P
S A L M S
PSALM XXI.
As the
foregoing psalm was a prayer for the king that God would protect and prosper
him, so this is a thanksgiving for the success God had blessed him with. Those
whom we have prayed for we ought to give thanks for, and particularly for
kings, in whose prosperity we share. They are here taught, I. To congratulate
him on his victories, and the honour he had achieved, ver. 1-6. II. To confide
in the power of God for the completing of the ruin of the enemies of his
kingdom, ver. 7-13. In this there is an eye to Messiah the Prince, and the
glory of his kingdom; for to him divers passages in this psalm are more
applicable than to David himself.
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The
Subject's Thanksgiving.
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To the chief musician. A
psalm of David.
1 The king shall joy in thy strength, O LORD;
and in thy salvation how greatly shall he rejoice! 2 Thou hast
given him his heart's desire, and hast not withholden the request of his lips.
Selah. 3 For thou preventest him with the blessings of goodness:
thou settest a crown of pure gold on his head. 4 He asked life of
thee, and thou gavest it him, even length of days for
ever and ever. 5 His glory is great in thy salvation:
honour and majesty hast thou laid upon him. 6 For thou hast made
him most blessed for ever: thou hast made him exceeding glad with thy
countenance.
David here speaks for himself in the first place, professing that his joy was
in God's strength and in his salvation, and not in the strength or success of
his armies. He also directs his subjects herein to rejoice with him, and to
give God all the glory of the victories he had obtained; and all with an eye
to Christ, of whose triumphs over the powers of darkness David's victories
were but shadows. 1. They here congratulate the king on his joys and concur
with him in them (v. 1): "The king rejoices, he uses to
rejoice in thy strength, and so do we; what pleases the king pleases
us," 2 Sam. iii. 36. Happy the people the character of whose king it is
that he makes God's strength his confidence and God's salvation his joy, that
is pleased with all the advancements of God's kingdom and trusts God to bear
him out in all he does for the service of it. Our Lord Jesus, in his great
undertaking, relied upon help from heaven, and pleased himself with the
prospect of that great salvation which he was thereby to work out. 2. They
gave God all the praise of those things which were the matter of their king's
rejoicing. (1.) That God had heard his prayers (v. 2): Thou hast
given him his heart's desire (and there is no prayer accepted but what is
the heart's desire), the very thing they begged of God for him, Ps. xx. 4.
Note, God's gracious returns of prayer do, in a special manner, require our
humble returns of praise. When God gives to Christ the heathen for his
inheritance, gives him to see his seed, and accepts his intercession for all
believers, he give him his heart's desire. (2.) That God had surprised him
with favours, and much outdone his expectations (v. 3): Thou
preventest him with the blessings of goodness. All our blessings are
blessings of goodness, and are owing, not at all to any merit of ours, but
purely and only to God's goodness. But the psalmist here reckons it in a
special manner obliging that these blessings were given in a preventing way;
this fixed his eye, enlarged his soul, and endeared his God, as one expresses
it. When God's blessings come sooner and prove richer than we imagine, when
they are given before we prayed for them, before we were ready for them, nay,
when we feared the contrary, then it may be truly said that he prevented us
with them. Nothing indeed prevented Christ, but to mankind never was any
favour more preventing than our redemption by Christ and all the blessed
fruits of his mediation. (3.) That God had advanced him to the highest honour
and the most extensive power: "Thou hast set a crown of pure gold upon
his head and kept it there, when his enemies attempted to throw it
off." Note, Crowns are at God's disposal; no head wears them but God sets
them there, whether in judgment to his land or for mercy the event will show.
On the head of Christ God never set a crown of gold, but of thorns first, and
then of glory. (4.) That God had assured him of the perpetuity of his kingdom,
and therein had done more for him than he was able either to ask or think (v.
4): "When he went forth upon a perilous expedition he asked his life
of thee, which he then put into his hand, and thou not only gavest
him that, but withal gavest him length of days for ever and ever,
didst not only prolong his life far beyond his expectation, but didst assure
him of a blessed immortality in a future state and of the continuance of his
kingdom in the Messiah that should come of his loins." See how God's
grants often exceed our petitions and hopes, and infer thence how rich he is
in mercy to those that call upon him. See also and rejoice in the length of
the days of Christ's kingdom. He was dead, indeed, that we might live through
him; but he is alive, and lives for evermore, and of the increase of his
government and peace there shall be no end; and because he thus lives we
shall thus live also. (5.) That God had advanced him to the highest honour and
dignity (v. 5): "His glory is great, far transcending that
of all the neighbouring princes, in the salvation thou hast wrought for him
and by him." The glory which every good man is ambitious of is to see the
salvation of the Lord. Honour and majesty hast thou laid upon him, as a
burden which he must bear, as a charge which he must account for. Jesus Christ
received from God the Father honour and glory (2 Pet. i. 17), the glory
which he had with him before the worlds were, John xvii. 5. And on him is laid
the charge of universal government and to him all power in heaven and earth is
committed. (6.) That God had given him the satisfaction of being the channel
of all bliss to mankind (v. 6): "Thou hast set him to be
blessings for ever" (so the margin reads it), "thou hast made
him to be a universal blessing to the world, in whom the families of the earth
are, and shall be blessed; and so thou hast made him exceedingly glad with the
countenance thou hast given to his undertaking and to him in the prosecution
of it." See how the spirit of prophecy gradually rises here to that which
is peculiar to Christ, for none besides is blessed for ever, much less a
blessing for ever to that eminency that the expression denotes: and of him it
is said that God made him full of joy with his countenance.
