The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): Make your face to shine upon us that we may be saved. God's people cry out to him again, but while they worship him with their mouths, their hearts have grown cold. God has a shepherd's heart but a sovereign's might. Will he save his people?

Guest (Male): Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and Internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. We yearn to see the face of God. We want to abide with him and feel his presence, but sometimes our hearts are far away. Let's join Dr. Boice as he examines Psalm 80 and discover the key to having God's face shine upon his people.

Dr. James Boice: We don't sing very many choruses at 10th Church, but for anybody who likes choruses, you really ought to like Psalm 80. It's a psalm with a chorus. You find it there three times. It's in verses 3, 7, and 19. And since you have three choruses, you also have three stanzas.

The stanzas are of unequal length. You have one stanza in verses 1 and 2, a second one in verses 4 through 6, and then stanza 3, the longest of all, is in verses 8 through 18. Now it's divided up in our translation, the New International Version, but it's all one subject matter as we're going to see.

This psalm in its structure is an awful lot like Psalms 42 and 43. You probably can't remember back that far in our exposition, but if you know the Psalter, if you read the psalms, you know that those two psalms really belong together because they have the same chorus. There is a chorus that's found twice in Psalm 42, and then it's found one more time in Psalm 43, and the subject matter really belongs together. So that psalm is very much like this one, and this is the only other one that we have.

The point of a chorus is that it sets the tone and establishes the theme for the psalm. And in the case of Psalm 80, which is the one we're studying now, it does it by asking God for restoration. Notice verse 3, "Restore us, O God, make your face shine upon us that we may be saved."

There's undoubtedly some kind of growth in intensity in that chorus as you move through the psalm, because if you notice it and compare what you have in verses 3, 7, and 19, you find that it's virtually identical, except that the name of God gets longer.

Verse 3, it says, "Restore us, O God." In verse 7, it says, "Restore us, O God Almighty." And then in verse 19, the longest of all, it says, "Restore us, O Lord God Almighty." So you begin to get a clue as you compare that to the intensity of the psalmist and what he's expecting. He's saying, in effect, there is no deliverance anywhere, except in God. That is the way we have to approach it.

When he asks for restoration, we have to ask ourselves what restoration he's asking for. What does this tell us about the historical setting? Well, as usual, commentators disagree on this, but the first stanza begins talking about God as Israel's shepherd.

That links it with the earlier two psalms, three psalms, that are having to do with God as a shepherd of Israel, but the historical setting has to be different. Because in those earlier psalms that we've been studying, Jerusalem has been destroyed, and here, not only is Jerusalem not destroyed, but even the Northern Kingdom is not destroyed.

So, this must be a prayer for the preservation of one of these kingdoms. And since it refers to Israel explicitly, and a little later on, it speaks of Ephraim and Manasseh, they were the two northern tribes, two sons of Joseph, and it mentions Joseph as well. It's probably right to think that this is a psalm for the restoration of the Northern Kingdom sometime before its fall to the armies of Sennacherib in 721 BC.

Franz Delitzsch says this: "The psalmist, as it seems, prays in a time in which the oppression of Assyria rested heavily upon the kingdom of Ephraim, and Judah saw itself threatened with ruin when this bulwark should have fallen." The Septuagint, that's the Greek translation of the Old Testament, seems to endorse this, at least in the judgment of those translators, because like Psalm 76, it adds to the title, "A Psalm concerning the Assyrian." So they have that in the background.

Now, the striking feature of this psalm that's fit in around the choruses that I've just mentioned, is that it has two great images for the God of Israel. The first one is the image of God as Israel's shepherd. It's developed very briefly in verses 1 and 2. And then the second image is that of God as the planter and the caretaker of a vineyard which stands for Israel, and it's developed in that long third stanza that I was talking about.

Now, this first image, this image of God as shepherd, is one of the ways the Bible has frequently of talking about God. We can understand that because the Old Testament was written for a pastoral people. Most people kept animals. They understood very well what a shepherd was, and how much work it was, and how wayward sheep were. And so when the psalmist speaks or other passages in the Bible speak about God being a shepherd, all those people would understand that right away.

