As much as I tried, I couldn’t get this Psalm out of my mind. While looking at it from one angle Wednesday, I mentioned it could be preached as a gospel message. I don’t believe that was David’s intent when he put these words to music and taught them to Israel. But the mind of God always supercedes the mind of man, and the Lord can lift a man’s efforts from one area into a much higher and more glorious area. But that is not to say I am going to improve upon David’s thoughts.
Centuries after the life and death of King David, Christ’s apostles arose to preach the gospel of saving grace. Peter may have been preaching to Jews in Judea or somewhere else along the eastern Mediterranean. And Paul may have been visiting in the Jewish synagogue in Corinth, Berea or Thessalonica. From where did those men get their scripture texts for their gospel sermons? They came from the Old Testament; they came from Isaiah, Deuteronomy, the Psalms and the prophets. It is highly likely that Christ’s early servants preached from Psalm 21 from time to time.
I am not going to say the Apostle John, for example, looked at it in this way, but it appears to me that this Psalm breaks apart into three pieces. There is a section on salvation from sin, followed by a few verses pointing out the need for salvation. Then we might look at verse 13 as a summary or conclusion – which was just as David intended. Let me start by reading the conclusion, before concluding with it later – “Be thou exalted, LORD, in thine own strength: so will we sing and praise thy power.” That is my reason for looking at this Psalm once again – “Be thou exalted, LORD.”
Verses 8 through 12 highlight the SINNER’S NEED of the grace of God – YOUR need of salvation.
David’s first thought is that Jehovah knows the true condition of every heart; He knows your true nature. The Lord knows who you are, everything you will ever do, and of course, everything you have ever done. Divine omniscience is a New Testament doctrine – and an Old Testament doctrine – it is Bible. “Omniscience” is a word which means that the Lord knows all things – He knows all there is to know. Jehovah knows whether you are living in repentance before Him, or whether you are a fraud – hypocrite
While this is undoubtedly true, David in this Psalm takes God’s omniscience into another sphere. He says,“Thine HAND shall find out all thine enemies: thy right hand shall find out those that hate thee.” God’s knowledge is not an inert, unresponsive mere recognition of the facts of our case. Wherever the Lord’s holy mind goes His holy hand follows. Not only does He KNOW who are wicked, His hand shall “find out all his enemies” – bringing judgment down upon them. And notice that this will be God’s “right hand” which finds out His enemies. Very few people are truly ambidextrous – few are equally strong and skilled with both hands. Even baseball players who can bat from either side of the plate usually do better on one side. Most people have a dominant arm, a stronger arm, a more skilled arm. And while that is NOT true of Jehovah, the Psalmist wants to leave us with the impression that God is going to come to the wicked with His strongest arm.
“But” someone says, “this is talking about God’s enemies, and those who hate Him” – it’s not about me. I have found in my 67 years of experience that nearly everyone inaccurately estimates himself. Most “think of themselves more highly than they ought to think.” And then there are some to picture themselves too lowly. But almost always these estimates involved comparisons among ourselves – other human beings. You are either a better or lesser person than I am – or in comparison to someone else. But the truth is – there is no one by nature who properly sees himself as God sees him. “I am not an enemy of God.” That is not a judgment which you can make. Only God can do that. For one reason, as I said, we all think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think. And then, none of us are godly enough to fully understand the standards which God uses to determine who are His enemies. However, it is safe to say that anyone who does not “love the Lord God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his mind, and with all his strength” might be considered by God to be His enemy. And when the Bible says “all liars shall be cast into the lake of fire” then we might assume that liars are among God’s enemies. Was the poet hasty when in Psalm 116 he said, “all men are liars”? That bit of envy, that thought of lust, that burst of anger, that moment of pride, were all evil acts of treachery against the holiness of God. Each of them and the ten thousand other sins we have committed all prove we were born God’s enemies. And David himself would have to be included in God’s “black list.”
But as the prophet of God, he went on to say – “Thou shalt make them as a fiery oven in the time of thine anger: the LORD shall swallow them up in his wrath, and the fire shall devour them.” Think back through the life of David, asking yourself, when God ever judged people with divine fire? Granted, Jehovah had done that; He did it to Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis and with Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus. There were probably unrecorded house fires and grass fires which caused the deaths of wicked men, but God rarely signed His name to them. There were none, so far as I am aware, during the lifetime of David.
