And turn now for our New Testament reading to John chapter 13. Gospel according to John, the 13th chapter. We’ll find that place where this Psalm that we just sang and will soon read is quoted. And see also how the Psalm is fulfilled in Christ. through Judas Iscariot, who lifted up his heel against our Lord. The reading will be John chapter 13, verses 12 through 20. Listen to this. This is the very word of God.
When Jesus had washed their feet and put on his outer garment and resumed his place, he said to them, Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then your Lord and teacher have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I’ve given you an example that you should also do just as I have done to you.
Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. I’m not speaking of all of you. I know whom I have chosen. But the scripture will be fulfilled. He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me. I’m telling you this now before it takes place. That when it does take place, you may believe that I am he. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me. And whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. And then turn in the Psalms. To Psalm 41. As we just sung this psalm, now hear the reading of it. Psalm 41, which is the text for our message this evening. To the choir master, the psalm of David.
Blessed is the one who considers the poor. In the day of trouble, the Lord delivers him. The Lord protects him and keeps him alive. He is called blessed in the land. You do not give him up to the will of his enemies. The Lord sustains him on his sickbed. In his illness, you restore him to full health. As for me, I said, O Lord, be gracious to me. Heal me, for I have sinned against you.
My enemies say of me in malice, when will he die and his name perish? And when one comes to see me, he utters empty words, while his heart gathers iniquity. When he goes out, he tells it abroad. All who hate me whisper together about me. They imagine the worst for me. They say a deadly thing is poured out on him. He will not rise again from where he lies. Even my close friend, in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me. But you, O Lord, be gracious to me and raise me up that I may repay them. By this I know that you delight in me. My enemy will not shout in triumph over me, but you have upheld me because of my integrity and set me in your presence forever.
Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Amen and amen. That’s the reading of God’s word. Let’s pray for his blessing upon it now. Father in heaven, we pray you’d help us to discover the riches of this psalm. to see the riches even of Christ himself revealed to us in this psalm. Bless us as we consider this passage and feed our souls with the bread of life. We ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.
This psalm brings to mind, to my mind anyway, one of the reasons why we so love all the great stories. as Samwise Gamgee put it, the ones that really matter. And part of the reason we keep going back to those stories, those great stories, those great books, the Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, and even the great movies, because we want to see good triumph in the end. We want to be assured that it does. We yearn for reminders that good triumphs over evil, and we yearn for assurances of that, and the great stories give us that.
So as we come to Psalm 41, and try to place it in context, within the Psalter, the context is it’s the last Psalm in Book 1 of the Psalter. That’s why you have that little benediction at the end, because at the end of each of the books of the Psalms, there is a benediction. Each one of them is slightly different, but the idea is the same. Glory to the Lord God of Israel.
But in the context of scripture as a whole, this psalm stands out because it’s a celebration of those very things that we long for, those very things that we seek and really yearn for when we read the old stories or when we watch those favorite movies where good triumphs over evil.
This psalm teaches us that. This psalm teaches us that good triumphs over evil, and it teaches us in particular that there is mercy for the merciful. That’s what this psalm is about. I think we can sum up the main theme of this psalm in the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. This psalm teaches us, blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. That’s the whole message of this psalm.
My three points are in your bulletin. Mercy for the merciful, the plea of the persecuted, and conclusive confidence. So let’s consider, first of all, mercy for the merciful. Blessed is, blessed is. That’s a theme that we see throughout the Psalms. It’s a motif that occurs again and again. In fact, the whole Psalter opens with that, doesn’t it? Psalm 1, verse 1, blessed is the man who does not walk in the way of the ungodly. So there we have it from the beginning.
And then the very next Psalm, Psalm 2 concludes with that. Blessed are all they who put their trust in him, in the Lord that is. If you fast forward to Psalm 32, it speaks of the blessedness of those whose sins are forgiven. Psalm 32 verse one, blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. There are many other blessings, pronouncements of blessing throughout the Psalms. And as we come to Psalm 41 in this final Psalm of Book One, this is the third time we’ll see a Psalm begin with such a benediction, pronouncing blessing. And in Psalm 41, who is blessed?
