Thank you, John. Before we get started, just one more announcement. We do allow here at the Independence Reformed Bible Church the opportunity for questioning following the sermon this morning. So if you have questions, you will have the opportunity to ask. Before we get started, too, I just wanted to speak briefly to a phrase we just sang. When we sang A Mighty Fortress, did you catch that phrase? The body they may kill, God's truth abideth still. That phrase confronts the modern mentality. The modern mentality is, might makes right. And Martin Luther there said, might doesn't make right. The body they may kill, they may kill me. That changes nothing as far as what's true and what's right. I was saying this morning to, speaking in our prayer time here this morning that we have before we get started, I had the opportunity recently to talk to some Christian friends of mine. I believe they're Christian friends in a little meeting that I have. I was saying it's very difficult for me to explain to them that there's a difference between me saying I believe in Jesus. It's a big difference. I can say I believe in Jesus with one hand. That's allowed. You're allowed to say that out there. Out there in our politically correct culture. You can say that. I believe in Jesus. What you're not allowed to say is that not only do I believe in Jesus, but all other gods are false and he's the only true God. That's what you're not allowed to say. And that's what Martin Luther said unapologetically in that Psalm. The body they may kill, God's truth abideth still. David is going to say that for us here this morning. Turn with me, if you would, to Psalm 18. This will be the longest psalm we've studied so far. And we are going to look at a particular section. We're going to look at a broad picture of the psalm, what the psalm is really trying to say, or saying, if you will. We'll speak more expositionally about what the psalm actually says next week. We'll note a few things. And then what we'll do today is we will, we want to, our purpose today is to demonstrate proper biblical interpretation principles for you this morning. There's some language in this psalm that we have not run into yet in the psalms at all. Some apocalyptic language, if you will. We want to look at this psalm to help us learn how to interpret what some would call difficult passages in the Bible. You'll see what they are in just a minute. Now, as we look at this, shall we say, challenging psalm, I want to say this, that it has been said that In face-to-face communication, over 90% of that communication is nonverbal. You've probably heard that, right, in talking? 90% of the communication is actually nonverbal. It's not actually the words. It's the body language. It's the facial expressions. It's the pauses. Parents know that, right? Ask your child if he's done something wrong. You don't listen for the answer, are you? You're looking for the facial expressions, You're looking for the I shifting away, and my favorite is the pause and the uh. Hey, did you take that cookie? Pause, uh, no. What are you believing? You're believing the pause and the uh. It's not believing the no, right? But what do we do? But think about what this means. If 90% of our communication is nonverbal, think about it. When we have words and words only, we may be missing up to 90% of the intended communication. You see, we only have words in the Bible, don't we? We don't have the nonverbal cues. So what do we do? However, we do know that when verbal and nonverbal cues are consistent, communication happens. But how are we to interpret words that do not feature extracurricular cues, words that were written hundreds, even thousands of years ago? Of course, those that oppose Christianity, those that oppose the Bible, say that we can't know what the Bible actually says. It was written too long ago. Now, you need to know this, that as you question these very same people, and I've had these conversations, they've said, you can't know what it really says. It was written too long ago. I remember one friend that I was having this argument with, and I asked him, I said this, how do you know what I actually mean right now then? How do you know? And he said, we can't know what happened a thousand years ago. How do you know what happened a hundred years ago? How do you know what happened a hundred minutes ago? How do you really know the communication that's happening right now? You see, those people that attack the Bible and say that we can't really know cannot be consistent, because at some point they have to say, well, we can know something. and we can know. Thankfully, we have something that they don't understand. We have a supernatural author, we have a supernatural document, and a supernatural helper called the Holy Spirit. No other book can claim this. A supernatural authorship? The only book besides the Bible that can claim that? Consistently? a supernatural document, the Bible, and the supernatural. This morning, we will see from Psalm 18 a clear example of how the best interpreter of Scripture is Scripture itself. We will first read the entire Psalm to get a picture of what this Psalm is about, and then we'll comment on it briefly. And what this Psalm is about Here's the psalm. It starts out saying, you know, David's grateful that he was delivered from his enemies and from the hand of Saul. But this