So to what does he refer, speaking of the wicked being fuel in God’s oven or God’s wrath devouring with fire? I know that it is not politically correct to speak of it, and in some circles it isn’t even theologically correct… But the Bible clearly, unmistakably, forcefully speaks about “the fires of hell” and the Lake of Fire. The New Testament speaks of “hell fire” and “everlasting fire” – in fact those are the words of Christ Jesus. It is better for someone to enter into life crippled and blind than to be “cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched. Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” John, the apostle of love has told us “the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.” He prophesied that one day death and hell will be “cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.” Did the Apostle Paul ever pick up Psalm 21 and preach hell or the lake of fire to the people of Greece?
“For they intended evil against thee: they imagined a mischievous device, which they are not able to perform.” Was it this same David who penned the second Psalm which begins with the words….. “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.” The people of the world intend evil against God, when they elevate evolution over divine creation. They intend evil when they permit and glorify homosexuality. They intend evil when they describe the Son of God as a mere man, an angel or as a simple prophet. They intend evil when they create churches which compete with the “ekklesia” of Christ. But what can the imagination of a mouse do against the lion of God? What effect can the mischief of the child have on the Archangel Michael, Gabriel or the Son of God? “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.”
David’s takes us forward once again to the Book of Revelation. “Therefore shalt thou make them turn their back, when thou shalt make ready thine arrows upon thy strings against the face of them.” This reminds me of those rebels of the Great Tribulation who will be so terrified before the wrath of the Almighty that they are calling on the rocks of the mountains to cover them. The arrows of God will be flying so thickly during the final months of those three years that fearful sinners will not be able to face them – “Therefore shalt thou make them turn their back.” But the physical plagues of the Tribulation will be nothing compared to eternity in the Lake of Fire. In the light of such things HOW can David conclude with – “Be thou exalted, LORD, in thine own strength: so will we sing and praise thy power”?
He can so conclude, because David knew also of God’s saving grace.
Who is the most powerful man in the world today? I shudder to think of possible answers. I can’t say David was the most powerful man on earth in his day, but on the Mediterranean coast he was. Yet he still bowed his knees before the Lord, Jehovah. “The KING shall joy in thy strength, O LORD; and in thy salvation how greatly shall he rejoice!” I admit to making spiritual, something which David may have meant to be physical. But I don’t apologize, because my application is unmistakable Bible doctrine.
David, the king of Israel, was a slave to sin and as much under the wrath of God as any Philistine or sodomite. I shouldn’t have to list his transgressions, but he was a murderer and an adulterer among other things. In the light of God’s holiness, David would have been near the top of Jehovah’s most wanted list – an enemy. But God’s hand had found out this particular enemy, and out of grace blessed him with salvation. The hand of the Lord may hold a sword or an eternal pardon; that is up to the sovereignty of God.
It took the omnipotent strength of the Almighty to save this wretched example of fallen humanity. In your estimation, what has been God’s greatest act of strength? Someone might reply that it was raising the dead or healing a leper. Someone else might point to Christ’s miracle at Cana in Galilee. What about making the sun stand still – was that the stopping of earth’s rotation, or the actual moving of the sun and moon to match the spinning earth? I think, more obviously, God’s greatest physical feat was His creation of the universe out of nothing. But all of these added together, did not require more than the salvation of any single wretched sinner. Not only did salvation require a resurrection – the creation or re-creation of life. But it necessitated the death of the Son of God, which is contrary to natural laws, and to supernatural laws as well. For David to rejoice in salvation, Christ, the Son of God, would have to bear in His own body on the tree of Calvary the full judgment of David’s sins – murder and all the rest. For any of us to be delivered from our sins, God the Father would have to turn His back on His only begotten Son. This is why David said, “The king shall joy in thy strength, O LORD; and in thy salvation how greatly shall he rejoice!” God’s salvation required more of the Lord than anything else He has ever done.
