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Psalm 149 - Rejoicing In God and A Warrior Psalm · Tabernacle Talk - A Bible Study Podcast with Pastor Bryon Self

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  Welcome to Tabernacle Talk. Tabernacle Talk is a Bible study
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  podcast brought from Tabernacle Baptist Church in Essex, MD.
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  I'm your host, Brian Self. We hope this podcast encourages
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  you to know Christ, grow in his Word, and show his love to
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  others. Let's dive right in.
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  Welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. Today we're in Psalm 149.
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  We are in the second to last of the Psalms and I am so excited.
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  What a journey that it has been together and we have been in the
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  book 5 of Psalms for a long time now.
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  I think it's probably been 5 or 6 months at this point.
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  And so I'm excited for the next chapter of what will we, what we
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  will be doing in Tabernacle Talk.
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  And we're going to be going back to the New Testament for a
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  little bit. We're going to do something
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  there. I am still praying over and
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  thinking over what that will be. And then once we complete that
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  in the New Testament, I know we'll be heading back over to
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  the Old Testament, likely Isaiah.
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  I think Isaiah is a tremendous book of Scripture.
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  So much of the New Testament, and especially so much of
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  Jesus's ministry is built on what Isaiah spoke from the Lord.
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  And there are so many prophecies about Jesus within the book of
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  Isaiah. And so I think that's where
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  we're going to be headed after we do our next portion in the
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  New Testament. But I like being able to give
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  some variety of doing some of the old, some of the new.
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  And I want to make sure that we are learning all of God's Word,
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  not just the portions that are most familiar to us or that we
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  maybe quote UN quote, enjoy the most.
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  But today we are in Psalm 149. So let's read through this and
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  see what God has for us today. Hallelujah.
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  Sing to Yahweh a new song, His praise in the assembly of the
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  faithful. Let Israel celebrate its maker.
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  Let the children of Zion rejoice in their king.
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  Let them praise His name with dancing and make music to Him
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  with tambourine and lyre. For Yahweh takes pleasure in His
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  people. He adorns the humble with
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  salvation. Let the faithful celebrate in
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  triumphal glory. Let them shout for joy on their
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  beds. Let the exaltation of God be in
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  their mouths and a double edged sword in their hands, inflicting
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  vengeance on the nations and punishment on the peoples,
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  binding their kings with chains and their dignitaries with iron
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  shackles, carrying out the judgment decreed against them.
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  This honor is for all His faithful people.
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  Hallelujah. All right, if you're like me,
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  you're reading through and at one point it's verse number six.
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  You go wait a second. This just took a giant turn.
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  What in the world are we supposed to make of this?
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  So let's walk through this together and see, see what we
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  are and what we are not supposed to do today.
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  So verse #1 Hallelujah, sing to Yahweh a new song, His praise in
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  the assembly of the faithful, that we are to be singing new
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  songs to God as God continues to be faithful to us.
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  So if God has given us new reasons to praise day by day
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  that he got me through 2025, He got me through January of 2026,
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  He got me through the day before I recorded this Sunday, February
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  8th, 2026, I have new reasons to praise the Lord.
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  God has been faithful to me in new ways that I've never before
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  experienced, him getting me through all of those things in
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  the way that he has. And so I ought to praise him a
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  new for the new morning mercies that he has given.
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  And I want you to consider that God's not just operating back
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  here in Bible times. He's not just given the final
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  word with Jesus's crucifixion and burial and resurrection and
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  ascension. He's not done with.
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  When the Bible was created, he's not done with, you know, maybe
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  the revivals that we would hear about the Great Awakening, both
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  the 1st and 2nd and the, you know, Billy Sunday and, and
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  Billy Graham crusades and things of the last century.
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  Like God is still working and every single day he is doing new
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  good things for you and for me. He's giving us encouragement.
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  He is giving us guidance from his word.
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  He's giving us new conversations with people that we can have,
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  that we can experience his goodness.
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  We can experience like his truth flowing through us to someone
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  else. There are just 1000 different
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  ways in which our God is newly good to us, so let's praise Him.
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  It's why I love whenever you know, Christian music artists,
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  whenever they release a new recording, I love being able to
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  listen through it. There's one song that I was
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  listening to recently from Elevation Worship.
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  I believe the song's title is So Be It.
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  It's kind of the the word we would use.
