[0:00] Turn with me to Psalm 108 and your copy of the Word of God, please. As they were singing that song, such a beautiful song, I thought about how great it would be to hear it in Russian on an Easter morning as God builds His church in a war.
[0:13] But God only builds His church during wars. I mean, we are in a war. We're in a spiritual war, and that is not a metaphor. We are in a battle every day of our lives.
[0:24] The physical war would be a metaphor for what really happens in our lives. And not only was that beautiful in Russian, but it would be beautiful in Russian. It is beautiful in English and in England.
[0:37] Whatever I'm saying, just take my words and do something with them, all right? Put them together however you want. But it's just a wonderful truth, and I'm grateful to hear it tonight. I want you to be in Psalm 108, and I'm going to be in Psalm 57 and Psalm 60, and you're going to say, well, that won't work.
[0:52] But it is, all right? It's going to work. I'm going to read to you a few verses from Psalm 57 and Psalm 16, and it's going to deviate a little bit from you following along in Psalm 108, but not much at all.
[1:04] This chapter is put together from a portion of Psalm 58, Psalm 57, and Psalm 60. And if you'll follow along, you'll see how it is almost verbatim the same psalm.
[1:17] So you're in Psalm 108, verse 1, and I'm in Psalm 57, verse 7. Then in chapter 60, verse 5, That the beloved may be delivered, save with thy right hand and hear me.
[1:50] God has spoken in his holiness. I will rejoice. I will divide Shechem and me out of the valley of Succoth. Gilead is mine and Manasseh is mine. Ephraim is also the strength of mine head.
[2:01] Judah is my lawgiver. Moab is my washpot. Over Edom will I cast out my shoe. Philistia, triumph thou because of me. Who will bring me into the strong city?
[2:12] Who will lead me into Edom? Will not thou, O God, which hast cast us off? And thou, O God, which does not go out with our armies, give us help from trouble? For vain is the help of man, though God will do valiantly, for he that shall tread down our enemies.
[2:29] Were you able to follow along? Pretty good. Very much similar. If you'll notice here, when you followed along, you saw a few words in a little bit of different order, but the same content was given.
[2:39] What may not be significant to you is that the passages come in different places in the psalm, and this isn't insignificant. Charles Spurgeon says, God's truth is deployed in many different ways, and different circumstances and situations bring out to our understanding new aspects and application of God's one truth, so that one truth spoken in one situation spoken to another situation comforts us, convicts us, instructs us, encourages us in different ways.
[3:08] In one portion, the promise that God, our heart, was settled comes after the battle, and another psalm, it comes before the battle. You could say this was kind of a remix, taking two other songs and bringing them together.
[3:21] Many commentaries skip over Psalm 108, and just tell you to look at Psalm 57 and 60. Psalm 57, as I said, starts off with this battle of discouragement.
[3:34] Verse 1, it said, Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me, for my soul trusteth in thee. Yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpassed.
[3:46] In the middle of a battle, in the middle of calamities, and then halfway through the psalm is where he declares, My heart is fixed. Psalm 108 starts off with, Before the battle even begins, my heart is going to be fixed.
[4:01] So why would we need to read it twice? Why would not one time be sufficient for us? Why would we want to skip over any passage we believe that we have understood?
[4:12] This song is to be sung jubilantly as a national hymn, or solemnly as a sacred psalm. We cannot find it in our hearts to dismiss this psalm by merely referring to the reader, Psalm 57 or 60, though it would be at once seen that these two portions of scripts are almost identical with the verses before us.
[4:29] It is true that most of the commentaries, this is Spurgeon speaking, have done so. And we are not so presumptuous as to dispute their wisdom. But we hold for ourselves that the words would not have been repeated if they had not been an object for doing so.
[4:43] And that this object could have been answered if every hearer of the psalm had said, Ah, we have heard this before, and therefore we need not meditate upon it. That God had intention.
[4:54] That God was not short of expressions that needed to be repeated to himself just to fill the content of a book. But the arrangement of it matters to us. The discovery of the intent in this psalm matters to us.
[5:06] And so with God's assistance, we want to know what was the intent that he gave us, Psalm 108. Any of you written a paper in college or in high school and you tried to make it go longer than needed, right?
