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Trinitas Church, we are nearing
the end of our exposition of 1st and 2nd Samuel. We're in
the last three chapters. For those of you who have been
present throughout this series, you know that we have by and
large been working our way through the life of David. Probably we
know more about the life of David than any other man in the Bible.
Even with respect to Jesus, we know most about his three final
years of his life. David, we know about his life
from his youth up to the time when he passed away. David was
the author of the majority of the Psalms that you read in your
Bible. And it's fitting therefore that at the end of this book
of 2 Samuel, we would have one of the longest Psalms of David.
This is virtually reproduced identically in Psalm 18. So 1
Samuel, rather 2 Samuel 22 and Psalm 18 are just about the same. You'll note that Samuel began
in 1 Samuel with a song. sung by a woman named Hannah,
where she anticipates David as the first godly king of Israel. It's appropriate that the other
end of this story, the other bookend, would be a song of David
himself. There's this principle in the
Bible, why say something when you can sing it? Song is not
something that many of us, especially men, are given to with any regularity. This challenges us to be worshipful
people. Now given that we are not inclined
to be worshipful so much as we are inclined to fret about tomorrow,
so much as we are inclined to think about all our daily labors,
we need to go to God in prayer and ask him to open our ears
and our hearts to his word. So please bow your heads with
me. Living God, we confess already
today that we are sinners. We don't live by the rule, why
sing, or rather, why say something that you can sing in praise.
We are slow to praise. And we know that this disposition
of our soul needs to be remedied by your spirit. We pray that
just that would occur today, that we would receive the challenges
of your word gladly, that they would bring us back to the foot
of the cross to celebrate who Jesus is and what he's done for
us. We ask these things for your
glory and for the good of those who love you in Jesus' name we
pray, amen. All right, so 2 Samuel chapter
22, we're gonna read all 51 verses and then when we're finished,
we'll rise to our feet and sing a short verse together, the Gloria
Padre. 2 Samuel 22. And David spoke the words of
this song to the Lord in the day that the Lord delivered him
from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. He
said, the Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer.
My God, my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn
of my salvation, my stronghold and my refuge, my savior. You saved me from violence. I
call upon the Lord who is worthy to be praised. And I am saved
from my enemies. For the waves of death encompassed
me. The torrents of destruction overwhelmed
me. The cords of Sheol surrounded
me. The snares of death confronted
me. In my distress, I called upon
the Lord. Yes, I cried to my God. And from
his temple, he heard my voice. And my cry for help came into
his ears. Then the earth shook and quaked. The foundations of heaven were
trembling and were shaken because he was angry. Smoke went up out
of his nostrils. Fire from his mouth devoured.
Coals were kindled by it. He bowed the heavens also and
came down with thick darkness under his feet. And he rode upon
a cherub and flew. And he appeared on the wings
of the wind, and he made darkness canopies around him, a mass of
waters, thick clouds of the sky. From the brightness before him,
coals of fire were kindled. The Lord thundered from heaven,
and the Most High uttered His voice. And he sent out arrows
and scattered them, lightning and routed them. Then the channels
of the sea appeared. The foundations of the world
were laid bare by the rebuke of the Lord at the blast of the
breath of his nostrils. He sent from on high. He took
me. He drew me out of many waters.
He delivered me from my strong enemy, from those who hated me,
for they were too strong for me. They confronted me in the
day of my calamity, but the Lord was my support. He also brought
me forth into a broad place. He rescued me because He delighted
in me. The Lord has rewarded me according
to my righteousness. According to the cleanness of
my hands, He has recompensed me. For I have kept the ways
of the Lord, and have not acted wickedly against my God. For
all his ordinances were before me, and as for his statutes,
I did not depart from them. I was also blameless toward him,
and I kept myself from my iniquity. Therefore the Lord has recompensed
me according to my righteousness, according to my cleanness before
his eyes. With the kind, you show yourself
kind. With the blameless, you show
yourself blameless. With the pure, you show yourself
pure. And with the perverted, you show
yourself astute. And you save an afflicted people,
but your eyes are on the haughty whom you abase. For you are my
lamp, O Lord. And the Lord illumines my darkness. For by you, I can run upon a
troop. By my God, I can leap over a
wall. As for God, His way is blameless. The word of the Lord is tested. He is a shield to those who take
refuge in Him. For who is God besides the Lord,
and who is a rock besides our God? God is my strong fortress,
and he sets the blameless in his way. He makes my feet like
hinds feet and sets me on my high places. He trains my hands
for battle. so that my arms can bend a bow
of bronze. You have also given me the shield
of your salvation, and your help makes me great. You enlarge my
steps under me, and my feet have not slipped. I pursued my enemies
and destroyed them, and I did not turn back until they were
consumed, and I have devoured them and shattered them so that
they did not rise, and they fell under my feet. For you have girded
me with strength for battle. You have subdued under me those
who rose up against me. You have also made my enemies
turn their backs to me. And I destroyed those who hated
me. They looked, but there was none to save, even to the Lord.
