Over the past few weeks in our study on Psalm 92, we have been considering how the Lord’s Day is an often neglected yet crucial component in the Christian’s arsenal. It is an essential ingredient and marvelous gift of God meant for the believer’s refreshment and joy. Last time, we gave thought to how this psalm refreshes and reorients our perspective in light of eternity, helping us to take the long view and encouraging us in our dealings against sin and wickedness in our earthly sojourn.
We have been considering this psalm under four broad headings.
- Verses 1–4 speak of Delight
- Verses 5–11 speak of Downfall
- Verses 12–15 speak of Blessing
- Recapping a bit in verses 8–11 the psalm speaks of the Savior
Having given attention to verses 1–11 (A Psalm of Delight and A Psalm of Downfall), we continue today by beginning with verse 12. As the psalm speaks to the ultimate judgment or downfall of the wicked in the previous section, it now speaks to the blessing of the righteous, both eschatologically and in this life.
A Psalm of Blessing
Verses 12–14 state:
The righteous flourish like the palm tree
and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
They are planted in the house of the LORD;
they flourish in the courts of our God.
They still bear fruit in old age;
they are ever full of sap and green.
Along the way, Psalm 92 has reminded us that the Sabbath day (or, for us Christians living post-resurrection, the Lord’s Day or the Christian Sabbath) is a day of delight; it is a day of sobering truths, but it is also a day to experience every kind of spiritual blessing.
One of the glorious, counterintuitive truths of this text can be summarized as if the psalmist were saying, “In the midst of this world with flourishing evil, a sin-sick world that fights to make the godly languish, the person who really flourishes in this life is the person who delights in God.”
As we noted briefly in our previous installment, he tells of the blessing of assured spiritual victory in verse 11: wickedness and the anguish of my soul and the harshness of my circumstances seem to be flourishing, but in the war-room of God Almighty, the battle has already been decided.
But then he goes on to tell of the blessing of enduring spiritual health in verses 12–15. Back in verse 7, from an earthly vantage point, it appeared as if the wicked were flourishing. But actually, the psalmist is quick to remind us, in this life (and most certainly in eternity), it is the righteous—God’s people—who flourish. The flourishing of the righteous is not like the sprouting and flourishing of grass (v. 7), but is a far more permanent and enduring flourishing.
The psalmist likens the flourishing of the righteous to that of the palm tree (famous for flourishing in difficult environs, like the desert) and like a cedar of Lebanon, “the most majestic tree in the ancient world.”1 In stark contrast to the grass, which “in the morning . . . flourishes and is renewed; [but] in the evening . . . fades and withers” (Ps 90:6), the righteous are like a tree, lasting and enduring through the ages—“a picture of life in the midst of the world of death.”2
Psalm 92 calls to mind the imagery of Psalm 1, where the righteous man is described in verse 3 as being “like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.”
Verses 12 and 13 of Psalm 92 remind us that this firm planting and steady flourishing take place in a particular venue—”in the house of the LORD” and “in the courts of our God,” evoking imagery of the temple, of Eden, of the new covenant temple which is the assembly of the saints (Eph 2:19–21), and of Eden re-created and amplified in the consummation (Rev 21). The ones who are righteous by faith still bear fruit—growth in godliness and virtue—like the man of Psalm 1:3, even unto old age (or “gray hairs” [שֵׂיבָה] as the Hebrew puts it literally) in 92:14:
They still bear fruit in old age;
they are ever full of sap and green.
This imagery is meant to signal fullness, full of the good of fatness, a favored imagery of the Psalms conveying a sumptuous contentment, provision, and blessedness. The “green” of verse 14 is the same word translated as “fresh” in verse 10, meaning that the believer, with his faith fixed firmly in the Lord, perseveres. Such a believer—more than merely subsisting or existing—actually abounds spiritually when he is in the presence of God among the community of his people. Like the flourishing tree of Psalm 1 or the prospering cedar of Psalm 92, he is spiritually vital—”healthy and green,” as the Christian Standard Bible renders verse 14.
