We are looking at Psalm 138. Alright, let's start with our summary statement. Psalm 138 praises Yahweh for His covenant promises to David which He will fulfill in faithfulness to His own name. So go over that one more time. Psalm 138 praises Yahweh for his covenant promises to David which he will fulfill in faithfulness to his own name. A simple outline for the psalm would be in two parts, verses one to five, the great glory of the Lord. Verses 6 to 8, grace to the lowly. That was verses 1 to 5, the great glory of the Lord. And verses 6 to 8, grace to the lowly. All right, we'll go to our observations. So Psalm 138 was written by David. You can see the superscription there, A Psalm of David. The superscription attributes it to him. There's no musical direction for the singing of the psalm. You do have two different references to singing of praises in the text of the psalm, in verse one and verse five, but no further musical direction is indicated. There's no occasion that is given for the writing of the psalm. And when you read the psalm, it has a future orientation. And so it's praising the Lord for what he will do as though it has already been done, which is not uncommon in some of the future oriented or prophetic predictive type psalms that we have looked at. To categorize this psalm, it is a praise psalm and it sort of has the conventions of a praise psalm but it's not standard like what we typically see and again. You know, these categories are just categories that we sort of discern by reading the Psalms, by comparing them, seeing certain features, whether it's structural features or whatever that it may be, to where we can put, kind of put them into groups or into categories. So it doesn't, you know, it doesn't mean that a psalm has to fit this way or that way. We're just trying to observe what's there and say, You know, it fits here, it fits there. So it is a praise psalm and I think you see the repetition of praise in the psalm and obviously praise and worship is central to the psalm. But I certainly would consider it non-conventional. So you start out with a direct address commitment to praise. So typically, in a praise psalm, you'll see a call to praise, reasons for praise, a commitment to praise, and a concluding praise, that sort of thing. It's kind of just typically what we've seen time and again. So this one has rather this direct address commitment to praise. Then there are some reasons for praise, but they're sort of woven throughout the psalm. They don't appear just in one particular block or two. And then you also get, interestingly, a vision of future praise within this psalm and then a concluding expression of confidence. So this praise is going to be realized. I would categorize it as a praise psalm. It's just probably non-conventional as far as most of the praise psalm types in psalms. As far as minor elements go, the most prominent would probably be that prophetic predictive. It is looking forward to a time that has not yet been fulfilled. And beyond that, this is actually the first psalm of the final group of David Psalms. So from Psalm 138 to Psalm 145, we have this final group of David Psalms. And then of course, those last few Psalms are just the grand climax of the whole of the Psalms. So this is the first of this final David group of Psalms. Now Psalm 138, It is connected with the previous Psalms. So if we look back to like Psalms 135, 137, we had that little subgroup of historical Psalms that we saw. And we can see several connections between them. We have reference to the gods here bowing toward the temple, the enduring forever being emphasized themes of exile and abandonment. and such, and so there are a number of connections to those preceding Psalms, but it also connects with much, much earlier Psalms. So, Psalm 2, and Psalm 8, and Psalm 16, and Psalm 22. And I'm not going to quiz you, but when you hear Psalms 2, and 8, and 16, and 22 especially, those are very significant Messianic Psalms. It should trigger something in your mind when you hear a psalm that has a lot of connections with these other messianic or kingly psalms. Now the poetic features of this psalm, I think one outstanding feature in particular would be the voice of the psalm. So when you read through this psalm, almost every statement in the psalm is actually a direct address to the Lord. The only exceptions to that would be sort of a reflective verses like verse 6 and verse 8. But all the rest of them are direct address to the Lord. And that certainly is a not entirely common feature among the Psalms. The Psalm also uses some word associations. And so when you read through this Psalm, and especially if you've been, you know, studying the Psalms all the way through and studying the Psalms as a collection and how they work together and all of that, Well, you're going to notice this psalm, even though it's relatively a short psalm, it has just a pile of covenantal associated terms. Terms that even when used by themselves are generally have some sort of covenantal association, but especially when they're used in groups. And so obviously you've got the word hesed. that shows up a couple of times, references to God's name, to the words of His mouth, to God perfecting or completing and Him not abandoning or forsaking. So you've got a lot of terms in this short psalm that's very, very covenant reference heavy. Beyond that, we'll say there's just some minor imagery, minor repetition and things that are pretty standard in the Psalms. All right, so we want to work our way through here. We have eight verses. I'll go ahead and read this. I will praise thee with my whole heart. Before the gods will I sing praise unto thee. I will worship toward thy holy temple and praise thy name for thy loving kindness and for thy truth. For thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name. In the day when I cried, thou answerest me and strengthenest me with strength in my soul. All the kings of the earth shall praise thee, O Lord, when they hear the words of thy mouth. Yea, they shall sing in the ways of the Lord, for great is the glory of the Lord. Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly, but the proud he knoweth afar off. Though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me. Thou shalt stretch forth thine hand against the wrath of mine enemies, and thy right hand shall save me. The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me. Thy mercy, O Lord, endureth forever. Forsake not the works of thine own hands. So verses one and two give us this opening commitment to praise. And of course, you immediately notice the commitment to praise with the whole heart, this wholehearted commitment. And so it's a reference to the entirety of being, in essence, my whole self will be engaged in the praise of the Lord. And he makes this reference to singing praise, And the word that's used for singing, there's two different words that are translated sing in this psalm. And the word here is one that actually means like plucking strings on an instrument. And so it's a word that indicates singing with musical accompaniment. And then the next word we'll see refers just to the lyrical singing that's used later. Now the word for gods is interesting here in verse one. And essentially, and it is Elohim, and Elohim can be used in three different ways. And what I mean by that is in ways that are not in reference to God, the creator of heaven and earth. The word for gods can be used, and it is a plural, and it can be used to speak of human rulers, which it does at times. It can be used to speak of false gods or idols, and it can be used to speak of spirit beings, and we can find all of those uses in the Old Testament. And so the question is, of course, you encounter a verse like this, is what is the intention here? I don't think it's entirely clear what the intention is and it's one of those that if you look at different commentaries, you know, they're just going to provide this just a whole host of views of could be this, could be that, could be something else. I think really though that it mostly is going to fall within the first of those two choices. It's going to be a reference to human rulers or it could be references to the false gods or the idols. And really the way that it functions, when you read this psalm and you read the whole context of the psalm, the way this reference functions, it seems to be an indirect reference to the nations. So if that indeed is the case, which later we get reference to the kings of the earth praising because they heard God's word and here he's committing to sing God's praises before the gods. So again, it could be, most likely I believe it is a reference to the rulers of the nations so this is the intent contextually and we see that being fulfilled in the later verses. In verse 2 we get this reference of bowing that worship the word for kneel down or bow down toward thy holy temple reference to the temple in Zion though Zion is not mentioned. Obviously the The connotation here is that the temple is there, and David is singing praise, and again, this is part of the future vision of this psalm. Now, we have this connection, like verse two, we get thy name, we get thy loving kindness, thy truth, and thy word, and a repetition of thy name. So, here we've got, again, we've got just a grouping up, gathering up of all these covenantal terms, references to God's name, which we have seen as we have been going through how that references to God's name. Well, what is God's name? God's name is the security of the covenant. When he could swear by none greater, he swore by himself. And this is why you read in the prophets, God sending word to Israel. about judgment that's gonna come upon them, but yet a remnant will be preserved and he's gonna restore them at some future time. And typically, you'll see references like, for my name's sake. It's not for your sake that I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it for my name's sake. Why? Because his name is the surety of the covenant. That's what he gave for the surety or the security of the covenant. So this reference to God's name, to hesed that is here translated loving kindness, We've talked about that numerous times, but it's also joined here with the word for truth, emet. So it's sort of equivalent to the reference to grace and truth. We've talked about that before as well, and God's word. So all these words referring to the security of the covenant, God's faithfulness to his covenant promises and his trustworthiness to keep them. And that's the truth, truthfulness, trustworthiness, and word in this context. So word shows up a number of times, God's word or the words of his mouth or something like that. And in this context, we generally see God's word and we start thinking, well, you know, the Bible. But specifically in this context, God's word refers to his covenant promises, those promises that he has spoken. That's his word to David in particular, which is the subject of this psalm. So we get all of these references together and David is worshiping and is praising He's praising the name of the Lord, he's praising his covenant faithfulness, his