If you'd like to open your Bibles
with me to 2 Samuel chapter 22. 2 Samuel chapter 22. We'll probably be in this chapter
for several weeks. There's every verse in this song of praise. That's what 2 Samuel 22 is, it's
a song of praise that David wrote. It's also recorded in Psalm 18,
so the same words are recorded in the Psalms. But David wrote
these, the scripture says, after the Lord delivered him from the
hand of his enemies. And I've titled this, Praise
is Comely. It's comely, it's beautiful,
it's attractive, it's lovely, it's appealing. And may the Lord
give us the grace to praise him this morning. Let's pray together. Our heavenly Father, thank you
for your word. Thank you for your Holy Spirit.
Thank you for the promise of your presence. Thank you for
the accomplished work of our Lord and our Savior, thy dear
Son, Jesus, who himself is the Christ. Lord, enable us to praise
thee Enable us to worship in the power of your spirit. Enable
us, Lord, to enter into the words that you inspired David to write. And might this be our experience
as we find your praise to be comely. We ask it in Christ's
name. Amen. David wrote in Psalm 33 verse
1, Rejoice in the Lord, O ye righteous, for praise is comely
for the upright. Praise is comely, it's beautiful. It is something that the believer's
heart is drawn to and rejoices in. David also wrote in Psalm
147 verse one, praise ye the Lord for it is good to sing praises
unto our God for it is pleasant and praise is comely. We get to glory. We're gonna
find out how comely, how beautiful, how appealing our praise will
be. Now we get a taste of that as
the Lord enables us to rejoice. Paul put it like this, he said,
rejoice in the Lord, in the Lord always, always. What comfort
it is when we're able by God's grace to do that. When we're
not doing that, we're focused on ourselves and our circumstances
and this world and our troubles and that becomes very overwhelming. But when the Lord enables us
to look away and look up and offer to him in the power of
his spirit, praise and worship. Oh, how comely, how blessed it
is. And David now is having that
experience. Scripture tells us that our God
inhabits the praise of his people. The reason why praise is so comely
is because when we're able to offer to our God praise, he reveals
himself through that praise and in that praise. Also tells us that the praise
of his people is comely to him. It's beautiful to him. He rejoices. in the praise that
his children are enabled to offer up to him. I want you to notice
in David's words the occasion of praise. And David spake unto
the Lord the words of this song. And there's different words that
are used for the word praise in the scripture. The one that's
used here is the word that refers to a song of praise. And the
Psalms were songs that were offered in melody to the Lord and so
David, inspired of the Holy Spirit is giving to us a song. How pleasant it is to be able
to, to be able to delight in music. But especially, especially
when that music offers praise to our God. The occasion of this
praise is notice in the day that the Lord had delivered him out
of the hand of all his enemies and out of the hand of Saul. The occasion of our praise. is
when the Lord delivers us from the hand of our enemy. So the question now is, who's
our enemy? Who's our enemy? I can only speak for myself.
The greatest enemy I have is my own sin. What a delight it is to be able
to offer up praise knowing that what the Lord Jesus accomplished
at Calvary's cross was the putting away of my sin. He delivered
me. He is the believer's deliverer
and he delivers us from our sin. The scripture tells us that he
put away our sin by himself when he bore them in his body on that
tree. The scripture says that he buried
them in the depths of the sea and that he separated them from
us as far as the east is from the west and that God himself
remembers them no more. Oh, what delight we have in being
able to come before the throne of grace and offer praise and
worship for what the Lord did in delivering us from our enemy. The very penalty of sin was suffered
by our sin bearer, our substitute. When the full wrath of God's
justice was poured out upon him, the Lord delivered us from death
and from hell and from the wrath of God. He delivered him from
his enemies. The penalty of sin has been paid. The word that our Lord used when
he cried from Calvary's cross, it is finished. From what I understand,
that word means paid in full. If you owed a debt, and you paid
that debt off and you received a receipt for a paid debt, it
would have that word written on it. It's finished. The debt's paid. There's no more
required to settle this debt. And so it is when the Lord Jesus
cried, it is finished. The debt that we owed God, was
paid in full. Not only do we rejoice in the
Lord Jesus paying the penalty for our sin, but we also rejoice
in how he has broken the power of sin. The power of sin seen First and foremost has to do
with our inability to believe. Before the Lord Jesus broke the
power of sin, we couldn't believe, we're dead in our trespasses
and sins. We couldn't see, we couldn't
hear, we had no interest in the gospel, we had no desire for
the things of God. We were spiritually dead and
alienated from God. And when the Lord gave us grace
to believe, he broke that power. And he caused us, he made us
willing in the day of his power. What rejoicing. We talk to friends
and family members who have no interest in the gospel. We see
ourselves in them. We see that where they are is
where we were. And we're caused to say, but
for the grace of God, there go I. And praise is our response
to God. Lord, had you not paid the penalty
of sin and broken the power of sin, I would not have believed. I could not have believed. What? Praise. and what worship. How lovely, how appealing is
this praise when the Lord delivers us out of the hand of our enemies. Still talking about sin, we were
held in bondage dead in our trespasses and sins. Couldn't see, couldn't
believe. And when the Lord delivered us
and caused us to believe, we offer to him, Lord, I wouldn't
have come to this by myself. I would never have been able
to make a decision or to or to make myself alive or to be able
to see when I was blind or to be able to hear when I was deaf.