[5:17] Forget how it said. You know, you can just take a few words and make it a lot of words. I'm pretty good at that. You know this, right? You hear me quite often, right? I can say it's so much shorter. God, the Holy Spirit's not doing that, right?
[5:28] He didn't need to fill a chapter count in psalms. So we believe that the Holy Spirit had an intent by taking these two portions of the psalm and putting them together to be read for us today.
[5:40] And we're blessed to have this recorded for us. Call this psalm the Warrior's Morning Song. This comes from this last thing I read by Spurgeon. He says, We have before us the Warrior's Morning Song, with which he adores his God and strengthens his heart before entering upon the conflicts of the day.
[6:00] That David writes this psalm here, bringing together some other psalms that he would sing together, maybe as a large group together, before the battle that was coming to them.
[6:11] That before they even faced what they were going to face, they had their heart was fixed. I've been recently reading a book called The Flags of Our Fathers, The Picture That's So Famous of the Six Men Raising the Flag at Irojima.
[6:23] This is the story of those men told by the son of one of the men. So many things I didn't know about it. One was just how incredible that battle was, how many people died.
[6:34] And even of those men that raised that flag, three of them will die on that island, two more will die in the next ten years, and the one that lives never is able to speak about it.
[6:45] Because out there on the shore, they're just going to see so many Japanese and American soldiers and Marines die. And the way was absolutely horrific.
[6:56] How many deaths that were going to happen. And there's four days into the battle when these four men are going to raise that flag and that picture will be taken.
[7:06] And one of the men said about that picture, he said that it was the happiest moment of his life. As he was doing that, as much as an unbeliever, or maybe the man was a believer, but not speaking of being strengthened by the Lord, just speaking in his own courage, as much as a man could say, my heart was fixed, that's what that man was saying.
[7:30] Even with the war about to take place, even with the battle going on, and that moment before three of them will die, before two of them will die in the next ten years, in that moment they said, we have peace, that we know that we have courage, that we're going to win this war.
[7:47] From the very outset, you can sense that there's going to be some trouble in the future from this psalm. And the psalmist prepares in his heart to be determined to worship God before the danger is on the horizon.
[7:59] You ever been there before? You ever known that there was a battle coming? Have you ever known as things began to come into place and you knew that it was coming, you knew that you would be dealing with something, you could see it on the calendar, or maybe you could just sense it.
[8:12] You knew that a storm was brewing. This is where David is at. Before he awaits to get on the battlefield, he declares his confidence in God. Psalm 108, Tim, Who will bring me into the strong city?
[8:24] Who will lead me into Edom? Wilt thou not, O God, who has cast us off? And wilt thou not, O God, go forth with our host? Give us help from trouble, for vain is the help of men.
[8:34] He is declaring, I have no confidence in my circumstances. I have no confidence in my own strength. God, if this battle is going to be won, it's going to be won by you.
[8:46] I was speaking to a friend today, pastors in Virginia, and he was just talking about how there's so many things that he could do throughout the day, and there's so many things you could do throughout the day, but there's sometimes things that you want done that you just can't do.
[9:00] And until they're done, it's hard for you to move on. It's those things that only God can move. It's only those battles in which you recognize that I'm completely helpless. Have you ever prayed for a lost loved one? You've been there before.
[9:11] You share the gospel with them. You live out your Christian faith. But then you cry out to God and say, if that heart's going to be moved, only God can move it. Maybe it's in a relationship. Maybe it's in some of your circumstances.
[9:22] And you just get to a point, and you say, I've looked at this every different way. I've tried everything possible. And you recognize that this is a battle that belongs to the Lord. But does it really matter what the problem is when the answer is always the same?
[9:35] We need help from God, or we are hopeless. And that's where David is at. If we don't have help from God, we're hopeless. Verse 1, Oh God, my heart is fixed.
[9:45] I will sing and give praise, even with my glory. David was fully determined to worship God, despite what the day might hold. No matter what was going to happen in that battle, my heart is fixed, and I'm going to praise you.
