Prescott Conference 2020: Saturday PM: Summary of David’s life and the psalms that garnished it
length: 70:43 - taught on Sep, 5 2020
Class Outline:
Prescott Conference 2020
Class 3: Saturday Night, September 5, 2020
Psalms:
Youth - 8, 19, 29, 23
Exile:
Surround House - 59
Nob - 52
Gath - 56
Hills of Judah - 54
Engedi - 7, 57, 142
Ziklag - 31
Ziklag: Psa 31 - God gives rest after a long “winter.”
To this period of comparative security one psalm has been supposed to belong - 31.
Psa 31
For the choir director. A Psalm of David.
31 In Thee, O Lord , I have taken refuge;
Let me never be ashamed;
In Thy righteousness deliver me.
2 Incline Thine ear to me, rescue me quickly;
Be Thou to me a rock of strength,
A stronghold to save me.
3 For Thou art my rock and my fortress;
For Thy name's sake Thou wilt lead me and guide me.
4 Thou wilt pull me out of the net which they have secretly laid for me;
For Thou art my strength.
5 Into Thy hand I commit my spirit;
Thou hast ransomed me, O Lord, God of truth [again David is a beautiful type of Christ].
6 I hate those who regard vain idols;
But I trust in the Lord.
7 I will rejoice and be glad in Thy lovingkindness,
Because Thou hast seen my affliction;
Thou hast known the troubles of my soul,
8 And Thou hast not given me over into the hand of the enemy;
Thou hast set my feet in a large place.
9 Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress;
My eye is wasted away from grief, my soul and my body also.
10 For my life is spent with sorrow,
And my years with sighing;
My strength has failed because of my iniquity,
And my body has wasted away.
11 Because of all my adversaries, I have become a reproach,
Especially to my neighbors,
And an object of dread to my acquaintances;
Those who see me in the street flee from me.
12 I am forgotten as a dead man, out of mind,
I am like a broken vessel.
13 For I have heard the slander of many,
Terror is on every side;
While they took counsel together against me,
They schemed to take away my life.
14 But as for me, I trust in Thee, O Lord,
I say, "Thou art my God."
15 My times are in Thy hand;
Deliver me from the hand of my enemies, and from those who persecute me.
16 Make Thy face to shine upon Thy servant;
Save me in Thy lovingkindness.
17 Let me not be put to shame, O Lord, for I call upon Thee;
Let the wicked be put to shame, let them be silent in Sheol.
18 Let the lying lips be dumb,
Which speak arrogantly against the righteous
With pride and contempt.
19 How great is Thy goodness,
Which Thou hast stored up for those who fear Thee,
Which Thou hast wrought for those who take refuge in Thee,
Before the sons of men!
20 Thou dost hide them in the secret place of Thy presence from the conspiracies of man;
Thou dost keep them secretly in a shelter from the strife of tongues.
21 Blessed be the Lord,
For He has made marvelous His lovingkindness to me in a besieged city.
22 As for me, I said in my alarm,
"I am cut off from before Thine eyes";
Nevertheless Thou didst hear the voice of my supplications
When I cried to Thee.
23 O love the Lord, all you His godly ones!
The Lord preserves the faithful,
And fully recompenses the proud doer.
24 Be strong, and let your heart take courage,
All you who hope in the Lord.
It has many similarities with the other psalms of his exile: God as his rock; the net his enemies have laid for him, the allusions to their calumnies and slanders; his safe concealment in God, and vs. 24 with the close of Psa 27.
Be strong, and let your heart take courage,
All you who hope in the Lord.
Wait for the Lord;
Be strong, and let your heart take courage;
Yes, wait for the Lord.
What points Psa 31 to Ziklag is:
Blessed be the Lord,
For He has made marvelous His lovingkindness to me in a besieged [fortified or strong] city.
“Strong city” could refer to the idea of the encompassing shelter of God, which the word is often used for, but in the previous verse David had stated that.
Thou dost hide them in the secret place of Thy presence from the conspiracies of man;
Thou dost keep them secretly in a shelter from the strife of tongues.
For 16 months David didn’t have Saul after him, which corresponds well to his words.
We may well believe that to the hunted exile, so long accustomed to a life of constant alarms and hurried flight, the quiet of a settled home was very sweet, and that behind the rude fortifications of the little town in the southern wilderness there seemed security, which made a wonderful contrast to their defenseless lairs and lurking-places among the rocks.
