Psalm 9 Sermon From June 2012 Prayer Service

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Rev. Ted A. Giese / Wednesday June 6th 2012: Season of Pentecost, Psalm 9. “If God Himself Be for Me”

           I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart;

                        I will recount all of Your wonderful deeds.

            I will be glad and exult in You;

                        I will sing praise to Your name, O Most High.

            When my enemies turn back,

                        they stumble and perish before Your presence.

            For You have maintained my just cause;

                        You have sat on the throne, giving righteous judgment.

            You have rebuked the nations; You have made the wicked perish;

                        You have blotted out their name forever and ever.

            The enemy came to an end in everlasting ruins;

                        their cities You rooted out;

                        the very memory of them has perished.

            But the LORD sits enthroned forever;

                        He has established His throne for justice,

            and He judges the world with righteousness;

                        He judges the peoples with uprightness.

            The LORD is a stronghold for the oppressed,

                        a stronghold in times of trouble.

            And those who know Your name put their trust in You,

                        for You, O LORD, have not forsaken those who seek You.

            Sing praises to the LORD, who sits enthroned in Zion!

                        Tell among the peoples His deeds!

            For He who avenges blood is mindful of them;

                        He does not forget the cry of the afflicted.

            Be gracious to me, O LORD!

                        See my affliction from those who hate me,

                        O You who lift me up from the gates of death,

            that I may recount all Your praises,

                        that in the gates of the daughter of Zion

                        I may rejoice in Your salvation.

            The nations have sunk in the pit that they made;

                        in the net that they hid, their own foot has been caught.

            The LORD has made Himself known; He has executed judgment;

                        the wicked are snared in the work of their own hands.

            The wicked shall return to Sheol,

                        all the nations that forget God.

            For the needy shall not always be forgotten,

                        and the hope of the poor shall not perish forever.

            Arise, O LORD! Let not man prevail;

                        let the nations be judged before You!

            Put them in fear, O LORD!

                        Let the nations know that they are but men!

                                                                                        (Psalm 9 ESV)

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Good Christian Friends. This particular Psalm is like a bird. The bird starts out on your shoulder, and then flies way up into the sky,  then comes back down then goes right back up, then back down; it is a prayer that moves from the big picture to the personal picture. Like a bird that sits on your shoulder as you stand in the middle of a crowded busy city but doesn’t stay there, psalm nine then flies up into the air surveys the whole city from afar, so high up the bird flies that you personally seem like a little speck, hard to see in that bustling busy crowded city. The first four verses are the bird on your shoulder, they are personal in nature, the Psalmist writes, “I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart; I will recount all of Your wonderful deeds. I will be glad and exult in You; I will sing praise to Your name, O Most High. When my enemies turn back, they stumble and perish before Your presence. For You have maintained my just cause; You have sat on the throne, giving righteous judgment.” These words remind me of the first verse of Hymn 724 in the Lutheran Service Book “If God Himself Be for Me”

If God Himself be for me, I may a host defy; For when I pray, before me My foes, confounded, fly. If Christ, my head and master, Befriend me from above, What foe or what disaster Can drive me from His love?[1]

Then the Psalm leaves the shoulder and continues on its way soaring high up, up into the sky, and when the words begin to talk of God judging the nations we are tempted to drift off because it’s no longer about me and Jesus. It looks like it’s about the world stage and events outside of our control.

This is a Psalm of King David, yet it’s not attached to a specific event in David’s life like Psalm Three was when it dealt with King David’s struggle with his rebellious son Absalom. Psalm Nine is more general, more reflective, and when you know that King David wrote it you might think ... well there you go, he’s a king and this is about world events and  nations so that makes sense, but in it there is nothing for me because I’m no king. While listening to the Psalm you might wonder where do I fit in this? Am I like King David? Am I like the enemy of the King David; am I part of the nations? Where do I fit and what does it mean for me.

It is true that this Psalm speaks to the vocation of being a ruler, that it’s a prayer for the Christian who governs a nation, and yet it does not remain lofty and far off; the bird which is nearly up in the clouds descends again to sit on your shoulder because God doesn’t “forget the cry of the afflicted.” In verse thirteen the very personal cry of the afflicted calls out again, “Be gracious to me, O LORD! See my affliction from those who hate me, O You who lift me up from the gates of death, that I may recount all Your praises, that in the gates of the daughter of Zion I may rejoice in Your salvation.”

In the midst of strife and trouble in this life, in the midst of upheaval in the world and in nations the prayer goes forth with wings flapping, calling out, ‘Heavenly Father, move me from the Gates of Death to the Gates of Life!” In the midst of the big picture David sits his throne with this little prayer on his shoulder. For King David it is a prayer for the coming Messiah, the coming Christ, the coming Kingdome of God; that God would redeem David and that this would happen in the sight of all nations, that the judgment of God would come with this salvation, and that all peoples would know their place in the order of creation. “God is in His heaven and all is well with the world.” David prays that a broken world of chaos filled with evil and with enemies would be put right in the big picture, all the while likewise praying that it would be put right for him personally.

