Psalm 144

Intro

From Gilgamesh to Agamemnon,

From Aragorn to Paul Muad’dib,

From Richard the Lionheart to Vladimir Putin,

The warrior king has a deep and abiding appeal to humanity.

The warrior king motif touches on our deepest desires. Whether we would announce it or not, we feel the great need for protection and leadership. We know that there are evils out there in the world that must be overcome, and we hope for leaders who would take up their arms, go out into the fray, take a stand and win victory in the face of an overwhelming enemy.

We desire the kind of kings that are battle proven and who will share the spoils of war with his people.

In the Bible the penultimate image of the Warrior King is David of Israel. He was the young shepherd that overcame Goliath the Giant, he who defeated the Amalekites, he who took the stronghold of Jerusalem from the Jebusites and established it as the center of authority and worship for Israel.

He defeated their enemies and brought peace and prosperity to God’s people.

As the author of many of the Psalms, it is no wonder that the figure of the Warrior King shows up all across the Psalms. In fact, Psalm 2, which we looked at some time ago, sets the scene for the whole book of Psalms with an anointed warrior king who is the Son of God. With the power of God he subdues the nations and defeat’s God’s enemies. He reigns over God’s people with God’s anointing and God’s blessing.

Yet, as great as David was, David could not live up to the fullness of the warrior king that he sang about in his Psalms. David was a foreshadow of a Warrior King who would come after him. A greater king. One who would finish the business of overthrowing God’s enemies and bringing in God’s blessing for His people.

That King was Jesus Christ! Descendant of David, Son of God, Son of Man the one who defeats God’s enemies and brings peace and prosperity to God’s people.

He is the one the Psalms point to! He is the one who fulfills all the pictures that David painted in these songs.

Songs like Psalm 144, which is our passage for today. Here we see the warrior King who triumphs and garners blessing for God’s people.

We’re going to walk through this Psalm, looking at it in 5 sections.

1. Secure in the LORD (v1-2)

This Psalm is “of David” it is a song that fittingly sits on the lips of the Warrior King, and as you read through it, you can see that it can only be fully utilized by a King over God’s people. If you or I were to sing it, we would be doing the mental gymnastics of seeing how these are the words and experience of someone else.

Kind of like if I were to sing Dolly Parton’s “Jolene”. I’m not a woman in fear of loosing my husband to a flirty redheaded, but I can sing the song with it’s proper context in mind.

We can sing this song remembering it’s place on the lips of the anointed warrior king.

The first part of this song has the king blessing God because of who the LORD is, and his secure position with the LORD God. The king is secure in the LORD.

Let’s look at v1:

Psalm 144:1–2 NIV

Praise be to the Lord my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle. He is my loving God and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me.

This Psalm opens and closes with beatitudes - Opening by blessing the LORD, and closing blessing the people of the LORD. It bookends the Psalm.

In this opening blessing the king tells us why he is blessing the LORD - because God provides for his needs in war, he is secure in the LORD and he delivers the King.

Let’s hone in on that opening line: these are probably strange word for us to say. Have you ever prayed this way?

“Praise God who trains my hands for war?”

You might feel a bit uncomfortable with that language. It doesn't sit right with you. Yet it is the language of Scripture. It is the Word of God, used in a prayer of praise and petition.

Brothers and sisters, our first instinct may be to try and explain away the awkward bits of the Bible when we read them. But usually the discomfort is a sign that we need to do some humble surgery to our own expectations of what God is like. We need to be conformed to the LORD’s outlook on the world, have Him shape the way we think, not impose our own preconceptions.

It is easy to see what happens when we tip-toe down that path, you loose your footing and soon you are slip-sliding your way into justifying all kinds of outright sin as “loving” and ditching the front half of your Bibles. Too many people who call themselves Christian would not know what to do with a God who trains hands for war.

This is your God, who trains the kings hands for war, and I am glad! For there is a war to be won!

It is all well and good to be a lover of peace, but it is the liar who proclaims “peace, peace!” when there is no peace!

How can there be peace when there is evil wreaking havoc in the world? when there is strife in families? and when sin wages battle against our souls?

Peace is won through triumph, the enemies of peace must be routed and overcome. The Enemies of God must be defeated.

And we need a champion who will fight for us, a hero who will rise up to overthrow the tyrants.

We need a Warrior King who is trained for war, fingers ready for the battle.

But the LORD does not only provide the training, he provides the defense. The Warrior king is secure in the steadfast love of the LORD. God is like his fortress, a castle, a shield, a refuge for him even while God is humbling his subjects.

The Warrior king is secure, trained, and well provisioned for the battles that he faces.

Yet there is something that interrupts the prayer: before the king makes his Battle plans he remembers something very important...

2. Brevity of Humanity (v3-4)

It’s almost like the king is momentarily struck by the absurdity of God backing him up. There is something wildly imbalanced in the relationship between the LORD God of the universe, and the average person who walks the earth. the King ponders (in ESV, it’s a better translation here):

Psalm 144:3–4 (ESV)

O Lord [YHWY], what is man [adam] that you regard him, or the son of man [ben enosh] that you think of him? Man [adam] is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow.

Humanity is to God what grass clippings are to us. Sometimes we let the grass grow a bit longer, but in the end we still mow it down and we dispose of the clippings. There is futility of the lawn - the grass continually growing up, only for it to be cut down.

