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And I simply hope that next week you have brighter and warmer weather for groomsports than you have tonight here. You have given me the fifth book of the Psalms, you remember, to comment on in two Wednesday evenings. And last week we talked about some psalms in the fifth book that were prophecies of the Lord Jesus. And we noticed in particular that they were prophecies about the end part of his life. Psalm one hundred and nine reminded us of his betrayal by Judas. Psalm one hundred and ten reminded us how our blessed Lord left heaven, came down here on earth, and was, uh, crucified, but God raised him again from the dead and set him at his right hand on the very throne of God. And so Psalm one hundred and ten points us forward, likewise, to the time when God will make the very enemies of the Lord Jesus the footstool of his feet. Until then, he is seated at the right hand of God, waiting for his second coming. Then we notice in Psalm one hundred and eighteen another prophecy of the Lord Jesus, that he was the stone rejected by the builders, but God raised him from the dead, and he has become the headstone of the corner. So in both those Psalms, one hundred and 118, while they remind us of our Lord's rejection, they put their emphasis very, uh, solidly on our Lord's triumphal resurrection and ascension and his present position of glory and his eventual coming again. We noticed at the end that when Psalm one hundred and eighteen is quoted in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter four, Peter standing before the Sanhedrin reminds the chief priests that the stone that they have rejected, the same is to be the head of the corner. We noticed last week how that that, uh, incident in Acts chapter four is in the context of Peter's great sermon to the crowd, that this same Jesus, God has made him Lord and Christ, one day, through him, all things that ever the prophets spoke of are going to be restored. Heaven must receive him until his enemies then are made the footstool of his feet, and all things that the prophets ever spoke of are going to be restored. Now, this week, I don't propose to read any particular reading to start with, but I'm going to ask you to open your Bibles at Psalm one hundred and seven, the first Psalm in the fifth book, and we shall just look through briefly through, as brief as we can, that is, briefly through book five, and pick out as we go some of the major themes of this particular book. We shall not quote every psalm, of course, nor every theme. Many, many themes in this particular book of Psalms, but we shall notice one or two or three or four of the major themes that are to be found in this book five, and in particular the major groupings of the Psalms. And our first theme we shall find is as follows. We meet it in Psalm one hundred and seven. It is the theme of God's regathering of his people from their sad experience of exile. Notice that stated, will you, with me in Psalm one hundred and seven and the first, uh, uh, verses. Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endureth forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the adversary, and gathered them out of the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south. They wandered in the wilderness in the desert way. They found no city of habitation. Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them. Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them out of their distresses. He led them also by a straight way that they may go, might go to a city of habitation. Oh, that men would praise the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the children of men, for he satisfieth the longing soul, and the hungry soul he filleth with good. So that first part of the Psalm is about God's regathering of his people from their exile. Notice verse three again. And he gathered them out of the lands, in the plural, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south. This is Israel remembering how once they had been scattered abroad in various foreign countries, and, uh, God had delivered them and brought them back to their land of Israel and to their capital city, Jerusalem. Let us think for a while then about that business of the exile. What a tremendous shock it was for the people of God, when because of their sins, God had allowed the heathen armies to come up and destroy Jerusalem and take his people away. The Assyrians came first and took them to Assyria, then the Babylonians came up and took them to Babylon, and then in later years Alexander the Great came and took a lot of them to Egypt. And the Israelites were scattered abroad among the heathen nations because of their sin against God. And that was a terrible shock. And then let's remember the bitter suffering that they endured, many of them, in those far-off countries. Some of them we know, of course, like Daniel, rose to high office in the Gentile government. Others of them in Egypt under Alexander rose to be generals in the army. But for the most part, and particularly at the first, the experience of exile had meant slavery, the loss of their home, the loss of their home country, and many a privation. It had been a very bitter experience. We shall meet one of those psalms later on. Well, let's meet it now, shall we? To see something of the terrible bitterness of the people that they had experienced in exile. Psalm one hundred and thirty seven, if you will. Let's look at it. Another of the psalms that talks about the exile. By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. Upon the willows in the midst thereof we hanged up our hearts. For there they that led us captive required of us songs, and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. Let my tongue cleave to the root of my mouth if I remember thee not, if I prefer not Jerusalem above my cheap joy. Remember, O Lord, against the children of Israel the day of Jerusalem, who said, raise it, raise it, even to the foundation thereof. O daughter of Babylon, that art to be destroyed, happy shall he be that rewardeth thee as thou hast served. Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the rock. And in this psalm, we learn something of the bitterness that the exiles experience. They're weeping, verse one. And they couldn't sing anymore, so their songs are gone, verse two. And then not only the bitterness of being slaves and strangers in a foreign land, but the mockery. When the Gentiles came round and mocked them as Jews. Go on, sing us one of your songs to the Lord. Go on. You worship the Lord, don't you? How did he let you get taken captive and brought down here? Oh, what a nonsense your religion is. Go on, sing us a psalm of the Lord. The terrible bitterness. Why had God allowed them to be taken captive? And now their enemies are mocking them in their face. Because of their disobedience of the Lord, the Lord had had to allow them to be disciplined. How could they explain that to their pagan captors down there in exile? And those of us who know what it is to be mocked by our, uh, fellows at the, uh, fellow workmen and fellow workwomen at work, mocked for our faith, will perhaps begin to see the some of the bitterness of these people who are now being dragged away from home, and the enemy would say your God wasn't strong enough to protect you. And then the homesickness, longing for home in a strange land. You know what it is like to go on holiday, isn't it? Uh, nice to try the dishes of the foreign food sometimes. You like that kind of things, so fish and chips or what have you, but sooner or later they will come, oh, I would like to be home again. This is a foreign country I'm in, all to be home. Yes. But these were exiles, and they couldn't go home. And Jerusalem would dwell in their mind, uh, longing for home. And then as they thought of home, the memory of the terrible days, uh, when the enemy had come flooding into Jerusalem and the Jews had seen them destroy it. And their spiteful enemies round Edom had been egging on the enemy, go on saying, go on, raise it, knock it down. A terrible flood of memories. A dream about it, they'd have nightmares about it. The time when the enemy chariots and horses and armor came in and razed Jerusalem to the ground. And then the fearful feelings of injustice that rankled in their breast. Some of them perhaps, a real sense of injustice, praying to God that God would deal with his enemies and with their enemies, Babylon. And then a very sorry verse, verse nine. For the people that wrote the Psalms weren't Christians, were they? They were Jews. And they didn't know, they hadn't heard of our Lord who prayed for his enemies. He was yet to be born. And now, instead of praying for their enemies, they're praying down God's judgment on them. And wanting to see somebody get hold of the little babes and smash their skulls in on the rock to get their revenge on their enemies. It all adds up to an exceedingly bitter experience. Brought on to Israel because of Israel's sin. And let's go back to Psalm one hundred and seven then. By this time, Israel has been brought back from exile, and now this is a lovely psalm celebrating God's kindness in bringing them back. And it's a lovely psalm to begin this book with, the last book of the Psalms that reminds us that God is the God who restores his people, and if they will repent, will bring them back again. Remember, for instance, will you, that when Solomon built the temple in Jerusalem, you read of it in one Kings chapter six to eight— when the temple was re- was built and finished, Solomon had a great meeting for prayer and praise in the temple courts. And he prayed to God in this fashion, O God, wherever your people get to, if they turn again and pray towards this house, then hear thou in heaven and bring them back again. Whether their sin has led to famine, then God have mercy on them. If their sin has led to ghastly and mildew, then God forgive them when they repent and pray towards this house. If they've sinned against thee and you've had to scatter them to the far ends of the earth, if they turn and pray towards thee to this house, then hear thou in thy heaven and forgive them and bring them back again. So had Solomon prayed at the inauguration of the temple. And here is a psalm that records God's faithfulness to his promises and his answer to his people's prayers, in spite of their sins that had brought upon them the discipline of exile, now God is bringing them back. And they're back in their land, and Jerusalem is in their, uh, control, and they got the temple. And as presently we shall see from this book of Psalms, year by year they're able to go up and keep the feasts of the Lord in the temple at Jerusalem. And we learn from it, don't we? Who of us has not wandered in heart since we've known the Lord and got ourselves into all sorts of scrapes and difficulties? And sometimes our testimony among our work fellows, amongst the unconverted, hasn't been too good. And the unconverted have mocked the gospel because of our misdeeds. And God has had to allow us to suffer. And we've felt, uh, that somehow we've gone astray, we've lost out. We've got a long way away from the Lord. The psalm is here to remind us not only of Israel's experience, how he brought them back, but God is a God of new beginnings. He will bring us back too, if we repent. And he's there to remind Israel, now again, scattered among the nations for many centuries and trying to get their land back again, that one day the Savior will come, and he will restore Israel. So this, uh, book five begins with the praise of God as the one who regathers his people from exile. And as that psalm continues, it, um, describes to us a number of different situations in ordinary daily life where God has, in from time to time, delivered people who got themselves into trouble. Look at verses ten to sixteen. Such as sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, being bound in affliction and iron, because they rebelled against the words of God and condemned the counsel of the Most High. Therefore he brought down their heart with labor. They fell down, and there was none to help. Here were men, because of their rebellion against the word of God, got themselves in prison. And then, in God's mercy, he brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death and break their bands in sunder. Oh, that men would praise the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the children of men, for he has broken the gates of brass and cut the bars of iron asunder. So now here comes an example of God's deliverance. When men sin and rebel, they got themselves into prison, bound, and sat in darkness and in fear. And then God in his mercy delivered them and broke their bands and set them free. And doubtless God has done that literally for men from time to time over the centuries. Or the next of the next stanza, verse uh seventeen onward, fools because of their transgression and because of their iniquities are afflicted, their soul abhorreth all manner of meat, and they draw near unto the gates of death. Here are men because of their sin suffer illness. And this first lot suffer imprisonment because of their rebellion against God's law, and the second crowd in their folly disobey God's word, and God brings on them sickness so that they no longer want their food, and they come near to death. And then God, in his mercy, when they repent, heals them of their sickness. So deliverance from prison, now healing from sickness. And then from verse twenty three onward, the psalmist pictures seamen that go down to the sea, and he doesn't say it is their fault this time. It's simply one of life's experiences, and the seamen who go down to the sea in ships now and again come