The Bible Study Hour

[ 0m0s ]

Dr. James Boice: Just who is God and where can he be found? In the psalmist's time, God was to be found in Judah with his chosen people. That was where God lived and where His name was honored. To find God, the nations would need to look to Israel.

[ 0m19s ]

Dr. James Boice: Welcome to The Bible Study Hour. A radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. In Old Testament times, God dwelt in Israel and was known there. But today, God is known in Jesus and His grace is available to all who are called and yield to His Lordship. Let's listen as Dr. Boice examines Psalm 76 with a focus on God's intervention for His people and where He can be found today.

[ 0m49s ]

Dr. James Boice: It's not always easy to tell why Psalms are placed where they are in the Psalter anymore than we can give justification for the placement of every hymn in our hymnals. Often there are sections, certain hymns fit into certain sections and certain psalms fit into certain sections of the Psalter, sort of bonded together by a common theme. But it's not always easy to tell why they are exactly where they are. In this case, however, these psalms do follow one another in an interesting way. Psalm 76 certainly on Psalm 75 and there's even a sequence that involves Psalm 74.

[ 1m27s ]

Dr. James Boice: If you can think back to our study of the earlier Psalms, you may remember that Psalm 74 looked on the violence and injustice that the Psalmist saw in the world, and he asked God to intervene. We got to the next Psalm, Psalm 75. God is speaking Himself. There's a oracle there, a revelation from God in which God says that he is going to do that. He's going to do it in His appointed time. So you can wait for that. He's going to happen.

[ 1m56s ]

Dr. James Boice: And now when we get to Psalm 76, we find an historical example of when God did exactly that. He intervened, he destroyed Israel's enemies on some significant occasion. It's a question what occasion that really was, but it's certainly what the Psalm is speaking about. And so we we reach a triumphant note. Now, in all three of these Psalms, God is presented as the judge, the righteous judge, who is not a passive judge, the way we think of justice, that is a man sitting at the bench, sort of waiting for all of the evidence to be heard on both sides and making sure that the trial is conducted judiciously, but rather in the ancient world, the judge was also the king who not only prescribed over a court of justice, but actually established justice.

[ 2m44s ]

Dr. James Boice: He established justice by meeting out judgment. Now that's what these Psalms are about. Charles Hadden Spurgeon wrote of the connection between these two Psalms, that is 75 and 6, saying, "Faith in the 75th Psalm sung of victories to come and here it sings of triumphs achieved." The present Psalm is a jubilant war song, a paean to the King of Kings, the hymn of a theocratic nation to its divine ruler.

[ 3m13s ]

Dr. James Boice: Now, these fighting Psalms have always appealed to fighting people, that is Christians who were engaged in combat, especially in past ages. For example, the Hugots sang this as they marched into battle on more than one occasion. The Covenanters in Scotland did the same. There's a particularly famous story of a time when they were meeting in a hidden area and suddenly a man who was called Bloody Claver House fell upon them with his troops. They were English, of course, attacking the noble Scots and the Scotsmen who were ready for this, simply girded on their swords, they marched out to meet the English and as they did, they sang the Psalm.

[ 3m55s ]

Dr. James Boice: Psalm 76 was sung by the English after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. It was a favorite Psalm of the Puritans, who didn't fight so much, at least the ones that came to this country, but it was a favorite of theirs and it's from this Psalm that they derived the name of one of the oldest communities in America, the town of Salem, Massachusetts, because you notice in that second verse, it says his tent is in Salem, his dwelling place in Zion. So they call their town in Massachusetts Salem, as a way of saying they wanted God to dwell there. They wanted it to be a godly city.

[ 4m32s ]

Dr. James Boice: Now, the opening stanza of this Psalm in which that name occurs, verses 1 through 3, sounds to most people today to be the narrowest kind of provincialism. Because what the Psalm says is that if you want to know God, you're going to have to get to know him in Israel. That's the only place he's known. And not only does it say it, it repeats it. You can't miss it, can you? In Judah is God known. His name is great in Israel. His tent is in Salem, another name for Jerusalem. His dwelling place is in Zion.

[ 5m5s ]

Dr. James Boice: So, when you get to know God, here's where you have to get to know him. Now, as I say, that sounds like a narrow kind of religious provincialism, but those who know the Bible are going to say, yes, but that is true. That is where God was known before the coming of Jesus Christ. If you wanted to get to know God, you had to get to know him in Israel. Furthermore, we are Christians would acknowledge today that we say exactly the same kind of thing when we say God has revealed in a unique and exclusive way in Jesus Christ.

[ 5m38s ]

Dr. James Boice: You want to get to know what God's personality is like, you find it in Jesus Christ. So there's that kind of narrowness both about Judaism and Christianity. Now, let's just think about that a little bit. First of all, the Psalm says in Judah is God known. You know, until relatively recent times, when communists, communism swept as a philosophy over much of the world, the nations of the world and the people of those nations for the most part, confessed that there was a God.

[ 6m9s ]

Dr. James Boice: In other words, there were very few atheists and those who were were certainly in the minority and didn't dominate a nation or a philosophy in any way. The problem, of course, is that everybody had their own idea about God. And so God had various names and various characteristics and in some places, even today, there are more than one God and the questions are, who is the true God? If there really is a true God, and if there is, how do you really get to know him?

[ 6m39s ]

Dr. James Boice: Now, what I want to suggest is that if it's left up to us, that is merely to human beings, there's no way to answer that question. Because you and I don't have a perspective from which we can get the answer. God isn't here to be examined. You know, if you want to say what is the truth or falsehood of a scientific proposition, you can put it to the test. You can see if this particular theory works, but you can't do that with God. God is over us and beyond us and above us and invisible to us and he just doesn't subject himself to that kind of analysis. So, if you are approaching the question from a merely human point of view, there's no way of getting an answer.

[ 7m14s ]

Dr. James Boice: There is, that is, unless God himself makes himself known. And that, of course, is what Judaism and Christianity declare, that God has made himself known. In the Old Testament times, he did that in his revelation of himself to the patriarchs. So Abraham, because of the revelation of God to Abraham, came to know the true God. And so did his son and his son after him and their children and indeed the Jewish people as God continued his kind of revelation. One of the great revelations of God was on Mount Sinai at the burning bush. To Moses, where God initiated the revelation, attracting Moses to the bush and when he approached, God revealed himself and God gave Moses his name. He said, I am that I am. It's the great name for God, the name Jehovah or Yahweh in the Old Testament. It means that God is self-existent, that he's self-effecting, that he's eternal, that he's holy and many other things besides.

[ 8m14s ]

Dr. James Boice: So, we turn to the Old Testament and we say, yes, God revealed himself in Israel. And so if you wanted to find out who the true God was, that's where you had to go. Now, Jesus himself said the same thing when he was talking to the woman of Samaria. You may recall that she wanted to raise a discussion about spiritual things and so she brought up the traditions of her people and she set them over against the traditions of the Jews and she said, you know, here we say that on Mount Gerizim is the place where you ought to worship and you Jews say, well, Jerusalem is the place you ought to worship. What's right? How do we how do we know anyhow?

[ 8m52s ]

Dr. James Boice: And Jesus replied in a most politically uncorrect statement. Jesus said to her, "Salvation is of the Jews." God has revealed himself to Israel. He dismissed the Samaritan claim. But he did go on to say that the time is coming when the people of God are not going to worship either on Gerizim or Jerusalem, but they're going to worship in spirit and truth. That is because of the change that he was bringing into the world, he himself being the Son of God.