psalm is definitely not about David. This psalm is a picture of the God that David serves. It begins in the Thanksgiving psalm from David, but what we see in this psalm are two main themes. One, who God is, and two, what he has done or is doing. So as we read this psalm, I'd like you to think about those two themes. Who is God, and what has he done, and what is he doing? Again, it starts out with it being about David, but it definitely does not end that way. It's all about the great God that he serves. To the chief musician, a psalm of David, the servant of the Lord, who spoke to the Lord the words of this psalm on the day that the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul. Now as we read this psalm, I want to mention again, this is about who God is, this is about what He's done, but there's also some very stiff language in this psalm. There is some language here that goes against some of the things we've been taught doctrinally. So keep your ears open, I don't want you to get glazed over, I know it's 50 verses, but please engage with each verse because there's some things here, well, that just won't go down too easily. I will love you, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer. My God is my strength, and who I will trust. My shield is the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised. So shall I be saved from my enemies. The pangs of death surrounded me, and the bloods of ungodliness made me afraid. The sorrows of Sheol surrounded me, and the snares of death confronted me. In my distress, I called upon the Lord, and I cried unto my God. He heard my voice from his temple, and my cry came before him, even to his ears. Then the earth shook and trembled. The foundations of the hills also quaked and were shaken, because he was angry. Smoke went up from his nostrils, and devouring fire from his mouth. Cold were kindled by it. He found the heavens also, and came down with darkness under his feet. And he rode upon a chair of his flue. He flew upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness a safer place. His canopy round about him was dark waters, thick clouds in the skies. From the brightness before him, his thick clouds passed with hailstones and coals of fire. The Lord thundered from heaven, and the Most High uttered His voice, while hailstones and coals of fire. He sent out His arrows and scattered the foe, lightnings in abundance, and He vanquished them. Then the channels of the sea were seen, the foundations of the world were uncovered at your rebuke, O Lord, of the breath of your nostrils. He sent from above, He took me, He drew me out of the many waters. He delivered me from my strong enemy and 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 up into a broad place. He delivered me because He delighted in me. The Lord 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 wickedly departed from my God. For all His judgments were before me, and I did not put away the statutes from me. I was also blameless before him, and I kept myself from iniquity. Therefore, the Lord has recompensed me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in his sight. With the merciful, you will show yourself merciful. With the blameless man, you will show yourself blameless. With the pure, you will show yourself pure. And with the devious, you will show yourself shrewd. You will save the humble people, but will bring down haughty looks. For you will light my lamp. The Lord my God will enlighten my darkness. For by you I can run against the truth. By my God I can leap over a wall. As for God, his way is perfect. The word of the Lord is proven. He is a shield to those who trust in him. For who is a God except the Lord? And who is a rock except our God? It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect. He makes my feet like the feet of deer and sets me on my high places. He teaches my hands to make war so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You have also given me the shield of your salvation. Your right hand has held me up. Your gentleness has made me great. You enlarged my path under me so my feet did not slip. I have pursued my enemies and overtaken them. Neither did I turn back again until they were destroyed. I have wounded them so that they could not rise. They have fallen under my feet. for you have armed me with strength for the battle. You have subdued under me those who rose up against me. You have also given me the necks of my enemies, so that I destroyed those who hated me. They cried out, but there was none to save, even to the Lord. But He did not answer them. Then I beat them as fine as the dust before the wind. I cast them out like dirt in the streets. You have delivered me from the strifes of the people. You have made me the head of nations. The people I have not known shall serve me. As soon as they hear of me, they obey me. The foreigners submit to me. The foreigners fade away and come frightened from their hideouts. The Lord lives. Blessed be my rock. Let the God of my salvation be exalted. It is God who avenges me and subdues the peoples under me. He delivers me from my enemies. You also lift me up above those who rise against me. You have delivered me from the violent man. Therefore I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the Gentiles, and sing praises to your name. Great deliverance he gives to his king, and