Dennis Tuuri

This time the children may be dismissed to go to Sabbath school. I think I mentioned last week that Psalms 20-24 form a unit as it were. I wanted to read a quote from a person quoted by Spurgeon. He’s the treasury of David referring to those psalms. This quote is from a man named Andrew Boner. Oh, I’m sorry. It is not. That’s the wrong quote. This is actually from R.H. Ryland out of the Psalms Restored to Messiah written in 1853.

And he says this, “There are traces of liturgical arrangement many of the psalms. There’s frequently an adaptation to the circumstances of public worship. Thus, when the Jewish church wished to celebrate the great act of Messiah, the high priest making a sacrifice for the people on the day of atonement, as represented in the 22nd Psalm, a subject so solemn, grand, and affecting, was not commenced suddenly and unpreparedly.

But first, a suitable occasion was sought, proper characters were introduced, and a scene in some degree appropriate to the great event was fitted for its reception. The priests and Levites endeavored to excite in the minds of the worshippers an exalted tone of reverential faith. The majesty and power of God, all the attributes which elevate the thoughts are called in to fill the souls of the worshippers with the most intense emotion.

And when the feelings are strung to the highest pitch, an awful astounding impression succeeds when the words are slowly chanted, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ It’s the first verse of Psalm 22. We are to suppose then that the series of Psalms from the 20th to the 24th inclusive was used as a service or office in the public worship of the Jewish church. And Spurgeon quotes that is of course, you know, it’s conjecture.

We don’t know that’s the case, but he says it’s probably less conjecture than many things many other things written about this particular section of Psalms. I think there’s some truth to that, but I think that the truth probably goes a little bit deeper than just a series of poetic devices leading up to Psalm 22.

In Psalm 20 and 21, I think what’s going on there is that the whole psalm speaks of the Messiah or the whole set of psalms Psalm 20-24. Psalm 20 remember last week we talked about prayer for the king going out to battle and it was a definite liturgical statement by the congregation, response by the king or his representative, and then statement by the congregation and that’s certainly true. That was, has first applications we understand it in the psalms to King David when he went out to battle. It also has messianic implications as well and we talked about that last week.

Psalm 21 is the answer to that in terms of petition to God on the part of the people for the king and we’ll talk about that today.

And then Psalm 22 makes it clear that although the Psalms have original reference to King David, yet it’s like we tried to point out here in several occasions, the scriptures, the Old Testament reveal the covenant keeper and everything that it talks about. It’s always crying out a revelation of God himself primarily, even behind the stories that we read about. And so Psalm 22 no longer lets us speculate on the possible messianic nature of Psalm 20 and 21, but rather confirms it by talking about the atonement of Jesus Christ and his death on the cross and that being of the real victory that Psalm 20 and 21 is talking about.

Psalm 22 is followed by Psalm 23 which most of us are familiar with and is a psalm of great rest and peace even in the face of enemies. And hopefully when we get to that it will produce that sort of security in the people that hear the talking on Psalm 23. And so Psalm 23 follows on the atonement, the finished victory of Christ clearly represented in Psalm 22, figured in Psalm 20 and 21.

Psalm 23 shows the relationship of that then to the peace and security we have. And so the series of Psalms is ended then in Psalm 24 which speak of the holy mountain again and the congregation that can go up to that holy mountain based upon Christ’s work. So there is a sense in which these psalms all fit together as of a piece and it’s good to keep that in mind as we go through them. Specifically this morning we’re going to talk about Psalm 21.

So I’ll begin by reading that psalm. The king shall joy in thy strength, O Lord, and in thy salvation. How greatly shall he rejoice. Thou hast given him his heart’s desire and hast not withheld the request of his lips. Selah, for thou preventest him with the blessings of goodness. Thou setest a crown of pure gold on his head. He asked life of thee, and thou gavest it to him in length of days forever and ever.

His glory is great in thy salvation. Honor and majesty hast thou laid upon him. For thou hast made him most blessed forever. Thou hast made him exceeding glad with thy countenance. For the king trusteth in the Lord, and through the mercy of the most high, he shall not be moved. Thine hand shall find out all thine enemies. Thy right hand shall find out those that hate thee. 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. Their fruit shalt thou destroy from the earth, and their seed from among the children of men, for they intended evil against thee. They imagined a mischievous device, which they are not able to perform. Therefore shalt thou make them turn their back. When thou shalt make ready thine arrows upon the strings against the face of them, be thou exalted, Lord, in thine own strength, so will we sing and praise thy power.

