Christ Church Leavenworth
Psalm 9
March 15, 2026
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OT READING: 2 Kings 6:8-19
NT READING: 1 John 4:1-6
A Man with God is Always in the Majority
Our text this morning is Psalm 9, these are the words of God: To the choirmaster: according to Muth-labben. A Psalm of David. I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds. I will be glad and exult in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High. When my enemies turn back, they stumble and perish before your presence. For you have maintained my just cause; you have sat on the throne, giving righteous judgment. You have rebuked the nations; you have made the wicked perish; you have blotted out their name forever and ever. The enemy came to an end in everlasting ruins; their cities you rooted out; the very memory of them has perished. But the Lord sits enthroned forever; he has established his throne for justice, and he judges the world with righteousness; he judges the peoples with uprightness. The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. And those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you. Sing praises to the Lord, who sits enthroned in Zion! Tell among the peoples his deeds! For he who avenges blood is mindful of them; he does not forget the cry of the afflicted. Be gracious to me, O Lord! See my affliction from those who hate me, O you who lift me up from the gates of death, that I may recount all your praises, that in the gates of the daughter of Zion I may rejoice in your salvation. The nations have sunk in the pit that they made; in the net that they hid, their own foot has been caught. The Lord has made himself known; he has executed judgment; the wicked are snared in the work of their own hands. Higgaion. Selah The wicked shall return to Sheol, all the nations that forget God. For the needy shall not always be forgotten, and the hope of the poor shall not perish forever. Arise, O Lord! Let not man prevail; let the nations be judged before you! Put them in fear, O Lord! Let the nations know that they are but men! Selah
The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the Word of our God stands forever.
PRAYER
Our Father and our God, we come before You this morning through Jesus Christ, our Lord, and in the Holy Spirit. Give us eyes to see and ears to hear Your Word this morning and let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in Your sight through Jesus Christ, in whose Name we pray, Amen.
INTRODUCTION
Our study of the first decade of psalms has brought us to track #9. And here David does something a little different. There are two ways to approach a subject. The typical way is to build your case by slowly working your way up to a conclusion. People can disagree with where you end up, but they at least can see how you go there. The risk you run in this approach, however, is fatigue. Your audience might give up on you before you get to where you’re wanting to take them. Think of all those “tl;dr” posts you’ve had shared with you. As Spurgeon once said, “If a man cannot say what he has to say in 45 minutes, when will he say it?”
This is where the other approach can be helpful. In this approach, the conclusion is stated right up front before circling back to show your work. The benefit of this approach is that everyone knows exactly where you’re headed before you get going. The risk you run with this approach, however, is that you lose some people right out of the gate. If they disagree too strongly with your opening statement, they might skip the rest of your lecture.
In today’s text, David employs this second, less conventional method: he begins with the application. He wants everyone to know, up front, where this is headed. Too many get bogged down in the details and never get around to applying what they know. Not David. He does not want to delay his resolve, so he leads with it and then he encourages us to do the same by making his case. One of the additional points made by presenting it in this manner, is that doing God’s Word must not be put off or made to be optional. It is essential and time sensitive. In other words, we must obey today. Right now. We must know Who we are dealing with, for sure, but then we must surely go on to deal with Him.
It is one thing to know that God is merciful and another thing to ask God for mercy. It is one thing to believe that He can forgive sin and another thing to kneel before Him and ask Him to forgive yours. It is one thing to know that He is in control and another thing to hand over control of your life to Him. Do not miss the forest for the trees. Which is more important? Knowing the standard or keeping it? But keeping it is so much harder… and that is why David asks God for more grace. More grace? Don’t be greedy; be content with the grace you got, right? Wrong! We need to be greedy for grace. It is not a lack of faith to ask for more grace. It is, however, if you stop asking for it. We never outgrow our need for grace. We cannot mature beyond our need for more. So, with that said, let’s turn to our text:
SUMMARY OF THE TEXT
:1-2 “I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds. I will be glad and exult in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.” Four times in two verses David declares, “I will.” He will give thanks to God, he will remember His grace, he will be glad, and he will worship God. He is committed to these things and he is saying it out loud for all to hear. “I will do these things.” He is inviting accountability. When you stand before others and say that you are going to do something, you are asking them to follow up with you if you don’t. If you say, “I do” in front of all your friends and family, you are inviting them to hunt you down and demand an explanation if you suddenly start saying, “I don’t,” or “I’m not so sure anymore.” And that is because “I will” is a promise.
The difficulty, however, is that in the moment, you really do feel like you will, but later on there comes a point where you really don’t. The question at that moment is whether your previous “I will” will determine what comes next or whether your current “I want” will. How much sway do yesterday’s “I will’s” have on today? A good reputation is the reward for those who convert their “I will’s” into “I did’s.” Anyone can say that they’re going to do something, but only those with integrity actually do it. Consider Proverbs 20:6-7, “Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find?” More men sign up for the test than pass it. Steadfastness is easier to promise than it is to deliver. A faithful man does not just do the easy work of making the promise, he does the hard work of keeping it. He takes responsibility for his words and looks not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of those who are depending on him to keep his word.