I could not have done that. Lord, you did it. And so we give
to him the praise and the honor and worship that is due to his
name. We're also rejoice when the Lord enables us by his grace to not
have sin reign in our mortal bodies. No longer have to yield the members
of our body as instruments of unrighteousness. In Christ we
rejoice and we give him the praise who causes us to will and to
do after his good pleasure. It is the Holy Spirit that causes
us to recognize our sin and to hate our sin and to turn to Christ
in our sin and be delivered from the dominion of sin. all the enemies of our flesh.
This world? Oh, we would be just like our
unbelieving family members and friends. We'd be, we were talking
about this this morning in the men's prayer time. This world
is all the unbeliever has. And it's the best they're ever
gonna have it. And it's the worst the child of God has. But we would be attracted. We are attracted. We would be
entrapped by this world. We'd be enslaved by it. This
world would be all that we had had the Lord not broken the power
of sin and delivered us from our enemy. And we praise him
for that. Lord, thank you that though this
world has an attraction to me and though I find myself Peeled
by it, I know, Lord, that this world's not my home. It's not
my home. And when you enable me, by your
grace, to look up, I realize how brief and how vain this world
really is. Satan is our enemy. And there
was a time when we were held captive by him. There was a time
when we were in bondage to him and the God of this world had
blinded our eyes. And now we have reason to rejoice
that though Satan is still the accuser of the brethren and though
he is always there with his guiles and temptations, the Lord has
delivered us from his power. We're not, we don't have to follow
after that. We see him for who he is. David, the occasion of David's
praise and worship was when God had delivered him from all his
enemies. And that is the occasion of our
praise and worship. When we're able by God's grace
to look to Christ as our deliverer In order to be delivered, we
have to be in bondage. We have to be enslaved. We have
to be, we have to be in need. Paul tells us in Romans chapter
six that sin shall not have dominion over you for you are not under
the law, but under grace. And then in another place, the
scripture tells us in Romans chapter seven, I believe it is,
that the strength of sin is the law. When we were under the law,
trying to earn our righteousness by our law keeping, the law only
aggravates sin. The law only makes sin worse.
And so the Lord says, sin shall not have dominion over you for
you are not under the law. Under the law, sin has dominion,
but you are under grace. And the only time that the power
of sin can be broken is by the law of grace and the law of the
spirit and the law of Christ. That's when the power of sin
is broken. If we try to go back to the law in order to break
the power of sin in our lives, that sin only takes greater grip
on us because now we've aggravated the temptation of sin with self-righteousness. But when we're able to look to
Christ and the law of liberty, And the freedom of Christ and
the constraining of Christ is the hope of our salvation.
Now, now the dominion of sin is broken. It's the only time,
only time. The real sin that has to be broken
in the unbeliever's life is the sin of self-righteousness. I was talking to someone recently
and after many hours actually of conversation They concluded that they believed
that Jesus was the son of God. They believed that the Bible
was the word of God, but they could not believe that their
good life merited them favor with God. They thought that the Bible was
nothing more than a book of instructions on how one was to live and they
had devoted their lives to living after the example of Jesus and
that they were confident that they would be able to stand before
God in the day of judgment and that what they had done with
their life was going to be acceptable to him. That's exactly where Saul of
Tarsus, you know, Paul's life before conversion was not a life
of indulgence, it was not a life of shameful fleshly pleasure. He said concerning the law before
he was converted, I was blameless before man, no one could charge
me with living a lawless life. But then he said that which I
thought was game to me was to my loss. I was trusting in the
fact that I was living a good life for the hope of my salvation
and that's where men are today. It's our righteousness that has
to be repented of and men will not do that. It is not natural
for us to believe that our righteousnesses are as filthy rags before God.
