Psalm 64 - Mom They’re Throwing Arrows Again

Hello, and thanks for being here today on Tabernacle Talk. We have, after this episode, we only have eight episodes left in Book 2 of Psalms.

And right about at that point, we'll be right around 200 episodes for the year. And it has been so much fun to go through so much of God's Word with y'all. I'm going to try and do some very quick math in my head.

Between 72 Psalms, we had 29 chapters in Acts that I think was 48 episodes from that. We went through all of the Gospel of Mark.

We went through the 27 or 28 chapters in Leviticus and then knocked out a bunch of tiny ones like Ruth and 2nd Peter, 2nd John, Obadiah, Zephaniah. It has been just a wild fun ride going through scripture with you.

If you have any maybe things you would like to hear about or if there's a particular book of the Bible that you're like, hey, it would be really cool if we went through that, please let me know. I would love to walk through that with you.

Today, we are in kind of a shorter psalm. And this is one that doesn't have any stated connections to any other portions of scripture. So it might not be a dreadfully long time today, but the inscription for Psalm 64 reads like this.

For the choir director, a psalm of David. He says, God, hear my voice when I am an anguish. Protect my life from the terror of the enemy.

Hide me from the scheming of wicked people, from the mob of evildoers who sharpen their tongues like swords and aim bitter words like arrows, shooting from concealed places at the blameless. They shoot at him suddenly and are not afraid.

They adopt an evil plan. They talk about hiding traps and say who will see them. They defy crimes and say we have perfected a secret plan.

The inner man and the heart are mysterious. But God will shoot them with arrows. Suddenly they will be wounded.

They will be made to stumble. Their own tongues work against them. All who see them will shake their heads.

Then, everyone will fear and will tell about God's work, for they will understand what He has done. The righteous one rejoices in Yahweh and takes refuge in Him. And all those who are upright in heart will offer praise.

Here's kind of a similar thematic Psalm to what we've been going through of David is in trouble and he's praying for God's deliverance. He's describing his enemies, but then also describing how amazing God is.

I love in this particular song, David, number one, he's praying. He's saying, God, I need you to do this. Will will you help me?

Will you hear me? He's also obviously doing some descriptions of these. This is the sin of these people as they are interacting with me and with others, like he's naming sin.

He's also kind of like asking in faith. I think it's in the New Testament. David's even described a time or two as a prophet.

And so here he's like kind of prophesying of saying, here is what God will do against these wicked people. And then it goes back to just praising the Lord again.

And I think this full gamut of emotions that David's running in here, man, I need that today. Today when I woke up, woke up about 5:45 a.m. And it's about 4.30 right now as I'm recording.

And so it's been a little bit of a longer day. Had sermon prep that I did. Was working on our church website.

Was going over some like future things for our church. Had a therapy session. You know, saying my daughter, happy birthday this morning.

And looking forward to getting back to her right as the workday ends. And with all of these different things, all of it brings different emotions. Times when I'm going like, hey, God, thank you for everything that you've given me.

Or times when I'm like, hey, God, could you really help out in this particular circumstance? I'm scared. Or God, I'm feeling angry.

Or God, I need you to work in that person. That God is there for all of it. That God hears all of it.

He doesn't just want to hear your praise. He wants to hear your complaints, your fears. He wants to hear, frankly, even what you want to take place.

I think of James Chapter 4, where James instructs some of the rich people.

He says, go now to the person that's saying, hey, you know, a year from now, I'm going to go here and here and do this and this, and I'm going to be rich and I'm going to make tons of money.

And he says, but you don't even know what tomorrow is going to bring. He says, so say, if it's the Lord's will, I will do this or that. And certainly, if we say that to other people, hey, if it's the Lord's will, I'm going to do this.

Well, let's say it to God to say, God, if it's your will, will you allow this to take place? That's us taking our requests to him. So sometimes, if it's just God, I would love if this would happen.

I saw some friends on Facebook the other day going, hey, I really would love to have a Christian godly spouse. That's something we can bring to the Lord. For some people, I know right now, we're working towards closing on a house.

And I'm praying like, God, please help there to not be any hiccups. Please help everything to go smoothly. Please help there to be, you know, sufficient finances, all that kind of stuff.

We can bring all of our requests for what we want God to do. We can bring it all to the Lord because he hears it. Every circumstance of life, every emotion we have, every type of thing that we could say to God, he wants us to bring it all to him.

Okay, verse one. God, hear my voice when I'm in anguish. Protect my life from the terror of the enemy.

He says, God, right now, I'm in anguish. I'm feeling it. Life isn't going super great, and so I need you to hear me.

I need you to pay attention to me, to have it cause you to act as a result of the fact that you hear me. And certainly, this is a bold thing to say to the Creator God, but it's what he wants us to say to him. So I love that.

He says, protect my life from the terror of the enemy. Hear David obviously asking for legitimate protection and safety.

I can think of our souls that were in danger, that we were condemned, that we belonged to Satan as the prince of the power of the air, that we were just kind of cogs in the machine, that we were slaves to sin, as Romans 6 would say, but God saved us.

And so now we are protected.

Our lives, not just our physical nowadays lives, but our eternal lives have been protected by God from the terror of the enemy so that we don't have to fear about ever being removed from God's love or God's grasp or eternal life, but that we can have

confidence because of what Jesus has done. Verse number two, hide me from the scheming of wicked people, from the mob of evildoers who sharpen their tongues like swords and aim bitter words like arrows shooting from concealed places at the blameless.

They shoot at him suddenly and are not afraid. Here I think certainly there are times in many people's lives where people are conspiring against them, whether it be family members for any number of reasons.