[9:59] It's in a contrast. What would it look like if your heart isn't fixed? Psalm 57, 6, it says, Thou hast prepared a net for my steps. My soul is bowed down. They have digged the pit before me into the midst whereof thou hast fallen themselves.
[10:15] Selah, consider this. My soul was bowed down. My heart was heavy. Have you ever had a heart or a soul that was bowed down, that it wasn't quickened, that it wasn't set there?
[10:28] But David is confidently anticipating a coming trial, but he's giving God thanks and praise. The anxiety of life makes every place feel like a battlefield.
[10:39] Those men are raising that flag, and off in the distance, they're already seeing the war that's taking place, and they understand how well and how fortified the island was that they were on, and that before they had to make some decisions in their heart when it came to courage.
[10:55] And we live in a world that feels like it's a battlefield at times. Every day when you wake up, not just at the end of the day, hey, God, I want to see how things turn out. If it turns out good, I'm going to worship you.
[11:05] That's not what David says. That's not a warrior's prayer. A warrior's prayer says, whatever this day holds for me, I'm going to give praise unto the Lord. And then why should we be confident?
[11:16] You know, the Psalms never just simply tells us to worship God, and they could, very much, without reason, but it doesn't. Verse 4, For thy mercy is great above the heavens, and thy truth reached unto the clouds.
[11:28] Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens, and thy glory above all the earth. Because of God's love and faithfulness, he has determined to worship God. Not because of the help they expect to receive in the battle, but because we worship a loving and faithful God.
[11:45] My Aunt Jan, she has some tests tomorrow, if you would pray for her. She'll have a dye test put into her heart. And I encourage my Aunt through text, and if my Aunt Sheila, who watches my sermons, sends this to my Aunt Jan, anytime I talk about my family, my Aunt Sheila tells everybody, alright?
[12:00] So Aunt Sheila, I'm talking about Aunt Jan. Get this to her, okay? I told my Aunt Jan that she can trust in God tonight before the test because of what she knows about the character of God.
[12:10] The fear not little flock, for it's the Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. It's the Father's good pleasure to take care of my Aunt. She is not off his radar. And so the psalm here says, be confident, fix your heart.
[12:22] We're not talking about the battle yet. We're not talking about the fact that you're going to win because you're going to outnumber them, or you're stronger, or you're a better army. We're not talking about that. You have confidence because of the God that you serve.
[12:34] David awakens the dawn and the instruments so that they will praise God. Awake, psalter, and harp. I myself will awake early. David gets up. He gets up before the sermon. He wakes up himself because that's, you know, the sun would have been there at alarm clock.
[12:48] He wakes up before that. He awakens himself and he says over to the guitar or the psalter and the harp. He says, piano, guitar, wake up. This morning, we need to worship God. Ben, do you do that in the morning?
[12:59] You and Kristen go there. Wake up, guitar. Wake up, piano. We got to praise God. Stop sleeping here, you lazy piano. It is time for you to wake up. What an incredible way to think about the instruments that we had.
[13:11] The purpose of this was to glorify God and David says, wake up in the morning and let's worship him. It's not just instruments that wake up to praise God, but it was David, a warrior, woke up to praise God.
[13:24] And warriors say, this is why I'm going to worship you, Lord. I'm going to worship you because of your love and your faithfulness. No matter where you wake up, hospital room, battlefield, Ukraine, whatever the day holds for you, we can wake up and we say, God, I'm going to worship you today because I know you and you're worthy of it.
[13:46] Wake up, piano. Wake up, guitar. Wake up, harp. Worship with me. And then where should this praise be directed? Psalm 108, 3. I will praise thee, O Lord, among the people and I will sing praises unto thee among the nations.
[14:00] Verse 5. Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens and thy glory above all the earth. If you're really praising the God as we should be, you want it directed somewhere.
[14:11] And there is no place. You want as many places as possible. So many times I think about all the different languages and the countries of the world and how there's just so many of them and it's just so overwhelming.
[14:22] And I only think about the negative aspect of it. But when I think about getting the opportunity to see people praise God, I love that there's hundreds of languages. I love that there's all these countries because God deserves to be worshipped more than just by rednecks from West Kentucky.
