Psalm 21
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Intro
When Morgan and I lived in Portland, she got me tickets to the UW-Oregon State football game for my birthday.
The game was in the middle of November and I think the temp at kickoff was 40 degrees.
And it kept getting colder and colder and colder.
Fortunately the Huskies kept scoring and scoring and scoring. I think by the end of the 3rd quarter we were up 30 or 40 and the temp was below 30.
But we stayed for the whole game, and I think Morgan got a cold afterwards because it was so frigid.
I wanted to stay at the end because there was just a few Husky fans there and I knew if we waited until the end, we would go down near the field and they would sing
Bow Down to Washington!
It made it all worth it!
Well, sort of for us.
Psalm 21 in a similar way is a victory song!
If Psalm 20 was a prayer in the middle of the game before the clock hits zero, Psalm 21 is the game is over and we’re singing together.
It’s the King’s victory song.
Again, like last week, we recognize the tension that this Psalm was not written to us
We don’t have kings, the people of God are not fighting military battles
But it is written for us - God is speaking to us through this Psalm today.
What might he be saying to us? What is he singing to us, and how might we join in?
What is this song, and how do we join in?
Thankful for His Strength (1-7)
1 O Lord, in your strength the king rejoices,
and in your salvation how greatly he exults!
2 You have given him his heart’s desire
and have not withheld the request of his lips. Selah
This Summer we are taking time each Sunday to study the Psalms.
The New Testament quotes the Psalms more than any other Old Testament book.
Jesus quotes the Psalms more than any other OT book.
In Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Jesus’ final words are lines from the Psalms.
Augustine, the church theologian calls Jesus the singer of the Psalms.
If we are followers of Jesus wouldn’t it make sense for us to sing them, too?
To understand the Psalms we need to feel the Psalms.
Last week’s Psalm felt tense. Uncertain. Anxious. Distressed.
This week’s Psalm is happy, elated, confident, victorious.
It’s the song they play at the end of a Marvel movie…it’s a tune that reminds you the good guys won.
Why is this song so joyful?
We said last week Psalm 20 and 21 are a pair.
And Psalm 20 was a prayer on behalf of the king - God, Save the king!
And we see in these first two verses that they’re connected.
Verse 1 - the king is speaking. Psalm 20 was all about saving the king and now in Psalm 21 the king is saying, God saved me!
Verse 2 - you’ve given him his heart’s desire.
This was a request of Psalm 20.
4 May he grant you your heart’s desire
and fulfill all your plans!
Picture King David, possibly still breathing heavy from a day of battle, sitting down with his harp, his hands tired but joyfully he writes a song to thank God.
3 For you meet him with rich blessings;
you set a crown of fine gold upon his head.
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;
you make him glad with the joy of your presence.
7 For the king trusts in the Lord,
and through the steadfast love of the Most High he shall not be moved.
This first section is full of blessings that David has received from God.
God has given him so much good.
There’s this image of a crown of expensive gold.
David won a crown of gold in battle in 2 Sam 12 when Israel defeated the Ammonites.
David says I asked you to save my life, and you did.
Not only that, but you gave me eternal life!
David asked for God to save him innumerable times. If you read the first 40 or so Psalms, it feels like David is constantly afraid.
It makes him a very relatable character.
So many of these Psalms are helpful for us in distress because David is expressing his concern to God.
David did not actually live forever, but because he was a man after God’s heart, God said he would establish a kingdom through David forever. Perhaps that’s what David is referring to.
God has given him great glory and power and splendor.
David is full of gladness, not just because of his victory, but because in verse 6 God is with him. This sounds a lot like Psalm 16.
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.
David’s trust is not in his own military strength, but in Yahweh.
And it’s not because of Jerusalem’s victory in battle that he feels secure, but it’s through the steadfast love of the Most High.
David uses this title for God - Most High - as a way to say that God is above all gods.
Higher than anyone else. Jerusalem was a secure city because it was high on a hill, but nothing and no one is higher and more secure than God and his covenant keeping love.
What word gets repeated over and over and over in verses 1-7?
You and your.
Who is David referring to? God.
David’s victory is because of God.
When life goes well, it’s easy to puff our chests. To feel like, “Yeah I got it figured out.”
I know how to manage my money.
I know how to keep relationships.
Things are going well because I make things happen.
But David in this Psalm is full of thanksgiving because he knows the source of his victory. God and his powerful steadfast love.
We know that David’s pride eventually got in the way.
He trusted in his own strength and it lead to his downfall with Bathsheba.
But Jesus was the true king who trusted fully in the steadfast love of God.
Jesus never wavered from trust and reliance and dependance and thankfulness from his Father.
Even though he was the divine Son of God he was also fully a man and lived in obedience and thankfulness and trust.
God gave him life forever.
Isn’t it so easy when things are going well to take the credit.
Let David in this Psalm remind us of Jesus this morning of how he trusted God. What would it look like for us to rely on his strength?
TRANSITION - David is thankful in verses 1-7 because God gave him victory. But what does this mean for the future?
Confidence for the future (8-12)
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’s a major shift in this section.
We’ve got from thankfulness to justice.
Notice a couple things that have changed in this part of Psalm 21.
The first is the tense
It went from past tense - You have given him his heart’s desire…he asked, you gave…
Now, David prays “Your hand will…You will make…”
So we’ve gone from praying about what has happened to now praying confidently about what will happen.
