The Bible Study Hour

Announcer (Male): Psalm 118 makes a statement and asks a question. I will not be afraid. What can man do to me? That became the theme of persecuted Christians in ages past who looked to this Psalm for comfort and quoted it in their suffering.

Announcer (Male): Welcome to The Bible Study Hour. A radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically.

Announcer (Male): As human beings, we tend to put our trust in other people when troubles and dangers arise. But others let us down and fail us. The truth is that man can do plenty to harm us, but God is on our side, and he always outweighs the danger.

Announcer (Male): Join Dr. Boice as he concludes his study of Psalm 118. A great Psalm of trust and deliverance and a Psalm that guides us back to our true source of security in a very unsecured world.

Dr. James Boice: We've already had one study of Psalm 118. We're going to have another one today. And it's no wonder because this Psalm is rich. It not only tells us about Jesus Christ and his work of redemption, it also has insights into the Christian life. So it speaks about ourselves and our need to trust God and praise him at all times and in all circumstances.

Dr. James Boice: This was the favorite Psalm of Martin Luther. Maybe that he did what I've sometimes done. That is, whatever I happen to be preaching on, I call my favorite passage of Scripture. And I don't know whether it might be possible to find elsewhere in Luther comments that some other Psalm is his favorite Psalm.

Dr. James Boice: But at any rate, in his study of this, he declares that that's the case. He wrote 60 pages on this one Psalm. He has a preface in it where he dedicates the work to Frederick, the Abbot of St. Giles in Nuremberg. And in the midst of it, he comments on the Psalm personally. And it's a good way to begin.

Dr. James Boice: This is what Luther wrote. This is my own beloved Psalm. Although the entire Psalter and all of the holy scriptures are dear to me as my only comfort and source of life, I fell in love with this Psalm especially. Therefore, I call it my own. When emperors and kings, the wise and the learned, and even saints could not aid me, this Psalm proved a friend and helped me out of many great troubles.

Dr. James Boice: As a result, it's dearer to me than all the wealth, honor, and power of the Pope, the Turk, and the Emperor. I would be most unwilling to trade this Psalm for all of it. Well, that's a good endorsement. And with that kind of beginning, we want to look at it. One way of appreciating this Psalm before we get into the particular verses that I want to look at today is to realize how important it was in the lives of the martyrs, particularly the Huguenot martyrs in France.

Dr. James Boice: There's a very valuable study of the Psalms by a man named Roland Prothero, called The Psalms in Human Life, in which he goes through history and brings out of the lives of God's people and even out of literature, the importance of the Psalms to those individuals. And he's particularly good when he talks about these martyrs.

Dr. James Boice: He tells about one, his name was Louis Rang. He was a Huguenot pastor who was captured and condemned to die in Grenoble in 1745. He was offered his life if he would renounce his faith. But like all of those other great heroes of the faith and pastors, he refused to do it. And so he was led away to the scaffold.

Dr. James Boice: As he did, he sang a French versification of the 24th verse of this Psalm. I won't give you the version in French, but let me give it to you in the Boice-authorized translation. It goes something like this. Here now is the happy day for which we have been waiting. Sing praise to God who gives us joy and pleasures unabating.

Dr. James Boice: Imagine singing a hymn like that on the way to your execution, but so he did. A few weeks after the martyrdom of Rang, another Huguenot pastor, Jacques Roget, likewise strengthened himself with that verse. He was 70 years old. He'd been a Huguenot pastor for nearly 40 years. He'd escaped many times from the authorities, often just by a hair's breadth.

Dr. James Boice: And when they finally tracked him down and caught him and asked who he was, he replied, I am he whom you have sought for 39 years. It is time you should find me. Roget spent his last days in prison, encouraging the other Protestant prisoners to stand firm in their faith to the end. And as he went to the scaffold, he sang exactly the same song that had been sung by Louis Rang just three weeks earlier.

Dr. James Boice: The last of the Huguenot martyrs in France was a man named François Rochette. He died 17 years after this in 1762. And it seems as the historians reported it was almost an accident. There was sort of a civil unrest and turmoil in the city of Toulouse. It's where he was. He was arrested. And just because he was a Protestant, he was condemned. He wasn't really responsible for any of it. But as he went to the scaffold, he put himself in the line of these other great men, singing, Here now is the happy day for which we have been waiting.

Dr. James Boice: Prothero, who gives these stories, says, it was fitting that the last words of the last Protestant martyr in France should be taken from that book of Psalms, which, through two centuries of conflict and persecution, had meant so much to the Huguenots. Those words were from Psalm 118.

