Praise for Deliverance. For the choir director. A Psalm
of David.
Deliverance; a universal desire of the hurting, oppressed,
discouraged and wounded. Some pray for deliverance from sickness and disease;
from poverty; addiction; from persecution, or whatever their current
circumstances may be. Psalm
21 records David’s praise to God once again for delivering him in times of
trouble.
My mind and heart are flooded with circumstances and
situations that cause me to cry out to God for deliverance. God’s deliverance
does not always come the way we wish, but we can learn from David and how he
prayed and praised God whether the outcome favored him or not.
O Lord, in Your
strength the king will be glad, and in Your salvation how greatly he
will rejoice! You have given him his heart’s
desire, and You have not withheld the request of his lips. Selah (vv. 1-2).
The king in this verse refers to David, but has messianic
implications as well. This is one of many royal Psalms which celebrate the
coronation of God’s chosen King. David’s
praise illustrates a tale of two kings; David is the current king from which
the Messiah will come to rule and reign forever—the future King. Ezekiel prophesied the reign of the Messiah:
They
will live on the land that I gave to Jacob My servant, in which your fathers
lived; and they will live on it, they, and their sons and their sons’ sons,
forever; and David My servant
will be their prince forever (37:25 NASB).
David
My servant will be their prince forever
speaks to the line from which the Messiah will come. David and the Messiah both
are kings, who suffer from enemies who deny their sovereignty. David was never
free from enemies who sought to dethrone him. In fact, when David sinned by
taking Bathsheba and killing her husband, the Lord pronounced that the sword will
never leave his house, because his actions despised God (see II
Sam. 12:10). The anti-Christ spirit has been operating in the world (see 1
Jn. 4:3) since Jesus walked this dusty earth. You and I are not without
trouble in this world, as Jesus promised (Jn.
16:13), but we always have hope; the Lord is faithful to those who wait on
Him. He is a Refuge and Strong Tower, a present help in trouble (Ps.
46:1).
For You meet him
with the blessings of good things; You set a crown of fine gold on his
head. He asked life of You, You gave it to him,
Length of days forever and ever. His glory is
great through Your salvation, splendor and majesty You place upon him (vv.3-5).
God always keeps His promises. This crown speaks to Christ’s
reward, and David’s. The Lord promised David that he would be king of Israel.
But just like in our own lives, some promises come step by step, not in quantum
leaps. David first became king of Judah because the kingdom had split and was
encumbered in a civil war. But the Lord is faithful to watch over His Word to
perform it (see Jer.
1: 12), He promised that the scepter would never
leave Judah; a promise that began in Abraham (see Gen.
49:10). God fulfilled His promise to David (see II
Samuel 5:1-5).
David’s story is a tumultuous journey of faith; he walked by faith
waiting for his promise to be fulfilled. The Lord sent Samuel to anoint David
as king when he was still a teenage boy watching sheep in his father’s field
(see I
Sam.16). It was a meager beginning to say the least;
Jesse didn’t think David worthy to be considered to bring before the greatest prophet
in Israel, and left him in the field. Samuel looked over each of Jesse’s six
sons, but they were not the chosen king. Samuel asked Jesse again if he had any
other sons, and they finally called for David, and Samuel anointed Him as God
commanded.
From the time David was anointed king, he had to endure hardship
and trouble. He had a few glorious moments, but mostly trouble. His father didn’t
bother to bring him before Samuel; considering it ridiculous that he would be
chosen king. Saul hunted him ruthlessly to kill him; he lived as an outlaw for
quite a while, accompanied by some loyal men who knew he would eventually be
king. He was finally crowned at thirty
years old. In every situation David endured, he praised God in the face of the
adversity. Here is a bit of what David suffered:
Psalm
3: He fled from his son Absalom who tried to dethrone and kill him.
Psalm
7: He sang—praised the Lord when threatened by Cush, a
Benjaminite.
Psalm
18: The Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, including Saul
who was ruthlessly hunting him.
Psalm
34: he pretended to be insane before Abimelech, so he drove him away
instead of killing him.
Psalm
51: Nathan rebuked him for taking Bathsheba from her husband and having him
killed. Only because he repented did God relent from killing him.
Psalm
52: The betrayal of Doeg who attempted
to turn him over to Saul.
Psalm
54: The betrayal of Ziphites who told
Saul of his whereabouts.
Psalm
56: When the Philistines seized him in Gath.
Psalm
57: When he fled from Saul in the cave.
Psalm
59: When Saul sent men to spy on his house to kill him.
Psalm
60: when he struggled with Aram-naharaim and with
Aram-zobah, and Joab returned, and smote twelve-thousand of Edom in the Valley
of Salt.
