Dennis Tuuri

We’ve been speaking for the last few weeks on a series of psalms—Psalm 20, 21, 22—and we’ll continue in 23 and 24 over the next few weeks. Those psalms are, I believe, a unit of psalms and teach a central message. Psalm 20 and 21, which are obviously connected: Remember, Psalm 20 is the request on the part of the congregation for the king because he goes forth into battle. And then Psalm 21 is the results of that request—the deliverance of the people typified in the king, the victory given the king, and the wrath against the enemies of the king.

Psalm 20 and 21. And then 22 reiterates all that and makes it clear that those psalms are messianic in primary intent. So we’re going to continue today with Psalm 22. Last week we talked about the first half of Psalm 22. And in a way you can see the first half of Psalm 22, verses 1-21, as being more typical of Psalm 20. And then the last half of Psalm 22 as being more typical of Psalm 21—the response of God to the requests for deliverance and salvation.

So we’ll deal with the second half of Psalm 22 today. Let’s begin by reading Psalm 22, verses 22-31.

“I will declare thy name unto my brethren. In the midst of the congregation will I praise thee. Ye that fear the Lord, praise him, and ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel. For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, neither hath he hid his face from him. But when he cried unto him, he heard. My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation. I will pay my vows before them that fear him. The meek shall eat and be satisfied. They shall praise the Lord that seek him. Your heart shall live forever. All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee. For the kingdom is the Lord’s, and he is the governor among the nations.

All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship. All they that go down to the dust shall bow before him, and none can keep alive his own soul. A seed shall serve him. It shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. They shall come and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this.”

Let’s pray. Almighty God, we thank you for giving us these scriptures. And we pray now that you give us minds to understand what’s in this particular portion of scripture, a heart to accept it, and hence to act in obedience to it. We thank you, Father, for the great gift of the scriptures, but more than that, for the great gift of salvation in Jesus Christ and the giving of the Holy Spirit, who is our true teacher. We thank you, Father, for yourself. We pray now that we would glorify you in the next few minutes as we discuss this psalm. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Last week when we were talking about the atonement, we talked and read from Romans 1, verses 15-18. I just want to read that again briefly.

“So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth—to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the just shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness.”

And we spoke last week about how the atonement had two elements to it. The wrath of God is revealed in the vicarious taking upon himself the sins of the world of Jesus Christ—the sins of the elect, that is—upon himself on the cross. The wrath of God against the sin bearer, Jesus Christ, who takes the wrath of God for us in our place. And the righteousness of God is revealed in that.

For we know the purpose of all that was that we might have atonement, reconciliation with God, through the expiation of sins made by Christ, the taking of the wrath of God upon him, and also by him giving his righteousness to us in terms of justifying us, imputed to our account. But the scriptures we just read that talk about that dual nature—the revelation of the righteousness of God, the revelation of God’s wrath—also makes a point that the gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation.

And we talked about that a little bit last week and you’ve heard me talk about that several times—that the word there for power is the Greek word dynamis, which is the root word for our word dynamite. It’s the power of God, the dynamite of God, the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. If we were to stop at Psalm 22—which, unfortunately, is where all too many preachers stop in terms of an understanding of the gospel of Christ—then we’d only see the wrath of God made manifest, the righteousness of God made manifest in the salvation of the people that he has chosen.

However, the last half of this psalm tells us much more has been accomplished by the work of Jesus Christ on the cross besides individual salvation, reconciliation, or atonement with God. It is the basis of a far greater victory than that.

I’ve used the construction of Psalm 20, 21, and 22 being of a piece, and I’m going to continue to use that today. So I’m going to outline these last ten verses of Psalm 22 according to some verses in Psalm 21. In Psalm 21—you remember Psalm 20 was the request for deliverance, Psalm 21 is the answer to the request. The first four verses of Psalm 21 read thus:

“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 witholden 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, even length of days forever and ever.”

Verses 1 and 2 in that answer of God to the request on the part of the congregation for the king correlate to verses 22-25 of Psalm 22. That’ll be the first section of the response to the request for deliverance in terms of rejoicing before salvation. Verse 3 of Psalm 21 correlates to verses 26-29 of Psalm 22. And verse 4 of Psalm 21—”He asked life of thee, and thou gavest it to him, even length of days forever and ever”—correlates to verses 30 and 31 of Psalm 22.

