Psalm 21 "The Steps of the Throne"

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Intro:

We carry on today in the Psalms and this next Psalm, Psalm 21 goes quite well with the Psalm that came before it. The last psalm if you will remember was likely written as a responsive song or chant that would have been recited by David’s men as they prepared for battle. It was a prayer for the help and deliverance from the Lord that included a check of the motives of the King and His men as they offered their sacrifices and then went off to battle against their enemies trusting that they were in right relationship with their Covenant Lord and could thus expect that He would come to their aid as their strong deliverer in the midst of the battle. Whether this deliverance took the form of a first person miraculous deliverance or was carried out through the means of secondary agents the anticipated victory was ascribed solely to the grace and power of their God who would go before them.

7  Some trust in chariots and some in horses,

they said, however:

we trust in the name of the LORD our God.

And so in this trust the army would set off into battle.
Psalm 22 now is well placed as a continuation of this theme. If Psalm 21 was sung in preparation for battle then Psalm 22 was well suited for the return from battle. Psalm 21 sees the men and their king fully trusting in the deliverance of God as they head out and Psalm 22 sees them rejoicing in and giving God glory for His deliverance and even anticipating more of the same in the future.
In Psalm 21 we read:

May he grant you your heart’s desire

and fulfill all your plans!

and in Psalm 22 we see:

You have given him his heart’s desire

and have not withheld the request of his lips.

It is no wonder then that the compilers of this book chose to set these two Psalms next to one another.
Now there is no way for us to now if these were indeed written by David in succession, I would guess not, but it is clear from the arrangement of the texts that these two Psalms became closely associated with each other in ancient Israel.
Now one other major biblical theme that we will consider as we take up this Psalm is typology. There are passages in the OT that are directly prophecies about the coming of the messiah. We see a lot of these in books like Isaiah. But even there we often see these truths framed against the backdrop of a figure contemporary to the prophecy. And so in Isaiah we see Cyrus the king of Persia held up as a type of the Lord’s chosen Servant who comes to fulfill His saving and redemptive purposes by providing deliverance for His people.
And so here in the Psalms we need to realize that what we will often see is godly King David held up as a type of the more true and more perfect King who was to come. In this way this Psalm before us today is rich with connections to Christ as the King who returns in ultimate victory for His people.
Spurgeon said of this Psalm:

The next Psalm will take us to the foot of the cross, this introduces us to the steps of the throne.

As we stand before this Psalm we will draw near to the steps of the throne and see exulted there our might Lord of glory and we will be drawn into the praise of his greatness and power in both salvation and judgement.

Pray & Read

Now as we jump into the Psalm just a few notes about the structure of the Psalm. Sometimes we may be tempted to view these kinds o things as dry and boring ind of like a high school English class, (I hated English). However, as we have learned from RC we need to be tuned into the patterns particularly in poetic literature like the Psalms because the structure around which these Psalms are penned often helps us to see what the Psalmist thought was most important and thus helps us to see the central elements for our efforts at interpretation and application.
In this Psalm we clearly have two major sections.
Verses 1-6, these verses focus on rejoicing in and giving God glory for the victory that He has granted to the King.
Then in verses 8-13 we have an further expectation expressed that God in going to continue to give victory to the king as he overcomes and seeks out and destroys all of his enemies and by extension all of the enemies of God’s people.
Now you might notice that verses 1 and 13 are very similar nearly parallel to each other. We see in them the themes or the strength and power of the Lord giving rise to praise and adoration by the king and his people.
Verse 1:

O LORD, in your strength the king rejoices,

and in your salvation how greatly he exults!

And verse 13:

Be exalted, O LORD, in your strength!

We will sing and praise your power.

Then in the middle of this Psalm sandwiched between these beginning and ending notes that sing of the might and power of the Lord and the respective verses that form the content of each of the two sections we have verse 7 which really becomes the central verse of the Psalm:

7  For the king trusts in the LORD,

and through the steadfast love of the Most High he shall not be moved.

Now that phrase close to the center of hat verse might sound familiar to you now. “Steadfast love” This is how the English often translates the Hebrew word “hesed” and hesed is the Hebrew word that speaks to the covenant love and faithfulness of God. This is the unique love that God shows to His covenant people, a love that arises out of the covenant bond that has been established between them, a love and faithfulness that is rooted and grounded in the person and nature of God Himself. This is further established by David’s use of the covenant name of God, YHWH, singled out likely in your Bibles by the use of LORD in all caps in the first part of the verse.
We see here the focus of this Psalm drawn directly to the fact that God, the One and Only Living and True Covenant God of Israel, is the One in whom the Psalmist is placing His trust. Think back to Psalm 20 verse 7 and the refrain there about trusting in the Lord; this builds on that theme, and we see that this trust is there because the Psalmist himself understand the magnitude of the hesed of God, the covenant faithfulness of God and it is in this faithfulness, this steadfast love that comes from the very nature of who God is and the nature of the relationship that He has chosen to establish with Israel, His uniquely chosen people, because of the utter faithfulness of God the king can know that he will not be moved.

