So, as I said, this is part two,
and I want to get started tonight on part two after we pray. Let's
pray. Father, thank you for your goodness to us, for your word.
We know that we can only know the truth if you have told us
in your word. And we can't go beyond what you
said, and we do desire, though, to understand what you've said
in your word. especially concerning the Lord
Jesus Christ and salvation for sinners in Him. We pray, Lord,
that You would grant us not to just know about the Scriptures
or even know about the Lord Jesus Christ, but truly to trust Him
and trust Him alone as everything in our salvation. We pray, Lord,
that You would give us this revelation from Your Word and cause us to
be so in need and persuaded that Christ is everything by God's
own Word and God's own warrant to sinners like us that we can
trust Him too. And help us, Lord, in so doing
to find that He is all, that we need nothing more than Him,
and that we have found this according to Your grace and by Your Spirit. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
All right, so Psalm 62. I want to read back through this
Psalm with you, starting from verse one. It says, truly, my
soul waiteth upon God. From him cometh my salvation. He only is my rock and my salvation. He is my defense. I shall not
be greatly moved. So you can see the emphasis here
on the, singularity, the only exclusiveness of God being our
trust and our rock and our salvation and our defense. Because of that
we're not going to be greatly moved. He says in verse 3, how
long will you imagine mischief against a man? You shall be slain,
all of you, as a bowing wall shall you be and as a tottering
fence. They only consult to cast him
down from his excellency. They delight in lies. They bless
with their mouth, but they curse inwardly. Selah. My soul, wait
thou only upon God, for my expectation is from him. He only is my rock
and my salvation. He is my defense. I shall not
be moved. In God is my salvation, and my
glory, the rock of my strength, and my refuge is in God. Trust
in Him at all times, you people. Pour out your heart before Him.
God is a refuge for us. Selah. Surely, men of low degree
are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie. To be laid in the
balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity. Trust not
in oppression, and become not vain in robbery. If riches increase,
set not your heart upon them. God has spoken once. Twice have
I heard this, that power belongs to God. Also, unto thee, O Lord,
belongeth mercy, for thou renderest to every man according to his
work. All right, so as we looked at
this last week just as a refresher, we saw that this psalm seems
to be taken from the context of the history when the son of
David, Absalom, conspired and tried to overthrow his father
and to take the throne away from his father in Jerusalem. Now this was a long attempt by
Absalom. He had plotted to do this for
a long time and he had gathered the favor of people in Israel
because he pretended to be on their side in judgment. He also
hired chariots and 50 men to run before him. So he put on
a great show of being an important man and having support of many
and having a place of authority and some place of honor as the
king's son. And then he also was a handsome
man, and he had done this for a while. He lied to his father. He said he wanted to go pay a
vow that he had made to the Lord, allegedly, when he was in a town
of Syria. And he asked his father if he
could go to Hebron, and his father, King David, allowed him to go.
And he went there, and when he went, he took 200 men from Jerusalem
with him, and with those 200 men, he plotted to announce himself
as the king while he was in Hebron, and then he would gather that
support in Hebron and move back into Jerusalem and set up himself
as king. That was his plan, and he executed
that plan over the course of a long period of time, about
four years. So it was that context, though,
when David wrote this psalm, it seems, and that account is
given in 2 Samuel, chapter 15 and chapter 16 and even beyond. There's many things that we can
learn from this account that I can't take the liberty, because
we're focusing on Psalm 62, of addressing all those things,
but I want to give you some sense of that Because scripture is
so deep, there's many layers of truth in scripture. And when
we look at some of those, we can see how just reading scripture
affects us at a very deep level. So one of the things that I see
here in the account of 2 Samuel chapter 15 and chapter 16 was
that the wickedness of Absalom. the wickedness of Absalom. So
scripture always gives us many layers in every text. And when
we look at this, we're gonna see some of these points here.
If you read through chapters 15 and 16 of 2 Samuel, it will
be helpful. And if you haven't yet, then
take time to do that. It says, one of the things I
noted here was that Absalom was David's own son. Okay, so that
added to the grief that this caused David. The problem with
that is that Absalom did not have the heart of his father.
