Beloved, we come for the second of two sessions to the 108th Psalm. Psalm 108, the message I started last Sunday, I would conclude today, and it's entitled, Thy Kingdom Shall Come. Thy kingdom, that is God's kingdom, shall come. This is a psalm which all the students of scripture who study this psalm know is composed of almost identical verses from two other previous psalms. The first five verses from Psalm 57 and the rest of the verses taken from Psalm 60. And these previous sections of the psalms are pieced together to make a new psalm That is Psalm 108, and it is not redundant that it is so. This is a Psalm which is worthy of our attention in its own right, even though we've already read and studied the other two Psalms from which it comes. Placed together this way by the Holy Spirit through a prophet of the Lord, likely David, this Psalm has its own distinct main point that it makes. And I would state that main point in these words. We praise hopefully and pray confidently for total victory through God. We praise hopefully this is the theme of the first five verses of the psalm, and we pray confidently the idea in the remainder of the psalm the last eight verses, we praise hopefully and pray confidently for total victory through God. Many of the Psalms start out with prayer and then anticipating the answer to the prayer, give way to praise to the Lord for the knowledge that he will answer the prayer. This Psalm is exactly the opposite in its arrangement. It begins with hopeful praise. That is, praise to God which expresses confidence that the Lord shall prevail over his and our enemies. And then, after the praise comes the prayer requests that are made. And as praise is the fruit of hope, so prayer is the acknowledgement of our misery and need. So the remainder of the psalm we have before us today acknowledges our need, the fact that the kingdom of God is not yet fully come. And it needs to come. We want it to come. It's miserable until it fully comes. So we offer up our prayers to God for that glorious kingdom in this last part of the psalm. And yet these interim prayers, by that I mean prayers that are offered between now the kingdom of God beginning and the kingdom of God not yet fully realized. These prayers in the interim are hopeful prayers. They are confident prayers you can tell in many ways that as the psalmist prays to the lord for for a total divine conquest of all that is evil he does so not with a spirit of iffiness but with the spirit that god will be pleased to hear these prayer requests and grant the things that are asked so with this introduction to psalm 108 Please hear a straight reading of the psalm. And after we've read the whole thing aloud, I want to take it up again, starting with verse six. This is God's word. A song or Psalm of David. Oh, 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 thee, O Lord, among the people, and I will sing praises unto thee among the nations. For thy mercy is great above the heavens, and thy truth reacheth unto the clouds. Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens and thy glory above all the earth, that thy beloved may be delivered. Save with thy right hand and answer me. God has spoken in his holiness. I will rejoice. I will divide Shechem and meet out the valley of Succoth. Gilead is mine. Manasseh is mine. Ephraim also is the strength of my 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? Wilt not thou, O God, who hast cast us off? and wilt not thou, O God, go forth with our hosts? Give us help from trouble, for vain is the help of man. Through God we shall do valiantly, for it is He that shall tread down our enemies. Amen? Amen. Very militant, vigorous, virtuous, manly type of psalm this is. So. This second part of the psalm, starting with verse six, is overall, you could characterize it as an elaborate prayer. And one of the traits that we discern from the manner in which these prayers are offered to the Lord is confidence. In other words, these petitions to the Lord are offered up with faith, believing that God is able to grant what is asked, and even that he is willing and in time shall fully give the thing for which the worshipers pray. And this kind of praying in faith is really the only way to pray. You know, many passages come to mind, One of the more pertinent ones to this idea that when you pray, you should pray as one who is a believer and one who has faith that God will grant the things you ask. This is an important doctrine in the ministry of Jesus. From Mark chapter 11, where we read in verse 22, Jesus said to these people, have faith in God for verily I say unto you that whosoever shall say unto this mountain be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea and shall not doubt in his heart but shall believe that those things which he says shall come to pass He shall have whatsoever he says. Therefore, I say to you, what things soever you desire, when you pray, believe that you receive them and you shall have them. In other words, when you pray, pray