Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

We read in the Book of Numbers that whenever it was time for the camp to move on from one wilderness location to another, Moses would cry out before the Ark of the Covenant,

Numbers 10:35 (ESV)

35 ... “Arise, O Lord, and let your enemies be scattered, and let those who hate you flee before you.”

Psalm 68 starts off on a note of the power and unstoppable authority of God based on that verse:

Psalm 68:1–2 (ESV)

1 God shall arise, his enemies shall be scattered; and those who hate him shall flee before him! 2 As smoke is driven away, so you shall drive them away; as wax melts before fire, so the wicked shall perish before God!

With an opening verse like that, you’d expect this psalm to be a warrior-psalm; a hymn to the power and might of God as He vanquishes His enemies and conquers all His opposition.

And as you read down through, there are certainly a lot of verses that follow that same theme:

Psalm 68:21 (ESV)

21 But God will strike the heads of his enemies, the hairy crown of him who walks in his guilty ways.

Psalm 68:30 (ESV)

30 Rebuke the beasts that dwell among the reeds, the herd of bulls with the calves of the peoples.

Trample underfoot those who lust after tribute; scatter the peoples who delight in war.

But at the same time, there is another theme running through this song—almost a complete opposite sentiment:

Psalm 68:5 (ESV)

5 Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation.

Psalm 68:10 (ESV)

10 your flock found a dwelling in it; in your goodness, O God, you provided for the needy.

Psalm 68:20 (ESV)

20 Our God is a God of salvation, and to God, the Lord, belong deliverances from death.

These two themes—God’s power and victory, and God’s gentleness and kindness—are woven together throughout this psalm.

Psalm 68 has a reputation of being a difficult psalm to “pin down”; partly because of the shifts in tone, and partly because there are some verses that are difficult to translate satisfactorily in English.

(Charles Spurgeon said in his commentary that when it came to Psalm 68,

The Psalm is at once surpassingly excellent and difficult.... Our slender scholarship has utterly failed us, and we have had to follow a surer Guide.

We trust our thoughts may not however prove unprofitable (Spurgeon, C. H. (n.d.).

The treasury of David: Psalms 56-87 (Vol.

3, p. 136).

Marshall Brothers.)

Many scholars suggest that this psalm was the song that David sang as he brought the Ark of the Covenant up from its resting place at Kiriath-jearim to Jerusalem (the passage that we read earlier).

Even in that story, we see the people rejoicing in God’s goodness (as they celebrated before the LORD) and at the same time the severity of God’s holiness (striking down Uzzah for touching the Ark).

This is a reminder to us—reflected here in this psalm—that we must never think simplistically of God.

Uzzah and his family members that put the Ark in the oxcart to be transported believed that God was more merciful than holy—that He would “understand” that Uzzah was breaking His command in touching the Ark because he didn’t want it to fall on the dirt of the threshing floor.

(But, as R.C. Sproul memorably pointed out, Uzzah’s sinful disregard of God’s holiness made his hands more unclean than the dirt the Ark was in danger of touching!)

And so then the ditch on the other side of the road is believing that God is more powerful and mighty than merciful—that He is the God of the lightning that strikes you down and the storm that overwhelms you for your imperfect obedience.

I believe that one of the characteristics of our fallen hearts is that we are always in danger of over-balancing in one or the other of these directions.

At times you lean so far into considering the grace and mercy of God that you trifle with your sin, believing that “God understands; it’s not that big a deal to Him”.

Your Christian life is one of shrugging off your battles with sin and disobedience, figuring that God’s grace will sort it all out one way or another.

Or perhaps for you, seeing the reality of God’s holiness and might and power becomes so oppressive to you that you can never be free of that weight.

You are always, in the back of your mind, trying to parse every action and every deed, afraid that you aren’t being “good enough” to be called a Christian.

Psalm 68, for all of its interpretive challenges and complex internal structure, can help us meditate on these two “diverse excellencies” of God this morning.

This psalm, by weaving together verses about God’s power and conquest of His enemies along with verses of his tender and gentle care for His people, helps us see that these two attributes are perfectly balanced in Him.

If we were to put the message of Psalm 68 in one sentence, I think that it would be that it calls us to

MAGNIFY the MAJESTY of God in the perfect union of His MIGHT and His MERCY

This is a psalm, if you will, about God’s merciful might.

Both of these attributes—merciful and mighty, as we sang earlier in worship—are perfectly brought together in this song of praise that David sings as he brings the Ark into Jerusalem.

We can see both of these themes woven together in Psalm 68—the first is His might, that

I.

He is the God who DECIMATES every ENEMY that OPPOSES Him

Psalm 68:1–2 (ESV)

1 God shall arise, his enemies shall be scattered; and those who hate him shall flee before him! 2 As smoke is driven away, so you shall drive them away; as wax melts before fire, so the wicked shall perish before God!

There are at least three types of enemies that God scatters in this psalm.

If you look down starting at verse 11, you see that God is mighty to scatter

Every USURPING enemy (vv.

