Psalm 80
So let’s give our attention to
God’s word. This is Psalm 80. It says, to
the choir master, according to the lilies, a testimony of Asaph,
a Psalm. And he says, give ear, O shepherd
of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock. You who are enthroned
upon the chair of him, shine forth. Before Ephraim and Benjamin
and Manasseh, stir up your might and come to save us. Restore
us, O God, let your face shine. that we may be saved. O Lord
God of hosts, how long will you be angry with your people’s prayers?
You have fed them with the bread of tears and you have given them
tears to drink in full measure. You make us an object of contention
for our neighbors and our enemies laugh among themselves. Restore us, O God of hosts. Let
your face shine that we may be saved. You brought a vine out
of Egypt. You drove out the nations and
planted it. You cleared the ground for it.
It took deep root. It filled the land. The mountains
were covered with its shade, and the mighty cedars with its
branches. It sent out its branches to the sea, and its shoots to
the river. Why then have you broken down its walls, so that
all who pass along the way pluck its fruit? The boar from the
forest ravages it, and all that move in the field feed on it.
Turn again, O God of hosts. Look down from the heavens and
see. Have regard for this vine, the stock that your right hand
planted, and for the son whom you made strong for yourself.
They have burned it with fire. They have cut it down. May they
perish at the rebuke of your face. But let your hand be on
the man of your right hand, the son of man whom you have made
strong for yourself. then we shall not turn back from
you and give us life. And we will call upon your name. Restore us, O Lord God of hosts.
Let your face shine that we may be saved. Amen. This is God’s holy and inspired
word. You probably know what the term
geopolitical means. You hear it mentioned and thrown
out all the time when you hear maybe our president or an ambassador
or our secretary of state say, well, we really don’t want to
go to war with so-and-so because if we make them mad and then
make them mad and make them mad, then it really puts us in a difficult
spot in that region. So you understand what geopolitics
are. It’s the why we can and the why
we can’t and the why we should and the why we shouldn’t of being
nice even to people who aren’t so nice to us. Well, this psalm
has a little geopolitics in it, a little geopolitical intrigue,
if you will. And what is taking place is that
when God promised to punished the northern tribes, the 11 tribes
outside of Judah, when he promised to punish them for their wickedness
and to do so by sending the wicked Assyrians to not only lay siege
against their cities and systematically destroy them, but to carry the
northern tribes off to Assyria for exile. the war, the conflict
got a little too close to Judah. And so this prayer of Asaph is
if he’s looking out his window of Jerusalem and saying, Oh God,
the enemy of our northern tribes is getting a little too close.
And we don’t want this to come here. And so he prays and ask
for help. But he also sees that in asking
for help that God has rightly judged, God has rightly punished
the northern tribes for their sin. And in fact, he sees that
God is not with the people of God, but he has turned his face
away. Now, before we dig into the psalm,
I want you to notice some themes that maybe you already did notice.
The first one is that God is a shepherd over the sheep. The
second is that God is a vine dresser and Israel is a vine. And then the third one, you’ll
see that there is a refrain and that refrain pops up in verse
three. And again in verse seven, and also in verse 19. And you’ll notice in this refrain,
it begins with, restore us, oh God. And then he says, let your
face shine that we may be saved. And that let your face shine
reminds us of the benediction we often hear from Numbers chapter
six. The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord cause his face to shine upon us. or to shine upon you
and be gracious to you. And he’s saying, God, you’ve
pulled your face away from us. Now restore us and restore us
by favoring us. And you’ll notice also in that
refrain that the beginning has a little added word to it. In verse three, restore us, O
God. Verse seven, restore us, O God of host. And then in verse
19, And so the refrain is added to
or given a little more oomph or emphasis each time. But the
psalmist is aware of the problems. He’s aware of spiritual danger
surrounding Judah. He’s aware of the Assyrians.
