THRU THE BIBLE EXPOSITION

Psalms: Living By Faith In God

LXVIII. God’s Triumphs On Behalf Of The Oppressed, Psalm 68:1-35

C. God’s Victory Over Continually Manipulative Foes

(Psalm 68:20-35)

Introduction: (To show the need . . .)

We face continually manipulative foes in today’s world, and many people are vulnerable to yielding to them:

(1) The evidence for this problem abounds: (a) “In 2020’s wave of political violence . . . media outlets . . . stoked the murderous riots with false narratives of widespread murders by police officers” to where “a national poll by the Skeptic Research Center . . . found that a majority of people who described themselves as ‘very liberal’ thought more than 1,000 unarmed Black men were killed by police in 2019, even though the actual number was 12, according to a database maintained by The Washington Post.” (“The left’s phony advocacy,” Republican-American, June 9, 2023, p. 6A) Then, “(a)fter a January 2022 article in New York magazine” exposed “the national BLM organization as a money-laundering machine, support for the movement quickly died down – and its newly rich founders suddenly lost their interest in activism.” (Ibid.) (b) “But that energy has been transferred to a more novel, fashionable cause for the Left: gender ideology” (Ibid.), for “(u)ntil recently, we all agreed that there were two human sexes, male and female,” but “in the past few years . . . there has been an explosion of girls ‘identifying’ as boys . . . While other countries and some U. S. states are . . . waking up from this nightmare, the Biden administration has gone all-in on gender dogma.” (Simon Hankinson, “Pride is the first deadly sin – arrogance could be the eighth,” Ibid., June 7, 2023, p. 6A) (c) However, the movement is now trending into deeper evil: “There’s evidence that the next front in the gender wars involves rebranding pedophiles as ‘minor-attracted persons.’ Examples abound: ‘Old Dominion sociology and criminology professor Allyn Walker gave an interview in which he asserted the need to destigmatize pedophiles by redefining them as ‘minor-attracted persons’ (MAPs),’ the New York Post reported last year” and “The Hartford Courant . . . on May 28 published an editorial, disguised as a news report, accusing the Family Institute of Connecticut (FIC) and CatholicVote.org of conspiracy theorizing, various ‘phobias,’ and stoking violence for flagging a Connecticut bill as another wave in the brewing pro-‘MAP’ tsunami. The bill, which passed the House and is up for a vote in the Senate, seeks to remove existing language in the state statutes precluding criminal sexual activity from anti-discrimination protections.” (“Bill’s language is insidious,” Ibid., June 3, 2023, p. 6A)

(2) Sadly, many people are yielding to such persistent manipulations: The Republican-American editorial, “Bill’s language is insidious” observed, “Activists, media personalities, and academics will slowly introduce a deeply unpopular and corrosive idea. When the idea is initially repudiated, its advocates insist it’s a fiction in the minds of the outraged. But after the idea slowly creeps into the mainstream, its advocates’ argument shifts: The idea is suddenly very real and indispensable, and its opponents are (allegedly) full of hate.” (Ibid., parentheses ours)

Need: So, we ask, “How does God direct us to respond to the efforts of persistently manipulative foes?!”

I. Psalm 68:1-35 “celebrates God’s victorious march from Egypt to Jerusalem” in the Exodus (Ryrie St. Bib., KJV, 1978, ftn. to Psa. 68) during the procession of the ark to Jerusalem, B. K. C., O. T., p. 842.

II. Psalm 68:20-35 reveals that God will punish persistently evil foes and give His people victory over them:

A. David asserted that Israel’s God, the God of the Scriptures, is a God Who saves from death, Psalm 68:20.

B. Following this claim, David added that God will surely crush His enemies, namely, he who “goeth on still in his trespasses” (v. 21 KJV), and the Hebrew text provides illuminating information on such foes (as follows):

1. The words “goeth on still” render the verb halak, “go, come, walk” (Kittel, Bib. Heb., p. 1032; B. D. B., A Heb. and Eng. Lex. of the O. T., p. 229-237), but here it appears as mithallek, a participle in the intensive reflexive Hithpael verbal stem to mean, “one who brutally makes himself keep going,” Ibid., p. 236; “The Hebrew Old Testament Slidaverb Conjugation Chart;” H. A. W., Theo. Wrdbk. O. T., 1980, v. I, p. 216.

2. The word “trespasses” (KJV) renders the Hebrew noun ‘asham, “offence, fault” (Ibid., B. D. B., p. 79-80).

3. In other words, these enemies of God, who are also the enemies of God’s people according to Psalm 68:22-23 in the context, continually make themselves brutally commit offenses against God and man.

C. God will eventually cause His people to have complete victory over such troublesome foes, Psalm 68:22-23.

D. Psalm 68:24-27 then temporarily shifts its focus to describe the inspiring procession of the ark into Jerusalem.

E. David then called on God to reveal His strength as He had done in Israel’s past, and he anticipated the coming reign of God over the world when Gentile nations would be subdued and worship the Lord, Psalm 68:28-31.