[ 9m21s ]

Dr. James Boice: Now, we start with that. The second thing we want to say because we're speaking of this same point from our perspective and not from the Old Testament perspective is that not only in Judah is God known, but in Jesus is God known. Because Jesus said speaking of himself, "I and the Father are one." He said, "He who has seen me has seen the Father." Even his disciples didn't quite understand that. He had to explain it to him, but what he was saying is, "I am the full revelation of the very person of God." If you want to know what God is like, how he thinks, how he operates, what holiness is, you find that by looking to me.

[ 10m2s ]

Dr. James Boice: Now, the result of that is that for those of us in the church, we don't preach philosophy, but we preach Jesus. We preach Jesus Christ. That's the one that we present to the world. You know, Paul did that in Athens. When Paul came to Athens, this very sophisticated Greek city, the capital of the empire, not only politically, but also religiously and philosophically, he began to talk about Jesus and people heard that, they got interested. And so a group of the Epicureans and Stoics called them and the people together and brought him to the Areopagus, which was the meeting place of the philosophers, and they said, come on now, we'd like to hear what what you've come to teach us.

[ 10m44s ]

Dr. James Boice: And so he began by saying, as I was passing through your city, I I noticed that you're very religious because you have altars here to all kinds of gods. It was said, Paul didn't mention it, but it was said by the ancients themselves that there were more gods in Athens than there were people. So everywhere you went, there was an idol. And Paul said, as a matter of fact, when I was walking around among those various altars, I I noticed one that bore an interesting inscription. It was to the unknown God.

[ 11m15s ]

Dr. James Boice: They were afraid they might miss a God. And so it was to the unknown God and and maybe the God they had been worshipping weren't the true God at all. They they weren't really sure who he was. But he said, now, the the one that is unknown to you, I have come to proclaim. And so he began talking about God as the creator, who had made not only the universe, but themselves as individuals. God who had determined the placing and the destiny of nations, including the great nation of Greece, and a God who is going to hold everyone accountable in the day of final judgment. He began to get through to them at that point and he began to talk about Jesus, who would be the judge and whom God proved to be the judge by raising him from the dead.

[ 12m0s ]

Dr. James Boice: So Paul in this ancient capital began by preaching Jesus. Now, that's exactly what we do today. Or at least we ought to do it today. The church of Jesus Christ ought to do it today. We have a message that has philosophical overtones. Sometimes I talk about that. I say our philosophy is theism. It's the opposite of the secularism and the materialism and the relativism of our day. We have answers to all of those various philosophies that have co-alest in our very secular society. But we don't preach philosophy, we preach Jesus.

[ 12m34s ]

Dr. James Boice: What we say is that if you would know what God is like, you have to come to know Jesus. Now, that's exactly the same thing for us today as the Jews meant when they said in Jerusalem or in Judea is God known. Furthermore, what we maintain is that it is the knowledge of God that is the beginning of all wisdom. And we go back to the Old Testament for a statement of that as well in Proverbs 9:6.

[ 12m58s ]

Dr. James Boice: Now, in spite of everything I've been saying here about the knowledge of God, we mustn't get the idea, certainly not from this Psalm that we're being theoretical. Or we're just doing is raising kind of a speculative question, is there a God? Oh, I don't know. You think he he exists and this other man doesn't think he exists. Can he be known? You think he can be, another thing he can't be, giving reasons for that. This is not a speculative matter at all. Because in the context of the Psalm, the importance of knowing the true God is because the true God acts and he acts in certain ways. What he acts is according to righteousness, according to his own standards of holiness and justice. And therefore you have to come to terms with that God. So, that's a very serious matter. And uh that's the way the Psalm proceeds.

[ 13m46s ]

Dr. James Boice: The theme of the Psalm is more apparent in the opening stanza in the Hebrew than it is in English. Because it's not always possible in the translation to capture the overtones of every word that is used. But let me explain that the word that is translated tent in verse 2, his tent is in Salem, is actually the word for lair. So a tent was a dwelling place. And so the word was was sort of a broader word. A a tent is the sort of thing the kids pitch in the backyard to us, but a tent is what people lived in. It's their be our equivalent of a house, but in this particular case, it has to do with the dwelling place of an animal, particularly a lion. So, it it is also translated and rightly lair. It occurs that way in Psalm 10:9, where our version renders it a cover, the place where the animals stay, but that's what's involved.

