Psalm 149
Praise the LORD! Sing to the LORD a new song, and his praise in the assembly of saints.
Let Israel rejoice in their maker; let the children of Zion be joyful in their King.
Let them praise his name with the dance: let them sing praises to him with the timbrel and harp.
For the LORD takes pleasure in his people: he will beautify the humble with salvation.
Let the saints be joyful in glory: let them sing aloud on their beds.
Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two edged sword in their hand;
To execute vengeance on the nations, and punishments on the people;
To bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron;
To execute upon them the written judgement - this honour have all his saints.
Praise the LORD.
Intro
During the 16th and 17th Centuries the growth of the influence of Psalms upon Christians was something else.
The Protestant reformer, the tortured Roman Catholic, the hunted Huguenot, the persectuted Ceverol, saw themselves in David. As he fled to the mountains as a bird to the hills. Like David they were betrayed by friends and family members, or like the early Christians, they were locked away in dark damp prisons from which death was their only escape and release.
In the strength of the Psalms, martyrs went to the stake, mounted the scaffold, or endured the rack. Men, women and children were dragged to jail singing Psalms along the way, and, as in the days of Paul and Silas, dungeons resounded with the sincere praise of God, with words memorised from the Psalms.
Also with the words of the Psalms fanatics denounced their foes, cursed them with the denunciations pronounced upon the enemies of Israel and God.
With the Psalms they excused their own barbaric acts of violence and presumptuously claimed for themselves the promises set aside for God’s elect. They claimed not only the promises but also the mission to rid the earth of those who stood against their faith.
It was for example that the Psalm that we will look at today caused Thomas Muntzer to stir up the Peasants to rebel against the nobility at the beginning of the 17th Century which lead to the death of many peasants. And Caspar Scloppius who through his book entitled "Classicum Belli Sacri", a book about sacred warfare, incited the Catholic Princes across Europe to embark on a 30 year war.
Any ideas what Psalm could have caused these wars?
Read Psalm 149
The backdrop for this Psalm is possibly Nehemiah where the people of Jerusalem rebuilt the City walls and kept the enemy out.
Or,
It is possibly written after a significant battle where the Israelites saw a great and mighty victory over the enemy as God stepped in and secured their success on the battle-field.
Or,
They had returned home after a period of time in captivity in Babylon.
Either way they had seen God redeem and deliver and so the Psalmist declares "Praise the Lord!"
They had seen a new mercy and a new deliverance and so celebrated with a new song of Praise to God. The nation of Israel was in the middle of a celebration. Celebrating some type of victory. God had saved them from their enemy. Recently they had seen a deliverance that was about to change their lives.
To Israel God’s deliverance meant that they had a new chapter in the life of the nation to re-establish, rebuild, restore and rejoice.
No longer were the under threat or dominion.
No longer were they under the control and rule of a foreign king, they had come home to safety under the protection and rule of God.
They rejoiced because of their redemption and restoration.
Psalm 96:1 "Oh sing to the Lord a new song! Sing to the Lord, all the earth, sing to the Lord, bless His name; proclaim the good news of His salvation from day to day. Declare His glory among the nations, his wonders among the people."
Psalm 98:1 "Oh, sing to the Lord a new song! For he has done marvellous things; his right arm and his holy arm have gained the victory. The lord has made known his salvation; his righteousness he revealed in the sight of the nations."
Rejoicing always accompanies salvation.
Rev 5:9 "And they sang a new song"
Rev 14:3 "they sang as it were a new song before the throne"
Our final victory is when we enter heaven and we will sing a new song a fresh song.
They rejoiced because God shapes their calling and destiny.
God had called out of the world a special people whom he had anointed with special responsibilities and duties. Through out the Old Testament it is possible to see how they fulfilled this in accordance with Gods will when they were used to bring judgement upon the nations around them.
Deut 7:6-11
And for us
1 Peter 2:9+10 "but you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy."
Ephesians 2:10 "for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them."
We have been anointed and appointed to be his people. He has given us authority that we will look at in a moment.
From the first part of this psalm there are two distinctly profound things that we can draw out of the first few verses that in our language has hidden.
1 - in verse 2 the original word for maker is plural it should be translated "makers"
2 - in verse 4 the word salvation is the Hebrew word "yshua" which is the same name given to Jesus as told to Mary by an Angel.
Isn’t that something to rejoice about? Verse 4 says that He takes pleasure in us and beautifies us with salvation, with Jesus.
If we ever needed a reason to sing then this is it. If we ever needed a reason to sing a new song then this is it. God takes pleasure in us. God has made us acceptable through Jesus.
Psalm 16:3 as for the saints, who are on the earth, "they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight."
God takes pleasure in you and me he delights in us. So when we come to church we will praise him in song and celebrate the very fact that He loves us.
Say to yourself "Thank you God that you delight in me."
