Psalm 149 is our text today. Psalm 149. And with all these psalms leading up to it, I trust your hearts are full of gratitude to the Lord already and that the exhortation from this psalm will fall on prepared soil. Psalm 149 you can turn to. Hallelujah in the triumphant assembly of the saints. In Exodus chapter 15, we have a very powerful scene, if I can take you back there in your mind's eye for just a moment. The Lord has just saved Israel from the hand of the Egyptians through the Red Sea. And after all the centuries of slavery, after all the Pharaoh's cruelty, they were finally free. And Israel stood on the shores of the sea that day, after the waters had closed, seeing the dead bodies of the Egyptian army floating toward the shore, and the realization hit them. The Lord has triumphed gloriously. That great dragon of the Nile, The mighty kingdom of Egypt had all the strength of a wet dishrag when the Lord arose to deliver his people from bondage. And so Israel does the only thing that would be fitting, the only proper response in that kind of a scenario. She conducts a festival, a festival of song and dance. "'I will sing to the Lord,' they sang, "'for he has triumphed gloriously, "'the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea. "'The Lord is my strength and my song, "'and he has become my salvation. "'This is my God, and I will praise him, "'my Father's God, and I will exalt him.'" And the Bible tells us that Miriam took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women went out with her with tambourines and dancing, and they sang. Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously. You see, when the Lord defeats evil and saves his people, what else can his people do but sing and dance for joy? And this event that we heard about, even in the very psalms we were rehearsing this morning, becomes a kind of a paradigm, a model for how the Lord works in history. And it prepares us for our text today. We've come to the culmination of the Psalms. Indeed, I think we can say the culmination of life with God. And we find that it's pure praise. Praise all the way through. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. We are exhorted over and over again. The five crowning psalms of this altar exalt in the Lord from every possible angle. One psalm here wouldn't be enough. We have to cover the bases, so to speak. Hallelujah, the Lord will reign forever, Psalm 146. Hallelujah, oh Jerusalem, Psalm 147, as God fulfills his promises for his people. Hallelujah, from the heavens and from the earth in Psalm 148, all of creation in its farthest reaches and every dimension uniting in one chorus to praise the Lord. And now, Psalm 149, Hallelujah, in the triumphant assembly of the saints. We have here a victory psalm, a psalm that catapults us into the ecstasy of the Lord's ultimate triumph over the nations. And what's so special about this psalm is that it calls us to joy in the Lord's victory because you share in it. because he glorifies his saints in the glory he achieves as he has victory over the whole world. So the first point I want to make in my sermon today here is to note a world of raging nations and plotting peoples. So you need to understand that the backdrop to this psalm is a world of raging nations and plotting peoples. In fact, I don't think you'll understand this psalm properly until you realize that's the context in which it is operating. This is the second to the last psalm in the Psalter, and it's playing off of the second psalm from the beginning. You remember that psalm. In fact, if you want to turn back there, pardon me, Psalm 2, as it sets the direction for the entire book of psalms, along with Psalm 1, it says, Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed. Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us." The nations of this world are raging against God's authority. They are asserting themselves trying to establish their own autonomy, trying to say, we will rule life, we will rule this world as we see fit. Of course, this is the world system that the Bible describes for us under the leadership of the god of this world, Satan himself. Rejecting God, trying to establish our own kingdom, pardon me, and to conduct our own life to achieve true life ourselves. This is what the nations of this world are engaged in ever since the fall and the formation of nations. This is what mankind has been doing continually over and over again. Of course, Psalm 2 gives us this encouragement. He who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury. As for me, I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill. I will tell of the decree, the Lord said to me, you are my son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage, the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Jesus will reign over this whole world. And so there's a warning given to the kings of the earth. Oh kings, be wise, be warned, oh rulers or judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, rejoice with trembling, kiss the sun lest he be angry and you perish in the way, for his wrath will soon be kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. There is hope in Christ, but you must submit to him ultimately. It's precisely that background that we need to see for this psalm that we come to today. And I'm sure it's not hard for you, as you think about our world right now, to see how the nations are raging. Nations claim that they can vote to define marriage however they want it to be, without regard to God. They claim the right to murder children by the millions while posturing as morally advanced over those benighted slaveholders of old. They engage in planned theft through their monetary systems. They pay for perversion and corruption with their tax revenues. They incarcerate the innocent and exonerate the wicked. And this isn't to mention the unjust wars that they