trustworthiness, and his word that he has spoken that is greater than his name or is exalted above his name because the name is the foundation, it's the security of the word. You get to verse 3, and we see David now talking about deliverance. And this verse almost, really when you look at this psalm, probably should have maybe mentioned it under poetic features, but when you look at this psalm, it almost seems like we've seen just about all of these statements before, just sort of in different places and in different orders. It's almost like it's sort of an assembly of a bunch of different lines from psalms that are together. So verse three sort of seems like it was snatched from a lament, and it's referenced to this deliverance and crying out. Of course, we've seen again, we've seen this before, crying out and being answered oftentimes shows up in lament psalms. And the implication of that is that the psalmist has a reason to expect to be heard and answered. Like it's not just sort of a shot in the dark. You know, it's not just sort of, you know, throwing something out there and seeing, you know, if it gets answered or heard or whatever. There's a reason. And that's also why we've noticed in the laments, now it's not, it doesn't come out here because this isn't a lament, but in the laments we've noticed that a lot of times we also get that question of how long. How long? How long are you going to stay silent? How long are you not going to act? How long before you deliver me from these enemies and questions like that? And again, those are covenantally based. It's because God has promised to do something. So David speaks about this deliverance that when he cried, when he cried out to the Lord, He had reason to expect, and he was answered, and he was strengthened, and strengthened in his soul, referring to an inner strengthening, which has the effect of preserving. In other words, it's sort of like saying that God sustained him. We've noticed again, if you go back to many of the laments, and even David's, many of his laments, that there's a weariness. It's like it's been a long and protracted time that he's been in this crisis, so he is preserved. Then we get to verses 4 to 6, and this is where we now get sort of a shift that starts talking about the kings of the earth and the fact that they will praise the Lord. Again, it's future-oriented. The kings of the earth, all the kings of the earth, and the word is there, so the total of the kings of the earth shall praise the Lord. So this is envisioning future praise from the kings of the earth And notice that it's when they hear the words of thy mouth. And again, we read this in context. Once again, specifically God's word in this psalm is his word to David. It is his promise, his covenant to David. And when they hear God's word, in other words, when God's word to David has been fulfilled, it's going to result the kings of the earth praising the Lord and again this is something that has not happened and then we get this other word for seeing there in verse number five and and That word again, it's different from the earlier word and it just has more to do with the lyrical singing, the voice and such. The kings of the earth are going to sing praises and the word for glory that is used there, it is that term kavod. We have noticed how often that that word is used in connection with authority and with power and with reigning. God's covenant promises to David obviously concern kingship and the throne. And so the glory of the Lord essentially will be praised in that day, the glory of the Lord, which will be upon the anointed son. And these references to singing are also interesting given Psalm 137, which comes right before it, because that Psalm that you had the exiles in Babylon, and they couldn't sing. Jerusalem's destroyed. The temple is destroyed. We hung our harps up on the tree because we cannot sing. We're in a foreign land. We're not in the land of promise. And so now we get sort of a reversal as you come to this psalm because now David is singing praises because God's words have been fulfilled. And not only David, all the kings of the earth, meaning all the nations of the earth will be singing the praises of the Lord as well. Now we get verse 6 which is that reflective, not really a refrain but sort of a reflective verse. pulls out of that direct address to the Lord and just sort of gives a reflection here. Contrast the high with the lowly. God is high. He is greatest. In other words, this is expressing his supremacy. He is above all. But it also highlights his grace because you see that contrast there. He's high, but he has respect to the lowly. And so there's a bending or a stooping compassion on the part of God. And the idea actually of respecting the lowly is supplying what they have need of. But then we see the contrast with the proud that he doesn't bend or stoop to them. The proud, which the word indicates the lofty, the lifted up, it's a word that essentially is used to refer to arrogance. and God is far off from them and being far off means no help and no deliverance for them. Well then we get to the last two verses, verses seven and eight of this psalm and these verses speak of God's everlasting covenant mercy and you get him walking in the midst of trouble verse seven and And you just can't help but think of Psalm 23, 4, David walking through the valley of the shadow of death and such. And so it certainly gives us sort of that recognition and that echo. But the word for trouble that is used here, it is a word that can mean distress and