Psalm 115
Turn in your copy of the scriptures
to Psalm 115. Tonight we’re still in the little series on the Egyptian
halels, the halel meaning the praise word, the command of praise.
And when you add Yah to the end, hallelujah, it’s praise Yahweh. Again, this is another that doesn’t
have the word in it, but it’s in the grouping. So let’s give
our attention to Psalm 115. Not to us, O Lord, not to us,
but to your name give the glory. for the sake of your steadfast
love and your faithfulness. Why should the nation say, where
is their God? Our God is in the heavens. He
does all that he pleases. Their idols are silver and gold,
the work of human hands. They have mouths that do not
speak. Eyes, but do not see. They have
ears, but do not hear. Noses, but they do not smell. They have hands, but they do
not feel. Feet, but they do not walk. And they do not make a
sound in their throat. Those who make them become like
them. So do all who trust in them. Oh, Israel, trust in the
Lord. He is their help and their shield.
Oh, house of Aaron, trust in the Lord. He is their help and
their shield. You who fear the Lord, trust
in the Lord. He is their help and their shield.
The Lord has remembered us. He will bless us. He will bless
the house of Israel. He will bless the house of Aaron.
He will bless those who fear the Lord, both small and great.
May the Lord give you increase. You and your children, may you
be blessed by the Lord who made heaven and earth. The heavens
are the Lord’s. but the earth he has given to
the children of man. The dead do not praise the Lord,
nor do any who go down into silence, but we will bless the Lord from
this time forth and forevermore. Praise the Lord.” Put yourself in this imaginary
scenario. You’ve lost every possession. maybe to a natural disaster or
some sort of event like that, everything is gone. And to add
to that, before this natural disaster, your health was poor
and the stock market had crashed. So everything is gone. And a
reporter who comes to town to do all the gawking they do and
to stick the microphone in your mouth and put the camera in your
face, does just that and wants a little in-depth interview with
you. You’ve lost it all, your possessions,
your health, your wealth, what do you say? Well, you could say
Psalm 115. You could say in a sense what
Psalm 115 means in the words of a hymn we often sing. Oh God,
our help in ages past, our hope for years to come. You could
say, let me tell you about my God, not about all your troubles,
all your woes, all your hardships, though that would make good television.
But you could say, let me tell you about my God. He is trustworthy
in the past, He is trustworthy in the present and he is trustworthy
in the future. Well, that’s sort of the occasion
of Psalm 115. The world is watching God’s people. They are wondering what in the
world is going on with this little band of people who call on the
name of the Lord. Where is their God? The occasion
is most likely post-exilic Israel. They’ve returned from Babylon.
I remember in the old covenant in Was it 722 or so? The northern tribes, the northern
11 tribes, they were taken captive by the Assyrians. They were hauled
off. The northern portion of Israel was cleaned out. They
expatriated the Israelites and they repatriated the northern
tribes. That’s where we get the Samaritans.
And then a little over 100 years later, it took place in stages,
but by the year 586, the southern tribe of Judah, where Jerusalem
was, the southern tribe, they were exiled by Babylon. They
were in Babylon a number of decades. Remember Daniel’s prayers? Remember
the stories from the land of Persia? Well, they’ve come back
to the promised land. You can read about it in Ezra
and Nehemiah. And they are rebuilding the temple.
They are rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem. They are rebuilding
their houses, which are lying in ruins and have done so for
decades now. And the buildings are smaller. The foundation of the temple
is not as magnificent as Solomon’s temple. The walls are not as
thick. They’re not as high. The houses
are not as grand. The city of God is only but a
small footprint of what it used to be under the height of King
David and King Solomon. And Ezra and Nehemiah lead a
band of the remnant, they’re called. They lead a band of Israelites
who still call on the name of the Lord. Not everybody returned
from exile. Some for decades had prospered in Babylon. and
some had children, some had families, some had business, and so they
stayed. But a few returned, a smaller
number, and they built a smaller city with smaller walls, a smaller
temple, and a smaller house. And there are a handful of sets
of enemies that come into this rebuilding project. in the little
city of Jerusalem. Under Ezra’s ministry, a letter
was written to Artaxerxes, the king of Persia, who was overseeing,
as maybe a little mini-state, Jerusalem. And they wrote a letter
and said, these people are building a city, a rebellious city, a
wicked city, and accused them in this letter to Artaxerxes
of sedition. And so the building stopped.
And for a time, the people of God were under suspicion. because
of these enemies. Well, wouldn’t you know it, their
own sin became an enemy. The people rebuilt the foundations
of the temple and then they stopped for about 20 years. And as you
read through Ezra about chapter five, chapter six, it says, Haggai
came and prophesied among the people. And one of the great
prophecies of Haggai was this. He said to the people, you’ve
come back to the promised land. The temple’s foundation has been
built, but you’ve stopped there. You’re paneling your own houses.
