Remain standing. I want to read from the law today. This is not normally a passage you would think would be law. This is one of the songs of Moses. There's not very many of them in the Bible, but this is from Deuteronomy and just kind of we're looking at the middle part of this great song for our law today. But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked. You grew fat, stout, and sleek. Then he forsook God, who made him and scoffed at the rock of his salvation. They stirred him to jealousy with strange gods. With abominations, they provoked him to anger. They sacrificed to demons that were no gods, to gods they had never known, to new gods that had come recently, whom your fathers had never dreaded. You were unmindful of the rock that bore you, and you forgot the God who gave you birth. The Lord sought and spurned them because of the provocation of his sons and daughters. And he said, I will hide my face from them. I will see what their end will be, for they are a perverse generation, children in whom is no faithfulness. They have made me jealous with what is no God. They have provoked me to anger with their idols. So I will make them jealous with those who are no people, and I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation. For a fire is kindled by my anger, and it burns to the depths of Sheol, devours the earth and its increase, and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains. And I will heap disasters upon them, and I will spend my arrows on them. They shall be wasted with hunger and devoured by plague and poisonous pestilence. I will send the teeth of beasts against them with the venom of things that crawl in the dust. Outdoors the sword shall bereave and indoors terror for young men and women alike, the nursing child with the man of gray hairs. I would have said, I will cut them to pieces. I will wipe them from human memory. Had I not feared provocation by the enemy, lest their adversaries should misunderstand, lest they should say, our hand is triumphant and it was not the Lord who did this. For they are a nation void of counsel, and there is no understanding in them. If they were wise, they would understand this. They would discern the latter end. How could one have chased a thousand, and two have put ten thousand to flight, unless their rock had sold them and the Lord had given them up? For their rock is not as our rock. Our enemies are by themselves. For their vine comes from the vine of Sodom and the fields from Gomorrah. Their grapes are grapes of poison. Their clusters are bitter. Their wine is the poison of serpents and the cruel venom of asps. Is not this laid up in store with me, sealed up in my treasuries? Vengeance is mine in recompense for the time when their foot shall slip, for the day of their calamity is at hand and their doom comes swiftly. I'm gonna read our gospel this morning, and I'm gonna read two Psalms. I'm gonna read Psalm 91 and 92. And let us remember that this is God's holy word. He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust. For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge. His faithfulness is a shield and buckler. You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side, 10,000 at your right hand, but it will not come near you. You will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked, because you have made the Lord your dwelling place, the Most High who is my refuge. No evil shall be allowed to befall you. No plague come near your tent. For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone. You will tread on the lion and the addler, the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot. Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him. I will protect him because he knows my name. When he calls to me, I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble. I will rescue him and honor him. With long life, I will satisfy him and show him my salvation. Psalm 92, a Psalm, a song for the Sabbath. It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High, to declare your steadfast love in the morning and your faithfulness by night. To the music of the lute and the harp, to the melody of the lyre, for you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work. At the work of your hands I sing for joy. How great are your works, O Lord, your thoughts are very deep. The stupid man cannot know and the fool cannot understand this, that though the wicked sprout like grass and all evildoers flourish, they are doomed to destruction forever. But you, O Lord, are on high forever. And behold your enemies, O Lord, for behold your enemies shall perish. All evildoers shall be scattered. But you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox. You have poured over me fresh oil. My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies. My ears have heard the doom of my evil assailants. The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like the cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord. They flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age. They are ever full of sap and green to declare that the Lord is upright. He is my rock and there is no unrighteousness in him. Father, as we hear your word this morning, especially in the gospel, we would like to pray that you would show us more of our Savior, the Lord Jesus, through these psalms. As we know that the reason you give us the gospel is for our comfort, but Its foundation is in the Lord Jesus Christ. And our Holy Father, we also would pray that your Holy Spirit would be pleased to descend and come into the midst of your people as we gather together to lead us into the truth of what it means to be saved by Christ, and in all the other things that he is able to do for us, we ask you would do this in Christ's name, amen. So we're looking at three Psalms this morning, Psalm 90, 91, and 92. and we're kind of beginning another section of the Psalter, so I want us to go back and just think about where we've come from as we're, it's hard to believe we're already this far into the Psalms, but I guess that's what you get for preaching some of them in groups, but this is certainly one of those occasions where that needs to happen. So let's go back to the very beginning of the book of Psalms, Psalm 1. The very first words begin by having us think about a man, and it says, blessed is the man. And then it tells us that this man is planted by waters because he is upright. And that's a theme that we will see again in Psalm 92 this morning, almost the very same thing. In Psalm 1, we don't know if this man