July 5, 2026
Series: Dwelling with the Psalms
William G. Carter
The Lord is king; he is robed in majesty;
The Lord is robed; he is girded with strength.
He has established the world; it shall never be moved;
your throne is established from of old; you are from everlasting.
The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice;
the floods lift up their roaring.
More majestic than the thunders of mighty waters,
more majestic than the waves of the sea, majestic on high is the Lord!
Your decrees are very sure;
holiness befits your house, O Lord, forevermore.
We are spending a season by dwelling with the Psalms. We will listen to them, pray them, study them. And the first thing we discover is a central theme of those ancient prayers: God alone is king.
This is Israel’s profession of faith. There is only one God. Any other contender is a counterfeit. A fake. A pale imitation of the real thing. Only God is God; God rules over all.
Israel swore by this declaration as truth. Yet biblically speaking, it did not come quickly. In the days when the prophet Samuel was God’s appointed press agent, the people looked around the global neighborhood and said, “Hey, we want a king.” Samuel answered, “You don’t want a king.”
- The people said, “Everybody else has a king. Why can’t we have a king?” The prophet said, “God is your king!”
- The people said, “But give us a king that we can see and hear.” Samuel said, “Let me tell you about kings. They take your children and conscript them as soldiers.”
- The people said, “Every king needs an army. That’s why we want a king.” “Then the king will put some of them in forced labor while he rides around in a golden chariot.” A small price to pay, if you have a king.
- Samuel added, “The king will make some of your kids work as royal beauticians and cooks, then hand them off to be exploited.” Yes, but what an honor if they are working for the king!
- “But you don’t want a king. Kings steal your best farmland. They steal your best vineyards. They tax you to support their own vanity projects.” So, what? If we had a king, we would be great, just like everybody else.
To quote the eighth chapter of 1 Samuel, “A king will lead you into battle. And if you don’t have a battle, a king will invent a new battle. And you will cry in desperation. You have God; you don’t need a king.” But the people argued, “No! We want a king. Then we will be just like all the other nations.”
Samuel looked to God. God shrugged. So then, not for the first time, not for the last time, God gave the people room to make their own mistakes. Their first king was Saul. He was tall, good looking, and emotionally unstable. The pressure of the job can make you crazy, you know.
Saul was replaced by David, a young shepherd boy who took the job before Saul was done with it. Everybody loved David. David did a lot of good things. Not so tall, but exceedingly good looking. The women loved David. He played the guitar. But you know those musicians. He fooled around and fell in love.
That was before one of his own sons wanted to kill him. It went downhill from there. Samuel was right. You don’t want a king. The government of God’s people came unraveled with one bad king after another. Is it any wonder that if you put one imperfect person after another in high leadership, they will stumble and fall? Every single one. Some are worse than others.
And yet, behind them, above them, is the One Real King, the Lord of All. This is Israel’s statement of faith. The Lord is King, the Lord Alone. God’s way gives life to all. There is no other way. So, how do we live under the dominion of God when every nation has imperfect leadership at the top? This has been the long-standing human struggle as long as there have been nations.
Yesterday, we celebrated the birthday of our national experiment in democracy. The rainstorms did not wash away all the celebrations. I kept the day as I have often done so in the past: revisited a few speeches by well-spoken patriots, watched a couple of hours of Ken Burns’ film on the American Revolution, and then to top it off, listened to my two-volume recording of forty-one marches by John Philip Sousa. (It’s a British recording, which gives me a certain perverse pleasure.)
Then I sat with a cup of coffee and remembered a moment from 1988. Muhlenberg College sponsored a visit by Dr. Martin Marty, the eminent church historian of the University of Chicago. The event was the bicentennial, not of the nation, but of the ratification of the United States Constitution. Dr. Marty, a serious Lutheran, pointed out how the Presbyterians affected the formation of that founding document.
It seems, long before James Madison drafted the Constitution, he had fallen under the spell of one of his college professors. A native of Virginia, Madison did not attend the College of William and Mary like many of his peers. He graduated in 1771 from the College of New Jersey, now called Princeton. His professor was the Rev. James Witherspoon, a Presbyterian minister, who would become the only clergy to sign the Declaration of Independence.
Witherspoon taught him two lessons. First, if the Lord alone is the King, the rest of us are fallible. And second, any truthful government will build in a series of checks and balances to keep us accountable to one another. In his Federalist Paper #51, Madison believed checks and balances are the essential mechanism for preserving liberty. They ensure three essential practices: the prevention of tyranny, the harness of human nature, and the protection of the minority.[1] Power flows up from the people below, not down from a single individual above.
And where did Witherspoon gain this wisdom? From the honesty of the scriptures and an observation of what people are really like – two complimentary documents, by the way. One year later, in 1789, the Rev. John Witherspoon served as the convening moderator of the first General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.[2] The government he inspired for the nation resembles the government he helped to establish for the Presbyterian Church: a representative democracy where power is shared, every voice is respected, and nobody gets their way all the time. Built within church and nation are the mechanics for continuing improvement, should they be pursued.
And above it all, the Lord is King. Psalm 93 amplifies the truth of it. The forceful rainstorms of the past few days – did any of you make it rain? Of course not. As we walk through our lawns to pick up the fallen branches, is there anyone stronger than the thunderstorms? Yes, there is, and that is the One we worship today. Is there true beauty, even holiness, breaking into our world? Indeed, and we honor the Source of it. Is there anyone who is permanent, anyone who will outlive all the monkey business of the earthly leaders? Yes, the Lord God is eternal. God came before us; God will outlive us. This knowledge is enough to teach us to live with honesty, restraint, and a pursuit of what is best for the largest group of God’s people and creatures.
250 years is but a blink of God’s Eternal Eye. It’s a long time for us, but just a small snapshot of God’s ongoing story. So, it’s enough for us to pause, reflect, and give thanks. We baptize a little boy named after Israel’s very first prophet. We break Christ’s bread for all and drink the wine of forgiveness. We begin again, and we pray that the Sovereign and Holy God would work among us to heal this land – and every land.
More on that next week, as we pray Psalm 94. For now, let us affirm that God rules over all.
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
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