Dr. James Boice: Now this is a Psalm in which verses literally leap out at us. You may have noticed in our study of the Psalms that I handle them differently because they operate differently as poetry. You read that great first Psalm, and what you have is a contrast between the way of the righteous who live by the law of God and the way of the wicked. It talks about their origins, their way of life, and their end.

Dr. James Boice: You come to the second Psalm, you have a dialogue going on there between the rulers of this world who laugh at God and God who laughs at them. You go to the 23rd Psalm. That's held together by that wonderful imagery of the shepherd and his sheep. You get into it through the imagery. This Psalm is somewhat different. It sort of goes on. It has a progression and an organization. But what strikes you are the individual verses.

Dr. James Boice: We've already looked at several of them in reference to Jesus Christ. Those that were shouted and sung by the people as he went into Jerusalem on what we call Palm Sunday. And then those great verses that he himself applied to his passion. The fact that this is the day that God has made. That he's the stone that the builders rejected and so on.

Dr. James Boice: Well, we looked at that last time. What I'd like to do today is look at four more verses that leap out at us in one way or another and apply not so much to Jesus Christ and his passion, but to ourselves, our relationship to God, and our need to trust him. Now follow me in this, the first verse that strikes us forcefully is verse six. It's quoted in the New Testament in Hebrews, the 13th chapter, also verse six. And then it's found in a very similar form in Psalm 56, where it's actually repeated twice, once in verse four and once in verse 11.

Dr. James Boice: Now it's that Psalm's theme. And here in the 118th Psalm, it reads, The Lord is with me. I will not be afraid. What can man do to me? Now, long ago, when we were studying Psalm 56, I asked that question, What can man do to me? And I answered, He can do a lot. He can oppress me, slander me, hurt me, hate me, maim me, murder me, just for starters.

Dr. James Boice: And yet that's not the emphasis of these two Psalms, either Psalm 56 or this one. What these Psalms are saying is that although men and women really can be evil and do very terrible things, in the final analysis, they can't harm us because God is on our side. Now, let me illustrate that just by the context of the earlier Psalm, Psalm 56.

Dr. James Boice: It was written by David. And it was written by him about the time when he came very close to being a prisoner and perhaps even executed in Gath. Gath was the great city of the Philistines, the enemies of the Jews during this period. And the way David got there showed that he was absolutely desperate. He had had to flee from Saul when it became evident that Saul was trying to kill him.

Dr. James Boice: He went to the city of Nob, which was a priestly city. That's where the ark was. And he went to Ahimelech, the priest in charge. He asked for food. He was given the show bread that was there before the altar of the Lord. And he asked for a weapon. And the only weapon that Ahimelech had was the great sword that had been the sword of Goliath.

Dr. James Boice: And David said, Well, I'll take that. Now we don't know how big it was. It's not described in that chapter in 1st Samuel, where we read about David's battle with Goliath. But it says in that chapter that he had a particularly huge spear and the other parts of his armament were big. So we can suppose the sword was big, too.

Dr. James Boice: Now, here was David with the sword of Goliath going into Gath, the stronghold of the Philistines, which just incidentally happened to have been Goliath's hometown. You'd have to be absolutely out of your mind to do that, or arrogant. And David was not arrogant, as we know from the Psalm. He was very much afraid. So it must have been desperation that drove him to it.

Dr. James Boice: When he went in, the people told Achish, who was the leader of the Philistines, the commander of the city, Isn't this David, the king of the land? Isn't he the one they sing about in their dances, Saul has slain his thousands, but David is 10 thousands? Well, who were those 10 thousands? They were the Philistines, among them Goliath, who came from that city.

Dr. James Boice: And here's David coming in with Goliath's sword. Now, he must have been absolutely desperate as I said. He was afraid. Yes, all of that. But David was trusting in God, too. And that's why when he came to write about it, he wrote, In God I trust. I will not be afraid. Or, as it says in this Psalm, The Lord is with me. I will not be afraid.

Dr. James Boice: In other words, it's a way of saying that God outweighs the dangers. It's not that we as Christians close our eyes to the horrible things in life. We are surrounded by them. They're happening all the time. They've happened this very week in our own congregation, terrible things affecting our families and those who are our friends. But God is greater than the dangers.

