A. This year we’ve been rotating four series according to the four stages of life.
1. As many of you know, the great American artist Thomas Cole painted a series of four paintings of the stages of life. The first is of an infant floating gently down a tranquil river in an exquisitely ornamental boat filled with flowers. The second is of a youth on the same boat moving steadily down the river with glorious-looking worlds up ahead. But from his perspective he cannot see the bend in the river ahead and how it descends into turbulent rapids.
2. The third painting is of a middle-aged man crashing down through the rapids. The boat is bare for all the ornaments are now broken off. You might think the man would be holding on for dear life, but no! he’s on his knees raising his hands to heaven crying out to God. This is the stage of life for which I am preaching the Psalms series. The Psalms give special encouragement to those in the third stage.
B. Read Psalm 60: 1 O God, you have rejected us, broken our defenses; you have been angry; oh, restore us. 2 You have made the land to quake; you have torn it open; repair its breaches, for it totters. 3 You have made your people see hard things; you have given us wine to drink that made us stagger. 4 You have set up a banner for those who fear you, that they may flee to it from the bow. Selah 5 That your beloved ones may be delivered, give salvation by your right hand and answer us! 6 God has spoken in his holiness: “With exultation I will divide up Shechem and portion out the Vale of Succoth. 7 Gilead is mine; Manasseh is mine; Ephraim is my helmet; Judah is my scepter. 8 Moab is my washbasin; upon Edom I cast my shoe; over Philistia I shout in triumph.” 9 Who will bring me to the fortified city? Who will lead me to Edom? 10 Have you not rejected us, O God? You do not go forth, O God, with our armies. 11 Oh, grant us help against the foe, for vain is the salvation of man! 12 With God we shall do valiantly; it is he who will tread down our foes.
2. Explanation of Psalm 60
A. TO THE CHOIRMASTER: ACCORDING TO SHUSHAN EDUTH. A MIKTAM OF DAVID; FOR INSTRUCTION; WHEN HE STROVE WITH ARAM-NAHARAIM AND WITH ARAM-ZOBAH, AND WHEN JOAB ON HIS RETURN STRUCK DOWN TWELVE THOUSAND OF EDOM IN THE VALLEY OF SALT.
1. I explained earlier this year why these inscriptions should not be considered as the words of God, but they may be helpful at times. This inscription says that this psalm was written in the context of a string of victories recorded in 2Sam.8:1-14 and 1Chron.18:1-13. This might be true, but there is nothing in the Samuel or Chronicles record that mentions the defeats spoken of in Psalm 60.
B. 1-3 THE PSALMIST’S COMPLAINT
1. 1 O God, you have rejected us, broken our defenses; you have been angry; oh, restore us. 2 You have made the land to quake; you have torn it open; repair its breaches, for it totters. 3 You have made your people see hard things; you have given us wine to drink that made us stagger.
C. 4 You have set up a banner for those who fear you, that they may flee to it from the bow.
1. This is difficult. There are two main theories of what it means and both involve some serious guessing. So I’m going to leave it and not try to grapple with it.
D. 5 THE PSALMIST’S APPEAL
1. 5 That your beloved ones may be delivered, give salvation by your right hand and answer us!
E. 6-8 GOD’S RESPONSE
1. 6 God has spoken in his holiness: “With exultation I will divide up Shechem and portion out the Vale of Succoth. 7 Gilead is mine; Manasseh is mine; Ephraim is my helmet; Judah is my scepter. 8 Moab is my washbasin; upon Edom I cast my shoe; over Philistia I shout in triumph.”
2. Not all these countries are the same. Nine regions are mentioned: Shechem, Succoth, Gilead, Manasseh, Ephraim, Judah, Moab, Edom, and Philistia.
3. But there’s a big difference between the four mentioned in v.7 and the three mentioned in v.8.
a. V.6 Shechem and Succoth were territories added to Israel late in the story of the conquest of Canaan, and this verse speaks of God’s joy in receiving them as His own and dividing them up and giving them as gifts to His people. The four regions mentioned in v.7: Gilead, Manasseh, Ephraim, and Judah , are all likewise regions of Israel, the promised land of the people of God .
b. This is in stark contrast with the places mentioned in v. 8: Moab, Edom, and Philistia. These were the enemies of God’s people, the people they were fighting against.
c. And notice the contrasting images! God has only fond things to say about the regions of Israel: He exults over them, they are His, they are His helmet and His scepter (treasured possessions).
d. The things He says about the three enemy nations are very different.
1. Moab is where God washes His hands when they get dirty.
2. Edom is where He throws His shoe.
3. And God rejoices when Philistia is defeated.
e. A wash basin which has water in it so people can come along and wash their hands is a tool, not a treasured possession.
f. And where do you throw your shoes? Some shoes today are elegant and fragile and need special care, but generally, and even more so in the Bible world, shoes are tough and dirty. The place where you throw your shoes, it’s a useful place but it’s not a place of honor in your house.
1. In your house you have vessels of honor like vases, and china and candlesticks, and vessels of dishonor like trash cans, sinks, toilets, and the two baskets for shoes we have in our foyer.
2. 2Tim.2.20 “Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and clay, some for honorable use, some for dishonorable.” (See also Romans 9:19-24.)
4. So God says here that His people are His treasured possessions while their enemies are at best mere tools He uses.
5. No matter how neglectful God seems to the psalmist and no matter how overpowering the enemy looks, God’s answer is that His people are His precious treasures and their enemies are merely useful — and that only on a temporary basis .