Or it is like our breath. You breath out and then the breath is gone. In a moment it disappears.

We like to think of ourselves more highly than we ought. We might be annoyed by the nihilist who opines that we’re all just bags of fizzing chemicals with short lives on a small planet flying though the vastness of the universe, ultimately inconsequential on the stage of cosmic history.

Yet,

There are partly right.

We are inconsequential. Our lives are so short in the scope of history. You are just another 1 human in an endless stream of humans , in a world of 8 billion other humans. We’re here now and gone in a moment, like that last breath that you didn’t even notice taking. We’re like shadows in the morning who are gone by noon when the sun is overhead.

But here is the weird thing, the crazy thing, the wonderful thing: Even though we are inconsequential, God does regard us,

He cares for us,

He thinks of us.

Although He is eternal, from everlasting to everlasting, beyond all comprehension, he will stoop to provide for us, care for us, deliver us.

And he will do it through the Warrior King. This is where our prayer turns next, for the LORD to stoop and deliver.

3. The LORD Delivers (v5-8)

The Warrior King has set the scene. He knows that the LORD is his trainer, his defender and security. He knows that we are nothing, we are worthless compared to God, and it is with this proper mindset that the King can now make his petition. He understands the state of things, so he will plead for God to act and provide.

It is not enough for God to just prepare the King and be a safe place to run to. If he is to win victory, the LORD must do it. The LORD must fight the battle. And so he asks:

Psalm 144:5–8 NIV

Part your heavens, Lord, and come down; touch the mountains, so that they smoke. Send forth lightning and scatter the enemy; shoot your arrows and rout them. Reach down your hand from on high; deliver me and rescue me from the mighty waters, from the hands of foreigners whose mouths are full of lies, whose right hands are deceitful.

Down though history people have understood that the gods affect the outcome of battle. So much so that at times losing a battle was seen as your god losing to their god. Yes, people knew that skill and tactics were essential, but they trusted to their gods to fight on their behalf to win.

It’s a good instinct, but often this was misplaced trust. They were turning to idols and spiritual beings who could not save them. Their spiritual back-up could only do what the God of Gods permitted. Their hands were tied by the Lord of Hosts.

The warrior king goes straight to the top. He calls on the name of the LORD to act decisively, coming down from his lofty heavens to rout the enemy and deliver the King from danger and enemies.

We must remember that this is song. While God can use these elements, and indeed has used them in the past, it is the poetry of divine deliverance in battle.

But this does not make the language here any less potent, even if we have some insight into how this stuff works.

You may be able to explain the natural phenomenon of lightning and volcanoes, but that does not mean they are any less the work of God.

Is conception any less God’s creative work because we know it’s inner workings?

Is healing any less God’s work if He achieves it with a pharmacist and a tablet?

You may know how lightning and smoky-topped mountains are made, but God can still use them to overthrow enemies.

The king is obviously facing some great trial, and he expects that he would be overcome I God does not step in and save him.

Who does he want to be saved from? Hands of foreigners whose hands are deceitful.

This is not racism - it is a distinction between God’s people and God's enemies.

In those days the boundaries of Israel provided a clear distinction between those who were for God or rebelling. Apart from a few exceptions, to be a foreigner meant you followed other gods and wanted to see God’s people fail. That’s why they are deceitful!

The King is confident that God has or will answer this request, and so he responds!

4. Respond with Worship (v9-11)

This is the natural and good response of all God’s people!

Psalm 144:9–11 NIV

I will sing a new song to you, my God; on the ten-stringed lyre I will make music to you, to the One who gives victory to kings, who delivers his servant David. From the deadly sword deliver me; rescue me from the hands of foreigners whose mouths are full of lies, whose right hands are deceitful.

It is why we sing after the sermon, it is why we sing often throughout the service and even in our daily lives! God’s people respond to God’s deliverance with worship in song, recounting what He has done a praising Him for it!

Reiteration of the prayer along with the praise.

5. God’s People are Blessed (v12-15)

The results are the people of the Warrior King experience the blessings.

Psalm 144:12–14 NIV

Then our sons in their youth will be like well-nurtured plants, and our daughters will be like pillars carved to adorn a palace. Our barns will be filled with every kind of provision. Our sheep will increase by thousands, by tens of thousands in our fields; our oxen will draw heavy loads. There will be no breaching of walls, no going into captivity, no cry of distress in our streets.

Sons - like strong healthy trees

Daughters like beautiful pillars holding up

Material blessings of excessive abundance.

The opposite of this is curse, like the blessings and curses for Israel.

v14 - translation weirdness either no failing of pregnancies or no failing of city walls.

Psalm 144:14 ESV

may our cattle be heavy with young, suffering no mishap or failure in bearing; may there be no cry of distress in our streets!

Not important either way, both paint the picture of blessing and provision in livestock and no despair. They will have the best livestock, and they won’t have reason to be upset.

Ending with the beatitude:

Psalm 144:15 NIV

Blessed is the people of whom this is true; blessed is the people whose God is the Lord.

The people of the Warrior King experience the blessings.

How can you become one of these people?

Jesus is Our Warrior King

Secure in the LORD - trained for battle

Knows our weak and fleeting frame

He Delivers us in the LORD - we won the battle

He leads his people in worship

He blesses his people.

Colossians 2:13–15 NIV

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

There is blessing in Him.

Praying this Psalm