Our Sovereign King

Intro

well it’s everyone’s favorite season of life, the second half of an election year. This is the time when those who are politically minded are extra anxious as they check polls and scrutinize debates and rallies, and even those who aren’t politically minded are trying to become informed voters as the election draws nearer. I tend to fall in that second category, and its been making me wonder:

What do we look for in a leader? We want someone who can protect us. We want someone who can provide for us. We are always looking for the person who will do those things consistently and faithfully. Its what Israel looked for in a King, its what nations look for in their elected leaders, its what wives look for in their husbands, and its what everyone is looking for in one form or another. Almost everything you look for in a leader will fit into one of these two categories.

This leads us to some good news and some bad news: there isn’t anyone on this Earth that can deliver you consistent protection and provision. Nobody can guarantee you that you will be protected at all times and provided for at all times. The good news is that God can and does protect and provide for all His people at all times. This morning I want to walk through Psalm 20 with you and help you to see more of the Lord’s protection, His provision, and how we can know whether that protection and provision is ours or not.

The Lord Protects His People

Psalm 20:1–3 ESV

May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble! May the name of the God of Jacob protect you! May he send you help from the sanctuary and give you support from Zion! May he remember all your offerings and regard with favor your burnt sacrifices! Selah

S: I want to note two important things that we can learn about this appeal to God for protection.

God Protects

The first is the most obvious, but we can’t look past it: God protects his people. When you read through the Biblical history of Israel, and especially as you read through King David’s time in Israel, you will notice how many “days of trouble” they really experienced. Israel was not some insulated nation that was carefree and happy—go-lucky. They found themselves surrounded by nations that often wanted to destroy them, and they were under seemingly constant threat of invasion and captivity.

This means that the people of Israel were in certain need of protection. Protection from their enemies was not some hypothetical need, it was no luxury. It was a very real need every day, and they needed protection from wicked men that they could see with their own eyes. And who did they look to for protection when they were at their greatest need? The King of Israel himself as he writes this Psalm instructs the people to look to God for their protection.

So it is an important thing for us to notice that the LORD is a God who protects, not one who just sits idly by as his people suffer.

But this brings us to the second thing to notice about the protection God offers

Not just any god, but the LORD, God of Jacob, who is worshiped in the sanctuary

David doesn’t just tell them to look to a higher power for their protection. He doesn’t simply say, pray to your god and hope he will save you.” No, but David invokes the Covenant Name of the Lord Himself. He calls upon the name of Yahweh, the LORD, the great I AM. The God of Jacob. The one who made those promises to Abraham, the one who led the people through the wilderness and gave them food and water in the wilderness, the one who led them into the promised land and caused them to be victorious over enemies who were more powerful than them, the God who saved them countless times from their enemies, the God who tore down the walls of Jericho, the God who caused an army of only a few hundred to defeat an entire nation at the time of Gideon.

This Psalm is not just making an appeal to some nebulous “higher power” to come and save them in their time of need. This hope that the Psalmist has isn’t so uncertain and baseless. The hope for protection isn’t just in a god, its in THAT God. The God who has proven himself time and time again to be the protector of his people.

APPLY:

This passage reminds us that we are also in need of protection. We’ve been blessed to live in the time and place that we do, where no wars have been fought on our own soil since we fought ourselves in the Civil War, but that doesn’t mean we are insulated from the dangers of the world around us. We know that there are plenty of people out there who wish us harm, whether they be from other nations or from our own.

We live in a world where are children are preyed upon by wicked people

We live in a world where schools can’t be considered safe

We live in a world where wicked men will attempt to take the lives of others without any regret or remorse.

In a world like that, we have great need for our own protection, and protection that the LORD himself can provide.

But it isn’t just protection that God provides, as we will see when we continue reading.

The Lord Provides For His People

Psalm 20:4–5 ESV

May he grant you your heart’s desire and fulfill all your plans! May we shout for joy over your salvation, and in the name of our God set up our banners! May the Lord fulfill all your petitions!

Here the Psalmist is looking past his need for immediate preservation and towards the future. Here we see that God is not to be seen as only someone to go to when you have immediate pressing needs, but also when you are looking to the future and your own wellbeing.

You can see the transition here: not only is the Psalmist asking that the Lord deliver the people on the day of trouble, but he’s also asking that the Lord grant all their hearts desire! Looking forward to the day where they shout for joy over the salvation the LORD has brought, they also want to see all their requests fulfilled in life.

I understand that this might put some people on edge, and we do have to be careful with how we understand this passage.

Does this mean that God will definitely give you everything you ever want?

I think we all know that it doesn’t mean that. We are all living proof that God doesn’t act like Santa, filling every wish list that’s brought to him. Actually, he loves you a lot more than to give you everything you ever wanted.

The book of James deals with this concept.

James 4:3–4 ESV

You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

There are things each of us want, maybe we want them badly, which we do not realize would drive us away from God. It may be a house, a job, a significant other, a promotion, or whatever; God knows what you need and what would harm you. Thankfully, God cares enough for his people to only give them those things that are truly good for them, and withhold those things that would drive them away from himself.

Which makes this next statement even greater.

We can make all of our requests known to God, and know that he will graciously give us every good and perfect gift that we ask for. We don’t have to always scrutinize what exactly would be good or bad, we don’t have to have everything figured out. Instead, we can simply ask God for the desires of our hearts knowing that if it is good, he will give it and if it isn’t, he won’t. Understanding that, we can be content with whatever comes our way, knowing that our Heavenly Father has given us exactly what we needed.

