May God arise, may his enemies be scattered;
may his foes flee before him.
2 May you blow them away like smoke—
as wax melts before the fire,
may the wicked perish before God.
3 But may the righteous be glad
and rejoice before God;
may they be happy and joyful.
4 Sing to God, sing in praise of his name,
extol him who rides on the clouds;
rejoice before him—his name is the Lord.
5 A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows,
is God in his holy dwelling.
6 God sets the lonely in families,
he leads out the prisoners with singing;
but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.
7 When you, God, went out before your people,
when you marched through the wilderness,
8 the earth shook, the heavens poured down rain,
before God, the One of Sinai,
before God, the God of Israel.
9 You gave abundant showers, O God;
you refreshed your weary inheritance.
10 Your people settled in it,
and from your bounty, God, you provided for the poor.
11 The Lord announces the word,
and the women who proclaim it are a mighty throng:
12 “Kings and armies flee in haste;
the women at home divide the plunder.
13 Even while you sleep among the sheep pens,
the wings of my dove are sheathed with silver,
its feathers with shining gold.”
14 When the Almighty scattered the kings in the land,
it was like snow fallen on Mount Zalmon.
15 Mount Bashan, majestic mountain,
Mount Bashan, rugged mountain,
16 why gaze in envy, you rugged mountain,
at the mountain where God chooses to reign,
where the Lord himself will dwell forever?
17 The chariots of God are tens of thousands
and thousands of thousands;
the Lord has come from Sinai into his sanctuary.
18 When you ascended on high,
you took many captives;
you received gifts from people,
even from the rebellious—
that you, Lord God, might dwell there.
19 Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior,
who daily bears our burdens.
20 Our God is a God who saves;
from the Sovereign Lord comes escape from death.
21 Surely God will crush the heads of his enemies,
the hairy crowns of those who go on in their sins.
22 The Lord says, “I will bring them from Bashan;
I will bring them from the depths of the sea,
23 that your feet may wade in the blood of your foes,
while the tongues of your dogs have their share.”
24 Your procession, God, has come into view,
the procession of my God and King into the sanctuary.
25 In front are the singers, after them the musicians;
with them are the young women playing the timbrels.
26 Praise God in the great congregation;
praise the Lord in the assembly of Israel.
27 There is the little tribe of Benjamin, leading them,
there the great throng of Judah’s princes,
and there the princes of Zebulun and of Naphtali.
28 Summon your power, God;
show us your strength, our God, as you have done before.
29 Because of your temple at Jerusalem
kings will bring you gifts.
30 Rebuke the beast among the reeds,
the herd of bulls among the calves of the nations.
Humbled, may the beast bring bars of silver.
Scatter the nations who delight in war.
31 Envoys will come from Egypt;
Cush will submit herself to God.
32 Sing to God, you kingdoms of the earth,
sing praise to the Lord,
33 to him who rides across the highest heavens, the ancient heavens,
who thunders with mighty voice.
34 Proclaim the power of God,
whose majesty is over Israel,
whose power is in the heavens.
35 You, God, are awesome in your sanctuary;
the God of Israel gives power and strength to his people.
Praise be to God!
Some Psalms are addressed to the life of the individual believer. They speak to his or her joy in the Lord, confidence in his promises, struggle with doubt, and so on, the issues that each of us face. But many other psalms address a much larger horizon, the church of God, the entire world, its history and its future. These are psalms that make your hair stand on end. In them we still find the mercies of the Lord, but right next to them, are the sterner themes of divine sovereignty, God’s justice and judgment, and the destruction of his enemies.
Such a psalm is Psalm 68.
Such psalms are often longer and from these longer psalms comes the longstanding practice in Protestant psalm-singing of singing just portions of a psalm in worship. There are a number of psalms that, were they to be sung in their entirety, the singing would take fifteen minutes or more.
The Psalm presents the Lord as a conquering hero, though one who cares for the needs of his people. Paul, in Ephesians 4:8-11 cites v. 18 as a way of describing Christ’s ascension to heaven.
The psalm is divided into four distinct sections.
There is a prologue or introduction in verses 1-6 and an epilogue or conclusion in vv. 32-35. The two central sections of the Psalm survey, first, God’s victorious march from Sinai to Jerusalem – that is the history of Israel’s redemption up to David’s time (vv. 7-18) – and, second, “the power and majesty of his regime seen in the ascendancy of his people and the flow of worshippers and vassals to his footstool” (vv. 9-31). It is both a history and a prophecy of salvation!
