Psalm 18

 

⁴⁶          The Lord lives,

blessed be my rock,

exalted be the God of my salvation -

⁴⁷          the God who gave me vindication

Who subdued peoples under me,

⁴⁸                      Who delivered me from raging enemies;

Aye:    You exalted me above those who rose against me;

You rescued me from men of violence.

⁴⁹          For this I will extol You, O Lord, among the gentiles.

I will sing praises to Your Name.

⁵⁰          Great salvations He brings to His king,

and shows steadfast love to His anointed,

to David and his heirs forever.

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Messianic Triumph

For the Lord’s Day:  the 13^th of June 2004

 

Introduction: One interesting phenomena of the human race, that I have observed over the years is the tendency of college graduates, in imitation of the ordinary repetitive educational process: is to make a strong start at the beginning of any quarter or semester course, earn the necessary “points” or early reputation to stand them in good stead and then to peter out in enthusiasm, production and intellectual insight at the end of every course and program.

 

The same is somewhat true of horse racing, there is a whole class of trained thoroughbred that can start very well, but the finish is entirely different.  Just as it sadly is in our own history of presidential candidates, contenders and electees – so many are full of promise at the start, but their final legacy leaves all too much to be desired.  At least this week, we have laid to rest a great man in every sense of the word, a man like David the King who acknowledged the reality of God and even credited Him with a providential purpose in raising him to office.  Like David, the life and times of Ronald Wilson Reagan were better because God called and enabled them both to do what He would propose and allow in their lifetimes.

 

Certainly, we understand that both men, David the King and Reagan the President were all too human and that both were capable of sin, as are we all.  The only reason I mention both in the same sentences and paragraphs is that in both cases, like Paul and the Apostles – they finished the race of life full of faith, good report and were like wise a credit to the work of God in and through them as He willed it.

 

So while the trumpets and bagpipes of the American military are still fresh in our ears, we are enabled by divine providence to turn in a timely manner to the poetic trumpet calls and a poetic piper’s celebration of God’s grace and greater glory: in the noble phrases that close the eighteenth hymn of the Psalter.

 

Development:  We turn now to the primary verse in the short and final, for this Psalm, collection before us: the forty-sixth. “The Lord lives, blessed be my rock, exalted be the God of my salvation.”  There are three thoughts collected in that short colon.

 

The first is a simple statement of fact:  “The Lord lives.” It is not as some suppose an ordinary regal blessing celebrated by a ruler’s people, such is we might have heard in other times and countries:  “Long live the King!”  No indeed, this is no implied blessing shouted by a multitude of well-wishers.  My Translator’s Handbook informs us that it “is a cry of confidence in Yahweh as a living God who constantly acts on behalf of his people; it is not the same as saying ‘Long live the Lord!’”

 

The next phrase is better understood as the blessing stated here:  “blessed by my rock.”  David intones as he winds down the evening when this Psalm must have been finished.  It is obvious that David is leading up to a special summary of all that the blessed Lord and Savior of mankind has, is and will accomplish in and with the knowledge of not only the Redeemed but also every person who takes the Lord seriously in His revelation, redemption and working out of our salvation.  No need to excuse the plurality of my report in that last sentence, since the Hebrew here for salvation, at the end of this sweet Psalm is obviously in the plural anyway.

 

And so David will lift up before the peoples, tribes and kings whose faded glory can never ever approach the greater work and purpose of the Creator God.

 

Our next verse is somewhat difficult to fathom, “The God who gave me vindication, Who subdued peoples under me, Who delivered me from raging enemies.”  For many the problem is exactly how to translate the word for which I have used “vindication.”

The plural verb here is best translated “retribution.”  Again, my Translator’s Handbook informs us:  the related verb here “is often used of God as one who punishes the enemies of Israel because of their evil actions.”  While “the idea of ‘getting even’ is not entirely absent from the word, but the need not necessarily be stressed in any translation.”

 

For this reason, I have used the word “vindication” to help us understand that God’s belligerent attitude against the ungodly and the sinner does indeed serve His cause and purpose not only in this world, but even more in the world to come.  Thus, as we affirmed in earlier weeks, the heartache, hatred and violence given against the Church of the Living Lord is accounted as against Himself and the person of God.

 

However, in David’s contemporary scene, the divine retribution serves just as well to vindicate the one blessed by God and to accomplish his establishment upon the throne of Israel.  Calvin notes on this verse here that David is not a private person, but a king “endued with royal power and authority.”  Further, he notes that “the judgment which he executed was enjoined upon him by God.”  And we may note that this judgment was part and parcel of David’s royal office:  “David, therefore, has put the word vengeance for the just punishments which it was lawful for him to inflict by the commandment of God, provided he was led under the influence of a zeal duly regulated by the Holy Spirit, and not under the influence of the impetuosity of the flesh.”