as a believer who asks for things you have confidence God will grant to you. And if you will pray that way with a justifiable confidence in God that He will give the things you ask, Jesus says, you will have the things you ask in your prayers. Now, this is not the only place in Scripture that commends and even requires such confidence in prayer when we make requests to the Lord. Another passage that reinforces this teaching is found in James 1, where James is telling us as Christians how to think and how to live under trials. Trials sent from the Lord that are meant to perfect us spiritually and perfect our faith. And James says that in these trials, and this is implied, we will discover that we are in desperate need of wisdom from God. And he says, in effect, this is James chapter 1, okay, you need wisdom in your trials, and don't be shy or hesitant to ask God for the wisdom you need in your trials. Because God delights to be petitioned for wisdom. He doesn't rebuke people when they cry to Him for wisdom. He delights to give the wisdom that people ask when they pray. However, when you understand you need wisdom from God and you are of a mind to pray and ask for wisdom from God, when you pray and ask for wisdom, make sure that you believe that God is going to give you the wisdom you ask. That's necessary for you to believe that He will hear you and answer your prayers for wisdom. It's in this passage that James says in 1.6. But let him ask in faith nothing wavering. So this wavering state of mind is contrasted with the confident state of mind called faith. It's similar to what Jesus said in the Mark passage. Believe that those things which you pray for will be granted and don't doubt in your heart. So there's the contrast between doubting and believing, both in Jesus teaching and here in James. Let him ask for wisdom in faith, nothing wavering for he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. Let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord. In other words, the one who is doubting in his heart. the one who wavers like a sea wave that goes up and down and up and down. Very unstable. James is saying, when you pray and ask for wisdom, ask confidently. Ask with faith that the Lord is there and He hears you and it pleases Him to grant what you ask. And I'm telling you, you need to ask for that confidently because if you're too two-minded person, one moment you think God is real and he will hear and answer your prayer, then another moment you think maybe, I don't know, maybe I'm an atheist, maybe God's not really there, maybe he's not good enough to give good gifts to his children. If you have that kind of a vacillating mind, you shouldn't expect that God is going to hear favorably any of your prayers and give you what you ask. In other words, you better pray with confidence that God will hear and answer your prayers. That's always how we should pray. Maybe that's one reason why we don't seem to accomplish more by our prayers. We're doubting in our heart that God will grant what we ask. We're like a wave of the sea picked up and thrown down by the wind. Why bother to pray if you're not praying confidently? If you're not asking God for things that you know are His will and things that you know He will grant according to His promise. And so this begins to answer the question, well, how can we pray with such confidence? How can we know when we ask God for things that in time, according to his wisdom and his own good pleasure, he will answer our request and give us what we ask? Well, certainly we can have that kind of confidence if we pray for the right things. We know that God will hear and answer our prayers because, hopefully, we're not asking amiss, but we're asking for things that God has promised to us. You know, James, later in his epistle, writing to a certain group of people, says to them, you're asking, he means in prayer, you're asking things of God And you don't receive the things you ask for. Why? James 4.3, because ye ask amiss that you may consume it upon your lusts or desires. This is a wonderful teaching on the difference between true prayer in confidence before the Lord that will be answered and the kind of prayers that we cannot have confidence will be answered. What's the difference? The difference is, in one case, we're praying according to God's will, and in the other case, we're praying merely according to our own personal human desires. We're asking God just to give us whatever it is we feel like we want, regardless of His will. By all means, you can't have confidence God's going to hear and answer your prayers if your prayers are just driven by your own personal whims and not by the promises of God in Scripture. It's like somebody buying a lottery ticket and praying, Oh Lord, let me hit the jackpot this week. They have no biblical reason to be confident that God will hear and answer such a prayer. But if they pray, oh Lord, let me have wisdom that I might serve you faithfully in this trial, that I might resist all the temptations it involves, that I might not be misled by the devil in this or follow my own wicked impulses. Lord, let me let me have the wisdom to love you and to love people in this and to glorify you. That we can pray confidently that he will hear and answer our prayers. 