Dennis Tuuri

Okay. So, please stand and we will read it one more time. Psalm 83, a song, a psalm of Asaf. Do not keep silent, oh God. Do not hold your peace and do not be still, oh God, for behold, your enemies make a tumult, and those who hate you have lifted up their head. They have taken crafty counsel against your people and consulted together against your sheltered ones. They have said, “Come and let us cut them off from being a nation that the name of Israel may be remembered no more.” For they have consulted together with one consent.

They form a confederacy against you. The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites, Moab and the Hagrites, Gebal, Ammon, and Amalek, Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre. Assyria also has joined with them. They have helped the children of Lot. See, deal with them as with Midian, as with Sisera, as with Jabin at the brook Kishon, who perished at Endor, who became his refuge. Make their nobles like Oreb and like Zeeb.

Yes, yes, all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna, who said, “Let us take for ourselves the pastures of God for a possession. Oh my God, make them like the whirling dust, like the chaff before the wind. As the fire burns the woods and as the flame sets the mountains on fire, so pursue them with your tempest and frighten them with your storm. Fill their faces with shame that they may seek your name, O Lord.

Let them be confounded and dismayed forever. Yes, let them be put to shame and perish that they may know that you whose name alone is the Lord are the most high over all the earth. Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this portion of scripture. We thank you, Lord God, that we’re learning to sing it in a more glorious fashion before you. Help us to understand now what it is we sing and the importance and relevance of it to our life and the life of Christians all over this world.

In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen. Please be seated. Nursery workers may be dismissed.

I told my children this last week that I have never seen anything like this. Unbelievable contest. Two men, many people gathered around them, engaged in a long and hard-fought battle. Providence of God evident to those who have eyes to see. Comebacks. Leaders who originally should have expected to win things, not winning things. Inability of men to predict the future is obviously at stake here. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears shed along the way in the context of just an overwhelming contest. No one could have predicted the twists and turns that happened at the end. Just an incredible event. And I’m speaking here, of course, of the Monday Night Football game between the Minnesota Vikings and the Green Bay Packers. And it was nearly as exciting for those of you who saw it.

And it was a prelude, I think, of what we were to see the rest of the week. Minnesota Vikings were heavily favored. The Green Bay Packers are not much of a team this year. They battled back, scrappy, matching field goal to field goal and touchdown for touchdown. However, it looked like the obvious was going to happen. Minnesota was going to win. Last play of the game: a fairly short field goal. But in the providence of God, the rain started to come down about then.

And then the Packer coach was bright, called two consecutive timeouts. The rain came down in sheets then. That’s unbelievable rain. And as a result of that, I suppose in the coldness of the evening, the holder muffed the hold and field goal didn’t make it. So, we’re in sudden death overtime. God of course controls the coin toss and the Green Bay Packers won the coin toss. Green Bay Packers not able to move the ball much against the Minnesota Vikings.

They come downfield. Last down for them. Third and whatever it was or whatever the down was. Last down. Throws a long pass downfield. Who knows what’ll happen. Almost intercepted by the Minnesota Viking player. The Green Bay Packer player is on the dust of the field laying there. The Minnesota Viking player sort of flips the ball around trying to catch it and doesn’t get it. He figures that’s the end of the play and walks away.

But the ball has ended not on the ground but on the body of the Green Bay Packer player and the ball rolls along his body for a while and this guy having presence of mind understands the ball has not touched the ground and so at the last minute it’s about an inch from going off. It goes off his back. It’s an inch from the ground and he grabs it with both hands to prevent the nose of the football from touching the ground.

Now he has not been touched by the opposing player and with great astuteness of mind, he picks the ball up and runs into the end zone and the game is over. It’s an incredible play. I’ve never seen anything like it. Well, we see the same thing in the context of the great political election. And I suppose I shouldn’t make light of it, but you know, in both of these incredible once-in-a-lifetime sort of events, we see some very common themes.

The theme of participation, the importance of participation in the electoral process. Your vote does count. That is a tremendous message from this. Even in Canby the city race for the city council one guy the last to get three out of six positions win and the last guy the third guy got six more votes than the fourth guy. My family has three votes. We believe we voted for that guy. And so if we had voted for the other guy it would have been tied.

