All right, you may be seated. Got your Bibles, I want you to turn to Psalm 108, the 108th Psalm. Psalm 108. And it's only 13 verses long, so let me read them, and I want you to ponder these 13 verses as I read them. Psalm 108, verse 1, there we read, O God, my heart is fixed. I will sing and give praise, even with my glory, awake, psaltery and harp. I myself will awake early. I will praise you, O Lord, among the people. I will sing praises unto you among the nations. For your mercy is great above the heavens, and your truth reaches unto the clouds. Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens, and your glory above all the earth, that your beloved may be delivered, save with your right hand, and answer me. God had spoken in his holiness. I will rejoice. I will divide Shechem and met out the valley of Sukkoth. Gilead is mine. Manasseh is mine. Ephraim also is the strength of mine head. Judah is my lawgiver. Moab is my washpot. Over Edom will I cast out my shoe. Over Philistia will I triumph. Who will bring me into the strong city? Who will lead me into Edom? Will not you, O God, who have cast us off, and will you not, O God, go forth with our host? Give us help from trouble, for vain is the help of man. Through God we shall do valiantly, for he it is that shall tread down our enemies. Now, just a simple question, does any of that sound familiar? Ah, I've caught you off guard. Psalm 57 in verses 7 through 11, what you find is the same as Psalm 108 verses 1 through 5. If you go to Psalm 60 and look at verses 6 through 13, they are the same as Psalm 108 verses 6 through 13, other than a couple of little minor changes. In other words, this Psalm is a compilation of two different Psalms put together, but they happen at a different time. And though the truth is changed, the truth is still the same. You understand what I'm saying? The Psalm is all in one composite here in 108, but it's in two different Psalms previously where David wrote. This is a psalm of David and the writer attributes it to David because it came from David, but the writer is probably after the Babylonian captivity he is writing. Now, why is there a repetition of the psalms when you've already got the psalm in Psalm 57 and Psalm 60? Is the Holy Spirit short of words? Does he need to express himself in different ways such as this? What is going on here? This I know for sure. Anytime there is truth, truth is always worth repeating. You can't get enough of truth and repetition is a key to learning. How many of y'all remember when you was growing up? One times one is one. Two times two is two. Three times three is nine. Four times four. You remember how you had to do that over and over and over again till you learn it? And I don't know if they teach that same way today. I doubt if they do. But it's the repetition. You say it every day and you've eventually just got it because the repetition was a key to learning. Though this was at different times, possibly around three, four, probably about 400 years difference as far as in time frame, it's possible they had similar situations going on in their particular lives when David wrote it and when this psalmist compiled it together. I believe when this psalmist put this together, and he put David's two psalms together, I think what it shows is a display of how this Person had the word of God flowing through his mind. And oftentimes they memorized the majority of what they had because they didn't have abundance of Bibles like you and I have. You got probably four or five around your house and probably stumbled across another one you didn't even know you had. Here they had to memorize. So what comes to his mind is Psalm 57 and also Psalm 60 and therefore he is putting it down. We have often said, anytime something's repeated, it's often there simply for emphasis. If you say something to a child and you have to say it again, you're emphasizing what you're saying so the child will get it. Repetition is a key to learning. There is an English fellow who was a pastor, and he said this, he uses a metaphor to describe this psalm. and his name is John Phillips. He says he likens this unto a kaleidoscope. You know what a kaleidoscope is? You know, you take the little thing and you turn it a little ways and it's got different colored fractured glass in there and it's in between two glass pieces and there's mirrors on both sides and every time you turn it, it changes colors and the shapes change and everything. And that's what he likens this psalm. It's just like a kaleidoscope, it's the truth, but it's looking at the truth in just a different light, in a different order. And it is the Spirit of God who gives it to us this way. Psalm 108 leaves off part of Psalm 57. It also leaves off part of Psalm 60. And what it leaves off is when David was writing the other two Psalms, it leaves off those distressful times that David was going through. It doesn't include that part. It cuts that out, but it has just these two sections of those two Psalms. And what it does, because it leaves off the distress, It's showing, more or less, the writer is experiencing the victory of God. David's faith came through in those Psalms, through those Psalms of distress, if you were to read them. But what Psalm 108 is, if this writer is coming out of