tribulation and various sort of things, but it also has the idea of adversaries. So it's not, these troubles here are not, they're not like calamity, like a flood. You know, a flood brings a calamity. A whirlwind, a tornado brings a calamity. An earthquake brings a calamity. An outbreak of pestilence or some sort of disease or infection, you know, that brings a calamity. But this word is more of a distress that has come from adversaries. So it's more of the suffering that comes at the hands of enemies, which enemies are mentioned here. shortly, but it's, so him walking in the midst of this trouble from adversaries implies being surrounded by them. And in fact the same word is used with the same sort of idea in Psalm 22 and verse number 11, that great Messianic Psalm. Now he uses this word for revive. He's walking in the midst of trouble, but God's gonna revive me. Thou wilt revive me. Now the word for revive, It means to make alive and it's used in two primary ways. One is the sense of keeping alive or in sense of preserving life, life that is in danger, life that is threatened and it being preserved and that usage is like in Psalm 33 and verse 19, but it also means to make alive again, which implies resurrection from the dead. And you can see it used that way, Psalm 71 and verse 20, and particularly in Psalm 85 and verse number six, where it refers to the restoration of Israel as a resurrection. You know, image that we're familiar with from the book of Ezekiel and the Valley of the Dry Bones and the Lord saying to Ezekiel that, you know, this is Israel and they essentially they're being resurrected from the dead. So, um, and we certainly know that, that David has many of his Psalms before. In fact, Psalm 22, uh, has, has resurrection imagery and language in it. Um, We've seen other Psalms of David that have that sort of language. We know that Psalm 16 in particular prophesied the resurrection of the Messiah. And so certainly that's nothing strange or unusual. And so it just sort of gives us that resurrection language. And just like in, particularly in Psalm 85, six, that leads to praise. And that's what happens here as well. Now the stretching out of God's hand against the enemies of his anointed, it's indicating that action that's taken at an appropriate time. And enemies is something that We haven't encountered nearly as much in book five of the Psalms and we're getting close to the end of the Psalms and we're not encountering references to enemies as much. But they are still here, they are still a thought, they're never entirely out of the picture because The destruction of the enemies is an important eschatological theme. It's an important part of that future vision that will include the promises to David being fulfilled as well as to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and so on. That he's going to save with the right hand, and we can see reference to David of that way back early, Psalm 20 and verse number six. But saving by the right hand, Obviously that's indicative of power, but it's also indicative of a unilateral action. And I didn't have time to think of a shorter word to use there than unilateral. And basically what unilateral means is that it's one way, one way. So God's saving by his right hand is referring to the fact that he alone does it. All right, so in other words, David doesn't help God deliver him. David doesn't have companions that help God deliver him, that the deliverance is of God's right hand. It's of his power and of his strength alone. And then we get in verse eight, we get this next reflection verse, and the Lord will perfect that. So the word for perfect there, it means to complete, it means to bring to completion. And what concerns David specifically is God's covenant promises to David. And in particular, we have seen reference to this very recently, Psalm 132 and verse number 11, the Lord has sworn in truth unto David, he will not turn from it, of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne. So the specific promise to David that is central in this Psalm is that God has promised to raise up one of David's descendants to sit on his throne over Israel forever. And we read this reflection, you get the word for mercy, that's hesed again, that is repeated, it endures forever. In other words, there's no expiration date on God's promises, there's no, His faithfulness and his loyalty to his promises that he has made will never fail. It will be fulfilled. And the ending petition there is not to abandon his works and specifically the works of his own hands. And this would refer to creation in general and to the earth and mankind upon the earth in particular. And we can see a similar reference in Psalm 8 and verse number 6. All right, let's go to interpretation. Psalm 138 teaches that God will not abandon his purpose for his creation. And this can be something that oftentimes can be troubling. It can be something that can cause people difficulty like, You know, thinking why, well, why didn't God just destroy Satan and just start over? Or, you know, all these other things. Why didn't God do this? Or why didn't God do that? Or why would he make a world and allow this creation to go on as long as it has with Satan and evil spirits and sin and death and suffering and all the things that's gone on? Well, you know, this verse sort of taps in God. It's a prayer to God to not forsake the works of his own hands. And, of course, he's not going to. Particularly those works of his hand, again, earth and man upon the earth. And we've read of God's purpose and the redemption of the