is a generic man or specific, it doesn't really tell us. But when we come to Psalm 2, we learn very quickly that he is called the anointed, and that is the word for the Messiah. And he also happens to be the son of God. And so the very last words of Psalm 2 fit the very first words of Psalm 1, blessed are all who take refuge in him. So in that way, the entire book of the Psalms opens by celebrating the anointed king of Yahweh and his ultimate success in the face of the raging nations. And the rest of the Psalter is going to develop in a whole bunch of different ways what this means for us to worship this God. Now, as we begin to read these Psalms, we see quickly that they become filled with Psalms of David, almost the entire first book of Psalms of David, and the anointed Son of God and the King of Israel. and we start to learn that his monarchy becomes under fire and soon we see lament psalms starting to dominate lamentation after lamentation and these reach their most desperate hour in the whole Psalter in the songs that we looked at last week, Psalm 88 and 89 where we sing a song of almost complete despair, Psalm 88 followed by another that seeks an answer to the question of how can God's great covenant with David, with all of its one-sided gracious promises, how can that be true when we look in the world and as it looks right now everything screams the opposite? And so that's how book three left us, and today we are looking at 90, 91, and 92 together. And these three songs open what is commonly referred to as the fourth book within the great book of the Psalter. And each of these many books ends, as we saw with the first three last week, in a single verse doxology, which was added by whoever compiled these songs together. So with Psalms 1 and 2 serving as an introduction, they're not really part of the five books. You have Book 1 goes up through Psalm 41. Book 2 goes through 72. Book 3 goes through 89. And now we're looking at Book 4, which is Psalms 90 through 106. So how have we been thinking about the Psalms up to this point? Well, we're Christians. This is a Christian church. And we've been reading the Psalms with 3,000 years between us and the time they were written and 2,000 years after the Lord Jesus came and taught his church that ultimately he is the man of Psalm 1 and 2 and in fact of the entire Psalter so that's how we've been reading it and it's good and right for us to do this but I want you to imagine for a moment going back say 2,400 years or so and being a Jew and maybe living in exile, maybe in Assyria or Babylon, be far away from the temple or maybe you've just come back into the promised land and you have no king and you have no son of David to rule over you and you just read Psalm 89 talking about that very thing. So This kind of a thought seems to me to be the driving thought behind whoever was tasked with compiling these various songs into one great hymn book and doing so in the order that he did it. As we come to book four, we're left with this terrible problem that we just saw in Psalm 88 and 89. Think about this problem of having no king and this kingly eternal covenant that seems to have been forgotten by God, in light of the fact that most scholars call book four, you might think it's book three, but it's not, it's book four, is the editorial center, or as somebody else has put it, the theological heart of the Psalter. That's what we're entering into right now. What that means is that we would expect to see some significant changes in the kinds of songs that are placed here. Changes that will move the main objective of the editor forward. in a way that we haven't seen in the first 89 songs. What I want to show you today is that this is exactly what we see and it is a beautiful thing that our priestly scribe has done for us. But all this is going to do is make our interpretation that Christ is the center of the Psalms all that more secure as we get through this book four, especially the meat of it. But even today we're going to see that that is the case as we consider this trio of songs that really serve as an introduction to this fourth mini book. So with the bleak lamentations of Psalm 88 and 89 as a backdrop, a fellow who wrote a book on kind of looking at book four as a book and how these things fit together, he asks a question as he introduces Psalm 90. He says this, to whom can the people of Israel turn to give them instruction in this formative time of despair? Okay, there is no King of David around, he's gone. Well, this is a very important question for understanding why of all the 150 Psalms, if you open your Bibles and look at the beginning of Psalm 90, the only named song of Moses comes next. A prayer of Moses, the man of God. A song of Moses begins book four. Who can they turn to? The answer is Moses. And think about this. Moses had said nothing in the Bible since the end of Deuteronomy. And all of the sudden Moses is going to speak to us here in this song. The superscription of Psalm 90, he explains, reminds the reader of one who came before David, one who was the archetype for prophet. Israel once again hears a message from Moses. And this in the next two songs, he says, mark a shift in the focus for the reader. An authoritative voice from Israel's past intercedes on behalf of the nation. I find that pretty exciting to think about that. Another, the Targum actually puts the superscription this way, the prayer that Moses, the prophet of the Lord, prayed when the people, the house of Israel, sinned in the wilderness, he raised his voice and thus he said. So before heading into Psalm 90, I want us to think for just a moment about why we might want to look at these three songs together. There are many reasons for this. If you have the handout, the sermon, you can look at the footnotes later. But the first thing is just to note that there's no superscription at all in Psalm 91. It's blank. However, at least six ancient Hebrew manuscripts join Psalm 90 and 91 into one psalm. That's interesting. Second of all, all three songs have many, many word connections to each other. And more importantly, back to Moses, especially his great song in Deuteronomy 32 that we read for the law today, as well as the next chapter, chapter 33 in Deuteronomy. So at the very least, their themes overlap with those of Moses, and this was deliberate in the way they were placed together. And third, I want you to notice Psalm 92 is called a Psalm, a song for the Sabbath. Now, as such, it can be read as a kind of climactic song, because think about it, what's the Sabbath in Old