Remember, David had a heart after God's own heart. Absalom never
showed good judgment. He proved himself to be subtly
wise, but never proved himself to be wise in righteousness. So in his subtlety, his wickedness,
he plotted to kill his brother Amnon, and he did kill him. One
of the things he did also is he burned down Captain Joab's
barley field because he wanted Joab to bring him in to David
and Joab delayed doing that so Absalom had Joab's barley field
burned. And then, in this great conspiracy
that was the background of Psalm 62, he plotted and pursued a
long time to usurp his father's place as king and to kill his
father. David said in 2 Samuel 15, he said, my own son is trying
to kill me. And then, So what we think about
these things, when we think about those things, about Absalom's
wickedness, we wonder how David must have thought. I'm sure that
David wondered that his own son would be set on such perversity
that he would do these things and showed a pattern of doing
them. He knew the history, and so that he was so lacking in
sound judgment. He was void of the ability to
judge things in a sound manner. In fact, I think the best way
to think of Absalom is someone who was completely absorbed in
himself. He was absorbed in his looks,
he was absorbed in his desire to have the attention of others. He really wanted the, admiration and the adoration
that King David, his father, enjoyed from the people of Israel.
And I think that that's what it was. He envied his father.
And so he wanted not only their admiration and loyalty, which
David enjoyed, and their love, but he also wanted to take the
throne. He wanted to replaced David on
the throne, and as the king now, since he was such a self-serving
man, he would have used the people to serve him rather than his
father. In fact, Absalom was the very
opposite of what his father was in many respects. Absalom served
himself and he would have used the people to serve him and tried
to do that when he became the king. He was like King Saul in
that way, but he was David's son. But the very opposite David
was. Remember David, when he's first
discovered to us from scripture, Samuel was told that David was
a man after God's own heart in 2 Samuel chapter 13 and verse
14. And then later, we find David
was taking care of his father's sheep. And he didn't just, you
know, with a piece of straw between his teeth, lay in the grass,
watch the sheep graze. He actually had to lay down his
life in order to take care of them, protecting them. took hold
of a lion and a bear with his bare hands, and he took a lamb
away from them when that lamb's life was just about taken by
the lion and the bear. So David overcame the lion and
the bear, putting himself at risk for the protection of that
lamb. And then, of course, we find
David standing up for the entire nation of Israel, putting his
own life in the balance when he said that he was going to,
out of his zeal for the Lord, he was going to go out against
Goliath in the name of the Lord. He was full of courage, he was
constantly thinking of the care put into his hand of the sheep
by his father and then the care he had, the concern he had for
God's own name. He was so infuriated that Goliath
would defy the armies of Israel And when David came out against
Goliath, he said, you come to me with a sword and a shield
and a spear, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts,
the Lord, the God of the armies of Israel, whose name you have
defied. And you can read about that in
first Samuel chapter 17, around verse 45 and 46. But in any case, you can see
the opposites between David and Absalom. And so this grieved
David greatly, I'm sure, in his heart that his own son would
be so perverse, but also lacking in sound judgment. And so when
you have these kinds of things that occur in your life, David's
reaction was not that he was so good himself and his son was
so bad, but that this being his own son reflected himself at
a level where his natural self was. So it would be Like when
you see your children exhibiting some behavior and you realize
they're doing exactly what you are naturally, and it grieves
you in the greatest way. And so this, I'm sure, was something
that David experienced. And he was probably extremely
sorrowful that it seemed as if God had left Absalom without
sound judgment. He had left him in his lack of
sound judgment, so that he was actually left to his own foolishness. And David knew that God had not
left him to his own foolishness, because he had been so merciful
to him, as you can see in the matter of Bathsheba and Uriah
the Hittite. And yet, God had left Absalom
in this way, and no doubt David had prayed for his son, no doubt
he had also thanked the Lord and asked the Lord, as we do
ourselves as believers, that God would not leave us to our
foolishness, would not leave us void of sound judgment, but
that he would rescue us from ourselves and he would deliver
us and give us the wisdom to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ
alone, as this psalm is telling us. So there's many things about
that, that if you think about it, would have been true. that
David would have been greatly grieved by. Not only was he grieved
that he had to flee from Jerusalem, but he was grieved that it was
by his own son Absalom. I'm sure that David had a favor
towards Absalom, and at the end of his life, Absalom's life that
is, when Absalom was killed, he was actually killed by Joab,
the captain of David's army, against David's direct command to all of his men, do
not, you know, do not hurt him. And David, I mean, Joab killed
Absalom. And when he heard of that, you
remember the lamentation that David had. Oh, Absalom. My son,
my son, oh, Absalom, my son, my son, would to God I had died
instead of thee. So David had a great sympathy
and love for Absalom, even though he could see that his son was
foolish, and that had to cause him great, great grief. You know
that there's no greater grief to your own self than when your
own children are unbelievers and obstinately foolish. Our only hope, of course, is
that the Lord would turn them, and that was David's only hope
as well. But here's the thing. The reason that Absalom did all
this was at God's own will. Absalom was doing these things
against David. It was a double work on God's
part, as he often does. He was bringing Absalom to judgment,
but he was also bringing on David the consequence of his own sin,
And in bringing the consequences of David's own sin upon him through
Absalom, he was foreshadowing all that came upon the Lord Jesus
Christ as a consequence of our sin that was made his. And that's
what we briefly looked at last week was that In King David's
flight from Jerusalem, when Absalom was coming, he had heard about
him coming. When King David was fleeing from Jerusalem, he and
those with him crossed over the brook Kidron, however it's pronounced. And it's the same brook that
the Lord Jesus, with his disciples, passed over. And then David ascended
up the Mount of Olives, And he was barefoot, and his head was
covered, and he was weeping as he went, and all the people were
going with him, weeping as they went as well. And so the Lord
Jesus Christ, he crossed over that same brook, Chitron, in
John chapter 18, and he went up the Mount of Olives. And you
know what was there, the Garden of Gethsemane, when he suffered.
In his soul, he said, He was sore amazed and greatly troubled
and very heavy in his soul because of the sin that had been made
his, which he owned before God, the sins of his people. No doubt
that that was the weight that was heavy upon him. And we can
read about that in different Psalms, like Psalm 69. If you
haven't read that lately, Psalm 69 is the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a prophecy of the Lord Jesus
Christ speaking. And you can know that for certainty
because in Psalm 69, he says many things that were spoken
about Christ on the cross, like they gave him gall. mixed with
vinegar for his drink when he was on the cross, and he committed
his spirit to the Lord when he was on the cross. All those things
are in Psalm 69, but in Psalm 69, he cries out to the Lord
in prayer that he had sunk in deep waters in Meyer, and he
was, his foolishness and his sins and all these things and
the reproach that came upon him for the Lord's sake for his people.
And so we know that the Mount of Olives was that place that
was called the Olive Press, where they pressed the oil out of the
olives. It was also like a press where they would press wine.
And so the Lord Jesus Christ was pressed, and he sweat great
drops of blood. And just like in this account
of David, where he fled Jerusalem running from Absalom, and it
seemed as if David was submitting almost in a weakness to this
conspiracy of Absalom. So the Lord Jesus Christ and
David, when he was fleeing Jerusalem, often spoke when Shimei cursed
him, for example, or when he had to send the ark back to Jerusalem,
he often spoke then of trusting God, even though that curse was
sent by God through Shimei, and even though the ark had to be
taken back to Jerusalem, he said, if the Lord is pleased to bring
me back, then I'll be able to come back to Jerusalem and worship
him, but if not, then let him do what pleases him. So those
things can be found in 2 Samuel 15 and chapter 16. So David was in submission to
the will of God. The will of God for David at
this time was the deep trouble that came upon him in his soul,
his very soul, because his son had risen up. in rebellion against
him to take his throne, to usurp his authority, and to gain the
favor and the love and the admiration of the people, not for what he
deserved, because Absalom deserved no favor from the people, but
by deceit and by lies and conspiracy and consultation with wicked
men. And so all of this is parallel,
runs directly parallel to the Lord Jesus Christ in the Garden
of Gethsemane and to the cross, where He bore our sins as His
own and suffered untold, unimaginable agony of soul when the wrath
of God was poured out upon Him for our sins. He not only bore
our sins, but He bore all that Almighty God could bear in the
wrath of God being poured out for him. And as Spurgeon likes
to quote, he bore all that Almighty God could bear with strength
enough, but none to spare. And so we can't understand that
really, but we can see that Christ suffered in our place. He suffered
for our sins. He suffered under the guilt of
them, and he suffered the punishment of them. And who can tell what
all that means except we get some small taint of it when our
conscience is afflicted by the guilt of our sins and when we
wonder if we could at all possibly be saved since we're such sinners. And then we find, of course,
by God's word that we can trust Christ only. And then the flood
of of God's comfort and grace overwhelms us because we find
in his word that even though we are sinners and have no strength
and no reason to trust God, his word gives us the warrant and
his name is glorified in our salvation. Okay, so that's the
background now. And I just want you to consider
the different layers of the depth of truth in scripture when you
read those two chapters, Absalom's wickedness, God turning him over
to the lack of judgment, and then therefore leading his own
self in his subtlety pursuing his own gratification for power
and for other people to admire him and serve him. And how often
we find those same tendencies in ourselves. It raises the hair
on our head because it causes us great fear to think that the
same seeds of wickedness are in our heart. And if God doesn't
keep us from ourselves, then we will also come to the same
ruinous end as Absalom did. And then we see in David the
very opposite of that, and his love for his son Absalom, even
though he suffered at his hand. And yet God is bringing David
as a believer. God is bringing David through
this trial, this extreme trial, perhaps the greatest trial of
David's life. And it is out of that trial that
he pours forth this psalm. So then this psalm then is given
to us as an instruction by God of what a believer is going to
experience in life in some small measure. And it teaches us that
in some small measure we are going to endure trouble, that
it will be by God's own hand, God's own hand, but God will
use that trouble for our good. Because when the Lord brings
trouble, like he did here in David's case, and more preeminently
in Christ's case, what was it that David learned? And this
is a very important point now. I wanna pause here as we're contemplating
the answer. What did David learn out of all
this? Well, you can find out by reading
the first verse and the rest of it. He says, truly, my soul
waits upon God. From him comes my salvation.
