2 Samuel 22:1-7

2 Samuel chapter 22 I want to read the first seven verses and David spake 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 and he said the Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer the God of my rock in him will I trust he is my shield and the horn of my salvation and my high tower and my refuge my saviour thou savest me from violence. I will call on the Lord who is worthy to be praised. So shall I be saved from mine enemies. When the waves of death come past me, the floods of ungodly men made me afraid, the sorrows of hell come past me about, the snares of death prevented me. In my distress, I called upon the Lord and cried to my God and he did hear my out of his temple and my cry did enter into his ears. God blessed to us his holy and sacred word this evening. It is clear that when Jesus taught his disciples about his death and his burial and resurrection and what was happening as he spoke with them after his resurrection, that he used to the Psalms to explain all these truths. And they were prophetic about Christ and about his work, as Luke 2444 indicates. The apostle of Hebrews says that Jesus sang with those who made up his church, and he quotes Psalm 22, verse 22, I will declare thy name unto my brother, and in the midst of the church, will I sing praise unto thee? Literally, I will hymn to you. So we see these texts indicating to us something about the Psalms and how they relate to Christ. We have an example of Christ hyming, if you would, in the Gospels. In the book of Matthew, chapter 26 and verse 30. We often read this when we read the Lord’s Supper. passage when Jesus introduced the Lord’s Supper at the Passover meal. Remember afterwards they had sung a hymn, literally they hymn, it says, and they went out into the Mount of Olives. What did they hymn? What did they hymn? What did they sing? Well, it was the Jewish custom to sing the Psalms at the Passover meal, especially the great halel, the psalms. 113 to 118, what other songbook did they have? That was the Psalm book that they used. Doesn’t all this indicate to you, then, that the divinely inspired Psalms would be what Jesus would have the church use? And Matthew Henry is interesting in his commentary on this. He says, the singing of Psalms is the New Testament command or gospel ordinance. Christ removing the hymn from the close of the Passover to the close of the Lord’s Supper plainly intimates that he intended that ordinance should continue in his church that as it had not its birth with the ceremonial law, so it should not die with it. And what would be more appropriate to sing? at the Lord’s Supper, but the Psalms that speak of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection, and so forth. good example of this is Psalm 18, which in its preliminary form here is found here in 2 Samuel 22. The New Testament makes clear by the repeated quotations in Acts and Romans and Hebrews that we looked at last week, that this passage speaks of the sufferings, the deliverance, the triumph, and the kingdom of Christ. So let us consider this passage in light of the revelation of the revelation of the the New Testament about it, that the church here is going to learn something about Christ. And let us sing Psalm 18, knowing that when we sing it, we’re singing here about Christ and his great work and what His kingdom is about, and his triumph and so forth. So let me say that you should see in this Psalm the sufferings and deliverance of Christ in verses 1 to 7 in particular. Now you have revealed Christ’s experience of deliverance in verses 1 to 4. Why did Christ need deliverance? Well verse 1 indicates to us here the enemies. It’s interesting in Psalm 18, this has moved to the preface. First 1 has moved to the preface so that we have that is not what was sung, but it’s certainly it’s still an indication of why this was written. David, of course, had plenty of enemies. You can’t read his checkered life without seeing how often he had enemies that he had to face. And in this, David portrays the Lord Jesus Christ, who is hated and despised by men, and made the target of a vast array of enemies. In fact, you’ll notice he says in verse 5, there are floods of unguards of unguards, and godly men that made me afraid. Remember that at his birth, Herod tried to kill Christ. During his ministry, we see the Jewish religious leaders plotting over and over again his death. Pilate and Herod certainly, and the Romans were hostile to Jesus Christ. Judas, one of his own disciples, we know, betrayed Christ. and even on the cross, the criminals on the right hand in the left, vehinously attacked him. The common people cried out for his crucifixion, led on by the religious leaders of the Jews. He was mocked and certainly ridiculed as he hung upon the cross, so during his earthly life, as we see, even from the very beginning until the end, no one cared for his soul. He was surrounded by enemies. It’s one reason he needed deliverance. But when in particular did Christ need deliverance? When on the cross, when Christ plummeted into the depths of what it meant to be forsaken by God and be the sin-bearer for his people, he endured, he endured the waves. of death, as the scripture tells us here in verse 5, and the sorrows of hell, as verse 6, indicates to us. There are those who take verse 6, and they see the sorrows of hell, and they say this is a parallel passage, and it refers