Your votes are very important. As I hear New Mexico is down to just maybe I don’t know 20 or 30 votes. Participation and the Green Bay Packer game and they had to work hard to participate for that warfare. A prophecy: men cannot predict, you know, on any given Sunday or Monday evening. Apparently, the best team can beat one of the worst teams. And men cannot predict what’s going to happen. And of course, we had predictions the night of the election.

And you know, I don’t know. You know, a lot of times we say there’s a conspiracy. There is no conspiracy. The great conspirator is God. And I don’t know if the voting news service was attempting to throw the election. That was the effect of granting Florida to Gore early on. I don’t know if you know or not, but half of the state, not half the state, but the panhandle. The polls weren’t closed. They’re in a different time zone than the rest of Florida.

The end result of the media doing that was that people who weren’t really committed to following through and participating, who believed the prophecies of the networks, a lot of them didn’t vote. And so Bush’s vote total was less than it would have been. But men cannot predict the future. It’s a God thing as Doug H. says, an obvious God thing here at work. And providence, of course, is the big message in all of this, that the hand of God is upon the affairs of man.

And we try our best and I heard one commentator say the night of the election that both these guys probably, you know, maybe it’s just like that tombstone out in the Midwest somewhere. The one out in Arizona or New Mexico is a tombstone and all it says on the tombstone is he did his damnedest. Well, sometimes that’s kind of what we do. We just do our best. Past. But ultimately, all of these things are in the hand of God, which is a wonderful truth.

It’s a great time to be a Calvinist, to believe that in spite of men’s sins and errors and difficulties, the hand of God is moving the affairs of our nation, the affairs of even our entertainments to demonstrate to us his hand of providence in all things.

Now there is weird stuff going on, and I did just want to I wanted to read something here to you. This is from the Florida statute chapter 101.5609 on ballot requirements and this is the section dealing with electromechanical ballots the type that are used in Florida and sub parenthesis 6 says voting squares may be placed in front of or in back of the names of candidates and statements of questions and shall be of such size as is compatible with the type of system used.

You probably heard over and over and over that some ballots were illegal. It is manifestly untrue according to this Florida statute. You heard all kinds of things this last week. If you’re like me, kind of a political junkie and like to watch the news shows. These people are incredibly inaccurate in their reporting. There is no sense of responsibility even after Tuesday night when they mistakenly called these elections and really cause quite a disruption in the process still for the next few days. There’s no more carefulness now than there was then.

The press is a horrible element of this entire thing. But the press are under the control of God as well. And all of these things are pictures for us really of some of the same lessons that we find in Psalm 83. Psalm 83, you know, we just sort of chose it this week because we’re singing it. The men are learning to sing the parts, the bass and tenor parts. So it could be good to focus upon it for a little bit here.

But in the providence of God, it’s an important psalm for us to remember that when men are arrayed against the people of God, and I am convinced that there are elements of this political process that are maybe not self-consciously, but certainly being used by the forces of opposition to the Christian church to affect evil in our land. You know, we you know, I was watching the news and thinking, well, why are these men doing this?

Why would they go to court? Why would they throw this election into such disarray the Democrats when it seems like the thing is over. Why would elements of the Democratic party go to Florida and try to whip up the public sentiment? Using one race against another. Why would they try to get people all agitated and angry? This is the same party that has been largely responsible, and I know there’s Republicans that have been no help, but in large part, the Democratic Party has been responsible for the murder of 30 million pre-born infants in this country.

Why is it a shock to me that they would do whatever they had to do to stay in power to continue to affect carnage? These are Moloch worshippers. Many of them who believe the civil state is the answer to our problems as we talked about last week from Psalm 8. Understand that when we pray through the Psalms, when we preach through the Psalms and we sing the Psalms, we are correcting our worldview.

We start to think like our culture thinks. Everybody’s okay. I’m okay. You’re okay. Everybody’s well-intentioned. There is no real battles in the world. But Psalm 83 reminds us that as God’s people self-consciously identify themselves as Christians, that brings opposition from the nations round about us. God has judicially placed antithesis warfare between the two seeds. And it’s not as if all that stopped because America is a nice moral upstanding country.

No, the Psalms correct our perspective. So let’s look at this psalm and let’s learn some lessons from it and understand it so that when we sing it we can sing it with more knowledge and understanding and we can apply it in the context of our particular lives. Let’s look first at the context of Psalm 83 and this is somewhat important of course it’s the third book of the psalms which are Psalms 73-89.

