Keith Simons teaches on Psalm 92, emphasizing its significance as a song for the Sabbath, a day dedicated to rest and worship. He explains that giving thanks and singing praises to God is not only right but beneficial, as it reflects God's loving kindness and faithfulness. Simons contrasts the fleeting success of the wicked with the enduring flourishing of the righteous, who are rooted in their relationship with God. He highlights the importance of worship through music and meditation, encouraging believers to recognize God's greatness in creation and His ultimate authority over evil. The sermon concludes with a reminder of God's unwavering righteousness and the blessings that come from being planted in His presence.

Welcome, my name is Keith Symons. I'm a Bible teacher from England and this is our podcast on how to understand the King James Version of the Bible. Today we're looking at Psalm 92. Psalm 92. And as usual we'll be going through word by word and verse by verse seeking to understand the meaning of the words and thereby to understand the meaning of the psalm as a whole. So Psalm 92 begins, a psalm or song for the Sabbath day. The Hebrew words for psalm and for song are different words with a similar meaning. So our King James Bible translators have given us similar words, psalm and song. One of these words specifically suggests a song that's played with musical instruments and we'll see the musical instruments later on. The Sabbath day is the day of rest and prayer each week. It's recorded when God created the heavens and the earth that on the seventh day God rested and therefore he made the seventh day to be a sacred day, a holy day, a day that was different from other days, a day when people shouldn't work but should rest and set the time aside for meeting with God in prayer. And so this is a specific psalm for singing on the Sabbath day, on the day a week when you don't work but you give your time to God. So let's look at verse one. It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord and to sing praises unto thy name O Most High. The Most High is a title for God. It's a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord and to sing praises to him. Now I can already imagine an unbeliever listening to this podcast and they're listening to this with horror because they say well if God really did create us, if God created the heavens and the earth and made us in his own image then it's right to be thankful to him but is it good? Because when we use the word good we mean something that's pleasing, that's beneficial to us, that's healthy and yet it says here it's a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord. So is it good, is it good to take a day a week as a day of rest when you could be working and earning more money and is it good to sing praises to God? Is it not just enough to say them? Why are you singing things which you've maybe already sung a thousand times before? Is that good? So what does this mean it's a good thing to give thanks to the Lord? We read of Eve when she saw the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the tree that she was told not to eat, Genesis 3 verse 6, and when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired to make one wise. Yes that tree was in a sense good, it was good for food. Is it a good thing to give thanks to the Lord? Well that's what the psalmist, the author of this psalm, has set out to prove that it is a good thing to give thanks to God and it is a good thing to sing praises to God, not to care about what pleases you or what's best for your own profit. He will show us that as he goes through it. So think of that first verse, yes it's a statement that it's good and right to give thanks to God, yes it's good and right to sing praises to God, but think of that as a statement that we need to prove as or rather the author of this psalm needs to prove as he goes through his psalm. So how is it good? How is it beneficial to us? How will it please us if we give thanks to God and sing praises to his name? Verse two, to show forth thy loving kindness in the morning and thy faithfulness every night. He's continuing to explain what he considers to be good and he starts to answer it in this verse, because God's kindness in the morning, his kindness which shows his love. Now that word for loving kindness is often translated in the bible simply as kindness or as mercy, but the translators here wanted to emphasize that this is not just kindness in the sense that you might be kind to someone who's weak or in need, but that it's God's love that he's shown to us and because God has shown his love we should show it forth, show it forth it says in the King James, we should declare it in the morning. When better to declare God's love, his kindness than in the morning when we've had the long night and the darkness of the night and then at the dawn the sun starts to shine, the promise of a new day. Isn't that a wonderful time to declare God's love, his kindness? And what about his faithfulness, the fact that we can trust him? Isn't it right to declare that in the nights when it's dark, when we feel in most danger, most afraid to declare God's faithfulness? So we've got an answer to our original question, is it good to give thanks to God? Yes, because God's loving kindness is there in the morning and his faithfulness is there every night. But how do we sing praises? Verse three, upon an instrument of ten strings and upon the psaltery upon the harp with a solemn sound. Okay, upon an instrument of ten strings, the music which they played, we think at the time of the Bible, roughly corresponds to the black notes on the piano. And if you take two octaves of those black notes, you've got ten notes. And we've got an instrument here which is tuned to those ten notes. And in fact, those ten notes, you can play a lot of traditional folk songs in many different countries just with those ten notes. And we think that music in Bible days was based on those ten notes, the black notes on the piano. Upon the psaltery, upon the harp, these are two of the