1 John 5, verse 14 says this, and this is the confidence that we have in Him. That if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us. And if we know that He heareth us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions desired of Him. You see, God's word and God's promises are to be the rule and government of all of our praying, including the parts of our prayers that are petitions. We should ask for things that God has promised us in his word, and then we can pray with great confidence that he will give us the things he promises to give us. Well, that's exactly what the psalmist does in this psalm. He doesn't ask that he might have, you know, a harem of beautiful women for his wives. He doesn't ask that he will become so rich he won't any longer have a care in the world and no need to depend on God. He doesn't ask for carnal things like that, that any sinner might want. He asked for holy and heavenly things. things that promote the glory of God and the best interests of God's chosen people. That's how he prays. And so praying along those lines, he's able to pray with all boldness and confidence that God will hear and answer the prayers. Now, what I've just explained to you, it could be revolutionary in your prayer life. If you understand what I'm saying, and you take it to heart, it may be that this will revitalize your prayer life, that you will resort to Scripture more than you have been, and pray God's Word back to him, and in this way be able to pray with faith that he is pleased with the things you ask. Now, to show you the theme of confidence in prayer through these remaining eight verses of Psalm 108, I would take you through four points. Maybe you could say these four points illustrate the confidence of the psalmist in prayer. How do we see that the prayer is offered up confidently? Well, number one, the psalmist prays for Israel as God's beloved people. In verse six, he says that thy beloved, that is God's beloved people may be delivered, save with your right hand and answer me. So he prays with a knowledge that the people for whom he's praying are God's beloved ones. Secondly, he prays on the basis of God's promise and therefore he's confident. Look at verse seven. God has spoken in his holiness. I will rejoice. I will divide Shechem and so forth. In other words, the psalmist knows that in redemptive history, God has already declared that he would make these peoples and this territory his own. And so the psalmist prays that God would do what he's promised he would do. That's why he prays confidently. Not only are the people for whom he's praying God's beloved ones, God has promised to give the things for which the psalmist prays. Then we see he prays confidently as one under God's discipline or as people under God's discipline. Look at verse 10. Or verse 11, and I'll get through this. I'll go back through this again, but just notice in verse 11, he says, will not thou and the thought is lead into us into victory against our enemies. Will you not, Lord, lead us into victory against our enemies, you, O God, who have cast us off? In other words, it's because of providence, God's doing, that we're not yet victorious over our enemies. You, God, effectively cast us off. But now I'm asking that you would lead us in. And now this may seem counterintuitive, I'm sure it is, but the fact that God had cast them off was part of what gave the one praying confidence that God would lead them in. In other words, his chastening was a sign of his favor. And then fourthly, the confidence is seen in this prayer because what is asked is asked in reliance on the power of God, which cannot be frustrated. Give us help from trouble, verse 12, for vain is the help of man. Through God we shall do valiantly, for he it is that shall tread down our enemies. So that's the movement of the confident praying that composes verses six to 13 of the psalm. Let's look at these four points in the psalm a little bit more closely now. First of all, he prays confidently because he's praying for God's beloved ones. Verse six, that thy beloved may be delivered, save with thy right hand and answer me. In other words, save your beloved ones by the exercise of your almighty power. In answer to my prayer request, save them Lord, save the ones who you especially love now i checked and in the original hebrew the word translated beloved is in the plural and in the historical context of this psalm surely that means the israelites god's chosen people then by The analogy of faith and the analogy of scripture, principles of sound interpretation, we know that now the reference is to the church of Jesus Christ. And David, the king of Israel, is praying for the nation over which he is king. He's the representative mediator, in