2 Samuel Lesson 75
David Praises God for Deliverance from the
house of Saul and Enemies – 2 Samuel 22
The last four chapters of 2 Samuel are to give a divine viewpoint
profile to David. David, you recall, has been exposed in his many faults so far
in 2 Samuel and the Holy Spirit has seen fit to not terminate with the 20th
chapter of 2 Samuel but to add four chapters which would be considered
appendices if we were writing the book.
And these appendices illustrate an important principle of
sanctification. When we become
Christians we are “in Christ,” that is our position. David had his top circle. The top circle always expresses perfection
because the top circle is God’s plan.
The top circle is independent of any of our doings and therefore can be
perfect. So while the top circle is very
nice, it represents the position, it represents the bases of all operations in
the Christian life, it’s the bottom circle where the action is or the sphere of
our experience. One is position, the other
is experience.
And in our day to day experience, obviously we fall far short of
perfection. In fact, the entire orthodox
Christian theology, from the New Testament on to the present day is united with
one voice, that perfection is never attained in this phase of our life. The first phase is we trust in Christ; the
second phase is from the time we trust in Christ to eternity, and the third
phase is eternity. In the second phase,
in the things of sanctification there is never perfection, and from time to
time in history of the church, there have been men who have advocated a
perfectionism, and they are always wrong and they have done more to mess up
church doctrine in individual lives than any other single factor apart from
outright heresy. People who specialize
in writing the deeper life books, people who always go to the biographies of
famous Christians and hope that by going to the biographies of famous
Christians they will find perfection in their experience, this kind of thing.
The small circle in David’s life was 2 Samuel down to 2 Samuel 20 and it
is to show you that even in David’s last days his soul had many things that you
would find fault with. If you were to
meet David in his last days you would probably not be impressed with his hyper-spirituality. And from the human point of view often David
was still a very cruel individual, even in his last days after many, many years
of experiencing and trusting the Lord and His Word.
Now this is why chapters 21-24 are given, to show us that the Holy
Spirit does not consider David to be a failure.
David, though considered to be a failure by human standards because
humans always want a bottom circle of perfection, David obviously never
attained that and it is very, very clear from the details of the text how far
he fell short, but the Holy Spirit would insist that David did the main job,
and that was to use the faith technique to his dying day, and even though David
did not use it perfectly, David developed a loyalty in his soul to the Lord Jesus
Christ by the exercise of the faith technique.
Now here’s a section of Scripture, this chapter we’re coming to, which
is the thanksgiving hymn that David wrote.
Chapter 21 is the prose account; chapter 22 is the poetic account. Chapter 21 dealt with two things, gave an
example of the extension of Saul’s house in verses 1-14 and in verses 15-22
gave an example of the extermination of David’s enemies. And this account in chapter 21 is not
considered to be complete, it’s just a few examples so that we are reminded
that David did indeed experience the blessing of God.
But then in chapter 22 we have a thankful response to God’s deliverance,
and it is in the form of a psalm. 2
Samuel 22 is the same thing as Psalm 18.
So we’re actually exegeting two passages of Scripture, both are the
same, there are minor variance in 2 Samuel 22 and Psalm 18 which shows you the
history of how the Scripture was put together; they represent two different
additions of an original. Psalm 18 is
not exactly word for word the same as 2 Samuel 22. But generally they are the same, almost word
for word they are the same and show that they come from an original composition
that was edited into the book of Samuel and another version that was edited
into the book of Psalms.
Now this account, this declarative praise psalm offers us some very
challenging problems in interpretation.
Tonight we come to a passage of Scripture that is going to challenge our
ability to interpret Scripture, and again we are back to certain basic
techniques that must be learned, must be applied, in these kinds of
situations. There are two interpretive
techniques that you want to know and apply as we begin this Psalm. One has to do with the Psalms; we went
through the Psalms and we said there were certain categories of Psalms to think
about. Two broad categories, the lament
Psalms and the praise Psalms. The lament
Psalms are always characterized by an emphasis on the trouble or the problem
that the believer has. The praise Psalms
are always characterized by God’s answer to the problem. Therefore, when you read this Psalm in 2
Samuel 22, what is it? Is it a lament
Psalm or is it a praise Psalm? You
should be able to skim it and discover whether it is a lament Psalm or a praise
Psalm. You always ought to keep these
categories in mind when you go to God’s Word.
It’s hard, yes, it requires some concentration, yes, but the dividends
are tremendous. The dividends to your
Christian life will be tremendous if you learn to read the Word of God with
understanding. Many pastors can’t read
the Word of God with understanding so it’s understandable that many Christians
can’t. In reading the Word of God you
have to have certain categories.
2 Samuel 22 is a praise Psalm. It
emphasizes the response to David’s problem.
It is an individual praise Psalm; now we also found there are certain
categories of praise; there’s descriptive praise and there is declarative
praise. Descriptive praise is abstract
praise, in the sense of general, God is this kind of a God, God is that kind of
a God, God does this always, God does that always; that’s descriptive
praise. But declarative praise is God
did this at this particular point. God
did that at that particular point.
That’s declarative praise and as you read Psalm 22 you’re going to find
most of it is declarative praise, though it has descriptive praise in it. The overall Psalm is an individual
declarative praise Psalm. And once we
categorize it then we can start breaking it apart and interpreting it. But that Psalm category is important and you
ought to learn to come to God’s Word with these categories in mind. See, this is why we spent so much time going
over and over and over these categories, because even though it may seem laborious
to some, it is only as you learn these categories that you can be blessed.
Now another thing is some doctrine.
