II. GOD’S VICTORY IN CHRIST
This Psalm begins with the moving of God and continues with the victory which Christ has gained. All God’s enemies have been defeated. When God moves with the tabernacle and with the ark, the enemies will always be vanquished. Wherever He goes, He always wins the victory; wherever He moves, He conquers. He has never been defeated.
Many times in reading the Old Testament we are impressed only with the failures of God’s people, the children of Israel. But we must read their history in Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy from a different perspective. We must see that whenever in God’s move He confronted the enemy, the enemy was defeated. Not once was God ever defeated by His enemies. As long as God’s people had the tabernacle of God with the ark as its center, they were victorious. They may fail, but God could never be defeated.
Have you ever found a single instance in the Bible of God being defeated? God has never been defeated. This is the main concept of this Psalm. God is moving, and with His move is constant victory. Oh, if we are in God’s house with Christ as the center, we can never be defeated! We may sometimes delay God a little, just as the children of Israel delayed Him for forty years in the wilderness, but what do forty years mean to God? If a thousand years is but one day in God’s eyes, forty years is only equivalent to about fifty-five minutes. According to divine reckoning, the children of Israel delayed God about fifty-five minutes. Actually, with God there is no concept of time; time is something with which we are concerned. To God, yesterday, today and tomorrow are all the same. In a human sense, God has been delayed many times, but He has never been defeated. To Him, a delay in time means nothing. He is moving on, and wherever He goes He defeats the enemy. Regardless of how poor the situation of the church may be, we should not be distracted. We must look at the glory of God’s move and His eternal victory. “Let his enemies be scattered: let them also that hate him flee before him” (v. 1). “The Lord sendeth the news of victory…the kings of the armies, they flee, they flee!” (vv. 11-12). “The Almighty scattered kings” (v. 14). “Thou has led captive a train of vanquished foes” (v. 18). “God will smite the head of the enemies” (v. 21). God’s victory is the second point of this Psalm.
Verse 11: “The Lord sendeth the news of victory: great is the host of women that publish the tidings.” We are all just a group of women, a host of females, publishing the good news. We are not so strong and able; we are not, in a sense, the warriors of battle; we are the women publishers. We just publish the good tidings. And what are the good tidings? Verse 12: “The kings of the armies, they flee, they flee!” These are the glad tidings—the victory of Christ, the defeat of the enemy. I could testify that when I was in the denominations, I was continually sighing, groaning, and begging, “O Lord, merciful Lord, have mercy on me.” The meetings of the group with which I met were filled with this kind of cry. I never heard praising or rejoicing. I never heard a song like, “Victory, victory, hallelujah!” In these days in the local churches I am forever hearing, “Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah!” All the enemies flee! They flee! They flee!
The publishers of the glad tidings are women, and those who divide the spoil are also women. The women tarry at home; they do not go out to fight. Yet they divide the spoil. I have never gone out to the battle; I am just a woman, abiding at home, enjoying the victory and dividing the spoil. We should all do the same. Praise the Lord, we are qualified, we are entitled to divide the spoil. All the meetings in the local churches are just the dividing of the spoil. What are the spoils? Verse 13 tells us: “The wings of a dove covered with silver and its pinions with glittering gold.” The dove is the Spirit, and the wings are the soaring power; so the spoils are the soaring power of the Spirit. These wings are covered with silver, covered with Christ in His redemption. Her pinions are covered with glittering gold, God’s divine nature. This is the spoil—the Triune God. We have the Spirit as the dove, Christ the Son as the silver, and God the Father as the gold. All three Persons of the Godhead together constitute the spoil. The spoil is our strength as two wings, not to walk or to run, but to fly and to soar. When you come to the local church and join in the Hallelujahs, you are enjoying the spoil. Eventually, after every meeting, you will have the sense that you are soaring. We do have wings, and we are on the wings of the dove. Our spoil is the Triune God as our soaring strength, and all the spoil issues from the victory of Christ.
(Christ and the Church Revealed and Typified in the Psalms, Chapter 10, by Witness Lee)
