Let's remain standing now for the reading of
God's word which is from Psalm 9.
Again, Psalm 9.
Please listen now
to the reading of God's word.
To the choir master,
according to,
a psalm of David.
I will give thanks to the lord with
my whole heart.
I will recount
all of your wonderful
deeds. I will be glad and exalt in
you.
I will sing praises to your name, oh
most high.
When my enemies turn back,
they stumble
and perish before your presence,
for you have maintained my just cause.
You have sat on the throne giving righteous
judgment.
You have rebuked the nations.
You have made the wicked perish.
You have blotted out their names forever and
ever.
The enemy came to an end in everlasting
ruins.
Their cities, you rooted out.
The very memory of them has perished.
But the lord sits enthroned forever.
He has established his throne for justice,
and he judges the world with righteousness.
He judges the peoples with uprightness.
The lord is a stronghold for the oppressed,
a stronghold in times of trouble.
And those who know your name
put their trust in you, for you, oh
lord, have not forsaken
those who seek you.
Sing praises to the lord who sits enthroned
in Zion.
Tell among the peoples his deeds,
for he who avenges blood is mindful of
them. He does not forget the cry of
the afflicted.
Be gracious to me, oh lord. See my
affliction from those who hate me.
Oh, you who lift me up from the
gates of death, that I may recount all
your praises, that in the gates of the
daughter of Zion, I may rejoice in your
salvation.
The nations have sunk in the pit that
they made.
In the net that they hid,
their own foot has been caught.
The lord has made himself known.
He has executed judgment.
The wicked are snared in the work of
their own hands.
The wicked shall return to Sheol,
all the nations that forget god.
For the needy shall not always be forgotten,
and the hope of the poor shall not
perish forever.
Arise, oh lord.
Let not man prevail. Let the nations be
judged before you.
Put them in
fear, oh lord.
Let the nations know
that they are but men.
This is the word of the lord.
Thanks be to god. Please be seated.
Well, in Samuel 1st in in first Samuel
17,
you'll find a familiar bible story
brimming with drama,
determination,
and divine intervention.
The Israelites,
gripped by fear,
face the towering menace of Goliath,
a Philistine warrior whose imposing
size inspires terror,
and whose strength
and ferocity
makes him seem all but invincible.
For 40 days, Goliath taunts
the armies of Israel,
defying them to send out a champion to
come and do battle against him.
The stakes are high.
Since defeat
means slavery
and death.
And since the courage of king Saul falters,
a mood of despair
and doom
descends
upon the people of Israel.
But defeat
is not the destiny
of god's people. So in god's providence, a
young shepherd
from Bethlehem,
sent by his father to deliver food to
his brothers on the battlefield,
was destined by god
to deliver victory instead.
So while Israel seasoned warriors
stand in the shadow of the giant, shaking
in their armor,
David takes refuge in the shadow of god's
wing. And armed with nothing but a staff
and a sling
and 5 stones,
he approaches Goliath without fear.
Goliath, standing behind his shield bearer, is in
utter disbelief
at the absurdity of the scene that's unfolding
before him.
So he moves towards David, mocking him and
cursing him,
but David does not back down.
He cries out,
this day,
the lord will deliver you into my hand
for the battle
is the lord's.
As Goliath charges David, the young shepherd from
Israel runs toward the giant and slings a
stone toward him striking the Philistine on his
forehead.
When Goliath falls on his face, David runs
to him, takes his sword,
and uses it to cut his head off.
David's victory over Goliath is a powerful testimony
of God's providence,
reminding us that God will judge the wicked
and vindicate his people even when all hope
seems lost.
This morning, we're looking at Psalm 9, a
psalm written by David and conveying the central
truth
that because God is good and just,
you can have confidence
in providence.
That's the main point that I want you
to remember today, that because god is good
and just, you can have confidence
in providence. And as we explore Psalm 9
together, we'll do so under 3 headings. First
of all, god is worthy of our praise.
