Psalm 68 - Defanged Demons and Church Leaders

Hello, and welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. We are in for a treat today.

Psalm 68 is an amazing song. And I had not really understood much of the psalm before probably about last year, as I was reading through the book, The Unseen Realm, by Dr. Michael Heiser.

And he brought out several elements of the area in which Israel was located, some of the things that the peoples around Israel thought and said and did that really brings this psalm to life.

And you can see what David is claiming about the God of Israel as he writes this psalm. So let's dive right into it today. It's about 35 verses or so.

So we're going to go through and, Lord Willen, get some encouragement from our day, see Jesus for who he is and see what our call is as believers as a result. The inscription for Psalm 68 says this, for the choir director, a Psalm of David, a song.

God arises, his enemies scatter, and those who hate him flee from his presence. A smoke is blown away, so you blow them away. As wax melts before the fire, so the wicked are destroyed before God.

But the righteous are glad they rejoice before God and celebrate with joy. Sing to God, sing praises to his name, exult him who rides on the clouds. His name is Yahweh, and celebrate before him.

God in his holy dwelling is a father of the fatherless, and a champion of widows. God provides homes for those who are deserted. He leads out the prisoners to prosperity, but the rebellious live in a scorched land.

God, when you went out before your people, when you marched through the desert, the earth trembled, and the skies poured rain before God, the God of Sinai, before God, the God of Israel. You, God, showered abundant rain.

You revived your inheritance when it languished. Your people settled in it. God, you provided for the poor by your goodness.

The Lord gave the command. A great company of women brought the good news. The kings of the armies flee.

They flee. She who stays at home divides the spoil. While you lie among the sheep pens, the wings of a dove are covered with silver and its feathers with glistening gold.

When the Almighty scattered kings in the land, it snowed on Zalmon. Mount Bashan is God's towering mountain. Mount Bashan is a mountain of many peaks.

Why gaze with envy, you mountain peaks, at the mountain God desired for his abode? Yahweh will dwell there forever. God's chariots are tens of thousands, thousands and thousands.

The Lord is among them in the sanctuary as he was at Sinai. You ascended to the heights taking away captives. You received gifts from people, even from the rebellious, so that Yahweh God might dwell there.

Blessed be the Lord. Day after day he bears our burdens. God is our salvation.

Salah. Our God is a God of salvation, an escape from death belongs to Yahweh, my Lord. Surely God crushes the heads of his enemies, the hairy brow of one who goes on in his guilty acts.

The Lord said, I will bring them back from Bashan. I will bring them back from the depths of the sea, so that your foot may wade in blood, and your dog's tongues may have their share from the enemies.

People have seen your procession, God, the procession of my God, my King in the sanctuary. Singers lead the way with musicians following. Among them are young women playing tambourines.

Bless God in the assemblies. Bless Yahweh from the fountain of Israel. There is Benjamin, the youngest, leading them, the rulers of Judah in their assembly, the rulers of Zebulun, the rulers of Naphtali.

Your God has decreed your strength. Show your strength, God, you who have acted on our behalf. because of your temple at Jerusalem, kings will bring tribute to you.

Rebuke the beast in the reeds, the herd of bulls with the calves of the peoples. Trample underfoot those with bars of silver. Scatter the peoples who take pleasure in war.

Ambassadors will come from Egypt. Cush will stretch out its hands to God. Sing to God, you kingdoms of the earth.

Sing praise to the Lord, Selah. To him who rides in the ancient, highest heavens. Look, he thunders with his powerful voice.

Ascribe power to God. His majesty is over Israel. His power is among the clouds.

God, you are awe-inspiring in your sanctuaries. The God of Israel gives power and strength to his people. Blessed be God.

So there you have this very triumphant Psalm that is written just extolling how great God is in verse after verse after verse.

Let's go through, and I want to highlight, especially the center section of this Psalm is something that the New Testament writers pick up on, and they bring into the conversation about Jesus.

So, because of that, I want to get to that point specifically. But let's begin at the first. So, God arising in verse number one is enemies scattering, those who hate him fleeing from his presence, like smoke before the wind and like wax before fire.

That is how the wicked are fleeing. They are destroyed. They are gone from God's presence.

It's much like when you have a light that turns on, you've got the different cockroaches and bugs. They scatter in front of the light because there is no safety for them in that place.

And so it is, even I think about John chapter three, where John the writer talks about mankind. And when Jesus came and he brought the light, they didn't listen to him and they didn't come to the light because their deeds were evil.

He says, but everyone that like loves righteousness, that wants to come to the light, they come so that their deeds may be shown to have been accomplished by God.

