2 Samuel Lesson 77

David’s Psalm: His Confidence in God – 2 Samuel 22; Psalm 18

I would encourage you as a believer to get to know other believers. It is only as you get to know other believers well enough to see how the Word of God works or isn’t working in their life that you can get perspective on your own sanctification. And God never intended that you operate as a lone ranger believer; if He had, it would have been very simple for Him to indicate this by giving every believer all the spiritual gifts. But isn’t it interesting that when God the Holy Spirit distributed gifts He didn’t distribute all of them to every person, He distributed them in such a way that it would force us either to work together as believers and be successful or just simply try it on our own and flunk. That’s the way the church, the body of Christ, is designed. So for your own selfish spiritual edification it pays to make the acquaintance of other believers, and you never can tell when, whatever it is that you can share in your life may be just the thing that that person needs. So keep that in mind please.

Let’s turn to 1 Samuel 22 again; we are studying the last part of the book, we’re studying those passages that commemorate David’s entrance into his rest, that when David reached the end of his life he could look back and summarize how God had worked in his life. He could point out certain things that occurred in his life, and he could cite these as evidences of God’s grace. Furthermore in this particular Psalm he is going to teach us about God’s grace; he’s going to teach us some of the things that he learned the hard way. He’s going to teach us about when do you do something and when do you just simply relax and rest. These are covered in 2 Samuel 22.

But as I like to do often is I want to expose you to the opposite. Since we’re studying David, David was a king in the Ancient Near East we’re going to go back in history to Egypt just briefly and we’re going to look at a very similar passage of Egyptian scripture, and this one isn’t about David, it’s about a Pharaoh, and it’s about one of the biggest braggarts who ever lived, this Pharaoh was in the 18^th dynasty, his name was Amenhotep II, he was the son of Thutmose III and Thutmose III was the man I’ve often mentioned as the one who hated his mother. He went all over the ancient world deliberately trying to destroy every building, every temple that his mother, Queen Hatshepsut erected. Wherever he erected something he couldn’t destroy he’d come over and have a plaster cast put over her name and then he’d write his own name on it. And that’s why for many years the existence of Queen Hatshepsut was an enigma, it was in certain lists but never did people believe there was a woman who reigned as Pharaoh, and yet far before the days of women’s lib there was a woman who was one of the most powerful women in the ancient world and she in some way failed in bringing up her son or Thutmose just went strictly berserk and in his career, which followed his mother, he just went around destroying it.

Well, Thutmose III had a son, Amenhotep II, and Amenhotep II took after his father, except he was more destructive than his father and he went around bragging about his physical strength. And we have some of the texts of this, I’ll just read a section of it because this acts as a good foil for 2 Samuel 22. This is a section that you can pick up in Pritchard’s Ancient Near Eastern Text, it’s a document that deals with Pharaoh as a sportsman; this was actually of Thutmose III, but later on Amenhotep II took parts of this thing and made it his life motto, so you can kind of just visualize this, not as particularly Thutmose III or Amenhotep II but just kind of the general picture of these two men together. It’s a description of their feats. “He shot at an ingot of copper, every shaft being split like a reed, then his majesty put a sample there in the house of Amen, being a target of worked copper of three fingers in thickness with his arrow therein.” Now obviously what he’s just said is that he’s taken a piece of metal that thick and shot an arrow through it, and obviously he’s either pulling our leg or if he did it he had a massive force on his bow. “When it passed through it he made three palms come out the back of it,” so you have the metal here and it measured three cubits the arrow went through. “In order to grant the request of those who followed, the success of his arms in valor and victory, I speak to the water of what he did, without lying and without equivocation therein, in the face of his entire army without a phrase of boasting therein. If he spent a moment of recreation by hunting in any foreign country, the number of that which he carried off is greater than the bag of the entire army. He killed seven lions by shooting in the completion of a moment; he carried off a herd of twelve wild cattle within an hour. When breakfast time had taken place the tails thereof for his back. He carried off a rhinoceros by shooting in the southern country of Nubia after he proceeded to move.”

Here’s his sons, Amenhotep II: “Now further, his majesty appeared as a king, as a godly youth. When he had matured and completed 18 years in valor he was one who knew every task of Montu,” Montu is the Egyptian god of war, “there was no one like him on the field of battle. He was one who knew horses. There was not his like in this numerous army. There was not one therein who could draw his bow. He could not be approached in running.” The phrase “no one could draw his bow” if you remember in classical literature, Herodotus, Book III of his book pointed out that Cambyses never could pull the bow of the Ethiopian king, and this was a common theme in the ancient world for the kings to brag that their bows were so strong that nobody except them could bend them. “Strong of arms, one who did not weary when he took the oar, he rowed at the stern of his falcon boat as the stroke for 200 men. When there was a pause, after they attained half an inters course, they were weak, their bodies were limp, they could not draw a breath, whereas his majesty was still strong under his oar of twenty cubits in length.” That’s about a 30 foot long oar. “He left off and moored his falcon boat only after he attained three inters in rowing,” in other words three times what 200 men had rowed, “without letting down on the pulling. Faces were bright at the sight of him when he did this.” And it goes on and describes how he trained horses and so on, what he did with them, fascinating reading, but I urge you to look at this book, it will provide you some good data to contrast the Bible with, Pritchard’s Ancient Near Eastern Text.

Let’s look at 2 Samuel 22 and see if we can spot the difference between Thutmose III and Amenhotep II on one hand and David on the other. In 2 Samuel 22 David is writing a hymn that commemorates his reign also, but the whole theme of this hymn, as we’ve seen, is utterly different than what you read in the ancient world. This hymn, which is nothing more than Psalm 18, it’s the same thing, verses 1-4 describe the proclamation to praise God. Notice how much praise of God there was in Thutmose III and Amenhotep II. Notice the contrast as you open this chapter again, just mentally read through those four verses and keep in mind the text which we just got through reading of the Pharaoh, and you can see there’s two men living in two different worlds. One man is the autonomous man, the self-sufficient man, the other man is the man who knows he’s a creature and he’s dependent upon his Lord. And so here the braggamony in verse 3 is totally God-centered, “The God of my rock, in Him will I trust,” and then verses 5-25 of this Psalm was the report of a key deliverance in time of need. And this passage dealt with one of the most spectacular answers to prayer that David could remember. In this hymn he wanted to relate something that would be spectacular and instead of relating a simple empty testimony how he rowed three inters in place of 200 men with a thirty foot long oar, David bragged on his God’s answer to prayer. So you could see the different attitude between David and these rulers.