Who is it? It’s the one who considers the poor. and you probably have a footnote in your ESV Bible clarifying that that word poor, it can be a reference to those who are impoverished materially, but can also, and perhaps is more directly a reference to the weak. But either way, a person who shows mercy to the poor or to the weak is blessed according to this Psalm. The person who shows mercy, In other words, and this is not the first expression in the Psalms of this evangelical grace of mercy to the merciful. We see it again and again. We’ve seen it in Psalm 18 verse 25. Where God is described in this way. With the merciful, you show yourself merciful. That’s God’s modus operandi.
He’s merciful to those who show mercy. And who was ever merciful if not the Lord Jesus Christ? Isn’t he the epitome of mercy? Didn’t he consider the poor? Not so much that he went around giving money to those who are impoverished, but that he looked upon sinners who are weak, who are spiritually impoverished, and he had pity upon them, he considered them.
Scripture says that while we are still weak, Christ died for the ungodly. He’s the ultimate expression of what this Psalm commends. He’s the ultimate expression of the kind of person that is blessed for considering the poor. We see that in the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew five, verse seven. which is again, the theme of this song, blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy.
Now, the teaching, Jesus taught that, that very thing. And the teaching of Jesus was not usually innovative. His teaching wasn’t usually novel. People were amazed at his teaching. And he certainly was and is the master teacher. But what was the genius of his teaching? It’s that he showed the people the glorious riches of the scriptures that they already had. He showed them the father.
And I, I think of when the Lord God, when Yahweh revealed himself to Moses, we read that this morning. That was our, it served as our words of assurance of pardon, our words of comfort. When God took Moses up on the mountain, hid him in the cleft of the rock, covered him there with his hand, you can hear the music, and he passed by and he proclaimed his name. And when God did that, this was all in response to Moses’ plea, oh Lord, show me your glory. God said, well, you can’t see my glory, but I’ll proclaim my name to you. And when he did, he passed by and he said, the Lord, the Lord, what was the first thing God said about himself as he responded to Moses’ desire to know him? What was the first attribute that God proclaimed when he proclaimed his name to his servant Moses? It was that he was merciful.
Now, if you’re accustomed to reading the New American Standard, or I think even also the NIV, the word there is compassionate. That’s a great word, too. We have a compassionate God. And when he wants to make himself known to his servants, that’s the leading attribute. Comes in first place.
He’s merciful. If you look again with me at verse one of this Psalm, you notice that just like the Beatitudes, just as we noted with the Beatitudes in the Gospels, this blessing is stated in the present tense. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed is the one who considers the poor. That blessing is already present. And what blessing is expressed here? In what way or how is such a person blessed?
They’re blessed in the sense that the Lord God delivers that person when he is poor, when he is weak. In the day of trouble, the Lord delivers him. Verse two says the Lord protects him. The Lord keeps him alive. And it says, he is called blessed in the land. This is the person who is known to be blessed of God. So the merciful person is the special object of God’s own mercy. And as we go through this Psalm, carrying on from verse two, we see how realistic a perspective on life it portrays for us. Because what is the psalmist conveying as he goes through these verses?
Well, he’s on a sickbed. And he has enemies. This, of course, as the heading indicates, was the psalm of David, and David had enemies. David was not immune to sickness. In fact, the circumstances of most of these verses are probably that David had fallen ill. And the people who hated him hoped that this was the thing that God was gonna use to take him out and get rid of him. He faces malicious opposition.
That’s what verses five through nine are all about. And yet in the midst of it all, he’s sustained and ultimately he’s restored. And that pattern holds for Christians in all ages. We will experience afflictions, we’ll experience sicknesses and various other kinds of sorrows. We will experience opposition from other people, but God restores us.
Now, we may be inclined to wonder, are these hardships of which the psalmist writes here, are they somehow contrary to God’s mercy? No, of course not. In fact, speaking specifically of the matter of sickness and of David being on a sick bed, Spurgeon wrote, speaking of how God works through sickness, he said, on a sick bed, a man discovers not only his enemies and his friends, but himself and his God more intimately. And what Spurgeon wrote there of sickness can be said of other afflictions that we endure, including the opposition and enmity of other people.