perpetrate and provoke. This world system is under the leadership of the Prince of Darkness. And it's bloodthirsty. It's deceitful to the core. That's its true nature. But given that setting then, what can God's people do? How do they respond to this? And here is where our psalm comes in. I want you to notice in verses one through four of our psalm here, a triumphant assembly. Pardon me. Praise the Lord, hallelujah. This psalm, like the ones just preceding it, starts off with exhorting us to sing to the Lord a new song, his praise in the assembly of the godly. Here we have the response to reality, to the Lord's reign of those who are, it says here in the translated in the ESV, the godly. Now we need to note this term here because it is an important one in this text. Actually, it shows up in verse one, the beginning of the psalm, in verse five, right in the middle of the psalm, and again in verse nine, at the end of the psalm. This is directly who this is aimed at. This is who this is calling to participate in this praise. This is the, and this is kind of hard to put into English exactly, and maybe to get one word that fits it well, This is the chassid or the chassidim. Now, in order to understand that, you have to realize that those are the people who are in a relationship of chassid with the Lord. Now, that term chassid, we've talked about many times throughout the Psalms. What did we just read in Psalm 136 as we went through that together, right? For his steadfast love endures forever, right? That's God's chassid. That's his character and nature. steadfast, loyal, kind, faithful, covenant love that he has for his people. That's his nature. And as he enters into that relationship with his people, and they reciprocate, because of his grace they return that to him, you might say, those are the chassid. Those are those in that relationship with the Lord. So whether you want to translate it as the godly, the saints, pardon me, the faithful, the loyal, the kind, even the beloved, some would translate this. Those who are beloved of God and in that relationship of love with Him who give their love to Him in return and stay faithful to that relationship. That's the people that this is talking to. They're in a right relationship of loyal love with the Lord. And what do they do in response to this whole world? This world is raging. This world is turned upside down. This world is inside out. It's in rebellion against God. Everything's falling apart. Anybody kind of feel that way sometimes? What do the Hasid, the faithful do in that kind of a scenario? They gather. They assemble. That's an interesting response, isn't it? In fact, they hold a victory assembly, assembly for celebration, for sheer rejoicing. I mean, celebrate? Rejoice? In the midst of a world gone mad? In the middle of raging nations and plotting peoples? Yes, this is what the faithful are called upon to do. That is because they are looking to the God we worship, which comes out in verse two here. Let Israel be glad in his maker. Let the children of Zion rejoice in their king. We know that he is the maker and the king of all that is, right? It wouldn't exist but for him. In fact, even those nations that are raging, even the peoples who are plotting and trying to throw off God and his reign, he is their maker and their sustainer. They cannot do anything outside of His sovereign control. They can't be anything that He does not enable or allow. And we can rejoice in that. In fact, He is the ultimate King who will bring this whole world to His good purposes. And that's why the godly then, in this text here, respond to a recognition of our Maker and our King with the only fitting response. For such mighty acts of salvation as our God works as he establishes his reign, the mighty acts of salvation performed by God, we praise his name. It says in verse three, let them praise his name with dancing, making melody to him with tambourine and lyre. In other words, this is calling for the kind of a response to God that is with all of our powers. Everything that we are and that we have is completely engaged in, you might say, becoming a living sacrifice of praise to the Lord. Giving ourselves, body and soul, everything we know, everything we have, everything we can possibly come up with, if you will, to give to him, we do. We praise his name in that way. And that's why we see, and I think in this text, as in so many of the Psalms, words alone are not enough. It's not even enough just to say, thank you, Lord. That's good. That's exactly what we should do, right? But for those who are recognizing the greatness of God's reign and what he's accomplishing in the earth and what he will do, we want to heighten that. We want to make his praise glorious. We want to respond in a fitting way to who he is. And so we write poems like Psalms. We make songs and we put them to music that is fitting with the character of our God and we respond to him. We need music. We need dancing. We already talked about Miriam and the example of God's deliverance at the Red Sea. When David brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, the Bible records that he leaped and danced before the Lord. We don't know exactly what that looked like, perhaps some kind of a circle dance, just from the nature of the term that's used for it. But we do know that it was a whole person sacrifice of praise to the Lord because of his victory. It was his people seeing his victory and responding to him in that way. In scripture, dancing is always the outworking of joy as opposed to mourning. When God overcomes our mourning and gives us joy, that's what brings forth dancing. Now what would create such a powerful, knowledgeable, intentional surge of joy as we're seeing expressed in this psalm? Verse four says, the Lord takes pleasure in his people. He adorns the humble with salvation. Now here's where some of the