across tremendous storms and are in fear of perishing because of their danger and difficulty on the sea. God in his mercy, delivers them and brings a great calm. And then from verse thirty three onward, the psalmist thinks of people who are in the land, all right, but they're farmers, and they're depending on the rain and on the water to irrigate their farms to get a living, and presently there comes a terrible drought. You'll see. And, uh, because of men's wickedness, God has to put his hand on their farms, and with the drought comes hunger. But then again, God is merciful and restores them and turns the wilderness into pools of water. And finally, people, uh, are prospering on their farms when presently the political conditions change, and they come under oppression by evil rulers that make their lives a misery, and then God, uh, delivers them. So this psalm started to talk about God's deliverance of his people from exile, and then it goes on to describe these different situations. Dis- disobedience leading to prison, and God delivers them. Disobedience leading to sickness, and then God heals. Men going down to the sea in ships and coming to a terrible storm, and then God delivers them and makes it calm. Farmers at work, and then there comes a terrible drought because of men's sin, and then God has mercy and sends them rain. Finally, people brought under oppression by evil rulers, and God has mercy on the poor and delivers them. There are some scholars who say, but look, these other instances, prison and sickness and storm and a drought and oppression. Well, they can have happened to many people, and they have known God's deliverance, but what the psalmist is doing is using these as pictures of what the exile was like. And in order to help us feel what the exile was like to God's people when they suffered it, the psalmist used these other instances as pictures. You know, he's saying, say some scholars, that exile was like being imprisoned, in bondage. Well, it was very often, for they were chained as slaves. And our sin against God, therefore, took us into exile and into bondage. But when God brought us back, oh, in his mercy, he broke our bands and set us free. Exile was like being ill because of our disobedience to God. We suffered illness and sickness and were near to death. That could often happen to literal exiles. Look at the Argentinians, aren't the Falklands nearly dead, aren't they, some of the poor old boys? Uh, it can happen to exile. And again, exile was like a terrible storm. We were living at peace in our homes in Palestine when the enemy came, and it was like a colossal great storm, and we were engulfed, and then God brought us out into calm waters again. And exile was like a drought and exile was like, uh, and it was a real oppression, and God delivered it, delivered, delivered us. I must leave you to make up your mind whether you think that these little pictures of prison and sickness and storm and drought and oppression are meant to be pictures of what Israel's exile was like, out of which God delivered them. But as I think of the Psalm, and I think of ourselves, how vividly those pictures can speak to us, can't they? Of what disobedience to God can bring us to. Can speak to the unconverted. Disobedience to the word of God lands men up in prison, not always in the crumbling. Huh. Perhaps there's more out of that than ought to be in. But sin against God will bring men to prison, spiritual prison, chained with the guilt of sin. Sin. And oh, what a wonderful God God is. He is the God of forgiveness. You know what forgiveness means? One of the words for forgiveness in the New Testament simply means the releasing of your chains, to let you go. For guilt is like a chain around one's hands and feet and around one conscious, keeping one in prison. And if those chains are never removed by the forgiveness of God, then there must await the unconverted an eternal prison, the chains of darkness. All the marvelous mercy of God, that when men repent, there is forgiveness, there is release from the prison house of sin. It speaks to believer and unbeliever as well, doesn't it? Sin, you know, is a sickness. And in our unconverted days, we are, like Isaiah said, there's no soundness in us from the crown of the head to the, to the sole of the foot. There's nothing but wounds and bruises and putrisi- putrefying sores. Sin is a sickness. Thank God for his mercy. He heals us. By his stripes we were healed. Yes, and uh, sometimes, you know, for believers, we could apply it at another level, couldn't we? One Corinthians eleven reminds us as believers that we ought to judge ourselves, and if we judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But if we grow careless as believers and we don't judge ourselves and seek the Lord's forgiveness, then the Lord may have to discipline us, and one of his disciplines can be allowing sickness in our lives, which he allows for our good to bring us to our senses. And if we repent, then he proves himself again to us, our healer. And then take the storm, whether you think the storm is here a literal storm, and God is saving literal sailors, or whether you think it was a picture of what the exile was like, it was a rough passage, it was a storm in Israel's national experience. It remains true, doesn't it, for us, that sometimes in life, we come across a violent storm, and we sail very rough seas, and we think every minute's going to be the end of us, and that we're going to get swallowed up and sent to the bottom. Like those disciples did on the lake in a very literal storm, and thought the Lord didn't care, and they were about to perish and go down and founder on the Sea of Galilee. Oh, how many storms some of us have been through. And prove God that he can turn the raging billows into a calm and bring us through. And so with the other two, drought and oppression. These likewise can we can use, can we not? Certainly of Israel's exile, certainly of our own spiritual experience. Oh, how many a man, unconverted man, because of his disobedience to God, has in the end found life like the prodigal found it, so hungry that he fame would have filled his belly with the s- husks that the swine did eat. Life turned into an unsatisfying, uh, desert. And life turning itself into an oppression, with our own sinful ways becoming our master. From these things, then God stands waiting to deliver, and Psalm one hundred and seven is a psalm of great praise on the lips of men and women who have found deliverance through repentance and the mercy of God. But then, if then the book opens, book 5 opens with this psalm on God's regathering of his people from exile, just turn over quickly at Psalm one hundred and nine again, will you? In this first group of Psalms that opens with God's bringing back of his people from exile, we have Psalm one hundred and nine. We read that last