The Bible Study Hour

Dr. James Boice: I've called this Psalm the Victors' Psalm at Agincourt because of an incident in the career of Henry V of England. Henry V was a remarkable king, and it's an interesting story. He might have become the emperor of Europe if he hadn't died in France of a fever at a relatively young age, the age of 35. In his youth, he was wild and profligate. Most of us, if we know about that at all, know it because of the plays of Shakespeare, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, which picture Prince Hal that way. He was the companion of Sir John Falstaff, you may recall. But regardless of his youth, when he became king, there was a marked change in Prince Hal. He became honest, grave, and modest, as one contemporary historian recorded.

He dedicated himself to freeing Europe from the Turks, and in order to do that, just incidentally, he had to conquer France. So he got together an army, and on the 11th of August, the year 1415, he left England with 1,300 ships and 10,000 men. He landed on the French coast at Harfleur, which was near the mouth of the Seine River. He conquered that town, and then he advanced toward Calais. By this time, the French had mustered their arms to meet him, and they did engage him on a field that was later called Agincourt on the 25th of October. It was St. Crispin's Day.

The French were very proud of their army, particularly because of their knights, those who were mounted on horseback. All of the nobles of France fought that way, and they relied on that for the victory. The English relied on their bowmen, and they had protected their archers with pointed stakes driven into the ground, inclining in the direction of the enemy. So when the French attacked on horseback across fields that had been made muddy by the fall rains and ran up against the stakes, they were unable to advance. The archers simply mowed down hundreds and then thousands of them. The horses turned back upon their own men. The English advanced from their fortifications and with maces and hatchets and swords they fell upon the army. King Hal himself fought. He was too excited, a young man here and too excited really to be afraid. He got into the middle of the battle, and it was just a tremendous victory for the English armies. The French themselves, French historians, put the French losses at 10,000 and the English losses at only 1,600 men. Of course, when Shakespeare told that, the French losses are 10,000 but the English only lost 29.

But here's the interesting part. Several years before this, when he was brought in by his father, Henry IV, to share in the government of the nation, the future Henry V was given a verse that was to guide his reign. His father gave it to him, and it was from this Psalm. It was Psalm 115:1. Now at Agincourt, as this great victory was achieved, Prince Hal had all of the army, the English army, kneel down in the mud, those who were victorious. Together, this is the hymn they sang. They sang it in Latin: *Non nobis, Domine, sed tibi sit gloria*. "Not to us, oh Lord, but to yourself be the glory." The Psalm itself puts it this way: "Not to us, oh Lord, not to us, but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness." Shakespeare even picked this up because he has the king say in the play, "Oh God, thy arm was here, and not to us but to thine arm alone ascribe we all."

Most of the commentators on the Psalm don't see it that way, of course. They don't see it as a Psalm of victory. They see it as a plea for God's help emerging out of some distressful situation on the part of the Jewish people. Their reasoning goes like this: they say verse two quotes the nations as saying, "Where is their God?" Now there are other Psalms where that is said, "Where is their God?" It seems to be a reproach. The Jews are in some bad situation, oppressed by foreign armies, perhaps even in Babylon as prisoners, and the taunt is made, "Where is your God?" Well, you can make a good argument that way. I just admit that I don't see it as I read the Psalm. It strikes me that the tone is not a desperate plea for help in some terrible situation, but rather an acknowledgment that God is our strength, He has been our strength in the past, He's our strength now, He will be in the future, and therefore we should go on trusting Him and above all we should praise Him. That's the way I see it, and I think that is the way it should be taken.

There's one thing the scholars do say that probably is right, and that is that the Psalm was probably liturgical. That's to say parts of it would be said by a priest and then there would be echoes perhaps from the congregation. The repetition lends it to that. The only difficulty is that it's very hard to decide who would say what, and if you read in the commentaries, you'll find that those who think along these lines have all kinds of suggestions. It's just a useless kind of thing to try and sort that out. But it probably was the kind of Psalm that would be used liturgically to praise God. I should mention, we're still doing an introduction here, that this is the third Psalm in the Egyptian Hallel. This is that collection of Psalms 113 to 118 that are songs of praise that were sung at the time of the Passover and some other occasions.