Let’s pray. Almighty and merciful Father, we thank you for calling us together to consider the words of this psalm. And we pray now that we would attend to them, that we’d speak right things that we know to be true from your scriptures. We hear those things in the power of the Holy Spirit to the end that we would worship you for them by giving praise and honor to you and singing praises to you the way that these people did and also by obeying you in everything that we do and say in Jesus Christ’s name. Amen.

I thought this week after I already given Howard a title for this psalm that maybe another title could have been the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat particularly after the end of the football season I suppose. But it is certainly true that this psalm divides itself into the thrill of victory and a rejoicing in the victory of Jesus Christ of the Messiah to come in and King David originally and then the messianic implications and then also however breaks into a discussion of the agony of defeat and God’s wrath against evildoers.

And that’s the way we’ll break it up this morning as well. Verses 1-7 talk about the thrill of victory or the rejoicing in the salvation victory. And then verses 8 through 12 speak about the implications of that victory for the enemies of God or the agony of defeat. And of course, these first few verses really they’re summed up in a victorious rejoicing in the victory that God has given his king David at this point in time in response to the intercession of the people, the request of the people and the king in Psalm 20.

So there’s a victorious rejoicing here in salvation. The word used in verse one in thy salvation how greatly shall he rejoice is the same word used for salvation in Psalm 20 5 and 9. We shall rejoice we will rejoice in thy salvation in verse five of the previous psalm and save Lord. Let the king hear us when we call save there. Those words and the connotation of the battle that we’re talking about don’t just speak to a plain deliverance in terms of salvation.

It rather speaks to a whole victory in terms of salvation. The root word is the same word we talked about last week, the root word meaning to be in open spaces as opposed to being in the tight spot if we found ourselves in the beginning of Psalm 20. Requirement for help coming from God. But it’s not just a release from hell. It’s total victory over the enemy in terms of the military setting that we find in Psalm 20 and 21.

And so many translations will translate the salvation their victory in verse one. Or they’ll put a footnote off saying or victory or they’ll say victory or salvation. And it’s important to recognize that tells us something very important about our salvation. Of course, it has that same connotation of victory in terms of battle. There’s a victory orientation throughout this set of psalms. And there’s a rejoicing for that victory that is called for again and again.

Verse two goes on then to move away from the rejoicing of the victory to talk about the reason for the rejoicing and the reason for the victory itself. And it talks about that in verse two that thou hast given him his heart’s desire hast not withheld the request of his lips. There’s an answer from God that came forth in response to the pleas of Psalm 20. And that’s the reason for the victory. It’s God’s answer and it’s God’s victory therefore that he’s given King David in this set of circumstances.

Now verse two now is in the past tense. Thou hast given him his heart’s desire. So we have a past tense of finished victory of God given to the king. How did the king get provide this or how did God provide this answer to the king? Well he says he goes on to say that thou preventest him with blessings of blessings with not withholding the request of his lips. He asked life of thee and thou gavest it to him.

The character of the victory we see here is a full one again. The word there, thou preventest him with the blessings of goodness. We don’t not familiar with that term much anymore. What that means is he sort of piled blessings upon blessings. Blessings of goodness added to the blessings that were already there. It doesn’t mean he kept him from getting something. He actually gave him many more blessings than he actually asked for.

And he sets a crown of pure gold on his head. There’s a demonstration here. The loving kindness of God that provides this sort of victory for the king. And that’s what one of the emphasis is the emphasis of God’s love shown toward the king. And remember, the king is the covenant head of the nation of Israel. At this point, the people when they asked the king to go forth victoriously into battle were asking not just for God’s blessing upon the king, but for all that he represented, his covenant people.

He was the king of Israel after all, going out representing them in battle. And we can think through the implications of that. We’ll talk more about that in Psalm 22. about the Messiah. He came as the new federal head for the new covenant people, the second Adam. He’s the covenant head of his covenant people. And so, it’s God’s faithfulness to him that provides his faithfulness to his covenant people as well.

David asked for life. He asked for deliverance here again. He asked that he might be killed. And what’s God’s response to that? Thou gavest him life and the length of days forever and ever. And we know that in David’s case, there are other verses, we’ll read them in a little while here, that talk about how David’s throne was established forever. So David has a life as it were beyond his own life in the in his throne being established forever and ever.