effect, between God and the sinful Israelites. And David, in that role of an intercessor, prays that God would save his chosen people. Well, of course, that was a type of the Lord Jesus Christ, the king of the church, who is in heaven even now, praying for full salvation to come to God's chosen people, the church on earth. And in saving the king, the nation is saved. And their God, that is their savior, is glorified. And this is wonderfully fulfilled in the antitype of God's beloved son. You remember, of course, in the gospel history that on the occasion, first of all, when Jesus was baptized in water, there was a voice from heaven that spoke audibly and said, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. So when we see this term beloved, We should think supremely of the unique Lord from heaven, son of God and son of man, Jesus Christ. He above all others and in a unique way is God's beloved son. And then multitudes of people from all the nations are beloved by God in Christ, the beloved son. Now, Jesus Christ prayed to His Father in Heaven that the mission He received from God would be accomplished, that He would be able to fulfill God's will for His own life, that He would go to the cross, that He would be raised from the dead, that He would be able to call to Himself a church of disciples from all the nations, that He would be glorified as the faithful mediator and Savior of all of His chosen people. And God the Father heard and answered Jesus' prayers for victory. Indeed, the Lord suffered in his passion, but then he was raised, he ascended, and now he reigns at the Father's right hand. This is the inauguration and glorious present form of the kingdom of God as it exists in Jesus in heaven. It's an answer to the Lord Jesus' own prayers. But the church following Jesus prays like our Lord. We who are beloved in the Beloved One, Ephesians 1.6, like Jesus, we are taking up our cross. We are persecuted by the world. And so we pray to the Lord that Thy Beloved may be delivered. Save with Thy right hand and answer me. And we are progressively being rescued by God in heaven. And one day we shall finally be vindicated on the last day, Judgment Day, in answer to the prayers of countless millions of Christians. Of course, that is going to happen. We are God's beloved ones. We pray as those who are loved in Christ, the beloved one. And so we can pray for the church's ultimate deliverance from all our enemies with confidence in the Lord who loves us. That's why we pray confidently for the triumph of the church in Christ over all our enemies. Because we are loved in a special way by God. We are God's beloved. We also pray confidently, secondly, from God's promise. This is the subject matter of verses 7, 8, and 9 in the psalm. Now, because we didn't live back then when the psalm was composed, because these place names are probably pretty unfamiliar to most of us, Um, you know, it's if this song said, uh, God has spoken in his holiness. I will divide New Hampshire and meet out, uh, Massachusetts and also Vermont and Maine shall be mine as well as New York state. And then we would have a, you would be able to relate to it either because we know these places, but who knows where Shechem and sucketh and Gilead and Manasseh and Ephraim, Judah, Moab and Edom and Philistia are. All we probably have is a vague idea that they're somewhere in the Middle East over there, north or south, east or west of Jerusalem. And that's true, they are over there. But to speak generally about this, these are regions that compose or surround what was then known as the Promised Land. So it is the case that Shechem and Succoth are very ancient names for the regions that came to compose parts of Israel. And then Gilead, Manasseh, and Ephraim are tribal names. So is Judah of the 12 tribes of Israel that were regions as well of the land called Israel. Moab, Edom, and Philistia are outside of that land. And they were considered foreign territory. the countries of the heathen, the Gentiles surrounding Israel. So this helps us to appreciate what's being said here. God, the psalmist says, has spoken in his holiness, which is a manner of emphasizing the absolute reliability of what God says. In other words, when God declares what He's going to do, the God who says this is God Most Holy. The God who cannot lie. The God who is Almighty. The God who is infinitely wise. The God whose will cannot be frustrated, not by a single person or by all the world of men taken together. The God who created all things out of nothing and then who superintends all things all the time to fulfill His eternally purposed plan in every particular and in the whole. This is the God who speaks. He speaks in His holiness. His Word is absolutely trustworthy and inviolable. And what is it that this holy God says? He says, I will rejoice, I will divide Shechem and meet out or measure the valley of Sukkoth. In other words, the word rejoice means to exalt. And that's the idea of triumphing with celebration. This is a