God uses those things. to draw us closer to himself, to bring us to a deeper and more intimate knowledge of him and of ourselves. He uses such things to show us our own hearts. And most of you have experienced that, haven’t you? You’ve gone through difficult times, and those difficulties and the stresses and the trials that you endure kind of push things out of your heart that aren’t very pretty. And that drives us to repent, to ask God to continue to sanctify us. So these hardships that the psalmist was experiencing, as well as the hardships that we all experience in our own lives day after day, year after year, are not contrary to God’s mercies. God uses them. To borrow the words of one of our hymns, he takes those things and he sanctifies them to us. He sanctifies to us our deepest distress. all the while showing mercy for the merciful.
Well, this psalm also, to come to our second point, is a model of prayer. And in it we see the plea of the persecuted. You notice that the prayer in verse four is past tense. I said, So verses four through nine, as this psalm was composed, maybe remembering back to a past trial that David had undergone. And he prays for what? He prays for grace. Be gracious to me, he says. So the psalmist recognizes his need for grace. And he trusts in God to grant that grace that he so desperately needs.
He says, heal me in verse four. There you’ve got the Hebrew word Rafa. If you’ve heard the expression Jehovah Rafa, the God who heals me, that’s the word that’s there. And actually what the passage says, it says in our English Bible or English Standard Version, heal me, but what it really literally says in the Hebrew is heal my soul. And that’s the most important healing, isn’t it? That’s what we need most urgently. Bodily healing certainly is to be desired, but the healing of our souls is paramount.
And he makes confession of sin, do you see that? As for me, I said, oh Lord, be gracious to me, heal me, heal my soul. For I have sinned against you. So all those who seek mercy from God, all those who seek help from God must come to him confessing their sins.
And that’s why when Jesus taught his disciples to pray, one of the things he taught them to pray, he conveyed to them as a central component in that outline for prayer that he gave us was to pray, forgive us our debts. We’re going through the Lord’s prayer in the catechism time right now. And very soon, in just a few weeks, we’ll get to that fifth petition. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
Because everyone who seeks mercy from God must come confessing their sins, not covering them up, not seeking to hide them, not seeking to justify them, certainly. And that’s why, even in our corporate worship, we have that element of confession of sin. Because when we come personally to God, we ought to confess our sins. But then as we come as a body, as a congregation, we ought to confess our sins to him as well.
This psalm teaches us that. We learn that from the psalmist’s example. Now this psalm is about mercy. And in it, the psalmist paints for us a sharp contrast Because he says, blessed is the one who considers the poor. Blessed is the one who shows mercy. Because God will show him mercy. But the psalmist’s opponents are the complete opposite of that. They’re without mercy. They have no pity.
The psalmist was sick. He was on a sick bed. He was afflicted, perhaps near death. and his enemy’s heart’s desires for him to die. They wish him evil. They said in malice, when will he die and his name perish? And they’re deceitful. He speaks of one who visits him and pretends to wish him well in verse six.
When one comes to me, he utters empty words while his heart gathers iniquity. When he goes out, he tells it abroad. He speaks maliciously after leaving, after putting on airs of compassion, airs of caring. Then he goes out and vomits out what’s really in his heart.
In verse seven, Solomon speaks of his enemies planning evil against him, plotting, and they’re united in their wicked intentions. All who hate me whisper together about me. He says they imagine the worst for me. And they savor, they relish the idea that this might be David’s downfall. They say in verse eight, a deadly thing is poured out on him. He will not rise from where he lies. And in every sense, all these things that they’re saying, all these things that they’re doing, they’re opposite of all that scripture calls blessed. There’s no mercy there. They’re completely devoid of it.
But then we have perhaps the most stinging and, and hurtful offense of all in verse nine, this betrayal, of which the psalmist speaks when he says, even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me. We don’t know exactly what episode is being referred to here in this psalm, but we do know that some of David’s closest friends and advisors deserted to Absalom when Absalom tried to usurp his father.