And of course we know that has messianic implications as well that it’s talking about the coming victory of Jesus Christ and his life is forever and ever from eternity. So it’s important again however recognize here that he has life. God gives him everlasting life. He asked for his throne to be kept on his head and not to be defeated in battle have victory over his enemies. And God does much more than that for him.

He gives him the blessing of an eternal throne and a long a throne established forever and ever. In Psalm 133, which we read sometimes during communion, and I think we probably will today, we read about this type of life as well. Psalm 133 talks about as the dew of Hermon and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion, there the Lord commanded the blessing even life forever more. more and the context is how blessed, how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.

So we hear there though that God also talks about that blessing like the precious ointment upon the beard or upon the head that ran down upon the beard even Aaron’s beard that blessing part of that blessing is that God commanded is even life forever more. The context the understanding then of life forever more or in Psalm 21 length of days forever and ever has its relationship back to a blessing of God in Deuteronomy 28, specifically verse 8, where God says, “If you act in obedience to these things, I’ll give you life forever more.” That’s repeated in Psalm 133, the Lord commands the blessing from Mount Zion where his presence is among his people.

And that blessing is life forever more. And so the blessings here in Psalm 21 besides being just in abundance to what God what the king had asked for also again have a covenantal implication, an implication back to the law of God. God would not have given David the desire of his heart had he not as in the words of the other verse we’ve been referring to frequently he if David had not delighted himself in God.

The scriptures teach us that if we delight ourselves in God will give us the desires of his heart. If we don’t delight he won’t do that. So we know that David here as the king delighted in God that means to conform himself to God’s will and as a result God granted him his heart’s desire. David acted in obedience in general obedience to the laws of God. through the power that God had given him. And as a result, God commanded the blessing for David, life forever more.

In verse 5, his glory is great in thy salvation. Honor and majesty hast thou laid upon him. And again, there we should right away recognize there’s messianic stuff going on here as well, talking about glory, honor, and majesty. Honor, and majesty in several places of the scriptures are referred to as characteristic belonging to God and God alone. And glory of course is the glory of God and God alone. So even though we know that David here is spoken of as having glory, honor and majesty but shed on him by God, the primary reference here is to an understanding of the person of God himself to come in the Messiah.

And again there we talked about how we see a revelation of God as a covenant keeper through the story that we’re reading about which is the King David. Glory, splendor, and majesty belong first and foremost to God. And to those people that act in obedience to his will, they share as it were in that glory, splendor, and majesty. Now, David recognized the great blessings that he’d received here, and he rejoiced in them greatly, and there’s certainly application to us as well.

There is more to a salvation in Jesus Christ. There’s more to being a covenant keeper before God and called into his covenant community than simply escape from the wrath of God. We looking for life the way that David was looking for life, salvation from death. And God gives him that, but God gives him more than that. He gives him life forever more, glory, splendor, and majesty. And the same thing is true of his covenant people.

He doesn’t just save us from the wrath of his, his wrath against sin. He gives us more than that. He gives us the blessings of salvation. He gives us life forever more and life that will proceed in the in the hereafter in communion with him and closer communion than we actually have now. So God gives us many more blessings than we asked for. The same way that he gave the king many more blessings. David understood these things.

And in 1 Chronicles 17:27, we read the following and the context of this that God is confirming to David that David will not but his son will build God’s temple or God’s house. And so that’s the context of what’s going on here. maybe I should read a few verses. I’ll start with verse 23. Therefore now, Lord, let the thing that thou has spoken concerning thy servant and concerning his house be established forever, and do as thou hast said.

Let it even be established that thy name may be magnified forever, saying, The Lord of hosts is the God of Israel, even a God to Israel, and let the house of David thy servant be established before thee. And see, that’s what we’re talking about, right? In terms of the life forever more, David’s throne is established before him. For thou, oh my God, hast told thy servant that thou shalt thou wilt build him an house.

Therefore, thy servant hath found in his heart to pray before thee. And now, Lord, thou art God, and hast promised his goodness unto thy servant. Now, therefore, let it please thee to bless the house of thy servant, that it may be before thee forever. For thou bless, O Lord, and it shall be blessed forever. David understood that the establishment of his throne, that his victory in battle, that his life before God, his physical life before God, and the establishment of his throne forever and ever came as a direct result of the blessing of God upon his covenant people and upon covenantal obedience.

