!

In the same way, beloved,

He DELIGHTS in your STORY (v. 7)

He not only was the One Who formed you in your mother’s womb, Who fashioned you and put you together carefully and precisely over nine months, but He has been your God from the very first moment you worshipped Him as your Savior the day that you repented of your sins and called on Him for salvation. He has been your God through every decision you have made, every trial you have faced, every hardship and loss, every laugh and every blessing—He has been your God, and He delights in every page of your story!

Look in verse 8, and there is one place and three specific tribes of Israel mentioned:

Psalm 108:8 LSB

“Gilead is Mine, Manasseh is Mine; Ephraim also is the helmet of My head; Judah is My scepter.

Gilead was the region on the east side of the Jordan River that the tribes of Reuben, Gad and Manasseh wanted to settle in because of its great abundance of grazing land and fruitful produce. You’ll recognize from our study of Joseph’s life earlier this year that Manasseh and Ephraim are both descendents of Joseph and were particularly blessed by Jacob to be abundant and fruitful peoples:

Genesis 48:20 LSB

And he blessed them that day, saying, “By you Israel will pronounce blessing, saying, ‘May God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh!’” Thus he put Ephraim before Manasseh.

The third tribe He names is Judah—the “scepter” (or “lawgiver”); the tribe through which all of Israel’s rightful kings have ever come. All of these names have one thing in common: They are all expressions of Israel’s glories—glories of physical abundance, glories of spiritual blessing, glories of kingship and authority and majesty. And God says, “All of it is Mine—I am sovereign over all of it!”

In the same way, Christian,

He GOVERNS your GLORY (v. 8; cp. James 1:17)

Every blessing you have ever received in your life has come from the loving hand of your sovereign King—He is the source of all of them; He is the One Who has portioned them out, He is the One Who is glorified in them, and every last one of them are expressions of His unfailing love for you as His child! Strengthen your heart, Christian, in the faithful love of your King that

James 1:17 LSB

Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.

The last three names on this list are nations that are surrounding Israel: Moab, Edom and Philistia: Moab and Edom were distant cousins of Israel: Moab was born from Abraham’s cousin Lot and his daughter (Gen. 19), and Edom was descended from Esau, Jacob’s brother. The Moabites oppressed Israel in the book of Judges under fat King Eglon (Judges 3), and the prophet Obadiah wrote his prophecy against Edom, which had stood by silently watching the Kingdom of Judah being destroyed by the Babylonians, and then mocking them in their distress. The Philistines, of course, was one of the best-known enemies of Israel—Samson, Saul and (most spectacularly) David made their names by their conquests of the Philistines in Judges and Samuel.

Here in Psalm 108, though, God shows once and for all that

He OWNS His ENEMIES (v. 9)

God describes Moab and Edom as slaves in His household—Moab is the washpot that He uses to wash His feet when He comes into His house, and Edom is the slave that catches His shoes as He throws them across the room! God utterly owns all of the adversaries and enemies that set themselves up against Him—He “makes a loud shout” over Philistia; the Hebrew suggests either that it is YHWH shouting in triumph, or that it is the Philistines themselves who are raising a loud cry over being conquered. Either way, it is a demonstration of His utter domination over every tribe, tongue, people, nation or individual who dares to oppose Him.

That’s a verse that can strengthen your heart, isn’t it, Christian? That there is no power on earth that can possibly stand against God in His might? No matter what happens to you in this life, His purposes will never fail! You can spend yourself in the battles that you face every day knowing that God’s enemies will always fall. Always. He is not troubled, He is not inconvenienced, He is not at the mercy of any man’s will or nation’s policies.

And when you have strengthened your heart with confidence in your sovereign King, you are equipped to fight under His banner. You will be clothed with

III. VALOR under a MERCIFUL King (Psalm 108:10-13)

Now, it’s a sign of the state that we are in as a people that a word like “valor” needs to be defined for us; we don’t run into this word on a regular basis, because the virtue that it describes is in short supply in this present hour. The American Heritage Dictionary describes “valor” as

Strength of mind in regard to danger; that quality which enables a man to encounter danger with firmness; personal bravery; courage; prowess (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition)

Somewhere along the line, we began to believe that being a Christian meant that God would always see to it that we never have to face anything dangerous or perilous—the “I know today God won’t give me anything I can’t handle...” line.

But when we base our understanding on Scripture, we see that the God we follow is the God Who called His people to face giants armed to the teeth with nothing but a sling and stone; to stand before the most powerful ruler on the face of the earth and demand he free all his slaves; to prophesy the downfall of a nation before a king who had already threatened imprisonment; to accept being torn to death by lions for praying publicly—in other words, the God that you serve regularly calls His people to great acts of personal courage.

This is reflected in Verse 10, isn’t it? The psalmist is standing on the battle plain looking at the high and imposing fortress that needs to be taken:

Psalm 108:10 LSB

Who will bring me into the well-defended city? Who will lead me to Edom?

We mentioned Obadiah’s prophecy against Edom earlier—in the opening verses he describes Edom, saying

Obadiah 3 LSB

“The arrogance of your heart has deceived you, You who dwell in the clefts of the cliff, In the height of your habitation, Who says in his heart, ‘Who will bring me down to earth?’

