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When God’s king is on his throne the rulers of this world seek to overthrow his rule and his people. We then cry out for a helper who is greater than our foes. The Holy Spirit is that helper and he has come to our aid.
[00:00:00] Dan: Hi everyone and welcome to Training for Life Redeemed. Today we are looking at Psalm 60. Dad, we’re going to be sitting down chatting about this. Dad is going to have a quick read through this psalm for us and then we’ll get stuck into it.
[00:00:13] David:
0 For the director
According to the crocus of witness.
A miktam of David for teaching.
When he was struggling with Aram Naharaim (Syria) and with Aram Zobah and Joab returned and struck Edom at the Valley of Salt 12,000.
1 God, you rejected us.
You broke us.
You were angry.
You will return to us.
2 You cause the land to quake.
You split it.
Heal its fracture because it has collapsed.
3 You cause your people to see hardship.
You cause us to drink a wine that makes us reel.
4 You give those who fear you a banner to raise away from the archery. Selah
5 In order that your beloved ones might be delivered,
Save by your right hand and answer us.
6 God spoke by his holiness,
“I will celebrate.
I will divide Shechem and I will measure the valley of Succoth.
7 Gilead is mine and Manasseh is mine.
and Ephraim is my helmet.
Judah is my sceptre.
8 Moab is my washing pot.
I throw my shoe over to Edom.
Raise a shout over Philistia.
9 Who conducts me to a fortified city?
Who leads me to Edom?
10 Is it not you, God? You reject us.
God, you don’t go out with our armies.
11 Give us a helper who is greater than our foe.
Salvation by a man is useless.
12 In God we do powerfully,
and he will trample our foes.
[00:01:47] Dan: Alright Dad, this, has kind of a context that, you know, even I had to ask you about, to be honest, before we started this. Yeah. So, give us a bit of a rundown. What, what is this context? We’ve got Aram, we’ve got… Oh, there’s Aram twice, so Nahari Ame or whatever it is. I’m terrible at this. Zobar, and then we’ve got a fight between Joab. he’s gone and defeated, I’d take it. Yep. Edom, down the Valley of Salt, which, you know, the Dead Sea is the salt. and then wherever the actual fight’s gonna happen. because the Dead Sea is not exactly the place where you have too many fights. It’s pretty steep on either side. But you know, further south from it or whatever, wherever the enemy coming through to try and get to Israel.
[00:02:34] Dan: when is this happening? this is the Psalm of David. The last Psalm was… David’s being chased by Saul, he’s young, he just got married, he’s not king yet, he’s running away from the king, he’s going to run away from the king for what, the next 20 years? Is that right? Oh, about 10. 10? Yeah. Okay, so 10 years of running around. Is he still running around? Is he king? Is Saul alive? What’s going on?
[00:02:59] David: Okay, so Psalm 59 is David at what, 18, 19, 20, somewhere in there, at the beginning of, he’s been anointed. he’s out there winning the battles. He’s God’s chosen man to replace the king. So you’ve sort of got this, God’s anointed king versus the usurper, the reject king, the king that world would want versus the king God wants, so David’s your, your, your pattern of Jesus and your pattern of all of God’s people. And Saul is pretty much your pattern of the guy who stole the show. So in Jesus’s lifetime, that would be Herod, it would be the Jewish leaders, it would be Rome. You could badge it whichever way you like.
[00:03:46] David: For believers, it is us trying to bring in the kingdom of God. While the world is trying to grind us into the dust. So those parallels are all the way through. But this Psalm 60 recalls an incident that happened around the time when David was enthroned. So 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, David’s just getting started.
[00:04:13] David: He’s enthroned when he’s 30. So we are now at a point where the Israel. has finally stopped having civil war. We’re finally settled down. We have our anointed king and we’re ready to start living God’s covenant lifestyle in God’s land, God’s way. And of course, as soon as you do that, all the surrounding nations say, Oh no, we don’t want God’s kingdom in the middle of us.
[00:04:41] David: Let’s go invade them and knock this king over. So the main competition is in the Northeast in Syria. And in the Southeast coming from Esau’s descendants, Edom..
[00:04:55] Dan: Yep So essentially some long lost cousins there coming to attack you. Pretty much.
[00:04:59] David: Pretty much. So, you know, Abraham’s home country up there in the Northeast and Esau’s home country down in the South.
[00:05:06] David: And Ishmael’s. He’s down there as well. So those nations are trying to knock David out. Get rid of God’s kingdom. Get rid of God’s rule. let’s get back to us being the boss. and so as soon as the good thing happens, the reaction, and the reaction is to knock it over. You see that in the New Testament as soon as Jesus, we forget about Jesus ascension.