Testament? It's the last day of the week, not the first day. And so it makes sense if these three are being linked together that this might serve as a kind of climax for the three songs. Also, I want you to note that in the Targum, its superscription for Psalm 92 is very interesting. It says, a psalm, a song that the first Adam uttered concerning the Sabbath day. That would make this the only song, only writing of Adam that we have. I have no idea if that's true. But it's interesting because Moses is the one that told us about Adam. And finally, the Sabbath is the seventh day. And curiously, Moses is mentioned seven times in the book of four of songs. At any rate, these reasons help us, I think, to understand that we can look at these songs together. So we're going to use them as a way of introducing the rest of Book 4, as well as we will look at them just this morning in how they are answering the question that's posed at the end of Book 3. So I want you to consider this kind of progression of themes in these songs right here. 88 and 89 talk about the reality of exile or God forsaking his people and its full of lamentation. So the first song we'll look at this morning is a prayer for deliverance from that, okay? Then we're going to see in 91 is a blessing on the people on how to avoid it in the future. And then Psalm 92 is praise to God because he is going to do it. So there's a logical flow in how these songs are going, working out. So let's get into this here with Psalm 90. If Psalm 88 and 89 pose a problem, what's the only real solution to it? And the answer is prayer. If nothing else, Psalm 90 teaches you to pray when problems arise in your life. Don't stay silent before God, tell him about your problems, pray. Look at, this is a Psalm of Moses, the man of God. Now that language comes right out of Deuteronomy 33 one. Moses is called the man of God. And it shows you what men or women of God do, they pray. It is not weakness to pray, it is godliness, strength, and power. If we use Moses' prayer as a model, it can teach you how to pray. Now a lot of Psalms can do this, but this is an interesting way of doing it. This is quite a unique Psalm. So let's kind of unpack this as we think about how Moses can teach us to pray. It's a prayer of trust and remembrance. So in your prayers, you want to trust God outwardly with your mouth and you want to remember what he's done in the past. So it begins, Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. That's how he begins his prayer. Now if it's true that it looks like God's promises are failing, then remember the past and how he has never failed in the past. Trust is found in seeing that God himself has been the dwelling place of man. He has been our refuge. And we can use the word even trust there as we find in other Psalms. And then remembrance is found in all generations. You see how that ends? Lord, you've been our dwelling place in all generations. God has never failed to be the dwelling place of his people. And so as you look at what the problem is right now, you're supposed to say, why would he start now? Second thing is that this is a prayer of wisdom and therefore it makes you wise. Verse two, before the mountains were brought forth or ever you had formed the earth and the world. That kind of language comes from Job 38, which is a wisdom text of Israel. Verse 3, I want you to notice, talks about a man dying. You return man to the dust. And then verse 5 talks about being renewed in the morning. And so together they teach us like Ecclesiastes does, another wisdom book, a time to be born, a time to die. And I also want you to see that the very first thing that is asked for in this song is for God to teach his people in verse 12. So this is a song about wisdom, teaching you wisdom. If Moses' prayer teaches you wisdom, what can you learn from it? We learn two of the most important things that we can learn in all the world. We learn the truth about God, and we learn the truth about ourselves. And really, you can divide the song kind of in half that way. About God, we learn two things. First thing we learn is that he's eternal. Second thing we learn is that he is completely sovereign. So it says, before the mountains, or the earth, or the world. Think about this, the mountains. I drove in this morning, as we do every week. I say this every week, but how can you not when you drive up these hills and see these things? They're so majestic and they never change. It seems like they've been here forever, doesn't it? God's been here since before them. Of course, the earth is even older than the mountains because the mountains grew up out of it, but God is even older than that. The metaphor is that He has no beginning. And so the verse concludes, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. And then we get a taste of how God experiences time. So think about this. Now, if you're just a little kid, you won't understand this yet. But anyone, like even in their 20s, has started to understand this already. Maybe you've understood it in high school already. I don't know. But you know how the older you get, the faster time seems to go by? Do you remember when you were in second grade? And it seemed like you were in second grade eternity. Is that just me? Nobody's answering. You guys all just breezed through second grade? I didn't and that was the longest grade ever for me. I don't know why. But you know when you get out of school it seems like time just starts flying by faster and faster. We've had this church go for 16 years now. I can't believe that. Think about that in relation to a God who's been around forever. Moses understood the relationship of time to God. For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, or as the watch in the night. A thousand years are like a watch in the night to God. Some might want to say that this teaches some kind of a relationship between God and time, like he's outside of time or that he's eternally temporal or something. I'm not sure that that's really what its purpose is. Others might read this and remember, you know, Peter quotes that, doesn't he? Yes, he does. And he's talking about the second coming. That God is not slow in his arrival just because he does not count time like you do. His application, then, as he reads this part of the psalm for Peter, is future-oriented, and it's actually grounded in the point of the psalm itself. Peter says, The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. That seems to be the very idea that the scribe who put this song here has in mind for the people