Bible Studies

A STUDY OF PSALM 27 VERSE 6

by GLENN PEASE
01/28/22
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6 Then my head will be exalted
above the enemies who surround me;
at his tabernacle will I sacrifice with shouts of joy;
I will sing and make music to the LORD.

A. Then my head will be exalted
above the enemies who surround me;

1. Safety first, and then sacrifice. When he feels safe and secure, he can raise his voice and offer the sacrifice of praise. His heart and voice shout with joy, and he breaks out in a song of thanksgiving for the glorious grace of God that makes him victorious over his enemies. He knows that on his own he would be a goner, but with God's help he will be the king of the mountain.

2. Spurgeon wrote, "David was by faith so sure of a glorious victory over all those who beset him, that he arranged in his own heart what he would do when his foes lay all prostrate before him; that arrangement was such as gratitude suggested. Therefore will I offer in his tabernacle sacrifices of joy. That place for which he longed in his conflict, should see his thankful joy in his triumphant return. He does not speak of jubilations to be offered in his palace, and feastings in his banqueting halls, but holy mirth he selects as most fitting for so divine a deliverance. I will sing. This is the most natural mode of expressing thankfulness. Yea, I will sing praises unto the Lord. The vow is confirmed by repetition, and explained by addition, which addition vows all the praise unto Jehovah. Let who will be silent, the believer when his prayer is heard, must and will make his praise to be heard also; and let who will sing unto the vanities of the world, the believer reserves his music for the Lord alone."

3. Calvin wrote, "By making a solemn vow of thanksgiving, after he shall have been delivered from dangers, he confirms himself again in the hope of deliverance. The faithful under the Law, we know, were wont, by a solemn rite, to pay their vows, when they had experienced any remarkable blessing from God. Here, therefore, David, though in banishment, and prohibited from approaching the temple, boasts that he would again come to the altar of God, and offer the sacrifice of praise. It appears, however, that he tacitly sets the holy rejoicing and songs, in which he promises to give thanks to God, in opposition to the profane triumphings of the world."

4. Fear and shame make the head hang down, but victory over the enemies of life make the head held high. Enemies are all around him, but he is not quivering in fear. He is exalted like a trophy that God has set on a pedestal. In defeat we bow our head, but in victory we lift it high, and his head is exalted because God has given him the victory. He does the same thing as we do when our team pulls out a victory that seems unlikely. He shouts with all his might.

B. at his tabernacle will I sacrifice with shouts of joy;

1. “Halah is an ecstatic shout of joy. It is the extemporaneous, unsolicited response to a favorable and joyful situation. It is the reaction one has when his favorite football team has just scored the winning points.” There are few events in life that can be more joyful than that of being delivered from certain death. Most of us do not feel it from being delivered from enemies trying to kill us, but from accidents on the road in travel, or from the destruction of nature in tornados and floods. When we survive these things we are filled with joy and praise to God for his providential protection.

1B. It sounds like David was a Pentecostal worshiper, for he is not quietly expressing his joy in the Lord. He is shouting his joy. It is surprising how often the shout of joy is seen in the Psalms. For example:

Psalm 33:3 Sing to him a new song; play skillfully, and shout for joy.

Psalm 35:27 May those who delight in my vindication shout for joy and gladness; may they always say, "The LORD be exalted, who delights in the well-being of his servant."

Psalm 42:4 These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng.

Psalm 47:1 [ For the director of music. Of the Sons of Korah. A psalm. ] Clap your hands, all you nations; shout to God with cries of joy.

Psalm 47:5 God has ascended amid shouts of joy, the LORD amid the sounding of trumpets.

Psalm 71:23 My lips will shout for joy when I sing praise to you— I, whom you have redeemed.

Psalm 81:1 [ For the director of music. According to gittith. Of Asaph. [ Title: Probably a musical term ] ] Sing for joy to God our strength; shout aloud to the God of Jacob!

Psalm 95:1 Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.

Psalm 98:4 Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music;

Psalm 98:6 with trumpets and the blast of the ram's horn— shout for joy before the LORD, the King.

1C. We do not see this type of shouting even in most Pentecostal churches let alone the other denominations. We tend to think of Old Testament worship in the temple and tabernacle as quiet and subdued, but the evidence is that it was loud and jubilant with voices raised in joyous praise. This was very acceptable to God, but not very acceptable to God's people. If I tried this I would be frowned upon, and so would just about anybody in any modern day church. Is this because there is seldom to never a good reason to be so joyous? It might be, for we are not being delivered as often as David, and we do not see the direct working of God in our lives as often as he did. We need to experience the wonder of God's protection and deliverance to have the energy and motivation to shout for joy.