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  Amen. May it be so.
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  And so they have just a a song of great confidence and
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  gratitude for God that when God speaks, it occurs and he is the
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  one that is triumphant over the grave.
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  He is triumphant over my sin and my weakness.
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  He has declared my salvation. And so we can echo that prayer.
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  So be it God. I think the course of it goes.
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  The Lamb of God has overcome my testimony is his blood.
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  And if he says that it is done, it is done, so be it God.
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  And I just think God is so worthy of every praise and new
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  praise that we can bring him. But then that praise isn't just
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  supposed to be in your own private individual heart.
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  That is absolutely where it should start.
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  Like there should be personal praise to God within you.
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  Now you might not write a new song, but you can say thank you,
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  the Lord. You can express gratitude from
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  him. You can join in in your heart,
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  in the praise, in the new praise that others are singing and
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  writing about. You don't have to be a composer
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  all on your own, but that praise, that gratitude that we
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  are called to have individually and personally from the heart,
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  is then supposed to spill out into the larger assembly of
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  God's people. He says his praise in the
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  assembly of the faithful. Are you part?
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  Are you a participant or an observer in the corporate
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  worship of the Saints? Now, you might not be involved
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  in the same way as everyone else is.
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  I know some people. They're perhaps like good
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  singers. But if you ask them to do, you
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  know, a dance or something rhythmic or to clap on beat,
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  they might not be able to do that very well.
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  That's all right. God has 1000 different ways in
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  which we are called to participate.
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  We can raise our hands, we can clap, we can sing, we can dance,
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  we can play an instrument, all these things that we would even
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  read in the upcoming verses. But God wants you to do
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  something in the praise and worship of Him.
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  I have led music for many years. One of the saddest things that
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  occurs in in the time of worshipping through music is
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  when you have someone that just especially with a scowl on their
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  face is not singing. They are not, you know, they're
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  not doing anything in worship with their hands or their arms
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  or their body. Like it's just scowl time and
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  they're just, you know, shutting up.
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  And what makes it really sad often times is it's people that
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  have a lot of opinions and they run their mouths about a lot of
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  different things in life. And they, it, it can be hard
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  sometimes to get such a person to be silent other than when it
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  is time to praise the Lord. And I, I want to encourage every
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  person that is watching. I want to encourage you maybe if
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  you've got a, you've got a spouse or you have a loved one,
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  a friend that maybe they've got kind of just that very stoic, Oh
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  yeah, I'm not going to do anything.
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  Encourage them God is worthy of our praise, so find some way to
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  praise him even if all you can praise him with his mouth in the
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  words and and having you know some modicum of joy or happiness
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  or a smile on your face. It sometimes the appropriate
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  response is you've got a tear coming down your face.
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  For some people, like great a tear is worship to the Lord,
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  that you are responding to God as a result of what you know to
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  be true about Him. It doesn't matter what the
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  response is, but have some sort of response.
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  I promise you are not being held at gunpoint and and told to
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  worship the Lord. We are forgiven and redeemed and
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  restored and adopted and given purpose and mission.
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  We are indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
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  We have every reason to praise the Lord.
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  And so I want to encourage you in that when it comes time for a
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  corporate praise, may we praise all together.
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  May we praise excitedly because it is good to praise.
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  Verse #2 Let Israel celebrate its maker, that the children of
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  Zion rejoice in their king. God made you, so He's worthy of
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  your praise. God is your king, He is your
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  ruler, so He is worthy of your adoration, of your rejoicing.
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  You can be happy that you have God as your king because He is a
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  good king. He does what is right, He
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  provides for you, and so you ought to rejoice in your king.
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  Verse #3 Let them praise His name with dancing and make music
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  to him with tambourine and lyre. If You Can Dance, dance for the
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  Lord. If you can play an instrument,
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  play an instrument for the Lord, there can be 1000 different, you
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  know, kind of good venues to be able to dance or to play.
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  I can think, you know, any weddings that you have.
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  That is a common occurrence throughout all of human history.
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  Like when it's time for this rejoicing, it's something that
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  you play music to you, you dance together.
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  And you can look even today at some of the wedding festivities
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  that happened during like Jewish weddings, where it is exciting,
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  It's joy filled. You have kind of the, the, the
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  corporate dancing that is done together.