Babylonian captivity, It's a small remnant that goes back to the promised land. And as he's coming back to the promised land, this is a song of hope. Boy, don't we like hope. If we had no hope, we'd all be very, very discouraged. We can lose sight of hope and get very, very discouraged. This is a new time of need that the psalmist is experiencing here as he's going through life and only the parts of it that express hope and confidence in God are written down here in Psalm 108. Only a fixed focus upon God is going to give you hope and victory in your life. Only a fixed focus upon God can give you hope and victory as you go through life. No matter what you face, no matter what trials, no matter what physical ailments you might have, no matter what kind of financial problems you might have, no matter what kind of decisions you have to face in life, let me tell you something, only a fixed focus upon the Lord God is gonna give you the victory. but we're all human, aren't we? Let me ask you, notice what it says in verse one. Oh God, my heart is fixed. Let me ask you, is your heart always fixed on God? We fall short there, don't we? It's easy to lose our fix, our fix of our hope set upon God. Only when your focus is fixed on Him Do you have hope and victory? When you get your heart not fixed on the Lord and it gets fixed on something else, we start getting discouraged. Boy, let me tell you, I go through that too. I'm sure you do. I know I do. I'm sure you do. We all do. So here's some encouragement from the Word of God about getting our hearts fixed upon Him. What happens if you fix your focus upon God, your heart is fixed on Him, it's gonna bring praise from you. Oh God, my heart is fixed. I will sing and give praise. even with my glory." Notice what the psalmist does when he says his heart is fixed. He gives praise. A focus on our hearts, or a focus on our frustrations, or a focus that's on our failures is gonna rob you of praise. If you get your focus on people, let me tell you something, people will let you down and you will lose praise. If you focus on your circumstances, I think you understand what I'm saying. If you focus on your circumstances, your situation, you're gonna get discouraged. And it's going to rob you of praise which God deserves. You can become very easily depressed, very easily despondent. You can become very frustrated. But the psalmist ain't there. He's saying my heart is fixed. I will sing. I will give praise. Even with my glory, with all of my being, I'm going to glorify God. So notice what he says in verse 2. He starts talking about musical instruments. Awake psaltery and harp. I myself will awake early. In other words, he's telling the musical instruments that he's going to play to wake up. Now, we don't play the psaltery and harp that much in our day and time. Lydia plays piano, Brother Steve plays bass guitar, and Sarah plays the organ. You know what? Awake, organ! Awake, piano! Awake, guitar! Awake the instruments now that God's given us that we can give Him praise through the instruments that He has supplied. If Lydia lived back in the day and time here, She'd be saying awake psaltery and awake harp, not awake piano. But here, the psalmist is crying out, like, wake up. And even my soul, you gotta wake up. I'm gonna wake up that I can give praise. I'm gonna get the instruments awake so I can praise. There is a story that's told. about a barnyard rooster. And the barnyard rooster, he assured the hens, they just admired that rooster so much. That barnyard rooster, he assured those hens, the sun got up every morning just to hear him crow. Ain't that the way some of us are? You know what, we need to awake and give glory unto God. Praise him. There's a resounding praise that should be heard. It says, I will praise you, O Lord, among the people. This is outside of the nation of Israel, the Gentiles. I will sing praises unto you among the nations. In other words, wherever I am, the praise will be resounding among people and among nations. Do you ever find yourself singing out in public, just maybe a spiritual song or a hymn? I've caught myself doing that that time or two. I got to thinking, people might think I'm weird. I say, so what? Who cares? Let them think I'm weird. You know what, we need to sing praise to the glory of God, whether it's out in public or whether we're just waking up. Have you seen those spontaneous where they, supposedly spontaneous choruses break out and they have choirs in the malls and stuff and all of a sudden they just start singing. Everybody starts singing in the mall. That's pretty cool. Maybe we should try that one day. If we're singing in public, it might just happen. When you have a fixed focus upon God, it's going to bring forth praise. You can't help but praise Him. And when you have a fixed focus upon Him, what's going to happen is you're going to see His attributes a lot more clearly. If you're thinking upon Him and you're focused upon Him and your heart is fixed upon Him, notice what the psalmist says, for your mercy is great above the heavens, and your truth reaches unto the clouds. He's talking about some of the attributes of God. When he says mercy, it's the word that's often repeated. And we've said it time and time again, the word, can anybody tell me what the