figurative way for the Lord to speak. It's as if God himself is the warrior. And God intends to conquer lands for himself, for his own pleasure. And he's announcing before those lands are conquered, I will triumph in the battle for these lands. And by dividing Shechem and measuring the Valley of Succoth, this is would have been understood in the early history of Israel in Israel's history to be exercises that are performed by an owner of the land. You only divide a land if it's your land. You can't divide land that belongs to someone else. You only measure the land that is your possession. So God is declaring before it happens, I will be the victor to take to myself these lands that shall belong to me in the end. I'm going to measure them, I'm going to divide them, I declare before it happens that Gilead, the land of Gilead is mine, the land of Manasseh is mine, Ephraim is also mine and so is Judah. The line in verse 8, Ephraim is also the strength of my head. is a reference to like a military helmet. Ephraim was a region in the north part of Israel. So it was like the first defense against enemies coming down from the north, sort of like a helmet would be on a soldier's head. Judah is my lawgiver. This is a reference to the people of Judah from which the Messiah would come, the lawgiver. Jesus is of the tribe of Judah. And then the last three places, Moab, Edom, and Philistia, are claimed by the Almighty to be His possession eventually as well. And there is a very disparaging toward them way that Jehovah claims even these foreign lands are His. A wash pot is inglorious. It's shameful. One of the paraphrases I read said something like Moab is my bedpan. The Hebrew word translated to washpot doesn't necessarily mean a bedpan. It means a common receptacle used in a house for washing things. And it's not dignified for Moab to be compared to a washpot. It's like the Lord. The Lord is the owner of the manor. And Moab is compared to one of the most commonplace utensils in the whole household. Over Edom, I would cast up my shoe. You know, there are rooms in a house that are more dignified and then there are rooms that are low. And the place, the mudroom where you throw your boots when they're muddy is not a dignified place in the house. God is speaking about Edom like a mudroom in his in his house. And over Philistia, that is those peoples who worship Baal, especially, I will triumph over them as well. So why is it that the psalmist prays confidently that God's chosen people will be the victors over everyone else at last? Because God has promised that it will be so. God has spoken in His holiness that He and His people will triumph over everyone else. Now look, I've described the meaning of these words to you in their literal and historical sense in the days when the psalm was written. But this is part of the accumulating revelation in the whole Bible that grows more and more cosmic and splendid with the succeeding prophets, especially in Jesus and the apostles. This same language grows to immense proportions in the further revelation of God's sovereignty and His proclamation throughout the whole cosmos. In the New Testament terms, in other words, this language from Psalm 108 should be properly understood that the whole unbounded creation belongs to Christ the King and to His church in Him. In other words, all things are yours, brethren, in Jesus Christ. This whole world belongs to Christ and in Christ to the church of Christ. The reprobate in the world really are just squatters for the time being who one day will be evicted from it. Isn't that right? Listen. Matthew 5.5. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, Blessed are the meek. for they shall inherit the earth. That's not some platitude that just sounds nice. That's a disclosure by a prophetic utterance from Jesus that the meek are the ones upon whom God's favor rests and they shall prove to be the victors, the conquerors over all their enemies in Christ. To the victor goes the spoils, is the rule. Well, the spoils of all creation one day will be bequeathed to all of those people who are in Christ on the last day. Because Christ wins the victory for us and through us over all our enemies and God's enemies. Revelation 21.7 says as well, he that overcometh shall inherit all things and I will be his God and he shall be my son. We need to take promises like that from God to heart. When we understand and believe promises like that that God has made in His holiness and we pray for the church's victory, we will be able to pray with confidence, not with doubting in our hearts or wavering like a wave of the sea. We will be able to pray, as the psalmist does, with confidence that our cause is just and our cause in the gospel cannot fail. God has promised the victory before it comes. Now, next to last, I hasten on. This is a prayer that's offered confidently under God's discipline. Under God's discipline. Look at verse 10. Who will bring me into the strong city? Who will lead me into Edom? Now, this is essentially