Thank you for joining me in this reflection on Psalm 20. I try each week to write a reflection on a psalm following the reading plan in the Seeing Jesus Together Journal, which is a resource that we use as a church to foster discipleship and Bible reading. Every day, we reflect on a portion of Scripture taken from both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible and on Saturdays we spend time in the Psalms. If you want to find out more or follow the reading plan through the week, then please click here.
What I love about much of the Bible is how it points forward. The Old Testament is constantly referencing different aspects of the Messiah who will save God’s people, who will be Immanuel - God with us. The prayer in Psalm 20 is a prayer of blessing, calling on the God of Israel to bless the king and to protect him from his enemies. This was certainly prayed over David and the other faithful kings who came after him. But looking at Psalm 20 I couldn’t help but see how it is also a prayer over the Messiah, over Jesus. “Messiah” simply means “anointed one” and Psalm 20 hints at this messianic idea, where it says, “Now I know that the Lord saves his anointed.”1 Looking at this prayer through the lens of Jesus, we can see how God worked marvellously in the life of Christ to help Him as He saved humanity from our sin and shame.
One of the greatest examples of how the Father helped Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane.2 On the night that He was betrayed, He goes with His disciples to a little olive grove to the east of Jerusalem, where He prays that He would be strengthened ready for His death.
Jesus is under such a weight of stress and distress that He begins to sweat blood, which the body can only do under immense psychological pressure. As the drops of blood run down His face and fall onto the floor, Jesus is praying to the Father to remove the cup, the wrath of God, which has been given to Him. He looks at His weak, human body and He doesn’t know if it is up to the task of dealing with all of the wrath that your sin deserved. The pain, the stress, the agony of the entire ordeal is palpable in Luke’s account. Yet Jesus prays an extraordinary prayer. He prays, “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” He prays that the Father’s will would be done. In this ultimate act of submission, Jesus places Himself in our position, in the way of the oncoming wrath that we deserve.
But how does Psalm 20 feature in this? Read along Luke’s narrative of Christ’s final moments with Psalm 20. The Father protects Jesus so that He does not die before His crucifixion. The Lord answers Him by sending Him an angel who would strengthen Him, who would encourage and build Him up before His death. The Father remembers His offering and sacrifice on the cross, as Christ takes on the debt that we should have paid, setting us free. And ultimately, Christ’s desire is to see the will of the Father accomplished, to see His people saved, and to see His Father glorified is granted. Jesus wins the victory over death as He rises again three days later - hallelujah!
And there is such certainty in this prayer. It’s not just a prayer hoping that God will answer but rather a prayer certain because the psalmist knows that the Lord saves his anointed. The Lord has saved His anointed as He rose Christ from the grave. It is exactly in the resurrection that we see that God, “will answer him from holy heaven with the saving might of his right hand.”3 The mighty hand of the Lord lifting Him up out of the grave is His answer.
Our response should to join in with the psalmist with a shout of praise over our salvation and to proclaim that the Lord is our God and He is mighty to save. With joy we declare that Christ is risen and we are risen with Him. What is spoken over Christ in this psalm is spoken over us because we are in Christ. Because we are united to Christ, we can trust that the Lord will save us, that He will protect us, that He will send us help. Through Jesus, we enter into those promises.
Is your trust in Jesus? Or are you trusting in “chariots and horses”?4 They will collapse and fall, but in Christ we will rise and stand upright.5 Our trust needs to be in the name of Jesus, clinging on to Him for salvation for if we are in Christ then we will surely be saved as He was saved, surely we will be resurrected as He was resurrected. That is our hope, our prayer, our faith.
Heavenly Father,
You will never leave your anointed one, nor will you fail to protect Him. You have worked mightily in the life of Christ to reconcile us to You and to raise us to new life. Help us, Oh Lord, to trust in you for our protection, our salvation, and our provision. So that You name might be glorified.
Amen
Psalm 20:6
You can read the story in Luke 22:39-40
Psalm 20:6
Psalm 20:7
Psalm 20:8