This Psalm happens to be one of the greatest Psalms in the Bible on the
use of the faith technique. Now the
moment you see David saying I trust, I trust, I trust, I trust, I give praise
to God, I rely on, I make God my rock, I make God my fortress, I make God my
shelter, God is my shelter, God is my Savior, God does this, I trust in Him,
you’re obviously seeing a Psalm that emphasizes the faith technique. You ought to be able to take the faith
technique and immediately know certain things about the faith technique. First of all, what’s the event in Bible
history that you should automatically link with faith? The call of Abraham. So of all the events that we’ve studied, creation,
fall, flood, covenant, call of Abraham, Exodus, Sinai, etc. that call of
Abraham is the one that should register.
So when you think of faith you think of Abraham, when you think of
Abraham, where do you go to find out about Abraham? Genesis 12, and the family of Abraham goes
all the way down to the end of Genesis. So that’s the place you go to
look. There should be a little light
that clicks that says call of Abraham. You
should okay, if I study Abraham’s life that’s where I’m going to get my best
model of faith. Where am I going to go
to study it? Genesis 12, there are some
other passages, Romans 4 is the commentary on Abraham, Hebrews 11, Galatians 3
is a commentary on Abraham. So these are
your data sources, these are places in God’s Word where you can study one real
live man who had realistic difficulty and had an imperfect faith. You’re not against an ideal, you don’t have
to say well, that’s in the Bible and that’s ideal.
Now here we have the faith technique and we want to review the four
points of the faith technique so when we come to the Psalm we’re going to be
sensitive to these kinds of things. See,
this is just a method of training the mentality of your soul to absorb the
content of Scripture. Now we’ve
summarized the faith technique under four points. First, the faith technique depends upon a
divine viewpoint foundation; you can’t have a god of evolution being the object
of your faith; you can’t have an “it,” you can’t have a process, you can’t have
upward development and chance being the god on which you trust; you have to
have a divine viewpoint foundation, plus you have to have a call or you have to
have a verbal revelation to you personally.
Abraham had to have God talk to him in order to trust the promise. We have to have the gospel preached to us
before we can trust in Christ. You’re
not going to trust in Christ apart from hearing the gospel. So this much is required. So when we come to Psalm 18 we’re going to be
interest, now David, what was your view of God?
What did David think of when he was thinking of God? Was he trusting in an “it,” or was he
trusting in a personal God who was his creator.
Did David have certain promises, certain doctrines that were addressed
to him. That’s point one of the faith
technique.
Point two of the faith technique is that faith can only indirectly be
observed and the only place you can observe it is the behavior modification of
the person. The person’s behavior will
be modified by his faith. There are
certain things that will be done differently, so when we study the life of
David we’re going to be interested how his life stacks up with the life of the
kings, the ancient kings. David’s life
will be different than the kings of the ancient east. And the difference is a measure of faith in
his life.
The third point is that faith has a resting and a doing side, so David
is going to rest in certain things and he’s going to do. For example, David will train his soldiers
how to kill; he will train them in use of the sword, he will train them in the
use of the spear; he will train them in the use of bow and arrow; he will train
them in the use of shields, he will train them how to march, how to fight from
certain elevated fortresses. All this military training is part of David’s
doing, yet on the other hand, David is never so foolish to think his training
is sufficient. And therefore as he’s
going to plainly say at the beginning of this Psalm, he rests all the while
he’s actually doing. See, faith has
these two parts and you can’t confuse the two.
There will be times, for example when you’re looking for a job, there
are certain things you do, you put out a resume, you go look, yet on the other
hand there are certain areas where you must rest. Finally it is in God’s hands and you have to
learn to rest there. So doing and
resting are vital parts of faith.
The fourth point of the faith technique is that it’s orientation to
grace. Faith is always the fallen
creature looking up to a holy God who is gracious to him, so that in faith it’s
not what I’m doing, it’s not something that the Holy Spirit Himself indwelling
me is doing, it is what God in heaven is doing for me because He is
gracious. My eyes are up, not inward; it
is not something in my heart, it is something in heaven and I am the recipient,
I am oriented to what God is giving me.
Why is this necessary? Because
then God gets the glory.
Let’s look at the song, you can look either place in your Bible tonight,
this is a time when it doesn’t matter what book you look at, you can look at
Psalm 18 or you can look at 2 Samuel 22, it doesn’t make any difference. The Psalm can be divided into three parts,
we’ll give the outline of these three parts and study part one and part of part
two tonight. Verses 1-4 form the first
part and this you can see because David is calling people to praise God. Verse 1, “And David spoke unto the LORD the
words of this song in the day that the LORD had delivered him out of the hand
of all his enemies, and out of the hand of Saul: [2] And he said, The LORD is
my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; [3] The God of my rock; in him will
I trust: he is my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, and my
refuge, my savior; thou saved me from violence. [4] I will call on the LORD,
who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies.”
End of section, because you notice the next verse, verse 5 begins in a
completely different way.
Verse 5 begins with his problem, and he says “When the waves of death
compassed me,” verse 6, and “the sorrows of hell compassed me about,” verse 7,
“In my distress I called upon the LORD,” so we have a break, and this second
section starts at verse 5 and continues through verse 25. Down at the end of verse 25, “Therefore, the
LORD has recompensed me according to my righteousness; according to my
cleanness in His eyesight.” End of
section.
Verse 26 begins a new section in which he deduces from his experience
certain truths about God, so beginning at verse 26 the Psalm becomes more
general, it is not pinned down to one specific incident in David’s life. “With the merciful Thou wilt show Thyself
merciful, and with the upright man Thou wilt show Thyself upright,” and so the
third section begins in verse 26 and terminates in verse 51, “The is the tower
of salvation for his king, and shows mercy to his anointed, unto David, and to
his seed for evermore.” That’s the end of that section. So we have the three parts to this psalm.