Application

Now here we can plant our first flag of application. The kings of Israel were to lead Israel to be shepherds for the people under the Lord and one aspect of that leadership was to set the people an example to follow. David is here expressing for the people and by extension for us if we have been made the people of God through the work of Christ, he is expressing what ought to be the primary source of hope and assurance for all of us, for every single child of God. Our source of hope is the hesed of God, that though we are faithless as 2nd Timothy 2 says, He remains faithful!
That we will not be moved, that we can not be shaken from our position in Christ after we have been brought into the family of God, that as Romans 8 says:

38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

When we are in Christ our position in Christ is secured through His own steadfast love and faithfulness He is our YHWH, our covenant Lord and this becomes our only source of Hope; as we sing, our only source of hope in life and death, Christ alone, Christ alone!

Part 1

But now we must take a step farther into the psalm and look briefly at its original context before we step back once again and view this Psalm in the light of the One toward whom David the king pointed.
We see in verses 1-6 a celebration of God’s salvation. Again, this welds so well with the Psalm that comes before. God has delivered, God has been faithful and God is to be praised in this faithfulness for His great salvation.
Now we see a few things here that we need to first understand in their context. Firstly, you will remember that we said in the last psalm that the only way you can pray the kinds of things we see in verse 2 is when you are praying them from a hear that is set to seek and do the will of God. God is not indiscriminate in giving us our hearts desires as though He were some gene in a bottle that is only bound by a few rules like the one in Alladan. No, God grants the desires of hearts that have first been transformed by His Spirit to seek to do that which He wills. Now if that is problematic with you take it up with scripture and the Author of scripture and not me.
I think this may be one of the reasons for the Selah at the end of the verse. It has been some time now but I preached some time ago that I believe this to be a signal to pause the music for reflection. Specifically here the intent could well have been to give the singer the time to pause and ask that question of his own desires, do my desires so align with the heart of God that He will move to grant them? Its a great question to ask and one that will help the christian to avoid much frustration in this life as we are so prone to hope for and desire things that are just so clearly not within the will of God for our lives!
We also need to see that in verse 4 the context does not demand a literal reading of those lines. It was not uncommon to speak this way of a king, that they would have a long life that might even go on forever and ever. Now when we step back and look at this text in light of Christ we will see that it is entirely possible to understand it in more literal terms but for now we can understand this in the same way that we understand Nehemiah's address to Artaxerxes in Nehemiah 2:

3 I said to the king, “Let the king live forever! Why should not my face be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers’ graves, lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?”

This is just the hope of divine blessing on the king. It is understood that there are many things that are seemingly in the power of the king to grasp and take for themselves but to seek a long life that has always been known, even in pagan cultures, to be in the purview of the gods or in this context in the purview of the God who gives life.
And so we see in this context the psalm is praising the greatness and goodness of God as He has now lavished His blessings upon the king filling as we see there in 6, filling the king with the joy of His presence forever.

Part 2

But as we turn then to the next section of the psalm note the shift, the psalm is still addressed to God but the subject of God’s actions in this second half of the psalm is not the godly King but rather the enemies of God, of His king, and of His people.
We see here a passage of judgement and the prayer that God would succeed in the punishment and destruction of His enemies. So complete we read is to be their destruction that:

The LORD will swallow them up in his wrath,

and fire will consume them.

10  You will destroy their descendants from the earth,

and their offspring from among the children of man.

The original command to Israel to bring a full end to the evil inhabitants of the land finds its answer here, it is God who will do this thing and finally bring an end to the enemies of His people and of Himself.
Now we will consider that again in a moment in the more full context of Christ but it is not hard to see how this would have been sung fervently by a faithful Israelite in the days of David as they saw finally, after years of failure, a King making headway in bringing about the defeat and destruction of Israels enemies.

Christ

But lets take a step forward now and reread this Psalm in light of the coming of Christ as the fulfilment of all of the typology in the OT. Again, it is not that this passage didn't mean something to David and those who would have sung it in his day, it is that God intended for David to prefigure Christ, this messianic servant who had been long foretold would come and do perfectly that which David had only been able to prefigure imperfectly and so we see in Christ the perfect fulfilment of this man, this King of Psalm 21.