Now some people will say that you can not sing praise to God and fight at the same time. The Christian life has become departmentalised so that we have a time of praise,
A time of prayer,
A time for the word,
And a time for warfare.
But they stay separate.
This Psalm would have us understand that we can praise and fight at the same time.
Can you recall the walls of Jericho
Joshua 6:9 "the armed men went before the Priests who blew the trumpets and the rear guard came after the ark while the priests continued blowing the trumpets." For six days they marched round once each day in that order and then on the seventh day they marched round seven times and then shouted. They shouted in expectation of the victory that God was about to give them. What started as a religious parade became an act of warfare and a victory that they rejoiced in.
And this brings us to the second part of this psalm
Verses 4-9
We must understand this in light of the New Testament. Our weapons are not physical/carnal but they are spiritual. Physically we can not exercise judgement on people in the same way that has been done through history. In Northern Ireland they have a system of "Rough Justice". They meet out their own justice through beatings and knee-capping people when they consider that the authorities aren’t doing their job properly. This is not for the Church. This is an act of the world.
Authority that has been placed upon us by God and we have to step into it to realise it. We have to acknowledge it and actively employ it to see it.
We have to understand that this is God’s world, He created it and sustains it and is sovereign over all that is in it. But, we have to understand that Satan has taken for himself a certain amount of power and authority. It is time for us to take back what belongs to God. Everyday, we have beamed right into our homes rubbish on the TV that has no goodness about it, but we still watch it. The lottery has become the champion for charities, abortion has become common place, and suicide is a viable option for many, drug abuse and violence are a way of life for many and this is just in this town. It is time for us to act and speak out. The Church of Jesus Christ has in this nation been too dormant for too long.
If we won’t speak out then who will? If we won’t act now, then when?
The strength of our fight either displays or betrays the depth of our understanding and the strength of our belief.
The Bible commands us to fight. That is not meant to be understood with fists and weapons, it doesn’t mean that we store up weapons, an arsenal for a later day. But it means that we use the everything that God has given us. The word, prayer and a faith that says "we will win this fight for our town, our nation." Why? Because God is on our side.
God has given us a message of mercy, love and life.
This is message is our victory too. When we present this message to the world God steps in and changes lives.
From the very beginning of their possession of the Promised Land Israel entered into warfare. They possessed because they fought for the promise that God had given them.
A time of Grace
But for us today, in a time of grace, when we wrestle not against flesh and blood we do not need to carry an instrument of judgement like a knife or a gun. Because we have a more powerful weapon, a two edged sword, the word of God, the bible. Yet our warfare is no less serious and our victories no less secure. The Bible tells us that the day will come when evil will be destroyed forever and that we will live in peace and security for eternity.
At this time the greatest enemies of the true church will be rendered powerless, reduced to shame and punished, this was Israel’s boast and it is ours too. The chief power of evil shall be restrained and dealt with according to God’s will. Those who have made captives of God’s people will themselves become captive. No power can bind God but God can and will bind all powers and principalities. And every power that has sought and seeks to make captive the church will itself become captive by the power of God.
It is in our power to make captive those that are outside the true church of God, to make them captive to the power of the gospel. In the book of Acts, Agrippa himself confessed to Festus that he was nearly persuaded to become a Christian. This was through the preaching of the Gospel by the apostle Paul. This is the power of the word of God. Each one of us here tonight has ourselves been made captive by the word of God. But in being captives to God we have become free. Our captivity is of grace and mercy of love and forgiveness. We are no longer bound to the things that would steal life and see us enter into an eternity without God.
Israel as a nation executed judgement upon the nations and rejoiced when God gave success to their action. We praise God not because we execute judgement but because we execute mercy that sets people free.
It is a sad error when this is misinterpreted and misused just so we can defend our corner and attack others that share a slightly different understanding. During my time at college there was a bit of bickering about who believed what and some people became quite nasty when their beliefs were threatened.
When we execute justice we must never go beyond the word, in the sense that the spoken word is as far as we should go and the Bible is the parameters within which we should stay.
The Gospel itself executes judgement according to how people respond to it. It is and never will be our place to say who can and who can’t enter the kingdom. It is our place to present people with the opportunity.
Honour for the saints
When Israel saw God’s deliverance everybody rejoiced; everybody shared in the victory and triumph it was an honour to be a part of the nation an honour to belong to God.
We likewise have similar honour shown in the victories of another sort.
When one soul is captivated by the gospel,
when one person is released from captivity,
when one heart is made whole,
when sickness is healed,
when one life is transformed
and a destiny is changed
Then we share in the honour but it is not an honour that is bestowed upon us now but an honour that will be acknowledged when we go to glory. There is no exception to this - everybody will be rewarded in heaven according to what they have and haven’t done.
All other honours are worth nothing compared to the honour that God shows us because of what we have done for Him and what he has done through us.
No titles, no money reward, no promotion, no public recognition can compare to this.
Our reward in this life is to know that God delights in us and we have been beautified with Jesus.
