I want you to hear the Lord speaking to you today from his Word. First, read Psalm 20. It’s only nine verses. We have time for nine verses.
Now that you’ve read the psalm, locate all the “May he” phrases. Pull them out with your eyes. Do you see them? There are nine of them. King David is praying may the Lord . . .
- Answer you
- Protect you
- Send you help
- Grant you support
- Remember your sacrifices
- Accept your offerings
- Give you the desire of your heart
- Make your plans succeed
- Grant your requests
What are you in distress about? Where do you need the Lord to answer you? Where in your life do you need his protection, his help, his support? What do you need him to remember, to accept, to grant? The point of this psalm is not to make the Lord out to be like Santa Claus, giving us our wishes and lists of demands. What I know about God is he saves his people and answers them (verses 6 and 9) in accordance with his will, through his power, for his glory, and in his timing. How do I know this? This psalm gives us a story from Exodus and reminds us of what our response should be to the Lord regardless of how he has answered our prayers (those continual burnt offerings we present to him, those things we sacrifice to him in prayer – verse 4).
How we should respond to God is found in verses 5, 7, and 8 of Psalm 20. There are four responses. We will . . .
- Shout for joy over his victories not ours
- Lift up our banners in his name
- Trust in him not our own strength
- Rise up and stand firm in him
Do you hear the story from Exodus David is referencing? Read verses 7 and 8 again. Now, turn to Exodus 14. God had just led his people through the Red Sea after years and years of them praying to him for deliverance. He answered them, protected them, sent them help and support, remembered their prayers, and gave them the desire of their hearts, but it was in his timing and in his way. Some people do not like this about God. There are times I don’t like this either, but according to Psalm 20 (and many other places in God’s Word), we’re not called to click a like icon on the ways of the Lord, but we are called to trust him. David is reminding us to trust God in Psalm 20. He is echoing Moses in Exodus 14. Exodus 14:9 show us what the Egyptians trusted. They pursued the Israelites with “all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots, horsemen and troops” because this is what they placed their hope in. An army of numbers is what they trusted. (Can you hear in that statement how we do the same thing today with social media? We trust in an army of numbers. Interesting how we don’t change as human beings. We evolve and become more sophisticated through technology, but our sin is the same. We’re still building our own towers of Babel trying to make a name for ourselves, and we’re still trusting in armies of large numbers.)
As the Egyptians pursued the Israelites (and the Israelites start unraveling – talking crazy, backpedaling, and misrepresenting what they actually asked of God), Moses says in verses 13 and 14, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today . . . The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”
Those who trust in anything or anyone other than Christ “are brought to their knees and fall” (Psalm 20:8). They end up drowning. God jams the wheels of our chariots (Ex. 14:25). The armies we build get swept away (Ex. 14:27). Our chariots and horses get covered by the mighty power of our God. They do not survive. Not one of them (Ex 14:28).
I know the Lord saves his people. He answers them with the saving power of his right hand (Ps 20:6), and I know who sits at his right hand. I know that trusting him, even when things don’t make sense, is logical because every other path, every other belief system, every other thing we could trust is a dead end in a sea of his power. Shout for joy, lift up your banner, trust him, rise up and stand firm, he is victorious and will show himself victorious in his time and in his way. Trust him.