We land in Psalm 21 today and we see an opening statement of praise. And it's important that we stop for a moment and we remember back to Psalm 20. That Psalm was a call for salvation. It started with, may the Lord answer you in the day of trouble and then ends with the prayer for Yahweh to save the King. And the final words are, may he answer us when we call. Psalm 21 then is a companion to that previous chapter of the Psalter. And the idea is that this is a song of praise in Thanksgiving that God has provided victory for the King.

Here we have more well-known statements from the Book of Psalms. Verse 7 is 1 of those phrases that when you read it you think, oh, that's where that is found in the book of Psalms. It's a popular verse to put in songs, or it's even just a verse that people quote. It's a statement that's important for the people of God regardless of time or place, and we'll get to that verse eventually, but first we need to take a moment and set up the context of it. We see that Psalm 20 is another Psalm of David, and it starts with a great statement. May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble.

Here in Psalm 19 we see a few different phrases that you probably find to be familiar. And you know the kind of statements in the Psalms that I'm talking about here. You are reading through a passage and you come across some verses, and the words are something that is used often, say, in prayers or in worship, and your brain says to you, oh, that's where this phrase is found in the Psalms. In fact, when we got to the end of Psalm 19, you might have thought, hey, that's what Mark says at the end of the prayer for illumination each week. Well, several phrases here are memorable to us because they are powerful and they use language that really draws us in. This Psalm of David is filled with praise and prayer, and he starts out by speaking about the handiwork of God.

We continue through Psalm 18 and what we read from verses 4 through 19 and what we see emphasized to us and what we read is the way in which David describes the desperate state of affairs that he's in. This is strong language that we see here. The opening of Psalm 18 used great imagery of fortresses and strongholds, and David told us that he was saved from his enemies, but as we continue, he paints a picture of how desperate that situation was.

So, Psalm 18 is by far the longest Psalm we've come to since the beginning of the Psalter, and I labored a little on whether or not to break up the psalm, but in order to keep these videos a reasonable length, I decided to break this psalm down and look at it over a few videos. And in this video, we're going to be looking at verses 1 through 3. And as we start out, we see that the information that isn't given a verse number that we read there is important. Usually the headings that we find in our Bibles are not a part of the original text. They're just there to help us make it easier for us as modern readers.

All right, as I mentioned, we are reading Psalm 14 today. It's a very familiar Psalm. Hear the word of the Lord. The fool says in his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt. They do abominable deeds. There is none who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand who seek after God. They have all turned aside together they have become corrupt. There is none who does good, not even one. Have they no knowledge.