And yes, it is an anniversary for Carol and I, so if you see her today, make sure to let her know how fortunate she is. She's used to it. After 45 years, she's used to it, I tell you. I'm sure you've heard the story about a guy who was telling his friend that he and his wife had just celebrated their 45th anniversary, and he said, well, what did you do for her? He said, I took her to my wife. He said, well, that's really something. He said, what are you going to do for your 50th? He said, I don't know if I can get her. All right, Psalm 108. I've got a lot to say and not much time to say it. So let's get to it. We'll read the entire psalm, and then we'll have prayer. Psalm 108, a psalm or song of David. Oh, God, my heart is fixed. I will sing and give praise even with my glory. Awake, psaltery and harp, I myself will awake early. I will praise Thee, O Lord, among the people. I will sing praises unto Thee among the nation. For thy mercy is great above the heavens, and thy truth reaches unto clouds. Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens, and thy glory above all the earth, that thy love may be delivered Say with thy right hand and answer me. God has spoken in his holiness. I will rejoice. I will divide Shacharim and mete out the valley of Succoth. Gilead is mine. Manasseh is mine. Ephraim also is the strength of mine head. Judah is my lawgiver. Moab is my washcloth. Over Edom will I cast out mine shoe. Over Philistia will I triumph. Who will bring me into the strong city? Who will lead me into Edom? Will not thou, O God, who has cast us off, and will not thou, O God, go forth with our hosts? Give us help from trouble, for vain is the help of man. Through God, we shall do valiantly for he it is that shall tread down our enemies. Father, bless your reading of the word, and now bless us as we look into these things. In Jesus' name, amen. Psalm 108 is very unique in that it is copied from portions of previous psalms. Psalm 108 in our text, verses 1 through 5, is a repeat of Psalm 57, 7 through 11, and then Verses 6 through 13 is a repeat of Psalm 60, verses 5 through 12. So it's interesting that portions of Psalms were taken and put together to form not a new reading, but a new unit in the Psalms. And both of the other songs were written by David. We don't know who made this compilation, and we don't really have any clue as to the timeframe when it was done, although commentators, ones that are smarter than I am, they tend to think that perhaps this was written, this was compiled, as a praise to God when they left the 70 year captivity after being in Babylon for all those years. And we'll reference a couple of things to that as well. Now, Psalm 57 and Psalm 60 were both written during times of trouble. Psalm 57, David wrote that while he was fleeing from Saul. Now he spent, a considerable amount of time. On the run, Saul was trying to kill him, not for any good reason, simply because Saul was jealous and he was rightfully, as it turns out, he was worried that David would become king instead of him. And that did happen, but not because of popular choice, but that was because God rejected Saul's kingdom and had sinned and anointed David in his place. Psalm 60 happened, was written when David was fighting the Syrians and the Edomites. So it's possible that David or someone who lived after him was facing a new challenge and realized that Or we have this to say, God's truth is adaptable to new situations. And old songs become new songs when new challenges are matched with changeless theology. And I thought that was a really good quote. And if you've been a dedicated believer for any length of time, you recognize the fact that we are constantly fighting spiritual battles. Ephesians 6 makes that very clear. Verse 12, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in the high places. I mean, that chapter goes on and it marks out the armor that we have available to successfully navigate those battles. We have the girdle of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, shoes of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation. sword and spear, which of course is God's word. We find a parallel thought over in 2 Corinthians 10, 4, the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, or fleshly, that's what that word means, but mighty through God, through the pulling down of strongholds. If we were fighting a literal battle, I mean, we might be able to take some martial arts lessons. I'd like to see me doing that. But we might, you know, learn how to box, or we might carry a good-sized gun if we might be prepared to fight that kind of battle. But that's not the kind of fight we're in, unfortunately. It's spiritual warfare, and it requires spiritual preparation. and spiritual weapons. And none of us is able to face up to these spiritual conflicts in our own strength. I mean, like David, we need the Lord on our side. 2 Chronicles 30, verse 8, with him is an arm of flesh, but, talking about someone else, but with us is the Lord our God. battles and over and over we're told the Lord will fight your battles for you. Israel experienced that as they entered and overtook the land of Canaan. So let's check in on David here and see what's going on. So if we search the text, first thing we see in the first time verses is Dad, after he had open heart surgery back in 2000 or 2001, I don't remember what it was, but somebody jokingly gave him this verse, and he used it for, you know, he loved a good funny line, and he said, my heart is fixed. He had, you know, bypassed surgery, and so that's what he used, but it actually means, The psalmist here means that his heart, and we're not talking about the physical pump that