In this section we dealt with verses 5-7a, David’s cry to God. Then last week we dealt with 7b-16, the answer to prayer, the catastrophic answer to prayer, the physical catastrophe that occurred when God answered David’s prayer. We went through extensive cross-references to give you evidence that this is not metaphorical, this is not a reflection on Sinai, this is talking about a real historic event.

Now beginning at verse 17 we have what appears to be a braggamony, 17-25. Now this passage of Scripture has to be understood in the day in which it was written. We tend to view these next verses as braggamony because we’ve all read Paul, we’re all students of the New Testament, and therefore since we’re more familiar with the New Testament than we are with the Old Testament, we always tend to compare the Old Testament to the New Testament. But tonight forget what you read in Paul; Paul didn’t exist at this time, the whole theology of the New Testament was something yet future, yet to be revealed. God hadn’t fully dealt with all the depths of sin, and in verses 17-25 you have the third part; you had the cry, the answer, and this is an explanation for why God answered David’s prayer.

And the explanation concisely stated is: God answered my prayer because I was in the center of His will for my life. Now that sounds like he merited an answer to prayer, but that’s not what he’s going to teach. But as you read through this, that’s what you’re going to think he teaches. So as we begin verse by verse with verse 17, please keep in mind, David is explaining why God answers prayer as an Old Testament saint would have understood it, not as a New Testament person would understand it. He is not bragging how righteous he is, he is simply saying I have integrity, I have integrity, it occurs again and again in the original language, and the words “I have integrity” basically is “I had a clear conscience” and there’s a difference between having a clear conscience and being perfect. Having a clear conscience just simply means that at the moment you’ve dealt with everything that God requires of you at that particular moment and you have a clear conscience. But it doesn’t mean that you’re sinless, it doesn’t mean that you’re perfect; that’s what 1 John 1:8 says, if any man thinks that he has not sinned, he deceives himself.

So a clear conscience and sinless perfection are two different ballgames. We’re not talking about sinless perfection; we are talking about a clear conscience and that’s the theme of verses 17-25. Stated again, what David is saying is that he has his eternal relationship to God and his temporal relationship to God. His eternal relationship to God is controlled by various Biblical covenants. He has the Abrahamic Covenant, which promises him three things as a regenerate Jew. It promises him first a seed, it promises that he is part of a nation which will survive every dictator from Hamen to Hitler, that nobody will be able to destroy the Jew from history. That’s part of the Abrahamic Covenant. It also means that he as a regenerate Jew shares in the promise of the land; that’s his possession, he doesn’t merit it, he doesn’t deserve it, but God in grace promises that to him. Furthermore, he is to partake of a nation which will be a worldwide blessing. Those are the three central terms of the Abrahamic Covenant, the covenant that defines the position of every Old Testament believer from Abraham on.

Now we also have added to that the Davidic Covenant, and the Davidic Covenant also has three central features. One is that David’s seed will be the Messianic seed, so the seed promise of the Abrahamic Covenant is now tightly defined and more specific, it is going to be David’s seed that rules over the earth. And then David is going to also be the recipient of a Father/son relationship. He enters in and he is the first man in history to have this relationship clear, that he is in a Father/son relationship, not a judge/ruler relationship. There’s a difference, one is legal, the other is familial. And in his relationship to God he is born into the family of God, he is the Father/son, 2 Samuel 7, and so he has a familial, besides having a legal, relationship with God. Furthermore David is an elect one, he is eternally secure. If you want to show eternal security, the best place to go is the Davidic Covenant, it knocks your opponent off balance because he’s not prepared to hear the doctrine of eternal security out of the Old Testament. And it is one of the most powerful statements of eternal security in 2 Samuel 7, a good place to defend that doctrine.

All right, that’s the Abrahamic Covenant and the Davidic Covenant. That’s David’s position; David can never be removed from that position any more than you, if you have received Christ, any more than you can be knocked out of your position “in Christ.” That is David’s elect position, but David also has a position in time, a position in experience that is defined by God’s will for his life in the present moment. You see, all that is promissory, all this includes God’s will for his life for all eternity, it goes from alpha to omega, from one infinite sign to the other infinite sign, but this is talking about present obligations that David is to do and that is spelled out with the Mosaic Covenant. David lived under the Law, David had, if the tabulation is correct, 613 plus commandments to follow. That was God’s will spelled out for him in the Law under which He had to live. If He did not obey this, he was out of fellowship; if he did obey this, he was in fellowship. That was the terms of his fellowship. However, along with that David had additional revelation in his bottom circle, the bottom circle of his temporal relationship. He picked this up from the priests such as Samuel, and the prophets. So David’s obligations to God are summarized by (1) the Mosaic Covenant, and (2) the priests and what they taught him, (3) the prophets and what they taught him. So summarizing all of that, that’s David’s bottom circle.

Now 2 Samuel 7 is talking about looking at life, these obligations down here, as the king of Israel, the things that God wanted him to do in the present moment as the son operating under the Father in a Father/son relationship, looking at these details in the light of his eternal relationship to God. You see, often times God will have you do something in the Christian life that just doesn’t seem to be connected in any way, shape or form, with what you did yesterday. It seems utterly disjointed, you can’t see what He is doing, you can’t get it all together. And this will be a very frustrating experience for you as a believer, to go through these times when you honestly seek God’s will and it just never comes, it never clicks, but you do know this moment, at least what you’re supposed to do. But you never can seem to back off and get the picture of what’s happening. Well in that kind of situation your recourse is to go back up here and consider that top circle, because that top circle or your relationship to God eternally, that’s the circle that defines where God is moving you; that’s the circle that tells you His big plan. It won’t tell you all the details of what he’s doing in your life, but it will give you an operational overview of what’s happening.

So David made it habitual in his life as a believer to constantly evaluate the battles, for example, Absalom, the revolt of Shimei, the problem with Saul, all these events in his life that appeared to be disjointed, he looked at in faith, God wants me to get on the throne of Israel, that’s the big picture and all these little dots that don’t seem to be connected, when you put them together they form one continuous line to fulfill the promises that He had made. So the principle is that what looks disjointed downstairs, when you look upstairs at the eternal plan of God, then it fits together.