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  It reminds me kind of my only connection with something like
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  that would be in the Prince of Egypt movies where you have
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  Moses and as he's become part of this larger family of Jethro and
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  the, the glad rejoicing and dancing that occurs there.
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  And Moses is kind of, you know, shaken along by it.
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  And it's, it's just a joy. And so there are many, many
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  venues in which dancing and singing and playing instruments
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  is appropriate and good, but none more so than the House of
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  God. The House of God is the place
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  where all of our greatest joys and excitement occurs.
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  And so it is in those moments that we need to be focused on
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  the Lord. Again, we don't we don't do
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  anything We do to, if you will bring attention to ourselves.
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  But if God is doing something, if God has done something for
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  you and he has, and if God is doing something in you and he
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  is, if you are still breathing, then there ought to be a
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  response of joy and worship and adoration and excitement about
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  what God is doing. Verse #4 For Yahweh takes
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  pleasure in his people. He adorns the humble with
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  salvation. What he thought that this is
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  God's not begrudging that we are his.
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  Instead, he takes pleasure in his people.
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  When I look at my kids, when I look at my wife, I am filled
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  with joy. I'm filled with happiness.
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  I go man, like God. Thank you for giving me these
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  wonderful people. Thank you for the joy that they
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  bring into my life. Thank you that they are not me.
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  They're not exactly like me and praise the Lord for that, but
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  their uniqueness is something that I'm able to rejoice in and
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  hear Yahweh in such a greater way.
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  He takes pleasure in His people. That is His default view of you.
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  By the way, I've mentioned the book on here before many times,
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  Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortland, and in it he quotes an
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  older Puritan author from the 15 or 16 hundreds who goes at
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  length to through Scripture to show us that God's like anger,
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  his vengeance, his wrath against sin.
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  That is his peculiar work. It is something that he does in
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  his righteousness, but it is not his normal mode of operation.
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  His normal mode of operation is mercy and joy and love.
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  And so when God needs to be just, he will absolutely do
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  that. But he is not, He is not framed
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  himself first and foremost as the God of justice.
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  He has framed himself first and foremost as the Lord, gracious
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  and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love.
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  Like that's God's description of himself that he gives to Moses
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  in the passage in Exodus. That is then one of the most
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  quoted portions of Scripture in all of the Old Testament.
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  So God's default mode towards you, his default opinion of you
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  is you are my child, I love you, I take pleasure in you.
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  I am happy that you are mine. And when it comes, you know,
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  time sometimes for God to judge us, for him to chasten us, for
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  him to kind of, if you will bring the hammer down when he
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  has to ground us, He will do it, but He does it out of love for
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  us. And what a joy that that is
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  God's. God's not perpetually angry with
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  you. And in times when you have it
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  all together, he's finally like, OK, I can, I can tolerate them
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  now. No, God is amazingly in love
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  with you, so much so that He gave His own life to die for you
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  who there is. There is no one in my life that
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  has ever had to thankfully make the choice between choosing to
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  lay ever dying on my behalf. But my God did that for me.
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  And this inexpressible love is something that I can rejoice in.
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  And if my God takes pleasure in me, may I take pleasure in my
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  God in following in His way and learning more about Him and
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  experiencing His presence, His Holy Spirit day by day.
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  I love it. The end of verse four.
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  He adorns the humble with salvation.
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  Those that are lowly, those that everyone else might have
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  forgotten, God does not forget them.
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  And He, if you will, adorns. He crowns them.
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  He clothes them with His salvation, with His rescue.
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  Verse 5, Let the faithful celebrate in triumphal glory.
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  Let them shout for joy on their beds.
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  We can be excited about what God does, about what he is doing.
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  I love this phrase. You know, let them shout for joy
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  on their beds. That you can wake up and you go
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  back, Man, God is awesome. Or you can lay your head on your
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  pillow at night and go. God, thank you for getting me
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  through another day. That there can be from sunup to
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  sundown, from waking up till going to sleep.
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  You can be thankful and you can shout for joy to your God.
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  All right, so then verses 6 through 9, what the world it was
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  it talking about there at the end, let the exaltation of God
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  be in their mouths. So here there's praising God
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  even when you're going to sleep and a double edged sword in
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  their hands, inflecting vengeance on the nations and
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  punishment on the peoples binding their kings with chains
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  and their dignitaries with iron shackles carrying out the
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  decree, the judgement decreed against them.