to death, and I suppose that shield can be taken in that way. But you know, when I read this, this afternoon, I was moved by this passage of scripture when I thought about it. Shield here can also be taken as hell itself. And the indication then would be that Christ endured all the punishment of hell for his people as he was dying on the cross. What we should have endured, he endured. And to me, it added to the intensity of the, the text, for the Bible certainly uses this word in saying that the wicked shall be turned into hell and so forth. And the scripture, especially in the book of Revelation, it’s interesting how death and hell are separated, two entities. Death and hell were cast into the lake of fire, as we read in Revelation chapter 20. So it’s very possible to interpret this in this manner. And certainly our understanding of what Christ did on the cross would indicate to us, yes, he did endure these, the sorrows of hell. This explains to us his cry. When he cries out, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? For what is hell? But God saying, Christ actually saying, depart from me, ye workers of iniquity, and he cast him into hell. To be separated from the favorable presence of God. And so we shouldn’t have any problems with seeing. the intensity here increased, not only the physical death that he faced, but also the spiritual death that he endured here on the cross. You know, when Jesus took humanity upon himself, he felt all that you would feel in that situation. We shouldn’t be surprised in that the Lord Jesus Christ, not only died or real death, but he also had normal feelings about death. And this explains this text in its intensity and the emotional aspect that we see here in this text of in this text of scripture. How did Christ experience deliverance? Well, Christ cried out for deliverance from the cross, but he wasn’t delivered. from the cross. He did die, as the scriptures indicate to us. Did God fail him? No, Christ was delivered from death. He triumphed over death, the Bible says, through the resurrection. And I find it interesting when you get to Revelation chapter 1, what does Christ say about himself? That he possesses the keys of hell and Death. They couldn’t hold him. They couldn’t continue to hold him and keep him in that state. He endured it and he triumphed over it by God’s help, giving him strength. By his resurrection and exaltation to God’s throne as the king of kings and the Lord of Lords, we know that all enemies eventually will be put under his feet. And therefore, we know that Christ prayer was answered when he prayed to the Father here. Praise is given to God for his deliverance in verses 2 through 4 here. Now, can you imagine Christ seated at the right hand of God. He has now been triumphant. He’s ascended to heaven. He’s exalted above all. principalities and powers and rulers and so forth. Imagine him taking a retrospective view of his sufferings and the multitude of his enemies and what he faced on the cross and the victory now that he is gained. And with this idea impressed upon your mind, you can grasp the force here of Christ’s words of thanksgiving in verses 2 through 4. whenever you sing this psalm, you should realize you’re singing it in conjunction with your Savior because his triumph is our triumph. Whatever he triumphs over, we triumph over as well. But imagine him newly risen from the dead and picture him saying these words. The Psalm begins as all worship must with the adoration of the living God of the everlasting God of the everlasting and covenant. God is to be praised for who he is in himself. His essential being calls forth our praise and worship. In the final public form of this Psalm, in Psalm 18, it begins with a declaration of love for God, 181, I will love thee, O Lord, my strength. Love is expressed for how God has protected and delivered Christ. In verse 2, he calls him my rock and my fortress. Here we have the protection of some type of inaccessible height, a strong foundation under him so that he cannot be moved in a rock. Dwelling among the crags and the mountains, you can imagine David in the strongholds of Judea and escaping the malice of Saul. God is compared to a place of concealment and security for him. And the people of God find shelter in their God, and so does the God man here in this text. He’s my deliverer, verse 2, the one who interposes in his hour of peril. Even my savior, or my deliverer, if you would, in verse 3. Christ and his people are rescued by the mighty hand of God. He’s called my God in verse 7. The Heavenly Father, who is the object of worship at the eternal, unchanging, infinite, and good God is the one that the human nature of Christ certainly calls my God. My rock, again, verse 3, strength, immovability is mentioned here. My shield in verse 3, he’s got armoured protection. He is warding off the blows of the enemy. God’s providence certainly frustrates the most determined efforts of Christ’s enemies. And those are the people of God, and ultimately they will be defeated. Verse 3, he speaks of God as the horn of his salvation. And here, horn is used in Scripture many times for strength. You can imagine the bullhorns or something to this nature that would charge at you or push you. Here with the idea that God is pushing his enemies back, you know, bringing them under subjection so that he enables the people of God in Christ to triumph over them. My