The Upward Logic of Praise Text: Psalm 21:13
Introduction: The Inescapable Premise
We live in an age that has inverted the very order of reality. Modern man, in his puffed up autonomy, believes that his feelings, his declarations, and his songs somehow create meaning. He sings about his own strength, praises his own might, and then wonders why his world is crumbling into chaos and despair. He wants to be the subject of the sentence, the cause of the action, and the recipient of the glory. But this is to build a house on the sand of self-deceit. It is to declare that the creature is the Creator, which is the oldest lie of them all.
The Christian faith, and particularly the Psalms, confronts this inverted logic head-on. The universe does not begin with us. History does not begin with us. And true strength most certainly does not begin with us. All things begin with God. He is the uncaused Cause, the unmoved Mover, the absolute premise upon which all subsequent truths depend. To deny this is not just to be wrong; it is to be insane. It is to attempt to do arithmetic after having declared that the number one is a social construct.
Psalm 21 is a royal psalm, a song of victory for the king. The people have witnessed God's deliverance, His power made manifest in the salvation of their anointed leader. The entire psalm recounts God's glorious deeds: He grants the king's desire, blesses him, gives him long life, and prepares to utterly rout his enemies. The psalm is drenched in the reality of God's active, intervening might. And it concludes, as all right thinking must, with the verse before us today. This final verse is not an afterthought; it is the logical, necessary, and joyful conclusion. It is the "therefore" that follows from the manifest reality of God's power. It shows us the proper relationship between divine action and human reaction. God acts, and we sing. God displays His might, and we praise it. This is the fundamental grammar of worship, and it is the only grammar that corresponds to the way the world actually is.
The Text
Be exalted, O Yahweh, in Your strength;
We will sing and praise Your might.
(Psalm 21:13 LSB)
God's Exaltation, Not Ours (v. 13a)
The first clause is a petition, a cry for God to do what only He can do.
"Be exalted, O Yahweh, in Your strength;" (Psalm 21:13a)
Notice the profound theology packed into this simple request. The psalmist does not say, "We will exalt you." That would put the cart before the horse. It would suggest that God's exaltation is dependent on our activity, that He is somehow diminished until we get around to puffing Him up with our songs. This is the error of modern, man-centered worship. We think we are doing God a favor by showing up on Sunday morning.
But the Bible's logic is entirely different. The prayer is "Be exalted." It is a recognition that God's exaltation is His own work. He is the one who displays His glory. He is the one who magnifies His own name through His mighty acts. Our role is not to create His exaltation, but to recognize it, to confess it, and to rejoice in it when He puts it on display. The prayer is for God to act in such a way that His supremacy becomes undeniable to all. "Yahweh, show Yourself to be as high and lifted up as You truly are."
And in what is He to be exalted? "In Your strength." Not in our cleverness, not in our strategic plans, not in our political victories, and not in our moral striving. Be exalted in Your strength. This is a prayer that flows from a deep conviction of human weakness. The king and the people have just seen a great victory, but they do not make the fatal mistake of attributing it to their own arm. They know that the only reason they are still standing is because of Yahweh's might. So their prayer is, "Do it again! Show the world that it is Your power, and not ours, that settles the affairs of men."
This establishes the great Creator/creature distinction that is the bedrock of all sanity. There are two kinds of strength in the universe: God's and not-God's. God's strength is original, infinite, self-sufficient, and eternal. All other strength is derivative, finite, dependent, and temporary. To ask God to be exalted in His own strength is to ask Him to make this distinction plain for all to see. It is a prayer against all forms of humanism and idolatry. It is a prayer that God would vindicate His own name by demonstrating that He, and He alone, is God.
The Inevitable Response (v. 13b)
The second clause flows directly and necessarily from the first. Because God is exalted in His strength, a certain response is required from His people.
"We will sing and praise Your might." (Psalm 21:13b)
This is not a transaction. It is not "If you exalt yourself, then we will praise you." It is a statement of cause and effect. God's self-exaltation is the cause; our praise is the effect. When God displays His strength, the hearts of His people are filled with an irrepressible joy that must come out in song. It is the spontaneous combustion of a redeemed heart in the presence of divine glory.
Think of it this way. If you are standing on a cliff and witness a magnificent sunrise, you do not say, "I have decided to exalt this sunrise." The sunrise is glorious whether you are there to see it or not. Its glory is inherent to it. Your gasp of wonder, your pointing it out to the person next to you, your declaration that it is beautiful, does not add to its glory. Rather, your response is the fitting and proper acknowledgment of the glory that is already there. So it is with God. His strength is infinitely glorious. When He puts it on display, our singing and praise are the only fitting, sane, and rational response.
Notice also the corporate nature of this response: "We will sing and praise." This is not the isolated piety of an individual mystic having a private moment with God. This is the covenant community, the congregation of the saints, gathered together to publicly declare the greatness of their God. Worship is a corporate act. It is warfare. As we gather to sing of God's might, we are not just encouraging one another. We are making a public, political declaration to the principalities and powers. We are announcing to the defeated enemies of God that their conqueror is strong and worthy of all praise. Our singing is a victory parade.
And what is the content of this song? We sing and praise "Your might." We don't sing about our feelings about His might. We don't sing about our experience of His might. We sing about the thing itself. Our worship is to be objective, robust, and theological. It is to be about Him. The great tragedy of modern worship is that it has become profoundly narcissistic. The songs are all about us: how we feel, what we've decided, how we are coming to Him. But true worship turns the camera around. It is about God's character, God's attributes, and God's mighty acts in history. We are to praise His power, His justice, His mercy, His wisdom. We are to sing the story of His redemption, from Genesis to Revelation.
The King and His Strength
As with all the psalms, we must learn to read this with Christ as the key. This is a royal psalm, and while it was about David, it is most truly and ultimately about David's greatest Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the true King who rejoices in the Father's strength.
It was the Father's strength that sustained Christ through His earthly ministry. It was the Father's strength that upheld Him on the cross as He bore the wrath of God for our sins. And it was preeminently the Father's strength that was displayed when He raised Jesus from the dead. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the ultimate display of God's might. It is God the Father being "exalted in His strength" in the most profound way possible.
In Ephesians, Paul prays that we would know "what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 1:19-20). The power that saved us is the same power that split the tomb. God was exalted in that mighty act.
And what is the result? What is the inevitable response to this ultimate display of divine strength? "We will sing and praise Your might." The church is the people who have seen the resurrected King and cannot stop singing about it. Our worship is a continual celebration of the Easter victory. We sing of the might that defeated sin, death, and the devil. We praise the power that has transferred us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's beloved Son.
Therefore, when we gather on the Lord's Day, we are fulfilling this psalm. We are looking to the exalted Christ, seated at the right hand of the Father, and we are praying, "Be exalted, O Yahweh, in Your strength!" We are asking God to continue to display the power of the resurrection in our lives, in our families, in our church, and in the world. We are asking Him to advance His kingdom and put all His enemies under His feet. And as we see Him answer that prayer, as we see His kingdom advance, our only possible response is to do what we were created and redeemed to do: to sing and praise His might, now and forever. Amen.