Let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for putting it on
our hearts to want to praise you. Lord, with that desire,
you must also give us the ability. Lord, we know that you inhabit
the praise of your people and how hopeful and comforted we
are in knowing that when we gather together that you are here in
the midst of us. Lord, we pray that our hearts
would be turned by your spirit to Christ, that you would cause
us to set our affections on him Lord, we confess that we've been
so caught up in the things of this world so often. Lord, might
we know your presence and your power and your peace, your grace
this hour, for we ask it in Christ's name, amen. I want to introduce this message
by reading a verse of scripture from Psalm 2. If you would turn
with me there in your Bibles to Psalm 2. And before we read
this verse, I'd like to repeat something that we talked about
on Wednesday night. The reason I wanted Tom to lead
us in the doxology is because I want to define what it is to
praise God. That's the word doxa is the Greek
word for praise. And we call what we just sang
the doxology because it is the study of praise. All creatures
here below, praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. That's what we
do. lift our hearts together in praise
to him. We also use that word doxa in
the word orthodox. Ortha meaning true or right. And so if something is orthodox,
it is proper praise or true praise or based on the basis of right,
that which is right in the sight of God. This morning I want us
to consider the word paradox. Again, we find the word doxa. And the word para means beside. And so when something is a paradox,
what you have is two things side by side that may appear to be
different, but they are both worthy of praise. Wednesday night
we looked at the two natures of the Lord Jesus Christ. Fully
God and fully man. It may appear to be a contradiction
but it's not a contradiction. It's the revelation that God
has made of himself in scripture. The Lord Jesus The Son of God
is the fullness of the Godhead bodily and he was made in the
likeness of sinful flesh and all of the trials and troubles
that we have in our flesh, in this world, the Lord Jesus experienced,
so that we have now a priest who is able to sympathize with
our afflictions fully God and fully man, a paradox. We might consider the nature
of a believer The nature of a believer is that in and of himself, he
is nothing but sin. Everything about us apart from
the Lord Jesus Christ is sinful. And yet in the Lord Jesus Christ,
we have no sin. Perfectly righteous in the sight
of God, in the person of our substitute. These are paradoxes. They're not contradictions. Contradictions
cannot be understood. Contradictions you can't make
sense of. A contradiction is something
that does that. It contradicts. For men to say
that God loves everybody, but that most of the people that
he loves he's gonna send to hell, that's a contradiction. That
can't be, that's not a paradox. or that Christ died for everybody,
but that most of the people that he died for were not redeemed
by his sacrifice on Calvary's cross. That's a contradiction.
That God is sovereign, that he's all-powerful until it comes to
man's free will, and then he and he abdicates his throne and
gives the power to man. That's a contradiction, that
can't be made sense of. And yet that's the kind of nonsense
that we hear in religion. Now, the paradox that I want
us to look at in Psalm 2 is found in verse 10 and 11. Be wise, now therefore, O ye
kings, be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Now I understand
that the Lord has made his people to be kings and priests. He has adopted us into his family,
and so the Lord's speaking to us. And those who are able to
make righteous judgments about what's true and what's not true,
that's who he's speaking to. And so the Lord is speaking to
his people, saying to them as kings and judges, be wise. And here's how we are to be wise.