Their eyes would lose their watchful restlessness, and it would be possible to lay aside their weapons and gather their homes about them and lead a restful, tranquil, domestic life. It must have felt like a miracle to David.
He describes his tremulous despondency which had preceded this marvel of lovingkindness in language which at once recalls the wave of hopelessness which swept across his soul after his final interview with Saul.
Then David said to himself, "Now I will perish one day by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than to escape into the land of the Philistines. Saul then will despair of searching for me anymore in all the territory of Israel, and I will escape from his hand."
As for me, I said in my alarm [confusion, distrust, literally means to sway backwards and forwards, hence to be agitated by fear],
"I am cut off from before Thine eyes";
Nevertheless Thou didst hear the voice of my supplications
When I cried to Thee.
David possessed the spiritual skill to rise above his individual experience to its true meaning, knowing his life and his story belong to the whole household of God.
This was ever David’s manner to rediscover that his own individual experience was eternally tied to the great truths concerning God’s care of His own children. That truth was more precious to him than his own personal safety, and from such welling faith within him, he breaks forth in jubilant invocation. His story belongs to God’s book which contains the stories of all in the household of God, all to God’s good pleasure.
The story of every believer is a part of God’s book. They are not our own.
And in Thy book they were all written,
The days that were ordained for me,
When as yet there was not one of them.
And rising, as was ever his manner, from his own individual experience to the great truths concerning God’s care of His children, the discovery of which was to him even more precious and his personal safety, he breaks forth in jubilant invocation, which, as always, is full of his consciousness that his life and his story belong to the whole household of God.
O love the Lord, all you His godly ones!
The Lord preserves the faithful,
And fully recompenses the proud doer.
24 Be strong, and let your heart take courage,
All you who hope in the Lord.
Anticipated is the final relation between man and God, brought forth to the church, in one bond of love.
It anticipates the final teaching of the NT in bringing all the relations between God and the devout soul down to the one bond of love. “We love Him because He first loved us.”
Love from God echoes in our own hearts. Love begets love; love seeks love; love rests in love. Our faith corresponds to His faithfulness, our obedience to His command and our Lord’s surrender, our reverence to His infinite majesty, and our love resembles His, from which it draws its life.
Blessed be the Lord,
For He has made marvelous His lovingkindness to me in a besieged city.
His lovingkindness to us becomes our love to Him, vs. 23, O love the Lord, all you His godly ones!
Love to God, resting on consciousness of His love to us, is the true armor.
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear
The heart filled with God’s love is strong to resist the pressure of outward disasters, while the heart that is empty of it is crushed like a dried-up husk. Life is filled with landmines that all of us are bound to step on, and icebergs that drift rudderless that are bound to crash into us. The heart filled with the love of God knows that God saw the berg coming a very long time ago and that He has joyfully made provision within a grand purpose that the lover of God explicitly trusts in.
Love is also the condition of hope. The patience and expectation of the latter must come from the present fruition of the sweetness of the former.
In his changeful, perilous years of exile he had learned that the brightness with which hope glowed on his lonely path depended not on the accident of greater or less external security, but on the energy of the clear flame of love in his heart. His trials were not in vain for he learned that the Lord loved him and that he could “wait on the Lord.”
Psalms 11,13,22,25, and 64, may, with varying probability, be considered as belonging to the Sauline persecution. Some critics would add Psa 40 and 69, but on uncertain grounds.
[good summary]
The imagery of the wilderness continually appears; the prowling wild beasts, the nets and snares, the hunted psalmist kike a timid bird among the hills; the protestation of innocence, the passionate invocation of retribution on the wicked, the confidence that their own devices will come down on their heads, the intense yearning of soul after God - are all repeated in these psalms.
The King: Psa 18, 101.
Rescue ark: 15, 24
Nathan’s promise: 110
Successful wars: 21, 21, 60, 68
The sudden movement of David to the throne is marked by the sudden death of Saul. The heavy cloud that brooded so long over the doomed king suddenly broke open on the disastrous field of Gilboa. What a sad end to a man who had once been brave, modest, and kind, full of noble purposes and generous affections - to end by flinging himself on his own bloody sword.