amazing beauty of God's work begins to come out. of how he's establishing his own glory in the world, but in doing it in such a way that he shares, if you will, with his people. God is a very generous God. God is very good and giving God. And he works his reign not so that he's just revered as the all-powerful tyrant that you have to submit to or else, but actually as the all-powerful one who brings his people into his life and gives them a share in his glory. He takes pleasure, it says here, in his people. If we can picture this reverently in human terms, what would give the Lord delight, true delight? The text says here, it's his people. Because as he creates them in his image, and then as he redeems them and brings them into union with himself in his own son, the perfect image of God, he sees, I believe, his own son, the reflection of his own self, the perfection of all of his creation in his people. And it gives him pleasure. It gives him delight. There is nothing like God's glory to bring delight because that is ultimate goodness. That is true beauty. In fact, that's what the next part of the text says. He adorns, he beautifies the humble with salvation. Beauty is the outshining of truth and goodness. And so to say that the Lord adorns or beautifies the humble with salvation means that his salvation brings them to full participation in goodness and truth. Think about this today for your own life. He makes your life beautiful. That's what God is doing in his redemption. All of you sitting here today is creatures made in God's image. There's only one way for your life to end up truly beautiful. not distorted, marred, disfigured by sin, not destroyed by this world system, not ending up just dust and ashes, worthless, empty, unfulfilled. There is only one way, and that's for the Lord to beautify you. That's why this is for the humble, by the way. It's those who are not proud, who don't think I have the ability to make my life great. They know I depend entirely on God. I need Him, and they cast themselves on Him, just like in Psalm 2. Blessed are those who take refuge in the Son. They do that. They humble themselves. They depend upon Him, and He takes their lives. He takes your life, if you're one of the humble, and He makes it eternally beautiful. He will make you into something that you cannot even imagine right now. Isaiah 6310 puts these words, gives us these words that we can use. I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall exult in my God for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation. He has covered me with the robe of righteousness as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. Folks, you have no idea what glory the Lord is going to bestow on you by giving you a share in his life, participation in him. You are a creature that is designed and destined for ultimate beauty. The beauty you see on earth right now is just a little shadow of what the Lord's triumphant salvation is going to provide for you. This is why this psalm is calling upon all of God's people to glory in him with all that they have, because God himself is going to work. Can this really be true? Can this really work out this way in a world of raging nations and plotting peoples? Yes. In fact, the next stanza looks forward to this happening in verses 5 through 10, where we see honor for all the saints. This stanza turns our attention to the end times victory over all the nations, the future judgment of God, the ultimate triumph of God, and how that will be good. So it says in verse 5, let the godly exult in glory. Let them sing for joy on their beds. Let the high praises of God be in their throats. and two-edged swords in their hands to execute vengeance on the nations and punishments on the peoples, to bind their kings with chains, their nobles with fetters of iron, to execute on them the judgment written. This is honor. It is honor for all his godly ones, his Hasid. Praise the Lord. This is what this, this stands, it turns our attention to God's ultimate victory, even with his people. bringing them to glory. Now, it's right at this point, though, that many people object to this psalm. They start reading things like two-edged swords in their hands, vengeance, punishments, binding kings and nobles. How do we rejoice in that? Is that going to be good? In fact, one man, an Old Testament scholar by the name of Walter Brueggemann, actually makes a... He critiques this psalm. He doesn't think this is good. He says this Psalm is extremely problematic because it combines praise the Lord with pass the ammunition, right? We shouldn't do that kind of a thing. And in one sense, you can see what he's getting at, but I think that view misses the whole thrust of this Psalm. It fails to appreciate the end times eschatological nature of the victory envisaged here. Now, we can make all kinds of maybe temporal applications, foreshadowings, or things like that to the church right now, in the sense that we can talk about the church as fighting spiritual warfare, our enemies are not flesh and blood, the sword is the word of God, and taking thoughts, captivity to Christ, or things of that nature. We can talk about all that kind of thing, and that's all true enough. But the primary view of the psalm here is not really those kinds of things, although, again, those are foretastes of this glory. This is a hymn of praise for the ultimate triumph, the ultimate justice that God is going to bring about in his world that is going to overtake all the enemies of God. All those who refused that warning in Psalm 2 and said, or said, be warned, O kings, you need to know this. If you don't heed this, judgment is coming. All those who refuse that warning will face the judgment. That's just for them. That is what is right for them. All those who repent and find refuge in the Son will not face this judgment, but will actually participate