But he did not answer them. Then I pulverized them as the
dust of the earth. I crushed and stamped them as
the mire of the streets. You have also delivered me from
the contentions of my people. You have kept me as the head
of the nations, a people whom I have not known serve me. Foreigners
pretend obedience to me. As soon as they hear they obey
me. Foreigners lose heart and come trembling out of their fortresses.
The Lord lives, and blessed be my rock, and exalted be God,
the rock of my salvation, the God who executes vengeance for
me and brings down peoples under me, who also brings me out from
my enemies. You even lift me above those
who rise up against me. You rescue me from the violent
man. Therefore, I will give thanks
to you, O Lord, among the nations, and I will sing praises to your
name. He is a tower of deliverance to his king and shows loving
kindness to his anointed, to David and his descendants forever. This is God's word. Trinitas
has noted in our introduction, this is a capping song to the
life of David. We read in verse one of this
passage, and David spoke the words of this song to the Lord
in the day that the Lord had delivered him from the hand of
all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. When we ask when
this was, there are any number of reasonable places to put it
in the life of David. It could very well have been
written right after Jerusalem had been conquered and defended
in 2 Samuel 5-8. But it could just as well have
been written right after the issues that we just read about,
David's battle with his own son, Absalom, and others attempting
to divide his kingdom. I'm gonna talk about four themes
in this psalm that I hope you will be acquainted with for the
rest of your days. These themes are based on these
physical objects and metaphors that David seizes upon to praise
the Lord. Talk to you about rocks and waves
and lamps, and then finally, the final judgment. All throughout
the Bible you will find this metaphor again and again, this
concept of God as our rock. How many people heard me reading
that and heard God described as a rock multiple times? You
remember that in the reading. You ought to because it was everywhere.
It was in the first several verses. It was smack dab in the middle
and it was at the end. David begins this song saying,
the Lord my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God my rock
in whom I take refuge. I want you to think with me for
a moment about the connotations of rocks. And the reality is,
everything in this creation that God has made is designed to reveal
something that is more true about our Creator than any aspect of
the creation itself. Rocks function in a variety of
ways in the Bible, and we've seen this in 1 and 2 Samuel.
To begin, a big rock often serves as a geographical marker. Therefore,
we read just a few chapters back about the large stone in Gibethon.
That was actually where Joab, David's nephew, had slain his
cousin, a man named Amasa. We read about the Rock of Oreb
in Judges, named after a man who was slain there. And if you've
spent any time on the Washington Trail system, you know that rocks
are frequently the markers of things. I once took a group of
18-year-olds up into the middle of the Cascades, to a place called
Mount Daniel. And on the way, there was this
incredible, distinct, massive peak that has the name Cathedral
Rock. And as a little day excursion,
we made our way up Cathedral Rock as well. Those of you who
know the Oregon coast, you know about haystack rock protruding
from the Pacific Ocean on the shoreline. Rocks. are a natural geographical marker,
something to mark out a place of significance. You know, there
are on this earth tribal peoples who don't have any word for your
left and your right hand. In fact, when they talk about
where things are, they won't say it's on your left or on your
right, they'll say it's on your north or on your south. They
would speak in terms of absolute geography all the time. And frequently,
large rocks and mountains would be the reference point. for where
you are on the map. But rocks are not merely markers
in the Bible. Rocks are frequently the site
of some sort of religious activity. We've seen this again and again
throughout 1 and 2 Samuel. We read about the large stone
in Beth Shemesh way back in 1 Samuel 6. Probably it was a sundial. We've read about the rock of
Rimen in the book of Judges. And this tells us something about
the connotations of a rock. Where a large rock would protrude
out of the ground, it was often seen as a point of contact between
God and man, especially if it were a pillar that went up straight.