Saul’s is the fate of the soul which makes shipwreck of faith and good conscience (1TI 1:19).
David writes a beautiful elegy for Saul and Jonathan, forgetting the struggles and remembering only the good that was once in them.
David had never thought of Saul standing between him and the throne. The first feeling on his death was not, as it would have been with a less devout and less generous heart, a flush of gladness at the thought of the empty throne, but a sharp pang of pain. And even when he begins to look forward to his own new course, he continues to show the remarkable passiveness which we have already observed.
Then it came about afterwards that David inquired of the Lord, saying, "Shall I go up to one of the cities of Judah?" And the Lord said to him, "Go up." So David said, "Where shall I go up?" And He said, "To Hebron."
He will do nothing until his Shepherd shall lead him. David’s only ambition is God’s will.
The throne is empty, he has been anointed for the position years before, the time has come, but still he does not run impetuously towards his destiny until the Lord tells him to. So he fulfills what he wrote years before.
Because of his strength I will watch for Thee,
For God is my stronghold.
[My strength! Upon Thee I will wait.]
David goes to Hebron and a constant stream of Israelites come to join his standard. The kingdom had fallen into misery and confusion. Some join David from Benjamin, Manasseh, Gad, and Judah. With such forces, it would have been child’s play to have subdued any scattered troops of the former dynasty, but he made no such attempt.
David was not going to win the kingdom by arms.
Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Thy throne;
Lovingkindness and truth go before Thee.
He took to a partial monarchy, allowing his commander to deal with the feeble and lingering opposition to his rule by Saul’s cousin Abner, settling down for the leadership of the men of Judah only, reigning in Hebron for 7 years.
After the death of Abner, David is crowned king by the elders of all tribes at Hebron. The first result of his new strength is to take Jerusalem, the old hill-fortress of the Jebusites, the city of Melchizedek, which the tribes of Benjamin and Judah were unable to take though it, though the city was allotted to Benjamin by God. For the first time in seven years David suits up for war.
Establishing Jerusalem as his capital, David reigns for some ten years with unbroken prosperity over a loyal and loving people.
These years are marked by three principle events - the bringing up of the ark to the city of David, the promise by Nathan of the perpetual dominion of his house, and the unbroken flow of victories over the surrounding nations. (2Sa 5-8) These are abundantly illustrated in the psalms.
These are the Songs of the King.
How did this man of faith bear his sudden change of fortune? What were his thoughts when at last the dignity which he had ever expected and never sought was his? The answer is in the grand psalm, Psa 18.
Psa 18
For the choir director. A Psalm of David the servant of the Lord, who spoke to the Lord the words of this song in the day that the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. And he said,
1"I love Thee, O Lord, my strength."
2 The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer,
My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge;
My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
3 I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised,
And I am saved from my enemies [he piles up names for God].
4 The cords of death encompassed me,
And the torrents of ungodliness terrified me.
5 The cords of Sheol surrounded me;
The snares of death confronted me.
[Now, David’s many cries for help]
6 In my distress I called upon the Lord,
And cried to my God for help;
He heard my voice out of His temple,
And my cry for help before Him came into His ears.
7 Then the earth shook and quaked;
And the foundations of the mountains were trembling
And were shaken, because He was angry.
8 Smoke went up out of His nostrils,
And fire from His mouth devoured;
Coals were kindled by it.
9 He bowed the heavens also, and came down
With thick darkness under His feet.
10 And He rode upon a cherub and flew;
And He sped upon the wings of the wind.
11 He made darkness His hiding place,
His canopy around Him,
Darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies.
12 From the brightness before Him passed His thick clouds,
Hailstones and coals of fire.
13 The Lord also thundered in the heavens,
And the Most High uttered His voice,
Hailstones and coals of fire.
14 And He sent out His arrows, and scattered them,
And lightning flashes in abundance, and routed them.
15 Then the channels of water appeared,
And the foundations of the world were laid bare
At Thy rebuke, O Lord,
At the blast of the breath of Thy nostrils.
16 He sent from on high, He took me;
He drew me out of many waters.
17 He delivered me from my strong enemy,
And from those who hated me, for they were too mighty for me.
18 They confronted me in the day of my calamity,
But the Lord was my stay.