week, we won't read it again. But verse 8 is taken by the New Testament and referred to Judas. So Psalm one hundred and nine reminds us how Judas sold our Lord for thirty pieces of silver. Now I'm going to ask you to think historically. I don't know, I don't know that anybody else does. Nobody knows exactly when Psalm one hundred um and seven was written, but it must have been written after the exile, mustn't it, when God had brought them back out of the many different countries whither they were dispersed, and he brought them back into the land, and you might have said to yourself, well, now they'll have learned their lesson. Now at last, perhaps they'll obey the Lord with all that wealth of experience behind them of what sin leads to and what disobeying God's word leads to. Now at length they've been brought back, the nation will never forget it, and as they would sing this psalm, perhaps in the temple or on religious feast days or on the Sabbath, with all the memory of the past, what happens when people disobey? They wouldn't sin again. What a sad story it is, that Israel, having sung that psalm thousands of times, went back again into sin and betrayed their own Messiah and crucified him. We never seem to learn, do we? How strange that is. With all the lessons of the centuries, that sin lands you into bondage, and sin lands you into sickness, and sin lands you into storm, and sin lands you into famine, and sin lands you into oppression. Let me go and do it again. What a terrible thing disobedience to God is. So that Israel, having come back out of exile and back into a land, eventually fell into such grievous sin as they betrayed Messiah and crucified him. How but then Psalm one hundred and ten that we read last week? What a lovely Psalm to be in this kind of a context, and in spite of it, Israel had done the very worst thing they could do and crucified their own Messiah. God raised him from the dead and set him at his own right hand in glory, and has said to him, sit at my right hand until I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet. And one day Christ shall reign supreme, and every disobedience will be put down, and every enemy put beneath his triumphant. When at last every enemy is put down, one of the enemies that I shall be delighted to see put finally under his feet, won't you? Is my own disobedience. How about you? When Christ shall finally triumph over every enemy, over every disobedience. Now let's go to Psalm one hundred and thirteen, Look at another little group of Psalms in this book five. And at first from that story of the bringing back of the people from, uh, exile, just for a moment at any rate. And Psalms one hundred and thirteen through to the end of Psalm one hundred and eighteen, an interesting collection because among the Jews they are styled the Egyptian Hallel, H-A-double-L-E-L. Hallel is simply praise in Hebrew, and this is called the Egyptian praise. And the reason why these, this little collection, Psalms one hundred and 18 are grouped together is because these were the psalms that the Jews over many, many, many years used to sing and still do at Passover time. So whenever the Jews got together at Passover and they were celebrating the Passover feast and at the roast lamb and the bitter herbs, then they would sing these psalms. They would sing, uh, not all of them at once. They sang one hundred and 114 before the meal, before the second cup, for they had a number of cups at the Passover meal. And then after the meal, when the fourth cup in the Passover ceremony was about to be drunken, then they would sing Psalm one hundred and 18. Called the Egyptian Hallel then, this collection, because year after year for centuries sung by the Jews at their Passover celebrations. Interesting because the Gospels tell us that when the Lord Jesus kept the Passover for the last time with his disciples in the upper room, just before they finished, they sang a hymn and went out. And in all probability, it was this Egyptian Hallel, and in particular the last of the Psalms, one hundred and eighteen. our Lord sang probably in the upper room with his disciples just before he went out to Calvary. So let's think about this, uh, this little group of Psalms, the Egyptian halle. The kind of thing Israel would think of when they were celebrating Passover. Interestingly enough, only Psalm one hundred and fourteen actually talks of Israel's deliverance out of Egypt. You'll see. Other psalms talk of other deliverances. Because, as you'll see, as the Israelites year after year after year celebrated the Passover, they wouldn't merely look down to the first deliverance from Egypt. They would look through the centuries at other deliverances and recall them as well. And then people would think about their own personal experience to- of deliverance, how God had intervened in their own personal lives and delivered them from this, that, and the other. So they would sing a number of different psalms, and all through them here and there will be this theme of deliverance. But let's take up Psalm one hundred and fifteen, shall we? What did they think about particularly in God's deliverances? Well, look at verse, uh, uh, one and two. Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory for thy mercy and for thy truth's sake. Wherefore should the nations say, but where is now their God? But our God is in the heavens. He has done whatsoever he pleased. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have mouths, but they speak not. Eyes have they, but they see not. They have ears, but they hear not. Noses have they, but they smell not. They have hands, but they handle not. Feet have they, but they walk not, neither speak they through their throat. They that make them shall be like unto them, yea, every one that trusteth in them. O Israel, trust thou in the Lord, he is their help and their shield. O house of Aaron, trust you in the Lord, he is their help and their shield. Ye that fear the Lord, trust the Lord, for he is their help and their shield. The Lord has been mindful of us. He will bless us. He will bless the house of Israel. He will bless the house of Aaron. He will bless them that fear the Lord, both small and great. The Lord increase you more and more, you and your children. Blessed are ye of the Lord which made heaven and earth. The heavens are the heavens of the Lord, but the earth hath he given to the children of men. The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence, but we will bless the Lord from this time forth and evermore. So here in this group of psalms that celebrate and recall God's deliverance of the people from Egypt, notice this particular emphasis. What has deliverance meant to them? Whether it's the deliverance from Egypt or since those days, the deliverance from exile. What have they learned from their experience? They learned the difference between the true