And therefore, we read all throughout the scriptures of different gods
of different nations being described as their rock, described by the
location where their false gods were worshiped. This is why you
can have these questions that David raises. Who is a rock besides
our God? Moses said, their rock is not
like our rock. This is still true. Today it's
true in all cultures across the globe. Many of you might know
that in Wyoming there's a huge rock called Devil's Tower. Well,
the Lakota and the Cheyenne and the Crow, they all regarded this
as a place of great religious significance and it's not surprising
why. But there's another connotation
of a rock. That is the connotation of being a firm foundation. This
might be the most familiar to all of you because you know about
the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus He warns us not to build
our house, as it were, on shifting sand, but on the rock of His
teaching. We'll see in just two chapters
from now, the last chapter in 2 Samuel, that God's house, His
temple, is going to be built on a threshing floor. That's
a big, flat rock where they would thresh grain. Rocks function
as foundations. If you were to ask what is the
common theme between rocks as geographical markers, rocks as
pillars and religious sites, rocks as foundations, what you
would agree on is you would see that immutability, changelessness,
consistency, something being established and unmoved is a
connotation of rocks. And when we speak this about
our God, we are at the very least speaking to the fact that He
changes not, that He stays the same. that he can be depended
on. And yet, let me tell you, for
all of that, you have yet to exhaust that reference on the
mouth of David. For David, it is not merely that
God is immutable that wins him the title rock. David knew rocks
in a different way than you and I do, because David was often
a fugitive. We read throughout the life of
David again and again that he finds refuge, finds a house,
finds a defense in the rocks. As early as 1 Samuel 22, we read
that David found refuge in the cave of Adullam, and Saul, his
father-in-law, was attempting to kill him. Again and again,
we read things like David stayed in the wilderness, in the strongholds,
in the hiding place, In the rock, in the wilderness of Ma'an, in
the rocks of the wild goats, David found a home. I'm going
to tell you something. You have not loved a rock until
you have had to hide in one. I happened to take the Bosserman
kids and the Roth kids to a movie last weekend. It was a great
movie, and I recommend it to you. It's called Lost on a Mountain
in Maine. It's actually based on a true story way back in 1939,
where a boy gets displaced from his family in the mountains,
and he survives on his own for 10 days straight in the mountains. This boy finds a cave, and I
imagine he might have some idea of just how comforting rocks
can be when that provides shelter from the elements. David engages
in a profound theological move. This man knew what it was like
to love rocks as a place of deliverance, a fortress. And David engages
in this important theological step you need to engage in. He goes, my God who made this
fortress that does not move, that shields me from the enemy,
he's the real rock. He is the real fortress. This
is just a revelation of his hand. This is only here because he
made it. I'm only here because God providence, it brought me
here. And so my rock is not the cave
of Adullam, it is the God who made it. I'm gonna tell you something,
many of you can rattle off the attributes of God, you can say
omnipotent, omniscient, all of the things, but what I would
submit to you from this Psalm of David is that you do not know
what God's immutability, his changelessness is until you know
his immutability as a fortress that surrounds you, that defends
you, that holds you and keeps you from the enemy. Friends,
there are all sorts of things that are immutable that don't
change that you encounter in reality. Numbers don't change. Mathematical equations that are
true are always true, but you don't know those things like
a fortress that surrounds you. God is immutable, but not like
a number. He is immutable like a cave and a fortress that holds
you. Have you made a list of your
fortresses? Those places where God kept you, those places of
security, and engaged in the theological task of going that
place of comfort, that is one of the finest revelations of
our God. I can think of a few caves that
the Lord granted me in my days. Many of you know that I was a
cross-country and track runner all through high school, first
year in college. I remember the intense anxiety
I would get before a race. In fact, I had a friend who was
like a three-sport athlete, incredible athlete, and he would tell me
this, even worse than lining up on the line in football, even
worse than getting ready for a basketball game is the sick
feeling you get in your soul before you have to race. There
are a variety of reasons for this, one of which is this, you're
not on a team and there's no passing the ball, you'll be the
only one running. It's a sick feeling. And not
only that, you know if you are running a distance race, your
body is going to hurt from the inside out. From your bones outward,
you are going to be in pain. You don't want to look dumb,
you are center stage. All of the anxieties you could
possibly have They come to a head when you get on the line for
a race. I remember I would frequently seek solace before these races,
and when we'd have home meets, the place I loved to go was into
the locker room in the pool facility of Lake Stevens High School.