The books are denoted by doxologies at the end of each of the five books as we know hopefully in this congregation by now. This is the last of 11 or 12 Asaf psalms. Why I say 11 or 12? Psalm 50 is written by Asaf and Psalms 73 through 83. Well, the next, the 11 psalm there are 11 psalms written by Asaf in this book of the Psalms. And what we’re reading here in Psalm 83 is the last of these 11 Asaf psalms. So this is the concluding of 10 or 11 rather or 12 if we count book two into the equation.

12 Asaf psalms and Asaf psalms particularly in book in this book three psalms 73-83 these deal all but one of them with enemies and enemies of the people of God the one that isn’t as much focused on that is Psalm 81 which is at the center of the third book of the Psalms and the focus in Psalm 81 is the word of God so book three is hard to categorize in total but the bulk of it written by Asaf is about opposition to the people of God.

But at the center of book three, there’s an Asaf psalm that is focusing on the word of God. And we’ll read that the last part of Psalm 81 as we go to the communion table at the conclusion of the service to see how that word of God plays into the promises that we rely upon when we pray and sing Psalm 83. Now, Asaf was a contemporary of David and he was the chief musician with David. There were three actually chief musicians.

He was one of them. And there were two others. And Asaf is the one who actually wrote these psalms that we’re talking about now. And he also conducted the music at the worship that David instituted in Jerusalem focused around the ark. And he conducted this music with cymbals, the music that was performed in David’s tent of meeting where this worship was going on that was essentially bloodless.

There were no sacrifices during the normal worship in Jerusalem. This is what David instituted and Asaf was the chief guy that orchestrated led these people in particularly with cymbals. This citation of Asaf is important to us. Some commentators have thought that Psalm 83 was written for on the occasion of Jehoshaphat being opposed by children of Ammon and Moab in 2 Chronicles 20. 2 Chronicles 20. We’ll come to that a little later, but it’s a recitation of a battle that happens.

And this battle, there are confederated people against Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah. And God miraculously delivers them. And an Asafite singer is the one who encourages the people to trust in the Lord and to hear the prophecy of God that they should stand still and see the deliverance of God. However, so there is links to Psalm 83. However, Psalm 83, if we believe the citation is written by Asaf who is long since dead by the time Jehoshaphat is the fourth king of Judah.

So you know you have David and then Solomon and then the kingdom is divided and then Judah’s kings Jehoshaphat is the fourth one. So it’s a long time later that the events in 2 Chronicles 20 happen. And I believe we should take the Asaf notation as literal that he’s the one that wrote this psalm. And I think what we see in 2 Chronicles 20 is a divine inspiration to us to believe in and do what Psalm 83 tells us to do because there are correlations to 2 Chronicles 20 as we’ll talk about in a little bit.

So the citation of Asaf is important for us and the centrality of the word in this center section. The word is what is asked for here on the part of those who are praying and singing Psalm 83. God’s word is asked to work out in the context of history what his word has promised. So the centrality of the word is important to us. Now Psalm 83 is about you know a specific geographical entity when the nation of Israel was a nation and there were groups allied against it around it but it has great application to us.

Matthew Henry said that in this psalm and the singing of it we may apply to the enemies of the gospel church all anti-Christian powers and factions representing to God their confederacies against Christ and his kingdom and rejoicing in the hope that all their projects will be baffled and the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church. So, Matthew Henry says that Psalm 83 is important for us to sing.

It’s important for us to understand and pray in terms of enemies of the gospel church. Again, in the providence of God, today, I didn’t know this when I selected this sermon this title to preach on, but today is the annual international day of prayer for the persecuted church. Several years back, people that were concerned about persecuted Christians around the world set up one Sunday a year to be the time when people would particularly pray for those who are being martyred and suffering on behalf of the name of the Lord Jesus Christ around the world.

So, one of the immediate applications of Psalm 83 to us when we sing it and when we read it and when we pray it in our prayer life is to think of Christians who are literally being put to death for their faith around the world. And toward the end of the sermon, I’ll mention a few of those instances that is ongoing in our day and age. The people that organized the IDOP, International Day of Prayer, estimate that over 200 million Christians are suffering persecution and tribulation of significant extent around the globe today.