That's not natural for man. Man compares himself to himself
and believes himself to be getting better. He compares himself to
other men and he believes himself to be above average. He believes himself to have something
that would merit him favor with God. That's just the natural
man. That's how we come into this
world. And only by God's grace can we come before the Lord.
and say with brother Job, behold, I am vile. Say with Peter, depart from me,
Lord, I'm a sinful man. Say with Isaiah, when he saw
the Lord, woe unto me, I'm a man of unclean lips, my eyes have
seen the king. Say with Daniel, When Daniel
saw that vision of the Lord Jesus, what did he say? He said, when
I saw him, all my comeliness was turned in me into corruption. All of my beauty, all that which
I thought was good was turned in me into corruption. What made
the difference? They stood before the one who
is holy, The one who is without sin and they saw themselves for
what they were. That's a work of grace. And that's
when the heart is turned to praise because we give to him all the
praise and all the glory for all of our righteousness. Lord,
I have no righteousness outside of Christ. I've gone about with
a zeal for God, trying to establish my own righteousness, ignorant
of the righteousness of God, for Christ is the end of the
law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. Our righteousness, our sin, Satan
and this world are all our enemies. They were all the things that
were keeping us from knowing God. Notice in our text that not only
was David praising the Lord for delivering him out of the hand
of all of his enemies, but also he said, and out of the hand
of Saul. Now Saul's name means one to
be desired. Saul, you remember, was head
and shoulders in height above all the men of Israel. And there
was no one more comely than King Saul. And when the people saw
Saul, they said, we want him to be our king. He's the one
to be desired. all of these enemies that we
have, our sin, this world, there's an attraction to those things,
isn't there? There's something about those
things that is appealing and we find ourselves wandering from the God that we
love being attracted to those things which are in fact our
enemy. And yet, in that, in that, we
find no satisfaction. And again, and again, and again,
the Lord is merciful and gracious to cause us to come to Christ. to whom we are always coming
and in whom only we find our praise and our happiness and
all our joy and all our salvation and all our righteousness and
all our comfort and all the hope of our salvation. Not only did the Lord Jesus,
our deliverer, deliver us from the penalty of sin and the power
of sin, the believer's hope and longing of their heart is that
one day they're going to be delivered from the very presence of sin.
And so we walk in this world always with an eye toward heaven. We walk in this world longing
for that day when we'll be made like him without sin. No longer
will the enemies be, no longer will we need to find deliverance
from our enemies, we'll be delivered. And all we'll see and all we'll
have in heaven and all we'll need and all we'll want is the
Lord Jesus Christ. and will be given to him all
of our praise for all of eternity for what he's done in delivering
us from the penalty, the power, and now, now in glory, seeing
him as he is and being made like him and having this mortal body
made immortal and having this corruptible flesh made incorruptible
And being in that place where there's nothing but righteousness,
oh, what a glorious day that'll be. And we live, the older we
get. And I talked to a brother yesterday
who's been given a very difficult prognosis for his life. And he made this statement to
me. He said, you know, good health is a blessing. He said, the sickness
is a greater blessing. It's a greater blessing. For
with great affliction and great trial comes great grace. And
he was speaking of what he's experiencing right now as the
Lord is giving to his heart that hope
for heaven. And how sweet the sound of praise
will be in that day. We delight in being able to join
our voices together here and offering up praise to our God,
but scripture says when there are thousands times tens of thousands
of voices in perfect harmony, Perfect pitch. Oh, can you imagine
the most beautiful voice? It's a beautiful thing to listen
to someone that has a beautiful voice sing. Everyone in heaven, even you
and even me, will have a voice like we've never heard in this
world. Never. Oh. What praise and what worship
the sound of those voices are going to have when we gather
around his throne. Then, then we will be completely
delivered from all our enemies. The Bible tells us that the last
enemy that we have to face in this world is death. But we have no fear in knowing
that we have one to deliver us even from that. Look with me at verse two. And he said, The Lord is my rock. Now in the Bible, the rock, oh,
it speaks clearly of Christ. He's the stone that the builders
rejected that God has made to be the head of the corner. He's
that rock that followed the children of Israel through the wilderness
that the rod of the law struck and brought forth the water of
life. Oh, what hope we have that in our experience in this wilderness
in which we live, that the rod of God's law struck the Lord
Jesus once. You remember Moses? Moses went