creation. And we read Psalm 8, again, a number of connections with this psalm and Psalm 8. and references to God and to his purpose in the creation and mankind. And we get strong covenantal terms throughout this psalm. And again, that's founded upon God's word of promise. In other words, it's not any merit on the part of any men on the earth. It's not as though God is sitting back and is just waiting for mankind to get better. That somehow mankind is improving as time goes on and eventually they're going to get to the point where God is able to come back and do something. That's not the case at all. So God's promises, his word of promise is what shows he will not abandon or forsake the works of his hands, particularly his creation and man upon the earth. And you get the various attributes of God that are referred to in this psalm. And here we see them, they're all shown to be in the service of fulfilling God's purpose, as expressed again through his words of promise. And so the messianic hope of Psalm 138 is seen through this central focus of the psalm. So the psalm centers on David and God's word of promise to David. And you notice, you get the, like verse three, crying out and being strengthened on the part of David. David being in the midst of a surrounded by enemies and being saved by God's right hand in verse number seven. And what's that result in? Results in all the kings of the earth praising the Lord. So the saving of David and the fulfilling of his word to David is what results in the praise from all the kings of the earth. So that central promise to David was a son from David to sit on David's throne forevermore. And so we have connections here again, those Messianic Psalms, Psalm 2, Psalm 8, Psalm 16, Psalm 22. And it shows again this hope to be in the anointed son of David, who is the son of God, who will come to the earth, destroy the rebellious kings, and rule the nations with a rod of iron. All right, application. Let's see, I have two of these. Number one, understanding Psalm 138, helps us understand the Psalms generally. David is the most prominent human being in the Psalms, certainly the most prominent writer of the Psalms. But more than that, David's life and his deliverance and his salvation and his resurrection and promises fulfilled to him are crucial to the redemptive purpose of God to restore this creation that He has made through His Son. Now again, God chose David. God chose David out of the sheepfold. You know, he's the youngest, he's the most insignificant of Jesse's sons and yet he is the anointed one because God has chosen him. And sometimes people think that statement, you know, well, David was a man after God's own heart and they think, oh, you know, that means that David was upright and he was pious and he was, no, no, no, that was God's choice. He was the man after God's heart. Saul was the man after the people of Israel's heart. They chose King Saul. God chose David. So again, it's not because of David. It's not because of what he was able to do or any particular qualities that he possessed. No, it's all centered around God's word, God's word of promise to David. In fact, when you look at Um, those, some of those last words of David there at the end of second Samuel, you know, David just says, you, you know, he's, he's given me a covenant that's ordered in all things and sure. And not like my house, you know, David recognized that he himself, and we've seen the penitential Psalms where David confesses, um, sin and iniquity. And David recognized that he himself and his, his sons after him, it wasn't because of them. It was because of God's mercy. It was because he had given him a covenant that was ordered in all things and sure that this is why David had this hope. So when we understand that and we read a Psalm like Psalm 138, we understand what David's hope really was. And it really, again, it helps us in many ways understanding the Psalms in general and understanding David and his words that you know it wasn't just that David was a talented musician or a talented poet or or whatever or you know he was just good at expressing emotion or whatever that you want to say but it was actually the place of David in God's purpose and David's place there was because God placed him there but it is an important place in God's purpose. Alright so number two Understanding Psalm 138 does help us have hope in God who will revive all those who believe in him. So because God's name endures, we don't have to fear the grave as though, you know, well, time ran out and I didn't experience the promises of God being fulfilled. I didn't see Jesus Christ return. You know, I didn't walk into glory, so to speak. We don't have to fear the grave. God's promises, His Word endures forever. His name endures forever and all of His promises will be fulfilled. David is a very important figure in God's redemptive purpose, but also so are those that take refuge in him, that are in covenant relationship with him. We do benefit from those promises being fulfilled. So because God's name endures again we don't have to fear the grave and our life on earth may end before Jesus Christ returns but that's okay that's not going to alter God's purpose or God's timetable or the fact that all these things are going to come true. David's been dead a long time. but he's talking about things that he's gonna see, and he's gonna participate in. He's gonna sing the praises of the Lord, and the kings of the earth are gonna sing the praises of the Lord. David knows that, why? Because God's made that promise, and he keeps his word.