And that’s the form we’ll use as we go through the second half of Psalm 22. First of all, Psalm 21, verses 1 and 2, say:

“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 witholden the request of his lips. Selah.”

This correlates to Psalm 22, verses 22-25, which I’ll now read:

“I will declare thy name unto my brethren. In the midst of the congregation will I praise thee. Ye that fear the Lord, praise him, and ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel. For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, neither hath he hid his face from him. But when he cried unto him, he heard. My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation. I will pay my vows before them that fear thee.”

And so you see, these first four verses of the section we’re dealing with today are a unit. They start with the declaration in the midst of the congregation of the brethren. They end in verse 25 with the praise and the paying of vows before them that fear him. And in the middle, it talks about the reason for that praise of God—being the deliverance effected. That’s talked about in verse 24. And verse 23 talks again about the identification of the congregation in the midst of which the Messiah is praising God.

Remember that in Psalm 20 and 21, in that answer that we’re correlating to these verses, the king is rejoicing in the salvation of God. The king was prayed for by the congregation in Psalm 20 because he was the representative of the congregation of Israel. He was Israel incarnate, as it were. He went forth into battle, and if the king died, the light of Israel went out. And we talked about some verses in the life of David where David was almost killed at one point and they said, “You go on back. We don’t want the light of Israel extinguished.”

The king symbolized covenantally the whole covenant people. And so the king, as he praises God, praises him individually, but he also praises him in the midst of the congregation. It is, as it were, the congregation that’s praising God. And so the deliverance given the king isn’t just deliverance given to the king. It’s deliverance given to the congregation of Israel as well.

And so we have a correlation in the verses in Psalm 22 that speak explicitly of the Messiah to come—Jesus Christ—of a declaration of his salvation. Jesus Christ is also to be seen as the salvation of the covenant people, salvation of Israel. Jesus Christ is that same covenantal headship as the king depicted in the life of the nation Israel.

We know that these verses refer primarily to Jesus Christ because verse 22, “I will declare thy name unto my brethren in the midst of the congregation while I praise thee,” is quoted by the writer of Hebrews in chapter 2:12 as pertaining first and foremost to Jesus Christ. He said that Jesus Christ, correlating it to the passage that Roy read, took away the power of death and by so doing then comes back to the congregation, declares God’s name, Jehovah’s name, unto them.

So we know that Jesus Christ is the true seed talked about here. He’s the true deliverer and the one delivered. He is, in Galatians 3:16, through the headship of Jesus Christ, the covenant keeping of Jesus Christ, the true seed of Abraham and of Israel and the true Israel of God. Jesus Christ, of course, is not just the covenant keeper. He is the means by which the covenant is kept as well. He is both the well—we’ll get to that in a minute, I suppose—but look at the response of Jesus Christ here in verse 25:

“My praise shall be in thee in the great congregation. I will pay my vows before them that fear him.”

The same thing in verse 23: we have the adjectives that describe those who are the seed—those that fear God. There’s a correlation. There’s a construction here where it talks about the seed of Israel being those that fear him. These are not separate groups talked of in verse 23:

“Ye that fear the Lord, praise him, all you the seed of Jacob.”

So the seed is, first and foremost, talking about Jesus Christ. And beyond that, it talks about the covenant community who are characterized by a reverential fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom, after all—a glorifying of God in everything that we do and a praising of God in the congregation.

Jesus Christ meets those criteria perfectly in these verses. And we, as his covenant people, demonstrate our inclusion in the covenant headship of Jesus Christ to the extent that we understand these things, that we fear God and so have understanding of his ways, that we worship him, and that we praise him in the congregation.

So verses 22-25 talk about the deliverance of the true seed—the true Israel. The response of that deliverance being praise, fearing of God, and also magnifying his name and glorifying him. The same way that verses 1 and 2 of Psalm 21 spoke about the king joying in the strength of God and his salvation. So we see this typified in Jesus Christ, the Messiah, in verses 22-25.

The next section of scripture, verses 26-29 of Psalm 22, correlates to Psalm 21:3, which says:

“For thou preventest him with the blessings of goodness. Thou setest a crown of pure gold on his head.”

And “thou preventest him with the blessings of goodness”—we talked about that a couple of weeks ago as we talked through this psalm. What it means there is “thou givest him blessings upon blessings.” There’s blessings of goodness given to him and then also a crown of pure gold. And the construction there is better read as: when thou meetest him, when God comes forth to meet the conquering king and gives him, and offers him, blessings—blessings of blessings.