and the living God and the dead idols of the pagan nations around. They've learned, I repeat, the difference between the living God and the dead, lifeless gods of the nations around them. So that deliverance for the Israelites as he kept the Passover wasn't merely just a historical thing way down there. God once upon a time brought our fathers out of Egypt, and he brought them into the Promised Land. Now they are singing of the reality of the living God that they have proved as the people whom God has delivered. Now they're very interesting. For you see, it's Israel, many a Passover, sang this hallelu. The difference between the living God and the idols. Sometimes happened, but it was just words they sang, wasn't it? Do you remember the Gospel of John tells us? In its chapter two, it begins to tell us how there was a feast of the Jews called the Passover, and Jesus went up into Jerusalem. Yeah? And he found in the temple. What did he find? People singing the wonderful reality of the living God as distinct from the dead idols. No, God says he found in the temple those that sold oxen and dove sitting. And he got a core of whips, and he toughed them out and said, make not my father's house a house of merchandise, made it a veritable, veritable den of robbers. Turned them all out. He came around saying, well, what sign do you show? By what authority do you, uh, do these things? He said, uh, well, if you want to know, destroy this temple and I'll raise it up again in three days. They thought he'd gone cranky. They said, you know, forty and seven years was this temple in building, and will you raise it up again in three days? But he was speaking of the resurrection of his body. They had no clue what he meant. The power of the living God. The resurrecting power of God. They didn't know anything about him. It is, wasn't it? Do you know, when their forefathers had first been delivered from Egypt and they got out into the wilderness, God had said to them, now I wonder, would you, would you, uh, give me gold and silver and some gems and some, uh, uh, wood and some cloth and some wool and make me a tabernacle? And the people had brought the gold and the silver and the precious stones and the wood and the wool and the leather, and they brought so much to make God's house that Moses had to tell him to stop. Somehow or other, when the Lord went to Jerusalem to keep the Passover, the only way they could keep the old temple going was to have a few bazaars and make a lot of money and sell a lot of bric-a-brac and charge the pilgrims exorbitant prices for the sheep and the oxen and the sacrifices and this, that, and power. Oh dear, what had happened? Why the difference between the early people who, when they had been delivered out of Egypt, gave willingly, and the people now with their colossal great temple, but scrounging all the money they can to keep the temple. And the answer is, isn't it? While they were celebrating the Passover in their own lives, they had no experience of the power of the living God. Yes? For you, just you listen. Says John, while our Lord was in Jerusalem, there came to him the ruler of the Jews, which wasn't surprising because he lived there, and his name was Nicodemus. Said our Lord Nicodemus, born again. I don't know what you're talking about, born again. What do you mean born again? Said our Lord, I mean being born again of the Spirit of God. You don't mean anything to him. And he was a great theologian. Keeping this celebration of the Passover, the witness to the delivering power of the living God, no experience of the power of God in his own life. Sad that, isn't it? And then it could be a little message to us, couldn't it? It's easy to come to meetings, to sing hymns about redemption, to celebrate Easter, to talk of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and have no experience of the power of God in one's own life. Not to know what it is to be delivered from the power of Satan, and no experience of the new birth. So not inappropriately then, the great Hallel points out to Israel what redemption means and what is the chief lesson to be learned, the reality of the living God who can save his people, the difference between him and the idols of the heathen that are merely the works of their hands and are lifeless. One other lesson we could notice before we pass on this group of psalms, and that is what we were looking at last week in Psalm one hundred and eighteen. It's the last of the psalms in the Egyptian Hallel. Last of the psalms to be sung at Passover time. It tells in the mouth of the speaker in the Psalms of a terrible experience, verse ten: when all the nations compass the idols of the heathen that are merely the works of their hands and are lifeless. One other lesson we could notice before we pass on this group of psalms, and that is what we were looking at last week in Psalm one hundred and eighteen. It's the last of the psalms in the Egyptian Hallel. Last of the psalms to be sung at Passover time. It tells in the mouth of the speaker in the Psalms of a terrible experience, verse ten: when all the nations compassed me about. Then adds, in the name of the Lord I will cut them off. They compassed me about, yeah, they compassed me about. In the name of the Lord I will cut them off. They compass me about like bees. They're quenched as the fire of thorns. In the name of the Lord I will cut them off. Now didst thrust sore at me that I might fall, but the Lord helped me. The Lord has become my strength and song, and he has become my deliverance. That's a very interesting passage, isn't it? It figures this someone surrounded by the nations determined to destroy him, and yet the Lord, uh, delivers him. You say that's a picture of Israel. And here was Israel surrounded now by the nations again, with all the nations ter- determined to destroy Israel, and God delivers Israel. Well, so there have been many occasions like that since Israel came out of Egypt, when the Gentile nations have decided to destroy Israel, and sometimes have come very close to doing so. Hitler would have done it completely if he could. The Arab states would like to do it again now. In the coming day, the nations are going to be gathered together around Israel and try finally to obliterate her, and God will deliver Israel. That's true. There's another sense, isn't there? So we learn from the end of this psalm that these things were true of the Lord Jesus. For when he came to celebrate the last Passover that he ever celebrated on earth, and he kept it with his disciples in the upper room, and he took the final cup, and they sang Psalm one hundred and eighteen, celebrating the Passover. Then he went down to Calvary. The Jews, the Romans, and Herod, all together united to cut off and destroy him. The wonderful story of that Passover is that God, uh, intervened and delivered him, not from dying, but from death, and raised him again. And as that psalm says, the stone which the builders rejected, the same was made the head of the corner. On that great Passover day, God intervened and saved his own son from death itself and brought him out again, triumphant and victorious. Now he's been made the head of the corner. Oh, thank God for that mighty deliverance that Calvary was when God raised Jesus from the dead. And one other little detail before we go, Psalm one hundred and eighteen. will you notice the phrase, uh, verse twenty five. save now we beseech thee, O Lord, O Lord, we beseech thee, send now prosperity. Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord. We have blessed you out of the house of the Lord. The Lord is God, and he has given us life. Bind the sacrifice with cords, even out of the horns of the altar. Notice those words in verse twenty six, blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Our Lord quoted those words, didn't he? In his last days, when he went out of the temple for the last time, he said, your house is left unto you desolate. You shall not see me again until you say, blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord. What does it all mean? Well, if you look closely at Psalm 118, you'll find it's a hymn that the Jews used to sing in procession. It would appear that certain of them would come join a great procession, and they would slowly march up to the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem. And as they came near the temple, the one group would cry out, blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. And the other group would reply, we bless you in the name of the Lord. And the temple gates would open. Verse 19, open to me the gates of righteousness. I will enter. I will give thanks unto the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord. The righteous shall enter into it. I will give thanks unto thee for thy great deliverance. So as they came up to the temple, celebrating the great deliverance of God from Egypt, perhaps also from exile, and a thousand and one other deliverances, and they came up to the temple celebrating God's deliverance of Israel. And the doors would open. And as they went in, one would say, blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord, and the other would say, we bless you in the name of the Lord, and then they would take the sacrifice and celebrate the sacrifice in the temple, binding the sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar. Perhaps they celebrated that very thing at the Passover when our Lord was crucified, with all their pomp and ceremony of their procession, they rejected the only one who could deliver them, sold him to the Gentiles and tried to compass his death, and he said, you'll not see me again until you say, blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord. What did he mean? Well, whatever he meant, and however many meanings he may have included in that remark, oh, thank God for what it shall yet be. When the blessed Lord who was cast out, while they were celebrating in Jerusalem, was dying on a cross to affect the greatest of all Passovers, the deliverance of his people from sin. Celebrating God's great deliverance of Messiah from the pangs of death and raising him again, and breaking the very power of death itself. So that the stone that was rejected of the builders has become the head of the corner. Ah, yes, but one day he'll come again. And finally deliver Israel from all her foes. And when he comes, God's glorious king, and every eye shall see him, and proceeds to his temple, then indeed shall they say, blessed he that comes in the name of the Lord. This little group of psalms then, the Egyptian hallow, celebrating God's deliverance in Egypt from the exile, sung by our Lord at his great, uh, Passover sacrifice, and looking forward to the time when the exalted Lord, the keystone of God's temple, shall come again in glory and publicly be received by Israel in their temple. There follows a big psalm, and you needn't fear that we're going to read it all, not tonight, Psalm one hundred and nineteen. In fact, though it is so big, we can dismiss it in a few words. But God prints its message on our heart. Psalm one hundred and nineteen, the biggest psalm in all the book of Psalms, is a psalm in celebration of the word of God, its importance, its value, its delight. And it's no accident it is. Somebody knew what he was doing, perhaps, when he put it here. What have we been considering so far in book five? God bringing back his people from exile, into which they went because of their disobedience, and the kind of things disobedience leads to, prison and sickness and storm and drought and oppression. And we've been celebrating God's deliverance from it. And then from Psalm one hundred and thirteen on, the Egyptian Hallel, God's deliverance of his people from Egypt at Calvary and in the coming day. And what's got Psalm one hundred and nineteen to say? Well, Psalm 119's got to say that for people that have learned the folly of sin and the difficult circumstances into which disobedience can lead you, let them surely observe how vastly important is obedience to the word of God. Now, of course, Israel had always been told to obey the word, but this much can be said historically, that when through their disobedience they were taken down into exile and then eventually came back into the land, there began a period of study of the Bible, perhaps never surpassed in the whole of Judaism. Starting with people like Ezra the scribe and his careful rewriting of the manuscripts of the Bible. He was a ready scribe. And collecting the books of the Bible and carefully writing them out, and not only that, standing up and calling all the people to come and reading the law in front of them and encouraging the nation to obey the word of God. When the people came back from exile, I repeat, there was a tremendous emphasis upon the word of God. Oh, I know it slipped. And there came days of desperate apostasy. Under Antiochus Epiphanes, there were Jews in the years about from hundred and seventy BC onwards. There were Jews in Jerusalem that, uh, virtually denied the word of God and joined with the Gentiles in putting an old idol on the very altar in the temple of Jerusalem. And joined with the wicked Antiochus Epiphanes in banning the word of God. And banning obedience to it. As a result of the Maccabees wars, Israel found deliverance from that, and after that time there was an even increased emphasis on obedience to the Word of God. You will hear the people saying from Jerusalem in the books of the Maccabees to the Jews of dispersion, now look, if you want copies of the scripture, we have got new copies of the scripture here in Jerusalem, and you can come and get them from us. In those days, the people that came to be known as the Pharisees began their great and meticulous