shows mercy to his anointed, David and his descendants forevermore." This is a psalm that gets some play with a few of the verses. But how does this psalm fit into your theology? How's this? Verse 34. He, I mean, and I've seen this. Let's start with verse 33. He makes my feet like the feet of deer. He sets my feet on high places. I've seen that on cards. I've seen that on plaques. It's a nice verse. How's the next verse grab you? He teaches my hands to make war so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze. Raise your hand if you've seen that on a plaque or a nice birthday card. Probably not. You see, it doesn't fit in with our basic theology or understanding of the way God is, right? The way the Bible's supposed to be. But isn't that what we do every time we come to Scripture, every time we come to church? Aren't we supposed to always be confronted with what the Bible says about who God is, as opposed to our ideas of who we think He's supposed to be? How about this? Verse 40, You have also given me the necks of my enemies, so that I destroy those who hated me. They cried out that there was none to save, even to the Lord, but He did not answer them. How's that? My enemies, David says, even if they were so desperate, that they even cried out to God, and God didn't answer. How does that fit into your theology? Can't you see why this, at least some sections of this particular psalm, are not studied all that much? How about this? Verse 42. I confront my enemies, and we sat down, we did a tate-a-tate, and we all agreed that we're all going to like Get along. That's not hardly a picture, is it? This is a picture of no quarter asked, none given, no surrender asked, none given. Only one is going to be standing on the field at the end, right? Then I beat them as fine as the dust before the wind. I guess them out like dirt in the streets. Whoa! What do we have going on here? The Lord lives. Verse 46. We're back. We're back to our plaques and our Christian cards. The Lord lives. Blessed be my rock. Let the God of my salvation be exalted. This is one of the reasons, my friends, why we have to preach through the Bible, verse by verse and chapter by chapter. It'd be easy, wouldn't it, to preach a sermon on that wonderful verse 46. The Lord lives. Blessed be my rock. Let the God of my salvation be exalted. Isn't that great? But the reason why he's saying what he says in verse 46 is because of what happened in the previous verses. The Lord lives, blessed be my rock. How do I know it? Well, I know that because I thoroughly destroy my enemies, David says. How's this Grammy this morning? To be real modern, how do you feel? about what we've read. Actually, it doesn't matter too much how you feel, does it? Yeah, yeah. That's why we share and we dialogue. Yeah, how about that? Now, David here is presenting a picture of the thorough victory of God and righteousness. Let's understand that first of all, my friends. God is not a compromising of God with evil. God is not a God who, in the end, will make a space for evil and a space for righteousness. We hear these kinds of things all the time. When we hear something like, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. As if! Caesar has his own separate jurisdiction, and God has his jurisdiction. Not at all. Caesar is responsible to bow before Christ, just like everybody else. It doesn't matter who Caesar's gods are. It doesn't matter what Caesar thinks. Caesar is responsible to believe and obey God. There is no separate section for anyone. Jesus Christ, king and ruler overall. Well, just a few more points from this psalm. And I want to say that the things that I've addressed this morning will mostly be addressed next week, some of the challenges, some of the issues here that we've talked about. Some I will address briefly today. First of all, I want to make a few points, though, from the psalm. I hope you got an idea that David is talking about a great God here who does great things, and David is very clear But the only reason why he can have this kind of victory over his enemies, and we'll talk about who his enemies are in a minute, but the only reason why he can have this kind of victory over his enemies is because of the God that he serves. Look, if you would, at verse 31. For who is a god except the Lord, and who is a rock except our God? David is not worshipping gods here. He's not trying to fit in with the culture. a polytheistic culture that worships Baal and all kinds of other asteroids, all kinds of gods. He's not fitting in. He's saying there's only one God, and he trumps all the others. There is no Tay-to-Tay, there is no detente, there is no dialogue, there is no equality between the gods, David says for us there. In the subscript, in the beginning, to the chief musician of Psalm of David, the servant of the Lord, who spoke to the Lord, You've got to just love that. David was a great king. David was the greatest king in Israel. David was, to this day, at least for the time that he lived, the best known king. Honestly, right now, could you name a whole lot of David's contemporary kings? King of Assyria, King of Babel, which really didn't exist, not really at the time. Assyria existed. The Hittite Empire mostly didn't exist. Philistines, can you name any kings? David was the greatest king of his time, by far. And he doesn't say, to his chief physician, Psalm