So 2 Samuel is written with those truths in mind. And this is why when he says what he says here he is going to teach us a certain principle, many principles, but one principle that he’s emphasizing in verses 17-25 is a discover that he made in his life. David wasn’t the first man to make the discovery but David certainly was the first man to make the discovery and then to sing about it as widely as he did, and publish it widely as he did. And the discovery was that God delivers you in time; remember this is not eternity, God delivers you in time to the degree, to the extent that you are in fellowship with Him. In other words, if you’re in fellowship you get deliverance; if you don’t, you don’t. That seems like a very elementary lesson, but it wasn’t elementary when it was first learned and David’s life is the model life.

David’s life is the place you go if you want to see sanctification; the reason is that David’s life with all of its deformities and grossness is pictured there so you won’t get any discouraging view. The tendency of believers is always to look at someone better, they think, than they are, look up to someone who’s more righteous, they think, than they are and become discouraged, to look up to a person and then become discouraged because that person is hopelessly more righteous than you are, you’ll never reach that plain, you’ll just be a peon Christian for the rest of your life and walk around with a discouraged attitude. Now David’s life is just made for you because you probably won’t do some of the things that David did. And David rebelled enough and the Holy Spirit let it hang out enough so you can get a good look and see that he had the same kind of sin nature that you have. Therefore, you should be encouraged, if David can make it, you can make it.

David is going to tell us in this Psalm the central discovery that he made was that when you are delivered, when you need deliverance in your life, don’t expect it to come from God unless you have a clear conscience. Now this doesn’t mean that God is always limited; obviously God delivered David when David didn’t have a clear conscience. Remember, he took a long vacation down in Gath one time with Goliath’s sword and that didn’t go over too well with the population of Gath, since that was the town’s hero, whom he had eliminated and carried his sword, of all things, back to Gath. And while he was down there completely out of it, in a POW camp, you remember that the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to him and told him how to evade interrogation and how to escape, and in that particular Psalm, I believe it was Psalm 30, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the angel of the Lord, taught him escape and evasion that is still used in today’s military, certain ways of false behavior and so on that survival schools still teach. Obviously the angel of the Lord didn’t come and deliver David because David’s conscience was clear in that situation, that is, David was totally out of it and still God was gracious and delivered him. But David’s main point here is that the deliverance he’s talking about here, when this deliverance came it wasn’t just that he was out of it and God delivered him anyway, it was because he was in fellowship and because he was in fellowship doing what he was supposed to do, then God came to him in this most marvelous way.

Verse 17, “He sent from above,” that was His holy temple, and we’ve gone over the many ways He sent from above, “He sent from above, he took me; he drew me out of many waters; [18] He delivered me from my strong enemy, and from them that hated me: for they were too strong for me. [19] They prevented me in the day of my calamity: but the LORD was my stay. [20] He brought me forth also into a large place: he delivered me, because he delighted in me.”

Now that last verse is the one that will cause a lot of problems with believers; it sounds like he’s saying God had to, but he’s not saying that. Let’s look before that, just examine verses 17-20, as a unit and look at how he’s reporting his deliverance. Notice some things that he says, and keep in mind the Amenhotep II Thutmose III letters that I read. Notice what he says in verse 18, for example, no Egyptian Pharaoh would have ever said something like that. “They were too strong for me,” now the Pharaoh would never admit that the Assyrians or the people of Retinu, or the people of Ethiopia or Nubia, that these people were stronger than he. No place in Pharaoh’s writings would this ever be. So when you see that admission, “they were too strong for me,” that is an admission that David is a grace oriented believer, unlike Amenhotep II, unlike Thutmose III. David realizes and he is not hypnotizing himself and thinking that he’s the big strong man and everyone else is weak. He says I know these people were too strong for me, that’s the whole platform that I operate from.

And notice verse 19 where he says “They prevented me in the day of my calamity,” he’s acknowledging the superior force of his opponent, very realistic, and he tells us about it, David is not a proud man, he tells us that I am not the strong king that I’ve been painted out to be, I faced real people and these real people were stronger than I am, I don’t go around pretending I’m stronger than all my enemies, I’ve sang it out in my psalms, they are too strong for me. And then verse 19 leads logically to “but the LORD was my stay.” The word “stay,” you see these pictures of the Arabs walking around even today with these sticks that they lean on, and that’s the stay. “The LORD is my stay,” the stay was used two ways, they were used for support and also fighting; the shepherd would the stay, remember David used the stay when he was a boy tending the sheep in the field, and the animals came by and he’d just let them have it with that pole, about a ten foot long pole and you can do quite a bit of damage if you know how to swing a ten foot pole. David’s stay was Jehovah, and the only way he could get this across in verse 19 is to first admit to us the superiority of his opponents. He had to admit that, otherwise, it wouldn’t have been a gracious deliverance. Now that’s the kind of thing you will never read in an Egyptian hymn of praise.

In verse 20, “He brought me forth also into a large place: he delivered me, because he delighted in me.” Now as we go into this delight, the concept is this. David is in a Father/son relationship. Now to make it easier to think of, let’s forget David for a moment and bring it into the Christian life. Here is your position in Christ; we presume that you are a believer, that you have at one point in your life trusted in Jesus Christ as your Savior. The Holy Spirit regenerated you, He indwells you and has since that time, you were baptized into Christ at that time, you were sealed. God the Holy Spirit gave you at least one spiritual gift. All these things were done for you; that’s your position, and you entered that position not because you legally qualified for it, you entered it because God in His grace moved you into the position. You didn’t attain it, you were given it. Now when God moved you into that position, that movement itself solved the whole legal problem. From now on you don’t have to live clinging on by your fingernails, afraid you’re going to slip down into hell. You can relax because you are in God’s family.