Secondly,
God is attentive
to our prayers.
And thirdly,
God is faithful
in his providence.
God is worthy of our praise, God is
attentive to our prayers, and God is faithful
in his providence.
Now as we begin our study of Psalm
9, let me briefly point out to you
that the Greek and Latin versions of the
Old Testament
consider both Psalms 9 and 10 to actually
be one psalm,
together.
This is partly because Psalm 10
lacks a title, which is unusual for the
first 40,
verses for the first 40 Psalms in in
our psalter,
but also because it seems to continue
an acrostic pattern that begins in Psalm 9
and concludes
at the end of Psalm 10.
Each verse in the original Hebrew begins with
one of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet,
and it does so continually from Psalm 9
through Psalm 10 with some gaps in between,
but nevertheless following a pattern.
However, the Hebrew Psalter treats them as separate
Psalms,
and this is supported by many things among
which is the stark contrast between Psalm
9 and 10. There's a significant change in
tone that begins at the first verse in
Psalm 10. So we'll follow the original Hebrew
order, which is preserved in our bibles, and
we'll take Psalm 9 and 10 as distinct
companion pieces that address, on the one hand,
the certainty of our heavenly hope, and on
the other hand, the challenge
of our temporal trials.
So let's focus our attention then on Psalm
9 this morning by considering our first heading
that God is worthy
of our praise.
Notice that in the first twelve verses of
Psalm 9,
David's language is brimming with praise.
In fact,
notice that in the first two verses of
this section, verses 12,
David praises god, and in the last two
verses of this section, verses 11 to 12,
David praises god again by calling others to
praise him. So verses 12 and verses 112
are all about
God's
being praised by David and then by all
of his people. You might say that this
whole section is wrapped up and delivered to
us in glorious language of praise.
In verses 1 and 2, David writes,
I will give thanks to the Lord with
my whole heart. I will recount
all of your wonderful deeds.
I will be glad and exalt in you.
I will sing praise to your name, O
Most High.
Notice the manifold ways in which David manifests
his praise for God.
First of all, he exudes an attitude of
gratitude.
He gives thanks to God with his whole
heart.
The Hebrew word for heart doesn't simply refer
to the organ that pumps blood through our
veins,
but refers to the inner person,
to one's will,
to one's disposition.
In other words, true praise of God
entails living with a wholeheartedly
grateful posture.
It's difficult to overstate
the importance of this principle
in our day and age. We live in
a time of unprecedented
levels of depression
and anxiety.
Factors like increased screen time,
the toxicity
of social media,
and reduced physical activity,
together
with fears stemming from,
even the recent pandemic, for example, or the
threat of world war,
or the politicization
of everything in our lives
have all conspired to usher in a new
age of misery.
The emotional ruts
that we experience is exacerbated by a materialistic
social ethic that incentivizes
a pseudo victimhood
rooted in egotism,
covetousness,
and greed.
In stark contrast
to all of this,
Psalm 9 calls us to cultivate gratitude
by lifting our gaze away from ourselves
and toward the Lord.
Even though life in this fallen world can
be very hard,
we always can and we always should find
good reasons to thank God.
In James 117,
our lord's brother reminds us that every good
gift and every perfect gift
is from above, that it comes from above,
that it comes down from the father of
lights.
Furthermore, in Luke 10 verse 20,
Jesus says that we should rejoice that our
names are written in heaven.
In other words,
everything good in our lives
from each breath that we take,
even to our very salvation itself,
should motivate us to rejoice
in God's goodness, to be grateful
for the mercies, for the gifts, for the
grace that God gives us.
Imagine what good it would do to your
soul
if each morning you praise god for someone
or for something
in your life.
Maybe you can try that out this week.
You might consider
each day a specific person in your family
or one of your friends
that you can,
that that you can call to mind that
day and consider how that person in particular
is a blessing for your life.
You can praise god for that person.