[ 14m42s ]

Dr. James Boice: The same way in Psalm 104:22, it's translated dwelling, but is used of a den of lions. Now, the reason I point that out is to say in this very first stanza, the way God is introduced is as a lion crouching in Judah on Mount Zion, ready to pounce. That's the image that comes across in the Hebrew. So it's a way of saying, this is a God to be reckoned with. God to be feared. You don't fool around with this God. That's what the Psalmist is saying. This has led two of the commentators on the Psalm to title it various Psalms have different titles and the commentators, but two of them call Psalm 76 Lion of Judah. One of them does that, the other one calls it the mighty God of judgment.

[ 15m28s ]

Dr. James Boice: Now, that's what is picked up in the second stanza of the Psalm. This is an easy Psalm to break down and the stanzas you have in the New International Version are perfectly valid. First three verses is the introduction that we've been studying and then the main body of the Psalm, verses 4 through 10. And after that, there's an application at the very end. Now, this main body of the Psalm describes a great victory. In which God, the judge, the powerful lion God, ready to pounce on his enemies has in fact pounced.

[ 16m1s ]

Dr. James Boice: And so it it describes this and you find two themes here that are are sort of interlinked. One is a description of the actual historical victory, whatever that may be, and then secondly, are what we would probably call theological reflections upon it. It's a very characteristic of the Old Testament. You see, God acts in history and then the the writers reflect on the meaning of that. Oh, he's done it. Does that mean anything for us today? And they say, yes, of course, it it does because God is a God of judgment. We have to reckon with him in the judgment. And so interspersed with the description, the historical description are these statements about judgment.

[ 16m39s ]

Dr. James Boice: Now, that's what we want to to look at. These verses obviously describe the battle. Look, "Valiant men lie plundered, they sleep their last sleep. Not one of the warriors can lift his hands. At your rebuke, oh God of Jacob, both horse and chariot lie still."

[ 16m59s ]

Dr. James Boice: Now, we read that and we say, well, what great battle was that? Who was defeated in this way in a way that protected Israel? There's nothing in the Psalm that is specific enough to enable us to say, it certainly was this battle and not another, but there is an incident in the Old Testament about which we know that does fit the circumstances. As I say, we can't be absolutely sure because there's nothing in the Psalm that makes it clear beyond any doubt. But in the year 701 BC, the Assyrian king Sennacherib marched against Jerusalem.

[ 17m33s ]

Dr. James Boice: He had defeated many of the cities, city states, nations roundabout, and he encircled Jerusalem. And he sent a letter to the king of Jerusalem, who was Hezekiah at the time. And in it he boasted about the victories that he had already achieved. He said, "We have already defeated Gozan and Haran and Rephah and the people of Eden, all of them have fallen. Now, their gods didn't protect them, why should your God protect you?" So what you ought to do is surrender before I tear your city down.

[ 18m6s ]

Dr. James Boice: Now, Hezekiah was a believing man, but this was a serious matter. And so we're told in the story, you find it in several places in the Old Testament, in 2 Kings, chapters 19 and 20, and in Isaiah, two chapters there, 36 and 7. What you find Hezekiah doing in in those chapters is going into the temple and spreading this letter from the Assyrian king before the Lord, a way of saying, here it is, look what I'm dealing with. Now, I bring it to you. He began by acknowledging that what Sennacherib had said is true. I want to quote him. He said, "It is true, Lord. The Assyrian kings have laid waste these nations in their lands. They have thrown their gods into the fire and destroyed them."