Now the first part, we’ll go back to verses 1-4 and go through it in
detail. “And David spoke unto the LORD
the words of this song in the day that the LORD had delivered him out of the
hand of all his enemies,” now it was customary in the ancient world that kings
at the end of a time of battle would always make hymns to the gods. That is not particularly unusual when we come
to David, when we see him he’s functioning as a king and it would obviously be
apropos for a king in the Ancient East to do what he is doing, to sing a song
unto his God. Now we have songs the
kings have sung unto their gods and the words that the gods supposedly spoke to
the kings. One of these Psalms, the most
famous one in history, is the Hymn of Thutmose III. Thutmose III was one of the most vicious
Pharaohs who ever lived. He grew up
under the reign of his mother, Queen Hatshepsut. Queen Hatshepsut was a very merciful queen, a
brilliant queen, a queen who reorganized Egypt, who built many wonderful things
and built some of the great architectural giants, construction projects of
Egypt, and she was a woman noted for her justness and fairness.
But she gave birth to this clod called Thutmose III. And Thutmose III had a passion against his
mother. In fact, his entire reign is
dedicated to the extinction of every monument everywhere his mother built, he
had it all plastered over with his own name.
And for many years people didn’t even know of the existence of his
mother until some archeologists were tapping around one day and they knocked
this whole piece of plaster off this monument and underneath, sure enough, was
the true name on the monument, Queen Hatshepsut. Thutmose III had just plastered it over and
put his own seal over it. He used to do
this all over the world, wherever he had any monument that reminded him of his
mother, he destroyed it. And he undid
most of what his mother did; this was just his big thing in life, undoing what
his mother did. Thutmose was as great
soldier; he invaded Palestine, and if Velikovsky is abridged in radical
chronology, which is accepted by practically no one, but if it’s correct,
Thutmose III is the man who invaded Israel in 930 BC, right after the civil war
and walked off with half the insides of Solomon’s temple. But after he got back from his campaigns he
had this hymn written by the priests of Amen Re, this was his god, and he went
on and described this, and I’ll just read sections of the hymn so you get an
idea of what a hymn would be like, and we’ll compare it to this hymn of
David.
“Words spoken by Amen Re, lord of the thrones of the two lands.” Now the priests have written this as though
Amen Re is talking to Thutmose III.
“Welcome to me, as thou exaltest in the sight of my beauty my son and my
avenger, Thutmose III, living forever, I shine forth for love of you, and my
heart is glad at your good comings into my temple, while my hands endow your
body with protection in life, how sweet is thy graciousness toward my
breast. I establish thee in my dwelling
place, I work a wonder for thee.” And it
describes what this Amen Re did for him.
“You treads all fine countries, you glad heart, there is none who can
trust himself into the vicinity of thy majesty while I am thy guide, You have
crossed the River Euphrates by the victory and by the power which I decreed to
thee. They hear thy battle cry, having
entered into caves; I have cut their nostrils off for the breath of life, so I
might set the dread of thy majesty upon their hearts. My serpent diadem, which is upon my head, she
consume them.” If you remember pictures
of Pharaoh, on his headdress he’d always have a serpent sitting there. That was the serpent diadem and that’s what’s
referred to, that the serpent diadem consumes Pharaoh’s enemies. Then after the campaigns, Amen Re says this:
“You have erected my dwelling place as the work of eternity, you made it longer
and wider than that which had been before, and the very gateway named Thutmose
III, whose beauty makes festive the house of Amen, thy monuments are greater
than those of any king who has yet been.
I commanded thee to make them; I’m satisfied with them, and I have
established thee upon the throne of Horus for millions of years that you
mightest lead the living for eternity.”
Now there are certain elements of that victory hymn of Thutmose III that
you want to listen to because it gives us a clue on what David was saying; it
gives us an accurate foil on which we can contrast the life of David. First, did you notice that Amen Re helped
Thutmose III in battle; Yahweh helped David in battle; in that they are not
different, except for the fact that in Psalm 18, how God helps David in battle
is by miraculous means. And Thutmose III
was not helped by miraculous means, so while the two hymns agree that the God
helped the king, only the Bible hymn has a supernatural helping of the king. Amen Re had no great catastrophic miraculous
type of helping, as you will shortly see in Psalm 18. So one difference between this hymn and
non-Hebrew hymns is the presence of miracles.
A second difference between Thutmose III and his god Amen Re, and David
and his God Yahweh, was the fact that when they came back, Amen Re told
Thutmose III to build him big monuments; see the point was that each Pharaoh
that came back would try to build bigger monuments than the Pharaoh’s gone
before. They thought that by doing that they
would obtain brownie points with God.
And so it would be kind of an operation of salvation by works, who can
build the biggest temple. And that’s why toward the end of the victory hymn
Amen Re was pleased that he had built a temple bigger than anyone else.
Now the interesting thing in David’s life is after David ascended the
throne he too wanted, in the good Ancient Near Eastern tradition, to build a
temple. But if you hold the place here
and turn back to 2 Samuel 7 you’ll notice something radically different from
the hymn of Thutmose III. Whereas Amen
Re told, supposedly, Pharaoh to build him a temple, Pharaoh obliged by building
him an immense one, here in 2 Samuel 7 the king, in verse 2, says I want to
build Yahweh a temple. Verse 3, “And
Nathan said to the king, Go, do all that is in thine heart,” however, after
Nathan says that the Lord speaks to Nathan and says now wait a minute, go back
and tell David something, Stop it, don’t build me a temple, I am going to build
you a temple, and you see the tremendous difference in 2 Samuel 7 from
Thutmose’s hymn is that all the gods in the ancient world had temples built to
themselves except one; the God of the Bible, He refused to have a temple built
to Himself when it was offered. True,
Solomon later built it but what God did is He held up the process and this
would have come as a shock.