Sometimes it's co-workers, sometimes it's perhaps a boss, or sometimes even something like neighbors, or a spouse or someone that is conspiring against someone. And if you're in that spot, know that number one, God sees you.

Number two, that Jesus has been there. Like this, again, is from David's perspective, but this is exactly what Jesus went through.

The scheming of wicked people, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the Sanhedrin, along with the Romans, they all conspired together to arrest Jesus and to put them on trial to beat him, to whip him, to mock him, and to crucify him.

All of that was done from the scheming of wicked people, from a mob that said, crucify him, crucify him. They had sharpened tongues like swords and bitter words like arrows.

If you're really the son of God, why don't you take yourself down from there? Tell us who hits you if you are really the holy one of Israel. All of that came on Jesus.

Verse number 7, they adopt an evil plan. They talk about hiding traps and say, who will see them? They devise crimes and say we have perfected a secret plan.

If you have to scheme against someone else, you're in the wrong. Like, I don't know that many people in that particular spot in their life would be listening to the podcast this many minutes in. But I do want to say, like, do right by people.

Don't look to disenfranchise others. Don't think about how you can benefit from the loss of others. In many ways, this would be one of the things that it's not wise, oftentimes, to gamble.

How you treat others and what you're willing to take from others is kind of a reflection of, frankly, your relationship with God. That God doesn't look for what he can steal from you. He looks at what he can give to you to bless you.

Certainly, we can have tons of fun with different things. I've spent many an evening playing poker with some good friends, but not for actual money, just for the little chips or whatever themselves.

I've heard of people doing it with pennies or whatever else have you. Certainly, there's elements of small enough stakes that it would just be fun, and inconsequential.

You're not either wasting money or in effect robbing from others or taking advantage of other people. But frankly, I don't have it in my notes or anything to mention that. That was just something that I felt like the Lord did want me to mention.

Just as I think here about ones that are scheming perfect plans against others, that that can sometimes be done in connection with gambling, certainly with gambling sites and in different things that are very available nowadays, taking advantage of

people that hope for big payoffs. And oftentimes, they're just being nickled and dimed away from what God has blessed them with.

And so I don't know if that's for you today, or if that was just for me, that God said, you know, Bryon, you need to make sure that you're not taking advantage of others. The end of verse 6 says, the inner man and the heart are mysterious.

And I think of the words of Jeremiah, where it says that the heart is desperately wicked and deceitful. Who can know it?

We vastly overestimate our righteousness, and we vastly underestimate how wicked our hearts are, how our emotions and inner drive what motivates us. We underestimate how often that is completely self-centered.

And here, as David is looking at these people, he's saying, like, I can't imagine what is in the hearts or the minds of these people to be able to go through this or to say this. Like, how can they live with their wickedness?

And I'm thankful that Jesus is the one that he cleanses us. He is renewing our mind day by day. He is bringing us peace and comfort.

He is giving us the fruit of the spirit of his righteousness and love and all sorts of wonderful things so that we will not be who we naturally are just in Adam, just in our flesh, but that we can be made new through Jesus.

Verse number seven, but God will shoot them with arrows. So the arrows that they were shooting out at others, now arrows are coming back at them. He says, suddenly they will be wounded.

They will be made to stumble. Their own tongues work against them. You know, sometimes if a person talks a whole lot, eventually those words are going to get them in trouble.

And so the words that they said, there is now a reckoning for them. He says, all who see them will shake their heads. It's a symbol of derision of, oh man, that person, goodness gracious.

He says, they will shake their heads at them. Then everyone will fear and will tell about God's work, and they will understand what he has done. Are you fearing Jesus?

Are you telling about God's work? Do you understand what he has done for you? Because of the natural response, when we know who God is and what he has done for us, the natural response is to tell others.

We have to kind of be numbed over the course of time to lose that desire to tell other people about Jesus. Then, verse number 10. The righteous one rejoices in Yahweh and takes refuge in him.

All those who are upright in heart will offer praise. There is safety to be found in God, and we can rejoice in him. We can be glad.

We can just find identity and purpose in Jesus. Wanted to end this particular episode just with a little paragraph from a book called In the Lord, I Take Refuge. And this is by, it's either Dane or Gavin Ortland, by Dane Ortland.

And it just walks through the Psalms and has just a few paragraphs about every single Psalm of devotional thoughts. And I thought that the entry for today, today's Psalm, Psalm 64, was incredibly valuable.

He says, There are few places in scripture where the destructive power of the tongue is more vividly described than here. Accusations are being conjured up in a sinister plot to ruin a righteous man's reputation. But note the rhythm of this Psalm.

The first half speaks of the words of evil people as arrows, while the last half speaks of the word of God as arrows. The overall point is that we dare not seek to respond with verbal arrows of our own. Justice is God's to give.

We can either seek justice now and be further hardened, or let God exact justice in his good time and be softened in our own hearts. Consider our use of words. How do we respond when others speak ill of us?

What do we do when we learn someone is quietly plotting against us? When gossip gets back to us and we learn someone we thought was a trusted friend actually is not. Our words reveal what is truly happening in our hearts far better than any x-ray.

When our immediate verbal response is to respond to evil with evil, we demonstrate that we're not in tune with the gospel. For the gospel is a word of grace to us, and enjoying such grace is the only way to respond with words of grace to others.

God will bring all cruel words to justice. For now, our job is to rejoice in Yahweh and take refuge in Him. That was a challenge to me.

What's my response when I hear about people plotting, when I hear about the wickedness that others are doing, or the lack of love or care for myself that others have? Is my response to lash out, or is it to say, God, I need you, I need your justice?

May we rely on Him and look to Him in all of our circumstances. Thanks for tuning in. Have a wonderful day.