Now God is omniscient and God knows all of your sins, so let’s take a person, he’s unsaved, he becomes a Christian, he’s in Christ, he has a sin nature, God is omniscient and He looks at that sin nature and God says okay, now you’re in My family, you’re My son, I see that you have this pattern, this pattern, this pattern, this pattern and this pattern, and God sees all of it, fortunately we only see part of it, like an iceberg, we only see a little bit above the water. So God the Holy Spirit, in our life begins to start working. Now He’s not going to do a complete work of sanctification in this life; you never die and go face to face with the Lord having said, well, I reached total sanctification. So you have these people coming up to the grave, and when believers come up to the grave, at that point, sanctification is incomplete. You think about it for a minute, you’ll ask the question, wait a minute, if God’s in the process of correcting behavior pattern after behavior pattern in my life, and He’s not going to finish by the time I die, why does He bother with any of them? Because obviously this experiential work of sanctification is insufficient, both to hold me in relationship to the Lord, or anything else. You don’t go to heaven on the basis of your sanctification; thank the Lord. But you go to heaven because of the merits of Jesus Christ that are imputed to you at the point of salvation, not because of your sanctification.

Now, what then is the reason for sanctification; it can’t be elimination of sin, because it’s obviously unsuccessful. Well then what is going on? What is going on is that God is generating a loyal attitude in your heart and that’s what He’s after. And you can find that you can get away with quite a bit in life, that doesn’t mean that God isn’t going to discipline in certain areas, but you can get away with quite a bit and maintain a loyal attitude, if you maintain a loyal attitude, like David. David maintained a loyal attitude and you can see the kind of things that he got away with and he was exalted and God complimented David that he was a king that fully followed Him. And we’ve just been carefully over Samuel, you know places David didn’t follow Jehovah, and yet God’s divine viewpoint analysis of David is that he followed wholly after me.

This should have forced some of you to rethink sanctification as you’ve studied David’s life. It should have forced some of you to do some very serious thinking about it. The whole point of David is that he maintained a loyal attitude, that’s the point. Once he was out of fellowship he realized he was out of fellowship and got back in fellowship; that’s the point. David was not sinlessly perfect, and experiential sanctification is a training. Look at it this way, the family again, not the legal side, the family side. God the Father is training us as children to be obedient to Him, that’s the simple lesson. Every other sin in your life and mine really goes back to this question, are we or are we not going to be obedient to the heavenly Father. All the things down here, the emotional fallout, the psychological difficulties, the guilt, all these things, those are just after effects, those are way down the line from this primary thing.

As I’ve said again and again, this primary thing you can spot in your life by several criteria, several things that come up again and again in Scripture. One is you can usually locate the place where you are having your trouble, you may be occupied with the emotional fallout, you may be occupied with the psychological problems, the guilt and so forth, but generally if you pray about it and start reading the Word and lay your life alongside the Word of God, sooner or later you will find the place, and one of the ways that you can use to find the place of rebellion where the Holy Spirit is making a big federal case out of the thing, is to ask yourself, of all the spectrum of my experience at the present time, where is it that I have the greatest difficulty giving thanks to God. Now that question is a very critical one because in Romans 1 when it talks about the people who had God-consciousness, it says when they knew God and so on, they had full knowledge of God, they weren’t thankful and God turned them over. It wasn’t first a gross sin that zapped these people, it wasn’t that at all, it was some area of minus thanksgiving, blaming God for something, God didn’t give me this, I’m going to be a bad boy, this concept. What it amounts to is just we are, frankly, spiritual brats and we act like little brats before God, if we can’t get what we want we’re going to be a brat, throw a tantrum spiritually, until God gives us what we want and we’re going to sit there, we’re going to cry, bellyache, yell, carry on until God gives us what we want, but usually God, because He’s a perfect Father, doesn’t give into tantrums and He walks in the room with a big paddle and goes whack, whack, whack, and that’s how He solves the problem.

So in this concept the big point to think about is where, WHERE am I in rebellion against God, just overall speaking. Where am I just throwing my fist in His face and throwing my tantrum. That’s the place, you take care of that area, you’ll find all the rest of the stuff just disappears; it all goes out once you can take care of that area. Now in David’s life he managed to take care of these areas before they got too bad, and so this is why he says “He delighted in me.” He’s not saying that God told David, you’re such a sweet man. David knew enough about his own soul, in fact, he’s going to tell us something it in a few verses, he knew God wasn’t saying that to him. What he’s saying is God delighted in the fact that as a son, Father/son relationship, when we were having a problem I was a quick learner, that’s the point. When we had fallout problems I got with it and God liked that.

Now the word “delight” means something else to us as believers. The fact is proved by verse 20 that the God of the universe can be happy with you. I don’t know whether you’ve ever thought fully and seriously that astounding truth, that the God of the universe, if you’ve got a Biblical God you’ve got the God of the universe, that Biblical God can have a smile on His face because of something that you do. Now the idea that you can do something down here as a little finite ant crawling around planet earth, doing something that is so significant you can put a smile on God’s face, shows you how important the every day actions are in the Christian life. The word “delight,” that’s what it means, put a smile of God’s face, and it doesn’t mean God looks down there and oh, she’s so sweet; it isn’t anything like that at all. The idea is that God looks down and says well now there’s a child that is finally getting with it, hooray for him. That’s what the delight is, it’s not sinless perfection, it’s just God rejoicing, there’s a child that finally got with it.

Now let’s go on to the section where he amplifies this, and having that orientation we won’t get lost and think this is perfectionism. Verse 21, “The LORD rewarded me according to my righteousness,” now you see, if you hadn’t got briefed before you’d get some dangerous conclusions out of that, “according to the cleanness of my hands hath He recompensed me. [22] For I have kept the ways of the LORD, and have not wickedly departed from my God. [23] For all his judgments were before me: and as for his statutes, I did not depart from them. [24] I was also upright before him,” and if you just stopped there you’d say wow, this guy is really getting into the works business, until you read the next phrase, and what does it say, “and have kept myself from mine iniquity.” So that proves to you that David has no illusion that he doesn’t carry iniquity with him. He’s simply saying he controlled the iniquity by God’s grace.