David was raised in Ancient Near Eastern culture and it would always be
customary that when the king is victorious, of course, you make a temple for
him. And you can imagine foreign
dignitaries who would be traveling through Palestine, David you’ve had all
these victories but where’s your temple, I don’t see any temple to you God, how
come you haven’t made a temple to your God.
And David would tell them the story of 2 Samuel 7, my God said to me
that He doesn’t want me to make Him a temple, He is going to build me a
temple. In other words, Yahweh alone is
the God of grace. So the second
difference that is a titanic one between the hymns of contemporary kings and
the hymns of David is the presence of grace.
God, Yahweh, God of Israel is a God who gives, He doesn’t take.
And then the third thing, you recall, “I Amen Re, have established you,
Thutmose, on the throne of Horus for millions of years that you may live and
dwell and lead the living for eternity.”
Obviously this dynasty which was in the 18th dynasty, the 18th
dynasty of Egypt did not last for millions of years, in fact it lasted only
about 200 years. David’s dynasty did
last holom, which in the Hebrew holom means forever and it did last
forever because David’s dynasty lasted one thousand years until the everlasting
one, the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ
is an everlasting king so therefore David’s promise holds, it has an
everlasting recipient. So this word was
vindicated in history; the word of Amen Re to Thutmose III was not vindicated
in history, God’s Word alone comes true.
That’s the difference, then, between this hymn and the hymn of the other
Ancient Near Eastern kings.
By the way, if you are a serious student of Scripture and you want to
get the flavor of the ancient world so you’ll learn when you read the Bible
what is part of the ancient world and what is unique from the ancient world, I
suggest this book. [Pritchard’s Ancient
Near Eastern Text] It’s kind of formidable, but you don’t have to read the
whole thing, just skim through it. At
the end of it, about page 560 I think you’ll see some interesting things that
have been dug up, these are little pottery shards and translations of these and
you’ll see in them letters written by people, Jews under King Josiah, and it’s
just correspondence, one soldier corresponding to another one, and it’s rather
exciting to read through these things and realize that here we have letters
from people who lived in the time that the Bible was written. When we read these things it puts you back
into the times of the Bible. You read
about this so much in the Bible that you tend, in your mind, just to think this
happened in the Bible, it didn’t really happen in history.
Here’s a letter written by a man who lost his clothes, they had thieves
in those days, and they had their problems, and here is a man who is out
harvesting. The interesting thing about
this, these were people that lived while the Scriptures that you hold in your
lap were being written. “But my, lord,
the commander, hear the case of his servant, as for thy servant, thy servant
was harvesting in [can’t understand word], and thy servant was still harvesting
as they finished the storage of grain as usual before the Sabbath. While thy servant was finishing the storage
of grain with his harvesters, Hoshea, son of Shobi, came and took thy servant’s
mantle. It was while I was finishing my
harvest,” and he goes on to institute legal procedures to sue this guy to get
his coat back. But the interesting thing
is again, you are listening to the words of people who lived when your Bible
was written. Here’s another one: “To my lord, Iliaship [sp?], may Yahweh grant
thy welfare, and as of now give Shimeri [sp?] half an aurora of ground, and to Pierosha
[sp?] give a quarter aurora, and to thy sanctuary what thou didst recommend to
me. As for Shalom, he shall stay at the temple of Yahweh.” He was talking about the temple in Jerusalem. So these are the kind of things that I would
recommend for you, you can get a paperback version of it and it will really
help your Bible study because it puts you back into the ancient world.
All right, 2 Samuel 22, a victory hymn, a hymn that would have been
written in the grand tradition of the Ancient East, a hymn written of praise to
the God, except things are said in this hymn that would never have been said in
a human viewpoint hymn of the surrounding culture.
Verse 2, David said, “Yahweh is my rock, and my fortress, and my
deliverer;” now what he lists here in verse 2 shows you the use of the faith
technique in doing and resting. The word
“rock” is a place where he would put a defensive fortification. So he went to defend himself as he so often
did against Saul’s search and destroy missions, against the Philistines, he
would place his defense set up in rock or high ground. David did this, the
history texts tell us David did this, but the rock, David had no illusion that
it was really Jehovah. Example of
application: Today if we are believing
we should develop a strong military and one that is going to have the best
weapons. We need tough and resilient
people in the service, yet it shouldn’t be that we place our trust in them; our
trust should be in God. So translated, if we were to translate verse 2 into 20th
century vernacular, the Lord is our Air Force, or the Lord is our Navy, or the
Lord is our Armored Force, that would be the equivalent today, “the Lord is my
fortress” a word for a defensive fortification.
And the one who is “deliverer,” that was a word for a person who would
come to rescue in battle, he is my rescuer.
Verse 3, “The God of my rock; in whom I trust,” now the King James has
“will trust,” it’s habitual imperfect, I constantly trust; use of the faith
technique, David gives testimony that he did and he rested by faith all the
time that he was leading the armies, “The God of my rock, in whom I daily over
and over and over trust; he is my shield,” this would be in hand to hand
combat, he is talking about the defense on his left side. God is his shield, “and the horn of my
salvation,” the word “horn” in Scripture means power or authority, He is the
one who gives authority of my salvation,
“my high tower,” is his place where he launches the attack, “and my
refuge,” that’s the place where he flees after the attack, “my savior; thou
saved me from violence.” Now the word
“save” is yasha‘, yasha‘ is the Hebrew word from which we
get Joshua and Jesus, it’s the common word to save, God is his Savior, who
saves constantly, it’s imperfect, habitual imperfect, “who constantly saves me
from violence.” And we’ll see just when
when we develop the hymn.