Swim season was over. No one was in there. That locker
room was warm, as they often are when you are at a pool. It
was quiet, no other runners decided to go there, and I could just
be calm before the storm that was about to begin. I'll tell
you, that cave that I loved so much pales in comparison to another
fortress. Many of you know my story that
my big brother, when he was about 19, he left the faith. and it
was crushing for me, anxiety producing. Felt like I lost a
comrade. I felt an imperative to fight
and to understand my faith like I had never felt before. I ended
up having a scholarship to go to Northwest University, and
I'm gonna tell you something, the Northwest College University
Library is to me a happy place in my soul. that to this day
resonates with me, made of brick, of course, and on the second
floor, you had the theology section, and I remember going up to that
place and feeling like I was in a fortress, like between me
and the world, between me and every objection to the Christian
faith, every doubt, there stood these rows of books filled with
writings by great Reformed theologians like Charles Hodge and John Calvin
and John Owen. They were like my defenses, my
bat cave. It was a secluded place. I never
had to worry about running into other students at the library.
And there I felt I could read and
scheme and build up my faith. I had a freedom to do so. I came
to know the Lord as a rock there. He made and He sustained that
place. He made the 2,000 years of good theology that were ready
at my fingertips to read. He's the upper room where those
very theologians now reside and change not. Do you have your rock fortresses
in mind, those happy places where you went and found comfort? Do
you understand that the Lord is the reality of what they are?
They are just a vestige, just a faint image of what God is
meant to be to us. Well, one of the only ways you
can appreciate God as rock is if you have encountered waves,
which is our next big theme. David again and again describes
his situation as if he were a sailor, and that should be confusing
to you because you know that David didn't spend one day of
his life on the sea. So you're gonna have to figure this one
out. David says things like this, I call upon the Lord who is worthy
to be praised for the waves of death encompass me, the torrents
of destruction overwhelm me, the cords of shale The Old Testament
word for both the grave and the place of the dead surrounded
me and the snares of death confronted me, but, but he drew me out of
many waters. I'm gonna talk to you about the
waves for a moment. The Lord very purposely in his creation
created our earth, our world in a state of relative disorder. It contrasted with heaven, and
God can say in the very first verse of scripture that God created
the heavens and the earth, but the earth, evidently by contrast
to heaven, was formless and void, and there was darkness over it.
The concept is that formlessness was a world that was marked by
the tumult of waves after wave. A raging sea. It's uninhabitable. If God had made man on day one,
he would have made man in a crazy, chaotic sea. No place for man
to be for his first day of life. So in days one, two, and three,
God creates light, dealing with the darkness problem. He divides
the waters on day two to begin with the formlessness problem.
And on day three, he makes dry land appear. And that's where
man and all the initial living things will be. The deep, therefore,
throughout the Bible, the ocean, is often called an abyss and
it's equated with death and hell. You think about where land is,
it's naturally above sea level and the sea, it descends much
deeper. In the symbolism of the Bible,
the nations outside of Israel are often described as the sea,
chaos. Not only that, crashing against
one another in war and battle in Israel is described as the
land. David knew about waves, not as
phenomenon on the sea, he knew about them in the form of battle. You think about two battle lines,
you guys have at least seen movies like Lord of the Rings, where
you have two battle lines, and what does it look like when they
go rushing at each other? It looks like waves crashing into
one another, doesn't it? Being in battle is like being
on the seas, a dangerous place. And David saw those battle lines
clash, whether it be with Israel herself, as Saul would come against
David and his men, or Philistia, or the Amalekites, or the Jebusites,
or the Ammonites, or the people of Aram, and Edom, and Moab.
David had been on many wild seas, you could say. It's a familiar
metaphor. You know, you guys are going
to say things throughout your life like, when you've been hit
by too many tasks, crises, or roadblocks to your plans, you're
going to say, what? I feel overwhelmed. You ever said that? That's literally
the language of drowning. Some of you right now are really
worried that a red wave or a blue wave is going to come across
America on Tuesday. You're afraid of being overwhelmed.
Just the same, this metaphor presents itself to us every time
we watch a football game. You got two lines going at each
other, clashing like two waves, and that's part of what makes
that game so exciting. I'll say in passing, parents,
that it is dangerous to shelter your children. It is very wise
as Christian parents to raise them and nurture them in the
faith at every point, but it is dangerous to shelter them.