As I said, you find it in a lot of other places. Some of the most poetic passages of the prophets speak of God as shepherd. For example, Isaiah 40, verse 11, "He tends his flock like a shepherd. He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart. He gently leads those that have young." We find it in the New Testament. Very extensive development of that idea in John 10, as you well know.

Here Jesus takes that Old Testament imagery, "God is my shepherd," and he uses it of himself, which is virtually identifying himself with God the Father. He said, "I am the shepherd. I am the good shepherd." Here's from John 10, verses 14 through 16: "I know my sheep, and my sheep know me, just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd."

Peter called Jesus the shepherd and the overseer of our souls. And the very ending of the Book of Hebrews, that's the image you find. You know how that goes. It's a benediction. "May the God of peace who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will and may he work in us what is pleasing to him through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen."

That's a great theme. I should point out, I think it's an interesting point that although that is a dominant theme throughout the Bible, Old Testament and New Testament, very strong in the prophets and in the teaching of our Lord, it's only found twice in the Psalter. Found in Psalm 23, of course, we know that one, and the second place is right here.

I think it may be helpful when we talk about this image of God as shepherd, to know that the earliest reference to God as the shepherd is by Jacob, Abraham's grandson, and you find it way back in the book of Genesis, in the 48th chapter. There Jacob speaks of God as the one who has been "my shepherd all my life to this day, the angel who delivered me from all harm."

The reason that is so interesting is that Jacob himself was a shepherd. And it was a difficult job, and he describes it in one place. You recall that when he ran away from his uncle Laban, taking the flocks and the daughters that were now his wives, Laban pursued him. Jacob was not a very talkative person. He seems to have been retiring. He put up with a lot. He was shy, but he was provoked to it this time, and he spoke up.

He said, "I shepherded your flock for 20 years. And it kept me awake at night, and I had to be there in the heat of the day, in the sun, and it was cold at night. And if God hadn't taken care of me, you would have sent me away with nothing." Is that was the shepherd's lot. So when he said, "God is my shepherd," he understood what he was talking about.

He had learned something else too, and that's part of Jacob's use of the image. He had learned that he wasn't able to shepherd himself. In other words, he wasn't able to run his own life. He thought he could at one time. He thought he could make his own plans. He was rather shrewd. He thought, "I can get by with my wits." But he discovered it didn't work out that way, and what he needed was God as his shepherd.

Now, that's absolutely the same with us. In his wayward days, I know Jacob would have acknowledged God. When he ran away from home when his brother was threatening to kill him and met God at Bethel, he said, "This God shall be my God." If you put it in contemporary terms, if you had said to him, "Are you a Christian?" He would, of course, said, "Yes." But still he was living his own way.

The wonderful thing of this, you see what he's testifying to at the end of his life, is even though he was wayward like a wayward sheep, God nevertheless didn't cease to be his shepherd. So when we take the image and apply it to Israel, we say, "God is the shepherd of Israel," even though they are wayward. God is our shepherd even though we are wayward. It's a good thing he is.

We ought to say, however, according to the psalm, that although God is introduced as the shepherd of Israel, this doesn't mean what we might think of as a shepherd. That is, young David out there, a boy in the field, gentle, almost helpless, doomed to take care of sheep, something like that. What the psalm says is that this shepherd of Israel is nevertheless the one who sits enthroned between the cherubim.

Now that is either a reference to the cherubim that were on the lid of the Ark of the Covenant in the Most Holy Place of the Tabernacle, or it's thinking of the cherubim in heaven because there are passages that refer to that, and the picture on earth is only a symbol of what was understood to be in heaven. But whether it's on earth or in heaven, it's saying, "This shepherd is the mighty one of Israel. This is God we're talking about." So it's true he has a shepherd's care, but he does it with a sovereign's might.