In singing this we should rejoice in his joy and triumph in his exaltation.
7 For the king trusteth in the LORD,
and through the mercy of the most High he shall not be moved. 8
Thine hand shall find out all thine enemies: thy right hand shall find out
those that hate thee. 9 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.
10 Their fruit shalt thou destroy from the earth, and their seed from among
the children of men. 11 For they intended evil against thee: they
imagined a mischievous device, which they are not able to perform.
12 Therefore shalt thou make them turn their back, when thou shalt make
ready thine arrows upon thy strings against the face of them.
13 Be thou exalted, LORD,
in thine own strength: so will we sing and praise thy power.
The psalmist, having taught his people to look back with joy and praise on
what God had done for him and them, here teaches them to look forward with
faith, and hope, and prayer, upon what God would further do for them: The
king rejoices in God (v. 1), and therefore we will be thankful; the
king trusteth in God (v. 7), therefore will we be encouraged. The
joy and confidence of Christ our King is the ground of all our joy and
confidence.
I. They are confident of the stability of David's kingdom. Through the
mercy of the Most High, and not through his own merit or strength, he
shall not be moved. His prosperous state shall not be disturbed; his faith
and hope in God, which are the stay of his spirit, shall not be shaken. The
mercy of the Most High (the divine goodness, power, and dominion) is enough to
secure our happiness, and therefore our trust in that mercy should be enough
to silence all our fears. God being at Christ's right hand in his sufferings
(Ps. xvi. 8) and he being at God's right hand in his glory, we may be sure he
shall not, he cannot, be moved, but continues ever.
II. They are confident of the destruction of all the impenitent implacable
enemies of David's kingdom. The success with which God had blessed David's
arms hitherto was an earnest of the rest which God would give him from all his
enemies round about, and a type of the total overthrow of all Christ's enemies
who would not have him to reign over them. Observe, 1. The description of his
enemies. They are such as hate him, v. 8. They hated David because God
had set him apart for himself, hated Christ because they hated the light; but
both were hated without any just cause, and in both God was hated, John xv.
23, 25. 2. The designs of his enemies (v. 11): They intended evil
against thee, and imagined a mischievous device; they pretended to fight
against David only, but their enmity was against God himself. Those that aimed
to un-king David aimed, in effect, to un-God Jehovah. What is devised and
designed against religion, and against the instruments God raises up to
support and advance it, is very evil and mischievous, and God takes it as
devised and designed against himself and will so reckon for it. (3.) The
disappointment of them: "They devise what they are not able to
perform," v. 11. Their malice is impotent, and they imagine
a vain thing, Ps. ii. 1. (4.) The discovery of them (v. 8): "Thy
hand shall find them out. Though ever so artfully disguised by the
pretences and professions of friendship, though mingled with the faithful
subjects of this kingdom and hardly to be distinguished from them, though
flying from justice and absconding in their close places, yet thy hand shall
find them out wherever they are." There is no escaping God's avenging
eye, no going out of the reach of his hand; rocks and mountains will be no
better shelter at last than fig-leaves were at first. (5.) The destruction of
them; it will be an utter destruction (Luke xix. 27); they shall be swallowed
up and devoured, v. 9. Hell, the portion of all Christ's enemies, is
the complete misery both of body and soul. Their fruit and their seed shall
be destroyed, v. 10. The enemies of God's kingdom, in every age,
shall fall under the same doom, and the whole generation of them will at last
be rooted out, and all opposing rule, principality, and power, shall be put
down. The arrows of God's wrath shall confound them and put them to flight,
being levelled at the face of them, v. 12. That will be the lot of
daring enemies that face God. The fire of God's wrath will consume them (v.
9); they shall not only be cast into a furnace of fire (Matt. xiii. 42), but
he shall make them themselves as a fiery oven or furnace; they shall be their
own tormentors; the reflections and terrors of their own consciences will be
their hell. Those that might have had Christ to rule and save them, but
rejected him and fought against him, shall find that even the remembrance of
that will be enough to make them, to eternity, a fiery oven to themselves: it
is the worm that dies not.
III. In this confidence they beg of God that he would still appear for his
anointed (v. 13), that he would act for him in his own strength, by the
immediate operations of his power as Lord of hosts and Father of spirits,
making little use of means and instruments. And, 1. Hereby he would exalt
himself and glorify his own name. "We have but little strength, and are
not so active for thee as we should be, which is our shame; Lord, take the
work into thy own hands, do it, without us, and it will be thy glory." 2.
Hereupon they would exalt him: "So will we sing, and praise thy power,
the more triumphantly." The less God has of our service when a
deliverance is in the working the more he must have of our praises when it is
wrought without us.
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