The Assyrians were wicked people, wicked captors, wicked enemies
of God. And so the big thing that I want
you to think about as we dig into this psalm is this. Are
you aware of the enemies to God’s people? Are you aware of what
we are up against. Are you aware of our spiritual
enemies? And then, are you praying about
them? And so keep that in mind as we
look at each of these three stanzas along with the refrain. So the
first stanza we find in verses one through two. He says, give
ear, O shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock,
you who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth. before
Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, stir up your might and come to
save us. He’s giving his appeal to God
and speaking to him as a shepherd of Israel. And really up into
this point in Israel’s history, we might understand as Christians
who look back, we might understand the shepherd theme is big, but
really it’s obscure. It’s obscure in the Psalms and
it’s very obscure in the history of Israel. But here Asaph picks
up a great theme of God as the shepherd and Judah and Israel
as the helpless sheep. And he says, give ear, listen,
you who lead us like a flock. And notice then he jumps from
the shepherd theme and he says, you who are enthroned upon the
cherubim, you who sit on the seat of the Mercy seat of the
Ark of the Covenant, you shine forth. So he’s appealing to God. And notice in verse two, he gives
a little bit of the historical context. Ephraim, Benjamin, and
Manasseh, these were the tribes of Israel that were very close
to Judah. And Assyria has gotten really
close to their tribe, to their land, to their city, and to their
people. And he’s saying, listen up. Listen
up, shepherd, listen up, enthroned one, stir up your might and come
to save us. And that’s our shortest stanza,
verses one and two. And then notice he hits the refrain,
restore us, oh God, let your face shine that we may be saved. In some sense, he believes God
is looking away. So that’s the first stanza. Second
stanza gets a little longer. We find it in verses four and
five. 5 and 6, where he says, Oh Lord, God of hosts, how long
will you be angry with your people’s prayers? You have fed them with
the bread of tears. You have given them tears to
drink in full measure. You’ve made us an object of contention
for our neighbors and our enemies laugh among ourselves. Why do
you think it is that God is not listening to their prayers? What
hinders prayers? Well, sin hinders prayers. They
have sinned against God. They’ve not listened to the prophets.
And God has done several acts of judgment. He’s angry. He’s
not listening to their prayers. They’ve been given, as he says,
the bread of tears. And they’re drinking their tears
in full measure. And not only that, Israel as
a witness, Judah as a witness, is being looked at by other nations
and saying, look, their God can’t save. Now, one of the things
you’ll remember from maybe your historical books of the Bible,
that in this situation, Hezekiah is the king of Judah. Sennacherib,
the wicked king of Assyria, has surrounded Jerusalem. And this is that instance where
185,000 Assyrians are put to death by God himself. Hezekiah
and his men do not even have to lift a finger to fight, God
takes care of it. But before all that, Sennacherib was sending
his men to Hezekiah and taunting. And one of his taunts is this,
there is not a kingdom on earth nor a king on this earth who
has withstood Sennacherib and the Assyrians. And Hezekiah knows
deep down, well, with God’s help, we can withstand him. but it’s
pretty scary. It’s pretty gut-wrenching. It’s
pretty difficult for them to be in this situation. Therefore
you fed them with the bread of tears and you’ve given them tears
to drink in full measure. Could you imagine having 185,000
Assyrians surrounding your little bitty city? It would be terrifying. And that’s what he means here
in the second stanza. They’re taunting us. They’re
laughing among us. Now we could, over spiritualize
this if we’re not careful but maybe at least we ought to think
about it we get jeered at for being Christians we get taunted
for having faith. We get told that Christianity
is a crutch. It’s a crutch for weak people
who have no intellectual capacity. And we just believe what we’re
told is the opiate of the masses. That’s what Christianity is.
And so sometimes we face this sort of thing. And so we might
say, as the psalmist says in verse seven, restore us, O God
of host. Let your face shine that we may
be saved. Another way we might say it though,
and maybe you think about this. What does the world see of the
church in America? What does the world see when
it looks in on our little congregation? Does the world see a majestic
God that is worshiped? Does the world see a truth of
the gospel, a truth of the Bible that is held high? And no matter
what anybody says, it to us is the greatest thing in the world. We might say in a sense, restore
us, oh God, so that we can be a witness to the watching world.
Restore us, let your face shine on us that we may be saved, but
also so that the world might see. Well, there’s a third stanza
here and it’s a longer when it’s verses eight through 18. And
this is where the picture of the vine dresser comes in. And
you also notice that in this little section, it speaks of
Israel’s past being brought out of Egypt. It speaks of Israel’s
present being a vineyard that has been destroyed. Then it speaks
of Israel’s future. A greater vine dresser will come
and take care of this vine that has fallen on hard times and
it causes them to hope in Christ. But look, if you will, starting
at verse eight, it says, you brought a vine out of Egypt.
That’s Israel. You drove out the nations and
planted it. So he cleared out the promised land and he planted
this strange, this alien vineyard in a foreign land. that was to
be theirs. You cleared the ground for it.
It took deep root. It filled the land. Remember under David
and Solomon, the kingdom spread to the farthest borders that
it ever had. And now when you speak of the
kingdom of God and Israel, it’s gotten really, really small because
of their disobedience and because they’ve been taken over by their
enemies. But at one point, He says in verse nine, it took deep
root and filled the land. The mountains were covered with
its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches. It sent out
its branches to the sea and its shoots to the river. Its borders
were great and wide, he seems to say. And then he presents
the problem, verse 12, or the present. Why then have you broken
down its walls so that all who pass along the way pluck its
fruit? The boar from the forest ravages it and all that move
in the field feed on it. Did anybody win the nickel? Guessing
the historical. You remember the papal bull against
Martin Luther? A boar is loose in the vineyard of God’s chosen
ones. Remember that? And Martin Luther
was supposedly the boar who was loose in the vineyard. So nobody
gets the nickel. I’ll just keep it in my ashtray.
That’s okay. I need it. I’ll be able to retire. So he says in his prayer, verse
14, Turn again, O God of hosts, look down from heaven and see.
Have regard for this vine, the stock that your right hand planted,
and for the son whom you made strong for yourself. One of the
images that God also uses, we didn’t mention it, but here it
is now, God often calls Israel his son. And so have regard for
the son whom you made strong for yourself. And he goes on, they have burned
it with fire. They have cut it down. May they
perish at the rebuke of your face. So what does he want their
face to receive? The rebuke of God. But what does
he want Israel or God’s people? They want the shining face of
God. Cut it down that they may perish
at the rebuke of your face, but let your hand be on the man of
your right hand, the son of man, whom you have made strong for
yourself, then we shall not turn back from you and give us life
and we will call upon your name.” So this third stanza speaks of
Israel as a vine that was planted, a vine that has become under
hard times, and it’s a vine that can have hope in Christ. Now,
verse 17 is a little bit of a mystery to some. You have a couple of
options. What does verse 17 mean? Let
your hand be on the man of your right hand. Well, who is the
man of your right hand? Who is the son of man who you’ve
made strong for yourself? Well, it could be, first of all,
the king, the present king. It could be Hezekiah. Second
of all, it could be Israel. He calls Israel sometimes his
son. And then third, it could be Christ. the Messiah. We can never go wrong with taking
whatever view Calvin takes. That’s usually the best way to
go because you’re in good company. If he made a mistake, then at
least he was a good man to make a mistake. But generally the
thought on who the son of man is, is Christ. It’s the Messiah. Now there’s
two ways to look at this. God wants to save his son, Israel. That’s what the Psalm is about.
but he’s going to do it through his son, the Messiah. And so there’s a little bit of
both. One, we get from the context of the Psalm, but we can take
17, verse 17, I think, to believe. of the future, the Son of Man.
So when we pray this prayer in the refrain, verse four, or verse
three, verse seven, and verse 19, restore us, O Lord God of
hosts, that your face may shine and that we may be saved. We
can’t help but understand that can only be fulfilled through
the Son, the Messiah. We can only believe that God
can restore his people through the mediatorial work of Christ,
both offering himself up and being the offerer or the high
priest. So how can we be restored as
God’s people? How can we have God’s favor,
his face shining upon us? It’s only through faith and it’s
only through hope in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so Psalm 80
gives us perspective when enemies surround us, and God does judge
us, and that when he does restore us, it is for his glory, and
it’s for our good, and it’s through Christ. Let’s pray together. Our Lord and God, we’re grateful
that you treat us as a father treats his children, you chastise
us when we are unfaithful, yet there’s always mercy you will
restore to us. of the joy of our salvation,
and we thank you for Christ, that we can look to him for his
obedience, his death, his satisfaction for our sins, and that we can
find restoration in you, and that you can shine the light
of your face upon us and restore us, and that we can be saved
through Jesus, and it’s in his name we pray, amen.