That’s a lot of people. You probably don’t know that there’s a holy war going on in one country against Christians. In another country, there’s Sharia, the Islamic laws being implemented and as a result driving Christians back into the shadows where they have to meet in private and villages are being bombed and shelled have been in this last month in various countries around the world just because they’re Christian.

People are being hacked to pieces. In some countries, there’s real enemies of God who are really in a physical way martyring and persecuting God’s people. In this psalm, we should understand it so we can pray for those situations. All right. So, let’s talk a little bit about Psalm 83. Then, let’s look at an overview of it. We’ll go through it verse by verse and try to put it in an outline to help us kind of remember the basic idea of the psalm.

And as you look at your outlines, hopefully you have them before you, the first item on the outline is that what this is first of all is a cry for action. Verse one, it begins as a cry for action. Do not keep silent, oh God. Do not hold your peace and do not be still, oh God. Now, notice that this prayer, this is a prayer obviously, it’s a self-contained unit. It is a specific psalm written to be sung in these worship services that David had conducted in Jerusalem around the ark and the tabernacle in the context of the ark.

This prayer, this song does not begin with adoration. It does not begin with confession and it does not begin with thanksgiving. It begins with supplication. And I’ve said this before, but here’s an actual example to us. There are times in our lives when our immediate response is to cry out to God for help. And sometimes we feel, oh no, we got to go through the whole formula of prayer, ACTS. Not true. This prayer informs us that sometimes it is appropriate, the inspired text here of scripture, to cry out to God for action first.

So notice that. Secondly, notice that in this verse one, there are really two things being spoken of here. And it may not come out quite as well to you, but the first thing is that God would act in terms of words. Do not keep silent, oh God. Do not hold your peace. That’s the desire is for God to speak forth words of judgment. And then the second line, and do not be still, oh God. This is a motivation to God to be stirred up to action.

So the call to action here is both in terms of words and deeds. And of course, it isn’t really separated out because unlike our words, God’s words always accomplish what he says he’s going to do. See, so the psalmist can pray for words and deeds in one breath, so to speak, in one line of the text because God is so faithful to keep his word that if God speaks the word, it’ll be affected in the context of deeds happening as well.

Now, that’s an encouragement for us. Hopefully by the end of this sermon, you’re going to commit yourselves to two things. You’re going to commit yourselves to thinking more about the persecuted church across the world and praying in terms of that. And you’re going to commit yourself to seek the glory of God first and foremost and utmost. No matter what is going on in your life, no matter what trials or tribulations come upon you, this psalm teaches us that in the midst of their physical annihilation, the people of God, right?

Interpreted by Asaf in the writing of this Psalm 83. Their primary concern is not their well-being, nor is it the conversion or destruction of the enemies of God. Their primary concern is that all the ends of the earth might know that God is and he is to be glorified. Their primary concern is the glory of God. So what I’m going to ask you to commit to in the context of this sermon and as you come forward to offer yourselves to God is to commit yourselves to seek him, his glory in whatever situation you’re in the context of, not your own well-being or out of your difficulties, but seek the glory of God first and foremost. Now, that’s a commitment we make and our word in which we commit that to God in our hearts today should be our bond because we are people that have we are called by the name of God. We are Christians and we’re to be those who reflect this attribute of God that his word is his deed.

They’re of one piece here. They’re put together in one phrase. And so that’s how we should be. Our word should be our bond. As we commit ourselves to God, we should be faithful to pray for the persecuted church. And our deeds should be such that no matter what trouble we find ourselves in, we ask for the manifestation of God’s name and his glory of his name as opposed to our own being relieved from our difficulties.

Now the third thing we can learn from this first verse is that God needs to be aroused. You know I don’t think this is sinful. This is the inspired word of God. The implication here is that God is quiet at times and his word doesn’t go forth and his actions aren’t made manifest. He’s still he’s quiet. He needs to be stirred to action by prayers. Now of course not that he needs to be but he has chosen to work this way in our lives.

He has chosen to leave some of you this last week in situations which you find nearly unbearable. and you see no answer from God coming in the context of your life. Now, sometimes that’s because we’re blind to what God is doing. I cannot believe the blindness of this country. Now, I suppose the media has some sort of obligation not to mention the name of God or Jesus Christ. The only commentator I saw who talked about the providence of God on this whole and I watched a number too many hours of TV this last week, but believe it or not, Dan Rather quoted from Ecclesiastes that the race doesn’t go to the swift acknowledging God’s providence.