Chesterton said it this way, “The man who makes a vow makes an appointment with himself at some distant time or place. The danger of it is that himself should not keep the appointment.” Nothing is easier to make than a promise and few things are harder to keep. Consider Ecclesiastes 5:5 “It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay.” A vow sounds good in anyone’s mouth. But it is better not to cut a covenant than it is to be cut up for breaking one. So, why not avoid them altogether? Promises are like keys, they unlock doors. We take vows in marriage and gain access to a spouse. We sign contracts and gain more business. We take an oath of office and gain its responsibilities. Liars want the perks of a promise without the work of keeping it. As a Christian, you must resist this temptation. Making vows may make others think better of you at first, but breaking them will make them think less of you in the end.
Psalm 15:4 reminds us that the one who walks with God, “swears to his own hurt and does not change.” So, does your “I will” have the power to hold you in place when your “I feel” is trying to pull you away? In order to be a faithful man, you have to be able to obey even when you don’t feel like it. Listen to this insight from Oswald Chambers, "If we only did what we felt inclined to do, some of us would do nothing for ever and ever. The proof that we are rightly related to God is that we do our best whether we feel inspired or not.” Anyone can obey when they feel like it. But what about when you don’t? Can you make yourself do things when you don’t feel like because you said that you would? We must “be ready in season and out of season.” (2 Tim 4:2) – that is, when we feel like it… and when we don’t.
And that is why David brings up the idea of a whole-hearted effort. You cannot follow God with half of your heart. It is not a duplex. It cannot serve two masters. It will either love the one and hate the other, or it will hate the one and love the other. Your heart doesn’t do fractions. Hear this admonition from Jeremiah 48:10 “Cursed is he who does the work of the LORD with slackness.” Note that the curse is on the slackness. You would think that doing the work of the Lord would be blessed, but not necessarily so. A lame effort in the right direction is still a sin. Colossians 3:23, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord.” God commands us to do things with all of our heart, all of our soul, and all of our might. He has to tell us to do this because we were going to try to do them with as little of our heart, soul, and might as we could get away with. As C.S. Lewis once observed, “We are half-hearted creatures.”
:3-4 “When my enemies turn back, they stumble and perish before your presence. For you have maintained my just cause; you have sat on the throne, giving righteous judgment.” Our enemies do not run away because they’re scared of us, they run away because they see our Father looming behind us. Consider James 4:7 “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” When you resist the devil, he doesn’t flee because you stood your ground, he flees because we called for our Dad. Calling upon the Father is how you resist the devil. Submitting to Him is how you conquer the world, the flesh, and the devil. When you call upon the Lord, the demons do not stick around for Him to show up. Sin cannot stand in the presence of God. It struts around and talks a big game, but the second you call upon Christ, it falls on its face before it cowers away.
Listen to the word of the Lord from Leviticus 26 “If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them, then you shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall chase ten thousand, and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword…But if you will not listen to me, I will send faintness into your hearts. The sound of a driven leaf shall put you to flight, and you shall flee as one flees from the sword, and you shall fall when none pursues. You shall stumble over one another, and you shall have no power to stand before your enemies.”
Our enemies are not scared of us, but they are scared of what’s behind us. If we get arrogant and imagine ourselves as vigilante enforcers of the good, the true, and the beautiful, we will be beaten back by the bad, the false, and the ugly. We are not Batman. We are just kids in Batman costumes. The reason our enemies flee before us is because when we put on Christ, they see the signal in the air and they know who’s coming to help. As John Knox once observed, “A man with God is always in the majority.” The only reason any one of us can take out twenty of them is because of the One who has our back.
In our OT reading, Elisha’s servant, Gehazi, was scared. He looked up and saw an army, and then he looked around and saw only Elisha. But when he saw Elisha, he could see that he was not scared. Elisha looked back at him and said, “‘Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” Whoever has God on their side has their enemy surrounded. The number of boots on the ground does not always win wars, but God always does.
Our NT reading from 1 John 4 reinforces this point: “Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” When the world surrounds you, look to Christ within. The One who lives within you holds the entire world in His hands. Even if He is all you have, you still have superior firepower. One of His Words outguns all the chatter in the world. As Luther once noted, “Though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us, we will not fear, for God has willed His truth to triumph through us. The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him; his rage we can endure, for lo! his doom is sure; one little word shall fell him.” The armor of God is bulletproof, but the gates of Hell cannot even stop a rock tossed by a kid. Just ask David.
:5-6 “You have rebuked the nations; you have made the wicked perish; you have blotted out their name forever and ever. The enemy came to an end in everlasting ruins; their cities you rooted out; the very memory of them has perished.” God is greater than the evil in this world. He will rebuke the nations and make the wicked perish. He will blot out their names forever and ever. Their greatness will fare no better than the legacy of Ozymandias. Who’s Ozymandias you might ask? Exactly. That’s the point. And if you do know who Ozymandias is, my point still stands, for what is Ozymandies famous for? Being forgotten.
Note that our text says that God is going to root them out of their cities. Evil can find some pretty dark corners to hide, but God is going to dig them out. He isn’t going to overlook anything. Heaven will not have a little corner of Hell in it. The gates of Hell will not hold out against the advance of the Kingdom of Christ and all Hell will be tossed out. The darkness will be flooded with light and the world will be flooded with the knowledge of the holiness of God. (Habakkuk 2:14)
Fear not, little flock, it is God’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom and a time is coming when we will all be so caught up in the glory and goodness of God that we won’t even remember the wicked anymore. To that party we will wear our battle scars like medals of honor. The pains of the past won’t be able to reach us there and our old hurts will be healed and hard to remember. Sin does not win. “Ye fearful saints fresh courage take, the clouds ye so much dread, are big with mercy and shall break in blessings on your head.” Once God is done using the wicked to bless us, He will dispose of them forever.
At this point someone might feel tempted to feel sorry for the wicked. Admittedly, that hypothetical someone probably isn’t here, but they do exist and they are out there. So, just in case they are listening, keep this in mind. This rough treatment of the wicked is not the result of God going too far or losing His temper. He is not like you. He doesn’t sometimes explode with rage and then have to walk it back later with an apology. His justice is measured and precise. It is administered with proportion. He is not overdoing it or getting carried away. He has not been patient all these years only to lose His patience in the end. Again, He is not like you. He doesn’t hold it down until it erupts. He is under control the entire time. So, if you want to feel bad for the wicked, do it now, while you still can, because you won’t later. The justice of God will be accompanied by the cheers of the righteous and the increase of His kingdom will have no end.
:7-8 “But the Lord sits enthroned forever; he has established his throne for justice, and he judges the world with righteousness; he judges the peoples with uprightness.” Where is Jesus right now? He is not in a grave rotting away somewhere. He is sitting at the right hand of the Father… on a throne. That is where He is. And what is He doing there? Destroying all His enemies. Many of them He is destroying by making them His friends and the rest He is destroying by exposing them for the frauds that they are. They looked powerful, but they were weaklings. They appeared to be fixed and certain, but they were flashes in the pan. And the worst of it is, they should have known better.
Hear the Word of the Lord from Acts 17:30-31 “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, (who’s call to repent? ALL people, EVERY where) because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” All people. Everywhere. We live in a world where a man has risen from the dead. Everyone who denies this fact is at war with reality and that is a battle they will certainly lose. These verses from the book of Acts reinforce what Psalm 9 says: Jesus is the Judge. And who is He going to judge? The whole world. And how is He going to judge it? With righteousness. Our text then doubles back and repeats this fact for all those people in the back. Who is He going to judge? The peoples. And how is He going to judge them? With uprightness. Make no mistake about it, judgment day will contain no mistakes. No one will be misjudged. No one will be misjudged. None of the guilty will go free and none of the forgiven will be condemned. That is the end of the world. The rule of Christ established and enforced everywhere without exception: all people, everywhere.
:9-12 “The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. And those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you. Sing praises to the Lord, who sits enthroned in Zion! Tell among the peoples his deeds! For he who avenges blood is mindful of them; he does not forget the cry of the afflicted.” The Lord is the immovable object and the unstoppable force. No one can move Him and He can move anyone He wants. All who trust in Him will be saved. All who don’t will be destroyed. Hear this Word of God from 1 Corinthians 15:24-26 “Then comes the end, when he (that is Jesus) delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” So, for the time being, Christ sits enthroned ruling and reigning and winning. He will not stand again until the only enemy left to defeat is death. And then death itself will die at the hands of Jesus.
:13-14 “Be gracious to me, O Lord! See my affliction from those who hate me, O you who lift me up from the gates of death, that I may recount all your praises, that in the gates of the daughter of Zion I may rejoice in your salvation.” Note the juxtaposition: the gates of death and the gates of Zion. These two gates are opposed to each other. There are those who hate God and love sin and there are those who love God and hate sin. Hear the Word of the Lord from Proverbs 8:36
“All who hate me love death.” And then consider this Word from Psalm 97:10,” O you who love the LORD, hate evil!” The gates of Hell are defended by those who defend their sins. But the gates of Zion are defended by those who are defended by God. Hear the Words of Jesus Christ Himself from Matthew 16:18, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” That is why David put his confidence in Christ. And that is why you should too.