And if you look at the translation of this, it brings to mind images of Melchizedek. When Abraham, who is after all typological of Christ as well (the Messiah to come), had defeated the enemies who were in the land and had come back from the defeat of the five kings (you know, the battle between the five kings and the four kings), then Melchizedek met him and gave Abraham wine and bread. He gave him true food and true drink, communion, as it were.

Well, we see here that Jesus Christ is not only the true seed of Israel, the true nation of Israel, but he himself is both the receiver and the offerer of these blessings of God. He is the blessing. He is the true food and true drink, as it were. But he’s also the one who receives that blessing, first and foremost, for the covenant people. He is both the high priest—Romans or Hebrews clearly tells us that—and yet he’s also the sacrifice that the high priest applies to the mercy seat. He himself is the high priest and also the sacrifice. He is the offering of God and he also is the one who receives that offering.

Well, correlating to that, in verses 26-29, we see the same thing:

“The meek shall eat and be satisfied. They shall praise the Lord that seek him. Your heart shall live forever.”

Verse 26. Then in verse 29:

“All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship. All they that go down to the dust shall bow before him, and none can keep alive his own soul.”

The meek will eat and be satisfied. And then later in the verse, the fat and those who go down to the dust of death will eat and worship him. And so we see there again—typologically—Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was the savior to come who was meek. And unless we get images in our mind that aren’t correct to that, I’d remind those of you who listen to the Beatitudes tapes by Reverend Rushdoony that his definition of the word meek—which we use this with our children a lot—is “a horse broken to harness.”

That’s the connotation of the word. You know, the Greek word used in the Beatitudes in Matthew: a horse who has been tamed, as it were, so that he can be directed through the bit, through the guiding of the Holy Spirit. That’s the kind of people we’re to be. We’re not supposed to be beaten down and doormats. We’re supposed to be tamed, to be used for God’s purposes. The horse who has been properly tamed still has strength and still has spirit, but that spirit is under the control of the rider. We’re to be the same. We are to be the meek of God, tamed for his purposes.

And we see that in verse 26:

“Really, the meek shall eat and be satisfied. They shall praise the Lord that seek him.”

Okay? So the meek are characterized as those that seek him. In verses 25, 26, 27, you have parallel construction. And what that means is it’s not talking about two different groups of people in those three verses. It’s using different terms for the same group.

In verse 25, we talked about the great congregation and those that fear him. That is the true congregation of God, those that fear him. Verse 26: the meek are those that seek him, that do his will, seek him to do his will. And in verse 27: all the ends of the world are synonymous with the kindreds of the nations. Those are parallel constructions. So we know that the meek here are those that seek God. That’s important to understand.

Now, of course, the meek first and foremost was Jesus Christ. He sought God. He came as the savior, meek and mild, as it were. And he came to do God’s will. Well, similarly, in verse 29, we see the other people that receive this communion feast, as it were, of salvation are the fat and those that go down to the dust of death.

The fat refer to the prosperous in scripture. And if you read the little insert in the bulletin last week, you know that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Too much fat is a bad thing. All things in moderation. But anyway, the fat here has this specific connotation of those who are prosperous in the earth. And so they’re not being talked about in terms of being satisfied, although that is true too—because, after all, it’s Jesus Christ’s true food and drink, his blood and his body, applied to the believer that satisfies us eternally. But the fact here is that they will worship God.

The word there means to bow down before him, to get down on your face before him. And those that go down to the dust shall bow before him. Those that go down to the dust—we saw that expression in Jesus Christ, that he was brought to the dust of death in the first half of Psalm 22, on the cross. And that has reference to death. Those who cannot even survive on their own here. Those who are not only not prosperous, but who are extremely poor and destitute and, as it were, at death’s door.

And that’s also the reference of the last half of the verse: “None can keep his soul alive.” That has reference to those same people. It really means those that really can’t even keep themselves alive.

So on one hand, the fat—the prosperous—and on the other hand, those who can’t keep themselves alive, the poor, the destitute, the emaciated. Both those people also will be at this great communion feast with God, rejoicing in his salvation, receiving those blessings that the king spoke of in Psalm 21.

But again, even there, we see that Jesus Christ is the covenant head of those people. He, after all, is brought to the dust of death and yet, having been delivered by God, he became prosperous. The scriptures said that all the world is Christ’s inheritance. That’s true prosperity. So Jesus Christ is both the fat and Jesus Christ is the one who is at the dust of death, taking upon himself the death of the sinner on the cross.

