Psalm 9: The Past For The Sake Of The Present (Part 3)—Applications

by on August 10, 2024 | Comment

Psalm 9 is a lesson about why history matters. We can easily question why we need to learn our history. At least, the modern assumption is that only the present matters. Psalm 9 reorients God’s people to the importance the past has for praying with greater assurance.

In that respect, Psalm 9 helps us see prayer is not hopeless. Our confidence in praying is grounded in how God has continually been faithful to his people. We look at how God has acted for us before in order to be joyous in prayer during the present.

This article explains how we can build upon the contextual and exegetical observations from parts one and two in this series on Psalm 9 to draw out applications for our lives today. Our two questions for application are: (1) How does this psalm apply to us directly? (2) How does it point us to Christ?

A Pattern for Prayer

How does Psalm 9 apply to us today for our spiritual good? It reminds us God has a pattern and that he sticks to it. Because God has been faithful to his people in the past, we trust that he will be faithful as we look forward too.

I spent several years panicking every time a new challenge arose in our lives. Whether it be personal, pastoral, or whatever, I would often hit a quick downward spiral whenever I realized the difficulty of the situation before me. I had no idea how I was going to overcome it. Of course, we prayed about it. But I did not see how God was going to keep coming through for us.

After too long, God has finally brought the lesson home to me, at least to some degree. I do not think my first or primary reaction is to panic at every new challenge—or at least I am better than I used to be. That is because the record of all that God has done for me is more firmly fixed in my mind and heart than it used to be. It took me too long to learn that lesson.

That is the truth Psalm 9 is trying to impress on us. We should be quick to pray about the challenges directly in front of us because we have so many reasons to praise God for how he has helped us through challenges in our past. Thus, we ought to cry out to arise and not to let our enemies and challenges have victory over us.

Because of this, it is good to bring praise reports and thanksgivings into our prayers. It is right and good to honor God for the gracious things he has done for us. So, the first purpose for praise in our prayers is to glorify God who is good to his people. But second, recounting God’s past goodness to us ingrains more deeply within us the pattern that God is faithful to deliver us from our troubles. Praying praises to God establishes our confidence as we rely upon God to bring our pleas and petitions before him.

Psalm 9 then points us to two important patterns: God’s pattern of faithfulness, which in turn gives us a pattern for praying with confidence. Psalm 9 points us to the past as a reminder of God’s record of faithfulness. He is in the habit of coming through for his people.

God’s pattern of faithfulness is then the ground for a pattern of prayer that will help us. When we develop the habit of reflecting on how God is praiseworthy for all the times and ways he has not abandoned us to our troubles, we have more joy in bringing our new needs before him. Our pattern of praise preceding plea will set us up to feel reassured as we seek that new help. God has not let us down in the past. Why should we think he would do otherwise now?

Provision that Endures

How does Psalm 9 point us to Christ? Psalm 9 makes nearly the same point as Romans 8:31–39:

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Because of what we know that God has already done for us, we should be confident about what God will do for us.

That truth that strengthens our trust is grounded in God’s ultimate work on our behalf in the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul put that most succinctly in Romans 8:32: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”

The once-popular Scottish rock band, The Proclaimers, sang their most known anthem about how far someone would go to show his love: he would walk five hundred miles and five hundred more just to be the man who walked a thousand miles for this girl.1 A silly follow-up question would be, “Would you walk down a short street for her too?” Of course he would.

God has made that point about his love for his people in Jesus Christ. He has done the utmost for us in sending God the Son to die in our place so that our sins could be forgiven. He has done the utmost for us in raising Christ victorious from the grave so that we always have an advocate before the throne of heaven to defend us even when we fail. If God has done the utmost for us in providing salvation to sinners, how could we imagine that he would withhold some smaller thing from his people in our time of need?

Psalm 9 reminds us that God has acted for us in the past, which should teach us to pray with confidence that God is still for us today. He has demonstrated that in Jesus Christ. He has given his Son for us and given his Spirit to us. God’s great provision in the past assures us of his provision ahead of us. With so much good that he has done for us in the past, why would we ever doubt that the Lord will be quick to help us in the present?

Note

  1. The Proclaimers, “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles), 1988.

© Harrison Perkins. All Rights Reserved.

You can find this whole series here.

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