You’re hanging your flat screens on the wall. Not really. But
you’re installing your fancy kitchens and your microwave ovens
and you’re making your houses nice. but the house of God is still
in ruins. And so the people of God get back to it and they build
the house and they complete the house so that worship can continue
in the promised land yet again. And so their own sin, their own
laziness is an enemy. Well, there’s another occasion
under the ministry of Nehemiah where the Jewish people are oppressing
their own poor. and they have to get down to
business and straighten that out. And so they have these letters
to Artaxerxes. They have their own sin, their
own laziness, their own oppression of the poor. And then you’ll
remember maybe one of the, it’s not so humorous stories, but
in Nehemiah, I think it’s in chapter four, I can’t recall
exactly, but Sanballat and Tobiah, they come and they poke fun at
Nehemiah and his laborers. And they say, What are these
feeble Jews doing? Will they restore the city for
themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish it up in a day?
Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish and burned
ones at that? Tobiah the Ammonite was beside
Sanballat and he said, yes, what they are building, if a fox goes
up on the wall, he will break it down, their stone wall. But
Nehemiah prayed, hear, O God, for we are despised. Turn back
their taunt on their own heads and give them up to be plundered
in a land where they are captives. Do not cover their guilt. Do
not let their sin be blotted out from your sight, for they
have provoked you to anger in the presence of the builders. And so these enemies came in
the midst of God’s people. But what did they remember? They
remembered, O God, our help in ages past. our hope for years
to come. And so as we think about Psalm
115 this evening, you can think in hard times about the same
hope that God’s people have had year after year after year, decade
after decade, century after century, and now millennia after millennia,
stretching back to Abraham and to Job and to Noah. Well, the
Psalm opens with praise and it ends with praise. Not to us,
O Lord, not to us, but to your name, give glory for the sake
of your steadfast love. That’s verse one. And then. Verse 18, but we will bless the
Lord from this time forth and forevermore, praise the Lord.
And biblical interpretation, or particularly when you’re studying
Psalms, these are what we call bookends. And in between the
bookends, you get the meat of the story, the meat of the lesson.
And so we have this opening praise that really stretches from verses
one to three. The people are in pain, they’re
in difficulty. They’ve gone to exile because
they have disobeyed God and now they’ve returned. They’re being
mocked, but now they’re confident. Why should the nation say, where
is their God? Our God is in heaven and he does
all that he pleases. Then there’s two groupings in
the middle of these opening and ending bookends of praise. The
first one speaks about idols and the curses that it brings.
And the second central portion of the psalm speaks of Yahweh
and what he’s able to do and the blessing he brings. So think
big picture here. We trust God, we praise God.
Idols can’t do anything. They bring curses. Yahweh can
do everything and he brings blessing. And then there’s the praise at
the end. Think for a minute with me about these idols. We find
in verse four to seven, what are idols? They’re, they’re impotent.
They’re dead. They’re manmade objects. They
can do nothing. And in Psalm 115, there are seven
charges leveled against these idols. You find it in verse four
through seven. They have no voice. If an idol has no voice, it can’t
be a revealing God to its people, but we have a God who does speak
and he speaks to us by his word and his spirit. Most of all,
he speaks to us through his own son, the Lord Jesus, a real living,
an everlasting living God. But these gods have no voice,
and so no revelation. They have no sight, and so they
cannot see what the men, the children of this earth are doing.
They cannot make moral judgments because they cannot see. They
have no ears, and so they cannot hear the cries of their people.
They have no nose, so they cannot accept offerings as the smell
of their burning rises up. They have no hands and they cannot
feel our infirmities. They have no feet. So they are
inactive and they have no thoughts, no musing, no, no sound in their
throats. And so you want to serve idols.
You want to serve a lifeless being that can do nothing. Remember,
When the Ark of the Covenant was stolen by the Philistines,
they stuck it in the same warehouse where they had Dagon, and every
morning they would go in to feed Dagon. Remember, they took him
food. And what did they find every morning? Dagon had fallen
over. and was bowing down, as it were,
to the ark. They would prop old Dagon back
up. They would bring food to him the next morning. And guess
what? Old Dagon had fallen back over and he bowed toward the
ark. I remember when God mocks the
idols through Elijah with the priest of Baal. Elijah is poured
water all over the sacrifice, all over the wood, built a ditch,
put water in it. And his God comes down with fire
and it laps up the water, the offering, the wood, and even
the altar. But their God can do nothing. Remember Elijah’s
taunts. Maybe your God is busy. At one
point he says, maybe your God is, maybe he’s in the restroom.
And he taunts them and taunts them. There’s Isaiah, I think
in Isaiah 44, just a, a brow beating taunt to those who follow
other gods. Isn’t it interesting that hymn
we sang earlier before the service, a hymn that was under the category
of sanctification, but it speaks of Christians being, falling
into darkness and worshiping idols. We have things that come
in the place of almighty God. And so sometimes we may think,
Oh, it’s the, it’s the, the bail people that worship is the Canaanites. It’s the this and that, but no,
it can be us. And so we need to be careful.
Idols can do nothing. They can bring a curse. Verse
eight. those who make them become like them. And so do all who
trust in them. Israel knows this all too painfully.