Psalm
63: When he was in the wilderness of Judah.
Psalm
142: When he was hiding in the cave.
This only recounts some of his troubles; but through them he
praised the Lord. When you are facing trials and hard times, remember God is
working patience and endurance in you. Your promise (your calling and destiny)
will come because God is faithful. The skies maybe stormy or dark; but in the
end you will see God’s promise fulfilled.
For You make him most blessed forever; You make him joyful with
gladness in Your presence (v.6).
Though I have spoken much of David’s story, I must not overlook
the messianic implications. Christ is the King of Kings to whom we look; David
is but a shadow of Him.
The word joyful is חָדָה châdâh, khaw-daw';
a primitive root; to rejoice:—make glad, be joined, rejoice (Strong’s). God has
so blessed the King, and of course David, and makes Him joyful in God’s
presence. The Hebrew word for presence used here is פָּנִים pânîym, paw-neem' (I know
that’s a lot of Hebrew!). The KJV translates this word many ways (see Strong’s here);
a few of them jumped off the page at me:
before; face/ face of seraphim or cherubim;
presence/person; countenance. These words evoke in me the Tabernacle; I see
the Bread of Presence in the Holy Place; the Presence of Yahweh between the two
cherubim covering the Mercy Seat. His Presence now dwells in us through the
Holy Spirit, and we can have joy in His presence.
John’s Gospel brings the Tabernacle into the New
Testament:
Though God is great and mighty, and I am but dust, He
invites me to find joy in His presence. He welcomes me—you into His presence.
In verses 1-6 David built a memorial to the Lord for what He
has done in the past, and how faithful God has been to him. In verses 7-13 He gazes
into the future to the One who is always faithful.
For the king trusts in the Lord, And through the
lovingkindness of the Most High he will not be shaken (v.7).
The language here shifts into the third person, toward the
king, and the King, which alludes to perhaps a congregational liturgy. The
names of God here in the Hebrew, are Yahweh and Elyon. Elyon or Most
High/Most High God means “Highest” or “Exalted One,” God is the highest in
every realm of life. When the Most High is praised, we are pouring our worship
on the One whose power, mercy, and sovereignty is unrivaled, unparalleled, unequaled,
and utterly incomparable. He is Transcendent: He is above and
independent of all creation.
Your hand will find out all your enemies; Your right
hand will find out those who hate you. You will make them as a fiery oven
in the time of your anger; The Lord will swallow them up in
His wrath, And fire will devour them Their offspring You will destroy
from the earth, And their descendants from among the sons of men (v.v.
8-10).
In the Hebrew it is literally make them as a fiery
furnace or like a furnace of fire. Many previous oppressors of Israel made them
burn; the desperation is heard in Lam. 5:10, Our skin is hot like an oven,
because of the burning oven (NASB). According to the Tehillim Commentary
this describes death by starvation, whereby one slowly deteriorates away until
there is nothing left of him. “Measure for measure, let these oppressors suffer
the same gruesome fate in the time of Messiah when starvation will turn them
into furnaces of hungry fire (*Tehillos Hashem).”[1]
Though they intended evil against You And devised
a plot, They will not succeed. For You will make them turn their back; You
will aim with Your bowstrings at their faces (v.v. 11-12).
These are hard prayers. It is hard to know how to reconcile these
types of prayers with Jesus and His command to love our enemies. But isn’t that
what prayer is? “Prayer in which all the dirt and noise of ordinary life is
boiled out. It is prayer that cultivates exalted feelings and sublime thoughts.”[2]
God is not lacking enemies. People of the cross will always experience
haters. It is important to note that though these are hard prayers, judgment to
be poured out on their enemies, they leave in the hand of God to deliver His
retribution; He is the Sophet the Righteous Judge.
“The last word on enemies is with Jesus, who captured the
Psalms. Love your enemies and pray for them that persecute you…Our hate is used
by God to bring enemies of life and salvation to notice, and then involve us in
active compassion for the victims.”[3]
We must remember that praying for our enemies will not
change them into our friends. “Love is the last thing our enemies want from us
and often act as a goad to redouble fury. Love requires vulnerability, forgiveness,
and response; the enemies want power and control and dominion. The enemies that
Jesus loved and prayed for killed him.”[4]
Be exalted, O Lord, in Your strength; We will sing and praise Your power (v.13).
In light of all the evil and oppressors, the Lord is
exalted. The Psalm opened with praise to the Lord, and so it closes with praise
to the Lord. All the oppression, all the haters, the evil, the trials of life,
the overwhelming circumstances—the hard places—
are bookended in praise to the Most High, who is sovereign, mighty,
and without rival. May He be exalted in our lives.
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| Photo by Piper Green |
My scribbling....