Apply:

Do you trust that God will provide for you in this way? Do you believe that God will establish you with everything that is good for you? Or are you sceptical that God would do this for you?

Are you content with God’s provision, or are you holding on to bitterness about unfilled requests? Do you truly believe that God only withholds things from his children when they would be harmful to them?

As I like to say, my two year old daughter will one day understand why I didn’t let her drink the dish soap, even if she’s throwing a tantrum about it now.

OK, so we see in this Psalm that the Lord protects his people, and that God provides for his people perfectly. Which brings us to our last point, which will be the answer to the question I asked at the beginning: How can we know that the protection and provision of the LORD are ours?

The answer is pointed to in verse six of Psalm 20, and it has to do with the LORD’s Anointed

Protection and Provision Are Guaranteed By The Lord’s Anointed

Psalm 20:6–9 ESV

Now I know that the Lord saves his anointed; he will answer him from his holy heaven with the saving might of his right hand. Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. They collapse and fall, but we rise and stand upright. O Lord, save the king! May he answer us when we call.

Up until this point David has been saying a lot of “may the Lord...”

But now he says: “Now I know...”

And what does David know? What can be counted on as a certainty? That the LORD saves His anointed. That he will answer his anointed one from his holy heaven with the saving might of his right hand.

What is meant here by anointed? Who is the Lords anointed? It’s not a word used too often anymore, and this is a strange case where you might be more familiar with the Hebrew Word than with the English word. The Hebrew word for anointed is Messiah — and at the time that David wrote this, that was a word used to refer to God’s chosen king that would rule over his people.

So how could someone in Israel be sure that they would be protected from outside threats? How could they be sure that God would provide for them? And why couldn’t a pagan have the same confidence? Because it all came down to the promises that God has made to his anointed, his messiah. You see, God made a promise to David as his anointed one: that David would rule on the throne and that he would prosper. And because the King would be protected and provided for, it would follow that all his people would share in that protection and provision.

And yet while David was the anointed one of God in some sense, it wasn’t in the fullest sense. God also made reference to David’s son, who would sit on the throne forever and secure that protection and provision from God for all time. And while King Solomon partially fulfilled that as the successor to King David, he also left much to be desired as the anointed one, the messiah. God’s people would come to understand that there was a better Son of David coming, one who would truly sit on the throne forever and secure the protection and provision of all the Lord’s people for all time.

And in the fulness of time, we have come to behold that this Anointed One, this Messiah would find its fulfillment in King Jesus, who sits on the throne of David even now and forevermore. That’s why the New Testament begins with these words: Matthew 1:1

Matthew 1:1 ESV

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Its why you see so many people calling out to Jesus for some kind of protection or provision with the words: “Have mercy on me, Son of David!” Whether it was the blind beggars on the road, the canaanite woman with a demon-posessed daughter, or the crowds outside of Jerusalem during the Triumphal Entry, the people of Israel were desperate for protection and provision and they were looking for the Son of David, the Messiah to bring it to them.

And every account that we have, when they looked upon Jesus in faith as the Messiah, the Lord’s Anointed, they found protection and provision through Him.

But beyond just their personal accounts of experiencing protection and provision through the Messiah Jesus Christ, we can also look to the experience of the Messiah Himself. Remember: Psalm 20 says that the people can be confident in their own protection and provision because God promised that he would do so for his Anointed One.

Let us look to the true Anointed One: when he was in the time of greatest need for protection and provision, where did he look? And where did his help come from? When he was in his darkest hour, hanging on the cross and looking to heaven, he actually died. And for three days it seemed to many like maybe he didn’t get any help at all from God. It seemed like maybe he wasn’t the Anointed One, the true Son of David, the Messiah. It seemed like maybe God wasn’t all that interested in protecting and providing for Jesus.

But then Sunday came, and with it the unequivocal proof that the LORD saves his anointed. Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ we see that the protection and provision of God triumphs over even the greatest weapons of evil, and not even the grave can thwart God’s promise.

And do you know that if you trust in Jesus, if you look to him as your King and Lord, the Anointed One of God, then this same protection and provision is guaranteed to you as well? Just as the people of Israel could be confident in their protection and provision because of God’s promise to David, we can be confident in our protection and provision because of God’s work in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. This is the main point of three different sermons recorded in the book of Acts, and its the main point of this sermon as well:

Acts 13:29–33 ESV

And when they had carried out all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead, and for many days he appeared to those who had come up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people. And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus, as also it is written in the second Psalm, “ ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you.’

Acts 13:38–39 ESV

Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.

It is through King Jesus that God’s protection and provision have finally been completely and unquestionably secured for all God’s people.

So then I ask you: what else has earned this level of trust from you? Who else can promise you so powerful a salvation? Who else can offer you such protection and provision, where not even death can stand against you? Are you trusting in politicians, or miliatry might, or stock markets, or retirement plans, or anything else?

Those who trust in chariots and horses will fall.

But those who trust in the name of the LORD will rise and stand firm.

FCF: There is much in this life that is outside of our control. In our fear, we trust in earthly things that cannot save us.

CFC: There is nothing outside of Christ’s control, and he has already accomplished our salvation.

Call: Trust in Christ alone and rejoice in his salvation

May he remember all your offerings and regard them with favor

May he grant your hearts desire

May he fulfill all your petitions

Now I know that the LORD saves his anointed

He will answer with might

we trust in the name of the LORD our God

We rise and stand upright