19 He brought me forth also into a broad place;
He rescued me, because He delighted in me.
20 The Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness;
According to the cleanness of my hands He has recompensed me.
21 For I have kept the ways of the Lord,
And have not wickedly departed from my God.
22 For all His ordinances were before me,
And I did not put away His statutes from me.
23 I was also blameless with Him,
And I kept myself from my iniquity.
24 Therefore the Lord has recompensed me according to my righteousness,
According to the cleanness of my hands in His eyes.
25 With the kind Thou dost show Thyself kind;
With the blameless Thou dost show Thyself blameless;
26 With the pure Thou dost show Thyself pure;
And with the crooked Thou dost show Thyself astute.
27 For Thou dost save an afflicted people;
But haughty eyes Thou dost abase.
28 For Thou dost light my lamp;
The Lord my God illumines my darkness.
29 For by Thee I can run upon a troop;
And by my God I can leap over a wall.
30 As for God,
His way is blameless;
The word of the Lord is tried;
He is a shield to all who take refuge in Him.
31 For who is God, but the Lord?
And who is a rock, except our God,
32 The God who girds me with strength,
And makes my way blameless?
33 He makes my feet like hinds' feet,
And sets me upon my high places.
34 He trains my hands for battle,
So that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.
35 Thou hast also given me the shield of Thy salvation,
And Thy right hand upholds me;
And Thy gentleness makes me great.
36 Thou dost enlarge my steps under me,
And my feet have not slipped.
37 I pursued my enemies and overtook them,
And I did not turn back until they were consumed.
38 I shattered them, so that they were not able to rise;
They fell under my feet.
39 For Thou hast girded me with strength for battle;
Thou hast subdued under me those who rose up against me.
40 Thou hast also made my enemies turn their backs to me,
And I destroyed those who hated me.
41 They cried for help, but there was none to save,
Even to the Lord, but He did not answer them.
42 Then I beat them fine as the dust before the wind;
I emptied them out as the mire of the streets.
43 Thou hast delivered me from the contentions of the people;
Thou hast placed me as head of the nations;
A people whom I have not known serve me.
44 As soon as they hear, they obey me;
Foreigners submit to me.
45 Foreigners fade away,
And come trembling out of their fortresses.
46 The Lord lives, and blessed be my rock;
And exalted be the God of my salvation,
47 The God who executes vengeance for me,
And subdues peoples under me.
48 He delivers me from my enemies;
Surely Thou dost lift me above those who rise up against me;
Thou dost rescue me from the violent man.
49 Therefore I will give thanks to Thee among the nations, O Lord,
And I will sing praises to Thy name.
50 He gives great deliverance to His king,
And shows lovingkindness to His anointed,
To David and his descendants forever.
David doesn’t use the common word for love in his opening line. He uses racham which is nowhere else used to express man’s emotions to God. It means compassion, mercy, or pity; which seems out of line from man to God. God uses it when He tells Moses “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.” From David to God it likely means, “From my heart do I love Thee.”
This is followed by a loving accumulation of divine names.
The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer,
My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge;
My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
3 I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised,
And I am saved from my enemies.
Each name revealing an experience in David’s life where God delivered him. They are what his Shepherd meant to him. He had called upon the God who possessed these names when they were difficult to believe in. But now, on the other side, he sings forth these names while he expertly strums his harp with the confidence and love that could only be felt by a man of God who had been delivered by God through much peril. Rock, fortress, deliverer, rock, refuge, shield, horn of my salvation, stronghold, Lord.
David thinks of his surrounded house. Fleeing from Nob where Saul had all the priests murdered. Fleeing to Gath where in great fear he feigned madness. Fleeing to Adullam, the rock fortress of caves. Fleeing to the hills of Judah and then to Engedi on the Jordan where daily Saul tracked him and sought his life. Fleeing to Philistia and Ziklag where he lived in relative peace until his temporary city was invaded and his people taken upon which he raced to successfully win them back. The whole time the Lord was his Rock, fortress, deliverer, refuge, shield, and stronghold.
Then David, in fierce imagery, describes God’s response to his many cries for help as an exile.
In my distress I called upon the Lord,
And cried to my God for help;
He heard my voice out of His temple,
And my cry for help before Him came into His ears.
7 Then the earth shook and quaked;
And the foundations of the mountains were trembling
And were shaken, because He was angry.