“Therefore,” verse 25, “Therefore the LORD hath recompensed me according to my righteousness; according to my cleanness in his eye sight.” Now the cleanness that he’s talking about is not a cleanness of his soul. Let’s go back and look at the soul, there’s a difference between the sin nature and the conscience. And it’s the conscience that David’s concerned about, not all the things in the soul. The conscience is the thing that tells us right now what is it that the Holy Spirit is making an issue. Now what David is interested in is the interface right here, between conscience and mind. He says when my mind comes into this and I know my conscience is against it, we deal with it. Now he may not deal with it for a while because he’s imperfect, but he generally deals with it, he doesn’t let the sin go into minus volition, get hardened up, where conscience is tuned out, you start to get scar tissue, between the conscience and the mind that chain of information is broken, so then God has to get your attention some other way; if He can’t get your attention through simply the thought life, He’ll get it through… apparently the conscience works through some way on the body and so it begins to affect your emotions. And people who have violated their conscience and violated their conscience again and again and again and again, they pay the price because then the emotions begin to go crazy and they have the wrong emotions, the wrong feelings for the right situation and everything else goes crazy because the emotions are thrown out of balance.

Why does God do that? Is He trying to be cruel? Not at all, but if he can’t get our attention through our mind, because we’ve shut that door, how else is He going to get our attention except go through another door, go through the door of the emotions. So a conscience problem shows up in the area of emotions. Now remember God has a third channel, if we close off the emotions and we ignore those, then finally God works on the body and the person can look old, rundown and so on because God is just simply tearing their body apart until He gets their attention that way. In other words, God must wonder how big a 2 x 4 does he need to get our attention; He’s trying to do it gently through the conscience, so when David says “clean hands” that is an idiom for the fact, not of his sinlessness, but of the fact that he’s washed his hands, they were dirty and he washed them before God. He confessed his sin, in other words.

Now a parallel passage, turn to the New Testament to show you that this isn’t in any way violated what Paul or the apostles teach. Acts 23:1, I’ll show you that they’re talking about exactly the same thing and obviously Paul isn’t going to talk about sinless perfection, so what is he talking about? The same thing David’s talking about, he’s talking about this conscience thing. “Paul, earnestly beholding the counsel, said, Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day.” Now does that mean that Paul lived a perfect life? No, you know enough about Paul’s epistles to know he couldn’t claim that, but look at the language, look what he says, “I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day.” Then, furthermore, in Acts 24:16 he does the same thing, the same kind of claim. “And herein do I exercise myself to always have a conscience void of offense toward God and toward men.” It is not that he’s teaching that he was sinlessly perfect, he was simply saying as God brings to mind my sin, I deal with it.

One more passage, 1 John 1:6, he’s talking about having fellowship. You have fellowship with God first through the Word, so here’s your mind, conscience, and it’s the Word of God. That is how you have fellowship with God. You don’t sit there and work up some feeling or anything else. John says, “If we say we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness we lie and do not the truth.” Now opposite, verse 7, “But if we walk in the light,” and notice he doesn’t say “if we become the light,” there’s no claim, no requirement in the New Testament that you have to be perfect, don’t sit there as a discouraged Christian thinking you’re sidelined, that you’re on the bench because you can’t have some spectacular ministry, or you’re always looking up to somebody better than you are, and you walk around with guilt and an inferiority complex. Nowhere in the New Testament does it say in order to enter the game you have to be perfect; that is not the New Testament teaching. If you think that way, somewhere along the line you got screwed up. “If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another,” now he’s talking about Christians, he’s talking about that bottom circle, “walking in the light,” visualize it as a stage and you have the spotlight shining down on the stage and maybe the spotlight is moving because God wants to move you through life and your job is just to stay in that spotlight, as the spotlight moves you stay in it, that’s all. “If you walk in the light” stay in that light. But now what he’s saying is, while you’re in that light, “the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses you from sin.” You say wait a minute, I thought my sins were cleansed at the time I became a Christian. Yes they were, but this is talking about a different kind of cleansing.

The cleansing in 1 John is cleansing of the conscience; as long as you’re walking in that light, for example the stage is your life, and you’re walk over and all of a sudden the whole room is dark except for that one spot where the light is, so the light moves over and all of a sudden you see a pile of junk. There it is, one big fat pile, so you can’t hide it because the light is shining on it and you’re standing there; now you can be embarrassed and walk out of the light and this is often times the reaction of a believer, you walk along, God exposes something in your life, it disgusts you as well as it disgusts God, so you just give up and walk away. But John says don’t do that, “when you walk in the light,” all right, there’s going to be a day when that light shifts over to something and you see this one big pile of crud, very discouraging, very bleak, but what he says as long as you stay in the light, don’t give up and go out of the light, stay in the light. What does that mean? It means that at that point you agree that that’s a pile of crud and you want it removed; that’s all God asks. And as He brings these things up in your life, don’t fight Him; if He wants to change it, let Him change it.

You waste a lot of energy fighting God and He always wins. It’s not an equal contest because He’s omnipotent so you just waste your energy fighting it, but we all like to fight Him and we all like to shake His fists in His face and so on, but the point still remains, when the light shifts and you see the pile, fine, get rid of it God, send Your janitor right now. All right, the janitorial work is this cleaning, that’s what the cleansing is about. As long as you stay in the light the janitor is there to clean it, but if instead when the light comes out and God the Holy Spirit brings up something in your life and you turn away, it’s disgusting, and walk out, that kind of thing, then He says sorry, its not going to be cleaned up until you get right back there, in fellowship, and confess the thing and it’ll be removed.

That’s why in verse 8 John is very quick to add something, lest anyone get wrong conclusions. The conclusion might be, to use our analogy of the light on the stage, because this moment, as I walk on the stage and the light shines on me there is no pile of junk in front of me. The tendency always is to say, ah, that means the whole stage is clear. Wrong, John says; just because in that little circle of light at this moment in your life the Holy Spirit doesn’t apparently bring anything to light, don’t draw the false conclusion that right outside the spotlight, guess what, a big fat pile of junk out here.

See, here you are, you don’t see anything. God the Holy Spirit at that point is kind of in abeyance as far as major changes are concerned, He isn’t planning something else, but now as that light shifts over and encompasses this, that calls us into action, that for a response, that’s 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to cleanse,” notice the word “cleanse,” the word “cleanse” is the same word “cleanse” in verse 7. So that’s where that word “cleansing” is coming from, that’s the janitor coming in to clean it up. But the terms of the cleaning, the janitorial contract reads “thou shalt stay inside the circle,” meaning you will submit to God’s evaluation of it, you will confess it, and let Him cleanse it. Now when you let Him cleanse it and take this out as the light exposes it, that’s what David’s talking about; that’s what Paul is talking about of living your life in a pure conscience. Now that is far different from what many of you have been sold on, I’m sad to say, in fundamental churches where you’ve heard somebody get up and yak and go on about some particular little taboo or something, you can’t be a good Christian unless you do or don’t do this, etc. all of those things may or may not be issues, but that’s not the point. The point is you have a dynamic personal relationship with the Lord and He is your Father and He is training you moment by moment as any normal good father would do to his children. That’s the way to look at the Christian life, look at it in a family way.

