It Starts Small

¹ May the Lord answer you in a day of trouble;
may the name of Jacob’s God protect you.
² May he send you help from the sanctuary
and sustain you from Zion.

Psalm 20:1-2

May the LORD answer you: This was a prayer from a multitude or congregation (based on the use of we in Psalm 20:5) that God would answer the prayers of one, who in context is the king readying for battle. We know that “you” refers to one person, because it is in the singular. The picture is that of King David, before battle – perhaps something like the battle with the Syrians in 2 Samuel 10 – at the tabernacle of God and offering prayers and sacrifices. Here the onlooking multitude responds to the king’s prayer with the cry, “May the LORD answer you in the day of trouble.” With the eye of faith, we see that this also speaks to the great battle fought by one greater than King David – by Jesus, the Son of David and the King of Kings. We can imagine this prayer being offered prophetically for Jesus as He pointed Himself toward the cross, where He would fight the greatest battle against sin, death, and Satan’s power.

Answer you in the day of trouble…he send you help from the sanctuary and sustain you: After the pattern of Hebrew poetry, this idea is intensively expressed by the use of repetition with slight variation. David was about to lead Israel into battle, and he needed the help of God in each of these ways. King David was about to lead Israel as a whole into battle, so the language is full of references appealing to the LORD as the God of Israel.

· The LORD: Using Yahweh, the covenant name of God.

· The God of Jacob: Remembering Israel’s patriarch.

· From the sanctuary: Calling to mind the tabernacle, the center of Israel’s worship. This word for sanctuary is simply ‘holiness’, a synonym here for Zion, where already God’s ark, but not yet His Temple, signified His presence.

 Out of Zion: Referring to the hills of Jerusalem. The prayer that God would strengthen you out of Zion is fitting for more than the field of battle. It is also appropriate for the church pulpit, which is a field of battle in a spiritual sense. Spurgeon wrote along the lines that this verse is a benediction befitting a Sabbath morning, and may be the salutation either of a pastor to his people, or of a church to its minister. I believe it is a prayer for our everyday lives.

May the LORD receive sacrifice.

May he remember all your offerings
and accept your burnt offering.Selah

Psalm 20:3

May He remember all your offerings: Sacrifice was commonly made at important moments, such as on the eve of battle. This is a prayer that the LORD would see and receive the sacrifices King David would make before war.

All your offerings: The hebrew word used is minchah, which refers to a gratitude-offering. It is rarely used to signify a bloody sacrifice.

May He remember…and accept your burnt sacrifice: This reminds us that not all sacrifices are accepted before God. If they were not offered with faith and in accordance with the Levitical system, they would not be remembered or accepted by God.

i. Burnt sacrifice: The Hebrew word olah is used here and meant a bloody sacrifice. The blood of the victim was spilt at the altar, and the flesh consumed. So we can see the difference. God accepts a graditude offering but offerings given without faith were considered a bloody sacrifice. The place of faith was important in the Old Testament sacrificial system. The one who brought the offering had to trust in the ultimate, perfect sacrifice that God would one day provide, the one that each animal sacrifice pointed toward. The prayer for acceptance of the burnt offering is very graphic, since the word rendered ‘accept’ is literally ‘esteem fat.

Selah: The idea in the Hebrew for this word (occurring 74 times in the Old Testament) is for a pause. Most scholars think it speaks of a reflective pause, a pause to meditate on the words just spoken. It may also be a musical instruction, or a musical interlude of some kind.  We take this Selah as an opportunity to consider Jesus, and see that this prayer was appropriate for Him as He faced the cross. The prayer was worthy to be prayed – that God would indeed remember and accept the offering Jesus made on the cross, which could rightly be called a burnt sacrifice, as it was burned with the fire of God’s righteous judgment, and Jesus held nothing back in this sacrifice.

May the LORD grant fulfillment.

May he give you what your heart desires
and fulfill your whole purpose.

Psalm 20:4

May He grant you according to your heart’s desire: In this moment, King David had one desire – to defend the people of God and the kingdom in covenant with God. Therefore it was good to pray, “May He grant you according to your heart’s desire.” When our desires are in accord with the plan and will of God for us, we can pray this same prayer with confidence. We can also look for God to bring our desires more and more into conformity with His, in the course of our Christian growth.

And fulfill all your purpose: Since David’s purpose was victory for the people of God, this was a good and necessary prayer to pray. We see this statement also applied to the great desire and purpose for the King of Kings as He went to battle to accomplish our salvation. We look to Jesus, struggling in the Garden of Gethsemane and say to Him, “May He grant You according to Your heart’s desire, and fulfill all Your purpose.”

On a personal level, we also see that God gives each one a purpose to fulfill in His great plan of the ages. The key to a life of fulfilled desire and achieved purpose is to find our place in His great plan, instead of hoping to make God an actor in our plan. Jesus knew this fulfilled desire and purpose, shown by His prayer:

I have glorified you on the earth by completing the work you gave me to do.

John 17:4

The Apostle Paul knew this fulfilled desire and purpose, shown by these words toward the end of his earthly life:

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

2 Timothy 4:7

May the LORD answer prayer.

Let us shout for joy at your victory
and lift the banner in the name of our God.
May the Lord fulfill all your requests.

Psalm 20:5

Let us shout for joy at your victory: This was the confidence the people had in King David’s success. They had so much trust in God’s deliverance that they had already planned to set up our banners of joyful celebration. The banners are “Our flags of defiance to the enemy, or our tokens of triumph to God’s glory, who hath given us the victory.

May the LORD fulfill all your requests: Once again the prayer demonstrates the confidence that God would hear and fulfill the prayers of His king. This was true both of David and the Son of David (John 17:1-5); of the King of Israel and the King of Kings. Jesus prayed for success in His work on the cross, and it was unthinkable that the Father would not answer the prayers of the Son.

The LORD saves His anointed.

Now I know that the Lord gives victory to his anointed;
he will answer him from his holy heaven
with mighty victories from his right hand.

Psalm 20:6

Now I know that the Lord gives victory to his anointed: Here King David expressed the great confidence that God would answer the prayers of His people. God would save (rescue) the king (His anointed).

His anointed: In a sense, all of the kings of Israel were God’s anointed because they were all appointed to their office by a literal anointing of oil poured upon their head. This literal anointing with oil was a picture of the spiritual anointing with the Holy Spirit needed for their duty of leading the people of God as king. In saying “His anointed,” David refers to himself as king. At the same time, it was also understood that there would come an ultimate Anointed One, the perfect King of Israel – the Meshiach, the Christ, the Messiah (as in Psalm 2 and others). It was true of David and Israel in his day that the Lord saves His anointed and his people; it is even more perfectly true of the ultimate and perfect Anointed One, Jesus Christ. The verb ‘saves’, from the same root as ‘victorious,’ could yield the translation ‘the LORD gives victory to his anointed. The root of the Hebrew word translated saves (in Psalm 20:6 and 20:9) comes from the same root in Hebrew as the name of Jesus.

Indeed, the LORD saves His anointed:

The Father saved the Son from sin.

The Father saved the Son from pride.

The Father saved the Son from self-reliance.

The Father saved the Son from doubt.

The Father saved the Son from failure.

The Father saved the Son from death, by raising Him from the dead.

he will answer him from his holy heaven with mighty victories from his right hand: This confirms and strengthens the idea that the LORD saves His anointed.

He is saved by an answer; God is not silent to His anointed.

He is saved from heaven; God hears and sends help from His throne.

He is saved with power, with the saving strength.

He is saved with skill and favor, with the strength that comes from His right hand.

Each of these was true for King David, but even more perfectly true of the Son of David, the ultimate anointed of the LORD.

Trusting in the name of the LORD.

Some take pride in chariots, and others in horses,
but we take pride in the name of the Lord our God.

Psalm 20:7

 Some take pride in chariots, and others in horses: David knew what kings and their people usually trusted in – human strength and the ways it is often expressed (in chariots and in horses). If writing today, David might say something like, “Some trust in nuclear weapons and some trust in tanks.” It is part of human nature to put our trust in such things. Chariots and horses are very terrible, especially to raw soldiers unaccustomed to their whirling onset; but the Name is mightier.

Part of the reason David refused to trust in chariots and horses was because God had commanded it so, commanding in the Law of Moses that the Kings of Israel would not multiply horses for themselves, either for use in cavalry or to pull war-chariots (Deuteronomy 17:16).

David drew a strong contrast. Another way to say this, they trust in those things, but our trust is in God. In the spiritual war, in which we are all engaged, the first and necessary step to victory is, to renounce all confidence in the wisdom and strength of nature and the world; and to remember, that we can do nothing, but in the name, by the merits, through the power, and for the sake of Jesus Christ, our Lord, and our God.

we take pride in the name of the Lord our God: David put his trust in the person, the character of God. He didn’t carry the name of the LORD as a magical incantation; rather the name speaks of the comprehensive character of God and is an expression of His faithfulness to His covenant with Israel. By the name of God is generally understood, in Holy Writ, the various properties and attributes of God: these properties and attributes make up and constitute the name of God.  This – the character and faithfulness of God – was stronger to David and Israel than thousands of chariots or horses.

The triumph of those who trust in the LORD.

They collapse and fall,
but we rise and stand firm.
⁹ Lord, give victory to the king!
May he answer us on the day that we call.

Psalm 20:8-9

They collapse and fall, but we rise and stand firm: David’s trust in God could be justified on many grounds, but one of those was the simple truth that David found that trusting God works, he learned that this faith leads to success. Those who trusted in chariots and horses have bowed down and fallen. Those who remembered the name of the LORD have risen and stand upright. Remember, Paul said to stand. Our posture is to stand.

 Lord, give victory to the king! May he answer us on the day that we call: The rescue David confidently sang of had not completely come. He still needed to cry out, “Save, LORD!” He still had his trust in the anticipated answer of the LORD.

The psalm ends in the same way it began: with a sincere prayer from the people to give David victory in his battle.