Your reaction to the truth about you being revealed, I think of, man, I think it's something that paul says, John might also allude to some of this in first John as well.

If we bring our sins and our failures and our flaws into the light to say, this, these are my weaknesses, like this is who I am in my fallenness, and I don't want this, like I don't claim this, this is an unwelcome guest in my life and in my soul.

Man, there is freedom there, there is joy, there is, you can breathe easy because no one can bring anything against you that you haven't already said, like this is an area that I struggle with.

And for you to say like this has no hold on me, I'm not beholding to keep this in my personality, or I'm not beholding to keep these in my life, I want to be rid of these, and I want to be entirely the Lord's, what freedom there is in that.

But if we hold on to sin, if we try and pretend like we don't have any sin, and so we're not open with others, we're not doing a James Chapter 5 of confessing our faults to one another.

If we are holding on to our sin and keeping it secret, then when something comes out, then it's world ending. We go, oh no, now what will everyone think of me?

Versus if we realize what Scripture says, and we are honest and open and transparent with our brothers and sisters, man, there is such life in that. But here, the wicked, they don't do that.

And so they flee from God's presence in the presence of radiation, which can be great for powering things or for warming up food in the microwave or whatever else have you. That's good as long as there is safety.

And obviously we know our safety comes from Jesus, from the fact that God loves us and has forgiven us. And so as a result of that, we have nothing to fear from God's holiness, that emanating holy perfection.

But those that refuse to follow the Lord, they don't have that. And so in his presence, they will be done away with. Verse number three, it says, the righteous are glad, they rejoice before God and celebrate with joy.

OK, verses four through six are really cool. You have sing to God, sing praises to his name. Again, the command, sing is not optional for the child of God.

A person that doesn't sing or at least attempt to sing or something like that, they are not walking with the Lord. And that's frankly as plain and simple as I can make it.

All of the commands in scripture make it so that the only alternative to singing or trying to sing is disobedience to the word of God. It doesn't matter if you've got a terrible voice. God doesn't care about if you can make it on American Idol.

And maybe you might not sing out at like the top of your lungs. There was one guy at our church back in Washington and he would not have won any prizes.

He would not have perhaps had anyone be like, hey, this person, would you please sing for this family event or for this thing? But he sang at the top of his lungs.

And that was such an encouragement, brought such a smile to my face as a music pastor, because even if it wasn't technically correct, it was worshipful to the God that this man loved with all of his heart and had followed for decades.

For you today, you might not be one that's singing at the top of your lungs, but you ought to sing to God. Okay, that was the first part of verse number four.

So sing to God, exalt him who rides on the clouds, his name is Yahweh, and celebrate before him. Okay, what's up with the cloud rider here?

This was one of the descriptions that was often given to Baal, the Canaanite and Philistines God, and to Marduk, the Babylonian's God. They talked about that deity as being the cloud rider.

So maybe in more common parlance, you'd think about maybe Thor or Zeus, that they're on these clouds, they're bringing thunder, they're bringing lightning, all that kind of stuff.

So that was one of the ways that the peoples around Israel talked about their gods. And here, David and later editors, as we would see even in verse 29, because of the mention of the temple that had not been built yet during the time of David.

So this was like David's initial composition that other people added some, added some phrases or added some words or things on to.

Much like today, you might have, you know, Chris Tomlin, who adds a chorus of My Chains are Gone to Amazing Grace, something like that. So you have David saying, OK, these other peoples around us, they think that they have a cloud writing God.

But Yahweh is the only real true God. He's the one that is really ultimately in charge of everything. And every other God is subservient to him.

All of these spiritual beings, the angels and the demons, they have to go through him to do anything in this world. And so God is the real one. He's the sovereign one.

You think that Baal rescues you. You think that Marduk gives you water for your crops. But God is the one who is this cloud rider.

This is even picked up in Daniel chapter 7 with the son of man who defeats this earth's kingdoms and rulers and then sits at the right hand of Yahweh or ascends up to Yahweh in that passage.

And it is a clear indication, okay, this is not just some regular person. This isn't just a human. This is a divine person.

And because there's only one God, Yahweh exists and in some way he exists and is also this son of man.

He is also this angel of Yahweh that we would read about so many times in the Pentateuch and in the story of Judges and the fourth man in the fire in the book of Daniel.

That the Trinity, though not explicitly stated in the Old Testament, was alluded to, that there were these clues that something's going on, that our God, Yahweh, is so much more than we could ever imagine or think. So God is this cloud rider.

We're called to celebrate before him. Verses five and six. When you think about an amazing God, what do you think he might do?

Do you think he might command heavenly armies? Do you think he might be the one that would, you know, craft rivers and just do amazing things, being thrown in fire? Certainly.