What’s one of the reasons they went into exile? Because they
were idolaters. They failed to worship Yahweh
and Yahweh alone. And they became corrupt by syncretizing
all the religions of all the nations all around them. And
they disobeyed God, which brought upon them covenant curses. And
so idols will lead you to being cursed. But what about Yahweh?
What about our God? We find what He is able to do
in verses 9 to 13. we call to our helper or ruler,
or our helper and shield. Notice it says it three or four
times. Oh, Israel, trust in the Lord.
He is your help and shield. This psalm may have, probably
was used in worship. And you know how sometimes we’ll
say, oh, give thanks to the Lord for he is good. And then what’s
the refrain? His steadfast love endures forever. And if you say that psalm over
and over, you end up saying that refrain, his steadfast love endures
forever. It’s kind of an antiphonal call and response worship. Psalm. Well, 115 may have been that
as well. There may have been a cantor.
There may have been a leader. There may have been a choir,
the Levites or something, and then the people of God. And can
you imagine in a gathering, we have a thousand churches across
our little area, but could you imagine there just being one
gathering, one church and thousands upon thousands of people saying
together, Oh, Israel, trust in the Lord. He is their help. in
their shield and repeating that line as it arises in the psalm. The call is to trust Yahweh,
the help and shield, the helper and ruler. Unlike idols who are
inactive and impotent, he is actively involved. His providence
is over our very lives. Israel, the house of Aaron, even
God fears. These are the three categories.
He speaks to the Israelites, the house and servants of Aaron,
and even those who are outsiders, but call on the name of the Lord.
They are called to trust God. Now, if the occasion of this
Psalm is the exiles returning, one of the important things to
note is verse 10, O house of Aaron, trust in the Lord. When
the exiles returned to rebuild, did they have a king? Was there
a David? Was there a mighty warrior? No,
the House of Aaron, they were the governors. They were the
priests. They provided all the leadership
and sometimes small things. get that way, right? We pitch
in, we put our shoulders to the plow. There is no king. There
aren’t all the accoutrements that we might be used to, but
God can work in small things. And he’s saying, trust me, look
to me as your help and shield. Don’t you think Israel got so
big and mighty? They thought, look at us. Look at us. Wouldn’t we forget God if church
got really big? Wouldn’t we forget God if we
thought, look at us, we’ve really, really, really done it. But it’s
more powerful, I think, more gracious of God to put us in
a place where we have to trust in him and in him alone. And
so he calls Israel to trust. And notice how in verses 14 to
15, where trusting in idols brings curses, this brings blessings
when we follow Yahweh. Verse 14. It says, may the Lord
give you increase, you and your children. Now in some places
when there’s a benediction like this, may the Lord give you increase,
you and your children. Sometimes it’s also your grapevines,
it’s your sheep, it’s your cattle. We sometimes summarize the covenant
blessings of God down to two things just to make it easy.
Two Gs, grapes, grandkids that’s right the covenant blessings
of God he gives us fruit in our household and so that’s one of
the promises may the Lord give you increase you and your children
may you be blessed by the Lord who made heaven and earth now
who made idols men but what did God make he made the heavens
and the earth Then it goes on to end with a conclusion of praise. Just as it opened verses one
to three with praise, it concludes. And there’s a very interesting
perspective. Verse 16 says, Now think about
the vast spread of the heavens. We got all these planets, we
got solar systems, stars are supposedly so far away, you know, we just had a, woman come back from close to
a year in the space station. You probably saw the viral videos
of her greeting her dog again and how happy she and the dog
were. But we send people into space. Our president’s promised
we’ll go to the moon again. We now have a new armed force,
the Space Force. It’s 2020. We should have one
of those. But space is vast. The distances are far beyond
our imagination. And if you went to the farthest
stretch of space and you look back at Earth, What would be
earth but a little speck? So God rules the heavens as fast
as they are. But what has he given to us,
his children? He’s given us the earth to rule.
I think we read in Hebrews earlier a quotation of Psalm 8, O Lord,
our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. What is
man that you’re mindful of him? What is man? the son of man that
you made him a little bit lower than the heavenly beings. It’s
King David musing over the image of God in man and that man rules
the earth. Genesis 1 and 2 teach us that,
that we have been given the earth. We’re God’s vice regents. We rule over the earth. We subdue
it. We make it work. We make it prosper. And so God has the realm of heaven
and earth, but we have the realm of earth itself. And so we look to God, we praise
God. So when the microphone and the
camera gets stuck in your face or when you gather with God’s
people at church and life has been hard, what do you say? Do
you list your complaints? Probably what we would do. But
in Christ Jesus, we should list our God, our help in ages past
and our hope. for years to come. That’s the
best testimony to one another, but that’s the best way to praise
God. Let’s go to him in prayer now. Lord, we thank you and bless
you for this psalm to remind us who you are and who we are.
We thank you that you are our shield. You are our help. We can look to no other, for
only you are able. So help us to remember your goodness,
past, present, and future, to put our faith and hope in you,
and to remember most of all that Jesus, our great high priest,
is one who has suffered in every way. He’s been made like us in
order that we might trust him and look to him. Hear us and
help us, we pray in Christ’s name, amen.