instruments they used to play then. And they would play them with plucked, they were string instruments, and they would pluck the strings and the strings were tuned to these ten notes. So we're talking about not just playing the music, but singing with it and singing your psalm with these musical instruments. A private way to worship or a public way to worship, something you can do on your own or something you can do with other people, but something that you should do with a solemn sound, a serious sound. In other words, although this psalm speaks a lot about joy, we should be thinking, we should be meditating, we should allow our words of praise to God to go through our minds so that we understand their meaning, so they reach deep inside us to our spirits. Verse four, For thou, Lord, hast made me glad through thy work. I will triumph in the works of thy hands. Triumph means be joyful, celebrate. And what God's done is wonderful. Everything God has done to create the world, to sustain the world, to look after us, to provide for us, these things are wonderful. The author of the psalm emphasises it. It's the works of God's hands. All the good things around us are the works of God's hands. Verse five, O Lord, how great are thy works, and thy thoughts are very deep. All around us we see the work of God, throughout creation, throughout the beautiful things he's made, throughout the rich things he's provided for us, and he's thought so carefully about them. Every detail God has carefully planned and worked out. We look at the detail of a flower or a fruit, how this is made up, how it grows. God's planned all this out. Verse six, there are some people who don't know this. A brutish man, it says, knoweth not, neither doth a fool understand this. Why? Because they haven't meditated about God's works. They haven't thought about these things. They haven't thought about how all the wonderful things in creation, from the heat of the sun to the movements of the tiniest ant, are the work of God. And so a brutish man, a fool, similar meaning. The person who thinks about themselves, the person who's turned aside from God because they only care about what is their own benefit. The sort of person who carelessly says, well why should we give thanks to God? Why should we sing praises to his name? Because they haven't thought about God's greatness in his works or the depth of his thoughts. Instead they care about their own profits and they seem to do very well caring about themselves, caring about what pleases themselves. Verse seven, when the wicked spring as the grass, like grass grows quickly and Israel's a hot country and grass can grow very quickly there. It's saying the grass springs up, it grows forth at sudden speed from the ground, only to be cut down. And when all the workers of iniquity, that means sin, evil deeds, do flourish, it's that they shall be destroyed forever. The workers of iniquity do flourish. This word flourish occurs again and again in this psalm and when you look at the Hebrew it's different words. The word we've got in verse seven is describing like flourish in English means flowers, like blossom. And this word in verse seven suggests the suddenness with which the flowers appear. I'm looking out of my window now on a beautiful cherry tree. It's in full flower. It looks wonderful. People sometimes come and take a photograph of it. Yet I know because I've lived here for 50 years that in a few days time there will not be a single petal left on that tree. There they were making, there they are now, making a tremendous show. Yet already those petals have started to fall off and are littering the road underneath them. And soon they'll all be gone. And although I've lived here 50 years I've never seen a cherry, the fruit, grow on that tree. That's how wicked people, that's how evil people flourish or are successful. They look so good, they look so impressive, it's so sudden and so wonderful. But it's for a moment, the moment of their lives on earth and often for a much shorter time than that. And then the judgment of God comes against them and they lose everything. They seem so great, so successful, but the truth is, verse 8, thou Lord art most high forevermore. They think themselves great, those evil people, they think themselves powerful, but it's God who is truly high. His throne is above them. His authority is above their authority. Their authority, their power, their wealth lasts for a moment. But God's power, his authority, his success, his rule lasts forever and forever and forever. Verse 9, for lo, the word lo means look, as if it's suddenly happening. For lo thine enemies, O Lord. Then it repeats it, for lo thine enemies shall perish. All the workers of iniquity, these evil people, shall be scattered. Like an army which has gathered up together to oppose God, this vast army, and then suddenly God acts and that army that opposed him is scattered and the people are all running away in different directions. Their power, their authority lost. Because God defeats these evil people. So we're getting an answer now to why does he say it's a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord and to sing praises unto the name of the Most High. Why does he say that? Because it might look good to live for your own wealth. It might look good to praise yourself. It might look good to look after your own interests. But the time of judgment will come and God will act against the evil people who did these wicked things, who selfishly cared only for themselves, who opposed him and who opposed his rule. Therefore it is a good thing to give thanks to God. Therefore it's beneficial for me to give thanks to God and to sing praises unto God. I don't just do it because it's right, although I should do it only because it's right, but I also do it and I know that it's good for me. Verse 10. But my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of a unicorn. I shall be anointed with fresh oil. Okay, the unicorn was an animal in ancient times. The Bible is describing an actual animal. The King James Bible uses the word unicorn describing a mythical animal, an imaginary animal. But the Hebrew is describing a real animal and this animal had a horn and it fought with that horn. And my horn shalt thou exalt. In other words, my power, my strength. Remember David, who wrote this probably, was a king. And it's saying, God, you're going to give me strength and power. Just like this powerful animal I've got in mind, you're going to make me strong and powerful. I shall be anointed with fresh oil. That's describing richness. It's describing success. It's describing wealth. This fresh, this green oil, like the oil from an olive tree that is still green from the olive and has the same strength in it that the tree has. That's a picture there. Verse 11. Mine eyes, sorry, mine eye shall also see my desire on mine enemies and mine ears shall hear my desire of the wicked that rise up against me. You'll see there the words my desire are in italics, xanthotype. They're not there in the original language. So he's saying he's going to see something about the enemies, the people who oppose him, and he's going to hear something about these wicked enemies. Why should his eye see that? Well, it's his eye which has suffered from those enemies. It's his eye which has wept in the past because of the power of evil people. And now those enemies are going to be defeated because God acts against them. In the same way, the ears formerly heard in the past about the enemies and made him afraid, deeply afraid. But now he hears of the defeat of these wicked people. And now, therefore, his eye and his ears can rejoice because those wicked people have lost their power. They've been defeated. God has acted against them. Verse 12. The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree. He shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Okay, the word flourish here in the Hebrew language is a different word to the way that the workers of iniquity, the evil people, flourished in verse 7. When it says the righteous shall flourish like the palm tree, it's describing the way the palm tree shoots forth a massive shoot with its flowers on it. And the palm tree is the plant from which we get the fruit called dates. And so the flower comes, a massive flower, and then a massive quantity of fruit, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of fruit from the one tree. The righteous, God's people, the good people, the people who do what's right because God has given them a right relationship with himself, they'll flourish with that level of success. He shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. These were massive trees. They also had a beautiful scent. And so it's saying not only will they have great success, they'll also become strong and successful. Verse 13, those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. Now trees were not planted in the house of God, God's temple, the holy place in Jerusalem, nor in the courtyards around it. So this is a word picture. It's saying the people that find their relationship with God, the people whose relationship depends on God, they will be successful. They will be successful because of that relationship with God, just as successful like the palm tree with its masses of dates or the cedar tree with its huge size. That is how God is going to bless them. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age. Verse 14, they shall be fat and flourishing. Fatness in the Bible describes success and wealth and comfort. Flourishing, this is again a different word to the previous words we found for flourish. It does occur in the Hebrew language earlier in this psalm when it talks about, in verse 10, the fresh oil. That word fresh is the same as the word for flourishing in verse 14. It's saying God's people shall be full of life. Even when they're old, they'll be full of life. Now we said at the beginning, it's a good thing to give thanks and to the Lord and to sing praises unto thy name, O Most High. Yes, the wicked people, their success is for a moment. Their success comes and it goes. But God's people, God's people are going to bring forth fruit, be successful on and on and on in old age, in the years and beyond that, into eternity, forever and ever, because they're flourishing in the courts of God, in God's holy place. So that shows us, verse 15, that the Lord is upright. He doesn't benefit wicked people and their wicked schemes don't bring success. That's why I find my strength in him. He is my rock, says the author of this psalm, and there is no unrighteousness in him. He's not giving favour to those wicked people. He's acting against them. It will be good to hear from you my email address 333kjv at gmail.com. Let me read that again before I read the whole psalm. 333kjv at gmail.com. And here's a whole of Psalm 92, a psalm or song for the Sabbath day. It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord and to sing praises unto thy name, O Most High, to shew forth thy lovingkindness in the morning and thy faithfulness every night, upon an instrument of ten strings and upon the psaltery, upon the harp with a solemn sound. For thou, Lord, hast made me glad through thy work. I will triumph in the works of thy hands. O Lord, how great are thy works, and thy thoughts are very deep. A brutish man knoweth not, neither doth a fool understand this. When the wicked spring as the grass, and when all the workers of iniquity do flourish, it is that they shall be destroyed forever. But thou, Lord, art most high forevermore. For lo, thine enemies, O Lord, for lo, thine enemies shall perish, and all the workers of iniquity shall be scattered. But my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of an unicorn. I shall be anointed with fresh oil. Mine eye also shall see my desire on mine enemies, and mine ears shall hear my desire of the wicked that rise up against me. The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree. He shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age. They shall be fat and flourishing to show that the Lord is upright. He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.