1D. Peter Kreeft wrote, "We are designed for joy. Joy is our fuel, our food. When true fuel, true food, is missing, it becomes psychologically inevitable that we go after and are victimized by false fuel, false food, which cannot satisfy. Why is it that “No man can live without joy?” Because we are designed by Joy for joy: because “the serious business of heaven is joy” (C. S. Lewis, (Letters To Malcolm). What we were created to do and experience eternally in heaven is the joy the saints anticipate here on earth.”

1E. A. W. Pink wrote, "Rejoice evermore" (1 Thess. 5:16). It surely cannot be unsafe to do what God has commanded us. The Lord has placed no embargo on rejoicing. No, it is Satan who strives to make us hang up our harps. There is no precept in Scripture bidding us "Grieve in the Lord aways: and again I say, Grieve"; but there is an exhortation which bids us, "Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous: for praise is lovely for the upright" (Ps. 33:1). Reader, if you are a real Christian (and it is high time you tested yourself by Scripture and made sure of this point), then Christ is yours, all that is in Him is yours. He bids you "Eat, O friends; drink, yes, drink abundantly, O beloved" (Song of Sol. 5:1): the only sin you may commit against His banquet of love is to stint yourself. "Let your soul delight itself in fatness"(Isa. 55:2) is spoken not to those already in heaven but to saints still on earth. This leads us to say that:
We profit from the Word when we perceive that joy is a duty. "Rejoice in the Lord aways: and again I say, Rejoice" (Phil. 4:4). The Holy Spirit here speaks of rejoicing as a personal, present and permanent duty for the people of God to carry out. The Lord has not left it to our option whether we should be glad or sad, but has made happiness an obligation. Not to rejoice is a sin of omission. Next time you meet with a radiant Christian, do not chide him, you dwellers in Doubting Castle, but chide yourselves; instead of being ready to call into question the Divine spring of his mirth, judge yourself for your doleful state."

2. Hebrews 13:15 "By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name." It seems strange to think of praise and shouts of joy as being sacrifices to God. It sure is better than bringing animals to church and killing them in sacrifice, but how is shouting and singing a sacrifice? It is offering up to God what he most enjoys, and that is a grateful heart. He has given you breath and life, and the best thing you can give him back is the breath of your life. By your lips, vocal cords, and lungs you can make your breath a sweet smelling sacrifice flowing from your inner being expressing your love and gratitude to God for all his blessings. How a person uses his or her breath is a good measure of their heart. If they use their breath to curse and complain rather than compliment and commend, they will not be seen as happy and thankful people in the eyes of men. If they do not use their breath to thank God on a regular basis, they are not seen by God as people who appreciate all of his grace and goodness.

3. Andrew Murray wrote, "Joy is always the evidence that something really satisfies me and has great value for me. Joy, more than anything else, recommends its cause to others. And joy in God is the strongest proof that I have in God what satisfies and satiates me. It shows that I do not serve Him with dread, or remain faithful only because He is my salvation. Joy is the mark of the truth, the worth of obedience, and shows whether I have pleasure in the will of God. It is for this reason that joy in God is so acceptable to Him, so strengthening to believers themselves and to all who are exposed to the most eloquent testimony of what we think of God."

4. Ralph Andrus has compiled the following reasons for why we should praise our Lord and King.

1. Praise Pleases The Lord - Ps 50:23
Ps 50:23 Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me: and to him that ordereth his conversation aright will I shew the salvation of God.
Ps 50:23 (NKJV) Whoever offers praise glorifies Me; And to him who orders his conduct aright I will show the salvation of God.”

2. Praise Raises Your Spirit - Deliverance
Ps 40:1-3 I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the LORD.

3. Praise Stimulates Your Possibilities
Ps 67:5-7 Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee. Then shall the earth yield her increase; and God, even our own God, shall bless us. God shall bless us; and all the ends of the earth shall fear him.

4.Praise Brings About Confidence & Peace
Ps 71:14 But I will hope continually, and will yet praise thee more and more.

5. Praise Energizes Enthusiasm - Ps 68:19
Ps 68:19 Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation. Selah.
Ps 68:19 (GNT) Praise the Lord, who carries our burdens day after day; he is the God who saves us.

6. Praise Expands & Extends Your Dreams
2 Pe 3:18 But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.
2 Pet 3:18 (Amp)But grow in grace (undeserved favor, spiritual strength) and [a]recognition and knowledge and understanding of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (the Messiah). To Him [be] glory (honor, majesty, and splendor) both now and to the start of eternity. Amen (so be it)!

C. I will sing and make music to the LORD.

1. People go back to ancient Egypt and to the Bible in search of the origin of music, but nobody seems to realize that God loved music before man was created. The angels sand long before man, and so music was in the mind of God in eternity. It is a part of his very being, and so music has no beginning, but is an eternal part of God’s nature.