Dr. James Boice: And so we can say, I will not be afraid because I trust in God. Would you like a New Testament statement of that? How about Romans 8? There, Paul's talking about the bad things that can happen. He's writing out of his own experience. He said, We face death all day long. We're counted as sheep to be slaughtered. He's quoting from another one of the Psalms, Psalm 44:42. But then he wraps it up. He says, But I'm convinced that neither death, nor life, neither angels, nor demons, neither the present, nor the future, nor any powers, neither height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God.

Dr. James Boice: That is in Christ Jesus our Lord. The Psalmist is saying that, too. That's the first lesson of the Psalm. The second passage I want to call to your attention consists of two verses, verses eight and nine. And I want to explain why. Some people like numbers. And one thing people that like numbers like to do is count the verses in the Bible.

Dr. James Boice: We used to do a seminar years ago, and one of the things Carl Wynn did, who moderated the seminar in those days, was to put up a list of Bible data on an overhead for about five seconds, take it off, and say, Now we're going to have a little quiz, How many verses are in the Bible? It was there. We ought to know. Do you know how many verses are in the Bible? Let me tell you. 31,174.

Dr. James Boice: You say, Why in the world does that matter? Well, the reason is this. If there are 31,174 verses in the Bible, then these two verses in Psalm 118, verses eight and nine, are the middle two verses. Psalm verse eight is the 15,587th verse. And verse nine is the 15,588th verse.

Dr. James Boice: Well, that should be enough to give them prominence. Why are they important? Well, suppose it was up to you to decide the verses that you were going to put in the very middle of the Bible. What would you choose? Well, I don't know, John 3:16, probably. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. If you had to choose a Psalm, maybe Psalm 23, it's certainly the most popular of the Psalms.

Dr. James Boice: Certainly you'd have a verse that had something to do with God's love. 1 John 4:8, God is love. Maybe something like that. But that's not what these verses talk about. Very significantly, what they talk about is putting our trust in God, rather than in human beings. In other words, they get right down to the nitty-gritty because we all tend to trust other people or ourselves more than we trust God.

Dr. James Boice: These verses say, It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes. So why is it better to trust in the Lord than to trust in man? This is the kind of thing that Charles Haddon Spurgeon loved. You know, I always say he can get more out of a text than anybody else I ever heard, and there's always good.

Dr. James Boice: What he has is good. He's not just making it up. This is really what the text is about. Spurgeon answers that question this way. Why is it better to trust God rather than man? First, it's wiser because God can be trusted, and human beings can't. Secondly, it's morally better. God tells us to trust him, teaching at the same time that mere human beings are corrupt, selfish, and untrustworthy.

Dr. James Boice: Thirdly, it's safer. It's dangerous to trust ultimately people other than God because other people always let us down. Fourth, it's better in its effect upon ourselves because we grow in faith and character when we trust God, not when we place that same kind of trust in other people. And finally, fifth, it's better so far as its results are concerned because God honors our trust by blessing us broadly.

Dr. James Boice: Now the world doesn't understand that, of course. When the world hears Christians talking this way, the world thinks that's utter nonsense. They say, the only protection you have in this world is from the power of princes, the power of the state, the power of money, the power of authority. That's the only thing that keeps you safe. I mentioned Martin Luther earlier. They said that about Martin Luther. His great friend and protector was the Duke of Saxony, Frederick. And his enemies used to taunt Luther and his movement this way. They said, Luther's heresy is dependent upon two eyes. When those are closed, his heresy will die.

Dr. James Boice: What they meant was it was only because Frederick lived and protected Luther that Luther survived. And when Frederick died, Luther would be overwhelmed and the Reformation would pass away. But Frederick did die. Luther lived. And the doctrines that Luther recovered and propagated are alive today and blessing countless millions of people. Luther said, The work continues, and please God it will continue even better unto the end because it's the work of God.

Dr. James Boice: That's the second of these four passages. When we were studying Psalm 115, I noted that the last two verses of that Psalm say rightly that it's not the dead who praise God, but the living. It says, it's not the dead who praise the Lord, those who go down to silence. It is we who extol the Lord, both now and forevermore. That's a fairly obvious observation, as I said then. But it does lead to this question.

Dr. James Boice: If the dead do not praise God, and it's the living who do, are we who are living praising God? That's the question. Do we testify to the grace of God? Do we praise him for his goodness to us? That's what this Psalm is dealing with in this next verse, verse 17. It strikes me. It says, I will not die, but live, and will proclaim what the Lord has done.