So these things speak, first and foremost, about Jesus Christ and his reception of communion with God and salvation. And then, of course, the covenant relationship to his people. We should be meek. We should be trained, as it were, to obey God, to seek him. We should be broken to harness under the harness of the scriptures and the Spirit of God. We should understand that, though we may seem to be weak and not able to keep ourselves alive, yet because of the blessings of Jesus Christ, he has given us true prosperity, and that prosperity will continue.

So these various groups also speak, first and foremost, about Jesus, but then also about the covenant community. It’s important there to understand.

And too, just before we leave that passage of scripture: the idea of worshiping God here—that the fat of the earth shall worship him and the poor shall bow down before him. Those things mean pretty much the same thing. There’s no distinction of persons, as it were, here. God does not want us to have distinction of persons in terms of looking down upon the poor man or looking down upon the rich man. Both those people will bow down and worship before God, which has the connotation of obedience to God.

You bow down. Like I said, the old Hebrew word used throughout the Old Testament is the word to actually get down on one’s face. That’s true worship. It’s to acknowledge the sovereignty of the person you’re bowing down to. You’re supposed to make homage, as it were. You’re supposed to humble yourself before the sovereign of all creation. And also, though, you’re worshiping by bowing down, you’re saying, “I will do whatever you tell me to do.” You acknowledge his sovereignty, and you’ll also acknowledge your commitment to obedience to the sovereign king.

And that should be our relationship as well as we come to the communion supper and all that entails. As we have communion with Jesus Christ forever through what he has accomplished in his atonement, we should, as a result of that, worship him and bow down before him, acknowledging his sovereignty and also making pledge to be obedient to the sovereign.

But there are more blessings here that are described in these—blessings of salvation and of being satisfied and being made full with the blessings of God. In Psalm 21:3 again, the other side of that is:

“Thou setest us a crown of pure gold on his head.”

And you remember we talked about that—it may refer to an incident in the life of David when he defeated the Ammonites and he took the crown of gold that they had and put it on his own head—the king of Israel when he went forth into battle. I described this before: his crown was a small, rectangular plate of gold which said “Holy to the Lord” on it, similar to the high priest plate of gold he would wear. He’d wrap blue ribbon around it and tie it to his head. That was the kind of crown the king of Israel was to wear.

This other crown that’s spoken of here is a circlet. And we talked about how the Ammonite king made this circlet crown. And if you want to get into what that symbolizes, you have a circle. You can either circle the troops in defense or you could make siege around the people as well, offensively. So that kind of crown, the circlet crown, speaks about victory in battle. And David, when he defeated the Ammonites fully, took that crown, put it upon his own head. And I mentioned then that some people think that was a bad thing for David to do, but in reality, that’s exactly what Jesus Christ does.

He conquers all the kings of this world and he puts all their crowns upon his head. And so we read in the New Testament that Jesus Christ is crowned with many crowns. And we sang about that earlier in the song. Jesus Christ’s crown is spoken of as being a multiple number of circlets. He wears the crowns of all the kings of the earth upon his head and they serve under him.

But that’s the other side of the answer that God gave to the king in Psalm 21, and God gave to David typologically. But we see the same thing made true of the Messiah in Psalm 22, verses 27 and 28:

“All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee. For the kingdom is the Lord’s, and he is the governor among the nations.”

Obviously references here are to his sovereignty and his kingdom and his crown that he has put upon his head—that God rather has put upon his head. God has given him to be king over kings and lord of lords. It’s important to recognize that’s part of the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ—the victory that Jesus Christ won over sin and death and over all nations of the world as well, that operate under the power of those who would oppose Christ.

Remember Psalm 22 talks about—Psalm 21 rather talked about God’s wrath against those that would oppose him. And so Jesus Christ now has suffered that wrath for the nations of the world, and he now is in the process of winning them to him, causing them to remember, to turn to him, and to worship him. It’s important to recognize that this passage—these two verses in the context in which they’re presented, which is the context of the atonement and the suffering of Jesus Christ for salvation and the effectual work of salvation—these passages speak explicitly about a postmillennial perspective of eschatology.

