2nd Samuel chapter 5 So all of the tribes of Israel
have bowed to King David. And in verse 6, it says, and
the king and his men went to Jerusalem unto the Jebusites,
the inhabitants of the land, which spake unto David, saying,
except thou take away the blind and the lame, thou shalt not
come in hither, thinking David cannot come in hither. Nevertheless,
David took the stronghold of Zion. The same is the city of
David. Jerusalem at that time was occupied
by the tribe of Benjamin partly, but also though God had commanded
that the Jebusites be driven from the land, still much of
Jerusalem was under their control, was occupied by the Jebusites. They could not, without David,
drive them out. Up until this time, they had
rejected David as king, and no one else was able to make this
happen. And so David, now that they bowed
to him, he acts on their behalf. He comes to drive out their enemies,
and he does so. And that's my whole message.
Let's just pray and go home. I'll expound on that a little
bit, but you see the beautiful gospel in that. We bow to Him
because we need Him. And He saves us. What a beautiful
gospel lesson. Now, listen to me though. We
do not bow to Christ in order to have our problems taken away. We do not. We bow to Him because
of who He is. We bow to Him because He's God's
King. But that being said, whatever
your problems in life, if you haven't bowed to the Savior,
you really just have one problem. Until you do that, All of your other problems are
just a symptom of that. Once you've bowed to Him, then you really don't have any
problems. Because even your problems are blessings then. And we see
that here. It's not that you won't have
troubles anymore. You will. You may have more than you did
before you knew Him. But let me tell you this now,
too. If your life is a disaster, and I know some that are, and
you do not honor the Lord Jesus Christ, don't wonder why your
life is a disaster. I've had people come to me and
just say, well I just don't understand. Well I do. I do. Until You bow to Him until you
pledge your allegiance to Him, until you honor Him. And not yourself. Until you live
for Him and not yourself. You just have one problem really
and all of the rest of the disaster that you call life is just a
symptom of that problem. All of it. And let me stress again. Don't
pretend to bow to Christ in order to have your problems taken care
of. That's pretend bowing. True bowing is bowing to Him
because of who He is. He's the King. Of course you're
going to bow to Him. He's the King. So don't just come. A lot of
people don't even come until they have some kind of problems.
Don't even pretend to honor the Lord until they have some kind
of problem. That's not how it works. Bow
to Him because He is God's King, because He is righteousness,
because He is your only sin offering before God. He is life itself. You can go to hell without any
problems just as surely as you can go to hell with problems.
It's not about the problems. And Once you're his, nothing
else is the same. He fights all of your battles
for you. You have a few jebusites that
you can't deal with? He can. Don't imagine that he's
fighting for you while you're spitting in his face, because
he's not. If you dishonor him in your life, And again, when
you're His, you'll still have troubles, you'll still have tribulations,
you'll still have heartaches and griefs, but He works even
those for your good, if you're His, and you'll know that. Paul said, we know that all things
work together for good. We have that peace in our heart,
we know. There's a big difference between
having Christ as your refuge in the storm and having Christ
as your enemy in the storm. When the tribe of Benjamin was
bowing to another king in defiance of David, they had made themselves
his enemy. Israelites, but they rejected
God's sovereign king, and so they're the enemy of David. And
many died his enemy among the tribes of Israel. But now Benjamin has bowed to
him and he has defeated the enemy that they could not. He stands between them. Not only
did he defeat the Jebusites but he stands between them now and
every enemy there is. You don't get to the Benjamites
without going through David now. And that's us spiritually and
in every way. What a beautiful spiritual truth
this is. Which side of Christ are you
on? That's the question. Is He between you and all of
the enemies of your soul? Or is He between you and every
blessing of God? Because you will have no blessing
apart from Him. All of God's love, all of His
grace, all of His blessings to sinners are in Christ. But now, if you've bowed to Him,
Christ is King now. He's always been King in reality. Before the Benjamins bowed, He
was still King. We saw that in verse 2, didn't
we? Look at verse 2 again. Let's read verse one as well. Then came all the tribes of Israel
to David and to Hebron and spake, saying, Behold, we are thy bone
and thy flesh. We're one of you. We're one with
you. Also, in time past, when Saul
was king over us, in other words, when we rebelled against God
and rejected God as king, you were he that led us out and brought
us to Israel. You were king then, too. We just
didn't bow then. We just didn't acknowledge you
as king. You were taking care of us then. You were winning
our battles for us then. And the Lord said to you, you
shall feed my people Israel and thou shalt be a captain over Israel. So they bowed there. But they acknowledged that even
when they didn't, He was king, so you're not making him lord. He's always been lord. He always
will be. And everybody's gonna bow and
acknowledge him as lord eventually. But now he's my king. He's always been sovereign over
me, but he's my king in the sense that I own him as my king. And that's a blessing of God
as well. But they didn't make him king
just because they needed help with the Jebusites. You notice
what they said? You've been the man all along. We should have bowed long ago.