of David, the great kings. You know what David exalted in? He didn't exalt, it didn't really turn him on that he was a great king. You see how he wants to identify himself? A Psalm of David, the servant of the Lord. That's what made sense to David. That's what made David tick. I am he says at the end, a servant of the Lord. And we see that in the very last verse. And it's almost paraphretical. Look at verse 50. Great deliverance, speaking of God, he gives to his king, David, saying, flat out, guess who I really belong to? Guess who I'm really serving here? I'm serving God. Now, my friends, there's a short application here. If any king, or any civil magistrate does not recognize that is ultimately the God of Scripture that he serves, then be afraid. Be very afraid. Because that king, or that civil magistrate, or that president, or that legislature, or that judge, ultimately they're going to think that authority begins and ends with them, and that always goes sour. David was a great king because he served God and he recognized that he was that he was God's king in the end. And he realized that God had given him his kingdom and God could take it away any time that he wanted to. And he was reminded of that when he sinned with Bathsheba. And God did take it away for a time. His king. Great deliverance he gives to his king. You know, when you look there at that subscript, the servant of the Lord who spoke to the Lord the words of the Son on the day that the Lord delivered him from the hand of Saul, the hand of his enemies, and from the hand of Saul." You know, we kind of read that and we just keep going on. But let's think about what a big deal that was and we'll look at that in a little bit. On the day that he was delivered from an awful lot of problems. And I don't know what kind of problems you have here this morning. We all have them. Some bigger, some smaller. But everybody has problems. So I must ask, are your problems this size, the size of David's talking about right here? A very powerful and popular king tried to kill you. And what do you have? A band of tax resistors running around the Judean desert. A very hot, dry, inhospitable place. And later on, surrounded by enemies on every side. We've talked about this before, how the land of Canaan, or the land of Israel, if you will, is surrounded by enemies. Moab, Ammon. The only place where it's not surrounded by enemies is the Mediterranean Sea, to the west. To the north, to the west, to the south. All potential enemies. David says, God gave me deliverance from them all. The greater the problem, my friends, the greater the deliverance. Now, we read from Romans this morning, Romans 15, where Paul is arguing that God would be a god to the Gentiles. And one of the verses quoted by Paul in Romans 15, 9, is verse 49. Therefore, I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the Gentiles, and sing praises to your name. You see, we constantly look at problems as if the object... We have a problem. What do we think, first of all? The object is to get out of this problem. Right? Let's get over this problem. Whatever it is. Money. Health. Whatever. There's a million problems. We pray. How do we focus our prayer? Please, let's get over this problem. We have to wonder about that. Because if God was really all that interested in just us not having the problem, maybe he wouldn't have given it to us to begin with. But this is great deliverance here that's happening with David. And David says, you know what? As a result of this great deliverance, I'm just going to go live my life and be happy ever after and go sing a song and write another harp and just kick back. No, David is seeing a great victory that goes beyond his personal little problem here, if I can call it little. therefore I will give thanks to you, verse 49, the Lord among the Gentiles will sing praises to your name. David says this, the Gentiles are going to know about this great God. Your problems, your problems are brought to you by God to show his great name in all the earth. Did you know that? If you and I are not focused that way, we'll miss the point. Oh good, we hung in there. And you know something, how me focused is all that. You know, I have this problem because I'm supposed to learn something. I hope I learn it quick, and then I can get out of this problem. No. No. No, no, no. God is a great God. And He's going to promote His great name. He is going to promote His great name through your problems. Oh, He's got other ways of doing it. And He will do it. But you must be focused like David is focused here. Your problems are going to redound to the great name and the great glory of God. Now, next. Let's talk about these enemies of David's. Who are they? Well, we get a little bit of a description from them. We see here that the Lord delivered him from the hand of his enemies, all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul. We always have these issues when we go to the Psalms, do we not? We read these verses of David just destroying his enemies. And then we read the New Testament, love your enemies, be good to them if they hate you. How do we put that together? We know the New Testament one, right? Love your enemies. Anybody can quote that. I would guess you could go to secular universities, and even the professors in the social science department. Worse yet, even in the art