happens to the chest. We are talking about the center of man's will and his emotions. His heart was steadfast. You hear about people have their eyes fixed on something. He said, my heart is fixed. And I think it's by implication, he said, my heart is fixed on the Lord because he goes on to say, I will sing and give praise, even with my glory. I will sing and give praise. The words here suggest the very definition of a song. And a psalm is a psalm or hymn to be sung and accompanied by a musical instrument. I've never been able to understand, you know, the Church of Christ saying, you know, we've got to do everything in a cappella, no instruments. Well, they had instruments in the Old Testament and they carried over into the New Testament. Ephesians, Colossians both tell us So I think that means we should have musical instruments. And so when he says, I will sing, you know what that means. And he said, I will give praise. That word, that's one Hebrew word, literally means to play the strings of a musical instrument. So when he says, I will sing and give praise, he said, I'm gonna sing and I'm gonna play my guitar, or something like that. He said, I'm going to praise the Lord with psalms. And listen, I'm in favor of instruments being involved in church music, the more the better. Now, of course, everything's supposed to be done decently and in order, but I tell you what, if you read Psalm 150, you find that's a pretty noisy song. It talks about the loud crashing cymbals, and so they certainly were very enthusiastic in the music when they sang to the Lord. Number two in, well, how'd I get that in there? That has to do with the eyes being fixed, how to keep in perfect peace whose mind is faith on Thee. Moving on, the awakening here in verse 2. He says, Awake, psaltery and heart. I myself will awake early. The psaltery was a stringed instrument. And it looked something like a small, compact guitar. It was more like a zither, if you've ever heard of a zither, or a dulcimer, something of that nature. And then the harp was, pretty much as we think of harps today, and that was David's instrument. He played on the harp, and at first, when he played in Saul's presence, it soothed Saul. Saul was battling a lot of inner demons, but he was soothed by David's playing. Later on, as he became... jealous of David. You know, David was there in his presence playing, and Saul trying to impale him with a spear. So their relationship went downhill. But here, David says, awake, psaltery and harp. In other words, let's get these instruments going. When he said, away, I mean, if the song was compiled, as people seem to think, as a return of the Babylonian exile, then it makes a lot of sense, because remember what happened in Babylon? They hanged their harps on the willow trees. And they said, how can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? The Babylonians were going to sing us one of those songs of Zion. Yeah, you've been you've been so cheerful in the past. What about now when you're in captivity? Yeah, sing us one of those songs. Now, they said, we can't do it. Well now it's time to wake up those instruments. They didn't have much music, I don't guess, during that 70-year period, at least not the Lord's music. They had some others, but now it's time to wake up those instruments. He goes on to say, will awake early. Literally, that means I will awaken the dawn. Now, Ferdinand Cambridge said this, usually it is the dawn that awakes men. It says, the solemnist will awake the dawn by his praises before daybreak. So I guess we ought to be up, while it's still dark, and singing and playing our music, and getting our neighbors mad at us. We don't do that much anymore, but I hope that you understand what he's saying, that from the very beginning of the day, We ought to be in an attitude of praise and worship. You know, somebody asked a guy, did you wake up grouchy this morning? He said, no, I let her sleep in. That's, you shouldn't have done that. But, you know, we ought to try to wake up and our first thoughts the Lord and His goodness, His glory, His provision for us. Let me tell you something, that'll change your outlook on life. It'll change your outlook on the entire day. Third, in verse 3, We see the Alleluia. He said there, I will praise thee, O Lord, among the people, and I will sing praises unto thee among the nation. The word Alleluia or Hallelujah, this means praise ye the Lord. We sing the chorus, of course, in Bible school. Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, praise ye the Lord. That's just two ways of saying the same thing. That's what hallelujah means, praise ye the Lord. And he said, I will praise thee, O Lord, among the people, and sing my praises unto thee among the nations. But when we talk about people and nations, this is not new territory. We're talking about the Gentiles. Now, these, of course, are the Jewish people, the Israelites. But yet, he's saying that I will sing even among the Gentiles. Remember, when they went into captivity, they felt like they couldn't sing the songs of Zion. But now that they were returning to their homeland, David says, let's praise the Lord even among the strangers, even among those that held us in captivity. So there was praise, the hallelujah. Next, we talk about the altitude in verse four. For thy mercy is great above the heavens, and thy truth reaches Mercy and truth. Of course, David is using hyperbole here. If you don't know what hyperbole is, it's a deliberate exaggeration when we talk about that's the greatest thing since sliced bread. Well, that's a little bit of hyperbole. What was the greatest thing before? So I spread, you know, that let me know. But anyway, David