"Courage for Life" Psalm 18 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Psalm 18, I'll read it.

It'll take about five or six minutes to read.

It's a long psalm, so it's a good thing you guys are sitting down.

Psalm 18, this is the word of the Lord to the choir master.

Psalm of David, the servant of Yahweh, who addressed the words of this song to Yahweh on the day when Yahweh rescued him from the hand of all of his enemies and from the hand of Saul.

He said, I love you, O Yahweh, my strength.

Yahweh is my God and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

I call upon Yahweh, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies.

The cords of death encompassed me, the torrents of destruction assailed me, the cords of Sheol entangled me, the snares of death confronted me, and in my distress I called upon Yahweh.

To my God I cried for help.

From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears.

Then the earth reeled and rocked.

The foundations also of the mountains trembled and quaked because he was angry.

Smoke went up from his nostrils, and devouring fire from his mouth, glowing coals flamed forth from him.

He bowed the heavens and came down.

Thick darkness was under his feet.

He rode on a cherub and flew.

He came swiftly on the wings of the wind.

He made darkness his canopy around him, thick clouds, dark with water.

Out of the brightness before him, hailstones and coals of fire broke through his clouds.

Yahweh also thundered in the heavens, and the Most High uttered his voice, hailstones and coals of fire, and he sent out his arrows and scattered them, and he flashed forth lightnings and routed them.

Then the channels of the sea were seen, and the foundations of the world were laid bare at your rebuke, O Yahweh, at the blast of the breath of your nostrils.

He sent from on high.

They confronted me in the day of my calamity.

But Yahweh was my support.

He brought me out into a broad place.

He rescued me because he delighted in me.

Yahweh dwelt with me according to my righteousness.

According to the cleanness of my hands, he rewarded me.

For I have kept the ways of Yahweh, and have not wickedly departed from my God.

For all his rules were before me.

His statutes I did not put away from me.

I was blameless before him, and I kept myself from guilt.

So Yahweh has rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in his sight.

With the merciful, you show yourself merciful.

With the blameless man, you show yourself blameless.

With the purified, you show yourself pure, and with the crooked you make yourself seem tortuous.

For you save a humble people, but the haughty eyes you bring down.

For it is you who light my lamp.

Yahweh, my God, lightens my darkness, for by you I can run against a troop, and by my God I can leap over a wall.

This God, his way is perfect.

The word of Yahweh proves true, for he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.

For who is God but Yahweh?

And who is a rock, except our God, the God who equipped me with strength and made my way blameless?

He made my feet like the feet of a deer, and he set me secure on the heights.

He trains my hands for wars, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.

You've given me the shield of your salvation, and your right hand supported me.

Your gentleness made me great.

You gave me a wide place for my steps under me, and my feet did not slip.

I pursued my enemies and overtook them, and did not turn back until they were consumed.

I thrust them through, so they were not able to rise.

They fell under my feet.

For you equipped me with strength for the battle.

You made those who rise against me sink under me.

You made my enemies turn their backs to me, and those who hated me I destroyed.

I cried for they cried for help, but there was none to save.

They cried to Yahweh, but he did not answer them.

I beat them as fine as dust before the wind.

I cast them out like the mire of the streets.

You delivered me from strife with the people.

You made me the head of the nations.

People whom I had not known served me.

As soon as they heard of me, they obeyed me.

Foreigners came cringing to me.

Foreigners lost heart and came trembling out of their fortresses.

Yahweh lives, and blessed be my rock, and exalted be the God of my salvation, the God who gave me vengeance and subdued peoples under me, who delivered me from my enemies.

Yes, you exalted me above those who rose against me.

You rescued me from the man of violence.

For this I will praise you, O Yahweh, among the nations, and sing to your name.

Great salvation he brings to his king and shows his steadfast love to his anointed, to David, and his offspring forever.

Amen.

I mean, that is a psalm right there.

That is a psalm.

And this is a psalm that really reminds us of the importance of courage, because listen, the issue of the day right now, as far as I perceive it in the church, is an issue of courage.

The world is gripped by fear.

The world is gripped in many ways by an irrational fear of death, an irrational fear of what can harm them.

And that shouldn't be surprising.

After all, Hebrews chapter 2 says that the whole human race is held in slavery, in captivity to the fear of death.

Hebrews 2 · chapter mention

People are terrified of death to the point that the Bible refers to it as a form of slavery.

Yet it is surprising to see that kind of fear often tumble over into the church, to see Christians respond to fear as if it is their master, to see Christians terrified of losing their life as if that were the worst thing that could happen to them.

You know, people in the world believe that and they're wrong.

Losing your life is not the worst thing that can happen to you.

Losing your life without the knowledge of Jesus Christ is the worst thing that can happen to you.

But Christians ought not fear death.

And I'm not even simply, although I am talking, I'm not simply talking about the virus in the world.