[ 18m52s ]

Dr. James Boice: Here's where the faith comes in. He goes on to say, "Because they were not gods, but only wood and stone fashioned by men's hands. But now, oh Lord, our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all kingdoms on earth may know that you alone, oh Lord, are God." As I say, that was a very believing prayer, in very desperate situations. And God heard it. He answered them. And the story tells us that that night, the angel of the Lord went through the Assyrian camp and killed 185,000 of the Assyrian soldiers. And when they woke up in the morning, there they were, all dead. And Sennacherib figured that that was a good place to leave. And so he packed up in a hurry and marched his troops down the road back to Assyria where later that year he was assassinated by his own sons.

[ 19m49s ]

Dr. James Boice: Now, as I say, there's nothing in this Psalm to prove that that's exactly what it's referring to, but it certainly does fit the situation. And there's at least this in its favor. The translators of the Old Testament into the Greek language, that is the Septuagint, thought that this is what it referred to because they added a title to the Psalm. You look at our Psalm, it says for the director of music with stringed instruments, a Psalm of Asaph, a song. But what the Septuagint translators added was concerning the Assyrian.

[ 20m22s ]

Dr. James Boice: Now, the Assyrian is Sennacherib, so they obviously thought that's what it referred to. There's one other person who thought it referred to that as well, and that is George Gordon. Do you know who George Gordon is? Takes a real English major to know who George Gordon is. That's Lord Byron. A sort of very attractive rake of England, among the romantic poets, who actually had to leave England because of some of the things he had done. He he wrote very lilting verse. And he wrote about this particular defeat. It's the one that begins the Assyrian came down like a sheep on the like a wolf on the fold. His clothes were all burnished with silver and gold. You know how that one goes. Well, he describes this and he borrows the language of Psalm 76 in order to do it. Here's a pretty good description of what was the result after the angel had gone through the camp.

[ 21m15s ]

Dr. James Boice: Here's Byron's verse. "For the angel of death spread his wings on the blast and breathed in the face of the foe as they passed, and the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill. And their hearts but once heaved and forever were still. And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide, but through it there rolled not the breath of his pride, and foam of his gasping lay white on the turf as cold as the spray of the rock beating surf. And there lay the rider, distorted and pale with the dew on his brow and the rust on his mail, and the tents were all silent, the banners alone, the lances uplifted, the trumpets unblown."

[ 22m10s ]

Dr. James Boice: Now, I don't know if you like that kind of poetry. I think that's pretty good. And uh at any rate, it's a description of this scene as Lord Byron saw it. Now, I said that it's an actual practice of the Psalmist after they describe an historical event to reflect on it. You find that throughout the Old Testament and this is exactly what you find here. What you find mingled in with this description, in this middle stanza are reflections not only on judgment, but perhaps on the final judgment yet to come. Derek Kidner, who is one of the commentators, a good one, on the Psalms calls this a vision of the end time in which God is foreseen striking the final blow against evil everywhere as judge.

[ 22m58s ]

Dr. James Boice: So now what we want to do, we've seen the historical setting, what it might be. We want to go back and look at the Psalm and see what it actually says about the final judgment. First of all, verse 7 tells us that God alone is to be feared. Verse 7, "And who can stand before you when you're angry?" Now, let's reflect on that. People fear all kinds of things. People are afraid of failing. People are afraid of ridicule, of deprivation, lacking life's necessities, sickness, accident, danger, and most of all, they fear death or dying. Now, those are legitimate fears, but what this particular verse is saying is that compared to having to face God in the final judgment, all of those things ought to fade away into virtual insignificance.

[ 23m47s ]

Dr. James Boice: I tell you, when the Psalmist says God alone is to be feared, he's not denying the fact that when the Assyrians surrounded the city, the people were afraid. Certainly, they were right in fearing the Assyrians. But, he says, that's nothing compared to having to face Almighty God. You know, the book of Revelation describes that. You know, that great picture of the judgment in the 9th chapter, verses 16 and 17, it's talking about the people of that day when God finally does unleash his judgment, and it says they call to the mountains and the rocks. They called, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come and who can stand?"

[ 24m31s ]

Dr. James Boice: Everything of Jesus, the Lamb of God, being the instrument of God's judgment, that's what's described in Revelation. In Revelation, as well as other passages, such as this, say, that's something to be feared. There's a second reflection on the nature of God's judgment, and it's what you have in verse 8. It's that every mouth is going to be silenced by God's judgment. The whole earth is going to get quiet.

[ 24m56s ]

Dr. James Boice: One of the most objectionable characteristics of people who have done something wrong is that they'll never shut up about it. They're always making excuses for themselves. And finally, you want to say, as some of the lawyers did say back in Watergate to the people that were always introducing reasons to produce extenuating circumstances why what they did wasn't so bad. They said, "Forget that self-serving way of speaking." People always want to serve. Oh, always have a last word they want to get in. But what the Psalmist is telling us here is that in the gay day of God's judgment, there will be no last words. Everyone's going to be silent when God speaks. You know, Paul writes about that in Romans, in the third chapter, verse 19, he says, "Whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God."

[ 25m51s ]

Dr. James Boice: One day you're going to stand before God and you're not going to have anything to say in your defense. The third principle here is in verse 9, and this is the good news. Up to now, it hasn't been much good news, but the good news is this, "God mingles mercy with wrath for the afflicted." You see, one side is his wrath, the other side is mercy. And what this Psalm tells us is that the mercy of God will be shown to the meek and the afflicted of the earth. Now, in the historical judgment that's described in the Psalm, that was mercy to Israel. They were the meek and the afflicted, they knew God, they called upon him humbly, as Hezekiah led the way, and God responded, he delivered them from their enemy.

[ 26m36s ]

Dr. James Boice: In our case, as we look ahead to the judgment of the last days, it's going to be mercy to those who have trusted in Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord. We saw this earlier, you know, when we were looking at a previous Psalm, we saw it by reference to Hannah's song when she presented her son at the temple. We saw it in reference to Mary's Magnificat. Mary says in one place in that well-known hymn, "He has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble." Are you a person who has humbled yourself before God? "He has filled the hungry with good things, but sent the rich empty away." Are you hungry for the spiritual blessings that only God can give? "He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever." Are you really the servant of the Most High God?

[ 27m31s ]

Dr. James Boice: And here's the fourth point that we find in verse 10, and it is that God is glorified even in his wrath. You see, "Surely your wrath against men brings you praise. And the survivors of your wrath are restrained." This is Paul's answer in the 9th chapter of Romans as to why God doesn't save everyone. You know, that's a great puzzle to people. If God is all powerful and he's loving, why doesn't he save everyone? Some people get out of it by saying, well, God gives everybody a chance, but some of them say no. Well, if all God did was give you a chance, everyone would say no. The fact that some are saved are because God doesn't take no for an answer. And so he gets in there and regenerates them as a result of which they say yes. But then that introduces the question, well, then why doesn't he do that for everybody? And the answer Paul gives, it's a very hard answer for people today to accept because we know very little about God and his ways are not our ways. Our ways are quite different from his.

[ 28m30s ]

Dr. James Boice: The answer Paul gives is this, above all else, God wants to be glorified as God. That is in all his attributes. He wants to be known as God. And not only is God want to do that, that is right. It's right that God be so known. And so God is known in his grace, mercy, compassion, and love to those whom he is saving. He saves through Jesus Christ. He demonstrates his love there. God is known in his wrath and his judgment in passing by those whom he passes by.

[ 29m0s ]

Dr. James Boice: Paul brings in a great example from the Old Testament. Sennacherib would have been a good example, but the example Paul mentions in that chapter is Pharaoh. And he quotes from the Old Testament. Here's what he says. He said, "I'm not making this up. I'm getting it from God's book. Here's what it says. The scripture says to Pharaoh, I raised you up for this very purpose that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. Therefore, God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy and he hardens whom he wants to harden."