And that's the basis of the appeal. The appeal says, "Awaken your might, come and save us," verse 2. The first time the recurring chorus appears is in verse 3, and it's immediately after this appeal to the great might of Israel's shepherd. And what it says is this, "Restore us, O God, make your face shine upon us."

Now that's undoubtedly a reference to the Aaronic blessing. You know, back in the sixth chapter of Numbers, God gave instructions to the priests, and particularly to Aaron, saying, "This is the way that you're to bless the people." Here's what you're to say: "The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace."

I suppose the psalmist must have heard that a thousand times, 10,000 times, maybe. And so when he comes to write the psalm, this is natural language to him. He says, "What we need is for God to turn his face in our direction once again and smile upon us." That's the way we would put it. "Let his face shine upon us." I mean, "Look upon us favorably." Now, that's what he's talking about here.

I suppose because that idea of seeing God's face has greater overtones, and he may also have been thinking of an even greater blessing than that. You know, the great desire of the people of God down through the Old Testament period was to see the face of God. They say, "We see your handiwork in nature, and we marvel at that. We see your power demonstrated in history and your protection of us as a people. But what we most long for is you. We want to see you. We want to see you face-to-face."

Moses made that request in the 33rd chapter of Exodus. He said, "Now, show me your glory." He meant he wanted to see the face of God, and God said, "I'll put you in a cleft of the rock. I'll pass by. You'll see my power and my might, but you can't see my face because no one can see my face and live."

That's the great destiny of God's people and desire. Theologians call it the Beatific Vision, to see the face of God. And it may be that in a certain sense, this is what the psalmist is talking about as well.

Now, let me say something. If what he's asking for here is that God might be favorable, and if this psalm is written before the fall of the Northern Kingdom, as it seems to be, then we know that God did not smile favorably upon the people and save the kingdom. And we know the reason why, because of the sin of the people, God made it very clear. They weren't repenting of their sin.

So, the psalm is a warning, among other things, that restoration is not automatic. Just because God is the shepherd doesn't mean that he doesn't punish the sheep. And so here you have a warning when you pray, "Restore us, O God, make your face shine upon us." It must be accompanied by repentance for our transgressions.

Now the second stanza of this psalm, following the chorus, verses 4, 5, and 6, is a description of Israel's present plight, the trouble that they're in. It's an explanation of why the nation needs to be restored. And the reason, stated very clearly, is that God is angry. And his anger is seen in the fact that he has allowed the enemies to come in upon them, to crash in upon them.

What this is saying, of course, is that sin has consequences, and so the stanza speaks of these too, these consequences. It's doing it in poetic language. What it says is this, it says that the people have been made to eat and drink tears, and that they have become the taunt of their enemies.

Now we have a very good example of this from this time, not from the north, I think this is about the Northern Kingdom, but it's the same kind of example, we find it in the south. Sennacherib, the king, had come up against the Southern Kingdom. He had surrounded Jerusalem, and Hezekiah was the king. He sent a message to Hezekiah. And the message was this, you find it in 2 Kings, the 18th chapter: "Has any god of any nation ever delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah? Have they not, have they rescued Samaria from my hand? Who of all the gods of these countries has been able to save his land from me? How then can the Lord deliver Jerusalem from my hand?"

That was a taunt, you see, and a very powerful one. Fortunately, Hezekiah was a man of God. He knew what to do with it. He brought it before the Lord, and he laid the letter that was sent up before the Lord in the temple, and he said to the Lord, "This is what he's saying, and it's true."

The gods of these nations roundabout have not been able to deliver their lands from the hand of the king of Sennacherib, "But you are the Lord." And so he said, "We want you to deliver us." And God did. And that night he sent an angel among the Assyrian troops, and 185,000 of them were slain. Sennacherib realized he couldn't carry on the campaign. He turned around, went home, and he was killed by his own sons when he got back.

It didn't happen in the north. We have to keep that in mind. If this is about the north, it didn't happen in the north. And that's because they didn't have godly people that sought the face of God.

Here's what Alexander says about this second stanza. In just three verses, the psalmist points to an angry God, a weeping nation, and mocking foes.