department, you can quote love your enemies. Everybody knows that one. They don't know Psalm 18, though. What are we to do with this? How do we put them together? Let's get a brief description of them, shall we? Let's look at verse 37. I have pursued my enemies and overtaken them, nor did I turn back until they were destroyed. And then verse 40. You have given me the necks of my enemies so that I destroy those who hated me. Seems kind of David-centered, doesn't it? Well, verse 3. I will call upon the Lord, whose word it is you praise, so shall I be saved from my enemies. Okay, we've got the enemy thing going on there again. What is descriptive about these enemies? What about them? Well, they just look a little bit like David. You know, just a little like what we think David might be. You know, kind of like your neighbor. They get an argument over the fence line, where the property line is. Hey, Gabe wants to have an empire. They want to have an empire. You know, we're all equal here. Is that what the enemies really were like? Who are they? What were they? And this brings us to the point of what we want to say this morning. Normally, the introductions are not this long. Just kidding. We want to talk about this language that we run into here in Psalm 18 that starts with verse 7. I want to ask you a few questions about it. Then the earth shook and trembled. The foundation of the hills quaked and was shaken. He was angry. Smoke went up from his nostrils. He bowed the heavens also and came down. That's verse 9. Darkness under his feet. He rode upon a cherub. Verse 12, from the brightness before him, his thick clouds passed with hailstones and coals of fire. And it goes on to say some more things. Now, we must ask ourselves, as we focus on this part of our sermon here this morning, if you looked out the window that day, would you have seen darkness, hailstones, lightnings, heard thunders? You see, we have this issue in our church about the literal interpretation of Scripture. What does literal actually mean? What does it mean? We all want to interpret scripture accurately, but what does it mean to interpret something literally? If I said, I was writing a paper, and I said the moon is an orange, you would not believe what I meant, would you? That if you went and squeezed it, you'd get the largest orange juice windfall ever? You would not believe that, would you? It's the kind of language that's used. But how do we interpret the Bible when it says these kinds of things? Does the Bible give us any kind of guideline? Let me give you an extreme example. Please turn to Isaiah 55, 12, if you would. Isaiah 55, 12. This is an extreme example, which makes, I think, an extreme point. Isaiah 55 and verse 12. For you, for you shall go out with joy and be led forth with peace. The mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing before you. And look at this next phrase. And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. How do we interpret this literally? The trees of the field are going, perhaps, to grow hands and clap them. No one believes that, that I know of. So how do we interpret scripture? And boy, this is a long subject that needs an awful lot of attention paid to it. But we have an opportunity here at Psalm 18, because it's going to give us a tremendous amount of insight. The heart of the issue. here is that we have this kind of language in the Bible. Psalm 18 is not the only place. It's in the prophets. It's certainly in the book of Revelation. It's in the book of Exodus as well. Language is how God communicates to us. We know from the New Testament that Christ is very specific here. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word. So we can't just sit back and say at some point, well, you know what? We're all going to disagree when it comes to prophecy, when it comes to some of this difficult language. You know what? Let's just agree to disagree. Let's just go study something we understand. No. Christ said, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word. So every word is important. There's no wasted words in the scripture. Not even in the genealogy. Nothing's wasted. We know, for example, that the Bereans in Acts 17.11 search the scriptures daily to see if these things were so. That's where they went to try to figure out what was going on. To try to figure out if the apostles were actually telling the truth. So here's the issue. Does the Bible interpret itself? And if so, how? Well, I hope to show you something this morning that is going to, I hope, encourage you greatly. Because we argue all the time about, especially about Revelation, how to interpret it literally. What do you mean by literally? How do we do this? You know, I'm fond of saying to some of my friends, you know, we've had so many Antichrist nominations since I've been alive. I think at one time I counted well over ten. The latest I've noticed was Benjamin Netanyahu. Somebody write that Benjamin Netanyahu is now the latest Antichrist beast nomination. I can tell you this, my friends. If you want to make money in Christian circles, get on the Prophecy Circuit. That's where the money is. But how do we do this? I've argued with a few of my friends who we get this discussion about the literal thing. I said, you know what? We can start, we can knock it off with who is the beast and who is the antichrist and we don't have to do