Verse 4, “I will call on the LORD,” or literally, “I constantly call on
the LORD, who is worthy to be praised:” and I am constantly saved from mine
enemies.” Now that is a personal
testimony that David wrote at the end of his life that shows you that although
he had his faults, he was a poor administrator, basically in many ways he was a
poor father, he did not run his home according to much of the wisdom available
to him in his time; he failed in developing and healing political breeches
between the north and the south, in fact, he opened several; he made political
blunders and yet historically he was a man who continually used the faith
technique. And you say, I thought a man
who used the faith technique would be perfect.
Negative, no one is perfect. And
that’s the whole point of grace taught in this.
So some of you who are so introspective and you get so shook when you
see some wrong in either your own soul or the soul of someone else, just relax
a minute and look at David.
Add David to your repertoire of meditation, so when you start thinking
of Scripture you wont’ sit there and condemn yourself for every single
shortcoming that you can see. You’re
just giving ground to Satan; there are obvious shortcomings, you have to take
them one at a time, but don’t just black out from discouragement because you
are aware of 26 different areas where you’ve just dropped the ball. Just relax; if you are a Christian, you have
trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ. There
are probably, for 26 things that you see wrong with yourself, the Holy Spirit
sees 2600 things wrong with you, and if He is patient enough to stay with it,
and He sees the whole mess and you only see a fraction of it, that’s no reason
for you to get upset about yourself.
This doesn’t mean become complacent but it does mean not to be so
introspective that you can’t stand to make a few mistakes. Just relax a little bit, you’ll make a lot
less if you just relax. And David was a
man who went on trusting, trusting, trusting, trusting, trusting and made
blooper after blooper, but he didn’t cry about it, he moved right on; he rested
and went on. Now that’s David’s
testimony, that’s what he means in verse 4, “I continually call,” it’s an
habitual term, “I continually call” and “I’m continually saved from my
enemies.” David doesn’t say oh, God’s
not going to save me from my enemies because I’ve got 26 things wrong with me,
and I had a fight with Bathsheba this morning and she doesn’t like me, so God
isn’t going to save me from my enemies.
Now you don’t ever find David doing that. David just keeps on moving, trusting in the
Lord, and that’s his basic testimony.
Notice he says in verse 4, which shows you how he could say it, “God is
worthy to be praised,” … “worthy to be praised!” Do you know why David could say that? Because the fourth point of the faith technique
is orientation to grace. David was such
a fantastic champion of faith that he knew daily all his mistakes. He knew his 26 mistakes, they were always in
front of him but he kept trusting grace upon grace upon grace upon grace upon
grace upon grace, and kept falling down and trusting some more, falling down,
trusting some more, falling down, trusting some more. Does it sound familiar? He kept on doing it, over and over and over
and over again, and that’s why he could say toward the end of his life, “God is
worthy to be praised.” He knew David
wasn’t, God was worthy to be praised.
That’s a little word or phrase you’ll never find in the victory hymn of
Thutmose III. You can read some letters,
some exciting letters in this book, you read an account of the destruction of
Judah, it’s interesting, he just kind of says I’ve captured all the cities,
then all of a sudden he’s going home, he never admits that he got his tail
kicked in by the Lord Jesus Christ, and that’s described in Isaiah 36 and 2
Kings, and it’s very interesting; combine the Bible with this [Pritchard’s
book] and you’ve got a tremendous rich source of history. In fact if you ever teach ancient history
what you ought to do is just use the Bible and something like this; teach the
children from the original document, let them hear the very words of these
great men as they speak.
So verses 1-4, David’s praise; now we come to verse 5 and now we are
challenged to begin to solve a problem of interpretation. Verses 5-25 form the
second section to this Psalm. It is a
report of a deliverance and it is “a” deliverance, it is a single
deliverance. Now we’ve got to find out
more about it because in verse 5 it says, “When the waves of death compassed
me, the floods of ungodly men made me afraid,” and if you look down further,
we’re trying to solve the problem of “when,” because it’s a specific
deliverance, we want to know more about this deliverance, what was David’s
problem, how did he test the Lord with his problem, what kind of a problem, how
did God answer the problem. If you look down
to verse 8 you see some strange things going on. In fact, the more you read after verse 8 the
stranger the picture seems to become.
[6, “The sorrows of hell compassed me about; the snares of death
prevented me; [7] In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried to my God:
and he did hear my voice out of his temple, and my cry did enter into his
ears.”]
In verse 8, “Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations of
heaven moved and shook, because he was wroth. [9] There went up a smoke out of
his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it.
[10] He bowed the heavens also, and came down; and darkness was under his feet.
[11] And he rode upon a cherub, and did
fly: and he was seen upon the wings of the wind. ]12] And he made darkness
pavilions round about him, dark waters, and thick clouds of the skies. [13]
Through the brightness before him were coals of fire kindled. [14] The LORD
thundered from heaven, and the most High uttered his voice. [[15] And he sent
out arrows, and scattered them; lightning, and discomfited them. [16] And the
channels of the sea appeared, the foundations of the world were discovered, at
the rebuking of the LORD, at the blast of the breath of his nostrils. [17] He
sent from above, he took me; he drew me out of many waters.”
Now what is happening, something between verses 5-16; 5-7 describe
David’s call and verses 8-17 describe God’s answer. Now obviously every time you pray you don’t
quite get an answer like verses 8-17.
And this passage has occasioned a great deal of debate among the
interpreters of the Bible. Now I’m going
to present you with a problem and then we’re going to solve the problem. This won’t be detailed but I want you to be
introduced to a little bit of how to interpret Scripture. You don’t sit down in your closet and ask the
Holy Spirit to show you the interpretation.