in his own day. Things seem terrible right now at the end of these last two songs. Like God has forgotten his covenant with David and what this is saying is no, he hasn't forgotten it. He just doesn't experience time the way that you do. Therefore, the doctrine of God is that he is ancient of days is used here not in some kind of a way to have some kind of a theological, philosophical, seminary class conversation. It's used in a concrete way to encourage you that even though it looks like God has forgotten, he hasn't. He just isn't like you, and his purposes are beyond your comprehension. In fact, verse 1 summarizes why this matters, and it isn't just to blow your mind, which it does. Anybody who's ever thought for two seconds about, you know, a thousand years are like a day, that blows your mind. But it isn't just for that. Look at what it says in verse 1 again. Lord, you've been our dwelling place in all generations. because he's eternal he's always been there for and with his people and they take refuge in him even when things seem at their worst. So you can see how this is a great comfort as you just come out of Psalm 89. Second thing we learn about God is that he is sovereign. Notice who made the earth in verse 2. God did it. And it didn't come into existence by chance. Notice what God does with the days. You sweep them, the days, away as with a flood. They're like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning in morning it flourishes and is renewed. So the point is each day comes anew. It goes out and then it comes back like it's a miracle. God renews them every morning. Those things that you count on every day that you really don't even think about, the sun rising, just the very fact that there is a next day, these are reliable precisely because God is sovereign over them. God is also the sovereign over your life, verse 3. You return man to dust and say, return, O children of man. Just as God has the power to bring every day to a close, look at second half of verse six, the evening it fades and withers. So the days are coming and they're going. Just like he has the power over the days, so also he has power over your life and your death. Look at what it says, return. This is not accidental. You don't just die because something accidental happens. God decrees an end, and when he does that, that's the end. He gives days and he brings them to an end. And it's so ridiculous that men spend so much time trying to live forever. It's just completely foolish. I'm not saying don't be wise about your life, but God is sovereign over the day of your death, just like he was over the day of your birth. All of our days are in God's hands. And so if God is sovereign like that, why do men defy him? Why won't they bow before a God who promises to be present with them for their good while he gives them life? The answer is that in that statement, we also begin to learn about ourselves. Because unlike God, we are not of old. nor will we remain here very long. There's a reference here to the dust that reminds us of Eden and Adam who came from the dust and returned to it. And so we learn that we pass away. And quite frankly, if I had to pick one theme of this song, it would be mortality. You're going to die. You have not been here forever. And this continues on in the song for quite a long time. The song of Moses here makes you sing about why you will die, and the answer is because of your sin. Sin is a violation of the basic commands of God, which he gave for your good. It's a rejection of his kingship, his authority, his sovereignty over your life. It's a desire to be autonomous, to do things your way, as if God wasn't really sovereign. But the point is, he is sovereign, and so you die. Moses is remembering the sins of his own generation, including his own sins that were, remember, caused him not to enter the promised land. Verses seven through eight, for we are brought to an end by your anger, by your wrath, we are dismayed. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. And the word presence there is the word face, which is probably a veiled reference to the angel, as it is throughout all of Moses' writings. God was with them, but they rebelled. So verse 9, all our days pass away under your wrath. We bring all our years to an end like a sigh. What's a sigh? Isn't it like this? That's how he says your days end. This would have been taught to the children of Israel. It would have taught this new generation growing up some very important lessons. in Moses' day. And in the context of the Psalter and the current laments with no king, it means the same thing. It means that God hates sin and he burns his wrath against it and therefore we go out with a whimper. You don't go out with a bang. It's like nobody cares. Next thing we learn in the song is why this matters. The years of our life are 70 or even by reason of strength 80 years you might get. Yet the span is just toil and trouble and soon they're gone and we fly away. Remember how long Moses lived? 120 years. Remember how long David lived? Maybe 80 years. Jesus lived 33 years. I'm already 15 years past that. You don't know how many years you have. 70 or 80, it's a long time for most throughout history. But when it's over, it's over. He says, I'll fly away. And how can you not think of the song? I'll fly away, oh glory. I'll fly away. The old spiritual, right? Singing this verse. But it's only a glorious song if you learn wisdom from this song. Verse 11, who considers the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you? It does not matter how long you live if you do not spend your life thinking about why you will die. Verse 12, so teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. So why? So that you can live a life pleasing to God and frankly, helpful to yourself. Do you wanna be able to sing that spiritual? Because quite honestly, not everyone will be happy on the day of their death. Return, O Lord, how long? Have pity on your servants. Verse 13, return, O Lord, how long? Have pity on your servants. That seems to me to have been something that might've been in Peter's mind as he was quoting earlier in the song. It's a wonderful little verse that looks forward to the future in hope and faith. And it really is kind of the heart of the prayer. He's saying, return to us, God, in favor. Now we know this side of the cross that he did. We're on the side where Jesus has already come. But they were awaiting the day of his first coming. Peter seems to have been thinking about it, longing for the second coming. For a while the first coming did away with the penalty of sin, only the second coming finally destroys its power. And so all of us are still in some way longing for this verse to come true. When you learn about who God is through the song, that he's infinite and powerful and sovereign and Lord and eternal and holy and on and on, and what you are in relation to that, which is finite and sinful and created and temporary, you cry out to him for him to return to you, to come to you, to be with you so that you can take refuge in him. And when you do that, then you have the end of the song. Verses 14 through 17. Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Why do you wanna think about these things? So that you can be glad all your days. Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us and for as many years as we have seen evil. Let your work be shown to your servants and your glorious power to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands upon us. Yes, establish the work of our hands. I want you to remember the ending of this, the work of our hands. We're going to come back to that a couple of times here. But let's just think about what we've just read just a little. We see that God is becoming our satisfaction because we're learning to take wisdom from the psalm. The pleasures of the world are fading away and we're longing to be more like God. We see that God makes us glad But I want you to notice that this is in the midst of something else. He's making us glad in the middle of suffering, and it's suffering that He caused in the song. Now, there are so many people who call themselves Christians who refuse to acknowledge the theological teaching of verse 15. It's almost, it's just staggering. As many days as you have afflicted us, But Moses knew well the sovereign hand of the Lord to bring testing and affliction upon his people. I mean, you can hardly go a chapter in the story of Moses without God doing something like this. He saw it all the time. But he also saw the amazing works of God which form the first of a duo here in verse 16 and 17. Look at how it says, it contrasts two works. Let your work be shown to make us glad to establish the work of our hands. So his works become our works. And when you see the work of God in your life and for chastisement or for salvation or whatever it is he's bringing in your life, then you're ready to be established in wisdom and the work of your hand From the day you do this until the day that he calls you home, all these are established by him. And you come to the end of Psalm 90. Now, as I've been thinking about how do I, how do you transition here? Basically, I almost thought about having you stand up and sing and then sit back down because Psalm 91 completely changes direction and you need to kind of get your mind focused off of what you were having, what we just talked about to something different. Now they're related, okay? But at the same time, we're going to enter here into Psalm 91 and something that's very, very different than what we've just read. So Psalm 90 is reminding prayer from Moses, setting the stage of book four. Psalm 91 becomes a demonstration that God answers your prayer. And it is a most remarkable song for what it is that God answers. I want you to remember again that it's possible that Moses wrote this song. His other two songs that we know of are Exodus 15 and Deuteronomy 32, which we read for the law. The first one sings of this triumphant victory of Yahweh in the Red Sea over the forces of evil, both in Egypt, so the Pharaoh himself, and also above Egypt, the gods of Egypt. And then in Psalm 32 he's remembering 40 years of wandering in a desert and he is cautioning Israel not to trust in false gods and demons or they will devour them. And there's a lot of the same language used in the passage of the law today in this song. And curiously the warning of Deuteronomy 32 Two, if you're reading through Deuteronomy 32, this great song with warnings, and it gives away these incredible blessings in Deuteronomy 33, and that's the very same pattern we're seeing here. And Psalm 91 is this great blessing upon the people, but it's in a very unexpected way. So as I've thought about how do you teach Psalm 91 and how do you do it in kind of a simple and fairly quick way, My answer is that we need to know that this song plays a very important place in the life of Jesus. And as such, it looks forward, just like Psalm 90 did. Turn to verses 11 and 12, and you may notice very quickly that these are in the Gospels, and they are in the temptation of Jesus. And who tempted Jesus? It wasn't some accidental thing. It wasn't a freak of nature. It was Satan, the devil. And this is what it says in the Gospels. For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hand they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone. That's the words of Satan quoting Psalm 91 to the Lord Jesus. So the temptation, if you remember in this case, was that he takes him to the top of the temple and he tells him to jump. Now these verses were then quoted by Satan as proof that God would listen to his prayer and save him. What's just as interesting is that Jesus quotes Moses back to him, but from Deuteronomy. I thought that was interesting because this is possibly, in my mind, more of the words of Moses. We don't know, but Jesus says, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test, quoting Deuteronomy 6.16. So this is the testing temptation of Jesus, and it's a reenactment of the testing temptation of Israel. So Jesus is basically fulfilling where Israel fell. Compare these two verses. First one's in Matthew 4. So Jesus has just been baptized, and it says, then, that is after his baptism, Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. When you go back to Exodus 15 you read this, then Moses led Israel from the Red Sea, see baptism Red Sea, and they went into the desert, the wilderness of Shur, and where did Moses take them? Well, he takes them first to the waters of Marah, bitterness, and they grumble. Next thing they do is they go to the place of Elim. Elim means the gods. There's 70 palm trees, and many of you know that that's a significant number related to the gods. And then immediately we learn in the next chapter, God tested them with manna from heaven. Now, what is Satan? He is the god of this world, according to 2 Corinthians. He's a thief come to steal, kill, and destroy, according to John. He prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, according to Peter. I want you to consider how our song begins as we begin to think