I'm talking about all manners of evangelism, all manner of taking stands for Christ, all manner of boldness in Christian living, boldness and refusing to be conformed to the world, boldness and not getting swept up with whatever the issues are that our world wants to make so important to you.

The courage to stand for Christ against the opposition of the world.

And certainly that includes the courage to be bold with your life, to take risks for the Lord, with your own life for his glory and for your good.

We know this.

The Bible calls Joshua and separates Joshua from the people and sends Joshua as the leader of Israel into the promised land.

And he says, Be strong and courageous, Joshua.

This is Joshua chapter one.

Be strong and courageous, for the Lord will go with you.

The Lord will be his defender, the Lord will be his advocate.

And this is a New Testament concept as well.

We're not all Joshua's leading into the promised land, but we are all believers sealed with the Spirit of God.

And the scripture says that God did not give us a spirit of timidity.

He did not give us a spirit that is weak.

He gave us a spirit of strength and of boldness and of courage.

Believers of all people should be marked with courage because we believe that God is sovereign over the affairs of the world and that he has set his affection on us.

We believe that God has a plan and a purpose for our life and a plan and a purpose for our death.

And so whether we are here in the body or we are in glory with Jesus, whether we live or die, Paul says in Philippians 1, we desire to be glorified.

We desire for God to be glorified through our life.

This is David's example.

I mean, there is no one who lived this out to the extent in all the Bible as did David.

David was constantly demonstrating courage in the face of adversity, constantly stepping out in boldness, constantly trusting the Lord in circumstances that the unsaved eye would say he has no business being in.

An example of this kind of courage, I think just an analogy to make this make more sense for us, because we're not kings going to battle against Goliaths, you know.

We're we're just Christians trying to lead peaceful and calm and quiet lives in the world, to work quietly with our hands and fly under the government's radar, so to speak, to use Paul's language, the Thessalonians, where he says, work quietly with your hands and stay out of trouble.

You know, pray for your leaders, he tells Timothy, so you can lead a quiet and calm and peaceful life.

So what kind of boldness should believers have?

Let me put it to you this way.

Think back to when you were in college or for me seminary, and I think of a Hebrew exam on Tuesday morning.

And there are some nights Monday night where it was hard for me to sleep.

Hard for me to sleep because, quite honestly, I wasn't prepared for the test.

And if I wasn't prepared, it was hard for me to have confidence going to bed the night before, which is a self-defeating cycle, right?

If you're not rested, you're gonna test even worse.

But there were other nights where I went to bed so nice and easy because I was prepared.

I had studied, I knew the vocab, I knew the grammar, I was ready for this, and so I slept like a baby those nights.

This is the way people use that expression, do babies even sleep that well?

I don't even know.

This is the way you have courage and boldness in facing the world.

Do you have confidence?

Do you have confidence?

Not just that you're prepared, but do you have confidence that God is at work through you in this world?

Do you have confidence that God has his hand on your life?

Confidence and courage go hand in glove.

When you have confidence in God and in his word, then you have courage to do what he's calling you to do.

But when you lack that confidence, you lack the courage that goes with it.

That's a David's life.

It's a series of one example after another where he had the courage to face the world.

And by the way, nothing corrodes courage faster than sin.

If you have unconfessed sin in your life, then of course you're going to lay awake at night.

If you have unconfessed sin in your life, you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.

It's not because you lack preparation, it's because you know that your sin could be exposed.

A non-Christian who's walking in unconfessed sin risks the fires of hell.

A Christian who's walking in sin risks the Lord killing you.

A Christian who's walking in in sin, not just could the Lord kill you, but your sin could be exposed, you could be humiliated, there's all kinds of consequences that come with your hypocritical sin.

And so you're not going to have courage.

But the believer who is walking in the ways of the Lord, whose faith is in Jesus Christ, who's trusting him and abiding in him, should have strength and should have courage.

And that's what David's life in many respects is an example of.

David writes this at the end of his life.

He writes this looking back.

It says in the inscription, and the inscriptions in the Psalms are inspired, and that's important in Psalm 18.

The inscription here is inspired, and it says he wrote this on the day when Yahweh finally had delivered him from the hand of all of his enemies and from the hand of King Saul.

And that makes me laugh every time I read it.

He delivered him from all of his enemies.

Oh yeah, and also King Saul, who was certainly his enemy par excellence.

I mean, they were the whole book of 1 Samuel is the story of Saul's villainy towards David.

That David was the anointed king, the rightful king, and yet Saul was his rival, the usurper sitting on the throne.

And yet God delivered David from his enemies and from Saul.

And so now David is looking back over his life.

This psalm in its entirety is also 1 Samuel 22.

This is one of our 2 Samuel 22.

This is one of those passages that is in two places of the Bible.

It's here and it's in 2 Samuel 22.

And there it comes at the end of David's life, where he's looking back over all of his journeys, and he is asking, how is it that God showed so much faithfulness to him for so long?

This chapter in many ways reminds me of the line from Amazing Grace.

Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come.

That's a shorter version of Psalm 18 right there.

Through many dangers, God has led him.

And now the question is why?

Why is this in the Bible?

What are we to learn from it?

And I think it's in the Bible to fuel our own courage.

We know that the characters in the Old Testament aren't heroes for heroes' sake.

We're not supposed to, you know, emulate their life, but we're supposed to seek to be like their God.

And nevertheless, there are certainly examples from David's life of courage for us to learn from, especially as they reveal the nature of God to us.

And so let me give you an outline this morning.

I want to look at in our time remaining this morning, how God fuels our courage.

How God fuels our courage, because that's what Psalm 18 is about.

How God gives us courage to lead an unconformed life to this world, a conformed life to Jesus Christ.

How God fuels our courage.

And the first way God fuels our courage is by deliverance.

He fuels our courage through delivering us from our enemies, through delivering us from sin.

And so the first part of this Psalm, really verses one all the way through verse 19, it's a litany of how David was delivered so many times.

All of his brushes with death.

And, you know, brushes with death is not even the right phrase.

You know, a brush with death is when you brush by somebody in the hallway, especially now.

That's a brush with death.

David didn't have brushes with death.

David had full-on, 100 mile an hour, head-on collisions with death.

And he walked away from them.

It's really staggering.

I mean, think of the near-death experiences David had.

Think of the amount of times that he should have died in his life.

I mean, he was cornered by Saul more times than we can even count.

Once he escaped when Saul sent his secret police to arrest David, he was in his house with his wife, and remember, David's wife grabbed an idol off of their fireplace, put it in bed, put a wig on it, and told the soldiers that David was sick and sleeping.

Meanwhile, David's sneaking out the window.

That's called a brush with death right there.

And don't miss the irony that David's wife, Saul's daughter, had an idol handy in their house to use as a disguise for David.

I mean, I don't even know where to begin with that.

There was one time where David was running from Saul, and he's up on top of a rock on this cliff, and it isolated to this one rock that was on top, and David was at the edge of the rock.

I picture him holding on to the very edge of the rock, and Saul's soldiers were trying to figure out how to climb up the rock to get to him when the trumpet, Saul's trumpet, blasted, saying that Saul was being ambushed, and they had to run away.

They had to give up their chase.

They were almost about to grab his foot and they had to let him go.

When David returned from that, he found his family gone, kidnapped.

His wives had been kidnapped, his families kidnapped, his house ransacked.

There's another time where he found himself captured by his enemies, and he was brought before their king.

He probably would have been put to death.

He got out of that by feigning his own madness.

One time he found himself hiding in the tabernacle, looking for food in the tabernacle, when an assassin who was being paid to go kill David walks into the tabernacle where David is, and David hides behind the curtain.

He was exiled from his kingdom at least twice.

Don't forget that he faced a giant in the battlefield with nothing more than a sling and stones.

Twice his own king cornered him in the king's palace, tried to pin him against the wall with javelins.

There was once where he was attacked by a lion.

Oh, he fought off the lion by wrestling it by its mane, by the way.

Another time, a bear stole one of his sheep, and he tracked down the bear, rescued the sheep, killed the bear.

He once found himself in a battle against 10,000 soldiers.

He had a thousand on his side.

And that's not even his closest brush with death.

His closest brush with death was his confrontation with the prophet Nathan, where Nathan told him the story, and David said the man should die, and Nathan said, You're that man.

You know, one person might escape one of those.

One of you, if you have like a distinguished career as a Navy SEAL or something, might escape two or three of these.

David had all of them.

All of them.

What are the chances that he could escape all of them?

I mean, it seems like God himself is on David's heels determined to make his new address down in Sheol.

That's the language of verse 5.

That God is tying him up and sending him down to Sheol, the realm of the dead.

And yet he was constantly delivered.

And those are just his brushes with his own personal death.

He had other heartaches as well, remember?

He buried many of his children.

There was no shortage of funerals for David's children, and he wept and mourned their deaths.

He was overthrown by another one of his own children, usurped the throne from him.

He lost his first wife, whom he loved, when his father-in-law took her back and married him off to a different man.

He was forced to fight a war against Israel, fighting against the people that he loved, the kingdom he should have been leading, and it was that war that his best friend Jonathan ended up dying in.

But after all of that, David can declare in verse 1, I love you, Yahweh.

In verse 2, you are my strength.

And this whole psalm, this whole first part of the psalm here, is filled with military language, military analogies, because these were battlefield victories, by the way.

I mean, David was not delivered from the kind of Americana trials and enemies we have.

He wasn't delivered from low self-esteem or a bad marriage or a mediocre job.

Actual enemies throwing spears at him.

That's why there's so much military language in this.

He's a rock and a refuge and a stronghold, a fortress, a shield, a horn.

I mean, if you think about those words, if you're a soldier and you're with your unit and you're maybe on some kind of expedition out in a remote place and you're attacked, what do you do?