Verse 11, serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. There's the paradox. Faith always
involves both of those things. We tremble before God and at
the same time we rejoice. We rejoice. It's not either or. It's not one or the other. And
if we emphasize one to the exclusion of the other, we will, well,
we'll end up denying the other. In other words, you'll have people
thinking that faith is nothing but rejoicing and they will deny
the need to be fearful before a holy God. or you will have
those who emphasize the importance of fear and reverence to the
exclusion of any hope of being able to rejoice. Rejoice in the
Lord always. And again, I say rejoice. So it's a paradox. But both are to be believed and
both are praiseworthy, both trembling and rejoicing. Now, I wanted to make that point
before we went to our text. If you'll open your Bibles with
me to 2 Samuel chapter 22. I've titled this message, Delivered
From the Fear of Death. Delivered From the Fear of Death. We rejoice in what the Lord Jesus
has done in destroying the works of the devil and giving us hope,
giving us hope in Christ for life. after death, eternal life. We rejoice in knowing that one
day we'll see him as he is and be made like him. On the other
hand, we understand something of the nature of the God that
we must face. A God who is holy and a God who
is just. We understand something of our
sinful nature and of our unworthiness to stand in the presence of this
holy and just God. So we don't make light of this need to tremble before God
and yet at the same time, at the same time and in the same
heart and in the same place, It's not that we go from fearing
to trembling, fearing to no, they're paradox, they're both
together at the same time. Rejoice with trembling, ye kings
and you judges. And I believe that's what the
scripture teaches and I know that is my own personal experience
when it comes to this matter of dying, this matter of dying,
that the Lord would put in our hearts a fear of him, not a fear like what Adam experienced
and what you and I have often experienced, that sinful fear
that causes us to hide from God, but a holy fear, reverential
fear, a fear that would cause us to come and bow before him
and the reality of our impending death causes the believer's heart
to rejoice with trembling, with trembling. The unbeliever doesn't
know anything about that. Turn to, before we read our text,
let's go to Psalm 74. Verse, 73, I'm sorry, Psalm 73. Yes. Verse one, truly God is
good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart. Only way we're gonna have a clean
heart is to have a new nature, is to be born of the spirit,
is to be found in Christ. And God sees that as a pure heart,
a sinless heart. Our hearts, apart from that new
birth, that miracle of grace, are desperately wicked and deceitful
and filled with sin. But here's our hope in Christ. But as for me, my feet were almost
gone, my steps had well nigh slipped, for I was envious at
the foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked, for there are
no bands in their death, but their strength is firm. You see,
David is expressing this trembling fear with rejoicing when he looks
at the unbeliever and he sees they don't struggle with this.
They don't have a paradox going on with them. They have one option. They were born of the flesh. They're interested in the things
of the flesh. They have no concern for the
eternal matters of their soul. They go about minding the things
of the flesh. Scripture says they that are
of the flesh do mind the things of the flesh. And that which
is of the flesh is flesh and the flesh profiteth nothing.
But if we have the spirit of God, we've got two natures now.
We've got a nature of flesh and we've got a new nature. And that
conflict, spirit warring against the flesh and the flesh against
the spirit so that we cannot be what we ought. We would be
perfectly holy if we could, sinless. But our old man that we bear
about this dead corpse on our bodies keeps that from happening. And this dead corpse would take
total control of everything about us as it does in the unbeliever
if it was not for the spirit of God and Christ in you. which is your hope of glory. Here's the paradox that every
believer experiences. It is our old sinful man that
continues to drive us again and again and again to find our hope
in Christ. And this is particularly true
when it comes to the experience of dying. Verse five, they are not in trouble
as other men, neither are they plagued like other men. Therefore
pride can pass at them about, As a chain, violence covered
them as a garment. Their eyes stand out with fatness.
They have more than heart could wish. They are corrupt and speak
wickedly concerning oppression. They speak loftily. They say,
I'm not worried about dying. They think they're going to just
stand in the presence of a holy God and present their righteousness
as the hope of their salvation. We know we can't do that. We
know that apart from being found in Christ will not be accepted
before God but not for the unbeliever. They're taking pride in their
works and in their will and in their wisdom and they think that
one day they're going to be able to, you know, if they ever even
really consider it, they don't consider it much but if they
do, not worried about it. No bands in my death. I've made
a covenant with death, Paul. The prophet Isaiah tells us in
Isaiah chapter 28, they have made a covenant with death and
with hell they are in agreement. In other words, they've made
their own covenant. They've made their promises and
they're trusting in the promises that they've made as the hope
of escaping hell and entering into the presence of God in heaven. And that chapter tells us in
Isaiah 28, God says, when the overflowing scourge comes, when
death comes, I will disannul their covenant. The hope of our
salvation cannot be based on any promises that we've made
to God. It can only be based on the promise that God made
to God. and that God made to his people.