David understood that. David remembered God and his victories. Many people have said in the past that it’s easy to pray to God when you’re in a when you’re in a tight spot and then when you get the victory you’ll tend to forget him. And that’s certainly true a very frequently. But the covenant keeper will understand that the victory comes forth from God. And he won’t forget God when the victory has been granted.

He’ll give thanks to God in prayer and in praise and singing before him for the victories that God has given him. And we should praise God, of course, in song for the salvation he’s wrought for us, but for the various victories and battles that we have as well. David didn’t forget that God was the source of his victory. And so gave forth this psalm, acknowledging God as the source of that victory in the establishment of his throne.

It’s important here I thought I think it’s important to just mention briefly again here that David is in this context a king. Now some Christians think that God had rejected the whole form of monarchy or kings and that and that it was bad to be a king and we shouldn’t have kings over us today. Well, it’s important to recognize that when the people of Israel asked for a king and we’ll talk a little bit more about that later also.

that God said that he had that the people of Israel had rejected him. He hadn’t rejected the judges that God had given them. He had reject they had rejected God as over God’s reign over them. If the king that comes forth from the land operates under God and understands that his kingship is subordinate to the kingship of God and now to be understood as the kingship of Jesus Christ the Messiah. That king is legitimate. But in his reign, more than legitimate, he is a servant of God.

And we tried to talk about that a little bit last week as well to pray for the authorities that they would recognize that they’re servants of God, get in covenantal relationship to him, and walk in obedience to his commands. As I was studying through this, I came across a passage in Isaiah 49:20. And I bring it up for two reasons. One is to again give us a picture of how God uses kings for his purposes.

And so that they’re divinely ordained as it were for good if they understand their reign as being under God. In Isaiah 49th chapter, we read the following verse 20. The children which thou shalt have after thou hast lost the other, shall say again in thine ears, the place is too straight for me. Give place for thee that I may dwell. Then shalt thou say in thine heart, who hath begotten me these, seeing I have lost my children?

and am desolate, a captive, and removing to and fro. And who hath brought up these? Behold, I was left alone. These, where had they been? Thus says the Lord God, Behold, I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people, and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders, and kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers.

They shall bow down to thee with their faces toward the earth and lick up the dust of thy feet and thou shalt know that I am the Lord for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me. What God is saying here through the words of Isaiah is that kings one of the purpose of kings is to nurture the church of God his church his covenant people he’s saying that kings and queens will be the supporters of his people will be their fathers and as nursing mothers to them that’s the obligation of the civil magistrate to be a nursing mother to the church to provide that peace and quiet that we talked about last week.

Not so that they can live in their houses quietly, but so that they can go forth into their community doing the work of the kingdom and making the kingdom manifest to those in the community who don’t understand that and bringing all peoples under subjection to Jesus Christ. The civil magistrate has that obligation. He has that duty. If we reject the civil magistrate, if we reject the king, for instance, in the time when they were monarchs, If we say that the king is in and of himself evil, we do away with one of the vehicles whereby God has promised to bless his people in these verses.

That’s one reason I bring this up. The second reason I bring this passage up is to repent because we used one of these verses in a liturgical device we used for several of our infant baptisms. We had blessings and cursings of childbearing and of children. And the verse in verse 20, the children which thou shalt have shall say the place is too straight for me. Give place that I may dwell. We use that as a curse.

We said that’s a curse of God of overpopulation in the land. But you know I think if you look at this passage there’s no doubt but what’s being spoken of here is not a curse but it’s an abundance of blessing. The cup is overflowing here is what’s happening. God is talking to a nation that is apostasized and as a result has become barren and cursed. from him desolate. But God now brings them back after they’re in repentance and brings them back to a position of blessing before him.

And he says, “You’re going to say when I bless you now, I’ve got so many kids.” The kids are going to say, “It’s too crowded in here for me.” But see, that’s not a bad thing. That’s a sign of blessing. Those children then would go forth from that land to conquer other lands and to go forth and live out the gospel, to live out the covenantal relationship they have with God in other lands. You understand what I’m saying there?

This is a sign of God’s blessing, not as God’s cursing. And that again shows the danger of using isolated verses in isolation from their context. And I’m sorry and I and I have sought forgiveness from God for using what he has described as a blessing in the context of these verses as a curse. So understand that when we make reference to Isaiah 49:20, recognize the whole passage speaks as that. And just as we talked about in terms of David, he asked for physical deliverance.