these Yasser Arafat nominations or Benjamin Netanyahu or real old Kaiser Wilhelm for Pete's sake. Did you know that? One of the first Antichrist nominations was the first World War Kaiser of Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm. There was a group that thought he was the Antichrist, for Pete's sake. And of course, we've had many nominations since. But we can stop, if you want to be really literal. All you've got to do is look for that monster with seven heads and ten horns. I think we can stop guessing, right? If you really want to be literal. So how do we do this? Psalm 18. tells us, I think, we have a tremendous door of interpretation open to us. So if you wouldn't do this, from Psalm 18, go to 2 Samuel 22. I'm going to put you on the spot. I'm going to ask you If you, as you read 2 Samuel 22 to yourselves, no prize, but somebody please tell me if they recognize 2 Samuel 22. Starting with verse 2. Anybody seen that before? Of course you have. 2 Samuel 22 is Psalm 18 with very few changes. Commentators believe that Psalm 18 was modified somewhat by David later on. It just changed a few things. 2 Samuel 22 is written in the context of David's pursuit and conquering of his enemies. Now I want to take a minute and I want to read once again what David had to say about what God did supernaturally. Okay, let's just dive into this language here as we study this. Verse 8. The earth shook and trembled. We had an earthquake going on. The foundations of heaven quaked and were shaking. He was angry. Smoke went up from his nostrils. There was smoke someplace. Fire from his mouth. Coals were kindled by it. That's really hot. Bow to the heavens also. So the heavens are bowing. Darkness under his feet. Wrote upon a chair of enclosed. So there's an angel going on here. Seen upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness canopies around him. Dark waters and thick clouds in the skies. Coals of fire were kindled. There's our coals again. The Lord thundered from heaven. So we've got thunder. Mosai uttered his voice. I guess you can hear it, I suppose. He set out arrows and scattered them, lightning bolts vanquished them, the channels of the sea were seen, the foundations of the world were uncovered. Wow! At the rebuke of the Lord's last breath of His nostrils. Wow! This is some strong language. Now I ask again, if you were there during that time, and you looked out the window, would you have seen this description? We must ask this, my friends. This is important. This is the first time we've run into this language here in the Book of Psalms, and usually firsts are important. Well, what's happening here? We have a historical description of what happened just before 1 Samuel 22. It's at the end of 1 Samuel 21. Let's read starting with verse 15 of 1 Samuel... I'm sorry, 2 Samuel 21. Sorry. Just before 2 Samuel 22. 2 Samuel 21. starting in verse 15. When the Philistines were at war again with Israel, David and his servants went down and fought against the Philistines, and David grew faint. Then Ishbi ben Ab, who was one of the sons of the giant, most people believe that's Goliath, the weight of whose broad spear was over 300 shekels, who was bearing a new sword, thought he could kill David. But Abishai, David's cousin, son of Zariah, came to his aid, and struck the Philistine and killed him. Then the men of David swore to him, saying, you shall not go out to war with us anymore, unless you have quenched the lamp of Israel. It happened afterwards that there was again a battle with the Philistines, with Gob, and the name I can't pronounce, the Hushah's knight killed Saph, who was one of the sons of the giant. There's our friend Goliath again. Again, there was war at Gob with the Philistines, with Elphanan, the son of somebody else. The Bethlehemite killed the brother of Goliath of Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver's beam. Yet again, there was war at Gath. There was a man of great stature, with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot. Twenty-four, he was also born to Goliath, the giant. So when he defied Israel, Jonathan's son Shimeidon, David's brother, killed him. So be David's nephew. These four were born to the giant in Gath, and fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants. Then, verse 22, or something. chapter 22, then David spoke to the Lord the words of this psalm on the day when the Lord had delivered him from the hand of his enemies and from the hand of Saul. So, we see a window into how scripture interprets itself, do we not? See, David is using this picturesque language to describe the great hand of God. And so, if we understand this passage literally, David is literally saying that God is a great God, He did tremendous things, He reacts emotionally to my problems, and He acts in a big way. David is using descriptive language to make that point. Again, we have questions after the service this morning. You can ask any kind of questions you want. But I hope you see the point here. God in His mercy has given us a tremendous window into how to interpret this kind of language. Because it's given to us right in a historical context. I think it would be a lot tougher if we didn't put Psalm 18 right here in 2 Samuel 22. But He puts it right aside, He puts it right together. And I don't want to say it's easy. But I do want to say it's a whole lot easier than what we've made of it. I want to say this too. If we want to study language and how the scripture presents language and we don't study this particular passage, we're missing out. We're not doing what we need to do. We're not doing our homework. 