Dr. James Boice: It may be that this verse was in the mind of Jesus at the time of his arrest and crucifixion because, remember, this is the last of the Psalms of the Egyptian Hallel. These are the ones that were sung in the upper room. Can you picture Jesus singing this along with the disciples, knowing that he was going to be arrested the same evening, crucified, and then rise again. I will not die, but live, and proclaim what the Lord has done.

Dr. James Boice: Well, yes, that's easy. The thing is that it's also to be applied to us. Jesus said to his disciples, he who believes in me will live even though he dies. And whoever lives and believes in me will never die. And he said, You are witnesses of these things. So that's the question this verse raises. The question does. We know those things. Are we really witnesses? This verse made a great deal to William Cowper. Cowper was the friend of John Newton. He had had a very troubled childhood and life.

Dr. James Boice: He was of a frail disposition, a poet, as you probably know. When he was in school in Hertfordshire, he was taunted and abused by the other students. And later in life, he was so disturbed, he was actually committed to an asylum for some time. And he thought he was going to die there. But God restored his sanity and brought him out. And afterwards, he expressed joy over his recovery in the words of this Psalm.

Dr. James Boice: He wrote, The Lord is my strength and my song. He has become my salvation. I shall not die, but live. And it was William Cowper who gave us such marvelous hymns as these: God Moves in a Mysterious Way, His wonders to perform, he plants his footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm. He gave us there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and Oh for a closer walk with God. Hymns like that, great blessing to the church.

Dr. James Boice: I shall not die, he said, but live, and proclaim the great name of the Lord. Martin Luther, I mentioned several times, had this verse on his study wall, and you can well understand it. I will not die, but live. He called it a masterpiece. And here's what he wrote about it. The Psalmist so immerses himself in life that death is swallowed up by life and disappears completely because he clings with a firm hand to the right hand of God.

Dr. James Boice: Thus, all the saints have sung this verse and will continue to sing it to the very end. So far as the world is concerned, they die, yet their hearts say with a firm faith, I will not die, but live. One of my predecessors here at Tenth Church was Donald Grey Barnhouse, and he served in the army in World War I, and they didn't have a separate Air Force at that time.

Dr. James Boice: So the army had planes, and Barnhouse flew. He was a pilot. And someone asked him on one occasion whether he wasn't afraid to fly in those planes, those little planes they had in those days, especially considering that those planes were also likely to be used in combat. And Barnhouse's reply was this. He said, No, he was not afraid because God had reassured him with a verse from this Psalm. And it was this verse we're studying, although he rephrased it in rhyme.

Dr. James Boice: And this is the way Barnhouse put it. Ours is not to fly and die, ours to live and testify. And so he did. He did it for many, many years. Let's remember, too, that sometimes our witness to the truth consists of denouncing error. So testimony is not always a positive thing in that sense. It's also sometimes negative. I give you this story of John Wycliffe, the great Protestant reformer. He fell sick at one point as a result of his incessant labors for God.

Dr. James Boice: And when he was sick and in bed, the friars, the monks, heard that their great enemy was dying. And they hastened to his bedside. They were thinking, Surely, now as he's dying, Wycliffe is going to be overcome with remorse as he considers his Protestant heresies. Certainly he is going to renounce them. And he's going to ask God for forgiveness and covet the blessing and forgiveness of the friars.

Dr. James Boice: Well, they entered the room. They began by wishes for his quick recovery and good health. But then they quickly changed their tune. And they began to urge him to make a full confession, since soon he was going to have to give an accounting of himself before God. And Wycliffe just lay there quietly until they got to the end of their admonitions. And then he had a man who was attending him prop him up a little bit. So he gained some stature in the bed. And he replied by quoting this verse. But he quoted it this way.

Dr. James Boice: I shall not die, but live and proclaim the evil deeds of the friars. And so God's people have done the same down through the ages. Let me take you to the last three verses. They're a powerful summary and application of everything the Psalm has been saying up to this point. Here's the way they read. The Lord is good, and he has made his light shine upon us with bows in hand. Join in the festal procession up to the horns of the altar. You are my God. I will give you thanks. You are my God. I will exalt you. And finally, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever.

Dr. James Boice: These verses make three powerful statements about God and about our right relationship to him. And it's a good place to end our study of the Psalm. Number one, they say that the Lord is God. Now, in that verse, Lord is the word Jehovah. So what this verse is saying is that Jehovah is God. It's not arguing simply that there is a God. Sometimes people think that that's the point of religion. After all, you've got to get people to believe in God.