God gives him a throne established forever. Here we have somebody made desperate by the curse of God. They want an inheritance, of course, after God blesses them and he gives them so many kids. It’s crowded. It’s overpopulated. They’re going to have to move out to other lands. But it’s blessing from God being talked about. And we know that’s true because in verse 23, it says, “These kings will bring forth all these children out of the other lands.” So, bring them forth and then you will know that I am the Lord.

They shall not be ashamed that wait for me. The person that has these crowded kids in the land are those that wait for God. And his blessings. So we likewise on the basis of these first seven verses should rejoice in our salvation. But we should rejoice in a salvation that isn’t just a deliverance from the wrath of God or fire insurance or escape from hell. We should rejoice the way that David rejoiced in the finished victory that was given to him and the recognition that victory be continued to work out in his life in the life of the covenant people.

We should rejoice the same way. There’s great cause for rejoicing in a salvation that is full-orbed that applies to everything that we do and say and not just what we do on Sundays. That’s the sort of salvation David gave joy rejoiced in. And that’s the sort of salvation we should rejoice in. We should pray on the basis of these verses also and expect that victory in Jesus Christ. We know that these verses spoke primarily of him and his coming victory.

We should expect that victory. We should thank God for the victories that he gives us. After we ask him for specific help in specific cases, we should remember that the victory comes forth from God the way that David remembered it. And finally, as I said, we should have a fuller understanding of the ramifications of salvation. When we think of salvation, we should remember that the word of God uses a word that has the connotations of victory to it.

In these contexts, we’re going to read these verses and rejoice in our salvation. We have to be thinking in terms of a salvation that has the implications of victory, not of a salvation that has the implications of defeat.

But there’s another side to this. There’s another side to this victory. There’s a ramification for this victory to other people as well. The agony of defeat as it were. We know that the word of God, David experiences the blessings here of Deuteronomy 28, life forever more and a throne established forever.

But we know the other side of blessings are curses. And so it is that the balance of the psalm except for the last verse speaks of some of those curses of God upon unbelievers or upon those who devise and plan against God’s people. It’s interesting in this context that the But I read out of 1 Chronicles 17 where David is talking about that God has established his throne and will establish his throne and he’s rejoicing before God in that giving thanks to them that is immediately followed in chapter 18.

Now after this came to pass that David smote the Philistines and subdued them. And it goes on to talk about battles and it goes on to talk about the wrath of God that came forth from David’s hand against the pagans in the land who were troubling God’s people. So the other side of this is agony of defeat, the curses of God against covenant breakers. Now, I think there’s ample there is evidence in Psalm 21 to draw a correlation between Psalm 21 and two passages of scripture that talk about David’s defeat of the Ammonites.

Before I get into that, however, I want to talk a little bit about the Ammonites and give you some reasons and some background to what I’m going to say because at first when I’m going to say it, it might sound it may be difficult to hear what I’m going to say. The Ammonites in Genesis 19:38, we’re told the source of the Ammonites. The source of the Ammonites was in Lot’s younger daughter. Remember when Lot escaped from Sodom and Gomorrah, he had two daughters and the younger daughter makes her father drunk, sleeps with him, has a child, names the child Ben Ammi, who was father of the Ammonites.

So, the Ammonites come forth from an incestuous relationship uh with Lot of Lot with his daughters and that’s their responsibility. Of course, Lot was drunk. I don’t think we can so that he was accountable in the act. In any event, it’s also important to recognize that the other his oldest daughter who laid with him and had a child, that child became the father of the Moabites. So when you read in scripture about the Moabites and the Ammonites, it has a relationship back to Lot to his two daughters who had escaped the wrath of God against Sodom and Gomorrah.

But as James B. Jordan calls it, there’s a physical extension or a spiritual extension seen in the Moabites and the Ammonites back to Sodom and Gomorrah. Because here his daughters were doing things they had probably experienced or knew about from Sodom and Gomorrah. So God had rescued righteous Lot here. Scriptures tell us that he was and yet his two daughters continue the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah. There is specific evidence of that correlation of the curses of God against the Moabites and the prophets that compare the Moabites and the Ammonites to Sodom and to Gomorrah respectively.

So that’s not just based upon Genesis 19:38. It’s important to recognize that the Ammonites are seen as an extension of Sodom and Gomorrah, the land. Now, God the god of the Ammonites was Milcom or Molech and alternate verses describe the god as either being Molech or Milcom and Milcom there is the word that becomes translated as king Malcolm which leads to the English word king. So what the Ammonites their side of this incestuous relationship became people who worshiped the state who worshiped the king worship is what they were into.