Now just one little footnote, this is why we’re having so much trouble, I think, in the Christian life today, because our families are so shredded with divorce, with all the rest of it that’s going on that we don’t have a good model of the sanctification process in our own experience. Remember when you life your life in a family unit, you’re providing your children with a model they’re going to need someday, if for nothing else they’re going to need that model to learn what sanctification is.

Back to 2 Samuel 22, now we should understand that David isn’t talking about his righteousness, he’s not bragging like Thutmose III. He says I have kept the ways of the Lord, I have not wickedly departed from them. Verse 24, “… I have kept myself from my sin,” so David does acknowledge that he sin, but that he has dealt with it. That’s the end of the section that ends in verse 25 and now the rest of the Psalm is dedicated to teaching.

Verses 26-51 is the last section of this Psalm. And this is general wisdom taught by God over the whole span of David’s life. He’s putting it in capsule form, between verses 26-51, just summarizing it and all the little things that have happened to it. He wants to pass this on to other believers. Remember I said as I started part of meeting another believer is to share with that other believer things that you’ve learned about the Word of God, and if you’re kind of embarrassed to do it, then just relax, but just remember than you can have something to share with someone else, and it isn’t some little titillating experience that you’ve had, it’s something God has shown you about the way the Word of God works; that’s what is shared.

Verse 26, here’s how David shared it; he’s sharing it with us and he’s fulfilling a prophecy and he’s also providing us a model. “With the merciful thou wilt show thyself merciful, and with the upright man thou wilt show thyself upright. [27] With the pure thou wilt show thyself pure; and with the froward [perverse] thou wilt show thyself unsavory [perverse].” Now that’s good King James, but let’s try to put it a little bit better. Verses 26-27 are simply stipulating this bottom circle relationship, that when he is in fellowship, that is verse 26, “with the merciful,” the word is chesed, there’s our word for love in the Old Testament, it means covenant love, it means loyalty to a prior agreement, when I am loyal to God’s covenant, chesed, then God is chesed to me, He’s loyal to His covenant. So he says when I walk in the light then God cleans me up, He keeps me from my sin, that’s all he’s saying and he does it under the imagery of several words here.

The last one in verse 27 is just contrast, and it’s an interesting contrast, “with the forward” this means with the wicked person, “you will show yourself unsavory,” but there’s a humor in the way the Hebrew is written here because it isn’t unsavory; it sounds like God shows up as a monster or something in this person, that’s not it at all. The word for “wicked” is the word which means to twist, and the particular kind of wickedness in verse 27 isn’t the gross immorality. In verse 27 the wickedness is the twisting to avoid conviction; in other words, the picture is of a person who’s had the light shine upon them from the Word of God, and they’ve tried to make up excuses and avoid the light so their path instead of being straight is twisting to avoid that particular area on the stage where the pile of junk is. So every time the light comes in there they kind of work their way around; that’s the picture of a twisted one, and in Hebrew the word to “twist” became the word for being evil.

Now the irony is in the last verb where he says “you will show yourself unsavory,” and this is another word to twist, and what the picture is, using the light beam again, is that here’s a person, the light beam comes up on this pile of junk on the stage, so the person starts to move around it, so the light beam follows him and works him right over to it again, and the person backs off and the light beam works him up to it again, and no matter how he goes he always winds up with this, because when he walks around, he may come up on it from the south, he may come up on it from the west, the east, every direction seems to lead to this mess, he can’t get around it. And this is the picture of one frustrated individual; it is a believer, a child of God who has a situation in his life and every time he tries to avoid the issue, and the issue is change it, instead of this, bang, he tries to escape and winds up hitting it again, he tries to escape and winds up hitting it again, and the idea is that God tricks him. He says you want to play games with Me, I’ll play games with you, I like to play those kinds of games. And this is the word “twist” so that’s the humor involved in the original text and the irony.

Verse 28, “And the afflicted people thou wilt save: but thine eyes are upon the haughty, that thou may bring them down.” Again notice the point, the point isn’t the specific sins involved, it’s the mental attitude toward God that’s involved. The person, “the afflicted people you will save,” that’s the picture of the person who knows there is the pile of junk God, I agree with it, let’s clean it up, that’s the “afflicted” person, it’s the word for humble, the person who is submitting to grace. The opposite is the “haughty,” it’s the word to be high up, “high and mighty” would be a good translation of this word. This is simply the proud attitude that refuses to accept God’s demands to make changes. And that’s the issue David says.

Verse 29 goes on further, again it reminds you of the passage of the Apostle John in 1 John, “For thou art my lamp, O LORD: and the LORD will lighten my darkness.” Notice he says not “the darkness,” but he says “the LORD will lighten my darkness.” Now if you contrast the last of verse 29 with the last of verse 24, you’ll see that David in no way ever intends to teach perfectionism in this Psalm. He’s saying I’ve got darkness, my whole stage is dark, David says, now God, You’re my light, and You’re going to put some light on that stage and You’re going to make my darkness light. David is a man who welcomes the light no matter how hard or how embarrassing it is, no matter how it hurts, no matter how bad it is, David will welcome the light. Now that’s the kind of pain that is a godly pain, that well Lord, You know, let’s get it over with and let’s make the changes, that’s the point.

Verse 20, now he goes on and he describes something that many of you wonder about, when do you do something and when do you rest? All right, David is going to give some examples of what you do and when you don’t do. We’ve explained faith as having a doing and a resting side, that is that God doesn’t excuse you from creature responsibility; He’s not going to send an angel to put your clothes on in the morning. He’s not going to write in the Ten Commandments what kind of color scheme you should use when you dress; if you pray in your closet to figure out what clothes you should wear, don’t expect illuminated signs. God expects us to do, that is fulfill our creature responsibility. Did you ever meet one of these believers, oh God spoke to me, and God did this, and God did that, and God did something else. Well God didn’t do it, that’s ignorance, God did not do those kind of things, they’re just having a game with themselves.