You blow a horn to summon for help.

You send out the alarm for other people in your unit to come to your rescue.

You probably retreat and you would retreat to the nearest fortress where you can hide behind the fortress and get your whole army together.

There is no fortress there.

You might go to a stronghold, or what we would call in American military terms, an outpost.

You might go to the nearest outpost or forward operating position.

You retreat there.

And if there's not one of those around, you would hide behind your shield.

And if you don't have a shield, you would hide behind the nearest rock, is what you would do.

And notice that David goes through all of these.

He describes Yahweh here in verses two and three as his fortress, as his stronghold, as the horn.

In other words, when I call for help, I'm calling God.

He is my help.

When I hide behind my shield, I'm hiding behind him.

God is my shield.

He is my fortress.

He is my stronghold.

He is my rock.

No matter what situation I'm in, I hide behind him and I am saved, he says in verse 3, from all of my enemies.

That doesn't mean this was easy.

Verse 4 and 5 describe him as being wrapped up in the cords of Sheol, going down to the grave.

In fact, verse 4, the torrents of destruction assailed me.

Torrents is the word for waves.

There's a beach in the northeast corner of Kauai that has a very cool warning sign on it.

You've been there, perhaps you've seen the sign.

It's got a sign with a picture of big waves on it, and then, you know, like the stick figure waves, and then a stick figure snorkel there with the little snorkel mouse coming, he has a mask on, the oxygen spout coming out of his mouth, and then he's got two red X's on his eyes, and his tongue is out of his mouth.

And there's a circle around the waves with an X through it.

So in other words, don't go in the waves, or you will end up like this dead snorkel.

That's the sign that David walked by every morning, it seems like.

Every morning he's walking into the world, every morning he's walking into the waves that will beat and beat and beat on him.

And yet he got up with courage and with confidence and walked out in faith to follow the Lord.

And then from verse 6 all the way through verse 15 is his description of how God answered his call for help, what God did when he heard the horn blast, how God responded when David ran to him.

And it is fantastic language, isn't it?

My cry reached his ears, verse 7.

The earth reeled and rocked, the foundations and mountains trembled and quaked.

Smoke comes out of his nostrils.

From his mouth.

Verse 9, he bowed the heavens back.

In other words, the arms of God grabbed the clouds and pulled them back to create an opening for God to enter.

And when God entered, it says he's surrounded by black smoke.

And he descends, and then the earth opens up like a pit beneath his enemies, and the foundations of the earth are exposed as the waves rush through after them.

I mean, that's how David's describing this.

And so you should pause for a second and ask.

I don't remember that happening.

This is David's language describing how it seemed to him.

This is how dramatic his rescues were.

I remember his rescues were through what we would call the ordinary means.

There weren't miracles involved.

They were the ordinary means.

There was an idol with a wig on it.

That was how God rescued him.

Saul's spear missed.

An angel didn't direct it, just providentially it missed.

Saul called his troops off of David's trail when they were about to grab his foot.

This is God's providential rescue.

But to David, if you're in that situation, it certainly seems not like a providential rescue.

It certainly seems like the heavens were peeled back.

I think of the story of King Arthur in Excalibur, how the queen of the lake handed him the sword from the stone, signifying that he was going to unite all of Britain under his authority.

Now, that didn't really happen, of course, right?

You know, you've heard it said that strange women distributing swords is no basis for a system of government, right?

But it's a legend that carries on because it signifies that God had a certain agenda for him, a certain calling unique on his life, that he would unite all of Britain.

I mean, that's the story behind the myth.

This is it here in the Bible, not because it's a myth, of course, but it's here in the Bible to demonstrate God's choice of David, that he would unite the twelve tribes, that he would be their king, and so he will continually rescue his servants.

And the rescue to David certainly seems in this way.

It certainly seems like the clouds had been pulled back.

I mean, how else do you explain all this?

In verse 16, he sent from on high and he took me.

He rescued me from my strong enemy, verse 17.

His enemy was too mighty for David.

But God, verse 18, was his support.

He rescued him.

Why did God rescue David?

It says verse 18.

Because he delighted in me.

He rescued in me, verse 8, or verse 19.

He rescued in me because he delighted in me.

That's the bottom line.

And that's how you explain all this is that God set his favor on David because God loved David.

This is the same thing Deuteronomy says about why did God choose Israel?

All the nations in the world, why did he choose Israel?

He chose Israel because he loved him.

Why did he love him?

Because he wanted to choose him.

Why did he choose him?

Because he loved him.

Why did God choose David?

Because he loved David.

Why did he love David?

Because he looked at him and set his affections on him.

He loved him.

It wasn't anything in David, of course.

David had nothing to offer God.

Do you remember how David was chosen?

I mean, this is the scene that has to hang over his whole life.

Samuel comes looking for a king.

Jesse lines up his sons, and Samuel looks at them and prays, and nope, not him, not him, not him, not him, not him, not him, not him.