Now we know that’s true not just in the name of their god we talked before about how the people rejected God as king over them and asked for a king. They wanted a king. And it said in 1 Samuel 12:12 that the reasons for that was that Nahash, the king of the Ammonites, had come up against them and done bad things to him. They said, “We need a king like these other nations around us.” They’re being infected by the same sort of king worship that was going on in the Ammonites.

They picked it up from the Ammonites. Okay? They picked it up from this extension of Sodom and Gomorrah into the covenant land. That’s important to remember that their king is not the god of scripture. Their god rather is not the god of scripture, but they’re involved in king worship or state worship. In the book of Judges, the ammonites are perpetual pain in the neck to Israel. The Eglon the king that Ehud ended up killing, very wicked king.

God used him to bring judgment upon the nation of Israel, used the Ammonites as part of his tool to come forth and to and to you know wreak havoc upon the Israelites. Jephthah the script in the book of Judges there’s a story of Jephthah and he’s the one that gave his daughter as a vow before God as a whole burnt sacrifice. It’s important to mention there’s very good evidence that the daughter was not killed.

The daughter actually became a servant at the house of God. and that’s another story but anyway what Jephthah was doing is he was battling the Ammonites at that time. The Ammonites were being very cruel and trying to drive out totally the Israel from their land and conquer them totally. The Ammonites are wicked people here, okay? They’re extension of Sodom and Gomorrah. They’re doing bad things against the people of God.

David, of course, had many battles with the Ammonites. We’ll talk about one of them in a minute. Nehemiah, the book of Nehemiah, when the people come back and Nehemiah’s rebuilding the city, you remember Sanballat and Tobiah being one of the two big enemies against him. Well, Tobiah is an Ammonite. The Ammonites are seen as making fun of the people of God, trying to tear down the work of the rebuilding, the reconstruction that was going on.

There was a conspiracy formed between Sanballat and Tobiah the Ammonite with other Ammonites, Arabs and Ashdites. So again, the Ammonites are involved in trying to break down the reconstruction of the covenant people in the book of Nehemiah. And specifically, Nehemiah prohibited one of the specific people he prohibited the people, the covenant people from marrying into were Ammonites. It’s a terrible thing because the people were marrying Ammonites and he said that’s no good.

Ammonites, the enemies of God. Book of Ezekiel, Ezekiel 25:1-5 talks about how the Ammonites mocked God’s people and God as the result finally says that he will utterly destroy the Ammonites off the face of the earth. He says they’re their wrath against them will be total. The book of Amos chapter one, verses 13-15 talks about how the Ammonites did some terrible things to enlarge their borders to encroach in Israel’s face again like they were doing in the time of Jephthah during some of those raids.

Apparently we don’t know what the historical setting necessarily was. They ripped open pregnant women of Gilead to enlarge their borders. Vile, disgusting things that they would do to try to conquer the covenant people. They are very bad folks, the Ammonites. In the book of Zephaniah, I’m going to read one prophecy relating to them. Zephaniah 2:8-11. I have heard the reproach of Moab and the revilings of the children of Ammon, the Ammonites, whereby they have reproached my people and magnified themselves against their border.

Therefore, as I live, sayith the Lord of host, the God of Israel, surely Moab shall be as Sodom, the children of Ammon, as Gomorrah. Okay, you see that extension there? Even the breeding of nettles and salt pits and a perpetual desolation. The residue of my people shall spoil them, and the revenue of my people shall possess them. This shall they have for their pride, because they have reproached and magnified themselves against the people of the Lord of hosts.

The Lord will be terrible unto them. He will famish all the gods of the earth, and men shall worship him, everyone from his place, even on the isles of the heathen. God’s wrath against the Ammonites talked about in terms of utter destruction in terms of Sodom and Gomorrah. Now, in 1 Chronicles 19, I talked about in 1 Chronicles 17, we read earlier. 1 Chronicles 18 talks about David going out against the Philistines.

1 Chronicles 19 Another battle is talked about. David in true evangelical or gospel fashion when the king of the Ammonites dies and his children reign and there his son reigns in thestead. David said, “I’ll show kindness unto Hanun the king of the son of Nahash because his father showed kindness to me.” It’s a whole another historical set of events we don’t want to get into. It’ll take some time. Anyway, D the point is David’s going to show kindness to the Ammonites.

