The New Song and the Lying Hand Text: Psalm 144:9-11
Introduction: Worship is Warfare
We live in an age that wants its worship to be many things. It must be uplifting, encouraging, relevant, and above all, therapeutic. The modern church often treats worship as a form of spiritual self-care, a time to recharge our emotional batteries for the week ahead. But the book of Psalms will not let us get away with such a thin and sentimental view. The Psalter is a prayer book, yes, but it is also a war manual. And the central activity of this war manual is worship.
David, the author of this psalm, was a man of war from his youth. He blesses God at the beginning of this psalm for teaching his hands to war and his fingers to fight. This is not the language of a quiet-time devotional. This is the language of a man whose life was a long series of conflicts, who knew what it was to have his life on the line, and who understood that the ultimate battle is always a spiritual one. The enemies he faced were not just Philistine giants and political rivals; they were representatives of a rival kingdom, the kingdom of darkness. And David knew that the only way to fight this war was with God-forged weapons. One of the chief weapons in his arsenal was song.
In our text, David connects three critical realities: the promise of new worship, the sovereignty of God over history, and the deep-seated treachery of God's enemies. He shows us that true worship is not an escape from the world's conflicts, but rather the central front in that conflict. It is a declaration of allegiance. It is the anthem of the true King's army, sung in the face of a world dedicated to lies. We sing, not to feel better, but to fight better. We sing because God gives salvation to kings, and because He must deliver us from those whose entire way of being is defined by falsehood. This psalm teaches us that our praise is a political act of the highest order, because it declares whose world this is, who is the true King, and which kingdom will ultimately stand.
The Text
O God, I will sing a new song to You;
Upon a harp of ten strings I will sing praises to You,
Who gives salvation to kings,
Who sets David His servant free from the evil sword.
Set me free and deliver me out of the hand of the sons of a foreigner,
Whose mouth speaks worthlessness
And whose right hand is a right hand of lying.
(Psalm 144:9-11 LSB)
A New Song for a New Deliverance (v. 9)
David begins with a promise, a vow of worship that is contingent on the deliverance he is praying for.
"O God, I will sing a new song to You; Upon a harp of ten strings I will sing praises to You," (Psalm 144:9)
What is this "new song?" Throughout the Scriptures, a new song is the required response to a new act of God's salvation. The old songs are still good; we are to sing the psalms of our fathers. But when God does something fresh, when He breaks into history with a mighty act of deliverance, it requires new music, a new anthem. It is a recognition that God is not a distant, deistic clockmaker who wound the world up and let it go. He is the living God, who continues to act, to save, and to deliver His people.
David is anticipating victory. He is so confident in God's faithfulness that he is already preparing the sheet music. This is an act of robust faith. He is saying, "When you deliver me from these liars, God, I will not be silent. I will get out my ten-stringed harp, an instrument of full and rich praise, and I will lead the congregation in celebrating what You have done." This is covenantal worship. It is public, it is loud, it is instrument-backed, and it tells the story of God's mighty deeds. It is not the sentimental, self-focused warbling that passes for worship in too many churches today. It is a warrior's victory song.
This points us directly to the Lord Jesus. The ultimate "new thing" God has done is the resurrection. In raising Christ from the dead, God performed the greatest act of deliverance in history, and it demands the ultimate new song. In the book of Revelation, the saints in heaven sing a new song, and what is its theme? "You were slain, and have redeemed us to God by Your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation" (Rev. 5:9). Every time we gather for worship, we are joining that heavenly choir, singing the new song of redemption in Christ. Our worship is a continual reenactment and celebration of the fact that our King has conquered sin, death, and the grave.
God, the Kingmaker (v. 10)
Next, David grounds his confidence in God's sovereign role in human history, particularly over the affairs of state.
"Who gives salvation to kings, Who sets David His servant free from the evil sword." (Psalm 144:10)
This is a profound theological and political statement. In the ancient world, kings were often seen as divine or as the special favorites of their tribal gods. Their victories were their own, or attributed to their pagan deities. But David, the true king, knows where ultimate authority resides. He confesses that it is God, Yahweh, who gives salvation, victory, deliverance, to kings. Presidents and prime ministers do not hold their office by the will of the people alone. Their power is derivative. God is the kingmaker and the king-breaker. As Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar, "the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomever He will" (Dan. 4:17).