Dr. James Boice: Well, people all down through history have believed in God. The Bible says it's only a fool who can look at the universe and say there is no God. But that's not what this verse is saying. The question of religion is, who is the true God? And this verse is saying, It's the Lord. It's Jehovah. It's the God of the Bible, the God of the Old Testament. And we look back, yes, and say the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And Jesus himself is God. That's who the true God is. That's the issue of religion.

Dr. James Boice: And so he calls people to come to terms with him. The second thing, verse 28, is this. You are my God. You see, having identified Jehovah as the true God, the Psalmist now takes him for his own God personally. That's an important second step. It's sort of what happens when we're talking about faith. It's not a question merely of knowing the scriptures or knowing the doctrines. It's believing that they're true and committing to them.

Dr. James Boice: And so the question the Psalmist would leave with us at that point is this, Is this God, Jehovah, the God of the Bible, your God? He's the only true God there is. And then finally, there's the statement of verse 29. And this is a verse that says the Lord is good. And it calls upon people who know this to bear their witness to God and tell others.

Dr. James Boice: This verse with which the Psalm ends takes us back to the beginning because it's the way the Psalm began. The Psalm began by talking about the goodness of God and the fact that his love endures forever. And here at the end, we have the same thing. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever. The Psalmist confessed that God was good because God had been good to him.

Dr. James Boice: If you read back over the Psalm, you'll find how it happened. He'd been oppressed, but God had freed him from his oppression. He'd been attacked, but God had delivered him from his enemies. He'd been about to fall, but God had raised him up and given him important work to do. And so that's his testimony. That's what he wants other people to know. One day, you and I are going to be in heaven. And I'm sure in heaven there are going to be many exciting things for us to do. I sometimes think that God will give us the ability to create worlds the way he has done it.

Dr. James Boice: And people them with those who will know God and sing his praises. If we're inclined to science, we can investigate the universe for billions and billions of years. If we love his word, the word itself is inexhaustible. We can study that. But of all those things there are to do, I am sure that we're going to spend the first million years or so simply rehearsing how good God is. Have you ever done that? Have you ever made that an exercise? Just beginning to list all the evidences of the goodness of God to you, all based on his great attributes.

Dr. James Boice: God is wise. We're not, but he's conducted the affairs of our lives with great wisdom. God is strong. Indeed, he's omnipotent. And so nothing has ever arisen in our lives or anyone where else that has overthrown his plans. God is gracious and compassionate. He's shown it to us in Jesus Christ. And so even when we sin, even when we fall, God is there, the merciful God to keep us and to lift us up.

Dr. James Boice: That's the kind of thing I think you and I are going to rehearse before the angels. As I say, for at least a million years before we get on to other things. But here's the point, you see. If we're going to do that in heaven, why wait for heaven? Let's do it now. There are people who need to hear that now. Let's make it our intent to do exactly what the Psalm says. Give thanks to the Lord because he's good. His love endures forever. And let other people need to know that as well.

Dr. James Boice: Let's pray. Our Father, that is our confession. We're your people. We've been saved by your grace through Jesus Christ and the work of your Holy Spirit. We're kept day by day. Even the breath we breathe comes from you. You're a great and a good and a loving and a compassionate God, and we thank you for that. We only confess that we are lax in telling others. And we would pray that you would extend your mercy and your goodness to us thus far that we might be enabled to bear strong testimony and find others come to know you as we have because of that testimony. For Jesus' sake. Amen.

Announcer (Male): Thank you for listening to this message from The Bible Study Hour. A listener-supported ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The Alliance is a coalition of pastors, scholars, and churchmen who hold to the historic creeds and confessions of the reformed faith and who proclaim biblical doctrine in order to foster a reformed awakening in today's church. To learn more about the Alliance, visit Alliancenet.org. And while you're there, visit our online store, Reformed Resources, where you can find messages and books from Dr. Boice and other outstanding teachers and theologians. Or, ask for a free Reformed Resources catalog by calling 1-800-488-1888. Please take the time to write to us and share how The Bible Study Hour has impacted you. We love to hear from you and pray for you. Our address is 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 17601. Please consider giving financially to help keep The Bible Study Hour impacting people for decades to come. You can do so at our website, Alliancenet.org. Over the phone at 1-800-488-1888. Or, send a check to 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 17601. For Canadian gifts, mail those to 237 Rouge Hills Drive, Scarborough, Ontario, M1C 2Y9. Thanks for your continued prayer and support, and for listening to The Bible Study Hour. Preparing you to think and act biblically.