You can pray for that person. You might
even call or text that person to let
them know that you prayed for them and
that you're thankful for them. Can you imagine
what that would do not only to your
heart, but for that person's heart?
Again, you would be cultivating an attitude of
gratitude that is appropriate
for the Christian.
Secondly,
David praises god by declaring his wonderful deeds.
This encourages us to recall and recount
God's marvelous works.
Reading through your prayer journals, as I know
some of you keep prayer journals, which is
a very good practice, as you read through
those,
that might bring to mind
how God has answered prayers in the past,
and this can serve to increase
your
gratitude
for your Lord
and also strengthen
your faith as you do that.
And this might cause you to proclaim
God's goodness to others. And as you proclaim
these things, not only will that serve to
give you hope and to give them hope
by pointing them to Christ, but it will
also serve to complete your joy
because joy is not complete until we express
it and share it with others.
This is why going to a ballgame in
a stadium in person, for example,
is a much better experience than watching it
on a screen.
Because in because in going, you you are
physically there, and you share that experience, and
you participate in that experience with others, and
it makes it that much more joyful. The
great English author, C. S. Lewis, puts it
this way. He writes, I think we delight
to praise what we enjoy
because the praise not merely expresses,
but completes
the enjoyment.
It is its appointed consummation.
It is not out of compliment
that lovers keep on telling one another how
beautiful they are.
The delight is incomplete
until it is expressed.
Therefore, we when we recount
God's wonderful deeds to others, not only do
we bless them by sharing with them the
source of our hope, but we ourselves are
blessed in that very process of sharing.
Finally,
David praises God by rejoicing and exalting in
him,
which culminates David's,
in David extolling,
God's name through singing.
The truth is
that as we praise God for all the
good gifts that he gives us and we
praise God by recalling and recounting
the wonderful deeds of the Lord,
the reality of his goodness,
his power, and his love are ever before
us.
And this inevitably
lifts our spirits
to a joyous crescendo of hope,
compelling our lips to sing praises to God.
Brothers and sisters, is this not a beautiful
illustration
of what our disposition
ought to be when we gather for worship
on the Lord's day.
This is what it means to worship God
in spirit and in truth. The joyous lifting
of our voices in song,
recalling and recounting
his marvelous works, having our hearts shaped by
his transformative grace. This is how the Christian
ought to praise God on the Lord's day
and how the Christian ought to praise God
every day.
In verses 3 to 6,
David praises God because he has defeated the
wicked. He writes,
when my enemies turn back, they stumble and
perish before your presence,
for you have maintained my just cause.
You have sat on the throne giving righteous
judgment.
You have rebuked the nations.
You have made the wicked perish.
You have blotted out their names forever and
ever.
The enemy came to an end in everlasting
ruins. Their cities you rooted out, the very
memory
of them
has perished.
In verses 3 4, David praises God
for being his deliverer.
And in verses 5 and 6, he praises
God for being the deliverer of his people.
This last point can be seen
by David's mention of God's judgment on the
nations.
Now this is not a racist or xenophobic
statement by David in mentioning the nations. The
nations simply represent the enemies of God,
the enemies
of God's people.
God's people
bear his name,
and people from every tribe, from every language,
from every tongue, from every race have been
adopted
into his family.
The reason why God's name is not forgotten
is because he preserves his people who bear
his name and with our lives and with
our words give him glory.
In contrast to this,
the names of the nations,
those in rebellion against God, those outside of
the household of God
are blotted out
and their memory is forgotten
according to Psalm 9.
This teaches us to praise God for our
personal salvation.
He's the one who delivers us from the
dangers
in this life,
from those who seek to do us harm,
but especially
from the one who seeks to destroy
our souls.
God is the source,
the strength,
and the seal of our salvation.
The father elects us,
the son delivers us,
and the spirit
regenerates us.
We simply receive
this amazing gift.
The credit and the glory for our salvation
are entirely
his. He is the alpha and the omega
of our salvation.