But what does David here highlight about this cloud riding God, the one who commands nature and gravity and is far above all other spiritual beings? Verse 5, God in his holy dwelling is a father of the fatherless.

When we think about our amazing God, yes, he's incredible. Yes, he's lofty. Yes, he's perfect.

But he cares about those who have lost everything, those who have no recourse, those who don't have a dad or a mom. He cares about them. That's the kind of God that you serve.

Not only is he a father of the fatherless, he is a champion of widows.

He cares about women being done right in this world, where people could say, Ah, well, I don't really want to deal with, you know, maybe a single mom, and that's just not desirable to me. Or what could they give to me?

God says, I'm a champion of the widows. This was something that even as David looked at his family history, he would see Ruth that was a widow.

He would see Naomi that was a widow and how God saved them and cared for them and brought a husband, a new husband into Ruth's life and cared for Naomi and gave children. All of that. So this was something personal for David that he had seen.

And he goes, this is who God is. Yes, he cares about the world. Yes, he reigns over all spiritual beings, good and evil.

But yet, he cares about widows. He cares about those that maybe everyone else has forgotten. He is there for them.

Verse number six, God provides homes for those who are deserted. God cares about those that are experiencing homelessness. It says he leads out the prisoners to prosperity.

He cares about those that have messed up in their past or have been prisoners of war or perhaps have been wrongly incarcerated, that God cares about all of those people and he leads them so that they are not perpetually paying for their sins or for

their crimes, that they are led out into prosperity. And what a wonderful God this is. He says, but the rebellious live in a scorched land.

He says, everyone that wants to follow God, God will care for, God will provide, God will do amazing, miraculous things. But those that refuse to follow God, they're out on their own.

Those are fatherless and widows and prisoners and rebellious, that they're just stuck with them. But when we turn to God, what wonder and life and joy there is with him. Then David references the Exodus again, even as we saw a couple episodes ago.

God going out before his people, when they marched through the desert, the earth trembled and the skies poured rain before the God of Sinai and the God of Israel. God showered abundant rain and revived the inheritance when it languished.

He says, your people settled in it. God, you provided for the poor by your goodness. God views the poor with love.

That's not something as Americans that we often value.

Or at least especially for maybe some of those that would be from kind of a libertarian or a Republican background, we go, man, the poor, if they really wanted to, they would be just as rich as me.

If they were really good, if they didn't have all of these terrible traits, then they would be just like me and they could get a leg up. But God says, for your heart posture.

Now, certainly, economic stances, social programs, all of that can be hashed out. And not every, not everything that says, I don't know if it's wise to give all of these things, or I don't know if it is lastingly helpful to people to do this or that.

Not all of that is disrespect for the poor. But what we ought to have is in our heart as Christians, something that says these people are made in the image of God, loved and known by him from all eternity past.

And so because of that, even if I can't maybe give them all sorts of things, I'm still going to love them in my heart. I'm not going to view them with hatred or disdain.

Now, that might not mean that you, you know, take a bunch of random people that you've never met into your home with your family. You know, it might not mean that. But at the very least, what is your heart posture towards these people?

When words come into your mind to think about the poor, are you automatically thinking in derogatory, slanderous ways despite not having known each individual person? Obviously, wisdom comes into play and all sorts of things like that.

But for your heart posture, for the thoughts in your mind, for the words that you would use to describe people made in the image of God, are you one that loves the poor like God does? Or do you have a natural hatred for the poor?

I will say a hatred for the poor is our natural heart position. You don't have to be taught that. You naturally experience that.

And life will reinforce that mindset in you. So fight against it. Fight against it by reading through Proverbs and see what God says.

Fight against it by reading through Psalms and see what David and others wrote about God's attitude toward the poor. Much more could be said. Going to go on here.

Verse 11, The Lord gave the command, a great company of women brought the good news. If you're a woman today, bring the good news of Jesus into every situation you can. The kings of the armies flee.

They flee. She who stays at home divides the spoiling, saying even those not going out to battle are experiencing the benefit of God working on behalf of his people.

And there it even says, verse 13 and 14, while you lie among the sheep pens, when you are in a desperate position, it says, the wings of a dove are covered with silver and its feathers with glistening gold.

He says even these like birds that aren't great, like these are, you know, birds that you would give if you were poor as a person in Israel. He says even poor people gifts, like it's covered in silver and gold.

There is great riches and happiness to be had when God works on behalf of his people. OK, I'm going to go verses 15 to 18. And I think this will about get us to the end of what we'll highlight for today.

Mount Bashan is God's towering mountain. Mount Bashan is a mountain of many peaks. OK, Mount Bashan, north of Israel, in Dan.