1  O LORD, in your strength the king rejoices,

and in your salvation how greatly he exults!

We will take up the topic of the Kingship of Christ in a moment but don't think it strange that this Psalm can be fulfilled in Christ as it talks about rejoicing in the strength of God and exulting in God’s salvation. This is part of the mystery of the incarnation that as Jesus came as the God/man that He was able to fully identify with us in our humanity so much so that He could even understand what it is to have one’s flesh strengthen by the power of God.
Think of Christ in John 4. there we read in the beginning as Jesus and His disciples are traveling:

So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.

Jesus was weary and sat down beside this well and yet we read toward the end of this story as the disciples return from the town with food:

31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. 35

Jesus had found strength in doing the will of the Father.
We will touch on salvation in a moment. For now though we continue:

have given him his heart’s desire

and have not withheld the request of his lips. Selah

At this point think of all of the prayers of Christ. Think of that great passage in John 17, the High Priestly prayer of Jesus. Think of Peter in Luke 22 where Jesus tells him of his coming betrayal and says the beautiful words “But I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail!” Jesus’ prayers kept Peter in the faith, Jesus prayers calmed the storm, drove out demons, and performed countless miracles, and Jesus’ prayers continue to have an effect in our lives as God continues to fulfill what was prayed by Him in John 17 as He builds His church and draws all of those who were given to Him by the father to Himself through the cross and the work of the Spirit in applying that sacrifice to our lives.
James 5:16 ESV
Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.
The prayers of our Lord have great power in their working!
The Psalm continues:

3  For you meet him with rich blessings;

you set a crown of fine gold upon his head.

Speaking of Christ the author of Hebrews tells us: (Ch 1)

3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4 having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

Further more in Ephesians 1 we read:

that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might 20 that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. 22 And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

And then in Philippians 2:

Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Finally 1 Corinthians 15 tells us:

. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27 For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.

Jesus was humbled beyond all imagination, he was the eternal son of God and yet was born in a manger and walked the dusty streets of Judea and then was so mistreated by wicked men that as He hung on the cross He was beyond recognition as a man and then He gave up His life and was laid in a tomb, crucified like a common criminal, the Lord of Glory and yet when He rose from the dead and ascended into heaven we find that all of this is now true of Him, he has been granted great power and glory and wears the crown as the Lord of all. When we meet Him in Revelation 19 we find that:

16 On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.

And of Christ we read in Daniel 7:

13 “I saw in the night visions,

and behold, with the clouds of heaven

there came one like a son of man,

and he came to the Ancient of Days

and was presented before him.

14  And to him was given dominion

and glory and a kingdom,

that all peoples, nations, and languages

should serve him;

his dominion is an everlasting dominion,

which shall not pass away,

and his kingdom one

that shall not be destroyed.

This leads us into the next lines of the Psalm:

4  He asked life of you; you gave it to him,

length of days forever and ever.

5  His glory is great through your salvation;

splendor and majesty you bestow on him.

6  For you make him most blessed forever;

We mentioned earlier that this phrasing doesn't necessarily have to imply literal immortality on the part of the King and indeed it did not when it came to David. David is in the ground somewhere there in Jerusalem. However when we get to Christ and read these lines in light of Christ we find that they are all of a sudden filled with a glorious weight of meaning. Yes Jesus died but there was no grave that could hold Him! Death itself was not powerful enough to bind him and keep Him in the grave.
It is no accident that we sing:
Up from the grave He arose With a mighty triumph o'er His foes He arose a Victor from the dark domain And He lives forever with His saints to reign He arose! (He arose) He arose! (He arose) Hallelujah! Christ arose!
As Peter quoted David in Psalm 16 speaking of the Christ in his sermon on the day of Pentecost:

For David says concerning him,

“ ‘I saw the Lord always before me,

for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken;

26  therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced;

my flesh also will dwell in hope.

27  For you will not abandon my soul to Hades,

or let your Holy One see corruption.

28  You have made known to me the paths of life;

you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’

Christ was not abandoned to corruption! Hades could not keep its prey. Christ arose and has arisen to the right hand of the Father and there as we have seen to rule but also as we see again in Psalm 16 leading us to the next line here in Psalm 21 we see that:

you make him glad with the joy of your presence.