Well, that’s what most people should have been saying and Christians should be praying in the context of God’s will being manifest in this election. So sometimes we think God is still just because we don’t have eyes to see. I This is an obvious providence of God thing here having this election go every which way. What form will judgement take? We thought Y2K. Well, part of the judgment is just simply confusion and a lack of clarity in the context of our country and the division and polarization that’s occurred. If you look at a map county map of county by county these election results, you’ll see that Gore won the counties that are heavily populated and Bush won all the counties that are rural. Why? Because the drift from Christ occurs in the context first of metropolitan areas. That’s where it’s going on most.

At any event, so sometimes we think God is still because we just aren’t looking and our in his obscure vision. But sometimes here in this case, he really was still up until the point that he was going to deliver him. And in the days of Jehoshaphat, God was still until the enemies were aroused, got up and were on the very verge of conquering Jehoshaphat’s people. And until Jehoshaphat saw his face and the people began to sing praises to him, God is still.

See, so don’t think that somehow you’re in a position of curse before God. If your difficulties, you find your difficulties to be seemingly unimportant to God. It’s not true that they’re not important. We’re to cast all of our care upon him because he cares for us. That word cares means he thinks about you continually as we’ll see in this psalm. But understand that sometimes God needs to be aroused in that sense that he has determined to act in relationship to the prayers of his people.

Participation there’s no contrast, there’s no competition, there’s no difficulty between participation being an important part of our lives as Christians and God’s providence and sovereignty overruling all things. God is still at times. Okay, so this is a cry to action first and foremost, a cry that God will hear. Secondly, this cry for action is against God’s clamorous and proud enemies. What does it look like to be an enemy of God?

What we’re told in verse two, for behold, your enemies make a tumult. They’re clamorous. They’re like the sea that’s always troubled. That’s what these guys are. They’re like waves. They’re always in tumult. They’re always in disarray and they’re making a tumult in the context of the nation. And secondly, those who hate you have lifted up their head. So as the cry for help goes out, the first reason that’s given for urging God to action is not I need help, which it is with us frequently.

No, it’s your enemies are manifesting themselves in particular ways. Your enemies are going on Monday calling a big rally in Florida to get people all whipped up so that no matter who wins the actual vote, the man who will let us continue to kill babies, the man who will let us continue to rely upon a social security system that represents at its heart Moloch worship or reliance upon the civil state to provide our well-being.

We’re going to make a tumult so no matter who wins the actual vote total, this man who makes us feel less convicted about living with each other in sin and not becoming married and homosexuality and all that stuff all this evilness that goes on, we’re going to create a tumult so that this guy is in office no matter what happens with the vote total. That’s what they do. It shouldn’t surprise us. This is what they do.

And when they do it, we should be praying. They’re making a tumult. Act Lord God, raise up, start to do things. Make that rain come down so the ball gets slippery. Control the flip of the coin. Make the ball not fall on the ground, but roll along the winning guy’s back. Work. Act. Your man, your opposition is reared up against you. And your opposition are those who have lifted their heads. It’s the pride of God’s enemies that will at the end of this psalm be countered by a request that he would shame them and humiliate them.

Shame them and humiliate them. So God’s enemies are the clamorous and proud. So there’s a cry for action against his enemies and also against the enemies of God’s people. Verse three and four, they have taken crafty counsel against your people. You notice it doesn’t say they’ve taken crafty counsel against us. No, we’re out of the picture except as we have relationship with God. You see these imprecatory psalms pointed out that way.

And this one very overtly says, “Don’t be praying for God to work against your enemies, but only against your enemies as you are identified with God’s people.” You see the difference? It’s not personal here. We don’t need help. We need help because we’re God’s people. God is vindicating not us but his name. And his name is what has brought us into existence. So our plea, our cry for action to help the persecuted Christians around the world is because these are his people.

They have taken crafty counsel against your people. They’ve consulted together against your sheltered ones, your hidden ones. Jordan’s translation says the people that are your treasure. That’s the kind of notation of this word. There’s a reminder to us here that in spite of God being silent, in spite of all the difficulties which we might corporately or individually or as families see happening in the context of our lives, there’s a reminder here that as we go to God to get him to rouse up to do something about it, there’s a reminder to us that we are the hidden ones.