study of scripture, taught by experience the need to put God's word central in the life of the individual and central in the life of the nation. You know, we know it in our youth, don't we? The word of God is important. Then we come to see it at our conversion, I suspect. What fools we've been to waste our lives disobeying the word of God, and now we've come back to God, we've been converted, and we're going to obey his word. And heaven can't it. But thereafter, as God's people, we get a little bit careless about obeying God's word and land ourselves into all sorts of trouble individually and as church. Then let experience teach us, as it taught Israel, the value, the delight, the glory, the absolute centrality, and the fundamental importance of the word of God and obedience thereto in our lives, in our churches. Two other small groups of psalms remain. Let's cast, cast a brief light over them. When Psalm one hundred and nineteen is finished, as you might expect, Psalm one hundred and twenty begins. And, uh, from Psalm 120 through to Psalm one hundred and thirty four, you will find every psalm labeled with the same label. I don't know what it's called in your translation, but in some translations they're called a song of degrees, and in other translations, songs of ascent, or songs of going up. Then there come, after Psalm 134, two other psalms, Psalm one hundred and 136. That last Psalm, 136, is also called the Great Hallel. That is, it is called so by some Jewish authorities to distinguish it from the Egyptian Hallel that we've been talking about earlier. Psalm one hundred and thirty six is called the Great Hallel. Other Jewish authorities tell us that they called all that group from Psalm one hundred and twenty right through to Psalm one hundred and twenty six the Great Hallel. And there's nobody who can tell us which is which anyway, and so you call it what you like. Certainly Psalm one hundred and thirty six, the great praise of, psalm of praise, is the Great Hallel. Whether you extend that term to cover the songs of degrees or not, well, you, you, you, you have your choice. You follow some Jews and do it, or you follow other Jews and you don't. But the main interest is in these psalms of degrees, whatever do they mean? Again, no one can say for absolute sure what the, that title o- originally meant. Songs of degrees. Some people say the title goes back to King Hezekiah. Remember the story of King Hezekiah in two Kings twenty, how that he was ill, and he was told he was going to die. And he turned his face to the wall and was sorry for his sins and pleaded with God for, to spare his life a while. And in the end, Isaiah the prophet was sent to him with the message that God was going to spare his life and going to give him another fifteen years. And the sign of that, that God was going to spare his life, is that the sun's shadow went back so many degrees on Ahaz's sun clock. In those days, ancients had, uh, things for measuring, clocks for measuring the, uh, length of the day. Only they weren't like, uh, our clocks, they didn't have springs or anything. They were simply a series of bricks, you'll see, built up like that. There'd be a step here, and another step here, and another step here, and another step on top. And the sun's shadow moved, and you know according to which step it got to, how far the day was along. It was a kind of a sundial, and those things were called degrees, steps, if you like. And so the sign to Hezekiah that he was going to recover was that the shadow went back on the degrees, on the steps of Ahaz's clock. Other people say, no, that's, that may be true, but the Psalms are not in aid of that. The reason why they're called Psalms of degrees or Psalms of ascent is that in the temple at Jerusalem, between one port and another, number of steps, and according to the Jewish authorities, the ancient Jewish authorities, the priests or the Levites used to stand in a series on those steps, and they used to sing psalms. Unfortunately, those same Jewish authorities don't tell us what psalms they were that they sang on the steps. So we can't be sure that these were the psalms that were sang on the steps, and we can't be absolutely sure, therefore, that the steps mentioned, the songs of ascents, the songs of degrees, the songs of steps, actually were sung on the steps in the temple. But if you, if you think they were, well, you must have your choice. Two other explanations. One is that the song of ascent, the songs of goings up, as the Hebrew says, were the songs that the pilgrims used to sing in their caravans as they ga- went on their pilgrimage up to the temple to keep the major feasts of the Lord in Jerusalem. See, three times a year at least, all the men folks were supposed to appear in the temple of the Lord at Jerusalem to keep the feast of Passover or Tabernacles or whatever it was. And if you lived in northern Galilee, there being no buses or anything like that, it was either walk or go on your donkey, and it would take you three or four days or six days maybe, and what you did was to gather with the other folks and the pilgrims gradually converging on the main roads, and at night times, uh, you would gather around the old fire in the caravanserai, and you would sing, of course. Young chaps had their equivalent of their guitars. It was like going to Groomsport, I suspect, and you'll see, at night time, you used to sing, and sometimes perhaps to while away the road, uh, they sing, strung on the old guitar, and sing a few psalms on the way up. And this grew to a habit, and then certain psalms that they used to sing more frequently than others, perhaps, were collected together, and these were the psalms of ascent that you sang as you went up on the pilgrimage. And that seems to be, make some sense, doesn't it? Because if you see, Psalm one hundred and twenty is a psalm that they, they, somebody wrote about his experience amongst his enemies in Meshech and Kedar. But then as you go on, verse Hun- Psalm 122, I was glad when they said unto me, let us go up into the house of the Lord. And then comes the exciting moment when the pilgrim who have come from Meshech, or they have come from Kedar, however far distant they've come from, they've at last arrived in Jerusalem, and our feet are standing in thy streets, inside thy walls. O Jerusalem! All the excitement of coming to Jerusalem, particularly if it was the first time you were coming to Jerusalem City, actually standing inside. Oh, the excitement of coming up to Jerusalem to keep the fees, yeah? And then, of course, as you read on, you'll come across, uh, other, uh, Psalms, Psalm one hundred and twenty five, you'll see, and, uh, uh, they look at standing in Jerusalem, verse two, and they look at the mountains surrounding. Anybody that goes there still can see it. There's the mountains around about Jerusalem, so the Lord is