the same thing. It's two rhetorical questions that anticipate the answer, God will. God will bring me into the strong city, namely Edom. Edom is the strong or fortified city in view, and it represents all the resistance to God and all evil, who will bring me into this impregnable fortress called Edom that is invincible by merely human means. Who will bring me into the unconquerable city, humanly speaking? Well, the king who prays knows that this challenge militarily exceeds human ability. And so that's why he's praying for victory. Verse 11, will not thou, O God, who has cast us off, will not thou, O God, go forth with our host, our armies? No. What I'm asking for is not humanly possible. It would be literally a miracle for us to triumph as I'm asking for us to triumph. But that is why I pray to you, Lord. With men, it's impossible, but with God, all things are possible. And so you, Lord, will lead us in. You will give us the victory. You will attend our hosts. And he prays this confidently, even though, or you might say, because the God to whom he prays is the God who has cast us off, verse 11. Now look, you might think to yourself, how could this man pray confidently to God for victory when God is the one who has kept them from the victory up to this point? How can he pray confidently to God for the blessing of triumph when God, by his providence, has denied the people the blessing of triumph up to this point? And that's the sense of the phrase, you God who has cast us off. God had treated Israel, in some respects, as if he didn't recognize them as his people. as if they formerly were his people. You know, when he brought them out of Egypt and through the Red Sea and through the wilderness and gave them victory under Joshua when they entered the promised land. But in the more recent history of Israel, Israel was suffering setbacks. This may have even been a psalm written when Israel was in the was in the exile. Driven out of their land by by Assyria or Babylon. So how can the psalmist pray confidently that you, God, will give us the victory even though you, God, have kept us from the victory up till now? I'll tell you how. He prays confidently to the God who cast them off because he understood the founding providence as divine discipline. Discipline upon the sinning people whom he loves, you see. And if the dark providence is merely discipline from our loving Father, then we know that it has an end and that He will accomplish in us what He purposed all along. Psalm 103.9 says of God, He will not always chide, neither will He keep His anger forever. In the 85th Psalm, verse 3, Thou hast taken away all thy wrath. Thou hast turned thyself from the fierceness of thine anger. In the book of Proverbs, there's a passage that says, Do not faint when you are disciplined by the Lord, because whom the Lord loves, He disciplines. That's why you shouldn't be discouraged as a Christian under divine chastening. Chastening is a mark of His acceptance of you as His beloved children. I am reminded of the Lord Jesus' talk to His churches in the letters of Revelation. Chapter 3, specifically in the letter to the Laodicean church. Jesus says, as many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Be zealous therefore and repent. In other words, the chastening of Jesus is an incentive to repent of our sins. It is likewise a motivation to pray with confidence. Listen, I think this is a profound insight out of the Scriptures that I'm about to share with you. We must never forget, as believers in Christ, that no matter how tough things get now, no matter how miserable we might be as Christians, God is refining us in the fire. And when He has finished His purpose to purify us as He would, we shall come forth like gold. Our trials as Christians and our trials as a church are a crucible of suffering for a benevolent purpose of our Heavenly Father. And yes, they come upon us oftentimes because we have sinned. We have not honored the Lord as we should. We have not trusted Him as we should. We have not obeyed Him as we should. But our sins do not nullify His covenant or jeopardize our victory. Victory in Jesus is not a reward for good behavior. It's a gracious gift to sinful people that get it anyway. Isn't that right? And therefore, the disciplinary hand of God upon us is a reason to be confident when we pray that the discipline shall pass and we will be victors at last. We also pray confidently, not only as God's beloved, not only from God's promise, not only as those under discipline as sons of God, but we pray confidently because of God's power. Look at verses 12 and 13. 