Hebrew word is there? I've told you 15,000 times and you haven't remembered it yet. I said, the piano's talking. Did y'all hear that? Awake piano. Chesed. What is chesed? It's loving kindness. It's the mercy of God. He's saying, for your mercy is great. How great is God's mercy? It's above the heavens. That means it's way beyond the skies. That's how much mercy God has. And we're thankful for that because if it weren't for the mercies of God, we'd all be consumed. That's what it says in Jeremiah. Therefore, his mercies are above the heavens, his loving kindness. We often sell God short on his love. We get down, we get discouraged, we get looking at things or people or circumstances, situations, and you know what? We go in doubt. And we forget how great God's love is toward us. It's far above the heavens. He loved us so much he sent his only begotten son. His glory is above all the earth, is what the word of God tells us. His truth reaches under the clouds. That word truth can be also his faithfulness, God is faithful. How faithful is God? His faithfulness reaches all the way up to the clouds. See, you fix your focus and your heart upon Him, you see Him a lot more clearly. His lovingkindness is great. His truth or His faithfulness goes way beyond the clouds and His glory is above all the earth. So the psalmist says, be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens, and your glory above all the earth. In verse six, he says that your beloved may be delivered. Who is the beloved of God? Well, his son is his only beloved son. But you know what? The redeemed are beloved of God. You are beloved of God. When it comes right down to it, you think about how much you are his beloved. It don't matter what anyone else thinks about you if they don't like you. You're loved of God. God loves you immensely. And this is what's consuming the psalmist because his heart is fixed upon God. The psalmist hopes. are upon the promises of God. That's what we find through the latter part of this psalm in verses 6 through 13. It tells of God's promises that He has already made. So He's got a fixed focus upon God, and His heart is fixed upon Him, and His heart is fixed upon the promises of God. Notice what He says in verse 7, God has spoken in His holiness. In other words, what God says is an absolute. If God said it, that settles it. Whether you believe it or not, don't believe the little bumper stickers. God said it, so I believe it. Well, it doesn't matter if you believe it or not. If God said it, that's it. That settles it. There are a lot of people who don't believe what God said, but that don't matter if they believe or not, because if God said it, it's truth. And if God says He will do, He will do. He will bring it to pass. So notice these promises that the psalmist starts settling upon. Remember, He's coming out of exile. He's coming out of captivity. He's back in the land of Israel, he's in Jerusalem, and as he is there, his focus is upon the Lord, but it's just a small remnant that's there. The place is in shambles. And so what does he say? God has spoken in his holiness, I will rejoice. The psalmist is rejoicing because of what God has said. And what has God said? I want you to notice here, in relation to Jerusalem, where these areas are. And you can look up on your little Bible map in the back of your Bible or get a home on a computer. But notice where these different places are that he's talking about. He says, I will divide Shechem. Now where is Shechem? It's in the land of Manasseh. Manasseh is about 65 miles north of Jerusalem. Let's think Jerusalem's right here. Shechem's up here. So we look north of Jerusalem and God says, I will divide Shechem. And I will met out or divide out the valley of Sukkoth. Now where is Sukkoth? It's in the land of Gilead. and it's in the mountain region east of Succoth. We're going east of the Jordan River. Now I realize I've got to flip myself around which way is east and which way is west. We're going to say this way is east. That means this way is west. You've got up here Shechem to the north, Succoth to the east. And then he says Gilead is mine. Gilead is east of Succoth. So you got these two places, Gilead and Succoth to the east. And then he says Manasseh is mine. Manasseh is on both sides of the Jordan River, which runs straight up from Jerusalem. So it goes both east and west. Then he says Ephraim also is the strength of mine head. Ephraim is west of the Jordan. Oh, you're getting a little picture now. You've got north, east, west. And then he says, Judah is my lawgiver. Now Judah was right where Jerusalem was at. It's included in that area. Notice he says in verse 9, Moab is my washpot. Moab is east of the Dead Sea. There is Edom, where he says, I will cast my shoe. That's south of the Dead Sea, which is south of Jerusalem. Over Philistia will I triumph. Philistia is on the coast, and it's west of Jerusalem. You see what the psalmist has drawn here? It's a circle around Jerusalem. I find that fascinating. What God's done, he's saying all these lands around Jerusalem, they're mine. They belong to him. You look at the turmoil that's going on since yesterday of how Iran started dropping bombs on Israel. Now I'm sure a lot of y'all got questions concerning that. I don't have all the answers to