We don’t see here some kind of thing where the atonement of Jesus Christ is being somehow ineffectual to do more than just save individuals. We don’t see that at all. The passages we just read are part of Psalm 22. The context of them is the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross and the atonement, the reconciliation that he made there. And remember, in Psalm 20 and 21, that’s being typologically fulfilled here in Jesus Christ. Those things also spoke of the king who went forth into battle, delivered by God, and then being given dominion over his enemies and indeed over all enemies of the world.

And we see the extent of that dominion in Jesus Christ in verses 27 and 28: “All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord. All the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.” The extent of that reign of Jesus Christ since his ascension, since God’s deliverance of him from the horns of death, the horns of the wild ox, and from death—since God’s deliverance of him, Jesus Christ has been put at the right hand of God the Father till all enemies be made a footstool for him. That’s what we just sang about in that song. That song is an excellent song and really typifies what’s taught in this psalm and the other passages that relate to the first coming of Jesus Christ and its effectualness in terms of the reconciliation of the whole world to Jesus Christ.

It is, after all, not a message simply of declaration or testimony we have to the nations. Jesus Christ has sent us forth, and Paul understood this in the New Testament, as ministers of reconciliation. It’s not our job to go forth and preach to the end that God would judge the world. That’s not the primary purpose. Jesus Christ didn’t come to—he said he did not come to judge the world. He came to save the world. And that’s what he effected through his work on the cross.

And that’s what this psalm is teaching us. Jesus Christ suffered atonement, suffered death, made atonement, and as a result overcame the world. He didn’t come to judge the world. He came to save the world. And that’s what he accomplished. And so we read here that “all the ends of the world shall remember. All the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.”

And we take the gospel of Jesus Christ forward as ministers of reconciliation. We’re reconciling the whole world through the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the covenant king, the one who wears many crowns. That’s our job.

I wanted to read a few other passages of scripture that relate to this specific subject. I think, you know, various people talk about wanting to study out postmillennialism, and that’s good. You know, the thing that’s just amazing to me as you study the scriptures is that the scriptures cry out a perspective that Jesus Christ has been effectual in what he has done in the first coming to achieve that millennial reign. Okay? It’s throughout the scriptures. It’s not just in an isolated passage. These scriptures should be clear to us in terms of their meaning. And if we hadn’t been preached an impotent gospel of personal salvation with no implication for the world, if we hadn’t been preached that gospel for most of our lives as Christians, we would have no trouble understanding these verses.

These verses are clear, but because we do have a little trouble, let’s look at a few other verses. In Isaiah 42, I’ll just read through this and make comments. Isaiah 42, obviously talking about the Messiah to come:

“Behold, my servant whom I uphold, mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth. Jesus Christ, covenant head of the elect people. He is the elect of God. We’re elect in Jesus Christ. In whom my soul delighteth, Jesus Christ was the one in whom God’s soul delighteth. I have put my spirit upon him. You know, obviously you can just think to yourself of the references to the gospel ministry of Jesus Christ in terms of fulfilling these prophecies. I have put my spirit upon him—the spirit that dove descended upon Jesus Christ. He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench. He shall bring forth judgment unto truth. He won’t extinguish the smoking flax. Verse 4: ‘He shall not fail nor be discouraged till he has set judgment in the earth. And the isles shall wait for his law.’”

There’s no discontinuous break here from verses 1 through 3 that clearly speak to the Messiah to come and the work of Jesus Christ at his first coming to verse 4. In fact, just the opposite is taught by these verses. He won’t fail. He won’t be discouraged once he comes to minister to the world in which he has already come to do. He won’t fail nor be discouraged until he has set judgment in the earth and the isles shall wait for his law.

Rushdoony calls the gospel the ascension of the savior king to the throne. And that’s what we’re talking about here. Jesus Christ has ascended to the throne and is now working through that reign throughout the whole world. And the islands wait for his law, the law of the king who has ascended, and he sets judgment in the earth.

“Thus saith God the Lord, he that created the heavens and stretched them out. He that spread forth the earth and that which cometh out of it. He that giveth breath unto the people upon it and spirit to them that walk therein.”

And there we have—should be thinking in our own minds—there’s a relationship there to the new creation. He gives breath to people. He gives his spirit to them. And so Jesus Christ breathed upon his disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Ghost.” New creation. God rebreathing life into his people and starting a new creation, as it were. And now, however, not in a finite king—Adam—but in a tremendous second Adam who has accomplished everything needing to be accomplished for his victory over all things.