high tower, my refuge, verse 3, a citadel, high enough to be beyond the reach of the enemy, a safe refuge. So we have this idea that through Jehovah I have stood in movable amidst the overwhelming temptations and sufferings and afflictions that have come. God has supported me in all my troubles. He has broken and shattered my enemies. And now I am set high above them all. As the God man. This marvelous deliverance elicits a prayer of thanksgiving to God. Verse 4, I will pray, I will call on the Lord who is worthy to be praised. It’s do him. it is a debt, do him. Christ here sets the example for his people to follow and how lovely the praise is in the mouth of the church triumphant and certainly even today with the church militant on this earth. But ultimately we will still be singing this kind of praise to our God for the ultimate deliverance he gives us. You also have revealed the sufferings of Christ in verses 5 and 6. He says, when the waves of death come past me and the floods of the ungodly men made me afraid, the sorrows of hell come past me about, the snares of death prevented me or went before me. Here we have a very moving account of Christ’s sufferings. Christ, as we talked about from the book of Acts last week, was bound with the cords of death. Even from his incarnation, we know. that his whole life was geared to one end and that was he was going to come and die on the cross. His early earthly ministry and throughout his ministry there was an anticipation of death for this cause came I into the world or came I to this hour he says. And our text here reveals this crescendo of suffering on Calvary’s Hill. He uses a figure of an anger. sea here, raging waves to describe the things that are threatening to overwhelm him. The floods here of ungodly men, the waves of death and so forth. The multitude of the wicked threatened him, like the water floodwaters, we would say. He pictures himself as captive and bound by death. It’s inevitable that he’s going to die. He must drink the cup as bitter as it is that his father has given him to drink. Finally, he feels like a bird caught in a fowler snare, unable to fly away. And we know that Jesus actually died after suffering this unequalled, physical, and mental anguish on the cross. And while Christ’s soul flew to paradise is bought. lay in the tomb for three days prior to the resurrection. Christ experienced the state of death, the separation of the spirit and the body. So you have a most moving account here of Christ’s sufferings. You can see the awful nature of Christ’s sufferings to secure the salvation of his people in this. There was a man that came up to the minister after the close of the service and complained. about the message. And the man said, I don’t see any necessity in the blood of Christ for my salvation. I can be saved without believing in his shed blood. And the minister said, really? How then do you propose to be saved? And the man said by following Christ’s example. That’s enough for any man. The minister said, I suppose it is. That is what you propose to do to secure your salvation, is it? The man said, I do. And I’m sure it’s enough. To which the minister replied very well. I’m sure you want to begin right. The word of God tells us how to do that. I read concerning Christ who did no sin. Neither was Gow found in his mouth. I suppose you can say that’s true about you. Well, the man him hauled around and was visibly embarrassed and finally said, well, I can’t say that exactly because I sit. The pastor said, well, then you don’t need an example. You need a Savior. and you need the blood of Christ. This Psalm calls forth for a fresh appreciation of what Christ endured in order to purchase your salvation as a believer. He had to face the most gruesome death and the most extreme anguish imaginable. How can we truly describe all this? Who can give us a description of the sorrows of hell that can pass Christ? My friends, whenever our heart grows cold spiritually, we need to spend a little time thinking about our Savior, thinking about the cost involved in our salvation. Here you sort of get a taste of it. You get Christ feelings. You get his thinking as he is suffering on the cross. This psalm should, you know, cause your heart to be filled with wonder and praise. as we think about Christ. You have revealed Christ’s prayer for deliverance in verse 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. He might wonder, you know, why or how could Christ be calling out to God when the Lord had laid on him the iniquity of us all? surely because Christ accepted this affliction that he was enduring as coming from God as just and necessary for the punishment of the sins of his people. Jesus was no sinner himself, but he makes this sacrifice as a true atonement taking the place of the believer. Jesus did not pray to escape from this terrible experience. He prayed to be victorious over it, in which he would see here the travail of his soul and be satisfied. This is the heart of Christ’s prayer life, submission to the Father’s will and expectation of victory over death. And God hears his beloved son, in whom he is well pleased. It was not a futile problem. prayer. Now what lessons can we draw here from these first few verses? Well, let me quickly give you a couple here tonight. Expect to face many enemies in your Christian life. If the people this world hated your master, the Lord Jesus Christ, they’re