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  All right, well, it seems like we turned a massive we we made a
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  big turn somewhere where we were going from like salvation, God's
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  love, all of that into judgement being executed on the nation's
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  number one. We need to remember this was
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  during a specific point in redemptive history in which if
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  Israel there as a nation, if it does not continue to exist, the
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  Messiah would not come into the world.
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  If Israel there is eradicated, the Messiah does not come
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  through the lineage of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah and David.
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  And so it was of utmost importance for these people to
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  live and to survive in unbroken, if you will, genetic line that
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  this was something that was necessary.
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  Here. The enemies that Israel had was
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  primarily Satan and the demons. But then Satan would often use
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  the other nations in order to attack and to try and harm
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  Israel. And so here for people that
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  were, that were consistently attacking, betraying, harming,
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  bringing in troops to steal things from the nation, there is
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  a if you will, there is this prayer over those that would
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  defend Israel that they would say, God, we need your victory
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  in the battle. So as we think about how you are
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  worthy of praise, as we think about the fact that you love us,
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  that you care for us, we believe that you will protect us as we
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  go into the fight. And not just that we will
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  survive, but that we will win here, that there will be this
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  punishment on the surrounding nations, that these that had at
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  one point chained Israel, that had enslaved people, they would
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  find that coming back onto them. And as we think about this now
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  as the people of God, that we are a holy nation, we remember
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  the Church of Jesus Christ has a double edged sword.
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  But it's not a literal sword. It's the word of God.
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  And we read about that in Hebrews 4, that the word of God
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  is alive. It's living and powerful and
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  sharper than any 2 edged sword. And so we fight our battles not
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  with a Glock or with an AR15. That's not the kind of battles
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  that we fight as the church. Instead, we fight using the word
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  of God to say this is what God says.
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  And so this is what we must do. And if someone, you know, if
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  someone wants to kill us, especially for our faith in
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  Jesus, our faith in Jesus in particular, I I will say.
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  Then we can have the same mindset that Jesus did, the same
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  mindset that Paul had, the same mindset that Peter had after
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  Jesus told him to put away his sword.
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  We can have the same mindset as the last 2000 years of Christian
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  martyrs, that if one wants to kill us for our faith, we do not
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  battle against them, but we recognize we die.
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  We're instantly with Jesus, We're good, but our deaths could
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  lead to someone else accepting the Lord.
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  You can see that even in Stevens stoning that Paul is there
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  consenting to his death. But then later God used Paul's
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  conscience and the fact that he had been so like moved and
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  grieved through what had happened that Jesus describes
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  Paul is like, Hey, you're you're fighting against the goat
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  against the, you know, kind of like ox prick thing that keeps
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  pointing you towards Jesus and you keep ignoring it.
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  And Paul get saved as a result in in part due to the stoning of
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  Steven that takes place. And so we don't fight with a
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  sword. We don't fight with gun for the
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  Kingdom of God, we fight with the word of God is the way that
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  we battle. And we can think of that coming
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  day when Jesus returns as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and
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  he will execute perfect justice on the nation's that everyone
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  will get the exact right and righteous condemnation for what
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  they have done. And on that day, we will be
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  amazed at God's like justice and his perfection of his ability to
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  exact vengeance in a way that is good and right and perfect and
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  holy. And so I don't want you to walk
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  away from this Psalm going, all right, cool.
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  I'm going to go, I'm going to go fight some person.
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  I'm going to go fight some kings and dignitaries.
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  Don't do that. Instead, realize Jesus is the
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  one that is the ultimate fulfillment of all of Scripture.
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  And may we praise, may we adore our God, may we worship and obey
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  him. And then may we go out to
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  battle, if you will, not against flesh and blood, but against the
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  demons and principalities and powers, the spiritual beings in
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  opposition to God. May we go out armed with the
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  Word of God and with the armor of God on us.
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  And may we seek to win people to team Jesus.
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  May we have more and more our attention focused on bringing
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  people into the Kingdom of the Lord, not on building our own,
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  you know, kingdoms of man. Well, no, it was a little bit
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  longer episode today, but thank you for tuning in tomorrow, last
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  episode of book 5 of Psalms and all of Psalms will be complete.
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  Looking forward to it. See you next episode.