11-14)

Psalm 68:11–14 (ESV)

11 The Lord gives the word; the women who announce the news are a great host: 12 “The kings of the armies—they flee, they flee!”

The women at home divide the spoil— 13 though you men lie among the sheepfolds— the wings of a dove covered with silver, its pinions with shimmering gold.

14 When the Almighty scatters kings there, let snow fall on Zalmon.

This is one of the sections that has its difficulties in translating (the silver-winged doves with gold pinions, for instance…) But what we can see clearly here is that God is scattering “the kings of the armies” that oppose Him—the women of Israel announce that the enemy kings who are seeking to rule over Israel have been routed and are running for their lives.

I take this to be a verse about usurping kings—rulers who help themselves to a rulership that they were not given—because of verse 14:

Psalm 68:14 (ESV)

14 When the Almighty scatters kings there, let snow fall on Zalmon.

There is one other place in the Old Testament where Mount Zalmon is mentioned—Judges 9.

It tells the story of Abimelech (the son of Gideon, the judge who defeated the Midianites with only 300 men).

Abimelech wrongly crowned himself king over Israel, and then when his little kingdom fell apart, he went to Mount Zalmon to gather brushwood in order to set fire to his former allies’ stronghold.

It seems as though David refers to this story as a way of saying that there are no rivals to God’s Kingship!

Every usurping enemy will be destroyed—when the Almighty scatters those usurping kings, he says, their bleached bones will cover Mount Zalmon like white snow!

Psalm 68 says that God is the God who decimates every enemy that opposes Him—every usurping enemy, and

Every SUPERNATURAL enemy (vv.

15-16)

Look at verses 15-16:

Psalm 68:15–16 (ESV)

15 O mountain of God, mountain of Bashan; O many-peaked mountain, mountain of Bashan! 16 Why do you look with hatred, O many-peaked mountain, at the mount that God desired for his abode, yes, where the Lord will dwell forever?

As David leads the Ark into Jerusalem, he looks north to the mountains of Bashan (today called the Golan Heights) and mocks them for their jealousy over Mount Zion (where the Ark was headed).

Ancient Canaanite legends all claim that the mountains of Bashan (and Mount Hermon, in particular) were the place where the sons of God first came down to earth, and that the caves at the base of Mount Hermon were literally the gates to Sheol, the underworld.

(You can even trace this further, with Bashan being the realm of Og, King of Bashan in Deuteronomy 3.

He is said to be one of the last remnants of the Rephaim, who were themselves associated with the Nephilim, the half-human half-demonic gigantic offspring of the sons of God and daughters of men in Genesis 6).

Mount Hermon was also said to be the dwelling place of Baal, the storm god, and was also associated with Molech, the god who demanded child sacrifice.

And David, at the head of the procession bringing the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem, looks to Mount Hermon and says “You have nothing that can oppose YHWH!

He will dwell forever with His people, and you cannot oppose Him!”

There is no rival supernatural kingdom that can oppose God; He decimates every enemy that opposes Him!

And in verses 21-23, David goes on to say that God will scatter

Every GUILTY enemy (vv.

21-23)

as well:

Psalm 68:21–23 (ESV)

21 But God will strike the heads of his enemies, the hairy crown of him who walks in his guilty ways.

22 The Lord said, “I will bring them back from Bashan, I will bring them back from the depths of the sea, 23 that you may strike your feet in their blood, that the tongues of your dogs may have their portion from the foe.”

Those enemies who walk in their guilty ways, those enemies who ally with the kingdom of evil in Bashan, those enemies who continue in their hatred and rebellion against God and His decrees will be brought to His justice!

The gruesome imagery of these verses are meant to be distressing to us—God striking their hairy heads, and then His people striking their feet in the blood of His enemies, with even their dogs participating in the downfall of their wickedness.

Make no mistake—this is the God that you are singing about in this psalm!

He is the God who will leave drifts of His enemies’ bones on the mountain, the God Who is utterly unaffected by the supernatural powers of evil and satanic influence, the God who will call His people someday to dance in the blood of His enemies—He is the God of power and might, and He will not be mocked.

God is the God who decimates every enemy that opposes Him—but His might is not the only attribute in view here in Psalm 68.

This psalm is written so that we would magnify the majesty of God in the perfect union of His might and His mercy.

The Scriptures are plain that He is the God who decimates every enemy, but it is just as clear here in our text that

II.

He is the God who DELIGHTS in RESCUING His PEOPLE

Psalm 68:3–6 (ESV)

3 But the righteous shall be glad; they shall exult before God; they shall be jubilant with joy! 4 Sing to God, sing praises to his name; lift up a song to him who rides through the deserts; his name is the Lord; exult before him! 5 Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation.

6 God settles the solitary in a home; he leads out the prisoners to prosperity, but the rebellious dwell in a parched land.

The same God who scatters His enemies when He arises is the God who rescues His people

When they are HELPLESS (vv.