3. 9-11 THE APPEAL IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S RESPONSE
1. 9 Who will bring me to the fortified city? Who will lead me to Edom? 10 Have you not rejected us, O God? You do not go forth, O God, with our armies. 11 Oh, grant us help against the foe, for vain is the salvation of man!
a. In light of what You say about Your love for us, we need You to help us in our battles. Who’s going to go with us into battle, Lord, if you abandon us? Human help is of no value. We need to see Your love for us at work on the battlefield. We need Your help, O Lord.
4. 12 THE ASSURANCE
1. 12 With God we shall do valiantly; it is he who will tread down our foes.
a. When you help us, we are triumphant, for it is God who defeats the enemy.
b. We know that when You help us, we shall do valiantly .
3. Application
A. No one can accuse the Bible of failing to warn us that life will be full of troubles. Not only does it tell us that repeatedly, not only do its characters frequently experience troubles, not only are two books of the Bible focused on the theme of suffering: namely Job and Lamentations, but many of its books, like the Psalms, are filled with help for those who are struggling with troubles.
1. 3 “You have made your people see hard things; you have given us wine to drink that made us stagger.” “You have shown Your people desperate times”
2. There is a psalm for facing old age, for cherishing the word of God, for repentance, for marriage. But if you ask anyone familiar worth the book of psalms: Which is the psalm for suffering and hardship? you’d make them laugh. The psalms of suffering? The whole book is full of suffering!
3. Yes, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life, but that wonderful plan includes seeing things we don't like seeing and experiencing things we don’t like experiencing.
B. This doesn't just relate to our personal problems. It also relates to what is happening in our culture.
1. The enemies of Christianity seem to be winning the day. In certain contexts there is a virtual consensus that the claims of Christianity are not only out-dated but ridiculous and preposterous.
2. Sometimes it seems like our enemies are getting all the breaks and we’re getting none.
3. Sometimes things don’t seem to be unfolding the way it seems they should if our God is indeed the God of the universe. Sometimes it doesn’t look like our God is stronger than our enemies.
4. But this psalm and much of Scripture tell us that we’re not the first to experience this. We’re not the first to have to watch the enemies of God flourish and the people of God flounder. God has allowed it to happen numerous times in history.
5. Right now it may look and sound and feel like chaos, our problems and enemies may seem overwhelmingly big and strong. But the things which seem so big and scary to us are nothing to God.
6. But I myself am a trophy of God’s superior power. I was rescued right out of the midst of the enemies of Christ. I know the God of Christianity is stronger than the enemies of Christianity.
7. The nations are like a drop in a bucket, and like the dust on the scales. All the nations are nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness. (Isaiah 40:15, 17 And remember that Isaiah had just witnessed this firsthand. He wrote this after the Sennacherib incident, when it looked like the enemy was going to smash the people of God, but God miraculously delivered – see Isaiah 36-37.)
C. A few years ago we went to a West African concert: strange instruments playing strange rhythms. To be honest, it sounded to me like complete chaos. But then suddenly they all stopped at the same instant, and I realized they had been playing together. So I went to my friend Luis Hernandez, a former Grammy-winning profession jazz musician. He explained that what we had heard was something called polyrhythm, where intricate rhythms are played on top of each other. It wasn’t chaos, it was just too sophisticated for my untrained ear!
1. This is the way it sometimes is with life. I’m not smart enough or wise enough to see that it is not chaos but rather a very sophisticated divinely-orchestrated symphony in my life.
D. There is no room for defeatist Christianity.
1. We live in hope on account of God’s promises.
2. Even though right now we may feel like we are experiencing God rejecting us and breaking our defenses, making the land to quake and tearing it open, making His people see hard things so that we stagger, in time through God we shall do valiantly and He will tread down our enemies.
3. Weeping may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning. (Ps.30:5)
4. How many funerals have been held for Christianity! But it keeps bursting forth in new life!
5. How many victories have been declared over the people of God! Only to find out that they haven’t died the death of a million insults and a million ridiculing.
6. During the battle we may have cried, “Lord, why aren’t You winning the day” but in the end God’s people will be the ones standing: through our God we will have done valiantly, and it is He who will have tread down our enemies.
E. There is also no room for triumphal Christianity, the idea that if we have enough faith we will move from one success to another, from one triumph to another.
1. Who doesn’t want to be part of this kind of life? But it’s not what life is like according to the Bible.
2. “Through our God we shall do valiantly!” isn’t the only thing the Bible says about life. It’s not even the only thing Psalm 60 says about life. We can’t take a Scripture like this out of context. We can’t assemble a whole bunch of happy, triumphant verses like this and pretend that this is all the Bible teaches.
3. I’m not faulting the person who wrote this song we sing that says, “Through our God we shall do valiantly.” You’re not going to sell a song that goes, “O God, you have rejected us, you have been angry. You have made the land to quake; you have torn it open. You have made your people see hard things.”
4. But isn’t “Through our God we shall do valiantly” much more meaningful in the context of Psalm 60 than it is alone? It’s not the pattern of every day life, it is the truth we cling to even when failure and defeat is the experience of the day. At times it doesn’t seem like He treats His treasures with honor and His enemies with dishonor. But God says, you are my treasures, your enemies are just my tools to shape you into my masterpieces.
F. This is why we can love our enemies: because it is God who will subdue our foes. Either He will subdue them to Himself, as He has done with us, or He will subdue them in judgment.
G. It is hard to face the dilemmas and scary monsters of life. But God has such good news for us! He has provided plentiful help for us in our trials. Much of the Bible is written for this purpose.
1. Take these psalms for instance. They start with our problems and distresses and agonies, but they don’t leave us there. They start with our problems, but they take us to God.