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. This is such a rich statement of what biblical faith is all about. It is about confidence in God and His mercy toward us. Biblical faith is about recognizing, as sinners never do as they should, recognizing our hopelessness apart from the mercy, grace, and power of our gracious God and Savior. We know we need God's help in trouble because no man, no mere man, nor even all the people in the world gathered together are sufficient to deliver us from our trouble. It really grieves me. It really grieves me. When I see communities suffering catastrophe, start printing the t-shirts that pronounces themselves strong. You remember? When the terrorist bomber at the Boston Marathon had killed people, it became popular to start wearing shirts that say Boston Strong. Do you remember that? I'll never forget it. And I saw even in Surfside, Florida, I think the t-shirts are coming out, pronouncing how strong the survivors are. That is an ungodly impulse. When we suffer catastrophes, this is a potent illustration of how weak we are. How impotent human society is to bring in the utopia. We are doomed except for the grace and power of God. And this is why we resort to prayer. Vain is the help of man. It is only through God that the church of Christ does valiantly because God is the one who tramples down our enemies. See, this is the utter polar opposite of humanism. This is divine worship. This is confessing that all of humanity is not competent or strong or sufficient to save ourselves. We must look away from ourselves to God for the salvation that we need. And when we do that, when we see God as our only hope, We know He has a certain hope, and we offer up our prayers to the Lord with confidence that He can and will hear and answer our prayers according to His will. So this is a wonderful appeal to divine mercy. It's an acknowledgment of hopelessness without mercy. It precedes this announcement, which is a staggeringly confident declaration of our ultimate triumph with all credit to God for the victory. The translation of the text in verse 13, which is the King James Version here, through God we shall do valiantly, for He it is that shall tread down our enemies. It is accurate and it is elegant. But another translation offers perhaps a a simpler, less elegant statement of the same idea that comes out of the Hebrew text. It goes like this. With God on our side, we will win. He will defeat our enemies. And that is exactly what began to happen with the advent of Jesus Christ, His death on the cross, That was the death knell for Satan and all his demons and all the hosts of hell, human and demonic. That was the beginning and the end for the kingdom of darkness. It was God in Christ, triumphing in the most unlikely way, the most unimaginable way. Through death, He conquers. Through death, He redeems captives out of Satan's grasp. Through death, Christ puts on display the love and the justice and the mercy and power of Almighty God. And as well, through His resurrection from the dead, all these things are accomplished. It is God who shall tread down our enemies first in Jesus and then In the church and through the church, the kingdom of God inexorably certainly comes in answer to our confident prayers. This is what we see when the second half of Psalm 108 is considered in the light of all scripture. It's not hard at all to make applications from the biblical text, and there are more than a few. But I want to leave you with two. First of all, a psalm like this can give us great spiritual courage, both individually and corporately. I'm reminded of the words of Jesus to his disciples, which were few in number in those days. And Jesus said to them, Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." And listen, the church number is in the millions and millions now. Why? Because it is the Father's good pleasure to give us the kingdom. The kingdom of God is coming according to God's plan. And one day it will finally come fully in all of its splendor. And you know, this is our confidence with respect to the church as a whole. But even the individual Christian can have such confidence. The Apostle John writing said to to these Christians, few in number. Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them, that is your enemies, because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. Don't forget that, brothers and sisters. Greater is He that is in you than He that is in the world. That is, the Lord reigns, and the Lord is in us, and the Lord is against all the host of wickedness. We, in the Lord, are certain to triumph. as Christian believers. And finally, we can make an obvious application of this psalm for the worship of our triune God. I hope some of my remarks have have helped you appreciate how it's true that every word of this psalm is fitting in the mouths of Christians today. This psalm, like all the psalms, is Christian scripture. It is for the church, yes? Thousands of years ago, it was for Old Testament Israel when it was written. But today, the church does well to take this psalm to be our psalm and to sing it in worship to the Lord. Every word of it fits us and is God's word to us about our identity and our destiny. And as we sing the psalm, Believingly, we worship God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So let us digest this psalm and its wonderful message. May God help us to do that. Amen.