The world is an ocean. It is not dry land. 80% of the
value I submit of involving your kids in athletics, debate, public
speaking, theater, whatever it might be, even social outlets
where they're out of their comfort zone, is that they need to experience
angst, opposition, and competition in a controlled setting so that
it's not unfamiliar to them. The world's not nice. How foolish
we would be to teach our kids that it is. Challenge you parents,
ask yourself the question, where am I asking my kids to step out
of their comfort zone? Because I will tell you what,
when they have to decide to go to church someday, and you're
not the one driving them there, they are gonna walk into a setting
that doesn't feel like a group of my best friends, that feels
a bit challenging, feels a bit foreign, and feels like something
they'd rather not do, unless they have the character. that
only comes from living a bit of life on the seas. I would
submit that when David uses this language of him being in the
midst of a raging sea, and he describes God as appearing on
the wings of the wind, he is alluding to a specific battle,
namely two battles of the Valley of Rephaim. After David in 2
Samuel 5, conquers the city of Jerusalem. He is immediately
met by two waves of Philistines from the Southwest. And when
the Philistines came the second time, God says this to David,
when you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the balsam trees,
Then you shall act promptly, for then the Lord will have gone
out before you to strike the army of the Philistines." The
picture is, when you hear the wind blowing intensely on the
top of trees, know that my angel army is going ahead of your army
and attack. This, you might say, subtle theophany,
simply in the form of winds and a storm, in that David tells
you not what his eyes saw, but what his faith saw. The living
God going before him. The God of creation and redemption
on his side. The God who came in Genesis 1-2,
and it says, after the earth was made formless and void, it
says the spirit of God hovered over the waters, getting ready
to subdue them. David sees the same God in his
battle. peering on the wings of the wind and ready to put
an end to the raging seas. Friends, God must be to you more
than a fortress because we don't just hide, we also war. God must be more to you than
a hiding place. He had better be more like a
storm hiding place where you stand in the middle of the storm,
guarded and at the same time going forth with him. In the
rustling of the trees, David hears God's glory cloud. And
this, I would submit, is what David is describing in poetic
form in verses seven and nine. In my distress, I called upon
the Lord. Yes, I cried to my God, and from his temple he heard
my voice, and my cry for help came into his ears. When it says
smoke went up from his nostrils, he's not describing a dragon.
In the Old Testament, whenever the Bible says that someone's
angry in your English text, what it says is that the person's
nose was hot. I don't know if you've ever seen
someone really, really angry with a red face right here. Describing God as angry at the
storm oppressing David. and is describing God as going
forth as a fire, as he did in the Exodus, as he did in these
pivotal events. Says he rode on a cherub. Why?
Because when the Bible describes God's glory cloud, we're told
in Deuteronomy 33 that that cloud isn't to be understood like the
clouds you see out there. It's actually a swarm of angels. That cloud that led people through
the exodus, it says it was dark by day and fire by night. It
is God surrounded by angelic powers, worshiped at all times,
showing up with a piece of heaven coming with him. The scattering
of the armies that David knew so well, it was like the parting
of the Red Sea. It was like the creation of dry
land. In these pivotal events of God's creation and redemption,
David is able to see his own story. God makes dry land on
day three, and you might know man is made out of the dust of
the ground, and that's why David can say, I am like day three. When he says specifically, you
took me up, you drew me out of many waters. I am like the ground
you pulled from a raging sea and made a place for living things
to be. He says, you enlarge my steps
under me. He says, I was as it were on
a narrow precipice and no, now you've widened the ground that
I can have firm footing on all sides. David describes his victory
over his enemies as creation performed anew. He says, then
the earth shook and quaked, and the foundations of heaven were
trembling and were shaken because God was angry. And he says, the
channels of the sea appeared. It's like the waters receded
just before a tsunami. All that's left are little water
ditches, and it's as if dry ground was made again. I'm no longer
subdued. I just challenge you all, can
you see the God of creation and redemption in your moments of
deliverance? Do you even have a list of the
moments where you were as it were drowning? But God came with
his storm and put an end to the raging seas before you. I remember
distinctly when I was in my college years, it was so comforting to
me to have my dad tell me his story, his storm again and again. I remember distinctly once when
I was 19 or 20 saying, Dad, tell me again how it was. that you
came to the faith that you did. See, my dad's story went like
this. He was raised Roman Catholic, where no one in his family was
taught the Bible at all, which is what you might expect in a
Roman Catholic system. Therefore, his dad, my grandpa,
who was the valedictorian of a Roman Catholic all-boys school,
when he was confronted by a false teacher, a cult leader, who used
the Bible left and right, he was sucked straight into it.