How is this prayer answered? It is answered when the Son of glory, the only begotten Son of the Father, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, hangs dead on the cross on that first Good Friday, that is when this prayer of David’s was answered and it is how it is answered: Jesus nailed dead to the wooden beams of the cross. The Kingdome of God was coming into the world and at the cross the Kingdome of God arrived. After the resurrection, forty days later the same Jesus, the One who came in answer to David’s prayer, Who is risen victorious from the Gates of Death gives again the Gates of Heaven to all nations who believe in Him when He commanded Baptism in the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. On that day He ascended bodily into heaven before the very eyes of His closest followers.

On the one hand David prays for relief from his troubles on the other hand he prays for judgment. The judgment that David prayed for, the judgment fulfilled on the cross, the judgment that lets the nations know that they are but men was likewise fore told by Jesus to His disciples: He promised to put the word of it in their mouths by the coming of the Holy Spirit when Jesus said, “when [the Holy Spirit] comes, He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.”[2]

From it's soaring heights the bird descends back down onto David’s shoulder and as David surveys the world before him and pleads “let not man prevail!” he asks God to arise and judge the nations. He looks for this judgment with a joyful anticipation and we like this too as long as God judges the nations, we like it if He gets down a little closer (for instance) and judges those who sin against others, we even like it if God judges those who sin against people we personally know, what we aren’t too fond of is when God’s law judges us. When His law isn’t only for those who sin against our friends and family, when God’s Law isn’t only for those who sin against our neighbours, or when God’s Law isn’t only for judgment against unruly nations, we become uncomfortable: All these judgments we can embrace but when the eye of God’s Law zooms in on us we itch and fret and worry and become vexed, and we should feel this way we should feel uncomfortable. If we feel that the bird is flying way up high, too high up to make us out, when we think of ourselves as but a inconsequential speck in the crowed our seared conscience can be made to lie and say ‘you are too insignificant for God to notice your damming sin, go on do as you like.’ This is of course untrue delusion God the Father is very aware of your sin and knows the depth of your depravity before you even ask for forgiveness. God is not shocked by your confession. In His holiness He is angry and you should be mortified. The truth is that you cannot hide by thinking yourself small. You cannot hide by pretending your sin is not judged as the sins of others are judged. God knows you like the back of His hand. You are not a speck to Him and neither is your sin. This is both terrifying and extremely comforting, terrifying because God sees you in your sin but comforting also because while you were trapped in your deplorable condition God saw you and had a plan to save you, He didn’t overlook you, He loves you enough to care what you are up to in your life. God gives you a way out: Your way out, is the blood of Christ that covers the multitude of your sins, without this you are judged with the nations and are cast away into eternal death and hell and torment.

When you look at Psalm nine in this way the whole Psalm becomes very personal. If the judgment that befalls the nations could be your judgment then the promises of God become more than nice news, the promises of God become Good news, the only news that counts; When Jesus says to us in John’s Gospel that “God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life,”[3] you say ‘thank the Lord,’ because this says that the love of God extends out past king David and the nation of Israel to me! I am no longer an enemy of God’s Kingdome but a part of it! It all becomes very important; the prayer that starts out ‘Heavenly Father, move me from the Gates of Death to the Gates of Life!’ ends up being ‘Heavenly Father, move us all from the Gates of Death to the Gates of Life!’ it becomes a call to evangelize because we have all sunk into the pits that we have made, we have all had our foot caught in the net of sin that we laid for ourselves, we each have been snared in our works apart from Christ, we are all oppressed by evil, besieged by it from outside of ourselves and from within; we all need to be saved. We desire the Kingdome of God to grow so that not just our loved ones but even our enemies might be saved by Christ.

Yet day in and day out the flesh of evil men seek to rise up against you and your own sinful flesh seeks to lay you low, to drag you out of the Kingdome of God. The bird comes back down from surveying the world around you and lands on your shoulder and it will not depart, it’s talons are firm in your flesh the prayer for God to judge the world with equity calls out and even though the enemies wish you to believe that there is no escape, that you should despair ... there is an escape , there is a salvation, there is a perfect judge coming who will vindicate the Christian that relief is Christ Jesus; the call for help, the prayer for salvation, justice and protection that goes up to the LORD is answered in Christ: for Christ doesn’t forget the cry of the afflicted and in His blood He is a stronghold for the oppressed in the time of trouble: In your baptism you have all of this and with confidence you can sing with your whole heart;

If God Himself be for me, I may a host defy; For when I pray, before me My foes, confounded, fly. If Christ, my head and master, Befriend me from above, What foe or what disaster Can drive me from His love?

Amen. 

Let us pray: Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen. 

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[1]LSB 724 “If God Himself Be for Me”

[2]John 16:8-11

[3]John 3:16