Psalm 16 reads:

11  You make known to me the path of life;

in your presence there is fullness of joy;

at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Hebrews chapter 12 admonishes us:

12 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Christ went to the cross in obedience to the Father knowing that on the other side of that dreadful tree there was a great and eternal joy set before Him a joy that would be everlasting there at the side of His father in glory.
In Isaiah 53 we read:

10  Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him;

he has put him to grief;

when his soul makes an offering for guilt,

he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;

the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.

11  Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;

by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,

make many to be accounted righteous,

and he shall bear their iniquities.

Verse 11 is one of my favorite in all of scripture because it describes the dual realities we have seen of the suffering and joy of Christ on the cross; so we see that even there in the midst of that great anguish He could see the complete end result of that sacrifice, that being the very salvation that you and I share if you are in Christ and Christ saw that result and was satisfied there even in the midst of His great anguish!
And this brings us to that central verse, verse 7:

7  For the king trusts in the LORD,

and through the steadfast love of the Most High he shall not be moved.

In the garden Christ had prayed that if it be the Lords will that perhaps the cup of the wrath of God might pass by Him but never the less, not His will but the Fathers be done. In the garden Christ laid all of His trust in the covenant faithfulness of His Father. Theologians talk about this as the covenant of redemption. That before the world was even created that there was a covenant made between the members of the Godhead that they would accomplish the salvation of God’s people in just the way that it transpired in History , the Father sending His only begotten son, the Son willingly coming and taking on a human nature and suffering the agony of the cross and draining to the last the cup of God’s wrath, the Father raising the Son to life again on the other side of the corss, and the Spirit applying that which was purchased at the cross in time to those for whom it had been purchased. Yes, Christ in that garden and at the cross was unmovable as He trusted in the hesed of the Father!

This is the Day of Salvation

Now as we close this morning we need to finally read the last half of the Psalm in light of Christ as well.
You see many people love to talk about the love and mercy and grace of Christ but seldom do people want to talk about this aspect of Christ nature.
As a result of what Christ did Paul in 2 Corinthians 6 can write:

Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.

The offer of salvation is that anyone who puts faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and submits their life to His rule and authority can share in all that has come before in this Psalm. Theirs is the victory, theirs is the salvation, we are said to rule with Him and we share in that joy and pleasure of being in the presence of the Father and will share in that for all of eternity.
However that same Lord who came to accomplish salvation will also come one day as a judge. To those who refuse to submit to him, who refuse to repent of their sin and evil ways they will find that He comes to seek them out but not for salvation.

8  Your hand will find out all your enemies;

your right hand will find out those who hate you.

9  You will make them as a blazing oven

when you appear.

The LORD will swallow them up in his wrath,

and fire will consume them.

10  You will destroy their descendants from the earth,

and their offspring from among the children of man.

11  Though they plan evil against you,

though they devise mischief, they will not succeed.

12  For you will put them to flight;

you will aim at their faces with your bows.

There will be no place to hide! You cant pretend your way into heaven either. Those who think they can play christian when it suites them and then blend right back into the rest of the world throughout the week will find that they have no place in God’s arms of Grace but rather that he draws His bow of Judgement and has it aimed right at your face! Jonathan Edwards describes it this way:
“The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart and strains the bow; and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God—and that of an angry God without any promise or obligation at all—that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood.”
Repent, this is the day of Salvation, turn to God in faith and trust in Him alone for your salvation. Don’t let yourself be fooled by the arrogance that thinks it will argue its way into heave should heaven prove to be true. There will be no arguing with God, every mouth will be shut and the whole world held accountable before Him! There is no obligation that stays the hand of God, it is grace and may that grace lead you to repentance!

Closing:

As we close note now that verse 13 most specifically connects back to the second half of the Psalm! The parallel in verse 1 referenced the saving works and power of God in salvation and deliverance but here we find the people of God praising God for His power in judgement.

We will sing and praise your power.

Sing and praise the power that has wrought this terrifying judgement!
This is a really important truth for us to realize and it is a hard truth for many to accept. Because today is the day of salvation we are to be at the task of sharing the good news of the gospel with all people, crying out with Paul that today is the day of salvation. We do not wish the fires of hell on anyone, not even our worst enemies, we pray that the power of God for salvation might be made manifest in their lives. However, as people who have been made to love God above all else we also realize that there is coming a day when we will rejoice in the fierce judgement of God against sin. There is coming a day when that judgement has been issued and many who we know will find themselves on the wrong side of that judgement because of their obstinate refusal to repent and turn to Christ and in that day while we will certainly not gloat over them, we will, in that day as that judgement is issued, turn to God and we will exhault the Lord in His strength and we will sing and praise His power and all of this we will do because we so love our Lord!
And so the question that we must ask ourselves today is do we love God that much!
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