What this led to was that my continuing Roman Catholic grandmother
eventually divorced my grandfather, who was in a cult. Now, back
in the 60s, you can imagine, even today, there's a certain
amount of embarrassment that accompanies divorce, but in those
days, in a Roman Catholic community on Capitol Hill, there was a
lot of embarrassment. What ended up happening is that
my grandma remarried, moved to a new home in Richmond Beach,
and my dad was told his senior year in high school Hey, there
are only two rooms in this house, and one of them is for your younger
brothers, and the other one is for me and my new husband. You
need to find a new place to live. My dad spent his senior year
living at his track coach's house, Shoreline High School. ends up
happening is my dad's oldest brother goes down to the flagship
college of this cult, used to be the fourth biggest in the
country, Worldwide Church of God, where he abandoned the faith
altogether and lived a life of hedonism. My dad's twin brother
went into the cult, became a minister in that group, and everybody else was just confused.
Friends, this is what a storm looks like. My dad well could
have drowned in that storm. And for me to hear the story,
Dad, how did you manage to not drown? And the answer is simple.
The Lord God came like a storm. Many of you may not be familiar
with the ministry of a man named Walter Martin. He was an evangelist
of people in cults. He had written numerous books
on cults. He had a radio program, The Bible Answer Man. And I'll
tell you something, he was known for being feisty. Because when
you engage with false teachers who are themselves feisty, telling
you they're the only true church on earth, and telling everyone
around them that everybody is bound for hell but those in their
little sect, you have to be ready to war. My dad was drawn out
of false teaching through the ministry of this man. He's like
the patriarch of a family of many people who believe. Let
me tell you something about what a storm Walter Martin was. I
remember in my high school years, I was in Young Life, and an area
director, high up, he's like, Brent, how are you, why are you
so much different than all the other kids in this public school?
And I told him a little bit about my dad's story, and I mentioned
Walter Martin, and the second I said his name, the guy soured
up really quickly. This Young Life leader was like,
you know, I never liked Walter Martin. It just seems like he
was always debating and arguing. He seemed like a real sour guy. It's as if this man had it in
his mind that the way you save people, the way you save everybody
is the way young life did. You have fun games and you have
a good time. What this man didn't seem to
understand is that when your faith is being challenged by
a ferocious enemy, you don't need a game of chubby bunny,
you need a warrior. You need a warrior. The Lord
came like a storm. I can tell you we've had rough
days and rough waters at Trinitas Church. First four or five years
of our church were intensely rough. We would get these waves
of people just leaving a big mega church because it had imploded. People who had never been pastored,
whose marriages were in difficult states, who were excited at first
because we shared kind of a common history with them where we had
gone to church to disappointment. The Trinitas lacked the ideal
time of worship. It lacked particularly pleasant
facilities and it was tremendously noisy because we have a lot of
kids. It waves in our families at the time, all of the leaders
of our church, but one had kids under eight and toddlers and
infants. The budget was struggling. And then you just had people's
ideas about what we should be and feeling like a constant disappointment. That is like waves. I remember
we had planned a vacation with our friends the Hedgecocks and
we all had these little kids and babies and baby Bjorns and
things like that. Scott and I were walking on the
beach on the Oregon coast and I remember we were both exhausted.
I remember Scott saying, you know, as it were, we were right
by the waves and we were really talking about waves, whether
or not we called it that. But I remember him saying, this
is just four years in, you know, Brent, I don't know if I were
to go back knowing what I know now, if I would do this again.
And it was an easy sentiment to resonate with me, the man
with whom he was talking. This just led to years and years
of prayer, friend. We prayed to have a morning service.
We prayed to have more workers. We prayed that we would have
teenagers. See, these are all the things you need. Churches,
you tend to get what you already have. I'll just tell you something. 11 years in, there is no question
I would go back and do it all over again. But it took the God
who comes as a storm and blesses. And here we are, a group of people,
servants, deacons, leaders. Third theme I'm gonna look at
in this passage is God is a lamp. David says it right in the middle.
You are my lamp, O Lord, and the Lord illumines my darkness.
For by you I can run upon a troop. By my God I can leap over a wall.
As for God, his way is blameless. The word of the Lord is tested.
God is not just a rock fortress in whom we rest, and He's not
just a storm who fights back the waves for us. He is a lamp
who sheds light on how we may join in His fight. I wanna just
talk about how the Lord is a lamp. Clearly, this metaphor means
He gives us understanding, He gives us wisdom. And I'm gonna
tell you what this doesn't mean. David is not celebrating. God
is a lamp who spoke to him again and again by his deepest feelings
and intuitions. I have to say this because so
many people today think they hear the voice of God from within,
and that's the primary place the Lord speaks to me. And it's
dangerous, friends, because you will very quickly confuse the
voice of God with the voice of your own sinful heart, and the
living God never advises us to follow our heart. It's sadly
that it's too often what's going on in modern charismatic Christianity
and Pentecostalism, people heeding the directions of their own heart.