about these themes. He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. Now, there's a lot in this. Dwelling in the Most High is very similar to the way Psalm 90 begins, our dwelling place, Lord. The word used for God in the first instance, or it might be the second instance here, the second instance is the word Almighty. This is the word El Shaddai, okay? This can mean God of the mountain. And I want you to think about how we abide in the shadow of Shaddai. kind of a picture of the God of the mountain we don't know, because it can also mean God of the wilderness. And I want you to think about Jesus in the wilderness, and I want you to think about Moses in the wilderness. This gets more interesting. There are several words that are translated very normally in this psalm by the ESV. They're found in verses 3, 5, 6, and 13. These are the words, pestilence, night, terror, the word pestilence again, destruction, lion, and serpent. I thought it was interesting. There's seven of these. But I discovered many years ago in my study on demons and giants that these words all have entries in a dictionary called the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible. So that you could also translate them this way, nocturnal demon, night demon, Layla, not Eric Clapton, but it's related to a kind of a night hag, an early vampire who stole away kids to suck their blood and eat their flesh. Diseased ghost, noonday demon, lion-headed demons and the dragon. Now, in this regard, there is not another psalm that even comes close to matching this kind of strangeness. And only a couple passages in the entire Bible can do that. But think about it in the context of Jesus and Satan. If this song is saying that God will protect you from supernatural evil, that makes Satan's temptation so much more powerful. because he didn't wrench this out of context. He was tempting Jesus with something that was true. Basically, God will protect you from me if you do this, Jesus. Think about that. The great lie was not that he cherry-picked scripture, but that through truth, he tried to get the Lord to stop following his father. Satan is a master tempter, and frankly, we have no idea the kinds of things he is capable of doing. But I want us to look at this psalm briefly. It has a chiastic structure so that beginning and end verses and middle verses start pairing up with each other. So we're gonna look at this through the pairings of this. Verse one and two have the words dwelling, abiding, refuge, and fortress. Those are all similar ideas, right? Like a house. There's four words for God that compliment them. Elyon, Shaddai, Yahweh, and Elohim. Now, the compliment here is the very end of the song, 14 through 16. If you read these verses, you find that God holds me fast in love and delivers, protects, and knows my name. He answers prayer. He's with me in trouble. He rescues and He honors. He gives long life and salvation. So, not only is that a great way to start it, take refuge in Him, and what does that mean? It gives all these incredible things, but it's also perfect to complementing Psalm 90 and even answering even more the two songs before that. But they also answer things in this song. Verses three and 13 are a unit. He will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. This parallels 13. You will tread on the lion and the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot. And these verses, these words in 13 are words like the lion-headed demon and the dragon and so on. Now, if you read these, as you read these, you can easily think of stories in the life of Moses here. Many of these stories in the life of Moses. And ultimately, the promise is that Satan will not defeat you. Now there's a passage in Luke 10 that goes like this, that's very similar to this. Remember, Jesus sends out, interestingly, 70. And they come back and they say, and Jesus says this, behold, I give you authority to trample on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall by any means hurt you. They go out, they come back and they say incredible things. You see, he talks about serpents and scorpions, the power of the enemy, nothing shall by any means hurt you. In this verse, Luke is not talking about little crawly things. He's not saying, you know, I'm afraid of spiders so they're not going to hurt me. Not saying that. The verse right before this talks about Satan falling like lightning from heaven. The verse right before that talks about demons being subject in my name. And then the verse right after this talks about spirits being subject to you. And all of this is what we see in Psalm 91. And what Luke is saying is that this is fulfilled in the ministry of the Lord Jesus. Jesus makes Psalm 91 work for you. What is a fowler? It's a pretty antiquated word, okay? There might be one guy in this room who's gonna get this, but it's not a golfer who wears colorful clothes. One guy, my dad, okay? A fowler is someone who pursues wild game to kill it, the fowl, for food. And the way he most often does this is he lays a snare, a trap on the ground. Okay, the game, the fowl is just minding its own business, it's just walking around and then boom, the snap, slam, the jaws of death crush the prey. What does the New Testament say? The devil prowls around seeking whom he may devour. Pestilence is a word that may be as much demonic imagery as it is natural disease through pests. The song is saying that the Lord protects you from the traps of the devil. And not only this, Christ gives authority that you can tell them to bug off. The next pair, verse 4, he shall overshadow you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge. His faithfulness is a shield and a buckler. And then 11 and 12, for he will command his angels concerning you. This is where the angel pairing is. You can hear how these both concern God's help. He will overshadow you with his pinions and wings. and then he will send his angels to guard and protect. As someone put it, his wings and feathers cover and deflect, and his angels guard and protect. The motherly-like protection of the bird hovering, we looked at this last week in Sunday school with the Holy Spirit, protecting them from the elements and the foul creatures, the images of finding refuge in God again, but using it through the image of wings and the image of the Holy Spirit, especially in Moses. It's a shield, and a large defensive, a shield, he says, you're a shield. This is a large defensive weapon that you carry by straps, and it's worn on your arm. What's a buckler? A buckler's a more small shield that