The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): God save the king. Today on The Bible Study Hour, we'll take a closer look at Psalm 20, which is a corporate prayer of trust that God will deliver the righteous king of Israel. What can this psalm tell us about the type of leaders we need today and how we should pray for them?

Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. In Psalm 20, the people of Israel are praying for their king, recognizing that favor and success come from God alone, who blesses those who put their trust in him. If you have your Bible, turn to Psalm 20.

Dr. James Boice: We come to Psalm 20, and with that to two psalms that are somewhat different from the psalms we have seen so far. These are psalms not spoken by an individual but by the people, and they are national in their orientation. The first is a prayer that God would deliver the king, probably on the occasion of some battle or perhaps many battles if it was used again and again in the worship services of Israel. And then the second of the two psalms is a prayer of thanksgiving for God having delivered the king. So obviously the two go together.

There are a few stylistic differences we ought to look at. It's helpful to do that, I think, as we begin the study of these because it focuses them as poetry in our minds. For one thing, the two are linked together by some words at the very end of Psalm 20, verse 9. You read, "O Lord, save the king, answer us when we call." And then the very beginning of Psalm 21 and the first verse, that same idea is picked up, how great is the king's joy in the victories you give.

It's not as apparent in the English as it is in the Hebrew, but the words that occur there at the end are picked up again at the beginning of the next psalm. So obviously the two are put together. We notice that from time to time as we work our way through the Psalter. They are not all linked in this way. I don't see any obvious link between Psalm 19 and Psalm 20 or Psalm 21 and Psalm 22, but these two at least belong together and should be studied together.

And then they're units in themselves. There is a device that the scholars call inclusio. That is, a psalm will begin with a phrase or a verse or perhaps a set of words which are then repeated at the very end of the psalm. It's sort of like a front door and a back door to a house, and that is very apparent here. In Psalm 20, you have the words "Lord" and "answer," and then hidden in the English translation, but nevertheless there in the Hebrew, the word "day."

The Hebrew actually says "day of distress." So you have Lord, answer, and day of distress. And that's exactly what comes in at the end, verse 9, "Lord," "answer," and then in that verse, it's "day of our calling." Again, day has been swallowed up in the English translation, but it's there in the Hebrew. So it starts with a phrase and it ends with a phrase, and it sort of holds the psalm together. The same thing is true of Psalm 21. There the words are "Lord" and "strength." You find them in verse 1; they come in again in verse 13.

What is perhaps most striking stylistically about these two psalms is that they seem to be liturgical. Now, a number of the commentators are skeptical of that, and I think rightly so, because there's a tendency in modern scholarship of the psalms to find liturgical elements everywhere. And because they're not always so obvious, the scholars tend to invent them. They invent settings in which this or that psalm had to have been used, and it had to have been used in such and such a way and by certain people and so forth.

I think one should rightly be skeptical of that kind of speculative theology, and yet there are times when it does seem that there's a liturgical element present, and that is the case here. One of the most skeptical of all the scholars in that respect is an older scholar named Perowne, but even he acknowledges that there are at least, as he says, half-liturgical elements at this point.

Let me show it in this way. What you find here are two psalms written for the most part in the first person plural, that is, using the word "we" rather than the words "I" or "me." Now, that's not been true of the psalms up until now, and it's not true of the one that follows either. Just look back to the last verse of Psalm 19: "May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer."

So four times over there you have the word "my," and it's quite obvious that there an individual is speaking. Same way, look at Psalm 22, the first verse: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?" So there you have five pronouns that indicate it's an individual: me and my repeated a variety of times. That is not what we have here in these psalms.

Here it's in the plural. "We will shout for joy" in verse 3, "answer us when we call," verse 9, and then in Psalm 21, verse 13, you have the same thing: "we will sing and praise your might." So here, rather than having an individual praying, you have a group of people praying, and that alone suggests that it would have been used in what we would call a liturgical manner in the Jewish worship services at the temple.

But there's even something else. If you look at Psalm 20, although it is true the phrases I read are in the first person plural, we will shout and we call, you find in verse 6 that there it changes back to the first person singular: "Now I know that the Lord saves his anointed." What is the explanation of that? Why does it go from the plural to the singular to the plural once again? The natural explanation seems to be that these were verses picked up by different groups of people or individuals in the worship service.

Apparently, the first five verses were spoken by the people interceding on behalf of their king. Their king's about to go out to battle, and so they're praying for him, or at least they are acknowledging that his prayers are righteous and they stand behind them. Then in verses 6 to 8, you have a change. It's very striking here. "Now," that is a break in the psalm, and it comes in in the singular, probably some individual responds at this point. Who? Some suggest it could be the king himself. I guess that's possible. More likely it was a priest or Levite.

So the people repeat the first part, and then the priest says, "I know that the Lord saves his anointed. He answers him from his holy heaven with his saving power of his right hand," and so on. And when that passes, you come in the very last verse to a concluding echo by the people as they say together, "O Lord, save the king, answer us when we call." Perhaps at this point as the king and his armies are marching out to battle.

Anyway, when you read it and you pay attention to the details, it seems to suggest something like that. It's not wrong to regard this, therefore, as a liturgical prayer that's a model for our prayers for national leaders. It teaches us something about the kind of leaders we want to have and how we should pray for them. So that's the way to look at the psalm.

Now, as I say, the first five verses are a prayer of the people for the king and his victory, although strictly speaking, they're not a prayer. When you read them, they're actually directed to the king. They're kind of an echo of what he's saying. The key word here is the word "may," and you find it six times in these verses. "May the Lord answer you when you are in distress and may the name of the Lord God of Jacob protect you," verse 1. Verse 2 says, "May he send you help from the sanctuary."

Verse 3, "May he remember all your sacrifices." Verse 4, "May he give you the desires of your heart." And then finally verse 5, at the end of that section, "May the Lord grant all your requests." So as I say, this is not strictly a prayer, and yet it is of the nature of prayer because although it's written in this particular form, it is actually the expression of the hearts of the people that God would hear the prayers of the king for victory and bless him as he fights Israel's enemies.

There's an interesting thing about those verses that is sort of hidden and yet is obvious when you begin to think about it. It's the revelation they give us of Israel's king. What can you say about him as you read these verses? Well, for one thing, the king himself is a man of prayer. The king is presumably leading the people in prayer. He's in the temple, and the people who are standing around outside, probably not at any great distance, are agreeing with him as he is praying for them and for himself in the battle.

A devout man, you see. If this is David, as it probably is, the title of the psalm says a Psalm of David, we don't have any trouble at all understanding or imagining how David would do that. That was natural to David. That's the kind of thing he would do. And then we notice, secondly, that he's offering sacrifices. I guess we should say at that point, well, he was not only a man of prayer, he's a man of devotion in that he entered into the religious practices of the people.

I'm well aware, as we all are, that you can have hollow prayers, prayers that are mere formality. And you can also have sacrifices that are mere formality, going through the motions, as we say. But there's nothing in the psalm to indicate that. Presumably, what we have here is a godly king. And when we realize that, we ought to find ourselves saying, "Blessed is the nation that has such godly leaders. Would that we had them ourselves."

There was a time when we did. I went through a period in my own education when evangelicals were saying, "You know, we have mythologized American history and turned all of our founding fathers into Christians." And there was a great movement in those days, maybe 30 years ago, to more or less debunk all that and to point out that many of our founding fathers were deists or atheists, or at least unbelievers, and some led very immoral lives. That, of course, is true of many of them.

But what has happened, which is what often happens in ways we look at history, is that we swing from one pole to another. And while we have succeeded to some extent rightly debunking the supposed spiritual and Christian groundings of our nation, we've swung so far that we fail in our day to recognize we had any religious groundings at all. And it's helpful at times to go back and read the kind of things that many of our founding fathers said and ask if we have people like that in government today who can be or would be as outspoken about their religious faith as these people were.

John Winthrop, one of the Puritans, was the first governor of Massachusetts. You know that the Puritans were godly, but here's a man who was actually the governor appointed to that position. Here's what he said. He wrote this at the age of 24: "I desire to make it one of my chief petitions to have that grace to be poor in spirit. I will ever walk humbly before my God and meekly, mildly, and gently toward all men. I do resolve first to give myself, my life, my wits, my health, my wealth to the service of my God and Savior, who by giving himself for me and to me deserves whatsoever I am or can be and to be at his commandment and for his glory."

That's the kind of things the Puritans not only wrote but believed and spoke openly, as John Winthrop did. George Washington was a devout Anglican and very private about his faith. People in the day were asking questions about his faith because he didn't, as we would say, wear it on his sleeve. Yet he was a true Christian, apparently, if we're to judge by his writings. Here's a prayer he wrote in his youth.

"O God, who art rich in mercy and plenteous in redemption, mark not, I beseech thee, what I have done amiss. Remember that I am but dust and remit my transgressions, negligences, and ignorances, and cover them all with the absolute obedience of thy dear son. That those sacrifices of sin, praise, and thanksgiving which I have offered may be accepted by thee in and for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ upon the cross for me. Direct my thoughts, words, and work, wash away my sins in the immaculate blood of the Lamb, and purge my heart by thy Holy Spirit." That was the faith, apparently, of George Washington.

Here in Philadelphia, when the vote for American independence was taken on the 4th of July, 1776, there was a moment of solemn silence as the delegates to that convention realized what they had just done. And then in that quiet moment, Samuel Adams, one of the great leaders in the revolutionary movement, stood and spoke what many on that occasion were thinking. Here's what he said in our city on that occasion.

"We have this day restored the sovereign to whom alone men ought to be obedient," speaking of God. "He reigns in heaven and from the rising to the setting sun, may his kingdom come." That on the very day when our Declaration of Independence was signed. Ben Franklin, you know, was not a Christian. Yet he had great respect for those who were. And out of his respect for that which was religious, he played a key part in the convention to draft the Constitution that was held here, also in 1787.

He did it by calling for daily prayer. They were deadlocked as they were fighting between a vision for a federated government and the rights of the individual states. And here's what Franklin said: "In the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for divine protection. Our prayers, sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending providence in our favor. And have we now forgotten this powerful friend, or do we imagine we no longer need his assistance?"

"I have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it possible that an empire can arise without his aid? We have been assured, sir, in the sacred writings, that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this. I also believe that without his concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel."

"We shall be divided by our little partial local interest, our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and a byword down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance despair of establishing government by human wisdom and leave it to chance, war, or conquest." His words were very effective. The delegation paused to pray. Out of it came our Constitution, which has become a model for people seeking freedom throughout the world. It was the first written constitution by the people to establish those laws by which they were going to be governed, an answer to God to such prayers.

I give that not to merely laud America for its history but to make the contrast. We don't have that kind of leadership today. Can you think of many people in government at any level—city, state, federal—that are that outspoken as these people were, even the unbelievers, in their desire to have God's blessing and to have prayers for their endeavor? I don't think so. I think we have fallen a long way.

Well, the second stanza of this psalm is an expression of faith that God has heard the prayers of the king and the people who are praying with him and has answered as he has always answered and that he will save. The key verse here is verse 7: "Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God." That verse is a reflection of something that you find in the book of Deuteronomy.

In chapter 17, verse 16 in Deuteronomy, there is an instruction given to the kings of Israel yet to come. There were no kings at the time, but the verse says there are going to be kings, and it said when the kings are established, they must not collect horses lest they put their faith in them because their faith is to be in God. Now, later in Israel's history, they did that. As a matter of fact, shortly after this, Solomon was the first of the kings of Israel to collect cavalry and the chariots that go with them.

He built large forts or garrisons where these mounted units were stationed, and they were all over the country. It's one thing that archaeologists notice and by which they can date certain fortifications that happened in the time of Solomon. It does incidentally, for those who are interested in this kind of thing, argue for an early dating of the psalm. Some of the scholars say all these psalms are late, but you see here you have a verse that it's not right to trust in horses. Later they did, so in David's time they didn't. It pushes it back into that period.

In the early days, Israel really didn't do this. And their history, as we find it in the Old Testament, is a long series of experiences of God intervening in sometimes miraculous ways and certainly without a superabundance of human force to deliver them from their many, many enemies. Go back to the beginning of their history, to the time of Abraham. Abraham was no soldier; he was no warrior. He was a Bedouin chieftain. He was powerful and rich, he had a lot of people around him, but he wasn't a king. He didn't maintain an army.

And yet when the four powerful kings of the East attacked the five cities of the plain and carried off Lot and his family and other captives from Sodom and Gomorrah and all the spoil, Abraham armed his retainers—he had 318 of them—able to follow him into battle. They went out and attacked the retreating armies by night, fell upon them, recovered Lot, the family, and the spoils. That was a bold and brave stroke. Abraham was certainly a strong and courageous man, but the victory wasn't because Abraham was bold or strong or courageous, it's because God gave him the victory, as Melchizedek reminded him when he returned from the battle.

Melchizedek told him that it was God Most High who had given him the battle, and God had. The people of Israel knew that. Or again, you come to the time of the Exodus. The people weren't even an armed body of people at that time; they were just a collection of slaves, rabble almost. And yet God intervened in a powerful way through ten great plagues upon the Egyptians. And finally, when the Egyptians were pursuing them and they'd crossed the Red Sea, God allowed the waters of the Red Sea to come back again and they drowned the pursuing forces of the Egyptians.

Moses wrote about it in that great song called the Song of Moses, which begins: "I will sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted. The horse and its rider he has hurled into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my song. He has become my salvation." Joshua experienced the same thing at Jericho. They conquered the city not because they were more powerful but because God knocked down the walls. The same thing happened at Gibeon where the sun and the moon were restrained in their courses while they took a full victory over their retreating enemies.

Gideon experienced the same thing. He started out with a large army, and God actually peeled it down until finally he went after the Midianites with only 300 and fell upon them by night, much as Abraham had done upon the kings of the East who had attacked the cities of the plain. And David, David the author of the psalm, killed Goliath not with a sword and armor but with a sling and a small stone. That was Israel's history.

And so when the person on this psalm says, "Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God," this was not pious rhetoric. This was what Israel had done, and it was a challenge to keep on doing it, and it should be a challenge to people everywhere. Wherever there is a remnant of Christian people in a nation, it should be true for us as well. I suppose someone will say at that point, has that ever happened with other people in history?

I think it has, though at this point we have to be careful because we tend to read history in a jingoistic or chauvinistic fashion and we can always be wrong in our interpretations. But it seems to me that it's happened. I think of the history of England, for example. Let me give the example of the Spanish Armada. There the fate of the Reformation in England hung in the balance, not to mention the succession of the English throne. The Spanish had mightier ships and more of them. They were met in the Channel. There was a great victory. Drake won it.

And then there was an enormous storm to complete the victory that drove the galleons of the Spanish fleet on up the Channel into narrower waters where finally most of them were wrecked in rocks off the coast of Scotland. Very few of those ships got back. It broke the might of the Spanish fleet and England was not threatened anymore. The Reformation was saved. Let me give another example, the time of Dunkirk in the Second World War. Here the European Expeditionary Force was trapped on the continent.

Hitler's Panzer divisions had encircled them. People in England were praying, praying everywhere. And God did exactly the opposite that happened at the time of the Armada. Apparently, a storm destroyed the Armada. God gave calm and fog at the time of Dunkirk, and the boats of the English were able—all the boats, everything they could muster—were able to transport the troops off the continent and back across the Channel a long, long distance to England. People in England were praying everywhere. They knew what was happening, and I think in many cases were literally praying the words of this psalm, including the last words, "O Lord, save the king, answer us when we call."

And God seems to have done that. Is that happening today? I think it is. I think that's exactly what's going on in Eastern Europe. We're talking about the great changes there, and you read in the papers about what's happening and how there's this great rebirth of democracy and a search for freedom. The one thing you don't read about in the papers is how religiously grounded it all is, and yet that is the great story.

People with religious concerns, seeking, crying out after God, ask for freedom, and God gives it. That literally is what's happening. We know a little bit about it because of Poland. Poland with its strong Catholic faith, obviously undergirding the Solidarity movement. Pope John being very close to that, Pope John Paul supporting them all the way down the line. Same thing seems to have been true to some extent of East Germany.

Conventional wisdom has it that the turning point was on October 9 in Leipzig when the people massed in a great rally saying we would rather die than be subjugated, let them shoot, we will still march. That was a spiritual statement. We would rather die than continue as we are, and it seems to have been the beginning of the change there in East Germany. The most remarkable case of all is in Romania. The revolution began around the home of a reformed pastor in the town of Timisoara.

The security police wanted to arrest him because he was too influential. People were listening to him, and his parishioners surrounded his house and said, "You'll have to shoot us first. We're not going to let you take the pastor." There was a standoff. The police didn't move effectively or dramatically at the time, and that small group of people collected others, and pretty soon there were several hundred, and by the next day there were several thousand.

There was a young Baptist church worker who thought this might be a good time to do something spectacular and significant, and so he got the idea of handing out candles. He went around gathered up all the candles he could find. And then he came to the crowd where there were the several thousand people, he gave out the candles, he lit his own candle, and then he passed the light around, everybody lighting their candle from his candle. And pretty soon this whole crowd was standing around with candles and they were chanting and singing, singing hymns.

The fighting started shortly after that. You know, perhaps 10,000 people were killed in Timisoara. The police finally did fire. This young man who came with the candles was shot in the leg. They had to amputate his leg. And later when he was in the hospital, his pastor came to visit him and he said to his pastor, "I lost a leg but I am happy, I lit the first light." You see, that's not a revolution. The people in Romania are not calling what happened there a revolution. They say, rather, call it God's miracle.

That's what Joseph Ton tells us, and he has been there and seen it well. You see, if every good and perfect gift comes down from heaven from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness neither shadow of turning, as James tells us, then the gift of freedom certainly comes down from God too. And the people who will seek God and his blessings will find freedom, and a people who will not have God will lose their freedom and tyranny will succeed it. That we are in danger of having happen here in time if we don't seek God as those in Eastern Europe have done.

We stood back and looked at the marvel of the Berlin Wall crashing, and we said, "Isn't that wonderful?" But what is to be gained if all they find when they come across the wall into the West is filled supermarkets and a materialism that has excluded any mention of the Maker? You see, when you take a psalm like this and begin to put it into the context of the events of our day or the state of our nation, you find that it's very relevant indeed.

Do we have leaders who can pray as David prayed on this occasion? Can we say because of the prayers of our leaders, "The Lord has saved his anointed. He has answered him from heaven"? How can we say that when we so seldom call upon the name of God at all? Well, we come to the very end. Very last verse, again, it's an echo as the people provide a response to what's been said: "O Lord, save the king, answer us when we call."

That first tells us that we're to pray for those in authority. We don't only need that verse to tell us; scriptures tell us as well, the New Testament does. Paul writing to Timothy said, "I urge then first of all that requests, prayers, intercession, thanksgiving be made for everyone, for kings and for all those in authority that we may live peaceable and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness because this is good and it pleases God our Savior."

If that's what we're told to do, then let's do it. Let's pray for those in authority. And while we're praying for those in authority, let's also pray that God will give us people who are godly leaders—able leaders, yes, and godly leaders too—and so bless our nation. We need it in our day. Let's pray.

Our Father, we can't read a psalm like this without being convicted of our failure to pray for godly leaders and for wisdom for those we do have and for righteousness rather than sin and wickedness to have a new rebirth in our times. We recognize that our nation, though it has had such great beginnings and so many godly founding fathers, is today far from you. So much so that for politicians, it's almost a ticket to disaster to be too outspoken with their faith.

Our Father, what we need is a revival of national proportions. And for that to happen, we need an earnest, faithful, consistent turning of your people to you once again. Our Father, we can't say save the king, we have no king. But we do say, O Lord, save our country and answer us when we call. In Jesus' name, Amen and Amen.

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