Here is an Old Testament picture of that wonderful doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. It is a picture of how a believer presses on, striding and striving in faith through all ages, stages, and circumstances. It is not so much a guarantee that all believers live well into old age, for many faithful saints have died at young ages or have even suffered martyrdom. Rather, it means that the work of God’s grace in their soul will continue until the time of their death, and that the Lord will bring his work of grace in the life of his righteous ones to completion (cf. 1 Thess 5:23–24).
One of the things I strive to remind my congregation (as a somewhat younger believer often speaking to a room with many older believers, older and wiser saints who have been dutifully and beautifully pressing on in their faith) is that one of the greatest blessings on a Lord’s Day is to look around the room and see Christians who have been faithfully plodding along in the Christian life for years. What a blessing it is to stand up in the pulpit, survey the congregation, and see saints who have been walking with the Lord for decades, seeing them persevere and grow, even under languishing circumstances, and seeing them praise our God in the midst of all kinds of difficulties. I think that is one of the grandest blessings of the communion of the saints and, particularly, one of the choicest benefits of being part of a multi-generational church.
In splendid contrast to the perverse, fickle, and flimsy ways of the wicked, the concluding verse 15 provides a stunning rejoinder: while the wicked are twisted, God is upright, absolutely just, and governing all the moral order of the cosmos. While the wicked are flimsy and doomed to crumble, God is the believer’s rock (note the possessive, “my”): firm, steadfast, and solid. Quite the opposite of the wicked, “There is no unrighteousness in him.” Or as the New Testament beautifully puts it, “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5).
Do you notice what the source of the righteous one’s spiritual flourishing is? What is the “thing” (if we can call it that) the psalmist desires to get out of worship? Is it merely some sort of emotional pick-me-up to get him through the week? Not at all. Look again at verse 15:
. . . to declare that the Lord is upright;
he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him. [emphasis mine]
It is God himself! That is what the psalmist is looking to get out of worship! His desire is to come and “declare” the splendor of the Lord.
Friends, when we come to the assembly of the saints, we want to commune with the Lord! By his grace, we want to become more like him. We want to hear him! What we want out of worship is God.
Growing up, my family attended a number of different churches. I will not take any cheap shots in this publication, but suffice it to say that in some of those churches, all manner of silly things took place—even irresponsible things. It seemed almost as if some of those congregations were going out of their way to avoid proclaiming the Word of God. As a result, my soul was starving.
So when, by God’s grace, I stumbled into a PCA church during college, I found a group of people who were committed to the idea that you experience God by depending on the biblical means of grace—prayer, fellowship, singing the Word, reading the Word, preaching the Word—and that the central hub, if you like, of God’s people was gathering to worship and experience God in his Word on his Day.
From that day forward, my soul was fed as it had never been fed before—worship was good (v. 1), and it was satisfying. There was genuine spiritual blessing to be had, even though my circumstances over those next few years were far from easy.
Dear readers, there is real gospel here in Psalm 92. The gospel is not just a get-out-of-jail-free card. Oh, it is so much more. In the gospel, you get God himself. In the gospel, the believer gets Christ and all his benefits!
Psalm 92 shows us that each week, there is a day for the glory of God and the good of man, a day where the Lord says, “Clear the decks. Clear the tables. Put everything else off to the side—you can have me all to yourself, along with all your fellow saints.” It is a day of incalculable blessing.
There is more for us to unearth in this marvelous chapter of Scripture, and we will do just that when we return next week to Part 4 of our ongoing Saturday Psalm Series.
Notes
- Christopher Ash, The Psalms: A Christ-Centered Commentary, 4 vols. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2024), 3.568.
- Ash, Psalms, 3.568, quoting Franz Delitzsch.
©Sean Morris. All Rights Reserved.
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Sean Morris
Sean was educated at Grove City College, Reformed Theological Seminary (Jackson, MS), and the University of Glasgow (Scotland). He is an ordained teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church in America, and serves as a minister at the Covenant Presbyterian Church in Oak Ridge, TN. He also serves as the Academic Dean of the Blue Ridge Institute for Theological Education. He is currently pursuing his PhD in Historical Theology at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Sean lives in Oak Ridge with his wife, Sarah, along with their children and useless beagle.
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