“I the Lord have called thee in righteousness and will hold thine hand and will keep thee and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles. And that’s again obvious—he gives Jesus Christ as a covenant for the people and for a light of the Gentiles, not restricted to physical Israel. To open the blind eyes. To bring out the prisoners from the prison and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house. I am the Lord, that is my name, and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images. Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare before they spring forth. I tell you of them.”

And we see here: opening the blind eyes, causing the lame to walk, bringing out the prisoners—a dynamic restoration, a restoration to paradise, as it were, the accomplishment of the return to the Garden of Eden being accomplished through Jesus Christ being made a covenant of the people. Not being accomplished through some sort of physical putting down of the enemy at some future point in time. The—what this portion of Isaiah 42 teaches is that all that occurs as the result of God giving his son, the true Israel, to come and be a covenant for the people. That’s what effects all this. The covenant keeping of Jesus Christ—he’s the true seed of the true Israel of God.

Isaiah 49:

“Listen, O isles, unto me, and hearken.”

And again, you see here that the isles shall wait for the law. “Listen, O isles, all the ends of the earth are going to be affected by what he’s talking about. Listen a while unto me, and hearken ye people from far. The Lord hath called me from the womb. From the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name. And he hath made my mouth like a sharp sword. In the shadow of his hand hath he hid me and made me a polished shaft. In his quiver hath he hid me.”

And these verses have first and foremost a typological fulfillment in Jesus Christ. He was the one that God called from the womb to come forth and to be the true Israel and the true covenant keeping. And it says in verse 2, “He made my mouth like a sharp sword.” That should remind us all of Revelation 19, where the king goes forth conquering with the sword that comes out of his mouth. It’s the word of Jesus Christ that is effectual unto salvation and is effectual unto the establishment of the kingdom.

“Verse 3: And said unto me, thou art my servant, O Israel. Jesus Christ, the true Israel, in whom I will be glorified. Then I said, I have labored in vain. I have spent my strength for naught and in vain. Yet surely my judgment is with the Lord and my work with my God. Work on the cross there are probably being talked about. And now sayeth the Lord that formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him. Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my strength.

And he said, it is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved of Israel. I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth.”

Thus sayeth the Lord, the redeemer of Israel and his holy one, to him whom man despised, to him whom the nations abhor, to a servant of rulers. Kings shall see and arise. Princes also shall worship because of the Lord, that is faithful, and the Holy One of Israel, and he shall choose thee.”

You see here in verses 6, 7, and 8 the clear teaching that these things are a result of the gospel work of Jesus Christ, of him being the true Israel and the covenant keeper. He was a light to the Gentiles. For what purpose? “That they may see my salvation unto the end of the earth.” The same thing we talked about in Psalm 22: All the ends of the earth will remember the work of Jesus Christ, will turn to Christ in repentance, and will worship before him. That’s what’s to occur in our generations to come as the gospel of Jesus Christ has its ramifications throughout our lifetime and the lifetime of our children.

He says, “Him who was despised”—obviously Jesus Christ, in verse 7—”shall see and arise. Princes all shall worship because of the Lord, that is faithful.” The Lord was faithful to Jesus Christ, the covenant seed of God, in delivering him. Jesus cried out for help, and God was faithful and delivered him from the cross and resurrected him and saved him from death. Because of that faithfulness, it says here, the king shall see and arise. Princes shall worship. The same thing we just read in Psalm 22: Him who was despised now reigns over all kings.

You, going back to verse 2: “He made my mouth like a sharp sword. In the shadow of his hand have he hid me and made me a polished shaft. In his quiver hath he hid me.”

You know, there’s an element there of mystery. There’s an element of concealing what God is going to do. And you know, it’s interesting to me that what’s happening here is that the nation of Israel, physical Israel, now the Pharisees erred in looking for a messiah to come with power and in judgment in terms of a physical destruction of all his enemies. But God says, “I have this shaft in my quiver, this arrow in my quiver, that is hidden. It’s a polished shaft. It will do all the work I need to have done, but it’s not what you’re expecting to have done.” And that’s what he accomplished in the gospel of Jesus Christ. That was the arrow. Jesus Christ was the seed of Israel, the covenant people. He was the arrow of God to accomplish God’s purpose in ruling over all nations. That’s what Christ came forward to do.

“Thus sayeth the Lord, an acceptable time have I heard thee, and at a day of salvation have I helped thee, and I will preserve thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, to establish the earth, to cause to inherit the desolate heritages.”