going to hate you. As one of his disciples. It is often been said the lot of God’s people is to have many enemies. It is true. And this world is not going to be sympathetic to our cause. It is going to be hostile to our cause. So do not marvel, John says. Do not be stunned. Do not be astonished that the world hates you. The second thing we learn is learn a delight in your covenant God. All the benefits you receive are based upon your relationship with God. You notice how often you do you receive, talks about my God or my strength or my deliverer or my rock and so forth throughout this passage. God has entered a covenant relationship with you and is dedicated to help you. He is your God and you are his people. He’ll never forsake you, the scripture says. The scripture says, though many are the troubles of the righteous, yet the Lord delivers them. out of them all in Psalm 3419. It’s a precious thing to have a personal relationship with God, to be in a covenant relationship with him, a bond of friendship, if you would. Thirdly tonight, let your praise and thanksgiving to the Lord be heartfelt. Words and sentences may help you to understand Christ’s praise here to the Father. But they can’t really make us feel it. This dilemma reminds me of a time, I believe it was somebody that was in Philadelphia that went up to George Whitfield, the evangelist, and asked if he could print his sermons that he was preaching. Can I print them? Whitfield replied, well, I have no inherent objection to you printing them, if you like, but you’ll never be able to put on the printed. page, the thunder and the lightning. You won’t capture the emotional aspect of it, just reading it on the printed page in itself. And there’s a sense in which we may find that is true with the text here as intense as it is. We can understand it. You could read these words and not really be as moved as you should be by these words. We don’t catch the fire of these words sometimes. But the scripture says in Hebrews 5, verse 7 about Jesus, who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death and was heard in that he feared. What’s this strong crying in tears, but what we find here in our text? My friends, we shouldn’t be unmoved by what we’re not. what God has done for us through Christ, so that when we pray, we may also be moved at times to strong crying and tears as well. Does God inspire your praise? Is he worthy of your praise? As Jesus speaks about here? I think sometimes we need to pray with the psalmist in Psalm 71.8, let my mouth be filled with thy praise and with thy honor all the day. We’re asking, God to actually put the praise in our lips, if you would. Fourthly, realize Christ is with you in all your sufferings. You know, one of the things that had contributed to Julius Caesar’s soldiers appearing to be invincible and many of the campaigns they engaged in in in Gaul was the fact that Julius Caesar was right there with them through it all. Whatever hardships or trials that they were undergoing, he was right beside them, going through it himself. He never sought an exemption from it. This attributed to the famous victories that he had. My friends, the captain of your salvation endured tremendous sufferings as the head and the savior of his church. Now, he does not require you to suffer for his cause without suffering along with you. As the scriptures indicate to us. that he is sympathetic to our cause, touched with the feelings of our infirmals. We make up one spiritual body of which he is the head, and therefore Christ really endures the suffering inflicted upon his church. Saul, Saul, why, persecutest thou me. I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. We read Jesus whom thou persecutest. We read in the book of Acts when Saul was breathing out threatenings against the church of Jesus Christ. So we should never think that we’re suffering alone. Christ is there beside us. Fifthly, learn to call upon the Lord in the day of trouble, as verse 7 indicates. Here is Christ example for us. The Psalm calls you to pray. And clearly the Lord Jesus Christ was a man of prayer because he believed his father would hear him and would help him when he pray. James tells us when we pray we’re not to be praying with a wavering spirit. We’re to believe that our prayers will be heard and that God will answer them. And so we find Christ constantly resorting to seeking God’s faith, especially when facing trouble. Even on the cross, he’s crying out to God, his father. Surely there’s a lesson to be leaned from this for us. Is any among you afflicted? Let him pray, James says. The tendency in the time of trouble is to faint, but the tendency of man is to fail in this capacity. Christ gives us the example we are to follow. In the midst of the worst possible suffering, he prays, seeks the face of his father. Neglecting prayer in the day of trouble is disastrous for us. So one true resource you have to help you endure and overcome the trouble you face is prayer. Where our text is not simply about David, it’s prophetic. It takes us beyond him. It gives us the words of Christ himself and what he is enduring as our Lord and Savior. And you should understand. understand this psalm is about Christ when you sing it. Let us read and study it with this insight and with this understanding, with this appreciation for what he underwent, that we might have eternal life. I’ll go to the prayer to mind.