DUNCAN/The Lord, my only hope for strength, love and protection

If you have your Bible with you, I’d invite you to turn with me to Psalm 144. It’s a royal psalm; a psalm of David. It’s a psalm for he and his successor kings lifted up in petition to the Lord for the whole nation. And so, it combines the kinds of content that you would expect in a psalm on the occasion of the coronation and installation of the king as well as the king’s prayer for the Lord’s blessing on the wellbeing of the nation.  This is David not just looking for personal protection from his enemies but public protection from his enemies and the enemies of his people. And he looks to the Lord. I’d like to walk through each of the parts of this psalm with you and see what they say to us.

The Lord is the Source of David’s Strength 

The first thing I want you to see is this. In verses 1 and 2, David acknowledges that the Lord is the source of his strength. The Lord is the one who loved him with a steadfast and unchanging love, and he tells us that the Lord is the source of his protection. Even at the pinnacle of his earthly strength, the Lord has impressed upon David that he is utterly dependent upon Him. 

If you are into reading literature from the Ancient Near East, you can find lots of songs and poems and royal declarations in which kings make great declarations about themselves. Isn’t it interesting that this royal psalm begins by saying that God should get the credit for everything? David is strong; God is his strength. David has been protected and so have his people; God is the one who has done it. Isn’t that how we ought to live no matter how gifted we are? No matter what resources have been entrusted to us, they’re not ours, they’ve been given to us by God, and He ought to get the credit. David is reminding us here that the credit must always be given to the Lord, and nothing is to be taken for granted.

The Lord’s care is Extraordinary 

And then the most curious thing happens. David immediately begins to meditate on the issue of the Lord’s care in verses 3 to 4. Having just acknowledged that the Lord is his strength, he immediately says, “You know, who are we that God would even take time to think about us?” It’s an expression of humility. Some of you might be wondering about the usage of the phrase or the term, “the son of man.” This is not used as a divine title for Jesus like it is in the Gospels or in the book of Daniel for the one who approaches the Ancient of Days. Here, it’s simply a poetic way of speaking about human beings. And the point is this. “Lord, You’re so great. Why in the world do You pay attention to people so small as we are?” In other words, David, having reflected on the fact that the Lord has given him strength and protection, pauses to say, “I don’t deserve this.” And all of us are called to dwell in that kind of humility.

And then comes the petition in verses 5 to 8. This is David seeking the aid of the Lord in the deliverance of his people, not trusting in chariots and in horses but trusting only in the Lord his God. That is something that we have to work at and practice all of our lives. And even when we have once mastered it, it is possible to slip back into trusting ourselves. And so, David reminds us here to completely trust on the Lord for deliverance.

A Determination to Praise God

And then fourth, if you look in verses 9 to 11, he does something very interesting. He connects this repeated prayer of deliverance with a purpose to praise God. He prays for deliverance with a view to worship. In other words, David is saying this. “Lord, when You deliver us, I’m going to praise You for it. I’m going to be the first one leading the congregational singing in praise to You. In fact, I’m going to write a new song!” A new song means a psalm written for a specific occasion of victory. And since David is asking for a new protection from the Lord, a new intervention from the Lord, there will therefore be a new occasion — A specific circumstance for which to give praise to God. And this idea of a new song is picked up elsewhere in the Psalter and repeated in the book of Revelation. The new song speaking of the great victory that we have in our Lord Jesus Christ. 

And then, in verses 12 to 14 he moves into specific prayers for the nation and the people. God, you see, is the author of national mercies, and even King David knows it. David knows, and you see this in his last prayer, that the king is meant to be a blessing to a people of a nation, but he knows that ultimately those national blessings and mercies come from the Lord. And so, he prays for the Lord to bless the families of the land. It’s a remembrance of the Lord as the author of all our national mercies.

God Himself is the Greatest Blessing of All 

And then in verse 15, he turns to acknowledge that God Himself is the greatest blessing of all. In that verse we are reminded that God Himself is three things. 

First, God is the soul’s provision. If you are burdened with a sense of your sin, who in the world can remove that load from your heart? If you long for strength to resist temptation, where on earth can you go to acquire that? But if you have the Lord for your God, you have pardon and peace and the hope of final glory because of Christ’s death and resurrection. 

Secondly, the Lord is the heart’s satisfaction. You could possess everything that this world has to offer, and yet apart from the Lord, there would be an aching void in your life. That’s why Jesus looked at that woman in the well and said, “Whoever drinks of the water that I give shall never thirst, but the water that I shall give, shall be to him a well of water springing up to everlasting life.” Nothing on earth can give that kind of satisfaction, only Jesus — Only God. 

Finally, He is our lasting portion. Whatever we have in this world will be stripped from us when we leave it. But at death, the believer only then comes into her or his full inheritance. That’s the greatest message of this psalm. David had learned what Paul called the secret of contentment — The ability to abound and the ability in want to recognize that the greatest blessing that can never be taken from us is the Lord God Himself.