F. Psalm 68:32-35 calls the nations to sing praise to God as the Rider of the skies (cf. v. 4) due to “His power and majesty displayed in Israel and in the skies and given to His people,” Ibid., Bible Know. Com., O. T., p. 844.

Lesson: God has promised in the end to give His people complete victory over their persistently manipulative foes, so God is to be trusted and praised for that coming deliverance and His ultimate glorification throughout the earth.

Application: (1) May we trust in Christ Who died as our Atoning Sacrifice for sin that we might receive God's gift of eternal life, John 3:16; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11. (2) May we take heart in God’s promise to give us eventual deliverance over our persistently manipulative foes, and may we thank and praise Him for that future deliverance.

Conclusion: (To illustrate the message and provide additional guidance . . .)

Though it is comforting to know that in the coming Millennial Kingdom of Christ, God will give us complete victory over progressively evil manipulators, it is even more edifying to know how to avoid being manipulated by such parties today. Scripture provides the information we need to enjoy such victory now (as follows):

(1) Since relentlessly manipulative foes try to control the minds of others, we must begin to handle such foes by acquiring the manipulation-immune mind of God the Holy Spirit Himself, what occurs when we put our faith in Christ to be justified by God and thus become permanently indwelt by the Holy Spirit, John 3:16; Ephesians 1:13-14.

(2) Once we have thus been saved and have become permanently indwelt by the Holy Spirit, we must rely as an act of faith on the Holy Spirit to retain proper Biblical beliefs, 2 Timothy 1:13-14 with 1 Corinthians 2:10-16.

(3) However, we may not know much about the Biblical truths we need to believe, so we must read and study the Bible and sit under good Bible teaching in a church in accord with the Apostle Paul’s call in 2 Timothy 3:15-4:5.

(4) When we have a working knowledge of the Bible’s teaching, we need to stick to what the Bible teaches without straying away from it, what many people in Church History have failed to do, and we explain: (a) Jude 3 KJV asserts that we must “earnestly contend” for the Christian body of truth, “the faith,” that was “once” delivered unto the saints. The Greek New Testament word translated “once” here is hapax, meaning “once for all” in this context. (Arndt & Gingrich, A Grk.-Eng. Lex. of the N. T., 1967, p. 80) Since Jude was concerned that his readers withstand efforts by Gnostic apostates to “change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord” Jude 4b NIV, by the term hapax, Jude asserted that the beliefs that had been taught by the apostles were meant to be believed totally unchanged throughout Church History unlike what the Gnostic heretics of Jude’s era were doing! In agreement with Jude’s teaching, the Apostle John in 2 John 9 KJV warned that anyone who “transgresseth and abideth not” in the doctrine of Christ did not have God, that he was an unbeliever. The New Testament Greek word rendered “transgresseth” (KJV) is proago, and it here means “goes too far” (Ibid., Arndt & Gingrich, p. 708-709), and “abideth not” (KJV) translates the negative particle me and the verb meno, meaning “remain” (U. B. S. Grk. N. T., 1966, p. 828; Ibid., Arndt & Gingrich, p. 504-505). John thus warned about those who did “not remain” in the doctrine of Christ’s Incarnation as God come in the flesh on a permanent basis (Ibid., Ryrie, ftn. to 2 John 7) and who “went too far” in denying that Christ’s body was truly human, that it only appeared that way, for they as Gnostic heretics viewed anything material like the human body as being evil. (Bible Know. Com., N. T., p. 907) (b) However, in violation of Jude 3 and 2 John 9, many people in Christendom have “gone too far” and “not remained” in the apostles’ truths: (+) When Charles Darwin produced his theory of evolution, it countered the Genesis 1-2 record of God’s supernatural creation of the entire universe in six consecutive solar days, and many in Christendom adopted Darwin’s theory to “go too far” in denying God’s inspiration of Genesis 1-2. (+) Darwin’s theory was also applied by some theologians to claim that the Bible came into existence by evolving over time as the work of imaginative human authors so that it was not the God inspired, authoritative Word of God like 2 Timothy 3:15-17 claims (Z. P. E. B., v. Two, p. 584-585) Again, many in Christendom “went too far” and did “not remain” in the apostles’ teachings even of the Bible’s divine authority! (+) So, with no belief in the divine authority of the Bible, with no sure, spiritual “compass” in the minds of many, a lot people in Christendom and thus our once “Christian” culture are now vulnerable to the manipulations of secular foes so that many support unbiblical LGBTQ immorality, unbiblical Marxism, unbiblical climate change catastrophism, etc., that plague us today! (c) This is one reason why in our worship service introduction each Sunday at Nepaug Bible Church, we give a summary of our Biblical beliefs – we seek to “remain” in the truths of God’s authoritative Word and avoid being misled in “going too far” into error!

May we trust in Christ Who died as our Atoning Sacrifice for sin that we might receive God’s gift of eternal life. May we be encouraged that God will give us eventual victory over persistently manipulative foes, may we thank and praise Him for that future victory, and may we rely on the indwelling Holy Spirit and God’s written, authoritative Word to avoid being harmfully influenced today by persistently manipulative foes.