There's our hope. And we have to, we rejoice with
trembling. We stand before a holy God in
fear. David goes on in this psalm,
he says, I can't talk about this with anybody else. This is an
experience and a reality that I bear in my soul that I can
only expose to God. He says, if I tell other people
about these struggles that I'm having, I'll just be a discouragement
to them. And isn't that the truth, child
of God? This rejoicing with trembling,
this reality of our mortality and the hope of our salvation. It's not something we can bear
nakedly before one another but it is something we often
bring before God and we bear our souls to him and only then
and that's what David's gonna do in Psalm, when we get to our
text, you'll see that in a moment. But that's what David's gonna
do in 2 Samuel 22, he's bearing his soul to God. And David goes
on in Psalm 73, he says, he says, until he said, I envied the unbeliever
because they didn't have this struggle. I envied them until
I went into the house of God. Then I knew their end. Then I knew their end and I didn't
envy them anymore. delivered from the fear of death. Turn with me to 2 Samuel 22,
please. In Psalm 22, the Holy Spirit
inspires David to write in great detail the physical events that
our Lord would experience a thousand years later on Calvary's cross. Here, the Holy Spirit inspires
David to write of the spiritual details The graphic spiritual
details that the Lord Jesus would experience. Now here's his experience
on Calvary's cross, facing death. Facing death, here's his experience. And this is his experience, this
is David's experience, this is our experience. Verse five. when the waves of
death compassed me and the floods of ungodly men made me afraid. Who is the ungodly man that makes
you most afraid? Who is it? Is it not yourself? Is it not your own sin and your
own unbelief? that's ungodly and that causes
you to be afraid. And I look at my sin, I look
at myself, I find nothing but sin and I can't find any hope. Can't find any hope. Verse six, 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 voice out
of his temple and my cry did enter into his ears. It's the
only time we cry. Only time we cry is when we're
afraid. Only time we come Before the
Lord Jesus as our Savior is when we're confronted with our sinfulness. It's our need. It's our need. And here's the Lord Jesus on
Calvary's cross. The rest of this, well, let's
read some more verses. Then, here's where we see such
graphic details concerning what happened at Calvary's cross.
Then the earth shook and trembled. The foundations of heaven moved
and shook because he was wroth. Here's the full fury of the wrath
of God falling from heaven on the sinner's substitute, bearing
our sins, bearing our death in his body on that tree. And the
earth shook. The rocks were rent, the graves
were opened. What a demonstration. The centurion
said, surely, surely this is the son of God. No question about
the evidence of what the Lord is doing here. There went up
a smoke out of his nostrils and fire out of his mouth devoured,
coals were kindled by it. He bowed the heavens also and
came down, and darkness was under his feet. And he rode upon the
cherub and did fly, and he was seen upon the wings of the wind.
And he made darkness, pavilions round about him, dark waters
and thick clouds of the skies. Through the brightness before
him were coals of fire kindled. Here's the fiery wrath of God's
judgment coming down on our sin bearer and satisfying God's justice. And David is describing the horrors
of this experience. The Lord, verse 14, thundered
from heaven and the Most High uttered his voice. And he sent
out arrows and scattered them, lightnings and discomfited them.
And the channels of the sea appeared. The fountains of the world were
discovered at the rebuking of the Lord, at the blast of the
breath of his nostrils. Here's what the Lord does when
he makes us to see in part, and only in a very small part, thankfully. The Lord Jesus is the only one
that saw all the ugliness of our sin. But the Lord shows us
just enough of it to cause us to see our need. He brings out the dark waters
of the world and shows us how evil our unbelief is. Verse 17, he sent from above,
he took me, he drew me out of many waters. My feet had nigh
slipped I was envying the way of the wicked. I thought there
are no bands in their death. They don't have the struggles.
They don't have an understanding of the God that they must stand
before. And they have no knowledge of
their own sinfulness. They walk in pride thinking that
somehow they're going to be accepted before God. Not so with me. It's not that way. I rejoice
with trembling, with trembling. He delivered me, verse 18, from
my strong enemy and from them that hated me for they were too
strong for me. Brothers and sisters, the word
of God refers to our passing from this world as our final
enemy, our final enemy. We face the enemy every day and
we cry out to him every day and never will we cry like we will
then. And the Lord promises, he promises
to give dying grace. He promises to deliver us from
that enemy. That's what he tells us in John
chapter 14. Why would he say to us, let not your heart be troubled.