is saying that mercy and truth are to be highly exalted. When we think about mercy, of grace. Grace is God giving us what we don't deserve. Mercy is God not giving us what we do deserve. And what a wonderful thing God's mercy is. Of course, His mercy is based on His holiness now. He doesn't show mercy on us just because He feels sorry for us and say, well, I'm just going to overlook those sins. God cannot overlooked sin, but those sins were placed on Jesus Christ, of course, at the cross. And then truth, mercy and truth. We must not do anything that sacrifices truth. Truth is of utmost importance. You know, there's a lot of things that preachers, for example, could say that would be very pleasing to people's ears. And the Bible talks about that, doesn't it? They'll heed to themselves. Teachers in the last days have itching ears. And preachers will tell people what they want to hear. They're not true preachers, of course, but they're telling folks things that are pleasing to the ear and to the flesh. But here he says, truth, what does it say? He said, thy truth reaches under the clouds. The truth of God. It abides forever and men can try to tear it down but God's truth is it's hot is mercy and is true are a high altitude then verse 5 we have the ascribing of To ascribe something means to recognize it and to give it its rightful honor. So what does he say here in verse five? Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens, and thy glory above all the earth. Now, God does not, within himself, need to be exalted above what he is. It's not like that God says, well, you know, if you don't exalt me, then I'm going to be alone. I'm just not going to be what I should be. No, I mean, you know, God is exalted. He doesn't need our exaltation and our praise. He's exalted in his own glory. He was exalted and glorious before we ever came on the scene. But we need to be reminded of His glory. I mean, like Isaiah, we need a reminder that God is high and lifted up. And not only that, we need to show that to others. We need to show others that God holds the preeminent place. And that's why we need to be careful about just being flippant about how we talk about God. Is that why we do not use God's name in vain? We don't want people to think of God as less than what he is, and we don't need to think of God as being just sort of a common kind of guy, and I've heard people go, ah, you know, he's the old man upstairs. No, no, no, that is not a good way to refer to our sovereign God. Make sure that we exalt him in our lives, in our words, and before others. So there's a lot of praise going on there. We move on now to the second section and that is power in verses 6 through 9. The first thing we see in verse 6 is that God saves. God saves. Verse 6, that thy beloved may be delivered, save with thy right hand and answer me. Now take note that before Any mission is made of God delivering His people, saving His people. The solace engages in praise and worship. No matter what our circumstances, God is worthy of our worship and our praise. We're going through a dark valley. God is still worthy of our praise. And I've said this before. I mean, if God lets me starve to death, And you can tell I'm not in any danger of doing that any time soon. But if God would let me starve, he'd still be a good God. I don't believe he's gonna do that. David said, I've never seen the righteous forsaken nor received baking bread. But the point is that God is good no matter what our circumstances are. And so when we come before him, before we bombard him with our needs and petitions and our wants and our desires, let's pause to recognize his majesty, his goodness, his awesomeness. That word awesome is sort of overused. There was a period of time a few years ago when everything that, and I heard young people talking, everything was awesome. And I asked a young person one time, I said, what word are you going to use when you run across something that actually is awesome? And he thought about that and said, I don't know. But God is truly awesome. I mean, inspiring awe. Awe is when you, like, stand with your mouth hanging open. Look at that. And God, that's our God. He is awe-some, his awesomeness. And we need to recognize that before we hit it with all of our petitions and wants and desires. Now, I agree that there's times you might not have time to run through the whole outline. If you're about to run off a cliff in your car, then you might say, Lord, help me. And that's okay. But as we come to God in our prayer time, regular prayer and devotion time before Him, we need to pause to get our minds in the correct frame by acknowledging His greatness, praising Him for His goodness and His glory. It says, may be delivered. Now, the word beloved, I just want to bring this out, the word beloved is a plural word. We don't always see that in the English translation, but the Hebrew and the Greek are very specific about these things. And so when we We see this word, to love, this in this occasion, it is plural, and that means it's clear that God, David, is not just pleading for his own deliverance, but for the welfare of the nation of Israel, of God's people. And then he says, save with thy right hand, Thy right hand, and by implication, the right hand is the stronger of the two. Most people, a majority of people are right-handed. How many Southpaw, how many lefties do we have here today? We got one, two, three, four, huh? So, but there's what, 20 people here, so you know, the majority of us are right-handed, so I apologize to you Southpaws. I'm apologizing on behalf of David here, but in Exodus 15, verse six, thy right hand, O Lord, is become glorious in power. Thy right hand, O