This also teaches us to praise God for
defending and preserving the church.
What great confidence
this gives us as we plant this church.
The forces of Satan will oppose God's plan
for this church plant,
but God will cause us to prevail
against them.
God has called us to recall and recount
God's marvelous deeds in this place, and he
will rebuke,
repel,
and root out all who stand in our
way. Not because we're any better than any
other,
but simply because we are his
and because he has given us a sacred
mission to be salt and to be light.
This is why in verses 7 to 10,
David praises God for vindicating
his people. He writes,
the Lord sits in throne forever.
He has established his throne for justice,
and he judges the world with righteousness.
He judges the peoples with uprightness.
The Lord is a stronghold
for the oppressed,
a stronghold
in times of trouble.
And those who know your name
put their trust in you, for you, oh
Lord,
have not forsaken
those
who seek you.
Think about this.
In acts 17,
we read that when Paul was planting a
church in Athens,
he goes up to the Areopagus,
otherwise known as Mars Hill, a place that
was full of idols
because all sorts of false gods were worshiped
there.
And his audience
was made up
of many arrogant people.
For Athenians, consider their city to be the
epicenter of culture,
enjoying a legacy of scholarship that had been
forged over centuries by philosophers
of great renown.
What chance
did the message of the gospel have against
such formidable foes?
A band of nobodies
from a scarcely known people
who were renounced
by their own families
and ruled and repressed
under the power of Rome.
What did they have to offer
before the glory of Athens?
And yet Paul
unashamedly
and unreservedly
proclaimed
the gospel
in that place.
He does so, by the way, by quoting
this very Psalm
when he tells the Athenians the following. He
says, the times of ignorance,
God overlooked.
But now,
he commands all people everywhere to repent
because he has fixed a day on which
he will judge
the world in righteousness
by a man whom he has appointed.
And of this, he has given assurance to
all
by raising him from the dead.
All the philosophies
in the world will hit a dead end,
lest they follow the one who is the
way.
All the learning
in the world
is ignorance,
lest it receive the one who is the
truth.
All the lifestyles of the world
shall end up in judgment and death,
lest they be transformed by the one who
is
the life.
The gospel
points us to the way,
the truth, and the life. And Paul preached
this gospel on Mars Hill.
He was rejected.
He was reviled.
He was ridiculed.
But in the end,
through his message,
many were redeemed
from sin and rescued
from the flames of judgment.
Because neither will the gates of hell
nor the minions of Satan prevail
against the church of Jesus Christ.
The Lord is the stronghold of his people.
We can hide in him and be safe,
and he will never leave us nor forsake
us.
This church
exists today
and the pagan religion of Athens does not
because God is true
to his promise.
This is why, as we do our work
here,
in the midst of many idols and many
dark forces who would oppose us, we can
praise God for this call.
Because even when we meet opposition
and when things
aren't going the way that we would prefer,
we can be sure that God's justice will
prevail and that he will vindicate his people.
Therefore, David concludes this section of praise with
verses 11 and 12 saying,
sing praises to the Lord who sits enthroned
in Zion. Tell among the peoples his deeds,
for he who avenges blood is mindful of
them. He does not forget the cry of
the afflicted.
Recall that David began the Psalm by praising
God with gratitude,
proclaiming the wonderful deeds of God and singing
praises to his name.
Now, having demonstrated that God is worthy of
praise because he judges the wicked and vindicates
the righteous,
he calls upon you this morning
saying, go and declare his deeds, unashamedly
joining
the joyous
chorus of praise.
We don't know when exactly David wrote this
psalm, but we know that David witnessed
many times,
God's wonderful deeds,
such as when God rescued his people from
the hand of the giant, for example, and
from the scorn
and the abuse of the Philistines.
So he writes this hymn of praise,
not
just for himself,
but he writes it to glorify God,
to encourage his people, and to invite others
to join him in this heavenly
chorus.
That was David's mission in writing Psalm 9.