Now the second great metaphor of this psalm is that of the vine and God as the planter and the developer and the restorer of the vine. You find it as I said in verses 8 through 18. Now in the New International Version, this section is itself divided into three stanzas. I mentioned it earlier, verses 8 through 11, 12 through 15, 16 to 18. And if you look at these carefully, it's easy to get the flow of thought, because the first of those subdivisions deals with the past. The second one deals with the present, and the third deals with the future.

Now, like this image of the shepherd, the image of Israel as a vine and God as the vine dresser and the planter of the vine is also found throughout the Bible, and especially in the Old Testament. I mentioned Jacob earlier. Jacob used this image in his final blessing on the tribes. He called Joseph a fruitful vine near a spring whose branches climb over a wall.

Some beautiful passages in Isaiah. One of them, the fifth chapter, begins, "My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside." Very poetic language. It goes on from that point. The 27th chapter again, "Sing about a fruitful vineyard."

But there's a negative. The second chapter of Jeremiah, verse 21, God complains, "I had planted you like a choice vine of sound and reliable stock. How then did you turn against me into a corrupt wild vine?" Hosea has two important passages. "Israel was a spreading vine. He brought forth fruit for himself." Tragic situation.

And again, he looks forward to a day of future blessing. "He will blossom like a vine, and his fame will be like a vine from Lebanon." Now this Psalm 80, despite of the fact that that image occurs elsewhere, is the only psalm in all the Psalter where this image is used for Israel in any sense.

It has three parts. First of all, there's the past, as I mentioned. God bringing this vine out of Egypt, and then planting and prospering it. It tells how he cleared the land. He got rid of the nations who were there before. Weeded up the garden. And he plants the vine. And he cares for it, so it grows up quickly to be a mighty vine that covers the mountains and stretches all the way from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the River Euphrates on the east.

Now that's a very powerful image describing what God has done, because God had indeed brought Israel out of Egypt into a new land. He cleared the land of the enemies and he planted her there, and she did grow and she did prosper.

But then there's the present, and that's what the next substanza talks about, and here it's a ruined vineyard. It's describing the people's present condition. "Why have you broken down its walls?" The walls of the vineyard, "So that all who pass by pick its grapes. Boars from the forest ravage it, and the creatures of the field feed upon it."

That idea of the breaking down of the walls has led some commentators, that's why you have a difference of opinion here, to think that, well, this is describing the destruction of the walls of Samaria. It was the capital, and it was the last fortress of the people. But that doesn't necessarily follow. It might be that that's what it's speaking of, but the walls could refer to the frontiers, the borders. And if that's the case, it's saying that the enemies that surrounded the nation have breached the borders, and they're beginning to ravage the land. You see, that's why the psalm would be written to begin to pray for restoration.

I suppose the strongest reason for refusing to place the psalm after the destruction of the Northern Kingdom is that nobody would have thought of restoration at that point. The destruction was just too complete. The land was utterly devastated. The people were deported, and you could hardly say at that point, "God restore Israel." The country and the nation was just gone.

Now in this third stanza, we come to the future, and this is looking forward to restoration through one who is called the Son of Man. It means that there's hope yet. Even though the frontiers are broken down, and the enemies are encroaching on the land, and the capital is in danger of falling, and the people in the south as well are worried, in spite of all that, there's hope, and that is for restoration by verse 17, "The man at your right hand, the son of man you have raised up for yourself."

He asks the question, "Who is this son of man?" It's natural for us to think of Jesus Christ, because he used those words of himself. He called himself the Son of Man. I think not borrowing them from the psalm, but rather from the book of Daniel, but nevertheless, that's the phrase he used. He referred to himself as the Son of Man.

So we say, "Well, this must be speaking of a future restoration through Jesus Christ, the Messiah who should come." Well, that may be, but it's not quite so clear that that's what is meant here. Let me suggest the three possibilities. First of all, "the man at your right hand" could be the current king, either the king of the Northern Kingdom, if it had not yet fallen, or a king in the south if it had fallen. And that would be a right way of talking about the king. He's the man you've set up at your right hand. He's the one you're going to protect.