that. I do not believe in replacement theology. I don't believe the church, whatever the church is, is replaced Israel. I believe in local visible bodies of baptized believers that assemble together. That's churches. The church has become a popular little item, which I don't think is scriptural. That's assembly. An assembly is an assembly. It's not another symbol assembly, an invisible assembly, it's assembly. So I don't believe in the replacement theology. But notice here, all these lands around, and it's the same true today, they all belong to God. Israel is encircled by enemies, humanly speaking. But notice what God says. God says, it's all mine. Same today, all this land around Israel, it all belongs to God. Now, let me chase a rabbit a little bit. Brother Wayne was asking me this, I think, about a week ago. Is Israel God's people? Here's a very interesting question. Let me tell you, as long as they reject the Messiah, they're not God's people. They're cast out. God's written a bill of divorcement. They've not accepted the Messiah. Their only way to heaven is through the Lord Jesus Christ and we pray for the salvation of Israel. They would believe the Gospel. They would believe the Messiah that was sent by God the Father. Will they? Well, pray that they will. I cannot foresee the future. God can. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Pray that God would be exalted. There's a lot of things that go on in Israel that God don't like. I can tell you that. But that's throughout the world. I want you to notice as we venture on through this psalm, because we've got to come to a close here, in the last few verses, What he's talking about, he's talking about Israel's enemies. When he's talking about Moab and he's talking about Edom and Philistia, these were the three biggest enemies of Israel back in David's time. And so what he says, he says in verse 10, who will bring me into the strong city? Now where is the strong city? He says, who will lead me in to eat them? The strong city would be Petra. You heard of the city of stone. Petra was a carved out area where they actually carved out and they got an arch over it where you go through kind of like a fat man squeeze. You know, they cut it out to where you can only get a few troops through there at a time. So therefore, you could pick people off as they're coming through, plus it was up a rocky crevice where the actual Petra city was. I don't know if you've ever seen pictures of it online, but it's a very fascinating place that goes way back. And humanly speaking, it's impenetrable. You cannot, a human army could not just come in there and just take over because it's very precarious situations there. It seems like an impossible task. Who can bring me into that strong city? Petra? Who will lead me into Edom? Verse 11 answers that. Will not you, O God, who has cast us off, and will not you, O God, go forth with our host? In other words, that which seems humanly impossible is possible with God. All things are possible with God. Have faith in God. Do you face impossible situations? Do things seemingly seem like they are totally impossible, insurmountable odds? Situations in life? News you get in life? Do they seem like it's impossible? I tell you, fix your heart. upon the Lord. Fix your focus upon Him, and His Word is what the psalmist is doing. So he cries out in verse 12 and 13, and basically what he's crying out to end this psalm is basically for God's mercy. Give us help from trouble, for vain is the help of man. Man's help cannot help. We're trusting in you, Lord. Through God we shall do valiantly, for he it is that shall tread down our enemies. You see what the psalmist is doing. He's resting in the Lord. And it is God who will tread down the enemies. Do you have cares and concerns in this world? Fears of the future. I've heard that quite frequently from different people. Troubles or problems or aches and pains. I believe everybody in here's got at least one ache or pain. Physical abilities lost, whatever it might be. Through God, we shall do valiantly. But how can we do that? Oh God, my heart is fixed. If you get your focus off God, you're gonna feel defeated. You're gonna feel like there's no hope, there's no help. I asked you, whatever your problem is, whatever your concern in life is, is God bigger than that problem? That's a very simple question. Through God, we shall do valiantly. Let's have a word of prayer, and then we're gonna sing one song. Father, we thank you for your word. And we know it's only through you can we do valiantly. And Lord, if we get our eyes off of you, and we get our eyes upon the mountain of problems, or the situation, or the circumstances, or the feelings, or the anxiety, or the troubles, or the cares of this life, or the pains of this life, and the aches, and all the other things we could name, Lord, we can very easily become despondent. So we ask that you help us to fix our heart upon you, that we might praise you, that we might see your attributes more clearly, that you might be exalted within our midst for Christ's sake. Amen. Now, if you get your hymn book out, Turn right over to page 446. And we're going to stand and sing because we're going to be dismissed with this song. Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine.