Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Psalm 92 | Date: March 2, 2025 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Psalm 92: A Song for the Sabbath

Psalm 92. You’ll see on the superscript here that it is a psalm, a song for the Sabbath.

“It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High, to declare your steadfast love in the morning and your faithfulness by night, to the music of the lute and the harp to the melody of the lyre. For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work. At the works of your hand, I sing for joy. How great are your works, O Lord! Your thoughts are very deep. The stupid man cannot know, the fool cannot understand this, that though the wicked sprout like grass and all evildoers flourish, they are doomed to destruction forever. But you, O Lord, are on high forever. For behold, your enemies, O Lord. For behold, your enemies shall perish. All evildoers shall be scattered. But you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox. You have poured over me fresh oil. My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies. My ears have heard the doom of my evil assailants. The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord. They flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age. They are ever full of sap and green, to declare that the Lord is upright. He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.”

Let’s look to the Lord. Our Father, we give you thanks for this, your word for us today. We pray that you would enable us to see through whatever difficulties it is that afflict us today—the sense of loss, sense of opposition, whatever kinds of concern—may we see with the psalmist here, that you, O Lord, are on high forever. We pray that you would encourage us, your people, with this great truth. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The superscript tells us this is a psalm, a song for the Sabbath. When we see that it’s a song for the Sabbath, it points out the temple setting. We’ll have more to say about that a little later on, but you’ll notice the temple setting, as most, virtually all the psalms are. But you’ll notice it here in verse 3: the music of the lute and the harp, the melody of the lyre. Even verse 13 makes reference to the righteous in the house of the Lord flourishing in the courts of God.

The setting of the Psalms is the people of God gathered with their king at the temple and he’s leading them in the praise of the Lord. And we see that here; this one was written for the Sabbath day. The Mishnah, the ancient Mishnah from the Jews, tells us that at least by the time of the second temple period, around the time of Jesus, the temple choirs sang Psalm 92 each first day, each Saturday, each Sabbath day. That reflects then in the Mishnah tradition that reaches back sometime behind it, perhaps all the way back to the writing, which what this superscript tells us was used in corporate worship of the people of God on the Sabbath day.

We don’t know for certain who the author of this psalm is. Verse 10 informs us, with its poetic imagery, that it was the king. “You have exalted my horn”—that’s a symbol of strength—”You’ve exalted my horn like that of the wild ox. You have poured over me fresh oil,” referring to the king’s anointing. So this is a king, perhaps David himself. There are Davidic psalms here in this cluster of psalms as I mentioned last time. It could be David, but at least we find again a royal psalm where the king himself is speaking.

Now, this psalm, we’ve come to recognize some of the forms of the psalm. This one has some similarities to the hymn or the praise psalm in that you have a call, something that resembles a call to praise in verses 1 to 3, and then verses 4 to 8, you have a cause or reason for praise. That’s the standard format of a hymn or a praise psalm. But I don’t think that’s exactly the form here. It may be a bit mixed. But we have here also the usual components of an individual song of grateful praise, where the king has written a song to give praise to God for some work on his behalf that he’s done recently.

You see in verses 1 to 3, the standard component, the proclamation: I’ll give praise to the Lord. Verses 4 to 8, you have a summary statement of what the Lord has done with some reflection on it. And then verses 9 to 11, you have the next standard component of an individual song of grateful praise, and that is the report of deliverance, that God has come and given us what I’ve asked. Then verses 12 to 14, again you have a reflection on the whole matter, and it ends with verse 15, the praise. So the proclamation, the summary statement with reflection, verses 9 to 11, the report of deliverance. And then verses 12 to 14, a reflection again. And then verse 15, praise is offered once again.

I don’t point this out very often because I think it’s just too tedious to do it, but in the Hebrew original, you’ll notice that the psalmist very often is so careful at symmetry in the poems that he writes. Often it’s just interesting. I don’t know that it often has great significance in all the details of it in terms of our expositions. But it does reflect, sometimes, especially in the Davidic Psalms, just a brilliant mind at work in balancing out these poems the way that he does.

And we have some of that here. And I’ll just mention it briefly: verses 1 to 4 and then verses 12 to 15. Four verses at the beginning and at the end of the psalm speak of the righteous giving praise. So the psalm is framed by the righteous giving praise. There’s something of a call to praise in the first verses, and then at the end it speaks of the righteous actually giving praise in the presence of God in the temple.

And then you have in the center, verse 8, the center line: “But you, O Lord, are on high forever.” That’s four words in the original. You, Lord, on high forever. That is significant. We’ll see that as we go along. That center line, then, is sort of flanked on each side. You have the first four verses, then you have three more, then the center, three more verses, then the final frame of the psalm. On each side of the center line, verse 8, you have a verse with three lines. The other verses have two lines each. On each side of verse 8, you have a verse with three lines, so it’s carefully balanced in that way.

And another way here: you have God’s name mentioned seven times in this psalm, three times in the first half, and then verse 8, one more, and then three times in the last half of the psalm. You see this often in the psalms. As I say, they don’t all these details have significance to it in terms of exposition, but it shows the care that the psalmist has gone to in composing the psalm. And we’ll point out some of the significance of this, particularly with regard to verse 8, the center line of the psalm, that is often the central message of the psalm, the pivot where the thought turns, and that is the case in this psalm. Verse 8, “You, Lord, on high forever,” speaks of God’s transcendence, his exaltation above space and time, ruling over all. And that’s his focus, and that’s the pivot of the psalm in verse 8.

The Appropriateness Of Praise

All right, then, let’s work our way through quickly. Verses 1 to 4, the king offers praise for some work that God has done on his behalf. Now, he doesn’t identify that work until later in the psalm, but here he’s offering praise for some work that God has done for him. Verse 1: “It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High, to declare your steadfast love in the morning and your faithfulness by night, to the music of the lute and the harp, to the melody of the lyre, for you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work. At the works of your hands I sing for joy.”

Now just quickly here, three observations stand out, I think, about these verses.

Number one, and this is perhaps the most obvious: the appropriateness of praise. Verse 1: “It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High.” We sing praise because it is fitting, it is appropriate, it is a good thing to do. God is deserving of our praise and it’s only right and it’s only a good thing that we sing it. In fact, verse 2 tells us this praise deserves to be ceaseless—day and night. Praising God is a necessary thing for the people of God. He is deserving of praise. We’ve seen in the Psalms where there’s the language even of owing God praise, where all of creation owes its praise to God as the creator of all. But in particular, for the people of God for whom God has worked, praise is an appropriate thing. It is the right thing.

The Subject Matter Of Praise

Number two: the subject matter of praise. And that’s verse 2: “to declare your steadfast love and faithfulness.” Well, this is that common theme that we’ve come across again and again and again in the Psalter: God’s steadfast love and his faithfulness. Two words that aren’t exactly the same but overlap in meaning, speaking of God’s pledged affection, his pledged loyalty, his pledged help, his covenantal love, and the help that comes with it. He’s made promises to his people and his word is steady. His word is trustworthy and he may be trusted.

So keep in mind this is an individual song of grateful praise for some work that God has done for the king. And so in verse 5 he says, “How great are your works, O Lord!” This is some concrete display of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness. So he’s singing of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness in praise to God, and this steadfast love and faithfulness has shown itself recently in some great work that God has done on behalf of the psalmist.

The Psalmist’s Joy In Sounding God’s Praise

All right, one, the appropriateness of the praise. Two, the subject matter of his praise. And then number three: the psalmist’s joy in sounding God’s praise.

Verses 1 to 4 here all carry with it this tone of joy, a joyful feel to verses 1 to 4, but verse 4 is the climax of it: “For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work. At the works of your hands I sing for joy.” In other words, singing God’s praise was no perfunctory duty that he was performing. This is not someone standing behind the hymnal with disinterest. He sings for joy. He sings with a heart that’s swelling with joy for what God has done for him. And so he sings with a tone of gladness.

Christians have always gone to the psalter to learn what acceptable praise looks like. And there’s a lot to be gleaned from the psalter in that regard. But one of the fundamental, one of the first things you find is that what distinguishes genuine, acceptable praise is the joy in giving it. This is not something done out of duty merely, but there’s a recognition that God has worked on my behalf and he’s made my heart glad. And so you find very often in the Psalms expressions like “sing,” “sing aloud,” “shout,” “make a joyful noise,” “bring out all the instruments,” “crank up the volume”—all of this reflecting the joy that’s in the heart. And the reason we find in the songs, we’ve seen this before, that you find this expression “sing aloud to God,” it’s not that God is hard of hearing, but that singing aloud is a reflection of what’s in the heart, the enthusiasm and the joy that brings the praise.

The Destruction Of The Wicked

All right, now, still, by the time we get through verse 4, the psalmist has not specified exactly what God has done for him that elicits the praise. Verse 5, he mentions his works briefly. Verse 4 actually kind of transitions to that at the end of the verse. “‘For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work. At the works of your hand I sing for joy.'” And now he gets to talk about it a little bit further in verse 5: “‘How great are your works, O Lord!'” Some great work God has done.

And then the second part of verse 5 is important. He traces this divine work back to the divine councils: “Your thoughts are very deep.” So verse 5: “How great are your works, O Lord, your thoughts are very deep.” That is what God had done for this king. We haven’t gotten there yet, but whatever it is God has done for this king was not some momentary action done as a reflex, otherwise unplanned. But it stems back to God’s deep thoughts. It’s an outworking of God’s purpose, his deep thoughts carefully set in place ahead of time.

Now, verse 6 tells us that understanding these deep thoughts is beyond the reach of the wicked. Verse 6: “The stupid man can’t know. The fool cannot understand this.” So the king understands what God has been doing. He has insight. The wicked don’t get it. They don’t see it. The wicked are stupid. The word there for stupid means brutish, like an animal. The thinking arises very little over the level of that of an animal. They can’t think in the big picture. They can’t discern what God is up to.

Well, that raises the question then, we come to the end of verse 6: just what is it that the king knows that the wicked don’t know? What is it he perceives in God’s works reflecting God’s thoughts that are deep? What is it that he gets that the wicked don’t get? Answer: verse 7. “That though the wicked sprout like grass and all evil doers flourish, they are doomed to destruction forever.” That is to say, the wicked cannot long survive. That’s what the king gets. That’s what the wicked don’t get.

So there’s a spiritual blindness on the part of the wicked. This is a common biblical theme, Old Testament and New Testament. God displays his works, manifests himself in the created order, manifests himself in our very human psyche, created as we are in his image, and yet there’s a spiritual blindness that remains. Paul talks about this in particular with pointedness in 1 Corinthians 2 with regard to the gospel. He preached the gospel to those who are lost and there’s just a dullness that meets it. “Yes, yes, yes, okay, I get it, that’s fine.” And you press the urgency of it with those that you love, and you’re very concerned because you love them, and you press the urgency. “Do you see?” And you finally recognize they don’t see. This is fine for you, and there might be a hostile reaction, but if they’re loved ones, it’s okay, that’s fine. But they don’t get the urgency of it. It’s a blindness, a dullness. Paul speaks of it as a veil in front of their eyes. They don’t see the glory of God in the face of Jesus.

Well, here his focus is in a particular way, not on the gospel itself, but they have a blindness with regard to their eventual ruin. I get it, verse 6. They don’t. They don’t get, verse 7, that though the wicked sprout like grass and all evildoers flourish, they’re doomed to destruction forever. You can warn them like the psalmist does here, you can plead with them because you love them, but it ends up being like water off a duck’s back.

And in fact, Paul talks about that in Romans chapter 1. God has revealed himself as the righteous God in the very created order and they recognize that. In fact, Paul mentions in Romans chapter 1 verse 32 that they know, they understand the righteous decree of God that those who practice these kinds of things are deserving of death. But although they know that, they go ahead and do them and they approve of those who do them. The righteousness that God has revealed that they can recognize they suppress and they hold it down. And so they know it but they don’t know it. And here they are loved ones of yours and you plead and you say, “Don’t you see your sin? Don’t you see the value of Jesus Christ? Don’t you see the ruin that lies ahead of you if you reject him?” “Yeah, yeah, I see it.” No, they don’t—not that urgency. The king says in verse 6: I get it, but they don’t.

Now we have a hint then, when we get through verse 7, we have a hint of what works God has done that have prompted this king’s praise. And that is, verse 7, he destroys the wicked. Verse 4, the works of God, the works of his hands for which the king sings praise, is that he destroys the wicked. So evidently, and we’ll see more of this as we work through the psalm, evidently the king writes Psalm 92 in the aftermath of some kind of battle. Verse 9 mentions, just looking ahead here, mentions his enemies. Verse 11, his assailants. Verse 9, it’s God’s enemies. Verse 11, it’s the king’s enemies. They’re both the same. To oppose God’s king is to oppose God.

So there’s been some attempted overthrow. Maybe it’s an attack from without. Maybe it’s an attempted coup from within. But there have been enemies that have been at work against the king. God has intervened. Maybe it was a battle of some kind. And in the wake of their destruction, he sings praise to God for working on his behalf. Verse 11: “My eyes have seen their downfall.” So this is a song of grateful praise that God has intervened on my behalf when these enemies were on the attack. And what the wicked did not understand and what the king rejoices in is that no opposition against God or his king can ever stand. The king revels in it, verse 4. He sings for joy. Verse 6, the wicked man’s completely unaware of it. He doesn’t get it.

You, O Lord, Are On High Forever

And that brings us to that center line, that pivot. The central message of the Psalm, verse 8: “You, O Lord, are on high forever.”

Now, two affirmations here. Number one: the Lord’s transcendence. He is on high. He’s exalted, unaffected, unthreatened by anything in the created order. He’s exalted above it. Number one: his transcendence. And number two: he affirms that his transcendence is never ending. “Lord, you are on high forever.” No rebellion, therefore, can ever succeed. And that’s the message of the psalm. God is exalted above all his created order, unaffected, unthreatened by any of it, and it is forever.

This is why the wicked cannot ultimately prosper. The Lord’s on high forever. He’s fresh from the battlefield. He’s reminded that because God is on high forever, his enemies cannot ultimately succeed. He may have allowed them for a time to be a menace, but what they can’t see is that rebellion against God cannot last. And so verse 9 elaborates.

Notice the explanation there. So now notice what’s happened in the psalm. Verse 4: the king looks back to what God has done in some recent experience. Verse 8: he affirms basic truths about God. And now, verse 9, he draws a broader conclusion. “For behold,” and notice here, now he’s speaking in the future tense. He was praising God for what he had done for him in the recent past, and now he speaks in the future tense: “Your enemies shall perish. All evildoers shall be scattered.”

So the king here is thinking in the big picture. This victory that I have just seen in this battle, this victory that God has given to us, is just a sampling of what must be, because the Lord is on high, because he reigns. Whatever the threat, however powerful, however well-organized, the Lord remains enthroned on high, unthreatened by anything in his created order. The wicked may be too blind to see it, but it remains, verse 7, that though they may sprout like grass and flourish, they are doomed to destruction forever.

And this was God’s purpose in it from the beginning. Verse 5: “his deep thoughts.” His deep thoughts that the wicked are too blind to see. God had a purpose in allowing them to flourish for a time. He allowed them to flourish for a time in their evil and in their rebellion so that he would cut them down in justice. So it’s the outworking of divine reprobation.

You might remember we saw this back in Psalm 73 where Asaph complains at the beginning of the psalm that it seemed that the world is so mismanaged and the wicked prosper and the righteous don’t seem to prosper as much. And then he comes around and he sees, “Lord, you, you have put them in slippery places.” And all this prosperity that they had, that they thought made them so stable and so sure, it was actually a slippery place. You put them there, and in their prosperity, they think they don’t need God. They think they’re unaccountable to God, and they pursue their wickedness and they pursue their prosperity, thinking that they’re the cause of their own success. And in the end, they slip, and they come down in judgment.

And that’s the thought here as well. In verse 7, they’re allowed to sprout like grass and flourish. Wicked think that they prosper in their evil. They think they’re self-sufficient. They think they’re unaccountable. But they’ve been duped—duped by their own success, duped by the prosperity that God has given to them. And what they don’t realize is that for them, their prosperity is going to become the occasion of their judgment. For a time, God gives them to flourish, but they don’t see that it’s like drinking poison. They get drunk on their own success. They begin to think that they’re the reason for their own success. They feel self-sufficient and they feel unaccountable to God. And they’re so self-satisfied and so secure in it all that they think they’re unaccountable. And when God comes in judgment, they’re surprised. Never saw that coming. He might’ve warned them. He might’ve pled with them. They hear it. They shrug it off. And when it comes, they’re surprised.

So verse 9: the king understands what in verse 6 the wicked are too blind to see, and that is verse 7, God’s enemies shall perish. All evildoers shall be scattered. In contrast to that, verse 10, the king speaks, and here he speaks with a distinct note of confidence: “But you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox. You have poured over me fresh oil.”

The horn in that culture, particularly in the poetry, becomes an image or a symbol of strength. Picture an ox with a horn; it’s a symbol of power, strength. It often becomes a metonymy, a stand-in for the king himself. He is the horn of God’s people. He says, “You’ve exalted my horn, you’ve made me strong.” And then he says, “You’ve poured over me fresh oil.” That is the king’s anointing. And by his anointing, he’s marked out as belonging to God.

God’s anointing of the king is a very important matter in the Psalms and in the Old Testament. The king is anointed. The prophet would come, pour oil over him. This was a symbol of God the Spirit coming over him, and now he belongs to God. And God will protect him. God will keep him strong. If he is to be brought down, that’s God’s doing. But no one else dare touch God’s anointed. This is why, by the way, in the life of David, when he’s chased by Saul in David’s earlier life, Saul’s like a madman going to try to kill David. And on two occasions, David had it in his hand to kill Saul. It’s right there. “Nope, I won’t do it. I won’t do it. You don’t touch the Lord’s anointed.” This was the test of David’s faith. God has promised to make me king. Right now, I’ve got another king here, but that’s God’s doing. If he’s to be brought down, that’s God’s doing. I won’t touch him.

And here the king is exalting in just that kind of safety. God has exalted my horn. He has poured fresh oil over me. He’s made me his king. I belong to him. I can’t fall. If God has made me his, then no enemy can stand against me. Verse 11 then points to the recent evidence: “My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies. My ears have heard the doom of my evil assailants.” That is to say, what I have just witnessed in God’s enabling us to defeat our enemies is just a sampling of what must come to all of those who oppose God or his king.

Our culture today, of course, is hell-bent on throwing off all restraints, throwing off all that reminds us of God as our creator and our accountability to God. What we have in our culture is an outworking of what we were warned of at Psalm 2, at the outset of the Psalter. The nations are in a rage against God, throwing off his rule. “We won’t have it.” We see it in a way in our own culture, which formerly had been something of a Christianized culture. We see it now with a particular kind of vengeance.

Often you’ll hear it pointed out that there have been cultures in the world and in history before ours that were much more wicked than ours. And that is true, except that ours has the particular character of apostasy. There’s a rebellion against what we know and what we have heard. And God’s kingdom is under assault. Morals that God has imposed on us and all his creatures are rejected outright. We won’t recognize ourselves as God’s creatures. We won’t even recognize ourselves as male or female as God’s creatures. Just shocking to read. I don’t know if these statistics are true or not; this is what I read in the news: that 40% of young people today and 60% of Democrats today believe that the murder of that insurance CEO in New York was justified. Who thought that in American culture, there could be such a collective approval of murder? The culture’s changed. God’s kingdom is under assault.

Now the king in Psalm 92 has seen assaults also, but he knows something. He knows something about God and he looks at these past judgments on the wicked, this recent one that he’s just seen, and he sees in that judgment on the wicked something more than just meets the eye. He takes encouragement, verse 7, that though the wicked sprout like grass and evildoers flourish, they are doomed to destruction forever. Verse 8: “You, O Lord, are on high forever.” Nothing will change that. “For behold, your enemies, O Lord, for behold, your enemies shall perish. All evildoers shall be scattered.”

That is to say, what I have witnessed in the destruction of my enemies is just a sampling. It’s just a dress rehearsal of what must be on a grand scale in the end. And so we see what we see often in the Psalms, that the king himself is taking a long view. He’s got the big picture in mind. He sees in these recent events a little picture of a big picture.

And it’s hard to miss, then, what we have seen over and again in the Psalms, and that is the king in the Psalms foreshadows the greater king who will come. Lying behind the Psalms and towering over the Psalms is this promise that God made to David back in 2 Samuel 7, that his son would come and he would rule on his throne forever. And there’s this great prospect of this kingdom that will come under David’s greater son. In verse 10 he tells us in effect that his recent triumph over his enemies, over God’s enemies, is prospective of their final defeat. The confidence of this faithful king is that God will fulfill his promise and God’s kingdom through David’s greater son will come to its glorious climax the world over.

Well, of course, we read through the Old Testament, we see that over and again through the Psalms, through the prophets. David’s son will come, he’ll take the government on his shoulders. With the zeal of the Lord of hosts, he’ll bring it all to pass. All enemies will fall. He’ll establish the kingdom in glory—the twofold aspect of the kingdom: the destruction of God’s enemies, the vindication of all of his people.

And of course we come to the New Testament and we find all of that culminating in the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, God’s appointed king. In his death, he defeats sin and dethrones the devil because he’s defeated sin. In his resurrection, he defeats death and leads us, God’s people, as our forerunner. In his ascension, he takes the throne and rules over all for the advance of his kingdom in the earth now through this age. And it’s only a matter of time before he, in his return, verse 9, we see all the enemies of God scattered.

Now, we tend to shy away from this “God will destroy all of his enemies” theme. Not very kind and gentle; it certainly doesn’t fit the sensibilities of our culture. Biblical writers are right up front with it. We find it from the beginning. Genesis chapter 3: the champion will come and he’ll crush the tempter. That’s picked up over and over again as we have seen in our Sunday evening studies of messianic prophecies. A prominent theme in it throughout is that God will, through his king, destroy all of his enemies and all opposition. You find it later in Genesis, Genesis 49, Judah. You find it in Numbers 24, Balaam’s prophecy. You find it in Hannah’s prayer in 1 Samuel 2. We find it over and again that God will bring his enemies to destruction through the work of his king.

This is a massively important theme. All through history, God has moved against the wicked. And each one, the psalmist tells us here to see in each one of them more than that has met the eye at the time. They’ve come and they’ve gone. Evil empires have come and they’ve gone. And there’s been Egypt and there’s been Assyria and there’s been Babylon and there’s been Medo-Persia and Greece and Rome and there’s been the Third Reich. And each one of them, in its fall, stands as a testimony of what will happen to all of God’s enemies in the end.

Revelation, of course, dramatizes that at graphic length and vivid ways. The world kingdom, singular—the world kingdom and all of its collective rebellion—goes against God with all of its force, but only until the king comes and they are put down. As I say, this is just an enormously important theme. This is God’s world. He’s the creator. We’re his creatures. We are accountable to him. And if the world is in rebellion against him, there must be an accounting. It’s a matter of right. It’s a matter of justice that they be called to account and that his enemies be punished. And the Lord God who reigns on high forever will make sure that that end’s coming.

And that’s David’s thought. We’re told again in Psalm 2—I keep going back to that, it’s the setup for the Psalter—told in Psalm 2 that though the nations rage in a rebellion against God, God says, “I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.” Now He also offers peace. “Kiss the Son.” Remember that? “Kiss the Son.” What a wonderful expression. Come to terms with God’s King. He offers peace. He’ll have you. You must repent. You must bow the knee. And He’ll have you. And it’s the glory of every Christian that we think we have the Lord Jesus who has borne that judgment that we deserve in our place. But history, the psalmist assures us, will witness the final elimination of all of those who refuse him. And that’s the psalmist’s theme in verses 1 to 11. The king, Psalm 92, speaking with such confidence of final triumph—what I have just seen God do on my behalf foreshadows what will happen in the end, in David’s greater son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Vindication Of God’s People

We get to verse 12 then, and the scene shifts a bit. Now, the king looks not to the elimination of God’s enemies, but in verses 12 to 14, he looks to the vindication of God’s people. The imagery here in these verses is the righteous flourishing in the temple precincts in the presence of God.

Verse 12: “The righteous flourish like a palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord. They flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age. They’re ever full of sap and green.” This is poetic imagery, but it’s speaking of the flourishing and the vindication of God’s people in God’s presence.

Verses 12 and 13: they’re like a palm tree. It goes up to 60, 70 feet tall, those plume-like foliage at the top, kind of regal and stately in appearance. Also the cedar of Lebanon—that’s a huge tree, like 120 feet tall they can become, living up in the mountains, just a majestic tree. All this is representative of eternal life, the endless joy of the righteous. Verse 14: bearing fruit even in old age, always green, they never die. Eternal life.

Verse 15: the righteous prosper forever in the presence of God. They have their own purpose and role. Verse 15: “it is to declare that the Lord is upright, that he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.” So he looks ahead and he sees in the end the righteous vindicated, flourishing in eternal life, and all of them collectively together singing the praise of God—that he is upright, that he is my rock, and that there’s no unrighteousness in him.

Now again, we should notice the setting of this psalm in the psalter. Book four is oriented to the exile. There is no king. And this is a good response in book four. This is the response of God’s people to the exile. We saw at the beginning of book four of the psalter, Psalm 90, that we have a psalm of Moses, the great deliverer who makes intercession for the people and prays with that hope at the end, “establish the work of our hands.” And then we had Psalm 91, where the king affirms his trust with confidence.

And then Psalm 92. What we find here is that this complements what we saw in Psalm 91: the king’s confidence in the destruction of his enemies. And there are some verbal what they call catchwords between the psalms. There’s a word that will appear in one psalm, and it appears in the next, and this is evidently why Ezra or the editors brought these two psalms together. Psalm 91 verse 8, the king is promised, “with your eyes you will look and see the retribution of the wicked.” In Psalm 92 verse 11, the king testifies, “my eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies.” In Psalm 91, the faithful king is promised that he’ll be invincible. We saw that last time. In Psalm 92 now, he sings his song of grateful praise for past victory that he has been given, which assures him that he will sing this song again, finally, in the end, when God’s great final defeat of his enemies comes.

And then we’ll see next time in the following weeks, Psalms 93 and following, we have these “the Lord reigns” Psalms. The Lord reigns, the Lord reigns, the Lord reigns. We’ll see that over and again. The God who reigns eternally will yet exert that reign in history and bring about his rule in this world.

So there are plenty of pointers here pointing us to the big picture, which, when you’ve read your Bible even once, you see this takes us to the Lord Jesus Christ. And in fact, even at the top of the psalm, in the superscript, “a song for the Sabbath.” This is the temple setting, as I mentioned. But it’s not at all certain here that the Sabbath in view is the weekly Sabbath. Or is it an eschatological Sabbath? A Sabbath in the end? That’s how the Targums recognize it. That’s how the Mishnah recognizes it. The ancient Jewish interpreters understood this to be referring to the end.

And in fact, the psalm itself encourages that outlook. We have here the shift in the tense to the future tense, looking at the final destruction of the wicked, the praise of the righteous, and the presence of God. Verse 14: “they’re still bearing fruit in their old age. They’re ever full of sap and grain.” And verse 12 even may hint of the same. The palm tree and the cedar tree in Lebanon—these are two very different trees. They grow in two very different elevations, in two very different climates. Palm trees grow in the low sea level climate, hot temperatures. The cedar trees, high elevations where it’s very cold. These trees don’t grow together. But there they are in the presence of God in the temple. This is poetic language pointing to this new creation kind of imagery where everything’s different now. Here we are in the presence of God with the final vindication of his people and the final triumph over all of his enemies.

And the setting here then is that the king is addressing—the whole setting of the psalm is that the king is addressing the congregation that’s gathered around him. In verse 13, he positions himself among the people of God to sing God’s praises with them. Brothers and sisters, that’s our destiny. It’s exactly where we’re going. We have glimpses of it and foretastes of it every time we meet together, we sing together. And we’re told in Hebrews chapter 2 that the Lord Jesus is in the congregation of his people with his children, singing praise to the Father. But what he pictures here is all of that finally in the end come to its grand climax where all the people of God will gather around their king and with their king sing praises to God.

What a glorious prospect. And until then, verse 7, when we see evildoers flourish, we maintain the confidence of the king in verse 8, the pivot of the psalm: “You, O Lord, on high forever.” God’s promise stands. The wicked will not flourish forever. The Lord Jesus Christ will reign. He will return and he will bring God’s kingdom to its glorious consummation. Amen.