If the Holy Spirit could talk to you He’d say the way you interpret is
learn something, and that’s the way you interpret Scripture. You sit and it takes work. Don’t think there’s some mystical shortcut to
interpreting Scripture, that God the Holy Spirit is going to give you a little
special private interpretation when thousands and thousands of other Christians
down through the Church Age have struggled with these passages. What makes you so sure that you are a
privileged character that are going to get a hotline to God on interpreting the
Scripture? That’s not the way we
interpret it, and that’s not the way He wants it interpreted because then you
come out of your closet, oh God gave me the interpretation of Scripture, and
you proceed to give it and that’s fine until you meet someone else, well God
gave me this interpretation of Scripture, now what are you going to do, you
have the same Holy Spirit giving two people two different interpretations. It can’t be, there’s only one and only one
interpretation to every passage of Scripture; many applications but only one
interpretation.
So here’s the problem. Do verses
8-17 speak of just poetic exaggeration of an actual deliverance or do these
verses actually describe a catastrophic deliverance that happened sometimes in
David’s life. In other words, do verses
8-17 describe a literal deliverance of God; do they or do they not. Now we have to decide, we have to make up our
mind about this because David is giving praise to God about this deliverance,
so we’ve got to choose, is it historical or not. Now even conservative interpreters get down
here and they see verse 12 and verse 13 and they say, oh that reminds me of
Mount Sinai, I know how I’m going to interpret that passage of Scripture, I
know what David’s doing, he’s taking the picture of Mount Sinai and using the
Sinai imagery to describe his particular local non-spectacular
deliverance. So even in conservative
commentaries you’ll find the idea that this is a poetic exaggeration of a
normal routine deliverance in David’s life that’s using symbolatry from Mount
Sinai. That’s what most people say. As you guess, I disagree.
And the main reason why I disagree at the very beginning of the
discussion is because what is the Psalm talking about? Is it not thanking God for work that He’s
done, and to turn around and praise somebody for the work that He has done, it
is no longer a legitimate praise to exaggerate the work that He has done. Would God like to have exaggerated His
work? God’s work never needs
exaggeration; the idea that you have to take something that God is giving you
and tack on 64 different adjectives to make it sound better than what He has
done demeans God. That’s what’s wrong
with a lot of Christian testimonies, oh, I accepted Christ and my life was
dramatically changed. I agree, it is
changed but the change takes time, and any quick changes are usually
short-lived because they’re not grounded on doctrine. So we’ve got a problem. If historic faith always rests in something
historic, if Christian rests on something historically valid, and we’ve got
poetic imagery being used, it seems to me that you’re demeaning the whole
problem, you’re demeaning God’s character, you’re making light of faith and
trust and so on.
So in answer to this we respond in the following way, and this is going
to involve us in looking through many verses, we’re going to verses of
catastrophe in the Bible, and all the time we’re going to ask ourselves, are
these passages exaggerations or have these events actually occurred. The first thing we want to do in solving this
problem is that we have to agree that these three events, the Exodus, Sinai and
the conquest are linked together catastrophically in poetry. Now let’s first look at prose accounts of
what happened. Turn to Exodus 14:19, I
want you to get used to looking at how things look through the eyes of prose
and then through the eyes of poetry in the Bible. Again, this is a lesson on how to read
Scripture. I presuppose that when I
teach you this that there will be times when you’re not going to be around a
pastor-teacher and you’re going to need doctrine and some information from the
Word of God and you’re not always going to have somebody around or a tape recorder
around to find out. So you will make
wise use of time now while you have the chance, to learn how to at least go
about solving some of these problems yourself.
In Exodus 14:19 we have something to do with the Exodus, “And the angel
of God, who went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and
the pillar of the cloud went before their face, and stood behind them.” This is at the Red Sea, Pharaoh’s chariots
are closing in. [20] And it came between
the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and it was a cloud and
darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these, so that the one came not
near the other all night.” Now obviously
you’ve got something very physical and very miraculous here. You’ve got thousands of people, millions of
people, you’ve got about two million people in one camp, and you’ve got
thousands and thousands of highly trained troops in the other camp, and between
them you have this tremendous smoke and pillar of fire. So obviously you’re seeing something
catastrophic.
But notice the subdued fashion of the prose, this is something you’re
going to notice. The prose is always written in subdued tones. It’s just a very dispassionate matter of fact
recounting. And why is this? Because
prose is always this way; prose literature is always dispassionate in the sense
that you’re just describing something going on.
In poetry you’re trying to enter into the thing and it becomes more
passionate. So in Exodus 14:19-20 we
have this report. Verse 19, “And Moses stretched
out his hand over the sea;” and there’s a wind that comes from the east and
blows the waters back; see, it’s a simple report.
Now in verses 24-28 here’s the water at the end, the Egyptians go in,
notice verse 24, “And it came to pass that in the morning watch the LORD looked
unto the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, and
troubled the host of the Egyptians,” you see what God’s doing? He’s going to dismantle their chariot force. [25] He “took off their chariot wheels,” we
don’t know how it happened, it’s just accounted there that He did that, “so
that the Egyptians said, Let us flee from the face of Israel….” And then in verse 26 Moses stretched forth
his hand…. Verse 28, “And the waters returned and covered the chariots…” and
they all died.
Now turn to Exodus 19:9 you have the account of Sinai, you have the
thick cloud that we spoke of in the morning, “that the people may hear when I
speak with you,” this is God talking to Moses, “And Moses told the words of the
people unto the LORD. [10] And the LORD said to Moses…” and you have all the
catastrophe described on down through to the end, verse 16, “there were
thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the
trumpet exceedingly loud, so that all the people that were in the camp
trembled.” [18, And Mount Sinai was
altogether in a smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire; and the
smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked
greatly.”] All right, that is the second event, Sinai.
