Let us turn to our Bibles to Psalm 72. Psalm 72. It’s a little longer.
I guess not quite as long as 71. Psalm 72. Let us listen attentively to the Word of God.
Give the king your judgments, O God, and your righteousness to the king’s son. He will judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice. The mountains will bring peace to the people, and the little hills by righteousness.
He will bring justice to the poor of the people. He will save the children of the needy, and will break in pieces the oppressor. They shall fear you as long as the sun and the moon endure throughout all generations.
He shall come down like rain upon the grass before mowing, like showers that water the earth. In his day the righteous shall flourish in abundance of peace until the moon is no more. He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth.
Those who dwell in the wilderness will bow before him, and his enemies will lick the dust. The kings of Tarshish and of the Isles will bring presents. The king of Sheba and Seba will offer gifts.
Yes, all kings shall fall down before him. All nations shall serve him, for he will deliver the needy when he cries. The poor also, and him who has no helper will spare the poor and needy, and will save the souls of the needy.
He will redeem their life from oppression and violence, and precious shall be their blood in his sight. And he shall live, and the gold of Sheba will be given to him. Purr also will be made for him continually, and daily he shall be praised.
And there will be an abundance of grain on the earth on the top of the mountains. Its fruits shall wave like the Lebanon, and those of the cities shall flourish like the grass of the earth. His name shall endure forever.
His name shall continue as long as the sun. All men shall be blessed in him, and all nations shall call him blessed. Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only does wondrous things.
And blessed be his glorious name forever. And let the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen and Amen.
The prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended. Let us pray. Father God, as we go through this psalm, may it strike into our hearts the wonders of who you are and how, Lord God Almighty, you have continued to expand your kingdom and our lives in so many ways, but also in the world publicly as we see the growth of the church from a small nation of Israel to the four corners of the earth.
May this be encouragement for us God and also a direction in our lives and our prayers to work to this end as we can in our small corner of the world. Amen. In this psalm we have what could be described as a prophetic prayer.
It is a prayer of David. Verse 20. The prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended.
But clearly he’s pointing beyond the prayer for his son Solomon to the kingdom of Jesus Christ. It is both the wish and desire of David that his son Solomon would be an upright and godly king over the people. That comes out clearly in the first few verses.
But it’s more than that. It is also a prophecy of Christ and his reign then and now. It becomes more and more obvious as we read through the psalm where we read about Gentile kings praying, paying, excuse me, homage to the king of Israel.
So by the end of the psalm prayer we have David rejoicing in the reign of King Jesus in verse 17. His name shall endure how long? Forever. His name shall continue as long as how long? The sun.
And men shall bless him. All nations shall cry and call him blessed. Not just some nation.
Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel who only does wondrous things. In his glory and glorious is his name forever and the whole earth will be filled with his glory, not just the sliver of land of Israel. So by the end of the psalm he’s beholding the glories of the, partly of what we live in here and now, but ultimately into heaven and the new heaven and the new earth.
And so before even that midpoint of the psalm there are a number of hints and descriptions as well that David speaks of more than King Solomon, that his reign for instance will last until the moon passes away, which is a very, very long time clearly, and the like. And so this everlasting dimension to the psalm points therefore to the person and work of Jesus in his kingly reign as our mediator and as our Lord. David understood this because he understood that any earthly kingdom, including the kingdom that he was a part of, he was a king of, is but temporary because of the sin of the people and of their leaders.
We live in a fallen world. He recognizes this. David and the saints also knew the nature of God who was without a body.
He’s universal therefore and not a local pagan deity as was everywhere else in all other religions. Of course they had to wait and see the outward manifestation of the Lord’s rule among all. All this meant of course that David’s psalm here, this prayer, looks beyond his son to one greater than Solomon.
So there’s a number of reasons besides the text itself describing it beyond David’s lifetime. And since these are both in view, that is, of King Solomon, you’ll see the title here of the psalm. It says, A Psalm of Solomon or for Solomon, his son, but more than that for one who is greater than Solomon, one who is greater than David, our Lord and Master Jesus Christ.
And so the title structure of the sermon here, Prayer for the King, King Solomon or earthly kings for that matter, the description of the Messiah’s reign and then the glorious reign of God Almighty in the future.
Prayer for the King’s Righteous Kingdom
So prayer for the king’s righteous kingdom, verse 1, specifically praying that the king would be given, what? Wealth, power, prestige? No, but what is a constant theme in the Old Testament, give the king your judgments, O God, and your righteousness to the king’s son. King Solomon and perhaps to his grandson as well, the next in line, but certainly any leader across the world for that matter, given, that is, it is the Lord God who gives and grants.
David, of course, will instruct his child as best he did or would or could at the time, but ultimately he recognizes any lasting wisdom that the king needs for being a just and upright king must come from whom? God. Give, O Lord. He cries to him, for God is the one who gives what we need and he is the source of all goodness.
Our prayer should be for the private, of course, and public citizens, but it’s always to God ultimately that we pray for. 1 Timothy 2.1 reminds us of this. Therefore, Paul writes, I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers and intercessions and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings, for all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceful life in all godliness and reverence.
This, in other words, prayer of David for his son, give the king, the future king, my son Solomon, your judgments, your wisdom, righteous acts as a king is but a particular application of a general principle. This is what we want for all our leaders. We don’t want wicked leaders.
Nobody’s like desiring for a tyrant. And give what? Judgments and righteousness. What exactly does that mean? These are parallel ideas, parallel words here.
You have that synonymous parallelism in Hebraic poetry here, saying the same thing two different ways. But it’s the rule and the government of a king. And judgment is not equivalent to what we can typically think of today like making a ruling over a court case like we have with Luan or we have with the Supreme Court.
Oh, that’s judgment. The king doesn’t, you know, the president doesn’t do judgment. He does execution.
And the senators and representatives, they don’t do judgment. They make law. They legislate.
You don’t have that. It’s not how the world was running for a very long time, brothers and sisters. So the word judgment here covers all three of those branches.
The king could make law and he would make judgments and he would execute said judgments as well or said laws. So the word here, judgment, covers a lot of those things. That’s what you need to understand.
And therefore when he says give the king judgments, he’s saying give him righteous laws, righteous execution, righteous legislation, all of that. It’s also parallel with righteous. So in your righteousness to the king’s son, right, what? Righteous judgment is the implication.
Righteous acts, righteous decisions, etc., all, whatever it takes to be a good king. That’s his prayer here. Edicts and commands and whatever else.
So, and of course, this rule, this judgment is God’s judgment. Not in the sense that the king hears voices from heaven and, hey, I’ve got the right answer, but rather a kind of wisdom, of course, as we saw in the life of Solomon with the two women, for example, and the baby, in which he exercises discernment. In the here and now, like the rest of us, are called to exercise discernment.
But we pray that he would be given even more discernment than us because the power of the king is so dangerous, you want to have him to be more righteous and more wise. And that’s his prayer here. The rule, therefore, of righteousness, of righteous judgments, of justice and equity amongst our magistrates is according to the Lord’s will.
It should be according to the Lord’s desire and commands for us. And that will is found in a twofold manner, as you will recall, I’m sure. God’s will in general revelation or His law reflected and expressed in general revelation that’s outside the Bible.
And then, of course, within special revelation inside the Bible. The first case, of course, is often described as natural law. The Ten Commandments written on the heart do not murder.
On the flip side, rather protect. Unbelievers do this intuitively. You see this over in Japan, in Korea and whatnot.
They have a very long secular culture, and yes, they’ve done a number of wicked things and the like, but still they have a large measure of order in society without having Christian influence. How is that possible? We ask ourselves sometimes. Because God has so designed the world that way that they recognize, even without expressly submitting to God’s rule and power, that murder is kind of bad if you let it run rampant.
And we’ve got to protect life to some extent or our society just collapses. So they understand this. This is what I’m referring to.
And there’s also this built-in application in nature, for lack of a better way of describing it, of the law of God. So it’s not just a general sense of, well, you know, you’ve got to preserve life and so we’re all called to preserve life. But specifically, men are called to preserve life because what’s built into nature is we are literally bigger and stronger and thus we are given what? The responsibility to protect others physically, in a physical sense.
And all societies recognize that. And a lot of this stuff we know intuitively, we know by practice, we’re taught by our parents. And of course, more narrowly, special revelation.
There’s a lot of overlap between general revelation and special revelation, but of course more clarity, detailed applications, illustrations and stories like we see through 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Samuel that I’ve done on Wednesday night, for example, and showing us these things, showing us even the unbelievers do a lot of these activities. But also the Bible gives us other things you can’t find elsewhere in general revelation like baptism. It’s just not there.
The gospel is not there. You can only find Jesus Christ here in the Bible. And to go one step further here in his prayer, give my son and of course by extension all godly leaders, judges, sheriffs, whatever they are, righteous judgments, righteous equity in practice and the like, is through providential means.
It’s through providential means. Prayer, of course, is a providential means in the sense that it’s something we’re called to do and exercise. If we want wisdom, we have to ask of the Lord.
If we have to ask for ourselves, we need to ask for others as well or pray for others in their name as it were. If any of you like wisdom we read, let them ask of God who gives to all liberally and without reproach and it will be given to him, James 1.5. That prayer is not just for us, it’s for our leaders. We pray that they would be given proper wisdom and prudence.
We pray that they would, of course, be converted from a sinful life, that they would be granted therefore a godly wisdom, not just an earthly wisdom, which is still pretty good. You can get a lot of things done, like I said, with pagan societies and a righteous rule above all. But it takes effort as well as prayer.
It takes training as well as prayer in fasting and reading of the Bible. Elsewhere in one of the Psalms you recall David praises the Lord for training his hand for war. He learned how to use a sword and the like.
It wasn’t as though God came down and taught him how to fight. Nobody believes that. What he’s saying is, in the way you guide the cause and effect of history, Lord, you’ve taught me through my training how to fight.
I learned that someone taught him. He had experience. We know some of his experience as a kid with a sling.
God didn’t teach him that in the sense of like a charismatic, but in the sense of the rest of us. Ordinary providence, you learn. His father probably taught him or his older brother taught him how to use a sling and then a sword.
A soldier taught him that probably and how to put on armor and all that. He learned all these things through ordinary activities and practice and training. This is good.
This is proper. And we ought to do both. And so the Lord gives us good circumstances and timing, gives us a good physical body perhaps for warfare, teachers and training, or whatever else we need in our life to get things done for our vocations and calling.
Description of the Messiah’s Righteous Kingdom
The description here, verses 2-16, the bulk of the psalm, inscription of the Messiah’s grand or righteous kingdom, verses 2-16. Why do I think it’s the Messiah, the God-man in particular, King Jesus? Well, we have some of the evidence here. The King shall live forever, longer than the moon, verse 5. That’s before you get to the halfway point.
And when you get to the halfway point, it becomes more and more clear. His name shall endure forever, verse 17. Prayer should be offered to him.
That’s quite interesting, isn’t it? Prayer should be offered to him. Daily praising the King. His rule is over from sea to sea and he saves the souls of the needy as well.
We have a number of descriptions that fit Jesus our Lord and Redeemer quite well. And as the God-man, he rules and is a mediator for his people. He rules directly over the church, but he also rules indirectly over all things for our good, as you recall.
So that distinction is important because those who do not submit to Jesus, unbelievers, are clearly not part of his kingdom. Yet they are used in God’s providence and by Jesus Christ as the mediator for our good. King Cyrus protecting the Jews in the Old Testament.
A pagan king, why is he protecting the Jews? And the passage is very clear because it was prophesied and the Lord moved his heart. And same with today, we’re thankful that there are leaders, even if they aren’t Christians, who, as it were, protect and preserve the church even if unwittingly, as it were, in the Western Christian tradition. So let’s go through the verses here.
Judging the people, verses 2-4, a repeated theme as well in verses 12-13. Description of blessing from a good king is what we are reading here. He will judge your people with righteousness and your poor with justice.
This is a good thing. This is what we want. Helping the poor in particular is emphasized as one of, as it were, a sub-theme in the Old Testament, especially for judges, especially for kings and magistrates.
Verse 12-13, pick that up again. He would deliver the needy and the poor also, who has no helper. And even the children of the poor, verse 4, he will bring justice to the poor and to save the children of the needy, so the next generation even.
This is a picture of, as it were, idealized perfect kingdom and a perfect king, which of course is ultimately King Jesus for His people and for us even now. The blessings through judgment is described as breaking the oppressors, in verse 4, and He will break the pieces of the oppressor. We read of blessings upon the land like rain.
He shall come down like rain, verse 6, upon the grass before mowing. That’s a picture not of taking care of the lawn, but a metaphor of how much blessings upon the nation when your king is righteous and upright. It’s like a beautiful rain.
We can appreciate that now in our drought. We want more rain. We know what that’s like.
That’s the kind of blessing a good king or a good leader or a good president or a good governor of a state would bring upon their people, because they’re given that kind of power. Even in our democracy or republic, they have a lot of power compared to the rest of us. And if it’s used for good, this beautiful picture will describe them, but ultimately describes our Lord and Redeemer who reigns over our soul and gives us the gospel due upon our hearts for our dry and thirsty soul.
The righteous shall flourish, verse 7, it describes there as well. So these are different descriptions interwoven through the verses here, you’ll see, and different beautiful metaphors, a picture ultimately of heaven. Christ’s universal reign in particular is highlighted in verses 8 through 11.
Clearly not a picture of Israel’s universal dominance. He shall have dominion also from sea to sea. Well, that never happened under Solomon.
It just simply didn’t. It didn’t happen under any of the kings. David and King Solomon were the greatest in the extent of the influence and affluence of Israel at the time and never powerful as this prayer and as this picture of Jesus did and does.
And so this is therefore a universal reign of our Lord and Savior, and that’s one of the titles you see in some of the Bibles on this psalm. And Christ fulfilled all these earthly promises for the Jews ultimately as we know. In 1 Corinthians we read about Jesus being the yea and amen of all the promises.
The yea and amen. The land itself is a picture of heaven. The kingship is a picture of Jesus at the type, and therefore the kingdom is a type of Christ our Lord and His kingship over all and over His people in particular in the here and now.
And so this beautiful picture, when you go into some of these details, they all highlight His dominion shall be from sea to sea, from the rivers to the ends of the earth. It’s just saying the same thing from a different perspective geographically. And those who dwell in the wilderness, even the enemies will lick the dust.
And it continues on to describe these things from sea to sea. A striking picture, verse 8, of universal dominion. We would say from the Atlantic to the Pacific and everything in between, which is across the entirety of the globe, is Christ’s.
The nations around them vying for local control with their local gods. David is claiming God is over all things. David believed the Lord would grow His kingdom across the world.
In verse 9 we read, those who dwell in the wilderness will bow before Him and His enemies will lick their feet. We would say the remote savage places will even bow before Him. That’s the picture.
Every man, woman, and child, high and low, small nations, large nations, obscure nations and tribes will bow before Him and honor Him. Even the enemies will be conquered. They will lick the dust.
And the implication is of the feet of the King. And that’s clearly a sign of subservience and of inferiority before God Almighty Jesus Christ, indicating that this prophecy of the present age looks at the age to come in which all the enemies of Jesus will bow before Him and every knee shall bow. The kings of the isles, verse 10, that paints a picture, again, of the extent and universal dominion from sea to sea, even particularly Tarshish, which is historically considered to be part of Spain.
And then, of course, to Sheba and Seba, which are further south of the nations there in southern Arabia. So far away, east and west, north and south, we would say today, all these different descriptions to say the universality of this kingdom, which is clearly not the Jewish kingdom. David knew this.
David understood. He was looking into the future. And all the nations shall serve Him.
Yes, all the kings shall bow down, verse 11, before Him. All nations shall serve Him, all the goyim. That’s us, brothers and sisters.
And it’s a joyous service. It doesn’t have to be the kind of subservience that Jesus spoke of. I mentioned this morning where Jesus said, I don’t call you servants anymore in the sense of servants don’t know their father’s, their master’s will.
They just do whatever they’re told. But I’m telling you more than a servant would ever know. So I call you what? Friends.
That’s the picture here. You’re a servant, but you’re a servant friend, hyphenated. And we are thankful and blessed for that.
So that’s the picture here of this. Some did, as we know, come from Sheba and Seba and recognized Solomon, for example. And others have for the last 2,000 years, some of the kings, King Henry, King Edward VI, for example, we heard this morning, honored Jesus and brought his whole nation as a word to Jesus.
And this will happen in the future in varying degrees, but ultimately in the fullness of the new heaven and the new earth. And so you see this progression over history that we are living in now in these verses, condensed and compressed. The universal blessing, not just the universal extent of the kingdom in verses 8 and following.
The blessing, verses 12 and 15, where he repeats the idea again. I mentioned some of the themes to be coming up here of the poor and the needy, for example. I mentioned that earlier.
So I go to verse 13 and 14. He will spare the poor and needy and will save the souls of the needy and redeem their life from the oppression. I hope you recognize that language as also spiritual language, right? Of salvation, the redemption of our souls, of your souls.
Marvelous language of spiritual deliverance from sin and of Satan’s dominion. We are indeed needy for the saving of our souls, not just needy as poor people, but needy for deliverance from the oppression of Satan. Those are the words used here, oppression, violence, to save the souls of the needy.
That’s us. This is Jesus Christ. This is one of the blessings of being in his kingdom, being saved from hell and of Satan’s kingdom.
Universal life, verse 15, and he shall live. He who? The king. The gold of Sheba will be given to him.
Prayer also will be made for him continually and daily he shall be praised. This has got to be Jesus. Why would you do this to Solomon or any other king? Prayers to him? Wow.
He shall live. It’s just simply, and he shall live. Jesus is what? The resurrection of life.
We heard this this afternoon. There’s a call of repentance to the audience that was commemorating the passing of a member of our church, a former member. He is the resurrection of life.
He shall live forever, and we who are in him shall live forever as well. And we are in him by what? By faith, and faith alone, not by our works, lest any man should boast. And we will reign for him and with him throughout eternity as the picture, the glorious picture in the book of Revelation describes for us.
And that leads us then to the third point. I’ve moved from the king, a prayer for the kingdom, for the magistrates and the earthly people of this world, to a description ultimately, clearly of Jesus and his universal dominion and reign as our mediator and redeemer, and here rejoicing in that reality of the kingdom of God, verses 17 and following.
Rejoicing in God’s Glorious Kingdom
The abundance of grain upon the earth and the like are more descriptions here in verse 16, and the fruit is, again, metaphors and pictures of the glorious blessings of the king for his people.
And verse 17 describes then onward clearly a praise before him. His name shall endure forever. His name shall continue as long as the sun before him, as long as the moon.
That’s a long, long time. That’s another way of saying what? For eternity. There’s that concreteness in which the Hebrew people spoke and talked.
It doesn’t literally mean, well, you know, another million years and the sun dies out. I guess that’s the end of Jesus’ reign. This means forever.
Clearly, forever. This is about our Lord and Savior, God’s glorious kingdom, brothers and sisters, that we get to see a great manifestation of it. King David in all his glory, and Solomon as well, we think about this.
At least I think about it. Maybe it was just me. It would be great to be back then and see the beautiful temple.
We saw pictures of that on Wednesday night, right? The best artist’s rendition of this. Gold plate this and silver that. It would be beautiful.