Now, that also you can think of at in terms of ush showing kindness to the pagans around them per chance they would repent of their doings and become covenant keepers and I think that was David’s intent here but in any event he sends these guys out to the Ammonites to show kindness about the death of Nahash and the children of the of the of the of Nahash and the Ammonite leader at the time they don’t believe it and they say this guy’s just trying to give us trouble so they take the messengers that David has sent as emissaries of peace they cut off their garments even up to the waist it says They embarrassed them.

They shaved them fully, sent them back, ridiculed them, made fun of them. But David tells the men to go back to Jericho and stay there till their beard grows out. Then they can go forth into battle again. Okay. After that, David then isn’t going to take this, of course, and he realizes that things are not well, and he has to move out against the Ammonites in battle. And he does that. The Ammonites hire the Syrians.

They hire the Syrians, and the Syrians have All kinds of chariots. Let’s see if I can find out how many chariots they had. Children of Adam Ammon sent a thousand talents of silver to hire them chariots and horsemen out of Mesopotamia and of Syria. Okay. They hired 32,000 chariots. And the king of Me and his people who came and pitched before Mediva. 32,000 chariots. That’s a lot of chariots. Remember we talked last week about chariots.

And 35 chariots was a lot in a particular battle. We could swing the battle. Well, 32,000 is a lot of chariots. Now, remember Psalm 20 talks about chariots, doesn’t it? Some people trust in chariots and horses. It’s obvious the children, the children of Ammon here, the Ammonites were trusting in chariots and horses. Okay. Well, Joab, David sends Joab out, his mighty men out against them, and they route the Syrians, and they put the Syrians to the sword and kill a bunch of them, and that’s the end of the Syrians.

Now, the children of Ammon are all alone. and he sends Joab against the Ammonites and God’s people in the form of the army marching forth under David’s command and specifically under Joab goes forth against the Ammonites and strike them and everything and it’s about it’s as it’s becoming evident that the victory is almost finished. The Ammonites are going to be wiped out here. Joab sends a word back to David to come out because he says the king should get the the what am I trying to say?

What was it? Well, he should get the glory, I guess, the honor, right?, of the battle. Okay. So, David comes out. Why am I going through all this? Well, I’ll tell you why I’m going through all this. Because what David does to these people, let’s see. So, David comes out when the battle is almost over and he goes out against the Moabites. Okay. And now David when he goes out against the Moabites, he breaks his vengeance against him.

He kills them. And it says that David took the crown of their king from off the head and found it to weigh a talent of gold. gold, and there were precious stones in it, and it was set upon kings David’s head. And he brought also exceeding much spoil out of the city, and he brought out of the people that were in it, and cut them with saws, with harrows of iron, and with axes. And in a parallel commentary on these verses, we also read that David caused the children of Ammon that he captured after he’d been given the crown, he caused them to go through the brick kilns, through fiery ovens.

Now, why am I bringing all this up? Well, in Psalm 21, we’re talking about the wrath of God, the other side of the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, and recognize that as we go through Psalm 21, there are various things in this psalm that point to an Ammonite defeat in this psalm. Now, I’m not going to say definitively that’s what this psalm is talking about is that specific battle. Okay? I don’t want to say that.

But I do say that this psalm is applicable to that specific battle. You had people who had devised a thing against God’s people, a thing that they could not perform. They were not up to it because the people they had grown up against had God on their side. You had chariots talked about in Psalm 20. We know that the Ammonites hired 32,000 chariots from the Syrians to fight for them, trusting in them. We know that David went out against them, trusting instead in God.

In verse three, one of the blessings that’s talked about in this song, the thrill of victory, thou setest a crown of pure gold on his head. Now, it’s important to recognize what word is being used there for crown. And the word being used there for crown is an encircling thing. Now, there’s a crown that Saul wore into battle when he was king. And the word used there for crown for crown in that context is the same one the high priest wore that was a solid gold plate wrapped to the head with blue ribbons and it said holy to the Lord on it.

It’s a plate. It’s not a crown like we think of. So, when Saul went out and then when Joash the infant the 8-year-old king was crowned king. He was crowned with that same crown, this plate. There’s evidence to believe that the kings of the nation of Israel wore this crown in terms of this solid gold plate that said consecrated the Lord. That’s not what’s being talked about here, though. What’s being talked about here is a round crown.