back and struck the rock a second time. And because he struck the
rock the second time, the Lord didn't allow him into the promised
land. Christ has struck once. And what
he did when he was struck once by the wrath of God on Calvary's
cross is he fulfilled the law. He was obedient unto the Father
in all of his life, yea, even unto death. And that rod of God's
justice struck him and that one strike was sufficient for the
water of life to come forth and give those who live in a dry
and thirsty land water to drink so that out of their belly shall
flow rivers of living water. Now what the Lord told that woman
at the well? If you knew who it is that saith unto thee, give
me to drink, you would ask of him and he would give you living
water. There's the Lord Jesus, he's
that rock. The rock in the Bible is a picture of strength, it's
a picture of stability and it's a picture of shelter. Bible says that our rock is higher
than their rock. And we're given this prayer to
pray. When the heart is overwhelmed,
lead me to that rock that is higher than I. How oftentimes our hearts get
overwhelmed in this world. Our sin and our circumstances,
we get to looking at them. Oh, how discouraged we can become. How down. Anything but praise
is coming from our lips and from our hearts. And what does the
Lord say? When the heart is overwhelmed,
Lord, lead me to that rock which is higher than I. Moses said that he is that rock
whose work is perfect. His work is perfect. Oh, he's
the rock on which, that's what the Lord was talking about in
the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter seven, when he said,
he that hears these words that I've spoken and does them is
like a man who builds his house upon a rock And when the storms
come and the winds blow and the rains fall, that rock will stand. Otherwise, we have our lives
built on shifting sand. And when the storms come, that
rock cannot stand. My hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest
frame. I dare not put my trust in the
best things this world has to offer and the best that I have
to offer. I cannot put my trust there, but wholly lean on Jesus'
name, on Christ. The solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand. Here's what David's saying. I
praise him because he's delivered me from all of my enemies. And I praise him because he's
delivered me from the hand of Saul. for he is my rock. Whom do you say that I am? Peter said, thou art the Christ,
the son of the living God. And what did the Lord Jesus say?
Simon Barjona, flesh and blood did not reveal the son to you.
My father which is in heaven has made that known unto you
and upon this rock, the confession that you just made, I'm gonna
build my church and the gates of hell shall not be able to
prevail against it. And David said, I praise him
and worship him because he is my rock. Peter's name means rock also,
but it means a little stone. A little stone. Petras, a little
stone. The Lord Jesus is the Petra.
He's the foundation stone. He's that rock on which we stand
and in which we have all of our stability and all of our strength
and all of our safety. And he is my fortress, my fortress,
my stronghold, my protection, my refuge, my hiding place. Bible says that David took the
stronghold of Zion and made it to be the city of David. He's
talking about Jerusalem and it's a prophecy of the church. Upon this rock, I'm gonna build
my fortress, my stronghold, my safe place. The refuge for my
people is gonna be built. The church with these little
stones, they're gonna be lively stones built upon that stone
and they together will become the church of the Lord Jesus
Christ where God's people can find again, once and over and
over and over again, their stronghold, their safe place, that cliff. Everything else is like the walls
of Jericho. The fortresses of this world
that we're tempted to find refuge in, we find that they are teetering
walls. They fall over very easily. There's only one high tower.
There's only one fortress. There's only one safe place.
David is offering praise because the Lord Jesus is that one. We
need a fortified city. How do we know if we're in a
fortified city? Well, the scripture says that
he's put watchmen in that city. And those watchmen don't, they
don't blow the trumpet in an uncertain sound. They don't leave
any wonder about who their deliverer is and who their enemy is. They don't leave any doubt about
that. They trumpet a certain sound. They're God's watchman. And that's
how we can discern the Lord's fortress from the fortresses
of this world. What's being preached? Who's
being preached? Is it a certain sound? Or is
it a yay-nay gospel? Is it a, well, you know, there's
a sense in which, or it could be this way, it could be that
way. Or, you know, God's sovereign, but man still has a free will.
Or Christ died for everybody, but some people that he died
for are still gonna go to hell. You see, or you're not under
the law, you're under grace, but we're gonna crack the whip
of the law over you and put you in line. You see, it's not an
uncertain sound, it's a clear message. And the message is very
simple. Christ is all and he is in all. He is the Christ, the son of
the living God. He is my reason for praise. He
is my rock and he is my fortress and he is my deliverer. All right, let's take a break.