We are the ones that he is hovering over as a bird covers her young. We are the ones who are the apple of his eye. We are those ones that he cares about, thinks about. In the terms of the personal work of our savior, moment by moment, you are never out of his attention. He is always concerned about his treasured ones that he hides and protects. And so this plea goes out that God would act because they’re working against his people.

You see, they have said, “Come, let us cut them off from being a nation.” They have let this they have said, “Come, let us cut them off from being a nation that the name of Israel may be remembered no more. So they want us and of course this is very obvious in its application to us. The history of God’s people is not just the history of a bunch of individuals. It’s the history of a nation. It’s the history of covenantal bodies.

And if the opposition to Christ in America can get Christians to be diffused into the context of the nation so that it’s no longer a Christian nation, or they’re not Christian states or Christian communities, then they have wiped out the remembrance of God’s people and they’ve taken away the glory of God for creating a nation. Now, here it was a literal nation, but these same groups are being formed in the context of God’s providence today.

So, the prayer for action is against God’s enemies and the enemies of God’s people. And notice one other thing before we go on to the next couple of verses. Remember Psalm 1. Blessed is a man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. Well, what do you what do we have here in this designation of God’s and our enemies? We have the sinners who are making a tumult.

We have the prideful who are the scorners. And here we have the council of the ungodly, the crafty counsel they take together. Now, if we took the time, we could see very obvious correlations between Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 and this psalm and in fact most of the psalms of course because it introduces the whole theme. But Psalm 2 shows that council of the ungodly, the sinful the mockers, they’re all laid against Christ and his people in Psalm 2.

And here it is the same thing. As much as they were arranged against Christ, so they’re arranged against his people here. So, it’s God’s enemies that are the opposition here that are being opposed. And for that reason, the cry for action goes out to God to assist them. And then we move on to God’s named enemies. Verse five, they have consulted together with one consent. They form a confederacy against you.

And now he names who those people are, the tents of Edom. Now, the Edomites were the descendants of Esau. And the Edomites are a perpetual enemy in the Old Testament of the people of God. The way that Jacob and Esau were arranged against each other. In spite of Jacob’s kindness to Esau, as he comes back to the land, Esau becomes the prolonged and perpetual enemies of Israel or Jacob. The Edomites are the descendants of Esau.

That’s who they are. The tents of Edom and of Moab. Now, Moab and Ammon are the two sons of Lot. Moab means “of my father.” Ammon means “a people.” And Moab is identified as being of his father in terms of the incestuous relationship that Lot had with his daughters. And so, these sons of Lot, Moab and Ammon are both mentioned here as the opposition to God’s people. Specific names are given to us.

The Hagrites, there’s a lot of contention about what this means. I think what it means are the descendants of Hagar, which would put them with the Ishmaelites that are mentioned as well. So, we have the tents of Edom. We have the Ishmaelites, we have the Moabites, the sons of Lot, and we have the Hagrites. Again, a reference to the Ishmaelites. Additionally, we have Gebal, and there’s no specific there seems to be a geographic location of Gibal.

The Gebalites were in a particular geographic location. We have no more information than that in terms of why they oppose God’s people. Ammon again with Moab are the sons of Lot. Amalek. The Amalekites are the ones who attacked Israel when they came out of Egypt. You remember they get delivered from Pharaoh and on their way to the promised land the Amalekites are the ones who attack them.

This forms kind of a pattern that goes on in the history of Israel. Frequently they’re delivered from one big bad group of guys. Then they’re attacked by Amalekites. And this goes on until remember we talked about last year at the feast of Purim and the book of Esther. Haman is an Agagite and an Amalekite. Agag was the king of the Amalekites who Saul erroneously or sinfully allowed to live. Samuel hacks him to pieces.

There’s always this warfare between the Amalekites and the Israelites and then finally the Amalekites in the person of Haman much later in the context of the book of Esther and after the people have gone into captivity as Nehemiah is being restored back to the land to rebuild the temple all that time the Amalekites again try to completely wipe out the people of God through the person of Haman but of course what happens to Haman is just what’s prayed for here himself becomes destroyed and that’s the end of the Amalekites at least in terms of biblical history so the Amalekites are perpetual enemies of God’s people.