And now he reminds us that this is
also our mission as God's people. He says,
be assured that God is mindful of you,
that he will not forget your cries.
And you know this is true
because he has already proven his steadfast love
for you in redemptive history when he sent
his son to deliver you,
when he has taken you out of darkness
and into his marvelous light. That's the whole
reason you are here this morning. You know
that God is faithful, that he does not
forget the cry
of his people. The Woodlands Reformed Church exists
to glorify God by making disciples of Jesus
Christ
through the power of the Holy Spirit.
That's our mission.
And even though it's not easy to plant
a church,
requiring all of us to contribute,
all of us to volunteer,
all of us to declare God's good deeds,
and to invite others to join
our joyous chorus, we can be confident that
we will succeed
because God is faithful
to his promises
to subdue
all opposition
against him, all opposition against the gospel,
and to redeem his people, and to vindicate
his church.
So
in this first section, we saw that God
is worthy of our praise. Let us now
consider our 2nd section in which we see
that God is attentive
to our prayer.
If you look carefully at verses 13 to
20,
you notice that they parallel verses 1 to
12, but instead of being written in the
form of a praise,
they are written in the form
of a prayer.
Just like the previous section of the Psalm
was enveloped or bookended
by praise,
this section
of the Psalm
is
enveloped or bookended
by a prayer.
In other words, the first two verses and
the last two verses of this section
are an explicit prayer.
The middle verses on the other hand are
a prophetic expression of confidence
in God's providence.
Look at the prayer that bookends this section,
verses 13 and 14 and
1920. David writes,
be gracious to me, oh lord.
See my affliction from those who hate me.
Oh, you who lift me up from the
gates of death, that I may recount all
your praises,
that in the gates of the daughter of
Zion, I may rejoice in your salvation.
And then verses 19 and 20. Arise, oh
lord.
Let not man prevail.
Let the nations be judged before you. Put
them in fear, oh lord. Let the nations
know
that they are but men.
In verses 13 and 14, David prays for
god's grace,
asking God to rescue him
from affliction at the gates of death, so
that he can rejoice in salvation
and praise God at the gates of the
daughter of Zion.
In antiquity,
the city gates were places where the rulers
of the city would gather to adjudicate legal
matters.
Therefore,
the gates represented
the threshold
between right and wrong,
between guilt and innocence.
They were the dividing wall between blessing and
curse,
between communion
and exile.
When David prays
to be rescued from the affliction at the
gates of death,
so he can rejoice and praise god at
the gates of the daughters of Sion.
The gates of death represent the dominion
of the godless world,
and not merely the people and the forces
that depose and persecute god's people,
but also
they represent the temptations that allure us,
the desires
that entangle us,
the addictions
that enslave us,
the priorities
that deceive us.
These are all deadly weapons against our souls
because they are forged by the values that
sever us
from God and from his people.
The gates of the daughter of Zion, on
the other hand,
represent the place where God's law is proclaimed,
promoted,
and practiced.
In other words, the gates of the daughter
of Zion
represent the church,
the assembly of god's people.
They are the place where god reigns and
rules in righteousness,
where sinners are
redeemed from their bondage to the flesh,
where their fallen nature
is regenerated,
where their broken image
is restored,
where they are rescued from the pit of
despair,
where they are received
into the loving embrace of their savior,
where their souls are refreshed
by the healing balm of the gospel,
and where their bodies shall be renewed in
the radiant splendor of the royal sun.
Can there be a more stark contrast
between 2 gates,
between 2 kingdoms, between two ways of life?
Most people we meet
are hopelessly imprisoned
behind the gates of death.
But that's why God has called us to
plant this church
and enlisted us on a rescue mission
to storm the gates of hell,
which cannot and will not prevail against the
church of Jesus Christ.
By God's grace,
through the mission of this church, God will
rescue the captives and bring them into the
safety
of the impenetrable gates of the New Jerusalem.