The third event, in Numbers 10 you see more signs of catastrophe. Verse 11, “And it came to pass on the
twentieth day of the second month, in the second year, that the cloud was taken
up from off the tabernacle of the testimony.”
In other words, there’s movement to this thing. All right, we’ve studied three passages that
deal with three different events, the Exodus, Sinai, and the beginning of the
conquest. All three of those passages
dispassionately report miraculous occurrences.
Now I want you to turn to some passages where the same three events are
picture poetically and watch the difference.
Turn to Deuteronomy 33:2, “The LORD came from Sinai,” see this is poetic
now and it’s exaggerated compared to the prose, but it’s still reporting a
factual event. Did you ever hear the
expression, I’ll put the fear of God in him?
Do you know where that came from?
Exodus and Sinai, God put the fear of Himself in Israel and He did it by
a very spectacular means; they never forgot it.
“The LORD came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them; He shined
forth from Mount Paran, and He came with then thousands of saints. From His right hand went a fiery law for
them.”
Turn to Judges 5:4-5, again poetry describing Exodus, Sinai and
conquest, watch the poetry and what it says.
“LORD, when You went out of Seir, when You marched out of the field of
Edom, the earth trembled, and the heavens dropped, the clouds also dropped water.
[5] The mountains melted from before the LORD; even distant Sinai from before
the LORD God of Israel.” You see the
poetic imagery, but it is describing true physical catastrophe. We could go on and there’s two other
passages, Psalm 77:15-19, and Habakkuk 3:1-16.
Those passages describe Sinai, Exodus and conquest in prose and poetry.
But here’s the point. Even though
Mount Sinai is talked about in passages like Judges, Habakkuk, Psalm 77, even
though that’s true, Mount Sinai is reflected in later poetry, yes we agree with
that, but in the context it’s always clear it’s Mount Sinai it’s referred
to. It’s very, very clear. That is not true of 2 Samuel 22. It was not clear from the context David is
talking about Mount Sinai. Obviously
David is talking about something else.
So it represents a different catastrophe than what happened at Mount
Sinai.
Now at this point someone is going to challenge us and say wait a
minute, there’s no other precedent in Scripture for catastrophes happening
apart from Sinai. Let’s see if that’s
true. In Judges 5:20-21 there is a
catastrophe described. Now is that Sinai
or not. “They fought from heaven; the
stars in their courses fought against Sisera. [21] The river Kishon swept them
away, that ancient river, the river Kishon. O my soul, thou hast trodden down
strength.” Now that’s talking about
astronomical intervention in verse 20, “the stars fought from heaven,” and he’s
not talking about astrology. He’s
talking about some geophysical forces that disturb the earth. Now is that just poetic exaggeration of a
deliverance.
Turn back to Judges 4:15, this is the event that chapter 5 sets to
poetry. Judges 4 is prose, Judges 5 is
poetry, and Judges 5:20-21 describe a catastrophe but Judges 4:15 hints at it
when it says “And the LORD discomforted Sisera, and all his chariots, and all
his host, with the edge of the sword before Barak, so that Sisera alighted from
his chariot, and fled away on his feet.”
Now it’s prose, verse 15, it says “the Lord discomforted,” and it says
it’s with the sword, but the fact that it’s the LORD prominently displayed in
the grammar of this sentence that gives a hint that chapter 5:20-21 are
amplifying what happened.
We have a similar thing, 1 Samuel 2:10, the song of the woman Hannah;
remember when she gave birth to Samuel.
In poetry she said something, and you could say oh, Hannah was just
describing by poetic exaggeration a deliverance of the Lord. But let’s see if it was poetic
exaggeration. “The adversaries of the
LORD shall be broken to pieces; out of heaven shall He thunder upon them,” now
look at that, “out of heaven He will thunder upon them,” now is that just an
emotional woman writing poetry and she’s just using poetic imagery to describe
a simple military defeat. Not at all
because in the same book, chapter 7 verse 10 we have the same verb used for a
true historic event in a prose section.
“And as Samuel was offering up the burn offering, the Philistines drew
near to battle against Israel: but the LORD thundered with a great thunder on
that day upon the Philistines, and discomforted them, and they were smitten
before Israel.” Now obviously that’s in
the prose section, it was obviously describing a real historical event that was
previously spoken of poetically.
One further on, this is in the prophet Micah. Micah 1:2, Micah makes a prophecy; the
prophecy is a poetic prophecy, “Hear, all ye peoples; hearken, O earth, and all
that is in it; and let the Lord God be witness against you, the Lord from His
holy temple. [3] For, behold, the LORD comes forth out of His place, and will
come down, and tread upon the high places of the earth. [4] And the mountains
shall be molten [melted] under Him, and the valleys shall be cleft, like wax
before the fir, and like the waters that are poured down a steep place.” Is Micah just using poetic imagery? Is he just simply using these as words to
describe a judgment of God? That’s what
you always hear, in all the Bible commentaries.
But isn’t it strange that one of his contemporaries, Amos, if you’ll
turn to Amos 1 and Zechariah 14. We have
a prophecy by Micah described in what we think is poetic imagery; that is, we
think until we see these next two verses.
In Amos 1:1, “The words of Amos, who was among the herdsmen of Tekoa,
which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah, king of Judah, and in the
days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel, two years before the
earthquake.” What earthquake? Turn to Zechariah 14:5 and we’ll find out
what earthquake. “And you shall flee to
the valley of the mountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto
Azel; yea, ye shall flee, as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of
Uzziah, king of Judah,” now does that sound like poetic imagery or does that
sound like it was a real historic event?
All right, here’s what we’ve done.