So this is Psalm 115. Now the first main section of the Psalm, after you get past that opening verse that I've already read, is a polemic against the idols of the heathen. It's what's talked about in verses 3 through 8. The interesting thing is that it's the first such polemic to be found in the Psalter. You would expect that earlier, wouldn't you? It's there in other places of the Old Testament. There's only been one other place in the Psalter somewhat earlier where there was any mention of idols at all. But here suddenly you have this great polemic against them. It's the kind of thing that shows up elsewhere, especially in the later literature. You have it several times in Isaiah and Jeremiah, and it may be a suggestion that this Psalm actually came somewhat late in the history of the people, that is after they had been in Babylon and had now come back to their own land, but they remembered the idol worship of the heathen. You sort of have the sense as you read this that they had witnessed some of this firsthand. So reflecting now on the greatness of the true God who had revealed Himself to Israel and comparing that with the worship of the heathen, they are very aware of how empty that heathen worship is.

You ask the question about idols. You say, what's wrong with idols? Well, what's wrong is that they're only objects made by human hands, and so they're less significant even than the people who made them. That's what the Psalm says. Listen how it reads: "They have mouths but cannot speak, eyes but they cannot see, they have ears but they cannot hear, noses but they cannot smell, they have hands but cannot feel, feet but they cannot walk, nor can they utter a sound with their throats." That's pretty good writing. That's sarcasm used in the best possible way because it's absolutely true.

I've sometimes said when I've commented on different writers on the Psalms that I've found Saint Augustine, the great Saint Augustine, to be not much help when dealing with the Psalms today because he sees everything in the Psalms as a prophecy of Jesus Christ. I just don't think that's true. There are prophecies about Christ in the Psalms, but the Psalms are dealing with all sorts of other things and to get the best benefit out of them, you need to treat them for what they really are. So I very seldom use Saint Augustine. But at this point where he talks about idols, he really is helpful because of course he lived in that kind of a culture. All around him there were the idols of the heathen. He saw them, he recognized how useless they were just as the Jews who had come back from Babylon, and his comments are really interesting.

He comments on the fact that the idols have mouths and don't speak, and eyes and can't hear, and so forth. And then he says this: "Even their artist surpasses them, that is the person who made them, since he had the faculty of molding them by the motion and function of his limbs." Then he goes on with that a little bit and then he says, "Even you surpass them, though you have not made these things, since you do what they cannot do." And then he takes it a step further: "Even animals surpass them, for they see and hear and smell and walk and some apes, for instance, actually handle things with their hands." Then he has a little interesting observation. I guess he'd seen these idols and he noticed that in the temples sometimes mice, snakes, and birds made their homes in the idols or around them. So he says, "A man who goes to worship moves himself so he can frighten away a living beast from his own God, and yet he worships that God who cannot even move himself." And he talks about that a little bit and then he gets to the end, and this is his punchline. He says, "Even the dead surpass them because at least the dead lived at one time."

Well, you begin to get the flavor of it, and of course Augustine is exactly right in picking up the flavor that we have here. Worshipping an invisible God, which is what the Jews did, was a great puzzle to Israel's neighbors. They just couldn't understand that. They had to have a visible representation of it. You may know, I'm sure you do, the story of Pompey, the Roman general, who when he got to Jerusalem and made his way into the most holy place of the Tabernacle was astounded to find that it was empty. He couldn't understand that. They all thought in terms of objects. And yet there was a profound reason why the Jews were instructed not to worship God by idols or by objects. The reason is this: if you try to represent the invisible God by something visible, you inevitably debase Him. That is, you bring Him down. God is not less than the visible object, that's the defense of them, it's something real, tangible, you see. But God is not less than the tangible object, He's infinitely more. Infinitely more in glory, infinitely more in wisdom, infinitely more in strength. So whenever you try to represent God by anything that you can see or touch or handle, you debase Him and you mislead the worshiper. That's why the Old Testament is so strong.

You think of the Ten Commandments. They're sometimes called the Ten Words because they're brief. Think of the second table of the law: you shall not steal, you shall not covet, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not lie. All of those things are very, very brief statements. But at the very beginning, there's one statement that's long, and that's the commandment against idolatry. It reads like this: "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to thousands who love me and keep my commandments." Obviously, that's one to be taken very seriously.

And the reason, of course, is that if you represent God by an idol or an image, even one that you hold in your mind, you're always making Him less than He actually is. And there's this too: a debased God will debase worshipers. And so people become like the God they worship. If your God becomes an idol, as the Psalm itself says, you will be like them. Look at verse eight: "Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them." It means that human beings are always drawn downward, not upward, by false gods.

So you say at this point, well, what's the alternative then? What should the people of God who know the true God do? Well, the answer that comes to mind right away is, well, we should worship the true God and worship Him in the way He tells us to worship Him. That is absolutely right. It's not what the Psalm says, however. You look at the next stanza, you'll find that it says something else which is true and equally significant. It tells us that what we should do, if we really are responding aright to the true and invisible God, is trust Him. You say why? Well, because He's our true help and shield. The idols offer nothing. The idols can't move even to help themselves. Any false God is a nothing, a no God, something to be despised. The true God is a God of strength and help and comfort. So the one who knows Him should really trust Him.