Certainly you have another son, right?

And Jesse says, No.

Picture David out there going, What did you say?

No?

Oh, I do have one other son.

He's out with the sheep, but he is certainly not the king.

And Samuel says, Bring him in.

That's how David was chosen.

There is no explanation for this.

Except the Lord set his affection on David.

He rescued me, verse 19, says, Because he delighted in me.

And so David is so thankful.

You know, Jesus tells a story of the person who was forgiven of a debt of$50, and another one who was given a debt forgiven a debt of$500.

And he asks, Who's going to be more thankful?

Who's going to love the Lord more?

And the Pharisees unanimously say, Well, the one who is forgiven$500, certainly.

So who's going to be more thankful to the Lord?

Saul or David?

Obviously, David.

He's so thankful for the deliverance that happened over and over and over again.

Only because God delighted in him.

This is the kind of boldness.

When you see the Lord deliver you one time, you're going to be more bold the next time, aren't you?

You see the Lord deliver you a second and a third and a fourth time, you're going to be more bold the fifth time.

I knew a lady in California who was the manager, I don't know the exact title she had, but she ran this fairly large hospital.

She was the one that was in charge.

The board that oversaw the hospital made her in charge.

So everybody worked under her authority.

And our church had Bible studies there, and she would walk around, she would share the gospel with people, and she would comfort families and pray with nurses and pray with patients and tell all kinds of people to go.

The Bible studies we were leading.

And one day I asked her, I mean, aren't you afraid of getting in trouble for this?

Like, aren't people gonna complain about you just telling everybody the gospel?

And she told me that she got this, she promoted up through this organization to this position, and that when she started, she was at a much lower position.

She kind of didn't like her job.

And so she decided one day that she was okay getting fired.

And so she was just gonna be very bold with her faith.

And perhaps she'd get fired for it.

And uh and the Lord blessed that.

The more bold she was for the faith, the more she got promoted.

And she said, you know, the the Christian explanation is that God was showing her favor.

The non-Christian explanation is that you have the secular company that is looking at a person who actually cares for her the patients and actually cares for the families and cares for the staff and rewards her by promoting her.

And now she's running this healthcare center in Los Angeles.

It was a pretty impressive conversation to have, an impressive history.

The Lord delivered her over and over and over again.

And she came to work every day with, you know what, if I get fired for sharing the gospel today, it should have happened 20 years ago.

It's okay.

And what if she had been fired?

Would you still be able to say the Lord delivered her?

Of course.

The Lord was working through her, getting fired for his own glory in a different way.

That's the kind of courage that I think should be seen in our lives.

The kind of courage should be bold for Jesus.

And I'm I'm so nervous for believers that don't have that kind of boldness because they don't know what would happen.

They don't know what would happen if they share the gospel, they don't know what would happen if they weren't afraid of death.

They don't know what would happen, they don't know what would happen, they don't know what would happen.

But God does.

God does, and God delights in delivering his children.

And I know, don't mishear me.

You know enough of the Bible to know the Lord doesn't always deliver you by keeping you from getting fired.

Sometimes he delivers you through being fired.

He doesn't always deliver you by keeping you from being sick.

Sometimes he delivers you through your sickness.

He's always doing something.

But there's no excuse for a lack of courage.

Well, one way that God delivers us is through, or God gives us courage, is through deliverance.

A second way God gives us courage is through righteousness.

Verse 20, Yahweh dealt with me according to my righteousness.

According to the cleanness of my hands, he rewarded me.

Verse 24, Yahweh has rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in his sight.

This is hearkening back to Psalm 15, Psalm 24, where God says, Who can ascend his holy hill?

Only those with a clean hand and a pure heart.

And of course, Psalm 24 answers the question and says, Nobody can ascend God's hill except God's holy king, the ascendant of David.

He's the only one with clean hands.

So what's going on here where David says, The Lord has dealt with me according to my righteousness?

Is David, one commentator refers to this as Santa Claus theology.

That David says, I've done good, and so God's doing good to me.

Had I been naughty, God would have sent his hail after me, but since I was nice, God's given me nice things.

You know, the Catholic would look at this kind of passage and see and hear their concept of righteousness.

In Catholicism, righteousness is what you do.

It's your work, what you accomplish in your life, your good moral work, that is, of course, fueled by your faith.

Your faith fuels your moral work.

That moral work constitutes your righteousness.

That is, I would say, not the biblical definition of righteousness, but I do grant you that a kind of a surface reading of these verses, it seems like that's what David is saying.

It seems like he's saying, I'm doing my works, and that is my righteousness, and God is now dealing with me according to the righteousness that I have earned.

But that would go against so much of what Scripture says and is so very unlike David, and more to the point, it's not at all what you actually see in David's life, is it?

When you read 2 Samuel, you do not end that book going, man, this guy had a righteousness of his own from his own works, and God dealt with him according to that.