you hold in your fist, okay? And here the buckler is called truth, or the shield is called truth. Now, I couldn't help but think about Ephesians 6 in all of this. What's in Ephesians 6? There you have another shield. and it's the shield of faith. Why? Maybe because we need faith to believe that truth will overcome the lies of the evil one. And what are his lies? The same Ephesians verse talks about the fiery darts of the wicked one. This would be the fiery arrow in the psalm. Curiously, the next pairing brings up verse 5, that you will not fear the terror of the night nor the arrow that flies by day. And when you understand the terror of the night is Leila, Okay? It's depicting a stalking demon who lays in wait for a young prey. You start to see that Paul is probably thinking about this whole psalm as he's writing Ephesians 6. Verse 6 continues this strangeness, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness and the destruction that waits at noonday. And this time You actually have the ancient translations are translating it this way. The Targum says, of the death that walks in the darkness of the band of demons that attacks at noon. And the Septuagint says, the evil thing that walks in darkness of calamity or the evil spirit at noonday. Okay. This pair is completed in verse 10. No evil shall be allowed to befall you. No plague come near your tent. And I think it literally means it. It reminded me of something I learned again as I was writing that book in the Shema. You remember the Shema? The Lord bless you, the Lord keep you, the Lord make his face shine upon you, the Lord be gracious to you, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and grant you peace. The Targum adds something to that. It says this, the Lord bless you in all your business and keep you from demons of the night and things that cause terror and from demons of the noon and the morning and from the malignant spirits and phantoms. Where did they get that from? Maybe they're reading Psalm 91. In Ephesians 6, again, we have this well-known but probably not very well-believed verse. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers and the authorities and the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places. And Psalm 91 helps you to see that. Is it any wonder, then, that in Jewish sources and liturgy, the Psalm is, in fact, called a song for evil encounters that you are to recite before you go to bed. The center of the song is verses eight and nine, but you, O Lord, are on high forever, for behold, your enemies, O Lord, behold, your enemies will perish and all evildoers will be scattered. Those verses really only make sense if this song is not talking about scorpions and snakes and spiders, but it's talking about evil, spiritual, supernatural entities. And it shows us that God is the Lord over all creation. And as it does this, it begins to answer Psalm 90's prayer, but in a way that nobody was thinking about. And it also looks forward to book four, which is all about Yahweh as king and what gives him the authority to do these things. We're gonna come to the last song here, number 92. Again, it's a totally different transition, and yet so many of the words and images are related to what we've just seen. The superscription is important here. It's a Psalm, a song for the Sabbath. Now curiously, I didn't know this until I read this this week, there are seven songs in the Psalter that are associated with the Sabbath day. And each one is associated a different day of the week. And this one is given the seventh day. This is the Sabbath song of the Psalter. In it, you would expect this, Yahweh's name appears seven times. Of course it does. But why would this be placed here? Well, we've seen how the previous two songs are used in the New Testament to refer to future things, and so also this song is read this way. The Jews read it as a song and a song for the era to come, the day that is entirely Sabbath and contentment for life everlasting. It's so fascinating that the Jews were expecting this to have a final consummated Sabbath day. And in my view, what God is doing here is showing that the fulfillment of the previous two songs can't really happen until the great Sabbath is ushered in. And this, of course, is related to Jesus giving permission to trample on scorpions and serpents and overcoming the temptation of the devil and so on. So let's go through it. The psalm begins with a musical note. It's good to give thanks to the Lord and sing praises to your name, O Most High. Most High, Elyon, we found it in the last psalm as well. This is the name usually associated with Gentiles for God. It's also associated with the name in Psalm 91. I will protect him because he knows my name. And now that becomes I give thanks because I know your name. And so the promise of Psalm 91 is not going to be empty and he's praising God because of it. Verse two, to declare your steadfast love in the morning and your faithfulness at night. This is related to what we just saw, okay? With the noonday demon and the night demon and that kind of stuff. But God is steadfast in his love in the morning and the night for us, okay? Verse three, to the music of the lute and harp and the melody of the lyre. Now, I think that's simply an idea of corporate worship, and that's where this would have been sung. It fits that theme of Sabbath perfectly, of the God's people coming together and praising him with these kinds of instruments. But the question is, why would we sing in the song? And the answer is because of who God is. Verse four, for you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work. At the work of your hands, I sing for joy. Now, there's that work theme I told you about at the end of Psalm 90, remember? The prayer of 90 is now answered. And how great are your works, O Lord? Your thoughts are very deep, in verse 5. Your thoughts are very deep. We could say a lot about these. We could do three whole sermons on these, each one of them for sure. And it's true enough that nobody can fathom anything that God thinks. But again, the emphasis here is not just on the fact that he has deep thoughts, but it's on the fact that his deep thoughts caused him to bring about great and mighty works of salvation for Israel. His thoughts did that. His thoughts caused him to give birth to Israel, to grow Israel, to send Israel into slavery, to free them, to grant them blessings, to love them, to chastise them, to have mercy on them, and so on. That's how the thoughts of God are related. They're very personal, and certainly that's