8 Smoke went up out of His nostrils,
And fire from His mouth devoured;
Coals were kindled by it.
9 He bowed the heavens also, and came down
With thick darkness under His feet.
10 And He rode upon a cherub and flew;
And He sped upon the wings of the wind.
11 He made darkness His hiding place,
His canopy around Him,
Darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies.
12 From the brightness before Him passed His thick clouds,
Hailstones and coals of fire.
13 The Lord also thundered in the heavens,
And the Most High uttered His voice,
Hailstones and coals of fire.
14 And He sent out His arrows, and scattered them,
And lightning flashes in abundance, and routed them.
15 Then the channels of water appeared,
And the foundations of the world were laid bare
At Thy rebuke, O Lord,
At the blast of the breath of Thy nostrils.
David was so many times sinking in black waters and all he could do was to cry out. And that is enough.
That one loud call for help rises like smoke straight into the palace temple of God where the cry for help entered the Lord’s ears.
It is not the prayer of one who doesn’t know God, but from one living in a conscious understanding of being in His presence. In a word it is faith in the knowledge of the one true God who has revealed Himself.
The knowledgeable know their own weakness in the face of their foe, but in faith they cry out to God who alone can deliver, and they wait in that faith.
In David’s case, he had to wait about ten years while in danger in the wilderness.
The cry is a poor, thin, solitary voice, unheard on earth, though shrill enough to rise to heaven; and in response, the answer shakes the heavens.
One man in his extremity can put in motion all the magnificence of God.
“The wonderful thing about praying is that your leave a world of not being able to do something, and enter God’s realm where everything is possible. He specializes in the impossible. Nothing is too great for His almighty power. Nothing is too small for His love.” [Corrie ten Boom]
Overwhelming is the contrast between the cause and effect. The artillery of heaven is released.
Then David proclaims the solemn truth that God appears to man what man is to God.
With the kind Thou dost show Thyself kind;
With the blameless Thou dost show Thyself blameless;
26 With the pure Thou dost show Thyself pure;
And with the crooked Thou dost show Thyself astute.
Crooked and astute are synonyms in Hebrew meaning twisted or crooked.
We need eyes to see. Our eyes are created to process light. If we are kind, blameless, and pure we will see more of these qualities in God. Of course, it is by His grace that we can be kind (through divine love), blameless (we are called by God to be so), and pure (we are made by the blood of Christ and the cleansing of His word). But if we are crooked, that’s what God will be to us in return. God gives grace to the humble and makes war with the arrogant.
The close of the song could not be in reference to Saul, since he did not fight Saul. It has to be a reference to the early years of his monarchy which was characterized by much successful military activity.
Now it came about when the king lived in his house, and the Lord had given him rest on every side from all his enemies,
He traces all his victories to God alone. And because of God’s faithfulness in giving him the weapons for victory, he looks forward to a future like the past, but more glorious still, thereby teaching us how the unchanging faithfulness of our God should encourage us to take all the blessings which we have received as but the earnest of what is yet to come. He concludes that his kingdom will extend far beyond the limits of Israel.
Thou hast delivered me from the contentions of the people;
Thou hast placed me as head of the nations;
A people whom I have not known serve me.
44 As soon as they hear, they obey me;
Foreigners submit to me.
45 Foreigners fade away,
And come trembling out of their fortresses.
Still he acknowledges that all his help is from God. He heaps God’s names together again.
The Lord lives, and blessed be my rock;
And exalted be the God of my salvation,
47 The God who executes vengeance for me,
And subdues peoples under me.
Lord, rock, God of my salvation, God who executes vengeance and subdues.
Even his title as king is attributed to God.
He delivers me from my enemies;
Surely Thou dost lift me above those who rise up against me;
Thou dost rescue me from the violent man.
49 Therefore I will give thanks to Thee among the nations, O Lord,
And I will sing praises to Thy name.
50 He gives great deliverance to His king,
And shows lovingkindness to His anointed,
To David and his descendants forever.
David receives a glimpse of an eternal throne to his descendants. David’s Son will sit on the throne forever, becoming Lord and King to Jews and Gentiles.
With prophetic eye he looks onward, and sees the throne to which he had been led by a series of miracles enduring forever, and the mercy of God sustaining the dominion of his house through all generations.