And that is not what David is talking about right here. David is talking about God being
a lamp because he speaks by his word. It's right there. You are
my lamp because the word of the Lord is tested. I'm gonna talk
about what this means. It's really hard to translate
this Hebrew word. Saraf. What it literally means is smelted. What you do with a metal to get
all of the impurities out of it, to refine gold or silver
down into that pure element itself and to extract from it any impurity,
what you do is you heat it up and smelt it till it glows. And
then on the other end of it, you got a really good smelter,
you're gonna have 99.999% pure gold. Therefore, when you look at the
various translations of scripture, what they're doing in verse 31,
NASB says, the word of the Lord is tested. Well, that's true,
but that only gets half of the concept. The concept is that
it is smelted and purified, refined all the way through without any
impurity. And therefore, You'll find in something like the NIV,
the word of the Lord is flawless. Well, it's those two things together.
It has been tested utterly and it is without flaw. It is absolutely
certain. So the same David who says that
the Lord is his lamp can say, your word is a lamp to my feet
and a light to my path. By reliance on this word, David
could war with his God. In the battle of Rephaim, he
got an objective word from the Lord, don't attack until you
hear the rushing winds. I'm gonna tell you, David didn't
feel good to attack any more than you feel good, young men,
when you have to go into your football game. David didn't have an overwhelming
happy, happy in his heart. He had the word of God which
contradicted the fears of his heart. All of your battles must
be fought in submission to the word of God, friends. David,
he won battles not primarily because he was a great warrior.
From the day he was young, he defeated Goliath, not due to
his physical strength or training, but out of faith and obedience
to the living God. David lived according to the
word. He never assassinates Saul, who was always trying to kill
him. He obeyed the word that said, you shall not curse God
nor curse a ruler of your people, much less kill God's anointed. Where Saul would not attack the
Amalekites, this people destined for destruction, David attacks
them relentlessly. David confesses his sins when
he lapses into them and he attends upon worship. And this enables
David to be decisive Many of us are tossed and turned in this
Christian life because we don't treat God's word as this refined,
flawless, absolutely certain lamp and we waver about what
we ought to do. David says, because of this lamp,
God makes my feet like Heinz feet. I can run straight forward
knowing what to do and where to go. He can say, God trains
my hands for battle, not because he came down as Obi-Wan Kenobi
and showed him how to use a lightsaber, but because the living God showed
him how to war by way of obedience, holiness, and truth. I'm gonna
tell you something. If you treat the word of God
as merely suggestive, you treat it as broadly wise, but not entirely
flawless, Your faith will wane. Frequently people will come to
me and say, God just doesn't seem real to me right now, Brant.
I will often ask those same people, do you take God seriously as
he has spoken to you in his word? A lot of times people say, I
don't know. My questions will usually follow
this form. Well, the Lord has told you to
not neglect gathering together and to live your life as a living
sacrifice, presenting yourself to God as just that. Have you
been attending on divine worship and people are like, hmm, kinda. I'm gonna tell you something,
things that are real to you, you get them in your schedule and
you don't miss them. Things that are real to you get
your time, and they get it with a religious consistency. I'll ask the same people this
question. When's the last time you gave anything concrete to
the Lord? That one, especially for anyone
in the age group 18 to 30, I don't have kids yet, and I'm not married,
and I don't have a family, is usually pretty well close to
nothing, if not nothing itself. I ask this question because things
that are real to you get your money. Things that are real to
you get some of your wealth. They absolutely do. Food is very
real to you, you'll go pay for it. The roof over your head,
quite real, you will pay for it. The government, whether you
like it or not, you will pay them, all real. When you treat
the Lord as someone who has no claim on your resources, the
sense of reality of God will wane. I ask the same question. Do you have a loving fellowship
with brothers in Christ? God literally says, this is how you
know. This is how you know that you
are loved of God if you love your brother. And when someone
says, I just can't stand to be around people in a different
stage of life than me, who have different interests than me,
who just aren't like me, who kind of bother me. Your sense
of right standing with God It will wane. David knew God as a lamp. He
battled not simply natural forces but spiritual forces by tending
to the directions of that flawless God through his flawless word. And this leads us to the final
judgment. Smack dab in the middle of this
psalm, if you're a good Protestant like I hope you all are, there
are some verses that might really confuse you. These verses seem
to have David appealing to his own righteousness as the ground
for why he's been delivered. Here are the verses. The Lord
has rewarded me according to my righteousness. Many of you,
you've heard this whole series, and you know David had a man
murdered and committed adultery. My righteousness? According to
the cleanness of my hands, he has recompensed me? He says,
for I have kept the ways of the Lord and have not acted wickedly
against my, really? And for about four verses, he
says things like that. We better take into account what
David means. David is not suggesting in these words or these verses
that he was sinless. In fact, he literally says in
verse 22, I have kept myself from my iniquity, which is a
tacit acknowledgement of his iniquity. So what does he mean
when he says I have kept myself from my sins? Well, the answer
is straightforward. David was a man who, when he
sinned, even in his great sin with Bathsheba, he confesses
his sin, and he says, I have sinned against the Lord, and
the prophet Nathan responds, the Lord has taken away your
sins. David was a man who knew forgiveness.