worth contemplating in your own life. Like Psalm 90, it's now contrasted, God is contrasted with man in verse six. The stupid man cannot know. The fool cannot understand. Though the wicked sprout like grass and all evildoers flourish, they are doomed to destruction forever, but you, O Lord, are on high forever. Sometimes the word stupid is biblical. Okay? Biblically stupid people are fools. That's what a stupid person is. And what makes them foolish? It's not lack of intelligence. It's not that they're dumb. It's something else. They do not understand evil in the psalm, the wicked. They do not understand God's common grace in the psalm. They sprout like grass and they flourish. They do not understand mortality and punishment. You can hear Psalm 90 again in that, can't you? They're doomed to destruction forever. They do not understand God's kingship. He is on high forever. That's what makes a person stupid. That's what makes them foolish. This kingship language, being enthroned on high, might be connected to the Sabbath day of Genesis 2. It's interesting in this regard, again, that this is called in the Targum a Psalm of the first Adam concerning the Sabbath day. And what does Genesis 2 say? Remember this is setting up the days of the week and it ends in Genesis 2, God blessed the seventh day, made it holy because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. When you read Genesis 1 as God creating a temple and he is the king and he's taking enthronement on day seven, suddenly this starts to make sense in that light. And while we have different reasons for going to Genesis 1 in our day, it is thinking about God being enthroned on his Sabbath rest as king that is what ancient people would have thought when they read Genesis. The point is, it's not out of the blue for a song for the Sabbath day to say something like this. It's very much the point. God is King. And this nicely finishes an introductory theme because that's what we're going to look at really in the next couple of weeks as we go through Book 4. Now, as King God is powerful over his enemies, verse 9, okay, we've seen supernatural enemies in the last song and now verse 9, behold your enemies, O Lord, behold your enemies will perish. All evildoers will be scattered. The point is to let wisdom teach you. as you consider the end of the songs God's power again. Verse 10, you've exalted my horn like that of the wild ox and have poured over me fresh oil. That's the language of a king being anointed. That's one of the reasons the Septuagint assigns David to this, not Adam. We just don't know who wrote this. It has no superscription. It's anyone's guess. But in this case, I don't think David or Solomon is necessarily the one in view, though I suppose they could have been in the near term. But it could be someone else. Verse 11, my eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies. My ears have heard the doom of my evil assailants. If we're thinking about this as a forward-looking song, who among all the people that have ever lived could have said this more perfectly than Christ? And then think prophetically as you hear these words that remind you of Psalm 1 again. Right where we began this morning, this is verses 12 through 15. The righteous flourish like a palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord. They flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age. They are ever full of sap and green to declare that the Lord is upright. He is my rock and there is no unrighteousness in him. So again, Psalm 1, speaking generally, talks of any righteous man, but it does have the man in its mind. This psalm starts to get at how the righteousness of the one man can be transferred to others. Like the man in Psalm 1, they flourish and grow like trees, but someone pointed out this. No longer is the productive tree planted by streams of water. Now, the flourishing tree is planted in the house of the Lord and the courts of God. The tree is no longer reliant upon God's provision indirectly through a stream, but directly in the court of God, it's having God's direct attention. So the psalm is moving us in a forward direction. And I would suggest that it's looking to the New Testament Sabbath day in Christ. And as we kind of come to a conclusion here, Hebrews 4. If Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. And that's that great promise. But how in the world do you enter God's rest? And what I want to suggest to you is that read these three Psalms and you'll learn a lot about it. Does it not mean that you confess that God is your dwelling place, first and foremost? And does it not mean that you pray to him in your distress? And most of all, that you trust in his name? All that comes from Psalm 90. Is it not entering into being sheltered by the Most High and protected by him from all evil and knowing that the Lord Jesus overcame the devil in his own temptation? That's Psalm 91. And is it not in singing the praises of the name from your heart morning and night while contemplating God's deep and mysterious ways? That's Psalm 92. his sovereign and powerful providence, your own sinful rebellion, his glorious forgiveness through the death and resurrection of his son, Jesus. Is that not how we enter God's rest? Therefore, as you consider these introductory thoughts to the book four, I want you to think long and hard on the things that we've heard this morning and sing them to yourself time and again. Be prepared for more glories to come in book four of the Psalter. And most of all, don't waste even a moment of your time this Lord's day in the time that we have left, worshiping and praising this God who has told you so many wonderful things about himself and has now brought them to pass through the risen Savior, Jesus Christ. Father, we ask you bless the hearing of your word this morning. We thank you for these songs and preserving them for us as we thank you for all of the songs in the Psalter. Don't know who wrote them all but we know Moses wrote at least one of them and their themes are so closely tied to his life. When we read them we can go back and consider his story again and as we think about our own story and what you're doing in our life and we can learn wisdom from these songs and we can learn about your protection and your goodness and we can learn what it means to praise you and into your rest. Seal these things upon our heart by your Holy Spirit, who is the one you send to shelter us under the shadow of his wings, to give us protection and comfort from the outside world. We ask in Christ's name, amen.