They are descendants of Amalek and they’re related to Ammon as well in various accounts of scripture. Then there’s Philistia. The Philistines are not of the lineage of Abraham or Lot as some of these other groups are. And the Philistines here are linked with the inhabitants of Tyre. So we have this one of the things that you can do here is look at the location on the map where these people are from. And it seems like these specific enemies are called to name both because of these historic problems, but also because if you look at them on the map, it seems like they form a complete circle around the people of Israel.

And if you didn’t have Tyre and the Philistines from this coast of Israel there, you wouldn’t have this picture of being completely surrounded by the enemies of God. And then finally, there’s this addition of Assyria in verse 8. Assyria also has joined with them. Now, at the writing of this psalm, Assyria was not yet the kind of powerful empire it would become in a few hundred years later. Assyria would become, of course, Nineveh, the whole picture of the opposition to God’s people in that period of time.

But the Assyrians are already included in this context. They were there geographically. They’ve not become a world empire. But Assyria has in the scriptures will become associated with really demonic forces. The kings or emperors of Assyria will declare themselves to be like the great serpent, the great dragon they’ll call themselves. So, it’s a picture of the demonic opposition to Christ and his kingdom to put Assyria, the power of Satan as it were from outside of the region originally to put that power in confederacy with what are summed up here as the sons of Lot.

So, we have external enemies, Assyria, Philistia, Tyre. We have internal enemies, the descendants of Abraham who were sinful, the descendants of Lot and the sons of Lot and these descendants of Abraham come together with those from outside and the Assyrians provide the power or the arm of the sons of Lot to oppose God’s people. So we have this geographic listing. We have a historical listing that encompasses really everything after the Exodus until long past this psalm was actually written to the time of the captivity when Assyria will be the dominant empire.

And so the whole history of God’s people in the Old Testament is portrayed as one of being in constant opposition and warfare bubbling up from the enemies of God. The geographic reference shows us a geographic wholeness or being surrounded by enemies. And all these things come together to paint a really awful gruesome picture of the kind of opposition God’s people had. These are powerful united confederated troops arranged against a relatively small nation in the center surrounding them, outnumbering them in terms of nations of 10 to one and even having the demonic power of Assyria providing the strength, the arm to the sons of Lot who are opposing the people of God.

And so we have this naming of God’s enemies and the naming should bring as we understand these stories in the Old Testament, it brings horror to our mind and it shows us the great difficulty the people of God would have on their own. Okay. So, we have the naming of God’s people and then we have again a cry for action. So, we have the cry for action and then we have the cry for action being against the enemies of God.

The enemies of God are then talked about in terms of being the opponents of God’s people. And then the enemies of God are actually named and then the cry for action comes up again in verses 9 and following. And the cry for action here is that God would do with them as he has done in the past to other enemies. And so through verses 9-12 we have this text go on to talk about seven more enemies. Now what’s going on in these verses is that we have two historic occurrences from the past both in the book of Judges that are being referenced.

The battle of Gideon against the Midianites and the battle of Deborah and Barak and Jael against Sisera and Jabin and their time. So we have two specific historical incidences that really form the basis of these seven named opposition people in verses 9 and following. Let’s go through them and talk about it a little bit. Verse 9, deal with them as with Midian. The Midianites were the ones that Gideon assembled or had to fight against.

Deal with them as with Sisera. Sisera was the one that Jael drove the tent peg through the head of in the times of Deborah and Barak. As with Jabin at the brook Kishon who perished at Endor who became his refuge on the earth. Jabin was the king of the forces that Sisera was the captain of. So Sisera and Jabin go together and while the brook Kishon is not specifically mentioned in the accounts, it is the same geographic region that is mentioned in the accounts and so it identifies it as the problems that Deborah and the people faced in the time of Deborah and Barak.

Now it’s interesting here that they perish at Endor who became his refuge. What that means is they became fertilizer. You can go and some military people understand this probably Steve S. knows about this but the site of great battles in the past become the place of fruitful crops because these bodies are not all cleaned up and these particular instances that are being recorded here like the one in Jehoshaphat’s time these dead bodies are literally piled up high in the context of the fighting field and they become fertilizer for the earth.

Now, that’s significant because what we’ll see as we continue to go through this psalm is they desire the pastures of God is what it says. They desire to take the nation to take the land that God has placed his people in. They desire the pastures of God and they become the pastures of God. See, it’s Lex Talionis judgment eye for eye. They’re going to try to steal the land. They’re going to be dead on the land and they’re going to cause fruitfulness for God’s people.