Does this not excite you?
This is more important than the presidential election.
Is more entertaining than any sport,
is more exhilarating than any music concert,
and more meaningful than any other call
that may be upon your lives.
And just like David knew that Israel would
prevail against the Philistines,
you can be certain
that this church will prevail in her mission
because we have the same champion
fighting for us
that David did and that Israel did.
The living God
is the one who fights.
This is why in verses 19 and 20,
David's prayer calls God to arise that his
adversaries may tremble in fear and be humbled.
Oh, may our prayers
for this church plant and for one another
be modeled after Psalm 9,
praising God for his goodness
and appealing to his justice with hope.
So having looked at the headings of praise
and of prayer,
let us consider our final heading that God
is faithful in his providence.
The reason David in Psalm 9 can praise
God
for his marvelous deeds
and appeal to God's justice when he is
confronting adversity
is that David has confidence
in God's providential
care and rule over creation.
The confidence in providence is especially clear
in David's prophetic words in verses 15 to
18 where we read,
the nations have sunk in the pit that
they made.
In the net that they hid, their own
foot has been caught.
The Lord has made himself known. He has
executed judgment.
The wicked are snared in the work of
their own hands.
The wicked shall return to Sheol
all the nations that forget God.
For the needy shall not always be forgotten,
and the hope of the poor
shall not perish forever.
Such is David's confidence in God's providence that
in the middle of his prayer for justice
and vindication,
David speaks of the future fulfillment of those
very things as if
they have already taken place.
As he did in Psalm 7,
he says that the nations have been caught
in their own net.
This is not a fortuitous occurrence but rather
it is an execution of God's justice because
this is God's world,
and He is in complete control,
and He will not be mocked.
It is worth reflecting
on how different our destiny is from that
of the wicked.
God's justice ensures
they are ensnared
by their own net,
While the great fisher of men
rescues us out of the terrible tempest
with a net
woven with threads of mercy
and of love.
The nations forget God
and lose their way in their prideful self
imposed
amnesia.
How many people willfully forget God living as
if He doesn't exist,
as if His commandments don't matter,
as if they get to live by their
own rules, pursuing
their own pleasures.
David says that that kind of forgetfulness
leads to Sheol, the place of the dead,
which is apparently the natural habitat
of those who choose to forget God since
David doesn't only say that they end up
there, rather he says that they return
there.
In the definitive example
of poetic justice,
God's providence ensures
that those who willfully forget God
shall
forever forget
the way to heaven
and will end up
forgotten,
forsaken,
and forlorn.
Yet god does not forget his people.
And though we suffer, we shall not perish.
We shall not be forgotten
because our names are written in heaven in
the indelible
blood
of Christ.
The Bible tells us that Goliath was armored
in a coat of mail
or more precisely in Hebrew, a coat of
scales.
But those scales were no match to the
stone
that cracked his skull
and the sword
that severed
his neck.
Before every Christian
and before every faithful church
stands a giant
in a coat of scales,
a menacing dragon
that threatens to devour us in its blasphemous
and revolting flames.
But like David in Psalm 9, we can
rest in God's providence
because that dragon is already dead.
Its coats of scales offered no protection
against the mighty rock of our salvation,
who already crushed the dragon's skull, and who
with the sword of the cross, slayed the
dragon
and severed its neck.
So beloved Christian,
take to heart the lessons of Psalm 9.
1st, because god is good, fill your days
with praise.
2nd, because god is just,
when trials have you in the fray,
pray.
And finally,
because god is good and just,
have confidence
in providence.
So the honor is for you who believe.
But for those who do not believe,
the stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone,
and a stone of stumbling,
and a rock of offense. They stumble because
they disobeyed the word as they were destined
to do.
But you
are a chosen race,
a royal priesthood,
a holy nation,
a people for His own possession that you
may proclaim the excellencies
of Him who called you out of darkness
and into His marvelous light. Let's do that
together. Let's pray.