Pastor Fredo Ramos: As we continue praying the Psalms, we come today to Psalm 68. Rise up, oh god, and scatter your enemies. Let those who hate god run for their lives. Blow them away like smoke. Melt them like wax in a fire.
Let the wicked perish in the presence of God, but let the godly rejoice. Let them be glad in God's presence. Let them be filled with joy. Sing praises to God and to his name. Verse five.
He's a father to the fatherless, defender of widows. This is God who dwell whose dwelling is holy. God places the lonely in families. He sets the prisoners free and gives them joy, but he makes the rebellious live in a sun scorched land. Verse seven.
Now he gets into detail about what god has done. Oh god, when you led your people out from Egypt, when you marched through the the dry wasteland, The earth trembled and the heavens poured down rain. Verse 11. The lord gives the word and a great army brings the good news. Enemy kings and their armies flee.
Down in verse 17, surrounded by unnumbered thousands of chariots, the lord came from Mount Sinai into his sanctuary. Verse 19, praise the lord for for, our god is a savior and each day he carries us in his arms. Verse 22, the Lord says, I will bring my enemies down from Bashan. Verse 24, your procession has come into view, oh God, the procession of my God and king as he goes into the sanctuary. Singers are in front, musicians are behind.
Between them are young women playing tambourines. Praise god, all you people of Israel. Praise the lord, the source of Israel's life. Verse 28. Summon your might, oh god.
Display your power, oh god, as you have in the past. The kings of the earth are bringing tribute to your temple in Jerusalem. Make them bring bars of silver and humble tribute. Verse 32, sing to god, you kingdoms. Verse 33, sing to the one who rides.
Verse 34, tell everyone about god's power. And then, of course, the last verse, god is awesome, his sanctuary. The god of Israel gives power and strength to his people. Praise be to God. It's a long Psalm.
Psalm 68 has 35 verses. That's why I was kind of going a few, going over a few of them. One of the themes that stands out by way of reflection is this picture of God having this procession, this victorious procession as if he's this king who's won a battle. And so David finds himself in a moment of prayer, envisioning how God is the victorious one over all of the nations, so much so that they're bringing their plunder to him. They're bringing all of their riches to him.
And I love in the grand scheme of this idea that God has conquered all. Verse 19 gives us this very intimate picture of the God who every day carries us in his arms. Another translation says, he daily carries our burdens. I love the the tension, of both a God who is majestic and powerful enough to conquer the universe, yet he's close enough, personal enough, and aware of our lives to daily carry our burdens. The one who every nation will bow to also is aware of your anxiety today, is also aware of the concerns you have today, of your route you'll take to work, of the conversations you'll have with your kids, of your morning routine of how you'll get ready, of how you'll go to sleep.
He is intimately aware of all of those things. And listen, the God who conquers all, he longs to carry your burdens today. And so be mindful of the things that maybe you're carrying now that you don't need to because God longs to carry those things for you. And to turn back even earlier to verse five, he's a father to the fatherless. He defends the widow.
He puts the lonely person into families. This is a God who transforms people. He sets prisoners free. Right? This is why we are to ascribe to him praise and power today because he has the power to set a person free.
He has a power to put you into community. He has a power to conquer the nations. And this should root all of our praise with the beautiful picture that in Jesus, we have the one who carried our burdens. Not just the ones that you and I need to be carried today, but the ultimate one of sin and death that he was able to conquer on the cross. You see, ultimately, the enemies of god that will hand over the keys and hand over their riches will, in fact, be death itself, and it will be sin itself.
All of those things will be handed over to the victorious one, Jesus. And it's you, Jesus, that we hear now inviting us to respond to you with praise. First, with a sense of gratitude that you are the conquering one, but also with the petition that we now hand these daily burdens to you. Verse 19 reminds us that you carry us in your arms today. In the midst of this victory parade that we look forward to, God, you're not so big that you have forgotten our needs, and so we give those to you now.
We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.