with the saints in their victory. That victory is going to be something that God will use to vindicate his people through judgment on the wicked, as we've seen over and over and over again in the Psalms. And that's exactly what the Psalm calls for praise for. I think Charles Spurgeon, for example, is exactly right to say, when we look at this last stanza of this Psalm, it is such a song as may be sung at the coming of the Lord. That's right. In fact, I would invite you to turn to Revelation chapter 19. Revelation chapter 19. For here we see what I believe is the fulfillment of Psalm 149 and the very rejoicing that it gives in anticipation. After God has brought judgment on the great whore Babylon in Revelation 18. In chapter 19, John writes, after this I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven crying out, hallelujah. Now why are they crying hallelujah exactly like the Psalms teach us to sing? Salvation and glory and power belong to our God for his judgments are true and just for he has judged the great prostitute who corrupted the earth with her immorality and has avenged on her the blood of his servants. Once more they cried out hallelujah. The smoke from her goes up forever and ever and the 24 elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who was seated on the throne saying amen, hallelujah. And from the throne came a voice saying, praise our God, all you his servants, you who fear him, small and great. We see here glorified beings, saints, rejoicing in the great triumph that God enacts over all this evil world system, over all that rebels against his son, Jesus Christ. In fact, when we go to the last part of chapter 19 in Revelation, we see him coming. We see this one called Faithful and True. In righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe, dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is the Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and his thigh he has a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. This is all working toward a time when, as Revelation 21 verse 24 will say, by the light of the new Jerusalem, the kings will walk. The nations, excuse me, will walk and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it and its gates will never be shut by day and there will be no night there. God is going to bring about his glorious kingdom of righteousness and peace and truth and justice. And the glory of it all is, that's going to be glory shared with us as his people. We get to participate in that. In fact, we get to reign and to rule with Him. This is honor for all the saints, like our text puts it here. Honor for all the saints. Do you believe this today? Do you really believe, in the midst of a world gone mad, that we can give ourselves totally to pure joy? Because God reigns, and He will enact this One of the things I think that tells us as believers, and that shows to the world around us, is exactly what Philippians chapter one, verse 28, talks about. When it says, as God's people walk in unity, shoulder to shoulder, if you will, in the gospel, that that is a sign to your enemies of their destruction when you operate in this world without fear. but of your salvation, the text says. You simply aren't afraid of this world system and all of its vaunted power and all of its machinations and plottings. No fear, because your hearts are taken up in praise. God is that good that the worst the nations can do simply does not impede our joy at all. That's a glorious thing. In fact, I think that leads to the flip side. Not only do we not fear, but you can today give yourself entirely to joy. Give yourself entirely to joy. You don't have to hold back, if you will, a part of your heart that says, well, yeah, but I've got to be a realist here. You know, this world is pretty rough. There's a lot of bad things that are happening. Who knows what the governments of this world are going to do next? You know, we might end up in prison. We might end up... All these bad things could happen. True enough. But does that change the ultimate outcome at all? Not at all. God will reign. The Lord reigns. The kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and we will reign with Him. God's faithful, loyal people will judge the world. You see, folks, I believe, and this is one of the reasons why this psalm is so important for our day, the most powerful way we can advance the cause of Christ is through praise. Praise is powerful. Praise is powerful. Even more, you might say, than argumentation. Now, I think it's perfectly right to demonstrate the truth of Christianity, let's say, to refute arguments of unbelievers and apologetics, we might call it. That's all good and right in its place. But you know one of the most powerful things we can do is simply praise the Lord. Show His goodness. Let people see. Let people hear. Know it yourself and bring it out. Demonstrate it. Give yourself to it. There is no weapon on earth that can stand against the Lord's praise. What did Paul and Silas do when they were in prison? They sang the praises of the Lord. What should we do today? Well, the psalm tells us, praise the Lord. This is what we should do. And I believe when God's loyal people are bursting with joy, the world is put on notice. That's a notice to the whole world. God is going to gain the victory. He is going to honor his saints. Evil will be undone. Life is glorious. So I would simply call upon you today, especially on this special occasion of Thanksgiving, in faith, Let us gather together as the assembly of the saints and shout hallelujah. That's what God has called us to do. If that is your faith together today, in fact, I would invite you to do that right now as a confession of faith in response to God's word today, to confess our faith together as a congregation with hallelujah, Jesus is Lord. All right, let's do it all together here. Hallelujah, Jesus is Lord.