This doing and resting is something all together different. You rest in a situation where you have to trust completely in what God is going to do. Now the hard thing comes about because there will come many moments in your life where you’re going to have to do the two things at the same time and that’s what’s confusing. You’re going to have to engage in an activity yet at the same time you’re doing, you’re not doing. Now if you want a vivid picture of this, think of Moses and the battle of Kadesh-barnea, think of some of the other battles back there, think of Joshua, when at one point Moses’ arms had to be held aloft, and he had to hold up his arms, and he had men standing there on either side of him holding his hands up. Now was Moses doing something? You bet he was, because if his hands grew tired and he let them down, they lost. Now what kind of magic show was God putting on there? To drill a principle, that the believer is to do something but never be deluded that what you do is sufficient to accomplish the task.

It’s like this, God ordered Joshua to march around Jericho, now everybody knows that marching around Jericho isn’t going to touch the walls, it isn’t going to do anything to the walls. So God asks believers to do something that is utterly unrelated to the actual work. Why? To point out that there has to be active obedience while you are resting. Now the armies under Joshua, just as under Moses, the work was not there on the wall. Who did the work? God did the work. Well, while they were walking around the wall, were they doing something? Yes, they were walking around the wall. Were they resting? Yes, because the work of collapsing the wall was in other hands than their own. God did the work of collapsing the wall simultaneously with their actions.

So just because there will come times in your life where you have to do something, don’t think that these are mutually exclusive; usually you will find that they are simultaneous, you are doing something yet while you’re doing that God’s doing something parallel with you. You’re driving along like this in life and you’re doing certain things along that path, God is doing something right along in the next lane. And He’s doing the heavy work, but He still won’t do His heavy work unless you do something. If Joshua’s army hadn’t walked around Jericho would the walls have come down? But was walking around Jericho sufficient to knock the walls down? No. In other words, our works are necessary, but not sufficient, that’s the picture of faith operating. As long as you can keep the balance that what you are doing in life is necessary for blessing, there are certain things that you must do as a Christian, you must get in the Word daily, there’s no option about that, God demands that you do that. There are things that you have to do, those things are necessary for blessing, but whatever you do, whether it’s Bible study, whether it’s prayer, whether it’s fellowship with other believers, all those activities are not sufficient to produce the result that you’re observing in your life.

God always wants us to constantly be aware of that. Christian action is necessary but never sufficient; the things that are happening in your life as a Christian are not there because, completely due to your study in the Bible and your prayer and these things. It wouldn’t happen if you didn’t do them, but nevertheless, your actions haven’t produced those results.

Now let’s look at what he’s talking about. David was a soldier so now we’re going to list a series of skills that he had to attain in hand to hand combat. Remember this is the days before machine guns and long ranger artillery, and David had to fight hand to hand, so all these things are going to be how God counts them. But now common sense tells us, and the Holy Spirit indicates in the text, that David trained himself physically. David didn’t just sit around and say oh, Lord, make me a big soldier like Amenhotep, and then all of a sudden an angel would show up and say, presto David, you’re transformed into Amenhotep, now nobody can pull your bow either. No one could do that for David, David had to train himself, but the brilliant mind of David spiritually was this; this is where David had it all over every other Ancient Near Eastern ruler. When David would do his daily calisthenics, which he must have done and had to do for hand to hand combat, you don’t sit in the battle and wave your sword around, especially the swords they had, holding a shield on your life, a sword in your right, and constantly go into battle and not have some sort of endurance. And remember, in hand to hand combat there’s no reserve in back of you. If you get tired and your body slows up, somebody else is going to go zit, and that’s going to be all and you don’t have to worry about training any more.

So you have to train; David had to train every day of his life to keep himself in good physical condition. But here’s the difference, David never made the assumption that Thutmose III over in Egypt was making, and Amenhotep II was making, these men trained too. They were good soldiers too, but all the time they were doing their calisthenics, all the time they were doing their training, the thought was going through their minds, well, look what I’m doing with my calisthenics, look what I’m doing with my physical training program, look at what a great warrior I am because of my effort. Now look at what David says here.

Verse 30, “For by thee I have run through a troop: by my God have I leaped over a wall.” Now these are speaking of defenses and offensive war. Running through a troop is when you have a battle line established and you have a breakthrough and you have the troop breaks through and you have to cut it off, that’s defense. So when it says “I have run through a troop” it means that he puts off this kind of a drive through a battle line, he is able to do that; that is defensive war, he’s defending a counter attack. “…by my God I have leaped over a wall,” the wall is the city wall, siege, and that is he is on the offense against the city. So both in defense and offense he recognizes God, it’s a Beth, the Hebrew Beth, the Hebrew “b” means instrument, by means of God I have done this.

Verse 31, “As for God, His way is perfect;” notice how he mixes the military skills with the Word of God, “His way is perfect; the word of the LORD is tried [tested],” and then right away, after talking about the Word of God being tested, being refined, what does he do in the very next clause? “He is a buckler to all them that trust in him.” Now that’s not a belt buckle, a buckler is a small shield, he says that God’s Word and my shield, he didn’t see it disjointed, he didn’t walk out in the battle without a shield, incidentally, well God is going to be my shield, here God, right here, and walk our like that. Now David wasn’t a jerk, he had a shield and he used his weapons, but while he was using his weapons he never made the disastrous assumption that those weapons were sufficiently producing the results he was seeing.

Verse 32, “For who is God, save the LORD? and who is a rock,” that was a fortress, again a military picture, “who is a fortress, save our God? [33] God is my strength and power: and He makes my way perfect.”