There's a lot of repetition in this Psalm, and here in this stanza, that is verses 9 through 11, you have it. The idea of trusting God is repeated three times, and it's directed at three different groups of people: to Israel, and the house of Aaron and the priests, and all who fear God. They're all to trust God. Look how it goes: "Oh house of Israel, trust in the Lord. He is their help and shield. Oh house of Aaron, trust in the Lord. He is their help and shield. You who fear Him, trust in the Lord. He is their help and shield." I sometimes say when we get to repetition in the Bible that if God says something once, we ought to listen to it seriously. If He says something twice, we better drop what we're doing and give it the most strict attention. How if He says something three times? Well, then we should give our full attention to it, study it, ponder it, commit it to memory, meditate on it, and obey it. Because, of course, God means for it to be taken seriously. Now in this case, what we're being encouraged to do is trust the Lord and not those other things that we often put into God's place.

So I ask the question, do you really trust Him? We say we do, of course, if we're Christian people, and there's a sense in which we do or we wouldn't even be Christians. But in the trials of life, in the ups and downs of the things that we go through, we have to admit if we're at all honest that again and again we fail to trust Him. And instead of that, we trust to our own resources instead. Or when we're put to the test, we pull back and say, well, that's for somebody else but not for me. It reminds me of a true story about a French acrobat in the last century whose name was Jean-François Gravelet. He didn't go by that name, he went by the name Blondin, meaning blond one, because he had blond hair and it was unusual for a Frenchman. But he became famous because of very unusual feats that he did. One of the best known was to walk across Niagara Falls on a tightrope. He came to this country because there was more money here than there was in France, and he used to put on this show with this rope stretched across the falls. On one occasion, he went about halfway across and he'd carried some things over there with him and he stopped and he cooked an omelet and ate it right above the raging torrent. On another occasion, he carried his manager across on his back and then he carried him back. When he got back to the other side, he stopped and turned to a man in the crowd and said to him, "Do you believe I could do that with you?" And the man said, "Yes, I've just seen you do it." He said, "Well, hop on and I'll carry you across." And he said, "Not on your life."

Well, that's what we do with the Lord. We give the verbal assent to the fact that He's trustworthy. Of course He is, He's the Lord. And then He says, "Well, then trust me," and we say, "Well, not today. Not in this situation. Somehow I have to trust myself." Well, if we're trusting ourselves, I suppose that's somewhat better than trusting idols because the idols are nothing, but it's still foolish. And what the Psalmist telling us to do is trust the Lord. Now what happens if we trust the Lord? That's the next question. Well, the answer is we won't be disappointed. Those who trust in the idols will be disappointed. If you trust to yourself, you'll be disappointed. If you trust other people, you'll be disappointed. But the one who trusts God will never be disappointed because He is the living, true, kind, and compassionate God who loves to do good to His people, to those who trust Him.

Now that's what stanza four is talking about. It has more repetition in it, and this repetition corresponds to the repetitive sentences we already found in verses 9 through 11. In that stanza, the house of Israel, the house of Aaron, and all who fear Him were challenged to trust God. Now in this stanza, these same people are addressed and they're declared to be the recipients of God's blessing. Plus, there's an additional general statement that God will bless us. Now it reads this way: "The Lord remembers us and will bless us." That's the general statement. "He will bless the house of Israel. He will bless the house of Aaron. He will bless those who fear the Lord, small and great alike." So the two stanzas together are saying this: if you trust Him, you really commit your way unto the Lord, you'll find that He is a God rich in blessing.

Now there is one new idea in that stanza that I've just read, and that is the idea that the blessing is for small and great alike. You see, the very last phrase. And in case we're inclined to miss it, the very next verse elaborates because it says, "The Lord make you increase both you and your children." Both adults and children. It's really saying that God's blessing is for you whoever you may be. It doesn't make any difference whether you're rich or poor, whether you're advantaged or disadvantaged, whether you're a Jew or a Gentile, whatever it is, whatever background you have, whatever class of life you come from, God will bless you if you trust Him. Now it's true in the matter of salvation. Anyone who comes to Jesus Christ will be saved. That's the kind of invitation He gave. He said, "Come to me all who are weary and are heavy laden, and I'll give you rest." He opened the gates wide, so whoever you may be, you'll find that God will bless you with salvation if you'll cease trusting to your own works and trust what God has done in Jesus Christ for you. Do you understand what He's done, why Jesus came to earth all those thousands of years ago? He came to die. The Bible says that death is the penalty for sin. He came to die in your place. Well, if you'll trust Him for that, believing that He is the Savior and He died in your place, then you'll find the fullness of salvation whoever you may be.