[00:05:35] David: So Jesus goes, is anointed back with John the Baptist, three years of people trying to kill him. Then they kill him. Yeah. And he rises from the dead. He spends six weeks explaining the Old Testament to his disciples, and then whoosh, he’s enthroned. Well, He’s enthroned. A week later, he pours out the Holy Spirit.
[00:05:58] Dan: And That’s the end of it. Huh? So that’s the end. It’s done. It’s all nice and easy after that.
[00:06:04] David: The kingdom of God’s arrived. God’s people are empowered. God’s dwelling in his people. Jesus is ruling. Jesus is ruling. Yeehaw. Crazy life after that. Yeah. And then they kill Stephen. And what’s Stephen’s crime?
[00:06:17] David: He’s doing meals on wheels to widows. For heaven’s sake. Well, really his crime was too many people were getting converted. Yeah. So, as soon as the kingdom of God arrives, all the other kingdoms want to wipe us out.
[00:06:31] Dan: Yeah. Yeah. So we’ve got David getting attacked by everyone. Yep. And needing God to help him to really establish what’s going on now that he’s finished the internal battle.
[00:06:44] Dan: Yeah. You’re pairing that up with Jesus’ defeat, enthronement, and stuff, so then does David’s continual battle. Equal our continual battle now. So, yeah, for those of us who didn’t work out, we’re quite sarcastic in my family, and definitely things are not easy since Jesus enthronement. so is that what, are we going to pair these things up and kind of go, well, David’s continual need to expand the kingdom, to set it up, to get it ready for, you know, basically we’re going to have the temple put in by Solomon after him and a bit bigger kingdom with Solomon.
[00:07:19] Dan: but David’s really the, the establisher of that, the one who goes out and actually, sets up the army and is, is the warrior. and then, so is that us today? Is our job similar in the sense of invading and spreading? Like it’s, the enthronement’s happened and now the kingdom’s got to spread. Yeah.
[00:07:39] David: So here, here’s your problem.
[00:07:40] David: David has set up this kingdom, David’s been established as king, Yahweh, is approving of this king and empowering him, and he has a track record for defeating his enemies and that’s a threat to the world. Now, if we bring that up to date, the Christian community is a tiny, tiny little community in our city anyway.
[00:08:09] David: And it’s scary how tiny we are. I’ve, I looked at some statistics recently when we attended, the Anglican Synod. And you go, you know, we, I think the Anglican Church in Sydney is probably the biggest evangelical community here. There are 40, 000 of us in a city of 5.2 million. You know, that’s, that’s something like eighty people in 10, 000.
[00:08:39] David: And yet, you look at the vehemence with which people attack what we stand for, and that they want to get rid of it. They want to censor it. They want to pass laws that say we can’t read the Bible out loud, you know, at least certain passages. So there’s all of this, opposition that’s there. And David looks back in this song and he says, look.
[00:09:06] David: You know, God, you rejected us, you broke us, you were angry, return to us. Now, that is our history. We were God’s enemies. And when we were God’s enemies, we tore each other apart. So he’s moving through that, and God’s history of what it took to bring God’s people to accept this king. And now, as soon as they’ve done that, things got worse.
[00:09:37] David: How does that work? It’s time to sit on, basically climb on God’s lap and say help. Laughter Um So
[00:09:46] Dan: then, this psalm then, is essentially us climbing on God’s lap, asking for help. it’s interesting, like David goes on to talk about, towards the end here. The idea that, everything in Israel is his, like he talks about, yeah, so he’s dividing Shechem, he’s got Manasseh, he’s got Gilead, he’s got Ephraim, and so these are the, generally the larger tribes, really.
[00:10:13] Dan: Yeah, the big dominant ones, you know, so he frames his helmet, all that kind of stuff. You know, he’s got a big solid, you know, basically, and then he prefers to Moab as his washing pot. He’s going to throw a shoe over Edom, and he’s rising, raising a shout over Philistia, which is the Philistines.
[00:10:32] Dan: Yeah. Are they beautiful images?
[00:10:37] Dan: It’s like God has finally, you know, set me up properly and, you know, this is, this is where things are going. Is there a sense where we have that same kind of confidence?
[00:10:49] David: yeah, there is. I mean, we’re looking at, if you have a historical view, you see people who oppose the kingdom of God go down in a screaming heap.
[00:11:01] David: and it’s. And it’s nearly always internally self destructing, whether it be the Roman Empire or whatever. if, if you live in a world where you reject God, ultimately it really is a world that is separated, divided, every man for himself, your truth, my truth, your right and wrong, my right and wrong.