[14:38] He deserves to be worshipped in Spanish and in Kosovo and Swahili and in Russian and all the languages of the world. And just like the instruments that should wake up and praise Him, we have the opportunity to declare unto the nations, wake up and worship Him for He is good.
[14:57] If you're really worshipping the Lord as we should, it never will just stay with you and it will never just stay short-sighted. It always wants to run as far as it can around the world.
[15:07] David is not satisfied with God being exalted in his life alone, but he wants it not just in Israel alone, but he wants all the world. Romans 15, 9, And the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy as is written, For this cause I will confess to thee among the Gentiles and saying unto thy name, God, I worship you and your mercy has been so great and I want to tell everybody that I can.
[15:29] Can I ask you, is this something that you think about? Does it matter to you that God is glorified among the nations? And it does, it should matter.
[15:41] It should really matter to us because He is worthy of the glory due unto His name. I went to a missions conference this weekend and I was forced to preach on missions and it was a wonderful thing to do that and to realize that it is just our identity as a church that be so given to the cause of Christ and causes missions.
[16:03] And I found myself just being so distant and weary of things, missions, because I lost my eyes on the fact that missions is praising the name of God among the nations.
[16:15] It's not setting up mission boards, it's not making decisions, it is praising God among the nations. And God really has gotten a hold of my heart about that. And so as a warrior I want to say my heart is fixed to worship God and my feet are directed towards the nation.
[16:30] He deserves to be worshipped by them. That's what a warrior says. He wakes up early in the morning, I don't know what the day holds for him, but God you're so good I'm going to worship you and I'm going to take it to the ends of the earth.
[16:42] The confidence for this petition should be based upon God's promises. Who will bring me into this strong city? It's fortified, it's well prepared army, it's a great defensive position.
[16:55] As I read, and I'm thankful that I was reading this book about Irizimah because I don't have any experience in battle. I don't know anything about this and so when I read about battle, it doesn't do for me what it should because I need to get myself in the picture more.
[17:10] I can do that from reading the Psalms, historical books, there's enough in this Bible to take me into this mindset of what it would be like to be a warrior but it's helped to imagine landing on a shore and seeing 150 different houses that are set up with somebody shooting in them, that's shooting at you constantly and they're being fortified and feeling completely defenseless.
[17:32] Even though they are outnumbered, they have a better position on that island but God's promise gives us perspective and confidence that we need. Verse 7, God has spoken in His holiness and I will rejoice.
[17:43] I will divide Shechem and meet out the valley of Succoth. I will divide. God gives us the perspective. His promise gives us a proper perspective and confidence. By faith, we embrace and believe that the promises of God in His Word.
[17:58] It gives us joy even before God fulfills the promise because you know of the certainty of God's promise. Before it even delivers you from the battle, it delivers you from the fear of that battle and gives you joy.
[18:13] It changes your perspective looking to the promises of God's Word but it also gives you confidence. God promised, this is my land. I will divide this land. All this belongs to me.
[18:24] God is saying here, every square inch of this belongs to me and I will give it to whom I want to give it to. Ephraim, that is a helmet to me. Moab, that's like a wash basin that serves me to wash my feet.
[18:36] God tosses His shoes to Edom to be clean. Edom, that's just a place that would wash, that would take care of my shoes. These powerful nations, they're nothing compared to Him. They all belong to Him.
[18:48] And so giving that perspective and that confidence and remembering it. And so a warrior cries out in the morning, God has spoken, I will rejoice. Looking at the battle, hearing the bullets shot at you, looking at how strong the enemy seems to be fortified, a warrior says in their heart, God, you have spoken, that's your promise, and I will rejoice by faith.
[19:14] And then it tells us that we should work valiantly and look to God for the victory. They're not opposed to each other. That we work hard and we serve in this battle that He's given us, trusting Him for the victory.
[19:26] Through God, verse 13, we shall do valiantly for He that shall tread down our enemies. David's formula was very simple. Without God, we can do nothing, but through God we can win great victories and accomplish great things.
[19:40] Without God, nothing. With God, everything. David understood that Israel was not to avoid fighting and passively just see what God would do. Faith is neither a coward nor a sluggard.