I mean, do you?

2 Samuel is all about David's sins.

I mean, his kingdom right in the middle of it with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah, and then his apathy towards Absalom, and which leads to the death of Absalom and David getting exiled.

And David knew that he was being punished by God for his own sins, doesn't he?

You've got the people spitting at him and cursing at him, and his his secret service says, Do you want us to take those guys out?

And David says, No, this is God who is perhaps working on me, purifying me.

The end of 2 Samuel is the census where David sins against God and then God ends up showing him mercy.

I mean, you cannot look at David's life and say God dealt with him as if his righteousness was his own deeds, like his own deeds deserved.

The better way of understanding this is to say, you know what, this is the guy who wrote half of the book of Psalms, okay?

So he has theologically precise language.

Let's give him some theological precision here.

Righteousness in the Bible is not what you accomplish with your own hands.

Righteousness in the Bible is how you live out being in a right relationship with God.

You are in a right relationship with God through faith.

God declares you to be righteous based upon your faith, independent of your works, independent of your deeds.

You offer nothing to your righteousness except the sin that makes it impossible.

A non-believer cannot be righteous by the biblical standard.

Our hearts are idol factories, not righteousness factories.

Our hearts produce sin, not righteousness.

Ever since David fell into sin, the world falls, ever since Adam fell into sin, the world falls into sin.

You're born in sin, you're born without a righteousness of your own.

And you cannot merit a righteousness of your own.

There's nothing you can do to be righteous before God.

So you don't earn righteousness by keeping the law.

You recognize that you're breaking the law means you're unrighteous.

You then place your faith in God who gives you an alien righteousness, a righteousness that's outside of you.

God declares you to be righteous based upon your faith in God, specifically your faith in the Savior Jesus Christ.

And the righteousness of Jesus, who led a perfect life, that righteousness is then given to you.

So your sin goes to him and his righteousness goes to you.

And that becomes your righteousness.

And God deals with you on the basis of your righteousness, which is actually the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

So one option is that David hit his head and forgot all that and wrote this paragraph.

The other option is that David knows all that because he's written psalms about this theology, and he's availing himself of that.

And so what he's saying is that he is righteous by his faith in God and his faith in the Savior, which he's going to talk about at the end of this psalm, by the way.

Spoiler alert, the Savior's coming.

He's going to write about this saying that God makes him righteous by faith in the Savior, and now he's living out that righteousness.

That's the Christian way of viewing righteousness.

That God makes you righteous by his own free gift, not based on anything you've done, just by your faith.

He gives you his righteousness, and then you live it out.

And then as you're living out the righteousness that was a gift to you, you're walking in God's way.

And when you're walking in his way, you don't have to fear sin.

You've been justified by God.

That's what David is talking about here.

Verse 21 I've kept the ways of Yahweh.

I have not wickedly departed from my God.

He's talking about how he's living out his righteousness here.

Because he has, of course, sinned in his life many times.

We rattled them off some of those times.

And when he sinned, God has shown him mercy.

David has repented, and God has shown him mercy.

All of his rules were before me, his statutes I did not put away from me.

I was blameless before him.

I kept myself from guilt.

So Yahweh rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanliness of my hands in his sight.

This is kind of 1 Peter 3, verse 12 in the New Testament.

1 Peter 3:12

The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, his ears are open to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.

What David is saying here is you have a righteousness that's not yours, if it's your faith in the Savior that brings it to you.

And if you have that righteousness and you are living it out, you don't need to worry about sin.

You might have a lot of troubles, but your sin is not one of them if you have your faith in Jesus Christ.

But the Christian who places faith in Jesus but is still sinning, still harboring unconfessed sin, of course we all still sin, but is still harboring unconfessed sin in his heart, that Christian has trouble.

That person couldn't say what David says here.

That person knows that his sin being exposed and is just around the corner.

Another way of saying it is David between 2 Samuel 11 and 2 Samuel 12 did not have this kind of courage.

His bones were wasting away, he says in Psalm 32.

He was he was not a man of courage, he was a man of fear because he was harboring sin in his heart.

But when he confessed it, the Lord showed him mercy and forgiveness.

And so David goes on here.

With the merciful, verse 25, you show yourself merciful.

With the blameless, you show yourself blameless.

With the pure, you show yourself pure.

This is Titus 1, verse 15.

Titus 1:15

To the pure all things are pure.

But to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure.

To people who don't have faith in Christ, the whole world is a pit.

The whole world is accessible and they can get sucked in at any point.

But for the person who has placed their faith in Christ, they don't walk around fearing the ambush around the corner.

Everything in the world is pure because they are pure.

They've been forgiven from their sins.

They're walking in the Lord's path.

They have confidence in him.

So do you see how if you have confidence, if you have courage in God, because you recognize that your righteousness is a gift from him that gives you boldness.

If you're wrapped up thinking that you got to earn your favor with God, you will not have boldness.