Knowing himself to be forgiven, he could plead in his prayers
as a man who knew a righteousness alien to himself, nevertheless
belonged to himself. That's why the prevailing word
that the New Testament authors of the epistles use for Christians
is they call you saints. Do you know that you are a saint
in the sight of God? Do you believe this? But David
isn't simply appealing. He isn't simply appealing to
the fact that he has a righteousness from without. He's actually appealing
to confidence in his cause. Let me explain what I mean. When
David went to war with Saul, many of you might have thought,
oh my goodness, can I go to war with the king of Israel, God's
anointed? When David went to war with the
Philistines, you might have wondered, is it righteous and good and
right for me to go out and fight this battle? But David is singing
when he says, the Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness.
He is singing about a bout he has with other men. These men
say I'm wicked for fighting for the kingdom, for laboring on
all sides against the enemies of Israel. But he goes, I know
I'm righteous in this cause. Why? Because God is a lamp to
me, his word is clear, and this battle is righteous to battle
and to fight. Despite what all the naysayers
say, I'm confident in this battle. Christians, I hope you know something.
You can be confident in your battles. It's not just a crap
shoot. Oh, I'm fighting in this direction. Sure hope I'm right.
That is not how we labor and fight. We can rest assured that
when we witness to people, even when they respond, your witness
was insensitive. It made me feel uncomfortable.
I didn't like it. You seem so sure of yourself.
What you did was unsettling to me. We can rest assured that
we are right in that battle and bout in the heart and spirit
of it. Even if, even if we have many
blunders along the way, We do not carry on Christians
as those without a lamp and a light to assure us in our course of
action. When you raise your children
up in the faith, if you have co-workers, if you have friends
who are unbelievers, there will be many who say, you're brainwashing
your children. you can carry on in full confidence
that you are right and righteous in that course, not because you're
flawless in your obedience, not because you have no sin, but
because the word has made it clear that is a right and righteous
course of action. And you can gladly bear those
accusations and assaults. David is essentially teaching
us is that the final judgment, it is not a mystery. to whom
and for what actions God will say, well done, good and faithful
servants. There are paths that are righteous
and will be acknowledged and praised by our Lord, even though
those righteous acts don't save us, don't justify us, don't win
us salvation. They will win the praise of a
righteous God and Savior. We're not tossed and turned on
the waves, friends. If you're with us today and you've
never believed in Jesus Christ, I would just challenge you, how
do you know any course, any battle you've ever fought is right and
righteous? Have you not had your opinions reversed? Have you not
had them turned on their head? Have your feelings not given
you a mixed report? Where is your lamp, where is
your light? Do you know Jesus Christ is the very word of God,
the authoritative, definitive word? We sure hope you find him
today. Bow your heads with me. Living God, we have sung too
little. Living God, we have not been observant where you have
come to us as a shelter, where you have come to us as a storm.
We have tended very little upon your word. Please remedy this
rebel spirit in us. Put it to death. Give us peace
and confidence, Lord, that we can take you at your word. And when you tell us that righteous
battles involve often very simple things, prioritizing your worship,
witnessing to those you'd rather not hear, standing up for the
unborn, Lord, give us peace and confidence that these things
have such a savor that is unpleasant to a world that is perishing.
There are causes that are just and right, and we needn't waver. We needn't waver in fighting
them. God, we pray for our loved ones who are lost. God, that
they would come to know you as a light. In Jesus' name we pray,
by your spirit, amen.
Rocks, Waves, and the Final Judgement
Series Thy Kingdom Come
| Sermon ID | 11324203747691 |
| Duration | 53:56 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | 2 Samuel 22 |
| Language | English |
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