Let not your heart be troubled, my heart is troubled. "'Let not
your heart be troubled,' the Lord Jesus said. "'You believe
in God, believe also in me. "'For in my Father's house are
many mansions. "'If it were not so, I would
have told you. "'I go and prepare a place for you.'" And when the
Lord Jesus ascended back into glory and took his rightful place
at the right hand of the majesty on high, Everything required
for us to enter into heaven was made ready. The Lord Jesus is
called our surety and we look to him for all our hope of being
able to stand in the presence of a holy God. I go and prepare
a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place
for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself that
where I am there you may be also. Let your heart not be troubled,
where I am there you may be also. We rejoice with trembling. Isn't that our, that's the paradox
of our life. That's our experience in this
world. We get so caught up in the things
of this world and we set our affections on the things of the
earth and we try to find our hope and comfort and earthly
pleasures and earthly relationships and then the Lord causes us to
see. He exposes the foundations of
the world he discovers as we just read. Verse 19, they prevented me in
the day of my calamity, but the Lord was my stay. The Lord was my stay. Death wasn't
my stay. People weren't my stay. The Lord was my stay. My possessions
weren't my stay. I couldn't find any comfort anywhere
else when it came to the waves of death and the sorrows of hell
come passing me about. I could find no place else to
go but to Christ, but to Christ. Verse 20. When the Lord became my stay,
he brought me forth into a large place. No more constrainment, no more
stuck in a hard place. No, now I'm in a large place,
in a large place. Oh, what hope we have. What hope
we have. He delivered me. Why did he deliver
me? Because he delighted in me. The
Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness. Now the unbeliever
will read verses like this and say, well, yes, see there, God's
gonna reward me because of my righteousness. because of the
good things that I've done. That's what the Lord said in
the day of judgment. They will come before me and
they will say, but Lord, we've done many wonderful works in
thy name. And he will look to them and
say unto them, depart from me, you workers of iniquity. You see, the things that the
unbeliever presents to God as their righteousness, God says,
that's iniquity to me. That's iniquity to me. Depart
from me, you workers of iniquity. I never knew you. I never knew
you. But David is speaking first and
foremost of Christ in this whole passage and the Lord Jesus was
able to stand before his father, having presented his works for
his righteousness. The scripture says that his works
went before him and recommended him to God. And God saw his perfect
works, his perfect righteousness, which is what God requires. He
won't settle for anything less. God saw And he said, this is
my beloved son in him, in him I'm well pleased. But concerning the gospel and
concerning our union with Christ through faith, we're looking
to Christ for our righteousness and for our justification. We're
looking to what he did on Calvary's cross. when he became the sinner's
sacrifice and this fiery wrath of God's judgment that we just
read about quenched itself on him so that my sin is now put
away. And now I can say, for Christ's
sake, for Christ's sake, who went before me? He went before
me and he presented his righteousness on my behalf. And I can say now,
What David said, the Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness. God made him who knew no sin
to be made sin that we might be made the righteousness of
God in him. Just as truly my sin became his
sin and he owned it as his own. It wasn't just satisfying some
sort of divine justice, he was made sin. I don't know what all
that means, it's a mystery. But I know he felt the shame
of sin. I know he suffered the wrath of sin. I know he suffered
the separation of sin. My God, my God, whilst thou forsaken
me, he was separated from his father. I know he experienced
the sorrow for sin, nothing like we can ever experience. We can't
know sorrow. The Holy Spirit gives us just
a glimpse of our sin and we repent in sorrow and we're grieved when
our sin separates us from God. All that's true, but not like
he did. The Lord rewarded me according
to my righteousness. According to the cleanness of
my hands hath he recompensed me. For I have kept the ways
of the Lord and have not wickedly departed from my God. For all
his judgments were before me. And as for his statutes, I did
not depart from them." David can't say that. I mean, look
what David did. We've been studying the life
of David now for a couple of years, a year and a half maybe.
All the terrible things that David, David's speaking of Christ
and his union with Christ. And the righteousness, here's
our hope. What is our hope in death? That
I have a righteousness before God that's acceptable to him.