 

In this sense it is the same Almighty and powerful God who must be given credit for the subjection of the peoples over whom David reigned.  And further, it is God indeed who delivered him from every sort of common and uncommon enemy against his person and the State of Israel.

 

The third thought in our text today, is only a portion of the original versification, normally counted as the latter part of the forty-eighth verse.  “Aye: You exalted me above those who rose against me; You rescued me from men of violence.”

 

The exclamation pointed out by David is “omitted by some manuscripts.”  My Translator’s Handbook observes that “It is a way of emphasizing what follows; in current English ‘indeed’ would be the proper way to represent it.”

 

I have left the exclamation in the archaic form, where in our time, an emphatic “Yes,” would be completely in order.  However, that contemporary cultural outburst may only be temporary, as are so many of the phrases in our world that change and loose their supposed meaning in all to short a time period.  “Therefore,” would be another way of putting it – but there is not the sense of excitement in that word – which may be conveyed in the traditional Parliamentary procedure of affirming one’s heart desire in the congressional  and presbytery courts of law.  The current Moderator of our Presbytery, has insisted on using “Yes” and “No” in the voting procedures, and for very many of us – that is so awkward to express our emotions in a contested choice of debate.

 

Of course, we have spent much time in the emotional excitement of this one word, and must of course turn to the reason for the poetic resonation.  And in the virtual repetition of the earlier verse, we find the emotional highlights of David’s feelings.  Nothing more that a second affirmation of all that God is, was and willing to do for His elect: this is what David celebrates – the work of God, and the wondrous fact that the God of heaven is interested in ones such as we!  Shouldn’t the great love and concern of the Almighty Creator of the whole universe in us and our needs elicit a like excitement?

 

Application:  But, this is not the end of the matter in this Psalm.  There is much more, and in these final thoughts, David looks beyond his own day to see the work of God written large over and through the entire history of the elect in ages to come.  “For this I will extol You, O Lord, among the gentiles.  I will sing praises to Your Name.”

 

Calvin notes:  “in this verse [David] teaches us that the blessings God had conferred upon him, of which he had spoken, are worthy of being celebrated with extraordinary and unusual praises, that the fame of them might reach even the heathen.”

Spurgeon reminds us that “Paul cites this verse” in (Romans 15: 9) as evidence for taking the Gospel to every tribe and nation to the ends of the earth.  Delitzsch too encourages us in the same vein:  “The praise of so blessed a God, who acts towards David as He has promised him, shall not be confined within the narrow limits of Israel.”

 

Sometimes, as in the time of David, it was and still is necessary to send Expeditionary Forces far from the heartland in order to defend the kingdom and country of the elect.  This force of arms, Delitzsch assures us that this is often within the will and purpose of God:  “When God’s anointed makes war with the sword upon the heathen, it is, in the end, the blessing of the knowledge of Jahve for which he opens up the way, and the salvation of Jahve, which he thus mediatorially helps us.”  Further, he notes:  “Paul has a perfect right to quote [this verse] … as proof that salvation belongs to the Gentiles also, according to the divine purpose of mercy.”

 

Remember, just as I had noted another week, David’s own band of “Immortals” had a real and substantial “Foreign Legion” makeup and at least one of that grand band of brothers wrote his own Psalm for the scriptures.  One Ethan the Ezrahite speaks in Psalm 89 of being left for dead in the Eighty-ninth Psalm on the Battlefield, and in his agony he prays to David’s God for help.  And so David’s prophetic poetry was even engaged in his own time and place, long before Paul pleaded the same case for taking the Gospel to the Gentiles.

 

And finally in our last colons (verse fifty) of this hymnic psalm, David does as Spurgeon allows: he “throws a fullness of expression, indicating the most rapturous delight of gratitude.”  After all, it is to be David’s line that leads doubly to Jesus Christ, both through Mary by birth and Joseph by implied adoption.

 

And so even after the rapt devotion engaged throughout this entire hymn, the best is yet to come, in the Spirit David looks towards the future when his own greater Son shall claim the throne forever and ever.  “Great salvations He brings to His king, and shows steadfast love to His anointed, to David and his heirs forever.”

 

Note that the Hebrew word for “salvation” here is multiplied in the plural form, blessings and saving graces have abounded for the earthly king, but they pale in comparison to the “steadfast love” that the Creator God will show in the future, because David’s heirs shall rule “forever” in and through the majesty and power of God’s only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.  Praise the Father, Son and Holy Spirit ever and always.  Amen.

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PREACHING RESOURCES

 

Calvin, John:  Commentary on Book of Psalms.

Delitzsch, F:  Commentary on the Old Testament – Psalms.

Spurgeon, C.H:  Treasury of David.

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