All right, what did he learn? Only from God comes my salvation. And in silence, he submitted
to God willingly And it was in his soul that he submitted. It
wasn't some outward show of obedience or submission. He was breathing
out trust in God, in this psalm, so that his soul was expressing
what was going on inside of him. Truly is the same word translated
only here. As I said last week, this is
called the only psalm because it uses the word only six times.
So we could read this verse either as this. My soul only waits upon
God. Or we could say, truly or verily,
my soul waits upon God. Or we could also say it, because
the margin of my Bible, which is a King James Version, a Cambridge
publisher, it says that in the margin, the word truly is only,
and the word wait is also in silence. So David also, you could
read it this way, my soul in silence only upon God is waiting. So we see then that not only
this trust in God and this trust exhibited in waiting, but only
upon God, and it was in his soul. It was in his soul. We often,
I say it myself, and I'll assume that you also too, I often think
I think I believe, I think I believe, but do I really? And we wonder,
you know, like that father in Mark 9, 24. Lord, I believe,
help my unbelief, or like the disciples, increase our faith. Lord, increase our faith. So,
and how does God do that? Well, he does it through trouble.
God does, he increases our faith through his word and through
trouble. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. And
in 1 Peter 1, he says, the trial of your faith. which is much
more precious than gold that perishes, though it be tried
with fire, may be, I can't remember the rest of the words there in
that 1 Peter 1, verse 5 and following. But it's to increase our faith,
it's to purify our faith, it's to try our faith in order to
grow our faith. And so every trial is teaching
us this one thing, only in God is my salvation. If we get that,
then we'll understand the purpose of all the trouble in our life.
Only in God is my salvation. And in silent submission to the
will of God, I'm trusting Him only. Okay? What does it mean
to trust God? What does it mean to trust Him?
Well, in 1 Peter 5, verse 7, it says, casting all your cares
upon Him, for He careth for you. One of the things it means is
that we unburden ourselves by leaving our burden to be carried
by the Lord, and having committed that burden to the Lord, we rest
and wait for Him to shoulder it and not ourselves, because
He's taken it from us as His burden. He's capable. We're incapable
of bearing it. That's what we're saying when
we trust God. This is your burden, Lord. It's my burden, but I am
relinquishing this burden to you. I am committing this case
to you. We not only commit our burdens
to the Lord. Jesus said, Come unto me, all
you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
We commit them to him and then we rest in him because he's bearing
our burden. We've unloaded it. We've unburdened
ourselves in trusting Him to carry it for us and to bear it
up. We can't bear it. He's able,
but we're not able. So we rely on Him to carry it. The other thing we do is when
we have any job to do that's beyond our ability, We will always
be happy to give that job to someone who is more capable.
We understand what that's like. I was always like that at work
when I was an engineer. I don't know what to do. Lord,
I am completely at a loss what to do here. And so I would find
somebody who is more capable than me and I'd say, what would
you do in this situation? And I'd be happy to take their
advice. Much infinitely more is it the case that when we have
work that God requires us to do, and we can't do it. We cannot
keep God's law. We are unable to remove any one
of our sin offenses against God, our crimes. We're unable to bear
the guilt and punishment of them. We can't bear it. And what do
we do? Then we are happy to let the
Lord do all of the work that His obedience and not ours. and
his answer to God's justice and not our attempt by anything that
we could contrive in sorrow or tears or some kind of a spiritual
experience that's going to lift us up or whatever it might be.
No, only in God is my salvation. My soul is going to trust him
only. So we completely rest. We wait on God to do what we
cannot do. We're unable to do it. And there's
nowhere else that we're more impotent and without strength
than in the case of our own sin against God. Isn't that ironic? Where we ought to be obedient,
we failed and we can't do anything about it. We need a savior. And
so that's what this is teaching us. And that's what trouble And
this is the deepest kind of trouble here taught David and the Lord
Jesus Christ. You remember what it says in
Hebrews chapter five, though he were a son, yet learned he
obedience by the things which he suffered. He's the son of
God, and yet in his sufferings, he learned what that obedience
God was requiring of him to yield was, truly. This is the obedience
that would be everlasting righteousness for the people that he was suffering
for and dying for. And it was that obedience unto
death, he submitted to that willingly and under that affliction, that's
when he said what Job said, though he slay me, yet will I trust
him. He rolled upon Jehovah. He trusted
the Lord. And that was his accusation.
They tried to mock him with that. He trusted in the Lord. Let him
deliver him, seeing he delighted in him. And the Lord did, because
he trusted in him. So that's the lesson of all these
trials. God brings trouble, and we can't
see. We know we deserve it. And yet
we think it's too much, we can't bear it. And we know that it's
not only deserved, but it's for the worst reason, because we've
done foolishly. And we can't see how he could
possibly glorify himself in delivering us from this trouble, from this
problem we brought on ourselves. And what do we do? Only in God
is my salvation and I will silently wait for him, looking to him,
expecting, waiting. He's my salvation. He's my rock. He's my defense. He's my strength. He's everything. He's my refuge.
And that's what this psalm is saying. Truly, only my soul in
silence upon God is waiting. From him comes my salvation.
Now, This phrase, from him comes my salvation. Remember that before
the world was, God determined to save his people, and then
from him came my salvation. He already had ordained that
his own son, the Lord Jesus Christ, would shed his precious blood
for our redemption. First Peter chapter one, verse
18 through 20. You're not redeemed with corruptible
things, but with incorruptible, with the precious blood of Christ. And he says in verse 20, who
was foreordained before the foundation of the world. If God did that
before the foundation of the world, before there was anyone
created, before we had even sinned in the purpose of God, the Lord
Jesus Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
From Him comes my salvation. That's when salvation came, didn't
it? And when God the Father prepared a body for His Son and sent His
Son into the world to accomplish our redemption and to obtain
our eternal redemption by offering His own blood in the presence
of God in heaven, from God then came our salvation, didn't it?
And it was finished. He purged our sins. He obtained
our eternal redemption. He perfected forever all those
who were sanctified by the one offering of Himself to God for
our sins. And then from God came our salvation. And what about
when he took his throne in glory and sent his spirit to cause
his apostles to remember his words and to understand them
and to write scripture, the New Testament, and to preach the
gospel so that sinners would hear what he had done and where
he was as the ruling sovereign to save his people from their
sins, the king of glory. then from God came our salvation,
didn't it? And when we were born and lived
our life before we ever heard, and God brought trouble into
our lives, and he caused us to feel the burden of the law, that
we couldn't keep it, and the sinfulness of our own hearts,
and our case was guilty before God, and we couldn't deliver
ourselves, so that that trouble left us in a misery, and we were
ruined. And then from God came our salvation. That was God's work, didn't it?
That was trouble. And we cried to the Lord because
we heard the gospel, and we heard and were persuaded by God's own
word that in the gospel Christ had given himself for his people,
had laid his life down for their life, and had taken their sins
and answered God and justified them in his own blood and righteousness.
And then we saw that God accepted us not for what he thought of
us, but for what he thought of his son. And then from God came
our salvation. He gave his spirit to us and
persuaded us that this was enough. This was all sufficient. Christ
was everything. And we trusted him. And from
God came our salvation. And then in every trial of our
life, and even in the greatest trial, when our life is ebbing
away and our minds are failing, And we're left wondering, can
I trust him? Am I strong enough? No. What
do I do? Well, then from God comes our
salvation. Once again, he uses the gospel to teach us Christ
is everything. He's our wisdom. He's our righteousness,
our strength. He's everything, and from God
comes our salvation. And then when we die, what happens? The Lord is going to strip away
this body of death. He's gonna bring us to himself.
He's gonna carry us. He says in Luke 16, the angels
carry us into the bosom of the Lord Jesus Christ. and from God
comes our salvation. We'll see Him, and when we see
Him, we'll be like Him, and He will change our vile bodies to
be like His glorious body on the last day, and He'll raise
us up, and from God will come our salvation. You see, all the
time, throughout, before time, and throughout time, and to all
eternity, Jesus Christ will always be our salvation, because from
God comes our salvation. All right, and this has made
a point. This is made of acute interest
to us in trouble in our life, isn't it? Trouble does this.
It can be trouble of any kind. It can be bodily pain. It's most
troubling when it's soul trouble, isn't it? When we're troubled
by our own unbelief or our own sin. That troubles me greatly. And then the cry is brought forth
by the grace of God. And we ask, Lord, how can I trust
you? How can I believe you? How can
you receive me? And the answer, it narrows it
down and it makes the way so narrow that we're left with only
one way, the Lord Jesus Christ. It's what he did. It's who he
is, where he is now. All of our confidence and assurance
comes knowing who is on the throne and what he is capable of and
what he accomplished. Isn't that it? From God comes
our salvation and we rejoice in that. And so he goes on. He
only is my rock and my salvation. He is my defense. I shall not
be greatly moved in our soul. We trust him, don't we? This
body, this flesh profits nothing, but in our soul we trust him
in the inner man. And aren't you glad that God
has given us, the Lord Jesus Christ himself is our life, that
he lives in us, and therefore we have this new man that was
created in righteousness and true holiness, that we can actually
trust Christ. It seems so simple, doesn't it?
To just trust the Lord Jesus Christ, but it's very elusive. In fact, it's impossible without
God's grace. We have to be in need, And we
have to hear God's truth from his word about Christ. And then
he asked to give us the grace. This is true. This is all your
hope. And we say, Lord, you're everything. I have no hope without you. And
we're left with him only. And then we find the comfort
of knowing we have nothing but Christ. But having nothing but
Christ means we have him. We have everything, we have all
things if we have Him. Someone asked a preacher, and
I've heard him, I've heard other preachers say this, I didn't
make it up. He says, is Christ really enough? And the answer
was, He is if He's all you have. So I don't know who originated
that, but that's a really good statement. Only, that's what
this word means, exclusive. He's enough if He is all that
you have. If God only is our salvation,
if we only trust Him, then this is the truth of Scripture. But
if we trust ourselves or something else in part or in whole, if
we don't trust Him, then God is not our salvation. He's not
our trust. And that's why it's comforting
to know that in our soul, this God-given, created by God, in
Christ Jesus, this spirit within us, that the Lord Jesus Christ,
as he's joined to his people in spirit, 1 Corinthians 6, 17,
and it's Christ who lives in us, Galatians 2, 20, therefore,
the life that we now live in the flesh, we live by the faith
of the Son of God, who loved us and gave himself for us. So
we see in this Psalm the contrast between Absalom, Ahithophel,
Shimei, and Ziba, these four men, and King David, and all
those who were with King David. On the one hand, these men had
their own self and their own worldly gain as their end, and
it became their total ruin. No sound judgment. Hithephel
was known for being the wisest counselor in all the land. And
yet, just like the devil, knowing what he knew and still doing
what he did, he turned and betrayed David. It's amazing, isn't it? All right, let's go on. I want
to get down. You can read through these verses.
We talked about verses three and four last time, and we actually
read through and talked about all these up to verse And I'm
going to read verse 9 and following now. He says, Surely men of low
degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie. To be
laid in the balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity.
Now here in this Psalm, in this verse, we see that men, if you
were to weigh their value on the scales and putting Christ
on the other side, putting the value, the thing that the Lord
values on the other side, that men would be weightless, less
than weightless. That's our value. In ourselves,
we are absolutely empty and weight and valueless. We're unprofitable. There's none that do with good.
No, not one. Taken all together, it says in
Romans chapter three, they are all together become unprofitable. And that's the case of our natural
selves. So therefore, the Lord has to
be our all, doesn't he? And then in verse 10, he says,
trust not in oppression and become not vain in robbery if riches
increase, set not your heart upon them. That's what these
men were doing, these four men that I just mentioned. Ahithophel
and Absalom and Ziba and Shimei. These men had personal gain as
their interest and they were going to get it by robbing David
They were going to get it by taking away from the one God
anointed what God had given him. And this is the intent of Satan
and his kingdom. It's to displace Christ as the
king, to put themselves as the object of admiration and honor
and glory. This is the heart of natural
man, hostile toward God, an enemy of God. Because we oppose the
rule of Christ naturally. Because we want our own glory. We want to serve ourselves. That's
the very epitome. Pride. It's pride. And lust. And envy. And greed. All these
things that come from the heart of man. So they wanted to rob
the king by oppression. They were willing to do whatever
they had to do to get what they wanted. And it didn't matter
who was hurt by it. That's called oppression. And
you can see that in men today. But look at verse 11. God has
spoken once, twice have I heard this, that power belongs to God.
Now in this verse, there's a couple things to note. First of all,
God has spoken once. God's word. Now, this is important
for us to understand. And there's a psalm that goes,
what more can he say than to you he has said, to you who for
refuge to Jesus have fled? Because God's word is the foundation
of all that we believe. There's only one way to know
the truth, it's if God has spoken it, if God has said it in his
word. Remember 1 Corinthians 15? The whenever the gospel is
given to the Corinthians by Paul, he gives it again to them. He
says, in fact, let me read that to you. This is so important.
It's so foundational. It's so basic. And yet it's it's
mature. It's not like we just leave this
for babes. We go to this as men as well.
He says, moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel,
the gospel. Which I preached to you. which also you have received
and wherein you stand." Okay, how do we stand? How do we have
access? The blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
What the Lord Jesus has done, not in ourselves. Verse 2, 1
Corinthians 15 verse 2, "...by which also you are saved." if
you keep in memory what I preached to you, unless you have believed
in vain." Isn't it amazing that we're saved by the gospel? We're
not saved by our own works. We're saved by the account that
God has given of what Christ has done. Isn't that amazing?
Isn't that wonderful? It's the most wonderful thing
in all the world. He says in verse three, for I
delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how
that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.
That's what I was trying to get to, the scriptures. God has spoken
once. Scriptures, it can't be broken. He goes on, "...and that he was
buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the
Scriptures." You see how the Gospel is what God has said in
the written Word of God, and what God has said is what Christ
has done? He died, He was buried, He rose
again, and it was for our sins, not for the sins of the whole
world, but for our sins, that He actually accomplished what
He came to do. It was God's will. God had spoken of it before.
God fulfilled His word. And in hearing this, what Christ
has done. And in believing it, not doing
anything, just believing what Christ has done, resting our
all on Him, we're saved. We know God. We know the Lord
Jesus Christ in this. Everything God is to say to us
and all of our salvation is in the gospel. It's the power of
God to salvation. Okay, back to Psalm 62. God has
spoken once, twice have I heard this. In other words, God's word
doesn't just say things once, but often and repeating. That
power belongs to God. Okay, this is the first thing
we need to know. First, God has spoken. He repeats what he says. This is his word. And this is
the rock. of our salvation. The power of
God unto salvation is the gospel, isn't it? Romans 1, verse 16. I'm not ashamed of the gospel,
for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believe
it. All right, and then he goes on. Power belongs to God. Also, unto thee, O Lord, belongeth
mercy. Isn't it amazing that in these
last two verses, The power of God, which is almighty, and the
mercy of God are set down by the word of God. And this is
repeated throughout scripture. God is almighty and God is merciful. And where is the power of God
and the mercy of God? It's in the Lord Jesus Christ.
First Corinthians chapter one says to us, Christ is the power
of God and the wisdom of God. We preach Christ in him crucified,
the power of God and the wisdom of God. You can read that in
First Corinthians chapter one in verses 24, for example. All right. So these two things,
power and mercy, are characteristics that David now is praising God
for. And these, of course, are fulfilled
in the Lord Jesus Christ. who David typified in his own
sufferings and in this prayer, speaking directly in prophecy
of the Lord Jesus and his trust in God out of the soul afflictions
that came upon him because he owned our sins, he took them
and bore them before God and suffered for them. And yet throughout
that, in that greatest possible of all cases of suffering, In
obedience, he was afflicted and he trusted in God only. He trusted
him. He was his salvation, his refuge,
his rock, his expectation, his strength, his all. And so he
says that here power and mercy, according to his word. Now, there's
an account, and I don't have time to expound on it very much,
but there's an account, and I wrote about this in our bulletin on
Sunday from Numbers chapter 14. I want to refer you to this in
Numbers chapter 14. The setting in Numbers 14 was
that, and this begins at verse 10 of Numbers 14, the setting
was that Israel had come to the very borders of Canaan. Having
come through the wilderness, now they were at the borders
of Canaan. It was less than two years before they left Egypt.
And God brought them all the way to the borders of Canaan,
according to His promise, and they were right there, ready
to go in. And they had sent spies in. Spies
came back and gave a report. And there were 12 spies sent
in. Caleb and Joshua were two, and
the other 10 that were sent in brought back an evil report.
And the people believed the evil report. They didn't believe the
good report. They didn't believe God's promise
to bring them into Canaan that he could and would overthrow
their enemies, the Canaanites, but they believed the report
of these 10 men who said that they were giants and we were
like grasshoppers in their eyes instead of the fact that Caleb
and Joshua said, no, they're grasshoppers in the Lord's eyes
and they're bread for us, let's eat them. So that was the setting
here. And in Numbers 14 and verse 10
it says, All the congregation, they had stoned them with stones,
and the glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle of the congregation
before all the children of Israel. So now the whole congregation
wants to kill Joshua and Caleb because they were preaching the
gospel. They were preaching the gospel. God's going to bring
us into the promised inheritance. This typifies Christ. All that we have, eternal salvation
and glory in Christ, God's going to give it to us. Joshua's going
to bring us in. He's going to destroy our enemies.