Now we’re going to circle back to 2 Samuel 22. The problem of interpretation was when we
look at 22 Samuel 22 and Psalm 18, are we just looking at poetic imagery? Answer:
No, because the other places where you have poetry talking about
catastrophe are always traceable to historic events, therefore this one must
be. So therefore we’ve got to find out, are there any times in David’s life
where this happened. So let’s see if we
can find a place in David’s life where this literally happened, just like it
says in 2 Samuel 22. There’s a hint
given, we passed through it, I believe I mentioned it when we were studying it
verse by verse, 2 Samuel chapter 5. In
that passage, just after David had been crowned king of the nation, remember he
fought a battle with the Philistines. In
fact, he fought two battles with the Philistines. And you remember the situation was that David
had just been crowned king.
2 Samuel 22:17, But when the Philistines heard that they had anointed
David king over Israel, all the Philistines came up to seek David; and David
heard of it, and went down to the stronghold.”
That’s the historical situation, the whole complete military machine of
Philistia, all the pentapolis, the five cities, gathered together in the most
formidable array of military groups that you ever would see in the ancient
world; this was a formidable array. The
Philistines had come up before but never like this. And so in verse 18, “The Philistines also came
and spread themselves in the valley of Rephaim.” It means there were so many soldiers they
occupied this valley, thousands and thousands and thousand of soldiers.
David, in verse 19, is obviously afraid, and he “inquired of the LORD,
saying, Shall I go up to the Philistines?
Will You deliver them into mine hand?
And the LORD said unto David, Go up; for I will certainly deliver the
Philistines into your hand. [20] And David came to Baal-perazim, and David
smote them there, and said, the LORD has broken forth upon mine enemies before
me, as the surging of the waters.” Now
it’s not said what happened in verse 20, it just said “the LORD broke forth
upon my enemies,” it’s an odd expression.
If you read Scripture your eyes should be tuned to these odd expressions,
they are signals that something unusual is happening here.
Then you remember in verse 22 the second battle was equally
mysterious. “And the Philistines came up
again…. [23] And when David inquired of the LORD, he said, Thou shalt not go
up; but fetch a compass [make a circuit] behind them, and come upon them over
against the mulberry trees. [24] And it shall be, when you hear the sound of
marching in the tops of the mulberry trees, that then you shall bestir thyself;
for then shall the LORD go out before you,” and this strange command is that
they’re going to hide behind this natural barrier and they were going to hear
the sound of marching. Now the sound of
marching they were hearing in the trees were angels, and David is simply to
hold back his forces until he hears angels marching. Now how he would know that there were angels
marching we don’t know, except God said wait until you hear the sound of
marching. And it wasn’t the Philistines,
and it wasn’t David, so that doesn’t leave too many other possibilities as to
who was doing the marching.
So we have a very catastrophic thing happening. But still that doesn’t quite show it, until
we begin to compare 2 Samuel 5 with some other passages. Turn to 1 Chronicles, a parallel passage, 1
Chronicles 14:16, and in this verse we pick up a little phrase we’re going to
see in 1 Samuel 22, a piece of the jigsaw puzzle, it’s like a big puzzle, we’ve
got lots of pieces and with each verse you look up, you’re putting another
piece in the puzzle. When you get it all
together you’re going to be astounded at the kind of God that David
worshiped. “David, therefore, did as God
commanded him; and they smote the host of the Philistines from Gibeon even to
Gazer.” And notice the result, verse 17,
“And the fame of David went out unto all lands; and the LORD brought the fear
of him upon all nations.” That is
mentioned in 2 Samuel 22 as a result of whatever this was, a particular
international reputation was conveyed by whatever was happening in the valley
of Rephaim, in these strange two battles.
Finally, one other reference, Isaiah 28:21, and this too talks about
this battle. Isaiah is talking about
judgment upon Israel, he’s talking about the fact that God is going to judge
them physically. And in verse 21 he
makes this strange reference, “For the LORD shall rise up as in Mount Perazim;”
that’s the account we just read about, “He shall be angry as in the valley of
Gibeon,” that’s the second battle, “that He may do His work, His strange work,
and bring to pass His act, His strange act.”
Now that, obviously, allows at least one point in David’s experience for
what we see operating in 2 Samuel 22.
So let’s conclude by looking at a few verses of 2 Samuel 22, we’ll just
have time to look at three verses, verses 5-7.
We’ve solved the problem, “when?”
We think we’ve pinned down the fact that this is not imagery or
exaggeration at all, it’s simply a poetic song written to describe the
tremendous physical catastrophe God gave in answer to prayer. So David says sin verse 5, “When the waves of
death compassed me, the floods of ungodly men made me afraid;” notice verse 5,
David was afraid. Remember those mighty
armies of the Philistines gathering together in the valley of Rephaim, of
course he was afraid and he’s not afraid to say he’s afraid, they made me
afraid.
In verse 6, “The sorrows of hell compassed me about; the snares of death
prevented me,” literally “confronted me.”
In other words, David has as his first job as king, this is the first
day, so to speak, that he’s been king.
He no sooner gets the crown on his head and has the responsibility of
leading the nation and what happens? The
most powerful military machine of the ancient world comes crawling up the
valley. This is the first job that David
ever had as king. So this is why it says
“The sorrows of hell,” he’s stuck, he’s got to do something, he’s just been
nominated king, everybody’s saying great David, you go out there, do something,
we’re behind you, that kind of approach.
So David obviously has a tremendous burden of responsible leadership.
And verse 7 is what he does with it, “In my distress I called upon the
LORD, and cried to my God: and he did hear my voice out of his temple, and my
cry did enter into his ears.” Next week
we’re going to deal with exactly how God answered that prayer, to show you the
rewards of using the faith technique.
Father, we thank you for this time together….