This is a truth our secular age has utterly forgotten, and which the church has become too timid to proclaim. We are taught to think of politics as a godless realm, a messy business that has nothing to do with faith. But the Bible says the opposite. God is intensely interested in who governs. He raises up rulers to accomplish His purposes, whether they know it or not. He raised up Pharaoh to show His power, and He raised up Cyrus to release His people. And He gives salvation to His anointed kings.
Notice the personal application. God's sovereignty is not a cold, abstract doctrine for David. It is his only hope. God is the one "Who sets David His servant free from the evil sword." David had faced the evil sword many times, from Goliath's spear to Saul's javelin to the armies of the Philistines. He knew that his own skill and courage were not enough. His deliverance was a direct result of being God's servant. This is a covenantal relationship. God saves kings in general, but He has a particular, familial care for His servant David. This points us to the great Son of David, the Lord Jesus. God the Father delivered Him from the ultimate "evil sword," which is death itself, and has now seated Him at His right hand, giving Him all authority in heaven and on earth. He is the King of kings, and all other rulers are His vassals, whether they acknowledge Him or not.
The Treachery of the Ungodly (v. 11)
Having established God's power to save, David now describes with sharp clarity the nature of the enemy from whom he needs saving.
"Set me free and deliver me out of the hand of the sons of a foreigner, Whose mouth speaks worthlessness And whose right hand is a right hand of lying." (Psalm 144:11)
Who are these "sons of a foreigner?" In the immediate context, this certainly refers to the pagan nations surrounding Israel. But the problem is not fundamentally one of ethnicity. The problem is covenantal. They are "foreigners" because they are strangers to the covenant of promise, without God in the world (Eph. 2:12). The defining characteristic of these covenant-breakers is their relationship to the truth.
First, "Whose mouth speaks worthlessness." The Hebrew word is shav, which means vanity, emptiness, a puff of smoke. Their speech is untethered from reality because it is untethered from the God of reality. They make promises they cannot keep, issue threats that are ultimately empty, and build philosophies on foundations of sand. This is the native language of the City of Man. It is the smooth-talking nonsense of politicians, the deceptive jargon of academics, the empty promises of advertisers, and the vain babblings of a culture that has rejected the eternal Word. It is all just noise, signifying nothing.
Second, and more actively, "whose right hand is a right hand of lying." The right hand in Scripture is the hand of power, of action, of covenant-making. When men would make a solemn oath, they would raise their right hand. What David is saying is that the very instrument of their strength and their covenant-keeping is itself a lie. Their power is built on deception. Their treaties are worthless. Their handshake is a prelude to betrayal. Their entire way of operating in the world is fraudulent. This is because they serve the father of lies (John 8:44). Falsehood is not an occasional tactic for them; it is their nature. It is their right hand.
This establishes the great antithesis that runs through all of history. There are two kinds of people: those who are of the truth and hear Christ's voice, and those whose native language is the lie. This is why our spiritual warfare is so intense. We are not fighting against people who simply have a different opinion. We are fighting against a worldview, a spiritual kingdom, whose fundamental axiom is the lie. They lie about God, they lie about creation, they lie about man, they lie about sin, they lie about gender, they lie about everything. And our task is to stand on the truth, speak the truth, sing the truth, and live the truth in the face of it all.
Conclusion: The Sword and the Song
So what do we take from this? We must see that our worship and our warfare are two sides of the same coin. David prays for deliverance from the evil sword and the lying hand, and his response is to take up the ten-stringed harp.
We are in the same position. We are surrounded by the sons of the foreigner, those whose mouths speak vanity and whose right hands are instruments of falsehood. They control the media, the academy, and the halls of power. And they hate the truth because they hate the One who is the Truth. We must pray, as David did, "Set me free and deliver me." We must not be naive about the nature of our enemy.
But our confidence is not in our own strength or cleverness. Our confidence is in the God who gives salvation to kings. Our King, the Lord Jesus, has already won the decisive victory. He has been delivered from the evil sword of death. And because we are in Him, we share in that victory. The lies of the world are loud, but they are the death-rattle of a defeated kingdom.
Therefore, our primary weapon in this fight is the new song. We gather each Lord's Day not to hide from the world, but to confront it. We sing praise to the God who is the sovereign King of all history. We sing of His mighty acts of salvation. We sing the truth into a world of lies. Every psalm, every hymn, every Gloria Patri is a cannon shot into the heart of the enemy's camp. It is a declaration that Jesus is Lord, and that all the sons of the foreigner and their empty words will one day vanish like smoke. So take up your harps, take up your voices, and sing the new song to your God. For He is the one who delivers His servants, and His kingdom shall have no end.