This is part of a life of trust in God - God’s past faithfulness gives us confidence in the future.
The second shift is the subject of the verses
In the first section, David is emphatically listing all the benefits of God saving his life.
Blessing, salvation, crown of gold, life forever, glory, joy, steadfast love…
But now it’s about God’s powerful judgment against his enemies.
So God’s strong unfailing love for David also gives David confidence that God is strong enough to judge those who oppose him.
Sometimes we think God’s love and judgment are in tension, but you can’t have one without the other.
If I love you, then I will work to protect you.
If you love your kids, you will discipline your kids.
In the same way, since God protects David and gives him his steadfast love, it means he will move against those who hate him.
It’s like God will take two fists-full of those who oppose him and make sure they can’t hurt his people anymore.
God is going to wipe them out like when you set your oven to clean mode.
We don’t have to worry about these people dying but their kids causing the same problems, God will make sure evil won’t continue to spread.
Their plans against God will not get the upper hand. We don’t have to be afraid of scheming that goes on behind closed doors. Their plans will fail.
God’s going to scare them off because he’s got them right in his cross hairs.
We live in a world where it’s increasingly difficult to know who the good guys and bad guys are.
The good guys are not just the ones who sit in the pews on Sundays.
The bad guys aren’t just the ones on the other side of the world.
But this Psalm reminds us that one day, God will deal with those who oppose him. He will render to each person according to their works. He will have justice.
And so in the meantime, we can trust him and not fight the way the world fights. Because we can have confidence that he will put them to flight.
TRANSITION - What does this mean for us?
Praise for His Strength (13)
13 Be exalted, O Lord, in your strength!
We will sing and praise your power.
The final verse is the final punch of this Psalm.
God be exalted!
To exalt something is to lift it up.
You don’t put a nice picture of your family on the ground. You raise it up so everyone can see it.
God, may you be noticed for your love, strength, and justice!
Why? For his strength!
His power and might. His power that gives victory to David and defeats his enemies.
David is rightfully humble in this Psalm.
Yes, David has won a military battle and he’s writing this Psalm as he sits down with his harp and maybe he has servants running around him congratulating him on the battle, but he’s giving the credit to God and his strength.
Not only that, but David knows his victory means something for all of God’s people.
The prayer moves from the king being thankful to God, to now ‘we’ will sing and praise your power.
Because God’s king wins, God’s people win.
We will be glad because of your strength.
David isn’t the true hero, it’s God!
David isn’t the strong one, it’s God!
We’re not glad because of David’s power, but because of God’s.
Conclusion
In Psalm 21 David thanks God for his victory, prays with confidence about the future, and with all of God’s people praises God for his power.
How do we fit into this Psalm?
We don’t have a monarchy. We’re not picking up weapons as God’s people, we saw how badly the crusades went.
This Psalm was not written to us, but it is written for us. Through the Holy Spirit it is speaking to us today.
God’s power is praised in this Psalm.
And David trusts in God’s power, but his power is shown in what? His steadfast love.
God’s true strength is not in his ability to kill an enemy army, but his power and strength are seen in his love for sinful people.
Like the people of God in Psalm 21, we are to praise God for his power, and his power is seen most clearly in the gospel.
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
God’s true power does not look like human muscle or a tank or a nuclear weapon. It’s not a bunker busting bomb or a show of force. God’s power is seen in his love that sent Jesus to die on the cross for our sins.
The reality is that none of us deserves God’s love.
In ourselves, we are selfish. We were not on God’s side, we were on our own side.
We were in the dark, willingly on the side of the enemy.
God made his beauty an power known in creation through things like beautiful sunsets, the majesty of the ocean, or even the beautiful people that he’s made…but in our sin we rejected him.
But God’s power was shown in his strength to send Jesus to take our sin on the cross.
Jesus was strong enough to suffer for us.
The true king came and took on everything in verses 8-12, the wrath and judgment and justice, so that we could have everything that’s true in verses 1-7, the beauty, the glory, and the eternal life. He was swallowed up by death so that we could have eternal life.
How do we get in on that?
Just like David, trust in the love of God.
If we put our trust in him, we get the blessings of Christ.
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,
Through faith in Jesus, all these blessings are ours in Jesus.
This is the power of God displayed. To save us and make us right with God.
So what does it look like for us to sing and praise his power?
Well of course to sing! That’s why we gather and praise God to respond to all he’s done for us.
But also with how we live our lives.
Paul says in Romans that it’s the gospel that displays God’s power for salvation. And then later in Romans he says…
1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
You know this. I know this.
God loves you. He’s strong enough to care about you.
But do we trust it? Does it hit us at the level of our emotions? I think God gave us the Psalms to sing them, to chew on them, to meditate on them. To feel them so that our faith can go deeper.
So that we can praise God for his power in how we live our lives.
It’s showing up for a work meeting with the confidence that my performance does not define my worth. I have the riches of the blessings of Christ.
It’s parenting knowing that I don’t have to be a perfect parent because my significance is not in how my kids turn out. I am victorious in Christ.
It’s not giving into the nagging voices that I’m failing as a person but trusting in God’s love for me more than whatever standards I’m using to measure success.
It’s not demonizing people who think differently than me but knowing that God will defeat his true enemies and I can be thankful that I’m safe because of Jesus’ love for me.