And there’s implications of that of military victory or military engagement. You would encircle a group of people when you’re going to besiege them. Similarly, when you’re under attack, you’d circle like you circle the wagons. Same things true. The crown speaks to defensive and offensive victory. In other words, this crown that David talks about is the same word for crown that’s used in the account we just read of David’s defeat over the Ammonites when he takes the crown of the Ammonites, puts it on his head, this heavy crown weighs a talent with precious stones in it.

That’s the only crown that we know of in the in the military battles of David where that you that term is used is in this battle with the Ammonites. There’s reason to believe that the crown that’s being spoken of here is that crown of the Ammonites that he put on his head. Now, some commentators, I’ve got to tell you, don’t believe that. They say David was terrible. He shouldn’t have taken that crown. It was a pagan crown.

He should have just got rid of it. He never should have done those mean things to those to those Ammonites. Because it says here in this psalm that God’s hand will be against his enemy. He shall make them as a fiery oven in the time of thine anger. As a fiery oven. Now, that’s the wrath of God against sin. And I think that there is reason to believe that when David caused the children of the sons of Ammon, the Ammonites, the physical extension of Sodom and Gomorrah that would rip open pregnant women to enlarge their borders.

When he caused those people to go through the kilns, he was doing so as a demonstration of God’s wrath against pagans. Now, if that now that’s hard, kind of hard to think through, but you know, we talk all the time about heaven and hell, and we talk about hell as being a place of eternal fire. and of continual pain where the worm doesn’t where the worm isn’t quenched. And if we draw back at an application of that God chooses to make in terms of Sodom and Gomorrah or in terms of the victory of David over the sons of Ammon, then we have to rethink what we’re talking about in terms of hell, don’t we?

This should help us define what the wrath of God is, its realness. Its importance, therefore, to go out and turn people to offer them the kindness that David offered the Ammonites, that they for chance would repent. and not face that wrath of God. I think David was perfectly legitimate in taking that crown from the Ammonites because you know that’s what Jesus Christ does. It says in the scriptures that Christ is crowned with many crowns.

What are all these crowns? They’re the crowns of dominion from all the kings of the earth who seek to rule apart from Jesus Christ. Those are his crowns that the king is to wear. This was Christ’s crown that David wore. The one to the thing of the front holy to the Lord. That was Christ crown that was given to the high priest to wear it in as representative of Jesus Christ of the Messiah to come. And the crown of victory, the round crown that’s talked about here as a definite blessing from God is the crown of Christ.

It belongs to him and the dominion belongs to him. And what the crown symbolizes belongs to him as well. In verse 10 of this psalm, it says, “Their fruit shall thou destroy the earth, their seed from among the children of men.” And what we read about here is a continual victory in the future. future over those enemies of God. And that’s just what God had prophesied about the Ammonites and as well as other enemies of course as well, but the Ammonites particularly we’re talking about here.

God said that he’ll completely wipe them out eventually. And it took many years to do that. not as if God couldn’t do it today, but he chose to do it through historical process. In the same way, this psalm talks about victory of the Messiah to come. But it means that there’s a perpetual working out of that victory over the enemies that come against him. The Pharisees are no longer here. They were judged by God.

The city of Jerusalem burned in AD 70. The wrath of God came upon it. But there’s there’s spiritual lineage from those people, you know, that are still in the land today. And those people God will drive out through a gradual historical process the same way he did the Ammonites. There are no Ammonites today. There are Arabs and there are other people that have lineage backed that way, but there are no Ammonites because God’s wrath is upon them.

Long-term victory. It’s important to point out there, however, that we’re not talking about physical lineage necessarily. One of David’s greatest fighting men was an Ammonite. David tried to show blessing to the Ammonites. And when God had his promised people or his people go to the promised land, he told them specifically, “Avoid the land of the Ammonites and the Moabites.” I’m giving that to them because they’re sons of Lot.

Okay? God shows grace to those Ammonites that will repent of their ways and turn and become covenant keepers. And one of David’s greatest fighting men was an Ammonite, and he wasn’t destroyed. We’re not talking about physical lineage, but spiritual lineage. And there’s something else important to mention here in terms of the fire of God’s wrath. Matthew 13:42, of course, talks about the day of God’s wrath be as a fiery furnace.

That it taught a description of hell as being continual perpetual consuming fire. That’s what the word of God teaches. Talking about covenanted people, of course. But you know, there’s other verses in the scriptures that talk about that fiery furnace as well. in Matthew 15. I’ll bet you that’s John 15.