It's the same for the Christian life. You don't have to be a brilliant person to get on in the Christian life. You don't have to have money to get on in the Christian life. As a matter of fact, money may even be a hardship, and so may intellect. Because the calling to follow after Jesus Christ is for everybody. When He called disciples, He didn't call them from among the scribes and the Pharisees or the nobility of the land. He called fishermen and tax collectors, and that's the way He calls today. You say, "Yeah, but I'm not smart enough really to live a strong Christian life." Well, the Bible has an answer for that. It says if you ask wisdom, ask of God who gives to all people liberally and it'll be given you. You say, "Yeah, but I'm not sure that I can really handle it." Listen, Proverbs 3:5 and 6: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He'll make your paths straight." That's for you whoever you may be, small and great alike, old, young, whatever.

It's also true for you in the hour of your death. God will bless you then if you're trusting Him. How could it be that the one who is faithful to His people in the matter of salvation and faithful to them in the living and growing in the Christian life should abandon them in death? Bible says, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints." It's the very next Psalm. We're going to come to it in time. You can trust Him in that hour whoever you may be.

So we come to the very end. And I've been asking a series of questions here. The question I ask as we come to these last verses is this: so what should our response to God be? Well, we've already seen one of them. Since God is powerful and the idols are nothing and people are disappointing and we are sinful and weak, we should obviously trust God. That's one thing we're talking about. But two other things are brought in here at the end. First, that we should be faithful stewards of all that God has given us, and second, that we should praise Him constantly.

Now this matter of being faithful stewards is what verse 16 is all about. It says, "The highest heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth He has given to man." Now that doesn't mean that God has abandoned the earth, let us do with it what we want, and He's just going to hang on to heaven. Not talking about that at all. It's saying God is the creator of the heavens and the earth. He owns it all, but He has entrusted the earth to human beings. It goes back to the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were made stewards, vice-regents of the creation for God, and there's a sense in which that continues today for us even in our sin. Now we can do different things with the material world. We can use it to enrich ourselves, we can abuse it as something that is not worthy of our care, or we can receive it and our share of it as the stewards of God and use it to bring blessing to others and honor Him.

There was a man who lived in England in the days of Queen Elizabeth. His name was Lord Burghley. He was the chief statesman in England in those days, and he was a very godly man. He was a great steward of the Psalm, a great student of the Psalms. And when he came to die, he wrote out a will that quoted this particular verse. And I want to read you just what he wrote. His will is dated October the 20th, 1579. It disposed of his lands and wealth in a manner that he hoped, so he said, and here's the quote, "shall not offend God, the giver of all these things to me, considering as it is said in the Psalm, 'The whole heavens are the Lord's and the earth He has given to the children of men.'" What he meant is that during his lifetime, he had used the resources that God had given him recognizing that he was God's stewards, and to use them in a good way, and when he died, he wanted his wealth to be used in the same way. It's great instruction for those who are considering how to handle estates today.

And then finally, the very last verses deal with praising God. Praising Him as the wonderful, strong, reliable, and benevolent God He is and letting other people know about it. And not only now, it says, but as long as we live, because God's people are to extol Him as it says forevermore. Now these last words are a challenge. "It is 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 not an argument against immortality as if those who die are extinguished or something like that. It's just the obvious observation that when people die, they don't talk anymore. And so they don't praise God. And so if on this earth God is going to get praise, it's going to have to be from those of us who are living. And so the challenge comes to us. God has blessed us. We've trusted. We've found it to be true. Are we going to tell other people about it? It takes me back to Agincourt again. Those on the English side who survived the battle recognized that God had given them the victory. And so they knelt there in the mud and they praised Him for it. "Not to us, oh Lord, but to thy name be the glory." And that's our great challenge and opportunity as Christian people. Do we do it? We probably never have a greater opportunity to do it than we do right now at this Christmas season. Charles Haddon Spurgeon wrote, "Though the dead cannot, the wicked will not, and the careless do not praise God, we will shout Hallelujah." And that's the way the Psalm ends: "Praise the Lord." Let's pray.

Our Father, we thank you for your goodness to us. We thank you that you are a wonderful God. We acknowledge it. Every good gift comes from you. Nothing that we have of any value at all has come from any other source. And so we say not to us, oh Lord, not to us, but to your name alone be the glory. And from the depths of our hearts, we say, "Praise the Lord." Amen.