Lord, hath dashed in pieces the enemy. And so the implication, normally, you know, the right hand is the stronger. so that's that's the what the inference that we would take from this this talking about the right hand and it's not not a coincidence that when Jesus finished his work here on earth he ascended to heaven and sat down at God's right hand in other words Jesus is the the power that God uses in dealing with the world, with mankind. It's Jesus Christ, the Son. I'm gonna move on. Not only does God say, secondly, God separates. In verse seven, God has spoken in his holiness, I will rejoice, I will divide Shechem and meet out the valley of Bethlehem. wanted to hear from God. Well, in verse 7, God has spoken. God spoke to David in response to his desire. And it says, God has spoken in his holiness. Now the meaning of this seems to be in the sanctuary, the tabernacle, or more specifically, in the God has spoken in the Holy Place. God didn't just speak from afar off. This comes from the place that He occupied there within the Tabernacle of Israel. They would travel and they would set up And God's glory would come down and fill the tabernacle and specifically would dwell there in the most holy place, or the holy of holies, there on the Ark of the Covenant and the mercy seat, which was the cover for the Ark. And that's where God would dwell, that's where his presence would be. where he spoke these things in his holiness or in the holy place. He goes on to say, I will rejoice. Many think that's David saying, I will rejoice. I personally think this is God himself rejoicing. To rejoice means to be joyful in triumph. That's what the word literally means. And he goes on to say, I will divide Shechem. I will meet out, to meet means to parcel out the valley of Succoth. Now, Shechem and Succoth were removed from each other. In the land of Canaan, they were removed from each other by a great distance. And I think that the meaning here, God is saying that he will divide up the entire land of Canaan and give it to the tribes Israel and all will be conquered by his power and so God separates God parcel out the land of Canaan to the twelve tribes where they God specifies What does he say here? Gilead is mine, Manasseh is mine, Ephraim also is the strength of mine head, Judah is my lawgiver. Now Gilead and Manasseh, were both on the east side of Jordan. Now, if you remember, when the Israelites finally got done with their 40 years of wilderness wandering and the old generation had died off and they were ready to go into the promised land, Reuben, the tribe of Reuben and Gad and half the tribe of Manasseh came to Moses and said, look, before they crossed the Jordan River, they said, Can we have this land for inheritance here on the east side? And Moses said, yeah, you'd like that, wouldn't you? You don't have to go in and conquer these enemies that are waiting over in Canaan. No, that's not going to happen. We will send our men, our fighting men, with you over into Canaan, across Jordan, and once the land is conquered and settled, then they'll come back and come back here and we'll have this possession. Moses said it. All right, you got yourself a deal. Now, he said, be sure now that you do what you say you're going to do or else be sure your sin will find you out. That was the occasion of that statement. But I should note that they did what they said they were going to do. They went in, they fought, they conquered the land, and then they came back to their possession on the east side of the Jordan. Gilead was a portion of that area, and Manasseh, of course. And so, these represent the settlements on the east side of Jordan. And then, he said, Ephraim and Judah, he mentions those, they were the foremost tribes of the East. land of Canaan, the west side of Jordan, the actual promised land. And so the idea is that God was intimately involved in all of his people, even after they settled into of possessions. He didn't just say, I'll fight for you and I'll divide your land and then you always get along on your own. No, there was a lot to be done after that. And God was there through it all. And he specified both the east side and the west side. The first sign, God is sovereign. Look what he says, Moab, That's not a pleasant, not a term, it's not a complimentary term. Moab is my watchpot. Over Edom will I cast out my shoe. Shoes, you know, are generally dirty things, especially the bottoms. And so, this is, again, not complimentary. Over Philistia will I triumph. Now, Moab, Edom, and Philistia represent three very fierce enemies. of Israel, and God speaks of them with disdain, as if they are no consequence to Him, and they weren't. They may have been consequential to the Israelites, but God doesn't have trouble with any of our enemies. Why, then, were these three enemies able to actually come against Israel and enslave them? God promised to keep them subdued. Well, yes, he did. He promised that with a condition. Now see, God has the right to put conditions on his promises. We don't have the right to put conditions on our promises to God. We, you know, say, well, Lord, I'll be faithful to church if. No, there's no if. He's commanded us to be faithful to the Lord's church. That's just an example. But God has the right to put conditions on his promises, and he did. He said, you be faithful to me and you worship me, only me. And I will always suppress your enemies. And Israel did not hold up their end of the bargain. They became idolatrous. And you know why they became idolatrous? Because they didn't follow God's directive to drive out all the inhabitants of the land. They left many people in the land that shouldn't have been there. They intermingled with