[19:52] She knows that God is with her and therefore she does valiantly. Spurgeon, one more quote by him. Yes, he helped me a lot this week. Okay? He said, divine working is not an argument for human inaction, but rather it is the best excitement for courageous effort.
[20:12] I'm going to say that again. Divine working is not an argument for human inaction. The promises of God, knowing that He's sovereign, knowing that He's all-powerful, this is not an excuse not to do anything, but it's the best excitement for courageous effort.
[20:28] The warrior says, by God's grace, we'll wake up in the morning and we'll wake in the dawn trusting in Him, ready for whatever the challenges the day may give to us.
[20:41] I'll end with what I started with. Spiritual warfare is not a metaphor. It would be more accurate to say that human warfare is a metaphor and expression of an even more real and pervasive spiritual warfare that is taking place all the time.
[20:57] You wake up every day and you could want to stay in your bed, you could want to be cowardly, you could want to be apathetic towards what you do, but you ought to have this prayer of Psalm 108 and say, God, I remember your promises.
[21:11] No matter what the day holds, my heart is fixed. I'm going to worship you. And God, it isn't just enough for me to worship you. You deserve glory from those that are close to me and you deserve from everybody in this world.
[21:22] And so my heart is fixed and my feet are set forward and I'm going to trust your promises. David was fully determined to worship God despite what the day might hold.
[21:33] His praise was directed towards the nations. The confidence of his petition solely based on God's promises. He knew the victory was of the Lord, but he must fight valiantly.
[21:45] Are you fighting valiantly every day? Andy, I love you, brother. And I know that wasn't the news that you wanted, but our God certainly knows where and when he is going to place you on the battlefield on the other side of the world.
[21:59] But every day you wake up, you need to set your feet towards those nations. You need to set your heart and you're going to say, what I know about God, regardless what email I get, no matter what lawyer says of the day, I'm going to worship you.
[22:14] And that can be said with every one of you in here. There's always something every day that's on your plate that says, God isn't worthy of our worship, that this needs to be taken care of before I can worship him.
[22:26] Set your heart in the morning before the day starts and say, I'm going to be a warrior for the Lord. I'm going to serve the God of heaven because I know that he is good. I ask you, is your heart fixed?
[22:39] Do you know the promises of God that address the fears of your life? Do you know the passages and the teaching of the Bible that apply to the issues that you're facing in your life? Maybe you feel like they're disconnected.
[22:50] Maybe you feel like, well, what I'm dealing with, the Bible has nothing to say with. That's just not the case. It most certainly is. The fear, the anxiety, whatever worry that you're having in life, the Bible addresses it.
[23:02] Maybe not the specifics of your battle, but the Bible has something to tell you about the promises of the goodness of God. And then I ask you, are you swinging your sword valiantly while trusting the Lord for victory?
[23:15] It's been promised to us. And so every day, say, God, this is your day you've given me and I want to give my very best to serving you. I'm going to take a moment. I'm going to pray.
[23:26] I'm going to give you a moment to pray in your seat. I'm going to ask Stephen if he would help us sing as warriors would sing, to give us words, a hymn or a song of response, to say something today, and to sing it as people that aren't defeated, that aren't victims in this world, that even though we live in a world of spiritual battle, we are not people that are not equipped.
[23:45] We're not people that don't have a God going before us. And if you've been beat down in the scourge, can I encourage you? Psalm 108, would you have your heart set today? Would you end that psalm knowing that you are valiantly set before the day to live as the warrior he has created you to be?
[24:02] Heavenly Father, I pray for my brothers and sister in here. Lord, sisters, I do not know exactly where they are at. Father, I know where I'm at. Lord, I might have a clue where Andy is at.
[24:12] I might have a clue where some other people are at. But Lord, every day there's something that just seems to want to knock us down and to cause us to be discouraged. And Lord, I am praying, not pride or arrogance, but a confidence in your word, a confidence in your promises would grow in the hearts of my brothers and sisters in here.
[24:34] And Lord, they would not live lives that are defeated, but they would live lives, Lord, that are courageous, that are living out what you would have for them to live.