I find that the commentators differ at this point, and there are differences even among the conservative commentators. One that I frequently refer to is the great Lutheran commentator, H. C. Leopold. He says, "There seems to be no other feasible way of interpreting verse 17 than to think of it as being a prayer for the king that sits upon the throne of Israel."

Now, if that's the case, what the prayer is is this: it's asking God to restore the king, in order that the king may live righteously. And if the king lives righteously, the people are going to follow along, they're going to repent of their sin, and the nation's going to be restored. Now, it could mean that.

The second possibility is that the reference could be to the people themselves. And this grows out of a kind of a careful reading of the psalms. You see, you look back to verse 15, you find that it also uses the word son. And when you get the same word in very close proximity, it's only two verses apart, you tend to interpret it the same way. You normally should unless there is a reason to the contrary. And back in verse 15, this clearly refers to Israel, because it's parallel to the phrase, "the root of your right hand that you planted."

We've just been talking about Israel as the vine that he's planted. It seems to be identified with the son. And if that's the case here, he's talking about the people. Now, who has this point of view? Well, no less a scholar than John Calvin. That's what he thought. He thought the Son of Man was Israel. It's also the position taken by Stewart Perowne. And it fits the view that elsewhere Israel is called the firstborn son of God. That's the second possibility.

Now the third is what I referred to earlier, and that is that the Son of Man refers to Jesus Christ. This was the interpretation, interestingly enough, given to the verse by the later rabbis. Jewish scholars themselves thought it referred to the Messiah. And this is what Charles Haddon Spurgeon thought. He said, "There is no doubt here an outlook to the Messiah, for whom believing Jews had learned to look as the Savior in time of trouble."

Now, I think Calvin is right so far as the interpretation of the psalmist is concerned. You go by the psalm itself, what it says. Son is used in verse 15 of Israel. I think it's referring to Israel here. But all that aside, it is nevertheless true that Jesus, the Son of Man, is the Savior and the Messiah. We have to remember that he referred to himself as the vine.

Called himself the vine in John's Gospel. Called himself the true vine. What he meant by that is that he was the essential, real vine. Any other vine was just sort of a shadow, an archetype, a little suggestion of what he might be. Israel was like that, you see, but he was the fulfillment. Remember what he said. John 15 is where he developed it. He said, "I am the vine, my Father is the gardener." He said, "I am the vine, you're the branches." He said, "You can't bear fruit of yourself. You have to abide in the vine."

So whatever we think this may have meant back then to these people, what it means to us is that we need the Lord Jesus Christ if we're to be fruitful or do anything. You see, without God, Israel could do nothing, at least she could do nothing but sin, and that she did in abundance. And it's because of that that the judgment of God came upon the Northern Kingdom. In order to survive, to prosper, even to live, the people of the Old Covenant had to abide in God. And no less do we.

Without Jesus Christ and his power, we're unable even to believe unto salvation. Without Jesus Christ and his power, we're unable to live a holy life. Without Jesus Christ and his power, we can't bear any spiritual fruit because he said, "Without me, you can do nothing."

That's what Spurgeon said, "Without the Lord, you will do nothing. An immeasurable cloud land of proposals and not a spot of solid doing large enough for a dove's foot to rest on." That's the way Spurgeon put it. On the other hand, you see, as Paul wrote to the Philippians, if we're in Christ, we can do everything because he's our strength and our power.

Let's pray. Our Father, we're thankful for this psalm, for the blessing it was to the people of the old dispensation and for the blessing it is to your people today because you've given it to the church in all ages. We look to it and we find that you are our shepherd, and Jesus Christ is our shepherd. We look to it and find that you're the one who planted the vine, and we find that Jesus himself is the true vine. And that we are to prosper by being closely joined to him.

Our Father, grant that we might do that in the lesson of judgment that the psalm reflects. Grant that we might learn from that too, in order that we might be fully blessed under your loving and keeping care, for Jesus' sake. Amen.

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