And what are the purposes for the future of a kingdom that God will perpetuate for all of eternity? We know that it will be David’s Son who will occupy the throne forever.
Psa 101 is a sort of manifesto for which David desired for his kingdom.
Psa 101
I will sing of lovingkindness and justice,
To Thee, O Lord, I will sing praises.
2 I will give heed to the blameless way.
When wilt Thou come to me?
I will walk within my house in the integrity of my heart.
3 I will set no worthless thing before my eyes;
I hate the work of those who fall away;
It shall not fasten its grip on me.
4 A perverse heart shall depart from me;
I will know no evil.
5 Whoever secretly slanders his neighbor, him I will destroy;
No one who has a haughty look and an arrogant heart will I endure.
6 My eyes shall be upon the faithful of the land, that they may dwell with me;
He who walks in a blameless way is the one who will minister to me.
7 He who practices deceit shall not dwell within my house;
He who speaks falsehood shall not maintain his position before me.
8 Every morning I will destroy all the wicked of the land,
So as to cut off from the city of the Lord all those who do iniquity.
Psa 101 is a sort of manifesto of the principles David intended should characterize his reign. But will David be able to create and maintain a kingdom like this?
As much as he desires it, as a man after God’s heart, he cannot do it. There is only One who can, the Son of David.
David will fail miserably. His kingdom will fracture in civil war, and that, by the rebellion of his own son Absalom. David will violate God’s law and take another man’s wife into the royal bed.
David will begin his reign with noble self-restraint, not meaning to make it a region of indulgence, but feeling that there is a law above his will, of which he is only the servant, and knowing that if his people and his public life are what they should be, his own personal domestic life must be pure.
We cannot harbor secret, impure lives and expect a pure ‘home’.
As for his court and his ministers, he will make a clean sweep of the vermin who swarm and sting, and buzz about the throne. The crooked, the wicked, privy slanderers, proud hearts, crafty plotters, liars, and evil-doers he will not suffer. He is fired with ambition, such as has brightened the beginning of many a reign which has darkened to cruelty and crime, to make his kingdom some faint image of God’s. He did not know how difficult it would be to keep himself and his rule consistently godly for many years. Little did he see of his own sore fall and would himself perform what he vowed to remove.
Three things that characterize the first seventeen years of David’s peaceful reign: Rescuing the Ark, Nathan’s prophecy, and his successful wars.
Rescuing the Ark: Psa 15, 24
Psa 15
A Psalm of David.
15 O Lord, who may abide in Thy tent?
Who may dwell on Thy holy hill?
2 He who walks with integrity, and works righteousness,
And speaks truth in his heart.
3 He does not slander with his tongue,
Nor does evil to his neighbor,
Nor takes up a reproach against his friend;
4 In whose eyes a reprobate is despised,
But who honors those who fear the Lord;
He swears to his own hurt, and does not change;
5 He does not put out his money at interest,
Nor does he take a bribe against the innocent.
He who does these things will never be shaken.
Psa 24
A Psalm of David.
24 The earth is the Lord's, and all it contains,
The world, and those who dwell in it.
2 For He has founded it upon the seas,
And established it upon the rivers.
3 Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord?
And who may stand in His holy place?
4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart,
Who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood,
And has not sworn deceitfully.
5 He shall receive a blessing from the Lord
And righteousness from the God of his salvation.
6 This is the generation of those who seek Him,
Who seek Thy face — even Jacob.
Selah.
7 Lift up your heads, O gates,
And be lifted up, O ancient doors,
That the King of glory may come in!
8 Who is the King of glory?
The Lord strong and mighty,
The Lord mighty in battle.
9 Lift up your heads, O gates,
And lift them up, O ancient doors,
That the King of glory may come in!
10 Who is this King of glory?
The Lord of hosts,
He is the King of glory.
Those who abide with God must be like God. This is the law of the new covenant as well as the old, but in the new it is a reality.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
What man can be pure in heart? None. All have gone astray. There is none righteous, not even one. So the climbing procession must stop. But righteousness and blessing come from Yavah. It is a gift from God to faith in Him. It is not a product of man’s toils. And so, the worshippers are those who seek Him in faith.