2. Making music to the Lord is a way of expressing gratitude, and it is a way of saying that he enjoys God, and magnifies and glorifies God. Man cannot make God greater, and so to magnify him and glorify him is not making him more magnificent and glorious than he already is. It means that he is magnified in us, and made more glorious to us. We are enjoying him on a higher level. Someone said, "It means thinking or feeling or saying or doing things that give evidence of God's infinite glory. You compliment (glorify!) someone's cooking by manifestly enjoying their food. You honor (glorify!) a symphony and its composer by enjoying the music." The more you enjoy God, the more you glorify him, and singing and making music to the Lord is the highest way of enjoying God, for it is the most powerful way of expressing the emotion of enjoyment.

3. By his singing to the Lord he is acknowledging that God, and not his own wisdom and power, has led him to victory over his foes. David is walking on the edge here, and sometimes it seems like he is bragging and boasting as if he is the author of his triumph. Let the enemy come, for they will be defeated, and I will rise above them to laugh at their defeat. They will fall before me as I rise above their weakness in my strength. Out of context this could be seen as prideful bragging, but in the context it can be seen clearly that he is giving God all the credit for his victory. Singing to the Lord is one of the ways we confess him as the source of all our success. When we praise and thank God for all our blessings we are admitting that he is the author and source of them, and not we ourselves.

4. I got a kick out of reading the testimony of an unknown Pastor who wrote, "The news from our mechanic threatened to scuttle our plans. A suspicious rattling noise prompted me to take our clunker of a car to the shop a day before we were scheduled to drive through the night to Florida for our family vacation. The mechanic informed me that the rattling noise was our transmission’s farewell song, and that we were going to have to replace it—a time-consuming and expensive repair. Seriously discouraged, I made my way back to the church office. I was considering how I would break the news to my family, when the phone rang. On the other end of the line, one of our church members said, “Hey, Pastor, I hear that you’re going to Florida on vacation. You know, my wife and I are worried about you taking your family to Florida in that little car. Our cars belong to God, and we would like you to take one of them on your vacation. Your choice!”

Wow! I knew that his cars were beauties—so either one would have been incredible. With vacation plans intact and with a heart of gratitude for God’s provision, my family made our way to Florida in our friend’s beautiful car. I’ve got to be honest: I loved driving that car. I loved the stares we got at stoplights; and I felt pretty proud as I pulled up to a gas station. As I was pumping gas into the car (it had a huge appetite for fuel!), a guy walked out of the gas station and said, “Hey, that’s a beautiful car. How do you like your car?” This was a big moment for me. Do you think I wanted to tell him it wasn’t my car? No way! A spiritual battle raged in my heart for what seemed like an hour (but was probably only 10 seconds). Truth finally won out, and I said, “Well, it’s not my car, but I like it a lot!”

Through the course of life, we all have opportunities to take the credit for ourselves when we shouldn’t. In the spotlight of some success, it’s tempting to keep the applause focused on “me.” But when you think about it, we would have no success in our lives at all if God did not see fit to give us the opportunities to succeed, the brainpower, the education, the temperament and gifts to accomplish praiseworthy things. Even so, when people notice that we have something good going, an internal spiritual battle occurs: Do we keep the glory for ourselves, or do we turn the spotlight back to God where it belongs? Paul had it right in Philippians 3:1-11 when he encouraged us to stop bragging about ourselves and to start rejoicing in the Lord. He put together an impressive list of his own accomplishments and then said they were like “dung” compared to the glorious reality of Christ in His life. Jeremiah said, “Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight” (9:23-24)."

5. The point is, we make music to the Lord when we confess him as the given of all our good things, and praise him as the author of all our success and victory. The beauty of song and music is that they are infinite, and so they are ever new. Clovis Chappell wrote, "What has been will be, and there is no new thing under the sun," (Eccl. 1:9) said a tired and bored cynic many years ago. To this pessimistic declaration many of us are ready to give a hearty "Amen." But the Psalmist will not agree with that pessimism, for he says in Psalm 40:3, "He hath put a new song in my mouth." David was forever writing new songs to sing, for God was doing such marvelous things in his life to save him from one threat after another. Listen to the first three verses of Psalm 30.

1 I waited patiently for the LORD;
he turned to me and heard my cry.

2 He lifted me out of the slimy pit,
out of the mud and mire;
he set my feet on a rock
and gave me a firm place to stand.

3 He put a new song in my mouth,
a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear
and put their trust in the LORD.