God heard Jesus Christ, delivered him, as you read about in Psalm 22. “And I will preserve thee and give thee for a covenant of the people.” That’s what God did with Jesus Christ. He gave Christ as a covenant for the people. And the result of that: “To establish the earth. To establish the earth, to set up God’s rule more in a realer fashion, as it were, in all the earth, to reify that dominion.”

“Saying to the prisoners, ‘Go forth.’ To them that are in darkness, ‘Show yourselves.’ They shall feed in the ways. Their pasture shall be in all high places. They shall not hunger or thirst. Neither shall the heat nor sun smite them.”

No hungering and thirsting in the true kingdom of God. They’ll eat and be satisfied.

Isaiah 45, verses 22-25:

“Assemble yourselves and come. Draw near together, ye that are escaped of the nations. They have no knowledge that set up the wood of their graven images and bring to a god that cannot save. Tell ye and bring them near. Yea, let them take counsel together. Who hath declared this from ancient time? Who hath told it from that time? Have not I the Lord? And there is no God else besides me. A just God and a Savior. There is none beside me. Look unto me and be saved, all the ends of the earth. For I am God, and there is none else. I have sworn by myself. The word rather is gone out of my mouth in righteousness and shall not return. That unto me every knee shall bow and every tongue shall swear. Surely shall one say in the Lord have I righteousness and strength, even to him shall men come, and all that are incensed against him shall be ashamed. In the Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified and shall glory.”

And here there’s a definite connection between the preaching of the gospel, the word of God going forth, Christ coming forth as the word of God in the fullness of time to go forth and through the preaching of the gospel of Christ conquer all the world unto him. Every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear. They that are incensed against him, against the one who trusts in God and understands that, shall be ashamed. In the Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified and shall glory.

These verses clearly teach that the millennial reign, the kingdom of Jesus Christ, that is, is a direct result of his first coming and his reconciliation made by God for his elect people. I could go on and on. Psalm 96 and 97 are pretty good.

Psalm 96:10:

“Say among the heathen that the Lord reigneth. The world also shall be established that it shall not be moved. He shall judge the people righteously.”

The Lord reigns. The world is under the reign of Jesus Christ in a real sense here. And there are heathen still in the land. That’s because this work is a continual, slow process of working forth the gospel of Jesus Christ in every area.

“Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad. Let the sea roar in the fullness thereof.”

Those are words that were used in terms of the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt. Okay? And they sang those sorts of songs—”the heavens rejoice, the earth… the fields break forth into singing.” But what has happened—that which was typified in the deliverance of Israel from Egypt—has now occurred once and for all in the coming of Jesus Christ, the true son that he called out of Egypt, the true beloved and firstborn of God. And this is what he’s accomplished for his people. And so we now can sing with a fuller measure these same things:

“Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad. Let the sea roar in the fullness thereof.”

Psalm 97:

“The Lord reigneth. Let the earth rejoice. Let the multitude of isles be glad, forever.”

God reigns. And so, to the end of other most parts of the world, we have joy forever through what Jesus Christ has accomplished.

And you know, again, it just—some people think that people who believe in a postmillennial perspective in terms of eschatology have a reduced opinion of the second coming of Jesus Christ. But I’ve said many times that the error made is by the premillennialists. They believe that the first coming of Jesus Christ was ineffectual. They think that the first coming of Jesus Christ and what that set in motion ends in failure.

What this psalm and throughout these scriptures—we could read dozens of them—clearly teach is that the first coming of Jesus Christ, his focal work on the cross and in his resurrection, was effectual. And as a direct result of that, all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nation shall worship before thee.

And so, as a result of all this that has been accomplished by Jesus Christ for us, we have the great commission. If we’re wondering what we should do with all this, all we have to do is turn to the great commission, in which Jesus told us:

“Go ye therefore, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always.”

This is our task now—to go forth preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ to disciple the nations. It doesn’t say go forth and just be a testimony, but nothing’s really going to happen. He’s saying that your preaching will be effectual. The nations will remember, will turn in repentance, will listen to the teaching of the church and the proclamation of God’s word, and as a result of that will worship him.

And Jesus Christ himself is who accomplishes all this through the preaching of his gospel, through the power of the Holy Spirit and his people that he has now effectually saved and made reconciliation with God to. And so he tells us that he is with us always, even unto the end of the world. Until the end of time, this is what will occur: the growth of the gospel, the growth of the reign of Jesus Christ.