them. They intermarried with them. And so God allowed those enemies to have dominion over Israel at times. Now, I'm thankful to say that He always delivered. And read the book of Judges, and you find out that when they cried to the Lord, then He always did deliver them. Thirdly, we want to talk about provision in these last few verses. Verses 10 through 13. In 10 and 11, we see the vanguard is the Lord. Talking about an army advancing now toward an enemy. The vanguard is the leading edge. The first to come in contact with the enemy. The first to engage. Verse 10, who will bring me into the strong city? Who will lead me into Edom? This is a rhetorical question. There's never a doubt who's going to lead. The Lord always said, I will go before thee. And God always kept his promise. In verse 11, he answers the question, will it not thou, O God, who has cast us off? And will not thou, O God, go forth with our hosts? See, Israel had sinned, they had turned away from God, and God had left them to their own devices. He had, well, how do you put it, cast us off. Yes, there was times when God did cast off His people because they were disobedient. I mentioned the book of Judges. You remember God? In those times, he always sent deliverance, but not until Israel came to the point of despair, realized what they had done, and cried out to God. And then he sent the deliverance. Here we see David, and really this is Israel as a whole, crying out to God in confession and desperation. Lord, we know you cast us off. Won't you come back to us? Won't you restore our relationship and help us in these troubles? Another quote from Barnes. Although God may seem to forsake us, that although he may leave us for a time to discouragement and darkness, yet we have no other resource but himself, it is still true that we may hope in his mercy and plead for his return. Hey, that's something we can take to heart as individuals. When we sin, when we stray from the Lord, that when we cry out to Him, we're never too far gone, but what He won't restore our fellowship. 1 John 1.9, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. The vanguard is the Lord. Notice the vanity of man's help verse 12 give us help from trouble for vain is the help of man I live everyone one woe to them that go down to Egypt for help and stay on horses and trust in cherries because they are many and horses because they're very strong, but they look not Under the Holy One of Israel neither seek the Lord You see man's help man's ideas man's plans are all to no avail if they do not originate in God's Word. Now, when we think of help, get help, generally we're talking about a psychological evaluation, psychiatry and all that. I think we can benefit. from wise advice and wise counsel, but only when that counsel is based on the Bible. And I would just advise everyone, stay away from worldly psychologists and psychiatrists because they do not look as were issues with the same worldview that we do. We believe God has the answers. We believe the Bible holds the answers to our needs. And then, a valiant army, in verse 13. Through God we shall do valiantly, for he it is that shall tread down our enemies. Think about the times, the occasions when God used very unlikely armies to, and very unlikely tactics to bring about victory. Gideon, remember what happened, Gideon had an army of 32,000 men, which compared to the Midianites was just a paltry amount. I mean, they had thousands and thousands, millions perhaps, camped against, ready to go to battle with Israel. And Israel had 32,000. And God came down and told Gideon, he got 2 million. Now, you can't do this with all these men. And so he said, tell all the ones that are afraid to go home. He did. 10,000 were left. 22,000 of those 32,000 went home. 10,000 were left. And God said, you still got too many. And so he divided the test, where they went down to the creek to drink and everything. And he said, set the ones on the one side, the ones on the other. And there were 9,700. on one side and there were 300 on the other. And I can just imagine Gideon got that sinking feeling that the ones that God sent him out to war with was the 300. And that's exactly what happened. And they didn't even go out with swords. They had lamps and they had trumpets and God used that little small group of people to defeat the entire enemy, the Midianites. The walls of Jericho, what did they do? Did they go up against them with battery rams? No, they marched around the walls 13 times total. And they shouted. The walls fell down. So unlikely tactics. Remember Elisha? His servant came to him and said, man, we're in bad shape. I mean, we've got a very fierce enemy against us. And Elisha said, Lord, show this guy what we've got. and God opened the eyes and there were chariots of fire all around the army of God. So the point is, that even though we are weak, God is strong. Why were these examples, why were these successful? Because ultimately, all victory comes from God. And nowhere is this more true than in the arena of our spiritual warfare. I mean, if you're not walking with God, you're gonna fail miserably. I know, because it's happened to me. And I imagine that it has to you too. If we walk with the Lord, he will fight our battles for us. Listen, those battles, just because you can't see the enemy, those battles are very, very real. We fight them every day. And I pray that we might fight them successfully through the power of God working in us. Father, bless your verses today, the passage of scripture that we have expounded. and pray Lord that you will use them to encourage us and strengthen us in our spiritual battles. Blessed the service now to follow in Jesus name. Amen.