And as we saw in the Gospel of John, Jesus cites this verse with reference to Judas. And this idea of lifting up the heel is very picturesque. Because to lift up the heel against someone implies that that person is reclining. The picture that’s being painted for us here is companions reclining at table to eat. That’s how people in the ancient Near East would eat. They would recline close to the table and they would eat. They didn’t sit in chairs usually the way we do. They would be sort of mostly lying down, having fellowship together, enjoying God’s provision.
And when someone’s lying down like that, they’re very vulnerable. And so the picture here is, Someone who thinks they’re in fellowship with someone nearby them and they’re lying down, they’re vulnerable, they’re unprepared, they’re defenseless, and this person lifts up their heels to stomp on them. Violence against a vulnerable and trusting friend.
So this psalm does recount the experiences of David, but it also foreshadows Christ. and his betrayal. And both David and Christ made their plea to God in the midst of persecution. When they were being persecuted, when they were being maligned, when they’re being spoken of against when they’re being spoken against, they both made their plea to God in the midst of that persecution. And you can do the same. when you’re suffering, when you’re being opposed, you can call out to him. You can pray the plea of the persecuted. You can also have conclusive confidence. And that brings us to our third point. Because once we get to verse 10 in the psalm, we see the psalmist’s perspective brighten. We see him fix his eyes back on the Lord. He turns his gaze upward.
And he says, but you, oh Lord, be gracious to me and raise me up. So he has this renewed hope. As he prays for mercy and in the face of such bitter opposition, what does he do? He prays. His heart has been trained to do that. His heart has been trained and conditioned to that spiritual discipline of crying out to the Lord in times of trouble. And he seeks God’s grace. Be gracious to me. And he seeks restoration. Raise me up.
And that gives us a pattern for prayer as well. We can call upon God to be gracious. We can call upon him to raise us up. But then we have what appears perhaps to be a little bit of a problem. end of verse ten. He says, be gracious to me and raise me up that I may repay them. That sounds like personal vengeance, doesn’t it? And we even heard about personal vengeance this morning and how God prohibits that. He doesn’t allow any of us to take personal revenge or to have a vengeful spirit even. So, what’s going on here?
Um I The New Testament teaches us not to seek revenge or to avenge ourselves and by the way so does the Old Testament. I always want to be quick to point out that these, a lot of these concepts that we tend to think of as mostly New Testament ideas are found in the Old Testament scriptures as well. So if you were to look at Proverbs 20 verse 22 The writer of the Proverbs says, do not say I will repay evil. Vengeance is mine, I will repay, is an Old Testament concept.
And so in Leviticus 19.18, The people were commanded in the law of Moses, the Pentateuch.
You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall do what? Love your neighbor. Love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. And Paul was quoting the Old Testament in Romans 1219 when he wrote, Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine.
I will repay, says the Lord. We speak of God’s communicable attributes. Those are the attributes of God that are reflected in us and that we share. So, for instance, God is a God of wisdom, and he conveys to us a certain amount of wisdom. God is a God of love, and we are able, we have the capacity to love, and there are many others.
Even anger. Anger is a divine attribute, and we have that. It’s very difficult for us to manage, because human anger is very volatile. And we so easily fall into sin when we experience and when we have anger, but there are also non communicable attributes of God.
So, for instance, he is he’s omnipresent. We’re not. He’s omnipotent, and we certainly aren’t. And there are certain things that God does not share with us beyond his attributes, and one of them is vengeance. That’s why he says vengeance is mine. That’s not something he shares with me or with you. Vengeance belongs to the Lord. He will repay.
And part of our faith is to be able to trust in him that he’s going to do exactly that, that he will in the end make things right, bring justice, repay evil, but it’s not our job to do it. So, having said all that, what’s going on in verse 10, where the psalmist says, raise me up that I may repay? Well, here’s how we have to understand that.
We have to understand in the first place that David, this is the Psalm of David, David was the king. And it’s the king’s responsibility to administer justice. It’s the responsibility and the duty of the king to punish things like treason. And so David understood that in his office of king, he was obligated to repay those who have been guilty of treason against him against the king, against the authority structure that God had established in Israel. So that’s the first thing, David was the king. But then secondly and more importantly and looking forward and thinking on to Christ, in the messianic sense this psalm applies to him, it applies to Jesus who is the king of kings.