So, the destruction of God’s enemies provide fruitfulness for his land and for his people. Okay. So, Jabin at the brook Kishon who perished at Endor who became his refuge on the earth due to the and so the Midianites we should mention as we go through this that you remember the way Gideon was led to defeat the Midianite army at least at one crucial part of the battle was he had his men winnowed down to 300 men.

And they had trumpets with them and that’s the way God delivered the Midianites into their hand. So these two specific historical incidences that are recounted now they’re saying deal with these current enemies the way you dealt with past enemies and the way you dealt with the Midianites was to deliver us and you made us outnumbered even more than we were by insisting only 300 guys go out with Gideon and you didn’t let them go out with, you know, big whacking swords.

You had them go out with trumpets. So, you know, you you defeated our enemies when it was impossible for us to defeat them. And the way you defeated the enemies during Deborah’s time, a Sisera specifically is a woman, not a big strong warrior. A woman does not go to warfare with him and hack him up. She causes him to drink milk and to sleep and then she takes a tent peg and cones it through his skull.

So, in both of these cases, what the psalmist, what Asaf is saying is he’s saying, “You always deliver us.” And extraordinary or you frequently have delivered extraordinary means demonstrating that it’s not our strength that the race does not go to the swift nor the battle to the mighty but these contests are always and we want to see it evidently here they’re always decided in terms of your providence and you’ve made that so clear in the past so that we don’t get the honor and glory from this difficulty but you do and that’s what we want today when we pray against the enemies of God’s persecuted church when we pray in terms of our difficulties we pray that God’s glory would be manifest and we don’t want us really to be able to take care of some of these battles.

We want God to demonstrate his strength, his providence that his name would be exalted in the earth that people wouldn’t say, “Boy, what good guys they are at that group. They organize so well.” No, we want at times for God to make manifest his sovereign deliverance of his people. Make their chiefs, their nobles like Oreb and like Zeeb, and their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna. Those are specific names of Midianite princes and captains that were defeated during the time of Gideon.

They shall be made like Oreb and Zeeb. They were two princes of the Midianites and Zebah and Zalmunna. Gideon himself slew those two. So the two princes of the Midianites were pursued by the Ephraimites in the context of Judges 7 and 8. And Gideon is one who killed the last two. And then verse 12, these named up opponents are those who said who said, “Let us take for ourselves the pastures of God for a possession.” So God says here that when we cry out for action to him, we can name specific enemies in the present.

We should we can name specific victories of God from the past. We should be able to do that if we know our scriptures. That becomes our basis for God to act on the basis of what he has always done in the past and will do in the future. And specifically, we note here that God’s judgment is always in terms of Lex Talionis they want the pastures of god they become the pastures of god one other point before we move on from this in terms of the pastures of god Rushdoony commenting on this portion of Psalm 83 says this the beginning of a biblical doctrine of property see it’s a property dispute they want god’s property the beginning of a biblical doctrine of property is to see god’s absolute property rights over us and over our income, vocation, family, and total life.

What belongs to God cannot be surrendered to another. Our sin begins with the claim that we are our own property, and it ends with our enslavement by a tyrant state. The first step to freedom is to acknowledge that God is the Lord and that beside him there is none else. It means confessing and declaring in the words of Isaiah 26, “Oh Lord our God, other Lords besides thee have had dominion over us, but by thee only will we make mention of thy name.

It is only the name and sovereignty of God that we will celebrate, obey, and acknowledge as our absolute Lord. Only then can we begin to recapture our freedom from humanistic tyrants and to restore God’s property rights and our own freedom under God. There is no other way. And that’s why I have tithe mentioned on the outline. See, it’s easy for us to say, “Oh, these bad guys are so terrible.” But when we take to ourselves or seek to possess for ourselves the possessions of God, we come dangerously close into moving into the enemy list of Psalm 83.

The ones who need to be ashamed, humiliated, upended, which is what God is doing in this country to his church through the political process, among other things. He’s doing it because we refuse to acknowledge his sovereign control over all that we have. When we go to our homes and think that’s a place that safe for us from God. We err greatly when we fail to acknowledge his ownership by the proper use of the tithe and much more than that the proper consecration of all of our resources and possessions to his purposes.

When we fail to do that