[00:11:27] David: it’s, it’s us versus them all over the place. It’s the origin of war. It’s the origin of divorce. It’s the origin of every kind of alienation. Satan’s kingdom is divided. When Jesus said, you know, you know, if I cast out demons by Belial, all that would mean Satan’s kingdom’s divided. He was being sarcastic.
[00:11:48] David: Of course it’s divided. how can it not be if Satan’s selling me the idea that you are God? You’re equal to God. so we, as believers, we sit back and we watch this happen. while we may be suffering, we’re trusting that God’s kingdom is permanent, eternal, and will grow. But I love this imagery, you were talking about a washing pot and throwing his shoe.
[00:12:16] David: I don’t know if you remember, some years ago, I think it was George Bush was doing one of his presidential media presentations. Some bloke got up and threw a shoe at him. And in the old covenant, I mean, this is cultural stuff that goes back thousands of years, when Ruth’s near relative. refused to redeem Ruth and the land, they took his shoe off and threw it at him because that was a way of shaming him.
[00:12:51] David: you know, here’s your stinky, you know, this is the sort of thing where the dishonour of being an enemy of God registers. The boasting turns into absolute embarrassment. and God’s about doing that to people, and I, the language is, it’s, yeah, it’s a good song to sing.
[00:13:21] Dan: Yeah. All right. So then psalm’s going to finish off with a focus on God being the one who provides, it’s kind of interesting this last little, I mean, you’ve sectioned off in this little paragraph here, but, It talks about God not going out of the armies, but then also, David’s like, give us the helper that’s, you know, stronger than man, et cetera, and then, you know, in God we do powerfully and he will trample our foes.
[00:13:48] Dan: And that’s very much, you know, a contrasting of, Where David was, where he is now, where we were, where we were enemies of God, and then when you accept Jesus and where you get to be, where God is then, you know, powerfully on your side.
[00:14:06] David: It’s like the last three verses of this psalm are almost like three contrasting windows of different options almost in Israel’s history.
[00:14:16] David: There were times when Israel went out on their own to fight their enemies with no regard for God at all, and they got thrashed. Yeah. then there were times when they came back, you think of the battle of Ai. You know, they go up to Ai and they get thrashed because they disobeyed God. Then they sit down feeling sorry for themselves and saying, help.
[00:14:36] David: And I love that line, give us a helper who is greater than our foes. the word helper, when it comes over into the New Testament, becomes the Holy Spirit. the word means an ally, and you can translate that in different ways, but, we, if we try and do it on our own, we’re toast. We need this helper.
[00:15:01] David: He has to be greater than our foe. And it can’t be salvation by a man because men are useless. Yeah. Then you have the third scenario. When we’re in God, we do powerfully, when we’re on our own seeing one, we get thrashed. When we come back from being thrashed, we repent, we cry out, and the final scene is God acts.
[00:15:25] David: He comes to his people when they are repentant, when they are trusting him, and then you see the action happen.
[00:15:33] Dan: Hmm. And you see that a lot in mission too, because I think of things that we do as a church and then, you know, we, At my church we have a little gospel community and stuff, but part of the point is that the gospel community is on mission together, and it’s when you as a community rely on the Holy Spirit and you’re, you’re prayerful that you actually start to see fruit come from your mission.
[00:15:59] David: Yeah. One of the things that we need to think about is… evangelicals at the moment is firstly to resist the pressure of our culture to turn church into a business. We are seeing, there’s a tendency at the minute to look for success by implementing the world’s business techniques or the world’s marketing techniques and so forth.
[00:16:24] David: When we go down that road, we know it’s going to not end well. And the other thing that I think, really is, is a threat to us is the sense of it all depends on me. So there’s a lot of pressure, I think, on clergy and a lot of pride to affect clergy to say, you know, it’s parish ministry, they support me and I’ll do it.
[00:16:50] David: It’s a lot of that. we are doing it rather than getting on your knees and saying, God help us. and so I think we need to turn our attention from marketing, personalities and procedures and get it, just get back to getting on your knees and saying, God help us. We’ve got 5 million people going to hell in this city.
[00:17:14] David: we can’t do this. We need you to do it. and God does remarkable things.
[00:17:24] Dan: Well, that’s the end of this episode. If you would love to come and grab the study notes and go a bit deeper, you can come and grab those head over to trainingforliferedeemed.com/123. Make sure you hit the subscribe button.
[00:17:35] Dan: Come and join us again next week. We’ll hit Psalm, 61, about to say 21, then , Psalm 61 next. we look forward to talking to you then.