And that righteousness is in the person and because of the
work that the Lord Jesus accomplished on Calvary's cross. He's all
of my righteousness before God. He's my stay. He's my hope. And never will that be more true
to me. Never will that be more. more
heartfelt and more experienced and more my hope and my stay
than when I'm on my deathbed. I won't be able to find any place
else to go. I remember Brother Marvin Stoniker
sharing the experience of the passing of Gabe's mother, Linda,
from our pulpit over in the other building, not long after she
had passed, and he was lying in the bed with her, and the
last thing she said to Marvin was, she said, honey, I know
now more than ever before that Christ is all I have. He's all
I've got. He's all I've got. I've got nothing
else. I don't need anything else. He's
my stay, He's my hope. Delivered from the fear of death
means to be found in Christ. Turn with me to Hebrews. Chapter 2, Hebrews chapter 2, verse 14. For as much then as
the children are partakers of flesh and blood. That's us, it's
the children of God. That's the kings and the judges that rejoice with trembling. He also himself likewise took
part of the same. This is why the Lord Jesus had
to be made flesh. He had to be made in the likeness
of his brethren. He had to be of the seed of Abraham,
not of angels. And all the, we have a priest
who intercedes for us before God
who understands. We just read in 2 Samuel chapter
22 what the Lord Jesus experienced. That graphic detail that we read
was His experience on Calvary's cross. Can He not relate to us
in our experience? Can He not speak peace and comfort
and truth to our hearts knowing that He went through much worse
than what we can ever know? infinitely more than we can ever
know. He also himself likewise took
part of the same, that through death. He conquered death by
death. The death of the Lord Jesus Christ
is the death of death for God's people. He's the firstborn among
many brethren. When he died, I died. All God's
people were in Christ. When he hung on Calvary's cross,
that fire of God's wrath that fell on him, all my sin was in
him. He's my substitute, my sin bearer. There's my hope. that he through death might destroy
him that had the power of death, that is the devil. That's what the Lord Jesus did. You see, we come into this world
spiritually dead and all we have an ear for and
all we have a heart for and an interest in are the things that
are not of God. We're held in bondage and the Lord Jesus died in order
to deliver us from he that had power over death
so that now the chains have been broken. and deliver them, look at verse
15, and deliver them who through fear of death were all their
lifetime subject to bondage. Child of God, we're not in bondage,
we're free. But we sure are subject to it. Are we not? You see, this coming to Christ
and being delivered and not fearing death is not something, well,
you know, I've done that. I hear people just, you know,
boast about. No, this is to whom coming. We have to keep
coming to Christ. If we have any sense about the
truth, we will always be rejoicing with trembling. We will always
be coming, but here's our hope. The Lord Jesus delivered us. You know David in Psalm 73 was talking
about the unbeliever and they have no bands in their death
and no fear and no fear of God and they just go about. They
don't have the struggle that the child of God has but neither
do they have the deliverer. They're living in a false hope.
And that's why David concluded Psalm 73 by saying, I was jealous
until I went into the house of God and I heard the gospel. Then
I knew there in that I'm no longer jealous of them. No longer jealous. I find it interesting that, and
I can't say this definitively about all believers but sure
was my experience and seemed like all the believers I talked
to, it's their experience as well. That God put something
in their heart before he called them. Before he called them,
before they were regenerated, before they were saved. He gave them He gave them an interest. That's
why those who are not brought up under the gospel, believers
that are not brought up under the gospel like I wasn't, believers
find themselves going from, as I did, from Catholicism to free
will Baptist to reform Baptist. What are they doing? They're
looking for something. Why? Because God has put a need
in their hearts. They're like that woman with
the issue of blood. who had spent all that she had
on physicians and was now worse off than she was to begin with.
They're like Saul of Tarsus. When the Lord did call Saul of
Tarsus, what did he say to Saul? Saul, it's hard for you to kick
against the pricks, isn't it? The Holy Spirit had been goading
Saul, not trying to get his attention, but preparing him for that time
when the Lord would get his attention. And it's like, you know, I was
talking to a brother the other day and he said, you see, I went
to this church and just something missing, it was something missing.
And I asked the pastor about it and he told me I'd need to
leave and I went to another one. They had some truths, but there
was just still something missing. What was that thing missing?
It was Christ. And when the Lord did call him, he said, I don't
have to go anywhere else. I'm not running to and fro looking
for the truth anymore. The Lord has found me. He has
revealed himself. That's God's grace. Who all their
lifetime were subject, subject to bondage. Being made subject to bondage,
we find our liberty only in Christ. Only in Christ. And every time
the subject of bondage rears its ugly head in our hearts,
the Spirit of God causes us to rejoice in the Lord with trembling. Child of God, your life now is
a paradox and it will be, it will be until we see him as he
is and are made like him. What a day that'll be. All right, let's take a break.