The psalmist is looking up at those cliffs where that fortress is situated; he sees that there is no way to win this battle. The enemy is too strong, they are too well-defended, he is outnumbered and out maneuvered. To attack that fortress means certain defeat. And so he cries out, “Who can get us into that city? Who will lead us in this hopeless cause?”

And his cry is complicated by the knowledge that we do not deserve YHWH’s help! Because in our natural state, apart from Him

We offer Him only COWARDICE(v. 11-12)

Psalm 108:11 LSB

Have You, O God, not rejected us? And will You, O God, not go forth with our armies?

There is no valor in our own nature—we are one with the Israelites in Numbers 14 who, when they came to the borders of Canaan—led by the God Who had decimated Egypt with His power a few months before—they saw the Canaanite cities they cried like little girls and wanted to run back to Pharoah. The next morning when they changed their minds and tried to enter the land, YHWH did not go with them and they were beaten and humiliated (Numbers 14:44-45).

And so the Psalmist knows that he does not deserve YHWH’s help—if God is going to go before him and fight for him it is because of His gracious steadfast love for him! There is no hope in any other man:

Psalm 108:12 LSB

Oh give us help against the adversary, For salvation by man is worthless.

We offer God only our cowardice and treachery and fearful unbelief—no other man can lead us in the losing battles God calls us to:

Only He offers us COURAGE (v. 13)

Psalm 108:13 LSB

Through God we shall do valiantly, And it is He who will tread down our adversaries.

G. K. Chesterton once wrote that

The one perfectly divine thing, the one glimpse of God's paradise given on earth, is to fight a losing battle - and not lose it. G.K. Chesterton, Times Abstract and Brief Chronicle, 1904-1905)

Beloved, God delights in hopeless causes, desperate last stands, impossible odds, the last gasp of resistance against overwhelming and complete defeat. Has He not written the entire story of redemption this way? From Abraham’s desperate rescue of Lot from Chedorlaomer and the five kings of the plain, Sisera and his iron chariots being overthrown by mud and a bottle of milk, Gideon’s three hundred soldiers routing hordes of Midianites; Elijah standing alone on Mount Carmel in the face of hundreds of Baal worshippers—God loves those stories!

And the greatest moment of the hopeless cause, the losing battle, was that day outside the gates of Jerusalem when God Himself in human flesh died alone, swallowed up by evil rebellion; the Light of the World snuffed out, the only hope of mankind’s rescue tortured to death on a gibbet. And that was the moment that everything changed!

The most valiant Man ever to walk the face of the earth, Jesus Christ, displayed more courage in the face of hopeless odds, more steadfastness in a losing battle than any other man in history. And since that moment on that Cross—because of that moment, in fact—His followers have been the most valiant men and women in history.

From John’s disciple Polycarp being burned alive rather than saving himself by cursing Christ, to Athanasius standing against the world in defense of Christ’s deity to Martin Luther’s “Here I stand, I can do no other—God help me!” To Ridley and Latimer burning at the stake to light a candle that by God’s grace has never gone out in England, to Marie Durand locked in a tower in France for 38 years rather than renounce her faith in Christ to Jim Eliot accepting death at the end of an Auca spear in Ecuador to John Allen Chau bleeding out on the beach of North Sentinel Island for a chance to tell the Sentinelese that Jesus loves them. There is no quality that enables a man to encounter danger with firmness and personal bravery like that which comes from belonging by faith to Jesus Christ!

This is the song to strengthen your heart with the sure promises of God each morning—the song praising your loving King, the song of confidence in your sovereign King, the song of valor under your merciful King. He is not calling you to ease or comfort or luxury—He is calling you to come lose your life.

In 1732, two young German Christians, Johann Leonhard Dober and David Nitschmann, heard about the appalling conditions of African slaves in the West Indies, and decided they would go and preach to the slaves. When they were told that white men would not be permitted to mingle with the slave population, they went down to the harbor and sold themselves to a slave owner bound for the West Indies so that they would be free to preach the Gospel to their fellow slaves. And as the ship pulled out of the harbor, they cried to their family members standing on the docks, “May the Lamb Who was slain receive the reward for His suffering!” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravian_slaves, retrieved 8/18/2026)

Christian, what losing battle is your glorious, sovereign, merciful King calling you to follow Him into for His glory? Make no mistake—this isn’t about some puny personal ambition; this isn’t some blasphemous twaddle about “claiming your miracle” or “living your best life”. This is a blood-earnest call to make your life count for the sake of the glory of God in the Gospel. This is a call for you to be able to lay your head down on your pillow every night able to say “I know that this day my life has counted for the sake of the Kingdom, especially for those currently beyond the reach of the Gospel”.

This is about the courage to speak up for Christ when you’d rather be silent, to reach out in compassion to that lost and hurting soul that you’d rather pass by, to sacrifice your comfort or security for the sake of making Christ known at your job, at your school, with your neighbors, in your family. Start each day strengthening your heart with His sure promises, preparing yourself to follow Him into every hopeless battle for the sake of your eternal joy the eternal glory of your Savior, Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION

Hebrews 13:20–21 LSB

Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, our Lord Jesus, equip you in every good thing to do His will, by doing in us what is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

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