around his people. And then finally, we could look, couldn't we, at Psalm one hundred and thirty four, where the pilgrims have got to the actual temple. Behold, bless you the Lord, all you servants of the Lord, which by night stand in the house of the Lord. Lift up your hands to the sanctuary and bless the Lord. And then the reply comes, the Lord bless thee out of Zion, even he that made heaven and earth. This is the pilgrims got right to the temple, and they're blessing the priests in the temple, and the priests in turn are blessing them. It's a likely explanation, isn't it? The pilgrims going up to Jerusalem to keep the feet. Why did God have them do that? I suspect, you know, because our human hearts easily wander from the Lord, don't they? We do so forget. And therefore, God arranged it for the Jew, that from time to time he had to leave everything and go back up, go up to Jerusalem to keep the great feast to remember Passover and what God had done. To remember, uh, keep the feast of tabernacles and to remember how God had brought his people out of Egypt, and they had lived in tents in the wilderness until they had come into the promised land. And there the people had to go up to remember God's deliverance. And then as they went up to the temple in a very special way, this is where God the Almighty deigned to presence himself. Jerusalem was the very heart of the nation, for there God was. Here was the nation's center. Here was the nation's heart. God who knows how easily we go astray and forget him, brought his people back up to remember him, to remember their redemption, and to praise the Lord. You know, we nowadays don't have a, a center on earth to come to, do we? But the Lord Jesus, before he left, he knew how our hearts would get cold and wander, yes? He said, you meet together, and where two or three are met together, there I am in the midst. And when you meet together, I want you to take bread and wine and And remember remember. what I did for you at Calvary. Does the Lord today see you, my brother, my sister, coming to meet with the Lord's people and to remember the Lord and his great redemption? You don't think it's necessary? Well, now you take a lesson from I- I- Israel. How easily we forget. And when we forget, how we wander. There's another possible meaning to the Psalms of degrees, you know, the Psalms of ascent. When Israel so sinned against God, God banished them to the nations. We- we've been thinking about that, didn't we? They're exiled. And then God brought them back again. And the Hebrew word for coming back from exile is this very word, ascent. And the first ascent was when they came out of Babylon. And if you go to Israel today and listen to the Jews very carefully talking, they'll talk about the first ascent, and they'll talk about the second. They're talking now about the way Jews are coming from all the nations of the earth and coming back to Palestine once more, to their land. It could be that these songs of degrees, not merely the songs that the pilgrims would have sung as they went from various places in Palestine up to the temple, but the songs that the pilgrims sang when they were coming from Babylon and coming from Egypt and coming from Persia and coming from Rome and coming from Greece. They've been scattered. They were the Jews of the dispersion, scattered because of the nation's sin, but at least once a year or once a lifetime, they made the effort to come back to Israel. Hope one day that God would bring the whole nation back to Israel. And they sang these songs of ascent, coming back to the heart of Judaism to remember God's redemption of his people. And as I think of that, you know, I think of ourselves. There's a lovely hymn that sometimes we sing, isn't there, of a Sunday morning when we come to remember the Lord, and we tell the Lord how we regain our long lost center through faith in Jesus' love. How easy to wander from the Lord. How important constantly to seek the Lord and to regain our center in God himself. Having said that, I'm only going to mention one more psalm, and to your great relief, I've finished. One more psalm. The Israelite came back to Jerusalem, or he came up on the feasts and celebrated God in his temple, coming back to the center and thought about redemption. When you come to Psalm one hundred and thirty nine, the psalmist has got even beyond that, hasn't he? And in Psalm one hundred and thirty nine, you'll hear the psalmist celebrating a wonderful thing that's just struck him, and he puts it down in poetry. And that is this. Do you know? Yes, of course God is in the temple of Jerusalem, but you know, God is everywhere, isn't he? You couldn't get away from the presence of God. Though you said that to heaven he's there, if you go down to hell, he's there. If I went to the far reaches of the universe, he'd be there. I could not possibly escape him. God is everywhere. You know, one of the things when we wake up to it, wherever I am, God is there. Sometimes I've forgotten it, sometimes I'm wandering from the Lord in heart. But you know, it's a lovely thing to remember. Uh, suppose I wandered in heart from the Lord. I don't have to go to Rome or Jerusalem or Canterbury or anywhere else to get right with the Lord, you know. The Lord is right here. And then the psalmist thought about it. He said, and do you know what? It's not only the Lord is right here where I am, but long before I was conscious, when I was being formed in my mother's womb even, then your hand covered me, and all my members were written in your book. Psalm has woken up to the wonderful thing of the omnipresence of God. What a gospel that is to finish on. Wherever I get to in life, God is there. However long I live, God is there. He was before sheltering me when I was conceived in the womb and when I began to grow and my members were put together and I recorded them in a book. And you know, says the psalmist, when I wake up in the morning, I am still with thee. I don't know how you will feel when you wake up in the morning. It takes me a little time. I think, where on earth am I? What day is this? Is this Friday or is this last Monday? Where am I now? Oh, oh, this is such and such a day, and oh, this is the day I have to... It's a lovely thing, isn't it, to be able to say when you wake up in the morning, Lord, you're still here. I am still with you. Not merely in the meetings, not merely in the great crowd of pilgrims, not merely in the colorful service- services in the temple, but on a cold Monday morning, when you've got to wake up and face the world once more, you could say with the psalmist, I am still with you. To be able to say it honestly, in a sense, is all that the psalms were talking about. We've regained our center and found it in God. They are just some of the themes. Thank you very much for your patience, and God use our studies to stimulate our interest.