2 Samuel 22 provides historical context for proper interpretation. Two other quick passages and then we'll be finished. Genesis 37 provides an example of proper interpretation. We actually see this kind of language properly interpreted in the Bible. Look at Genesis 37. The best interpreter of the Bible is the Bible. Verse 3 of Genesis 37. Now, Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age, and he made him a tunic of many colors. And when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peaceably to him. Now Joseph had a dream, and he told it to his brothers, and they hated him even more. So he said to them, Please hear this dream which I have dreamed. There we were, finding sheaves in the field. Behold, my sheep arose and also stood upright, and indeed your sheaves stood all around and bowed down to my sheep. And his brother said to him, shall you indeed reign over us? Or shall you indeed have dominion over us? So they hated him even more for his dreams and his words. Then he dreamed still another dream. So we're going to get a dream here, and we're going to get an interpretation now. Please understand this. His brother's interpreting the dream, but his father's also going to interpret a different dream. Watch this. Then he dreamed still another dream, and told it to his brothers, and said, look, I have dreamed another dream, at this time the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars bow down to me. So he told it to his father and his brothers, and listen to what his father said. And his father refused him and said to him, What is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall your mother and I and your brothers indeed come to bow down to the earth before you? And his brothers envied him, but his father kept the matter in mind. Now you see what Jacob did here. Jacob heard about Joseph's dream, Nowadays, we would say, we want to do the literal thing. Boy, the sun's about to start. I wonder how they bow down. I wonder how that works. The sun's kind of round. How's it bow? How about the moon? Maybe the moon could make a little more sense if it was like a half moon or something. But Jacob doesn't do that. He immediately interprets the dream. I would argue this morning, my friends, that an awful lot of Bible commentators and interpreters would have a problem with the way Jacob interpreted this dream. Jacob, you're not literal. It's the sun, it's the moon, it's the stars. Why are you applying this to yourself? And Joseph's stepmother at the time, and his brothers. Let me give you an example of proper interpretation from the New Testament. Take time for questions. Acts chapter 2. Peter's sermon to Pentecost. Is that a direct question? What's going on here? These flames of fire, the sound of a rushing wind, this talking in a language that we can understand. Peter says, we're not drunk, verse 15 of Acts chapter 2. We're not drunk. He says, this is what it's not, but this is what it is. It shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men dream dreams. And all my men servants and all my maidservants, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they shall prophesy, and I will show wonders in heaven above and signs in the earth beneath, blood and fire and vapor and smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord, and it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." Peter says, you want to know what's happening? And he quotes Joel. And he says things like, wonders in heaven above and signs in the earth beneath, blood and fire and vapors and smoke, sun into darkness, moon into blood. Peter says it's happening now. Now, we would say, well, the sun looks bright to me. It doesn't look like it's turning into anything nor the moon. But Peter is still applying it. We have trouble because we don't know how the Bible actually interprets itself. And if you will look at this kind of language, you will see this kind of language used often in the Old Testament about judgment. Judgment on God's enemies. Judgment on Babylon. judgment on Assyria, this exact same type of language which these people would have understood. My friends, again, when we get speculative about the scriptures, and we don't go to the scriptures themselves, we will wind up getting ourselves in some kind of trouble. We have enough trouble when we do go to the scriptures. We can't afford to go away from them. It will not work for us. So, David here, in Psalm 18, uses descriptive language that literally means God is a great God and he will act on behalf of those who pray to him. Let us use what David has taught us here in both Psalm 18 and in 2 Samuel 22 as we study every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Shall we pray? O Lord, may we never abandon any of your words or any of your word. May we study it daily like the Bereans did. May it not be good enough for us to study one day a week and be done with it, but may we study daily. And may we have a thorough knowledge of your book that you've been so gracious to give to us. We thank you, O Lord, and give you gifts to begin with. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.