There is a lot of substantial New Testament doctrine contained in David’s poetry. For example, “Thou hast given him his heart’s desire.” I can’t speak for David or for anyone other than myself, but there was a day when my sinful heart began to yearn for deliverance. I heard some gospel preaching, and I was convicted of my sinful condition. It was not simply a desire to escape punishment for my sin. It became a yearning for acceptance and fellowship with God. By nature this is something foreign to all of us; it is contrary to the fallen nature of Adam within us. Because of every man’s spiritual state of death, we have no desire for Jehovah – we fear Jehovah. Romans 3:11 – “There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.” We might feel the flames of hell and smell the brimstone, but that is not the same thing as yearning for fellowship with the holy God.
So what ignited David’s search for peace with God? “For thou preventest him with the blessings of goodness.” That phrase suggests that before the day David’s heart yearned for God, the Lord stepped out and preceded David. You don’t have to take my word for it, but it would simplify things if you did. “Preventest” meant “preceded” in the English of four hundred years ago. In other words, God initiated that blessed relationship between Himself and the sinner – the relationship which we call “salvation.” It was the Lord who put in David’s dead spirit, a yearning for salvation and fellowship with Jehovah. Everywhere you look in the Bible, it is God who initiates, commences and begins the salvation of sinners. God chooses – elects – specific sinners to eternally fellowship with Him. As much as the two presidential candidates wish that they could simplify things and elect themselves, election is the work of others. God miraculously gives faith and repentance to people who are spiritually dead and incapable of trusting Christ. “Thou preventest him with the blessings of goodness.”
By the grace of God, there was a day when David, like thousands of others saints before and since…. By the grace of God, David “asked life of thee, and thou gavest it him, even length of days for ever and ever. He asked life of thee, and thou gavest it him, even length of days for ever and ever.” As I say, a state of salvation is not merely escape from due punishment. This enemy of God has been completely forgiven, and like David’s treatment of his predecessor’s grandson, Mephiobsheth, is brought into the throne room, the living room, the kitchen of King of kings. And this new fellowship, this salvation, is an eternal state – it is for ever and ever. Christ said, “And My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.” I can’t point to some specific moment in David’s life when he was born again – something which I can do in my own life – but I believe David was converted in a single moment – before he became king of Israel. And yet his sins against the family of Uriah were committed long after his salvation. But they did not disannul God’s promise to the man of eternal life. David’s obedience to the law did not maintain God’s salvation – it was entirely by grace. And his disobedience didn’t make void the grace of God.
“For the king trusteth in the LORD, and through the mercy of the most High he shall not be moved. His glory is great in thy salvation: honour and majesty hast thou laid upon him. For thou hast made him most blessed for ever: thou hast made him exceeding glad with thy countenance.” Wicked king David, and wicked Canadian David, put their trust for salvation in the mercy of the Lord. David did not trust his reasonably good leadership of Israel, to make points with God. David didn’t claim his kinship with Jesse, Ruth and Boaz, with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to open the door to God’s blessings. “He trusted in the Lord and the mercy of the most High.” There will never be any other grounds for deliverance from sin, but in Jehovah – the Lord Jesus Christ. But don’t dilute your faith with an over-abundance of praise for God’s love. God’s love was not sufficient in itself. That love lead to divine acts of mercy and grace. “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
If you are like David, then you were quickened while you were dead in trespasses and sins. And “God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace are you saved); and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Or as David expresses it, Lord, “honour and majesty hast thou laid upon (me). For thou hast made (me) most blessed for ever: thou hast made (me) exceeding glad with thy countenance.”
What is the meaning of David’s word “countenance?” He is talking about the face of God. What is salvation? It is living forever in the presence, in the fellowship, and under the smile – of God. How is that possible in the light of our native sinfulness? It is possible only through the merits and mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ paid the penalty which God’s law demanded of us – sinners dead in His sight. Christ paid the penalty – thoroughly and completely. Believe it. Humbly admit that you are hopelessly helpless before God. Repent, before the Lord, casting yourself down before His mercy, and trust what the Lord Jesus Christ did on the cross to save your soul. David understood the theology of Paul, or maybe it was the other way around. Do you understand that salvation is by grace through faith in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ?