The Kingdom of God in Psalms from Beginning to End

God’s eternal kingdom and his eternal reign in Psalms is hard to miss. Consider:

Psalm 9:8— But the Lord sits enthroned forever; he has established his throne for justice…

Psalm 10:16— The Lord is king forever and ever; the nations perish from his land.

Psalm 45:7— Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of uprightness;

Psalm 47:8–9— For God is the King of all the earth; sing praises with a psalm! God reigns over the nations; God sits on his holy throne.

Psalm 95:3— For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods.

Psalm 103:19— The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.

Psalm 145:13— Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations. The Lord is faithful in all his words and kind in all his works.

And this is just a small sampling—a taste.

In light of this, have you ever noticed how Psalms begins and ends? Psalms literally begins and ends with God reigning over his kingdom through his Son the King. As we read with the grain of the Psalms, this wonderful reality moves us to praise our God who reigns forever.

 

The Beginning of Psalms

Psalm 1 and 2 are wildly recognized as the introduction to the book of Psalms, and therefore they should be taken together. Psalm 1 describes the righteous man who delights perfectly in God’s law. Psalm 1 begins with “Blessed is the man.” Psalm 2 describes God’s Son, his Anointed, the King, whom he has set on Zion to rule over the nations. Psalm 2 ends with “Blessed are all who take refuge in him.” This intentional framing of Psalm 1 and 2 with promised blessing intends to reveal that the blessed man of Psalm 1 is God’s royal Son, the King in Psalm 2. Therefore, those who take refuge in this king, the righteous one will be blessed.[1]

 

Jesus is the Righteous Man of Psalm 1, the King of Psalm 2

We know this promised king to be Jesus, our resurrected Lord. The saints in Acts 4:23–31 recognized Psalm 2 to be about Jesus. And Peter in Acts 2 makes clear, that Jesus was the promised Son of David, the Messiah and King, who lives forever and sits at God’s right hand until his enemies are made a footstool for his feet (Acts 2:22–36; see Psalm 16:8–11; 110:1).

So Psalms begins with a proclamation of God’s eternal kingdom and his King who will reign from Zion, and all who take refuge in him will be blessed. Jesus is that King. Therefore, this prophecy is for us—we are those who have sought refuge in the King of Zion. Well, if this is how the Psalms begins, how does it end?

 

The End of Psalms

Psalms ends with five Psalms of praise to God for who he is and all his works throughout history (Psalm 146–150). David himself leads into these five Psalms of praise with this declaration in Psalm 145:1:

I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever.

Psalm 149, then, begins to close out the entire book by picking up with where Psalm 1 and 2 left off. It exhorts “the assembly of the godly”, the saints, “the children of Zion” to “rejoice in their King” (Psalm 149:1–2), to “Sing to the LORD a new song” (Psalm 149:1). Who then are these saints? Who are these children of Zion? They are all those who took refuge in the blessed, righteous man of Psalm 1. They are those who took refuge in God’s King of Psalm 2, who sits “on Zion my (God’s) holy hill” (Psalm 2:6). They are those who have taken refuge in Jesus. So when God ultimately executes his justice on all his enemies and the enemies of his people at the return of Jesus the King, these godly ones are blessed and honored; therefore they praise the LORD (Psalm 149:9). Indeed, they are the redeemed who will stand with the Lamb on Mount Zion and sing “a new song” before the throne of God (Revelation 14:1–3; see Psalm 149:1).

 

Praise God

Psalms begins and ends with God reigning over his kingdom through his Son the King. Psalms lays out for us a royal roadmap. It reveals the trajectory of all of history. God has established his kingdom in his Son, the King, Jesus. Those who take refuge in him are and will be his children, children of Zion, when his kingdom comes in its fullness at Christ’s return. Until then, we sing and praise God our King now, just as Psalm 150 exhorts us to:

 

Praise the Lord!

Praise God in his sanctuary;

praise him in his mighty heavens!

Praise him for his mighty deeds;

praise him according to his excellent greatness!

Praise him with trumpet sound;

praise him with lute and harp!

Praise him with tambourine and dance;

praise him with strings and pipe!

Praise him with sounding cymbals;

praise him with loud clashing cymbals!

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!

Praise the Lord!

 

Amen. Praise the Lord.

[1] See Jason S. DeRouchie, “Lect 19-Psalms” (Jason S. DeRouchie 2022: 6) at https://jasonderouchie.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Lect-19-Psalms.pdf

Where is Your Confidence?

[As we contemplate this Sunday whether or not God needs us, consider this devotion on Jeremiah 17, edited from the original version written in 2011.]

Where is your confidence? Where do you find hope? Where do you find security?

Consider Israel in Jeremiah’s day. The prophet has said time and again that judgment is coming upon the nation. No one, however, pays attention to his warnings. The political and religious leaders do not want to believe in a God who would exercise judgment on His chosen people, and they look to military strength and their foreign allies for protection. So, echoing Psalm 1, Jeremiah writes:

Jeremiah 17:5-9: Thus says the LORD: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the LORD.  6 He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.  7 “Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD.  8 He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.”  9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

Who can understand a heart that voluntarily turns away from the only source of true security, from the only source of true sustenance? What tree would send its roots away from a nearby water source instead of towards it? Yet that is what the people of Israel were doing.

And the lesson holds for us. If we abandon the source of all good, no matter how wealthy or powerful or successful we become, we have no security. We have no true accomplishment, for we will never become what we were created to be or do what we could have done by His power. Indeed, we can only expect loss. But the one whose heart is changed so that God alone IS his confidence will be fruitful always (there is wordplay in the Hebrew text of verse 7 to emphasize this point – we might capture that partially through this translation: “Blessed is the man who is confident in The One Who is; the One Who Is is his confidence”). For to know the source of all being is to be certain of becoming what you are intended to be.

Jeremiah continues a few verses later:

Jeremiah 17:13-14  O LORD, the hope of Israel, all who forsake you shall be put to shame; those who turn away from you shall be written in the earth, for they have forsaken the LORD, the fountain of living water.  14 Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved, for you are my praise.

There is only one way to quench our deepest thirst, and that is through the water fountain that is the Lord. There is only one source of healing, only one source of rescue, only one sources of strength: and that is God Himself – so if we turn away from Him, if we praise and depend on anything else, we will lose everything we think we are gaining, and thus will be put to shame. But if we instead come to Him for healing – if we cry out to Him for salvation, looking only to His offer of Christ for our confidence and joy – then we shall be truly healed. Then we shall be truly saved. Then we shall fulfill His great purposes for us, His people.

Father, it only makes sense to have confidence in you, the source and the generator of all life, of all goodness. Wean us from what leads us astray, all these false sources of joy and fulfillment and strength, so that you indeed might be our confidence, our sustenance, our power, and our joy.