6. Clovis Chappell wrote about these verses, "How he ever got into this pit we are not told. He may have been plunged into it through some great and devastating calamity. He may have fallen into it through his own willfulness or carelessness or spiritual stupidity. But regardless of how he had come to be there, there he was, and there was no shutting his eyes to his tragic situation. He could never forget the stark horror of it all. The place was dark and cold. It was unspeakably lonely and as silent as death itself. And that which brought his awful plight to the very climax of hopelessness and despair was that he could find no solid resting place for his feet. For this pit did not have firm masonry for its floor. It did not even have water. It only had stenchful mire that gripped him with tenacious fingers and slowly dragged him into a ghastly grave.

It is Victor Hugo, I think, that tells the story of a man caught in the quicksand. One moment this man is walking in safety. Then his path begins to cling to his feet a bit. A few more steps and he is bogged down to his knees. He then begins to struggle frantically. But the more he struggles, the deeper he sinks. Soon the treacherous sand has reached his waist. By this time the unfortunate victim has become desperate. He now realizes that he is being slowly swallowed by a hideous, blind mouth that is absolutely without mercy. He cries for help, but there is no response. He looks at the clouds floating in the blue and the birds as they soar above his head, and they seem to mock him. He; prays, he shrieks, he curses. He struggles with every ounce of his energy, but the implacable mouth still swallows him only the faster. At last his final wild wail ends in a gulp. The cruel sand has filled his mouth, and the futile struggle is over.

Now the singer tells us that he was like this man, that he, too, was sinking and was horribly sure that all was over, that he, too, cried desperately for help. But here he has a different story to tell. There was One that answered his cry. He stretched up a helpless hand, and that hand was seized by One that was mighty, and he felt himself lifted to safety. Since then he has had a song upon his lips. It is a song of deliverance. Some of us can join him in the singing of it, for such a song befits the lips of every man who has greatly sinned and who has been greatly saved."

7. by: Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)

The prayers I make will then be sweet indeed,
If Thou the spirit give by which I pray:
My unassisted heart is barren clay,
Which of its native self can nothing feed:
Of good and pious works Thou art the seed,
Which quickens only where Thou say'st it may;
Unless Thou show to us Thine own true way,
No man can find it: Father! Thou must lead.
Do Thou, then, breathe those thoughts into my mind
By which such virtue may in me be bred
That in Thy holy footsteps I may tread;
The fetters of my tongue do Thou unbind,
That I may have the power to sing of Thee,
And sound Thy praises everlastingly.

This poem was translated into English by William Wordsworth (1770-1850).

8. When paeans triumphant in heaven are ringing,
When the earth is delivered and free,
When the hills and the valley’s break forth into singing,
We will join in the glad jubilee,
In loudest hosannas we’ll shout the refrain;
Jehovah, the Lord, doth omnipotent reign!

9. O, GOD, with humble heart and voice, We now approach thy throne, Releas'd from ev'ry earthly thought, To worship thee alone. O, may our thankful songs to thee Like grateful incense rise, And mingle with the praises which Are sung above the skies. We come, O Lord, as children come, And ask thee to supply Our hungry souls with living food, Which thou wilt not deny. But as the gentle dews descend, So may thy grace be given, To cheer us in thy earthly courts, While on our way to heav'n! Thus let our hearts all yield to thee, Our stormy passions cease, As fall the waters of the deep, When thou commandest peace. And when all earthly scenes shall fade, O, may we joyful stand, To worship with the ransom'd throng Who dwell at thy right hand! WILLIAM BAXTER.

10. David was singing because of deliverance from enemies. How many reasons do we have to praise God besides all of his blessings? Here is someone's A to Z list of reasons to praise God. Dear God, you are: Almighty, Beautiful, creator, dependable, everlasting, fulfiller, glorious, holy, immutable, Jehovah, kind, loving, mindful, new, omnipotent, precious, quick, righteous, sensitive, terrifying, undergirding, victor, wonderful, eXcellent, Yesterday today and forever, Zestful.

11. Rev. T. Harrison wrote,
With voices harmonious, we'll sing to the Lord,
For he is our refuge, our shield, and our sword:
His goodness and glory we ever will praise:
To him, and him only, our anthems we'll raise.
His wisdom, and mercy, and might, are supreme;
And all his perfections in harmony beam:
He reigns all resplendence around and above:
The universe teems with his glory and love.

12. Someone made this interesting comment: "Satan cannot operate in the divine ambience. For years many have known that praise is power without fully understanding why. May this not be the explanation? Is it not a convincing rationale for praise? In short, Satan is allergic to praise, so where there is massive, triumphant praise, Satan is paralyzed, bound, and banished." What another great motive to praise the Lord often.

13. Horatius Bonar wrote in the 1800's:
Fill Thou my life, O Lord my God,
In every part with praise,
That my whole being may proclaim
Thy being and Thy ways.

Not for the lip of praise alone,
Nor e'en the praising heart,
I ask, but for a life made up
Of praise in every part.