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.