Now verse 34 is particularly interesting because this was hand to hand combat, some of the skills he had to have: “He makes my feet like hinds’ feet” now this is an idiom that is used in the Old Testament for sure footwork. You see, the battles weren’t fought on a table top, many of the battles in the ancient world were fought on hillsides and if you’re, obviously envisioning someone coming at you with a spear and a sword and they’re charging you and you’re sitting down like this, and they’re coming down at you and your foot slips on some gravel, what’s going to happen? You’re going to get hurt. All right, what he’s talking about here is his footwork in hand to hand combat. Now he had to practice this over and over and over and over, but he said, in spite of my practice God, I am not under the delusion that my exercise are sufficient to produce these results. “He makes my feet,” and the Hebrew word is a participle, “He continually makes my feet sure,” I don’t slip, I have skill, “and He sets me upon my high places.” This means particularly on these battles for these hills on an incline, God would get him up to the top of the hill, once they were on top of the hill in hand to hand combat that was the battle, right there, who won the ballgame was the guy that could control the top of the hill. So he’s talking about hand to hand combat.

Again in verse 35, “He constantly teaches” Hebrew participle “my hands to war; so that a bow of steel” it’s literally bronze in the Hebrew, “a bow of bronze is broken by mine arms.” He did Amenhotep one better, he didn’t walk around saying anybody couldn’t break my bow, he said I just bust the bow, that’s all, no bows left when I’m through, and this wasn’t a braggamony, this actually happened. Verse 36, “Thou hast also given me the shield of Thy salvation: and Thy gentleness hath made me great.” Now unfortunately you could go on about the word “gentleness,” I won’t because it’s dubious in the Hebrew text, verse 36 is bad news in the Hebrew and I haven’t got time to fiddle with it.

Verse 37, “Thou hast enlarged my steps under me; so that my feet did not slip.” Again he’s talking about the skill in hand to hand combat; particularly here, the King James kind of botched the translation because it doesn’t say “my steps,” the word “step” here is the word “pace,” and he’s talking about how far his feet were apart when he was in hand to hand combat, he says “You’ve enlarged my pace, in other words, he’s got a good broad stance when he’s in battle. This again historically came about because he trained, but in this Psalm he points out his training was not sufficient, it was necessary but not sufficient.

Verse 38-49, the whole section is summarized in the first two verses, “I have pursued mine enemies, and destroyed them; and turned not again until I had consumed them. [39] And I have consumed them, and wounded them, that they could not arise: yea, they are fallen under my feet. [40] For thou hast girded me with strength to battle: them that rose up against me hast thou subdued under me. [41] Thou hast also given me the necks of mine enemies, that I might destroy them that hate me. [42] They looked, but there was none to save; even unto the LORD, but he answered them not,” referring probably to Saul.
Verse 43, “Then did I beat them as small as the dust of the earth, I did stamp them as the mire of the street, and did spread them abroad. Now one can read that and say hmmm, that doesn’t fit very well with turning the other cheek in the New Testament. Well, without going into detail, he is talking about holy war, and in holy war God is the ruler and He makes rules. And the rules are thou shalt hate thy neighbor when I tell you to hate them. And when God tells a man to hate neighbors, these are people who have reached the point of unredemption, that is they hare rejected, rejected, rejected, rejected, rejected the Word of God, they have become unredeemable. At that point God takes the right and the wrong, the rules that are going to control all of our lives for eternity because you will be told in eternity, incidentally, to hate some neighbors, those who have not received Christ in eternity are to be the object of a holy hatred. Now we are taught to love our neighbors today, yes, because today is the grace. But those who are outside of Christ we would be traitors if we did not share God’s hatred for them for all eternity. So the rules are going to change. Now God has periodically changed the rule book in history to let us see what’s coming in eternity and these are one of those times where David has this animosity, this total hostility to his enemies.

Why is this in the Bible? Have you ever thought why there are Psalms in the Bible that pray that the children’s head be bashed against the wall. Those Psalms are in the Bible to teach us an attitude that you have to have in the Christian life to survive. You have to share God’s evaluation of sin in your life and the attitude toward your own personal sin has to be uncompromising hatred. This is why, to cite a historic example, the Puritans were such great soldiers in battle. Many people have commented on it, that the Puritans fought to intensely their own personal battle of sanctification in their life, they grew tough dealing with their own sins in their own soul, and the toughness that came out of their personal struggle in sanctification then spilled out into all areas of life. What other group of people do you know of who sailed thousands of miles across the ocean and carved out a civilization like ours out of pure raw material? It was the Puritans that did that. And they did it because of this attitude. This attitude is very vital, don’t knock these passages of Scripture. Get to the point where you can look at verse 43 and assimilate that attitude; if you can’t you’ve still got some areas to go in getting straightened out on the basics.

[44, “Thou also hast delivered me from the strivings of my people, thou hast kept me to be head of the heathen: a people which I knew not shall serve me. [45] Strangers shall submit themselves unto me: as soon as they hear, they shall be obedient unto me. [46] Strangers shall fade away, and they shall be afraid out of their close places. [47] The LORD liveth; and blessed be my rock; and exalted be the God of the rock of my salvation. [48] It is God that avenges me, and that brings down the people under me, [49] And that brings me forth from mine enemies: thou also hast lifted me up on high above them that rose up against me: thou hast delivered me from the violent man.”

Finally, in verse 50-51 David fulfills his prophecy as the king, he speaks to the fact that God has saved his king, verse 44 he’s going to be head of the heathen, but now in verse 50 he says, “Therefore I will give thanks” it’s the word to praise, “I will praise thee, O LORD,” and the very fact that in the Hebrew there is no difference to praise or to give thanks teaches you what is praise God. Praising God ultimately is thanking Him for what He has done. “I will give thanks unto Thee, O LORD, among the heathen,” that’s in public, “and I will sing praises unto Thy name. [51] He is the tower of salvation for his king: and shows mercy to his anointed, unto David, and to his seed for evermore.”

There’s only one problem and that’s the problem we want to finish with tonight in verse 50, who is it that David sings praises among the nations? The word “heathen” is Goiim, it’s the Gentiles; now David didn’t sing praises among the Gentiles. Well, then how is verse 50 historically valid? Is it an exaggeration. No, this song pictures David and all of his seed in himself, and what’s David’s greater seed? The Lord Jesus Christ. Now is the Lord Jesus Christ singing praises in the middle of the heathen, among the nations. You can say no again until you realize who’s “in Christ.” Believers who are among all the nations. And so when you sing your hymns of God, when you share the gospel with an unsaved person, when you share with another Christian something God has done, you are fulfilling verse 50. You are part of the Lord Jesus Christ who is the son of David and you are locked into one unit. As you praise God David praises God with you.

Father, we thank You for…..