But if you rest on the righteousness that is a gift from God, if you're humble before him, verse 27, you will be saved by him.

But if you're proud before him, he will bring you down.

Verse 28 is reference, I think, to it's repeated in Psalm 119, the end stands of Psalm 119, that God is word is a lamp, he lights up your path, he shows you how to live.

And when you follow God's path, listen, it doesn't matter where it matters where his path goes, you can leap over a wall, David says.

Because God's word, this is the key point, verse 30, the word of Yahweh proves true.

Do you catch this?

If you believe God's word is true, and you are following his path, you will have such courage.

You will have such confidence, such boldness.

Such boldness because God's word is true.

I was reading a one of those cheesy Christian magazines.

I should learn my lesson at some point.

I was interviewing a pastor who'd walked away from the faith and wrote a book about it.

And the interviewer asked the pastor, okay, you walked away from Christianity.

What happens if you die and it turns out you were wrong and Christianity was true?

And God asks you, Why did you leave the faith?

What would you tell him?

It's actually a good question, I think.

It's a question, it's a little wordy, but it gets to the issue, doesn't it?

What are you gonna tell God when he says you knew this and you walked with him and then you leave him?

What are you gonna tell him?

And the guy's answer, I kid you not.

I would tell God, why didn't you send me an email saying that you were real?

And would it help if I emailed you Psalm 18?

Would that help?

I mean, that's the point here in verse 30.

The Lord's word proves true.

He is a shield for all who take refuge in him.

All who take refuge in him.

James 4, verse 6, God gives grace.

James 4:6

He opposes the proud, gives grace to the humble.

The Lord loves to give grace to the needy, and he loves to cast down those who are proud.

This is the fulfillment of Hannah's prayer at the start of 1 Samuel.

Hannah prayed for the Savior to come through through her son Samuel, who anointed David.

This is the fulfillment of Hannah's prayer that God has answered by humbling the proud and exalting the broken.

And this leads to the third way God fuels our courage.

He fuels our courage through delivering us, he fuels our courage through righteousness that's not our own, and he fuels our courage through victory.

The second part of the final third of the psalm is repeating all the language and imagery from the first third of the psalm, but I want you to see a subtle change.

The first third of the psalm was David being defeated and God rescuing him.

The final third of the psalm is David having victory through God rescuing him.

So the first third, defeat, but God gives him glory.

The last third, victory.

God isn't rescuing David from defeat.

The last third, God is rescuing David from his own victories.

And you understand this if you're a you know, think of a swimmer who's swimming a race along the ocean, the waves are being on him, and he starts to drown, and the lifeguards rescue him.

The swimmer would be very thankful to the lifeguards.

Now, rewind the tape.

The swinner is doing the same race in the same waves, and he doesn't drown, he overcomes the waves and he wins the race.

He's gonna pay no mind whatsoever to the lifeguards.

Lifeguards didn't help him win.

That's the arrogance of people right there.

And so this last third of the psalm is the counterbalance to that.

This last third of the psalm is reminding David, it's David reminding us really, that God is still the source of our strength even in our own victories.

And he's using the same imagery from the first third of the psalm, but subtly different.

Let me draw it out for you.

He says, Who is a rock except our God?

We've seen that before, who equipped me with strength.

Remember the first third?

I didn't have strength.

God is my strength.

Now, God gave me this strength.

He made my way blameless.

See justification right there?

God gave me his righteousness.

He's the one who made my way blameless.

He made my feet like the deer and set me secure in the heights.

The allegory, hind's feet in the high places.

That's from this verse.

That David is just a, he's a he's a little fawn here.

He's a little weak-legged deer.

He can't stand before his enemies, but God rescues him and takes him up to the heights of the mountain and teaches him to stand in the high places.

He trains my hands for war.

First part of the psalm, David is being defeated and God was the warrior.

Second part of the psalm, David is declared righteous by God.

Third part of the psalm, David is now made the warrior by God.

My arms can bend the bow of bronze.

Remember earlier, God was bending the clouds.

Now it's David bending the brow.

You've given me the shield.

Earlier, verse 2, God was the shield.

Now David has the shield.

He's supported by God, of course, verse 35 says.

You gave me a wide place for my steps under me.

My feet didn't slip.

A wide place.

You know, I've heard from people that have served in Afghanistan.

They know the most terrifying part of being on patrol in Afghanistan is going through one of the wadis, going through one of those little channels.

Some of those are so narrow that your little toy to pick up can barely fit in there.

You've got to fold in the mirrors to fit through.

And you can be ambushed from above.

If somebody puts a blockade behind you, you can't escape.

If they block you off from the front, you're trapped.

I mean, it's the most terrifying part of being on patrol there.

And what just exhilaration you have when you come out of the little canyon and there's just an empty expanse of nothing in front of you.

You're finally safe.

David is very familiar with that.

He was hiding in those little channels in Israel out by the Dead Sea, and now he gets to the place where God has let him out to the wide open places, and his feet didn't slip.