Then the second part of Psa 24 is for the procession going through the gates that Melchizedek once walked through. The King of glory is to go in and make His home in the newly conquered city. “Who is the King of glory?” is asked to which the crowd responds in loud unison.
How vividly the reluctance of an antagonistic world to yield to Israel and Israel’s King, is represented in the repetition of the question - “The Lord strong and mighty, The Lord mighty in battle. The Lord of hosts, He is the king of glory.”
The Jebusite fortress laughed at David’s approach.
Now the king and his men went to Jerusalem against the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land, and they said to David, "You shall not come in here, but the blind and lame shall turn you away"; thinking, "David cannot enter here." 7 Nevertheless, David captured the stronghold of Zion, that is the city of David. 8 And David said on that day, "Whoever would strike the Jebusites, let him reach the lame and the blind, who are hated by David's soul, through the water tunnel." Therefore they say, "The blind or the lame shall not come into the house." 9 So David lived in the stronghold, and called it the city of David. And David built all around from the Millo and inward. 10 And David became greater and greater, for the Lord God of hosts was with him.
When Moses sought passage through Edom, they said no. They were forced the long way around and running into two strong Amorite armies, defeated them through the power of God. Crossing the Jordan, Joshua facing and defeating 31 kings. The times of the judges saw God deliver Israel over and over. A selfish proud monarch in Saul brought defeat by the Philistines, but still God delivered through David, conquered God’s city, and placed His ark there on the hill of Zion. The world continues to fight the ways of God and it always loses.
Promise from Nathan, Psa 110.
The king is firmly established and free from war, and he remembered an ancient word.
When you cross the Jordan and live in the land which the Lord your God is giving you to inherit, and He gives you rest from all your enemies around you so that you live in security, 11 then it shall come about that the place in which the Lord your God shall choose for His name to dwell, there you shall bring all that I command you: your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the contribution of your hand, and all your choice votive offerings which you will vow to the Lord.
David desires to build a solid house, a house of cedar, for the Lord.
His own ease opens his heart to danger - the trap of repose and luxury. He regards his tranquility not as a season for selfish indolence, but as a call to new forms of service. He might well have found in the many troubles and vicissitudes of his past life an excuse for luxurious repose now. But devout souls will consecrate their leisure as their toil to God, and will serve Him with thankful offerings in peace whom they invoked with earnest cries in battle. Prosperity is harmless only when it is accepted as an opportunity for fresh forms of devotion, not as an occasion for idle self-indulgence.
Now it came about when the king lived in his house, and the Lord had given him rest on every side from all his enemies, 2 that the king said to Nathan the prophet, "See now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells within tent curtains."
However, David’s generous impulse was outrunning God’s commandment, and he was in danger of forgetting his entire dependence upon God, and fancying that God would be the better for him. So the prophet reminds him that the Lord had never, through all the centuries, asked for a house of cedar, and recalls the past life of David as having been wholly shaped and blessed by Him, while God pointedly inverts the proposal:
The Lord also declares to you that the Lord will make a house for you.
Then follows the prediction of a son of David who should build a house, whose kingdom should be perpetual, whose transgressions should be corrected indeed, but never punished like the unhappy Saul, and that the kingdom and his throne will be forever, 2SA 7:13.
The prophecy of the Messiah enters a new stage. He will be a King in the line of David and He will be a Priest according to the order of Melchizedek.
Now for the first time can the Messiah be set forth as the king of Israel; now the width of the promise which at first had embraced the seed of the woman, and then narrowed to the seed of Abraham, and thereafter to the tribe of Judah, is still further defined as to be fulfilled in the line of the house of David through successive Davidic monarchs.
David’s psalms often portray his own experience as prophetic precursors to the Messiah, his Son to come. Psa 22 is typical. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” “A band of evil-doers surround me.”
This type of prophetic experience in David has a marvelous application to us. And be sure to know that David is not acting out some script. He is unaware that what he is going through has been decreed by God to be like the Lord Messiah’s life to come. God so decreed, or made it, so that the life of king David would encounter experiences that would make David like his Son Jesus to come. God made it so that it would be recorded. God put a heart of poetry in David and then surrounded him with the right imagery to draw upon and preserved those words for us. There is a profound reason for this.
For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren; 30 and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.