Back to our text, :15-16 The nations have sunk in the pit that they made; in the net that they hid, their own foot has been caught. The Lord has made himself known; he has executed judgment; the wicked are snared in the work of their own hands. Higgaion. Selah Stop and dwell on that: God has caught the crafty in their own craftiness. He has outmaneuvered the cunning. He has seen through all their secret cabals. If it had not been for Him, we would have gotten got, but because of Him, we have not. Their trip wires haven’t worked and when they went to double check their traps, they blew up in their faces. If God is for us, who can be against us? Their hidden nets are not hidden from Him. He is the one playing 4D chess, not them. Thanks be to God. God sees what they plot in secret and puts a plot twist in their narrative. The very things in which they trust will turn out to be the things that trip them up. Consider this from Isaiah 36:6 “Behold, you are trusting in a broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it.” It is bad enough that the wicked put their hope in a broken reed, but then they go and lean on it with all their might. If they had not leaned on it, it would not have stabbed them. It did not hurt them until they leaned on it. In other words, trusting in evil will get you killed. So, hear this truth: wickedness cannot pierce your soul if you do not put your trust in it. But all those who do will be impaled by it band the worst part of it will be realizing that they did it to themselves.
:17-18 “The wicked shall return to Sheol, all the nations that forget God. For the needy shall not always be forgotten, and the hope of the poor shall not perish forever.” Note the contrast. The wicked, as we observed previously, are going to perish forever. They are going to be forgotten. But not the needy and poor in spirit. Recall the words of Jesus who said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt 5:3) The poor in spirit will not perish forever, even if they do for the moment. The martyrs did not lose their lives, they gained them.
And remember, the advancement of Christ’s Kingdom is not like a rocket launch. It is not a straight line up with no interruption. No, the kingdom is more like a mountain climb. Sometimes you are sliding down steep cliffs and sometimes you are ascending long slopes, but you are always going up the mountain. The summit is always before you and each step brings you closer to it and further from where you began. Christendom is always going, always growing, always destroying its enemies, and always prevailing over and against the gates of Hell. The hope of the saints will not perish. The goodness of God does not grow mold. The Gospel will not go stale and God will not disappoint. Nations may forget God and suffer for it, but God will not forget them and He will redeem out of them those who have put their hope in Him.
:19-20 “Arise, O Lord! Let not man prevail; let the nations be judged before you! Put them in fear, O Lord! Let the nations know that they are but men! Selah” Men will not somehow prevail against God. The wicked will not grow so strong and so secure that even God Himself cannot overcome them. Mankind will not make such a mess of things that even He cannot clean it up. We cannot put ourselves beyond the reach of grace. David prayed that God might put the fear of Him into the nations. He prayed that the nations would be reminded of their mortality and be humbled. The only hope for us as individuals or for our nation, is remembering that we will die. As long as individuals or nations believe that they are special in themselves, they are at odds with God and in danger of losing everything they hold dear. But any man or nation that thanks God for what they have and humbly seeks to serve Him with it, will retain their distinct flavor and offer it as a living sacrifice to their God and King. All the best things of all the nations will be refined by fire and retained in the kingdom of God. Hear this Word from Haggai 2:7 “‘I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory,’ says the Lord of hosts.” Some nations may force God to hold them upside down by their ankles to shake them until all their pockets are empty, but rest assured, all the good stuff will be kept for the saints and will dwell with us forever in the house of God.
In the end, all men, including us, need to be reminded that they are but men. It is easy to imagine that you are omniscient if you have the internet, or omnipotent if you have a weapon, or omnipresent if you have a camera at every intersection or a drone in the air, but even then, you are still just a man. And as Psalm 82:6-7 reminds us, “You are sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, like men you shall die.” And so, the nations need to know that they are but men. That is an extraordinarily simple, yet a profoundly supernatural prayer. People coming to their senses and returning to common sense seems easy enough… until you look around. Common sense is not as common as it used to be and it cannot simply be assumed as a given. In order for men to admit that they have been wrong, they need the grace of God to see that being wrong is even an option. The pride of man boasts in its armor, but the weapons of Heaven have soul-piercing bullets. The prayer of David is that God would do whatever it takes to bring all people everywhere to repentance. Let us be an answer to that prayer by reminding the world that they are but men, and living like we are men of God.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
PRAYER
Heavenly Father, we confess that we are but men. Without You, we would be so tangled up in our own sins that we would not be able to walk with You. But because of Your great mercy in sending Your Son to save us, we are set free from the cords that bound us. Give us grace today to walk in the works You have prepared beforehand for us to do and by so doing, may the world see our good works and give glory to You, Our Father who art in heaven. We ask these things in Jesus’ name and we offer up the words of the prayer He taught us to pray singing...