[ 29m30s ]

Dr. James Boice: God hardened Sennacherib and he judged him and he was glorified in the judgment. And God's melted the heart of Hezekiah and the people of his day and saved them and he was glorified in his salvation. Now, people are always angry with God and his judgments, and they always have been and they are today. And when you talk along these lines, people get very angry with God. Isn't it right for God to do that? Why should God do that? I I could never believe in a God who would do that. God is like, God, I hated a God like that. Listen, it doesn't make any difference whether you get angry with him or not. Do you think your anger upsets God? Your anger doesn't terrify him at all. God is what God is. And the part of wisdom is to come to terms with that.

[ 30m14s ]

Dr. James Boice: Now, how do you do that? How do you come to terms with a God who is a God of judgment? Well, the last stanza of this Psalm makes two suggestions. First of all, he speaks to the Jews, to Israel, who alone can claim that God is their God and he says, "Make vows to the Lord your God and fulfill them." His point in the context of the deliverance is this, because God has delivered them from the Assyrians, they owe him their allegiance. They need to follow him. They need to obey him. It's exactly what you find at the beginning of the 10 Commandments where the laws are laid down. God begins by reminding them that he brought them out of out of Egypt, delivering them from Pharaoh and bondage by mighty hand. Therefore, he says, you shall have no other gods before me.

[ 31m0s ]

Dr. James Boice: Now, it's exactly the same thing for us. If you profess to know God through Jesus Christ, if you believe on him as your Lord and Savior, then remember that he is your Lord as well as your Savior. And Jesus said to the people of his day, why do you bother to call me Lord if you're not going to do what I say? I'm your Lord, you have to obey me. That's what he said. Why do you call me Lord, Lord and don't do what I say? What does he say? Well, one thing he says, is that if any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. It's a way of saying, my way is the way of the cross and if you would go with me, that's the way you have to go. If you've come to Jesus Christ, fulfill those vows.

[ 31m42s ]

Dr. James Boice: And then secondly, he turns to the nations roundabout. Now, the true God is not their God. They have other gods. But what he says to them is this, "Let all the neighboring lands bring gifts to the one to be feared." It's a way of saying that even though they haven't been worshipping the true God, they're answerable to him anyway. And so what they had better do is submit to his rule and indicate that by bringing gifts. That's exactly the way Psalm 2 ends. Remember Psalm 2? Psalm 2 deals with all of the arrogance of the nations who shake their fists in God's face and it tells us that the one in heaven laughs. It's ludicrous to think that men object to God. And then it concludes, it says, "Kiss the son, well before he's angry and before you're destroyed in your way." That's what it's saying here.

[ 32m34s ]

Dr. James Boice: Now, that applies to you if you've not yet bowed in faith and obedience to Jesus Christ. But the Psalmist says at the very end is this, "God breaks the spirit of the rulers in order to be feared by the judge of the earth." He'll break you too unless you yield to him. And the part of wisdom is to yield to him now. If you do that, you seek mercy at his hand, you will find it. Nobody ever came to God asking for mercy, but they didn't find it. Remember the publican, God be merciful to me a sinner. And what Jesus said of that tax collector is that that's the man who went home justified in God's sight. May it be true of each of us as well. Let's pray.

[ 33m19s ]

Dr. James Boice: Our Father, we're thankful that we have had some time here tonight to study this important Psalm, dealing with this important theme of judgment. We don't like to think about that. What we actually do is try to push thoughts of judgment from our mind so we don't have to reckon with it. But again and again in the Bible, you remind us of it because it is something to be feared. Something to be considered and dealt with and avoided through Jesus Christ if we will come to you through faith in him. We pray that you will use this study in the lives of many to accomplish exactly that and so bring glory to your name. We pray in Jesus' most holy and blessed name. Amen.

[ 34m9s ]

Dr. James Boice: 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 alliance.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'd 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.