We are to be like Christ. It is the whole point of Christianity. So, if we think to ourselves it is impossible, despite all the promises given to us that it is, and in fact foreknown to be true, we can also look back at David, a man after God’s heart, and see that he was like Christ, and he was that without the great assets that all born-again believers possess through the fulfillment of the new covenant in Christ’s blood. Yet David failed badly, we may say. But isn’t that a comfort, though not an approval of sin? We all fail, yet we can be like Christ through the grace and mercy of God, through faith in His word and strengthened with power through the Spirit in our inner man.
Besides the prophetic experiences of David there is the purely revelatory prophetic passages in his psalms that were never his experience or any son of his who wore the crown in Israel.
To this type we look to Psa 110.
The clearest instance of distinct prophecy is of the victorious dominion of the personal Messiah is in Psa 110. In Psa 110 David beholds a king whose attributes are not his own. It was “the Spirit of Christ that was in him,” which gives the substance, and transfigures the earthly monarch into a heavenly dominion. Jesus bears witness that it is of David.
Psa 110
A Psalm of David.
110 The Lord says to my Lord:
"Sit at My right hand,
Until I make Thine enemies a footstool for Thy feet."
2 The Lord will stretch forth Thy strong scepter from Zion, saying,
"Rule in the midst of Thine enemies."
3 Thy people will volunteer freely in the day of Thy power;
In holy array, from the womb of the dawn,
Thy youth are to Thee as the dew.
4 The Lord has sworn and will not change His mind,
"Thou art a priest forever
According to the order of Melchizedek."
5 The Lord is at Thy right hand;
He will shatter kings in the day of His wrath.
6 He will judge among the nations,
He will fill them with corpses,
He will shatter the chief men over a broad country.
7 He will drink from the brook by the wayside;
Therefore He will lift up His head.
“The Lord said to my Lord” is an oracle heard by David from heaven.
Vv. 1-2: In singular juxtaposition are the throne at God’s right hand and the sceptre - the emblem of sovereignty - issuing from Zion and universal in extent.
It is a monarch too, established in the midst of enemies, sustained in spite of antagonism not only by the power of Yavah, but by the activity of the sovereign’s own rule. Hence, the Sovereign has to be special. He has to be qualified for He is to rule.
And still the vision includes more, for the kingdom has to have subjects. They are shown in close union to the Ruler and how inseparable they are from His glories.
They are characterized in a three-fold manner.
Thy people will volunteer freely in the day of Thy power;
In holy array, from the womb of the dawn,
Thy youth are to Thee as the dew.
The subjects, vs. 3
They willingly offer.
They are dressed as priests and not warriors.
They are many, together strong, and refreshing the world.
They are not mercenaries, nor pressed men. They flock gladly to the standard, like the warriors celebrated of old in Deborah’s chant of victory, who “willingly offered themselves.”
It is a glad consecration and grateful self-surrender as the one bond which knits us to the Captain of our salvation who gave Himself for us, to the meek Monarch whose crown is of thorns and His scepter a reed: tokens that His dominion rests on suffering and is wielded in gentleness.
Holy array - “In the beauties of holiness.” a common name for the dress of the priests. They are clothed, not in mail and warlike attire, but in “fine linen clean and white,” like armies which a later prophet saw follow the Lord of lords.
And I saw heaven opened; and behold, a white horse, and He who sat upon it is called Faithful and True; and in righteousness He judges and wages war. 12 And His eyes are a flame of fire, and upon His head are many diadems; and He has a name written upon Him which no one knows except Himself. 13 And He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood; and His name is called The Word of God. 14 And the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following Him on white horses. 15 And from His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may smite the nations; and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty. 16 And on His robe and on His thigh He has a name written, "KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS."
The Lord is the only One who fights. Those following are soldiers who are priests, their weapons purity and devotion.
Around this image gather all ideas of discipline, courage, consecration to a cause, loyalty to a leader.
They are like the dew sparkling in infinite goblets on every blade of grass, handing gems on every bit of dead wood, formed in secret silence, reflecting the sunlight, and, though the single drops be small and feeble, yet together refreshing a thirsty world. So, formed by an unseen and mysterious power, one by one insignificant, but in the whole mighty, mirroring God and quickening and beautifying the worn world, the servants of the Priest-King are to be “in the midst of many people like the dew from the Lord.”
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