And so now, verse 37, the tables turn.

I pursued my enemies.

Remember, earlier it was God pursuing David's enemies.

Now David's on the hunt.

I thrust them through, verse 38 says, so they wouldn't rise.

They fell under my feet.

You equipped me with strength for battle.

Do you see how this is coming together?

First third of the Psalm, David needed strength.

Second third of the Psalm, God justifies David and gives him his own strength, his own righteousness.

And now David is living it out.

Oh, and he's living it out in what an old testament way, right?

Verse 41, they cried for help.

Oh, nobody saved them.

Verse 42, I beat them as fine as the dust before the winds.

So there's limits to applying this to a New Testament Christian, right?

You know, I had an enemy of an unrighteous boss who was making my career miserable, but I put my faith in God and ran him through with a spear.

No, not a good application.

Bad.

Some of this is, of course, national to Israel, of being God's people and David being their leader.

If you want to apply it to the New Testament, certainly it would be seen foremost in how our sin is nailed to the cross of Christ, that Jesus conquers our sin on our behalf, and now we have the strength to live in boldness against the world and to fight the devil and to fight the temptations of the world with the boldness of Jesus Christ.

Certainly that is all true.

Verse 43, you delivered me from strife with the people.

Now, here is the interesting thing where he starts to allude to the Savior.

This is the Davidic covenant.

The Savior who will reign over the world will come from David.

And David knows that.

People whom I haven't known served me.

They didn't serve Saul, but they served David.

Foreigners came clinging to him.

Foreigners lost heart.

They came trembling out of their fortresses.

My how the tables have turned.

People are running from their fortresses to cling to David now.

It's all because of verse 46.

Yahweh lives.

No.

This is God giving people victory.

God giving people courage through their victory.

I want you to appreciate that so much of this is messianic.

This so much hinges on Jesus Christ.

Verse 49, I will praise you, O Yahweh, among the nations.

I'll sing of your name.

Verse 50.

Great salvation he brings to his king.

He shows steadfast love to his anointed.

That word anointed is the word for Messiah.

To David and His offspring forever.

Who wrote this psalm?

David.

And he signs it off by saying, God is going to show mercy to the world.

He's going to show grace to the nations.

He's going to give his righteousness to the nations through the Messiah, through David and his offspring, his seed forever.

This is the great messianic promise.

God tells Adam and Eve that it will be the seed of the woman who will be the savior.

He tells Abraham it will be the seed of Abraham that will be the Savior.

He tells Judah it will be from Judah, the Savior will rise.

He tells David, 2 Samuel 7, the Savior will be the seed of David.

The Savior will be David's Lord and David's descendant.

This is why when Jesus comes, he identifies himself as David's Lord and David's descendant.

And the Pharisees can't figure that out.

Jesus says, How can the riddle me this, Pharisees, how can the Savior be David's Lord and his descendant?

How can he be both?

David understands verse 50.

Salvation he gives to his king, not King David, not King David, to the Savior who comes from King David and to his offspring, to the seed, to Jesus Christ forever.

You look at the life of David, the quintessential Old Testament king, glorious in battle, hanging, holding Saul's head up, soddered off of his body with his own sword, holds it up for the world to see.

That's David.

And even that is a story about the courage he has being through his faith in the future Savior Jesus Christ.

When David signs off at the end of his life, these could be the last words he wrote, at the end of his life, he signs off, and that's what he signs off with.

The Savior is coming.

Have courage in how you live your life because you believe that.

Lord, we know that we have peace with you and we have peace with David's descendant.

We have peace with you through having peace with Jesus Christ.

We know you through knowing Jesus Christ.

So I pray that this would be a congregation marked by courage, marked by boldness in how we enter the world, marked by boldness in how we stand with our convictions, marked by boldness in how we evangelize, marked by boldness in how we have confidence that you are at work in our life.

We echo Paul's words in Philippians 1.

Whether we live or die, whether we're absent from the body or present, we want to glorify you in our life.

We pray that you would be glorified in our life by living, that you'd be glorified in our life by dying.

Guard us from a spirit of fear that so easily plagues us.

Guard us from a spirit of timidity, which is not becoming of Christians.

Guard us from a spirit of this age which is given to fretting and worry.

Instead, Lord, give us courage.

Courage that comes from being united to David's descendant.

Courage that comes from being united to you by having your spirit that dwells with us.

Courage that comes from having a righteousness that is not our own.

We don't have to earn this.

We know that.

It's a gift that you give to all those who place their faith in David's Savior.

He's our Savior as well.

Pray to him in his name.

And now, for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thank you for joining Emmanuel Bible Church today through this resource.

It's my prayer that if you live in the DC area, I'll be able to meet you on some Sunday at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church, you can go to iBC.church.

Or for information on the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource helps you seek God through Jesus Christ, serve the Lord with joy, and share him with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.