He's going to give us rest. And the children of Israel said,
no, they didn't believe. Verse 11, the Lord said to Moses,
how long will this people provoke me? How long will it be ere they
believe me? For all the signs which I've
showed to them, I will smite them with a pestilence and disinherit
them, and I'll make of thee a greater nation and mightier than they.
So God is telling Moses, I'm gonna wipe out everybody else,
and I'm gonna make children come from you and make a nation from
you. Moses didn't take the temptation.
It was a test. Moses passed the test. He didn't
fail. He didn't say, oh yeah, that's
fine with me. I don't care about them. No,
no, listen to what Moses said. And Moses said to the Lord, he
said, this is Moses interceding, interposing himself, knowing
God and praying according to God's word and God's will. based on God's character. Notice what he says, Moses said
to the Lord, then if God does do what he said, disinherit them
and so on, then the Egyptians shall hear it, for thou broughtest
up this people in thy might and your strength from among the
Egyptians. And they will tell it to the
inhabitants of this land, for they have heard that thou, Lord,
art among this people, and that thou, Lord, art seen face to
face, and that thy cloud standeth over them, and that thou goest
before them by day time in a pillar of a cloud, and in a pillar of
fire by night. Now if thou shalt kill all these
people as one man, then the nations which have heard of the fame
of thee will speak, saying, Because the Lord was not able to bring
these people into the land which he sware to them, therefore he
has slain them in the wilderness. You see what he's saying? Lord, You brought this people out of
Egypt with a strong hand. You brought them through the
Red Sea. You divided the waters of the Red Sea. You brought them
through the wilderness. You were a cloud of covering
by day and a night, a light to them. You separated between them
and their enemies. All this power and now what? You're going to destroy them
because of their unbelief? The enemies of God will say because
he didn't anticipate how wicked they were, because he couldn't
pay the price necessary that he said he would do. He couldn't
fulfill his promise to them. He hadn't. He was surprised by
their wickedness and he was not able to do this. He couldn't
set aside his anger because of their sin. And he therefore destroyed
them. Do you see that? This is a powerful,
Moses' argument rises to the highest level of persuasion. Of course, this is God's own
spirit breathing out through Moses God's own heart and revealing
it to us that it is because of what follows that God saves his
people. And listen to what follows. He
says, Now, Moses is going on. He says in verse 16, they'll
say, because the Lord was not able to bring these people into
the land which he swear unto them, therefore he has slain
them in the wilderness. Not able because of their sin.
Verse 17, and now I beseech thee, let the power of my Lord be great. According as thou hast spoken,
there's God's word, saying, the Lord is long-suffering and of
great, what, mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and
by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the
fathers upon the children under the third and fourth generation.
And then Moses says this, pardon I beseech thee, the iniquity
of this people, according unto the greatness of thy mercy, and
as thou hast forgiven this people from Egypt till now." And the
Lord said, I have pardoned according to thy word. Do you see the three
things spoken of in Psalm 62? He says, God has spoken once.
Twice have I heard this. Power belongs to God. Where is
that power? Where is the power of God seen?
The almighty power of God seen. It is seen in His ability to
forgive sin. It's seen in His ability, by
His mercy, to answer His own justice. so much so that he would
answer his justice in such a way that not only would he satisfy
his justice, but he would exalt his justice to the highest possible
level through his mercy towards his people because he would offer
up his son. And this took great power. This
took almighty power. Talk about power and mercy combined
together by God's word. That's what this is talking about
here. Let the power of the Lord be great in his mercy according
to his word. This is Christ and him crucified,
the power and the wisdom of God. You know, the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ, though he was rich, Yet for your sakes he became
poor that you through his poverty might be made rich. What power
that God would set aside his anger and do so in a way that
would magnify his justice to the highest pinnacle possible
so that mercy would rejoice over justice in the Lord Jesus Christ
to our salvation. Trust only in him, you people. Pour out your heart before him.
Let's pray. Lord, It is absolutely incredible
what you've said in your word and amazing beyond comprehension
who you are and what you've done, exhibiting yourself to be so
great in power and mercy to save a sinful people, so much so that
your promises made to them in Christ before the foundation
of the world were already fulfilled in their contingency and conditions,
having slain the Lord Jesus Christ in your eternal purpose, in order
to answer every attribute of God and magnify yourself in all
of your perfections to the highest possible degree in our salvation. all for your namesake, and therefore
we trust, Lord, that for your namesake, for Christ's sake,
you would save us to the uttermost. We unburden ourselves to you,
we commit the work to you, and we wait on you to do all that
you have said in the Lord Jesus Christ to save such as we are
for his sake, and in his name we pray, amen.