This is actually, some people have, so it's in the same kind of region as Mount Hormon, which was a place of great idolatry, demon worship, sacrifices to false gods and idols that was there in that region.

And it was something that there was just a consistent expectation that if you were going to Mount Hormon or Mount Bashan, this region in the north, you were going to experience spiritual darkness. There was just always wickedness there.

And it didn't matter who was living there. If it was the Canaanites, the Philistines, even Israelites that were up there, like this was just an evil, wicked place. And here God is saying, no, like everything belongs to me.

There is nothing beyond the reach and power and conquest of our God. He will reign victorious over it all. And so here God is saying, God wants even these places that were strongholds of darkness, He wants to conquer them and to live there.

That's verse 16, why gaze with envy, you mountain peaks at the mountain God desired for His abode. Yahweh will dwell there forever.

Then verse 18, so God is saying, I'm going to own these places that were once places of devil worship, and now my name will be worshiped there.

Just as all of these people are benefiting from my rule, so places of darkness, they're now going to be under my rule as well. And then verse 18, it says, you ascended to the heights, taking away captives.

You received gifts from people, even from the rebellious, so that Yahweh God might dwell there. And you might say, okay, well, what's that about? Well, Ephesians chapter 4, paul tells us in God's sovereignty what God was doing.

Okay, verse number 7 of Ephesians 4, now grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. For it says, when he ascended on high, he took the captives captive. He gave gifts to people.

But what does he ascended mean except that he also descended to the lower parts of the earth? The one who descended is also the one who ascended far above all the heavens to fill all things.

And he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, equipping the saints for the work of the ministry to build up the body of Christ.

Here, as paul highlights this passage, he says, this is about Jesus destroying the demonic forces.

So when Jesus died, 1 Peter 3, Ephesians 4, Colossians 3, no, sorry, Colossians 2, among other places, would tell us that Jesus descended into the grave, into Sheol, into Hades, that he took all of those that were there in Paradise or Abraham's

bosom, that you would read about even in the story of the rich man and Lazarus. He preached condemnation to the damned and the demons that were in what we would know now as hell, also referenced in 2 Peter 2 as Tartarus.

Basically saying like, hey, your condemnation is just because you have, in your life, you rebelled against God. And because you did not turn to him, you have gotten exactly what you wanted.

And so then he ascended, brought those from Paradise, from Abraham's bosom up to heaven, now that there was access made through Jesus because the price had been paid and they could enter into God's presence without being consumed.

But in doing that, taking away the keys of death and hell, as you would read about in, I think it's Revelation 1 through 5, that Jesus spoiled the principalities and powers, as you would read about in Colossians 2.

And he made a show of them openly, just being like, I have won, I have defeated all of this.

This is the son of man in one sense, having conquered this world's kingdoms and the penalty of sin and death and all of the darkness of this world through his sacrificial death and then his resurrection.

And then he ascended up to the Father, if you will, on the clouds, that as Jesus ascended into heaven at the end of those 40 days, that the clouds took him out of their sight, as we would read in Acts chapter 1, and I believe possibly in Matthew 28.

So, Jesus, he spoils the powers of hell, and he reigns victorious that here at Mount Bashan, this place that pictures demon worship and the stronghold of evil, that Jesus is victorious over all of it.

And in his ascension, he then gives gifts to the church, and those gifts are spiritual leaders that can equip us. And certainly, there's great mysteries there that I do not understand all of this at all.

But what a wonderful truth that Jesus is victorious over everything, over every human situation, over every demonic situation, over every relationship and economic and justice situation, that God is over it all. He is the ruler of this whole world.

And so, we can worship him, we can sing to him, because he is such an incredible God.

The one who, if you will, has de-fanged the snake, the serpent from the garden, who has crushed his head, who has made it to where he is going to come again with tens of thousands of his saints, these chariots that we heard of, thousands and

thousands. And he is the one that will reign on the throne of his father David forever. What an incredible God this is. So for you today, are you worshiping him?

Are you following him? Are you loving him? Are you singing to him?

Are you turning to him, no matter what difficulty you are encountering? Are you thinking that Satan or temptation or evil or the world or peer pressure is too powerful for you?

Realize that God already de-fanged all of those things so that there is no true impact it can make on the child of God.

And then what that causes us to do then is to say, okay, am I listening then to my spiritual leaders that this victorious God has said, listen to these people and they will help you be equipped and mature for the work that I have for you?

That's such an incredible like mystery and truth to me that God would do all of these things and tie it together with the local church. What an amazing God.

We are well out of time for it today, but thank you for tuning in and I hope that hearing about your amazing God would prompt you to want to follow him today. Thanks for tuning in. Have a great day.