And so when we think of the things that we read the end of the book of Revelation, as Jesus is described as a warrior on a white horse riding forth to destroy his enemies. And it says in Revelation 1915, from his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. And he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God, the Almighty.
That’s retribution from our messianic king. And so we can’t interpret Psalm 41 verse 10 at the end there as being in any way applicable to us and any privilege we might want to claim to repay those who have done evil to us. We have to see this in context of David and ultimately in the context of Christ. All the vengeance passages in the Psalms are that way. They’re kingly in their interpretation. They’re messianic in character.
But going on, we see how in this conclusive confidence that the psalmist expresses, he has this renewed hope and he prays for mercy. But we also see how he witnesses evidence of God’s favor to him and he assures himself by that evidence. And what’s the evidence that he sees and that he takes as assurance that God will deliver him, that God will be gracious. First of all, in verse 11, he says, by this I know that you delight in me.
My enemy will not shout in triumph over me. His enemies won’t prevail. He’s confident of it. And there’s application for us in that, because in this world, in this life, we will have tribulation. just as Jesus told us we would. I think I cited this verse this morning as well. Jesus said, in this world, you’ll have trouble. It’s a fact. It’s inevitable. But be of good courage. Jesus has overcome the world. Your enemies will not finally triumph over you either, because Christ is going to defeat all of your true enemies. So there’s that. The psalmist sees that his enemies will not prevail, but he also sees this glorious hope, this forward-looking blessing and promise, the promise that he’s going to be placed in the very presence of God.
Verse 12, but you have upheld me because of my integrity and set me in your presence forever. being placed in God’s presence, what that literally says in the Hebrews, being placed before your face, which is actually how it’s translated in some of our English versions. And there, verse 12, is where the Christological application really shines through, because it’s Christ who had perfect integrity. He could say, because of my integrity, you have upheld me. He had perfect integrity and therefore death could not hold him. And so he was raised up and he ascended into the very presence of God the Father. He appeared before his face.
And that’s good news for us. It’s very good news for us because Jesus also prayed to his father as follows. Listen to this, listen to Christ’s prayer for you. I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am. So Christ, who through his own matchless and perfect integrity was raised up and was brought into the presence of God and set there forever, prays that you can be in the same place through his grace. And he even made a promise to us, didn’t he? Listen to Christ’s promise to you who have trusted in him.
I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am, you may be also. So through Christ, each one of you who are trusting in him can have that same conclusive confidence, the same that he had. because in him it’s yours. So that’s the confident statement that ends this psalm. And this psalm ends book one of the Psalter.
You ever wondered why the Psalter is divided into five books? You ever wondered what the logic is of it? and why the divisions are where they are. Well, those things are matters of ongoing scholarly pursuit. There’s some very good books written on these issues. Palmer Robertson’s book, The Flow of the Psalms is probably a very good read if you’re interested in learning more about that. We don’t have time to delve into all that tonight, but each of the five books ends with a doxology. And this is the overarching theme of all the Psalms and of the book of Psalms as a whole.
Blessed be God forever and ever. So, as I said at the beginning, we all want to know how the story ends. And we all hope the ending’s happy. We all hope that good triumphs over evil. And we yearn to know We yearn to know that the wrong shall fail and the right will prevail. And Psalm 41 is one of the Bible’s many promises that good triumphs over evil in the end. And it speaks of how mercy triumphs over judgment. Teaches us, blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy, gospel mercy. that leads to life everlasting.
Let’s pray. Father, make us to be merciful. By your grace, make us men and women, children who love to show mercy. And thank you for the great confidence that that evidence of your spirit at work in us will give. Having been promised by you, those who are merciful, those who have regard for the poor, those who have regard for the weak will receive mercy from you. We thank you for the mercy that you’ve graciously and unconditionally extended to us through your son, Jesus Christ, our savior. And in the gospel, Lord, may we stand In that grace, thank you, Lord, for being a merciful God. Thank you for being a God who loves to declare himself to be a God of compassion. We rejoice in your compassion towards us. May it be multiplied, and may we seek to extend that message of compassion and mercy to others. We ask all this in Jesus’ name, amen.