That pales in comparison to what we have now. They didn’t see Jesus and understood the Messiah and the way and the fullness that we have, brothers and sisters, in the revelation of the New Testament era. They were confused in a lot of ways.
You can see it at times. Even David was. This is a great rejoicing that we see and have for ourselves.
By God here, then, in the third point, I’m emphasizing the divine origin of God’s kingdom and as one who sustains it by His might and power. David praises the Lord of the Covenant. The Lord God, verse 18, blessed be the Lord God.
Jehovah, I am that I am. That is, I never change. I am always the same.
And so when I gave my word, I gave my promise, I will never break it. That’s what that name points to. Recognizing David as the divine origin of grace and that the kingdom of David is part of God’s kingdom, although in typical form, of course, with some activities that we wouldn’t do today, certainly the priesthood being one of those.
But nevertheless, the essence is the same. He was in Christ, the Messiah’s kingdom, in a childish or weakened form in many ways, humanly speaking, yet a real form nevertheless. David was justified.
Paul argues that point. Paul’s like, look, you know why you’re justified, Romans 4? Because David was justified. And Abraham was justified by faith.
He goes to the Old Testament. He’s saying, they were saved the same way we are saved today. There’s no difference.
And so David, although again, didn’t have the full taste of what it means, that is with respect to sanctification, as it were, and greater illumination, nevertheless, his substance was saved the same. David therefore knows as one who understands not only creation, that our creator is beyond creation. He’s not physical.
He’s infinite. And of course, by the word of God telling us that he is without end and has not a body like man, recognizes therefore the Lord’s handiwork, which is what his kingdom ultimately will therefore also be eternal. And his kingdom must have then therefore been temporary.
I think the unbelievers in the Old Testament understood and saw a lot more than we recognize at times. And this is part of the, I think, proper reasoning that they would go through. Now, the name here in verse 17, his name shall endure forever.
His name shall continue as long as the sun, right? May hearken us to the third commandment. You should not, you know, blaspheme the Lord. You should honor his name and not dishonor it and the like.
It’s not the name, qua name, as much as the name represents God, right? That’s what it’s really about. It’s not a magic thing. So the name here, however, is more along the lines of his kingdom.
Just put it, his kingdom shall endure forever. His kingdom shall continue as long as the sun or his rule or his reign. So the name here is shorthand for what God is doing as the king, King Jesus.
The name of Jesus shall be exalted. We’re saying then Jesus himself is going to be exalted. It’s just a way of speaking.
Of course, this is poetry and he’s going to have a lot of freedom, as it were, to express it in so many ways. So the name here is another way of describing the kingdom forever because the name, of course, represents a person. And the person here, of course, is not just a person, but it’s a king.
That’s the whole description here is the king and therefore of his kingdom, of his rule, of his reign. And it shall endure, that’s his prayer, that’s his praise as well, forever with universal recognition. And men shall be blessed in him and all nations.
There it is again, as it was in prior verses. All nations shall call him blessed. He’s clearly looking to the future because he hasn’t seen it then and there.
And we know after his death, it didn’t happen with Solomon, it doesn’t happen with any of the kings. So it’s still yet to come. That’s why it’s a prophetic prayer, this glorious and beautiful psalm.
And it’s ultimately fulfilled in the future, new heavens and the new earth. We are part of it by nations. It doesn’t necessarily mean only the kings and all.
It just means a different variety of people besides the Jews. All those people out there outside the Jewish orbit, any and all of them can be and will be as we know ultimately calling him blessed. The wondrous works of God.
Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel who only does wondrous things. The wonderful works of our Lord. Of providence, delivering his people from Egypt, conquering the land of Canaan, delivering them from the Syrian army.
And yes, the Jews fought. They fought the enemy. This is true.
They went through a lot of work. I talked about that. David praises the Lord for strengthening his right arm and his sword arm to fight for his Lord.
But the victory was ultimately of God and for God’s glory only. All Christians recognize this out of humility. That what we have is from him and him alone.
And so our praise is his wonderful works. And his wonderful works doesn’t have to mean miraculous although it includes that. But even the mundane as it were, the everyday activities of providence is part of God’s wonderful works as well.
But let’s go into particularly the wonderful works of redemption. The deliverance out of Egypt was not just out of Egypt as a social economic deliverance and reformation, but also a picture ultimately of real salvation and deliverance for God’s people. And it was given to them in the Mosaic Covenant as well, the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And ultimately pictured the language out of Egypt or out of Babylon picked up in the book of Revelation. Now Babylon is now the ultimate archenemy of the church besides Satan. It’s clearly then picking up the language of the Old Testament as symbolic of spiritual deliverance ultimately.
For we worship what? A spiritual God. And thus he’s concerned with our soul as well as our spirit. And we are delivered therefore out of Satan’s kingdom.
That’s the greatest wonderful work of our Lord God Almighty Jesus Christ. They and us as well of old were in Satan’s kingdom until we were delivered by his might and power. Egypt and Babylon were part of Satan’s kingdom.
That is at least in outward form and practice to be sure. And therefore their deliverance, all that language there again points spiritually ultimately. The whole earth shall be filled with his glory, verse 19.
Verse 19, verse 20 is the end of his prayer. Blessed be his glorious name forever and let the whole earth be filled with his glory, amen and amen. This wonderful prayer that the world would become explicitly Jesus.
They would submit to him, the Messiah. That Habakkuk 2.14 we read, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. What knowledge is that? Clearly that’s the knowledge of the Messiah.
Not just an intellectual knowledge, yeah I’ve heard about this Christianity, but more importantly, why else would you have the prophecy and rejoice in this? But many would believe in that knowledge. That is believe in Jesus who is the object of the teaching of this knowledge, the glory of the Lord across the sea. That is as far as the sea covers the earth, the knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ spreads and we see that.
In our lifetime, they have not seen that in the prior generations, brothers and sisters, a hundred years ago. If you know some history of foreign missions, places like China had virtually nothing. The inner parts of China or other parts of Siberia or India and places like that, although part of India of course had the British Empire, but they couldn’t send all the missionaries everywhere.
It’s still the heart of Africa, all this stuff, just there was nothing. And even now there are still tribes who haven’t heard these things, but it’s still grown. And thus we see Habakkuk 2.14, we see here his prayer is being answered that Jesus Christ’s kingdom, the church is growing throughout the world.
And we are living witness of this prophecy here and now. And thus we should praise him and glorify his name. Let the whole earth be filled with his glory.
His prayer is that he wants everyone to be saved. He’s not a bigoted Jew. Sometimes some people paint the Old Testament church.
He wants others to be saved, but he killed some people, pastor. Yeah, well, they’re trying to kill him. It’s just how it works.
If someone tried to kill me and kill my family, I’d stop them. I still want them to be saved, but you know, they’re not listening to me right at the moment. I have to do something to protect my family.
That’s just how we live in a fallen world. You can do both. Your desire may be one thing, but your actions have to be something else because there’s priorities.
His prayer, genuine prayer, is that the whole world would be saved, that the whole world would submit to the glory of our Lord and Savior. Praise. Our Savior reigns over us, brothers and sisters, directly in the church, over our souls, through the Word of God, through the pastors and ordinances and worship.
But the praise here is that there would be greater visibility. That’s his prayer and praise. The whole earth be filled with his glory.
That’s so obvious that Jesus is King. And on that grand day of his return, when every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess, it will be visible. Come quickly, Lord Jesus, we pray, Maranatha.
Amen. Father God, may your Son come quickly. But of course, may we submit to your timing.
And while we are waiting, may we continue to rejoice and pray as David does for our magistrates to exercise righteousness and justice, but more importantly, God, to put our trust and hope ultimately in King Jesus, who has exercised and does exercise these things for his people here and now. Gracious God above, may we not be discouraged by what we see around us in our nation and the politics and the like, gracious God. But above all, sovereign Lord, put our trust in you.
We pray these things by the kingly rule of our Lord and Savior and his grace upon us. Amen.