All of the Psalms have their place in the history of Christian life and devotion through the ages. But it is particularly true of this psalm. Even before the Reformation, before anyone had begun to translate the Psalms into metrical verses, the 68th psalm was chanted by Savonarola and his fellow Dominicans as they marched to the grand piazza of Florence where they were to meet their trial by fire.
The year was 1497. The Italian Reformer’s preaching had been more than the corrupt Roman establishment could bear and they condemned the good man to death. And he met his death with the strength that only faith, and faith sustained by such a psalm as the 68th, can supply.
But, a few decades later, when the Reformation broke over the church the same psalm sustained the legions of Christians who were now exposed to suffering and persecution simply for advocating a return to a biblical faith.
And the 68th played its great role in strengthening their faith as well. The psalm was to become known, especially as a result of its use by the French Huguenots, as The Protestant Psalm of Battles. Listen to this from one scholar of the Calvinist Reformation, that is, in particular the Reformation in French and English-speaking Europe.
“The Calvinist Reformers were led by a militant aristocracy and financed by a wealthy bourgeoisie. They put up long and frequently successful battles. Yet the leadership and finance could not have won the day had the individual Calvinists not possessed, to quote Cromwell, ‘a conscience of what they were doing.’ In many cases, they won their battles or retrieved those they had lost, not through generalship nor through greater economic power, but because of superior morale. In building up and maintaining this morale, the battle hymns of the Psalter played a conspicuous part.”
The story goes that the authorities were so unnerved by the confident singing of Psalm 68 by the Protestant party that they outlawed it. Public singing has often been a means of carrying a message into the streets and stamping it upon the public consciousness. And so, it was in the Reformation. It was a singing movement and what was sung was the Psalms.
In v. 19: “God daily bears us up.” We have burdens and God sustains us under them until the day of consummation comes when there will be no more burdens to bear! In other words, we find ourselves, in this psalm, placed between the great demonstrations of God’s grace and power in the past and the certain victory that is coming.
No wonder that it was this psalm that nerved God’s people to withstand the opposition they faced in the days of the Reformation! But the lessons of this great psalm are as necessary for us as they were for the Huguenots of the 16th and 17th centuries.
We too find ourselves in the same place they found themselves, similar are our circumstances. For us today as well the consummation of the kingdom has not yet arrived, and the demonstration of God’s future reign is still very much hidden. Other Christians around the world find it easier than we do to acknowledge this and to reckon with it day by day.
Theirs is often a more lively faith than ours in the coming of the kingdom of God. We are too comfortable. We don’t ache for the coming of the kingdom in the same way Christians do in parts of the world where the church and individual Christians are oppressed.
In our circles we can even talk almost triumphantly about the creation mandate and the transformation of culture, as if we actually had some influence in the culture and as if the culture were actually being transformed in explicitly Christian ways.
Nowadays, we need a sense of humor, the ability to laugh at ourselves. We Christians have very little influence in the culture and the culture is rapidly removing from itself every vestige of Christian conviction…we are Christ haunted at best. There can even appear to be a certain arrogance on display, when people who have little or no influence in the culture argue among themselves about what they would do to transform it.
To talk about transforming a culture that is going to hell in a handbasket is, I suppose, a way to compensate for the miserable irrelevance of the evangelical church in Western culture. It is a temptation to which American Christians are particularly susceptible, because it was not so long ago that the culture did pay attention to the viewpoint of evangelical Christianity and because, as Americans, we are not used to getting so thoroughly whipped.
But it is for us to remember verse 18, which describes our present reality: God daily bears us up! Some Christians do not seem to realize that Christ’s eventual triumph in the world does not mean that Christians in the meantime do not have to travel the way of the cross. Eventual victory does not mean that faithfulness to the Lord now is not likely to mean suffering and marginalization rather than influence and success!
Prayer: Father, I know that I am not in control and that I should humbly and joyfully bow before You as the One who controls all things and yet in my pride I feel as though my will should always be done, in my timing as I see fit. Forgive my arrogance. Help me to work hard at what you have set before me, but to know that I do not know the answer to all things, or even to most things and therefore to live trusting that You DO know all things. Give my faith, strength to boldly go where You send and DO what You have set before me, through Jesus Christ my Lord, Amen.
Hymn: Sanctus