And God, they acknowledged that God had made him. God said, you're
the one that's going to feed Israel. God said, you're going
to be their captain. That's why we're bowing, because
God made him king. Now, they didn't say, oh, you
know, what are we going to do about these Jebusites? We better
bow to David. No, that's just a fringe benefit. It's a really
good one. He is to Christ is to be bowed
to because of who he is The fact that he saves us and
rids us of every enemy that we have You could just call it a
fringe benefit. It's a really good one Because he's worthy Because he's
been leading leading us all along because he is salvation in every
sense of the word David's been saving them since he was a boy
Christ has been saving us since before there wasn't us And also there's not a thing
wrong with rejoicing in the right way in the right order in that
the Jebusites are history too. There's nothing wrong with that.
Thank you God for everything. Even the stuff we call the small
things that God does. We ought to be thankful for everything
he does for us. And notice it says the king and
his men. I like that. He doesn't have to include us.
Christ our King doesn't have to include us. But did you know
that one of God's greatest blessings to his people is his people? And I thank God for that. I thank
God for you. All the glory is going to go
to David. The city's gonna be called the city of David, not
the city of David and his men, but I'm just glad to be in on
it, aren't you? I'm just glad to be there, to take part in
it. He's gonna get all the glory.
We're all agreed on that. But I'm thankful for you, too. I love this verse of scripture.
Listen to what Moses said to his father-in-law in Numbers
10, 29. Moses said, Unto Hobab, the son of Regel, the Midianite,
Moses' father-in-law, we are journeying unto the place of
which the Lord said, I will give it you." This is Moses saying
to his father-in-law, we're going to the promised land. God gave
it to us. We're going to go occupy it.
And he said this to him, come with us. Come with us. Come thou with us, and we will
do thee good. For the Lord hath spoken good
concerning Israel. It's not that we can do anything
really, but it'll be good for you to come with the people of
God. Because God has promised good
unto us. That's a beautiful thing. So David and his men, the king
and his men, I'm glad that he includes us in that and I'm thankful
for his men as we glorify him for the victory. Now David did
what they could not do and that teaches a very simple and beautiful
and the truth, the glorious gospel truth. David accomplished what
could not be done by anybody else. Listen to, turn over with
me to Romans chapter 8. Let's look at this together. You see the picture now in the
text. The Jebusites have been for years, years now, Israel
has occupied this land, but they couldn't drive out the Jebusites.
But now, that the tribe of Benjamin has bowed to David. He comes
and defends them and fights for them and drives them out. And so we just see this simple
truth in that he did what nobody else could do. Romans 8.1, there
is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus,
who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. For the
law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free
from the law of sin and death." Now I'm not going to be condemned
before God. And by the way, We can talk about the enemies
of the sinner, but your primary enemy, if you don't know the
Lord Jesus Christ, is God himself. But there's no condemnation,
there's no enmity to those who are in Christ. to those who have
bowed to David, those who are in David, who walk not after
the flesh, but for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ
Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. The
law of God that condemned me, I'm not under it anymore. Why not? Verse 3, for what the
law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh. The law of God could not bring
me to the place where there's no condemnation. Under the law,
I'm condemned before God. But now, since I'm not under
the law, I'm not condemned and here's why. What the law could
not do because of the weakness of my flesh, the inability of
my flesh to measure up to God's law. It's very simple. God sending
his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned
sin in the flesh. That's why I'm not condemned
by God. There's no condemnation to those
who are in him because of what he did for us that we could not
do for ourselves. Through the weakness of the tribe
of Benjamin, the Jebusites couldn't be driven out of Jerusalem. But
here comes David. What we couldn't do, God sent
His Son. And we bow to Him. And He does
it for us. And we reap the benefits. And
we praise His name forever. And live happily ever after. That the righteousness of the
law might be fulfilled in us. That's what He accomplished for
us. I am spotless, righteous before
the law of God because of what Christ did as my substitute.
He lived for me and he shed his precious blood for me. And now
we're still full of flesh but we don't walk after the flesh.
We walk after the spirit. We bow to God's king. We bow
to him who saved us. who did what we could not. We
are saved, we stand before God, not only not condemned, but fully
blessed and perfect and holy in Christ, because Christ did
what we could not. Our flesh was incapable of pleasing
God, so God sent His Son to do always those things that pleased
the Father, as our representative. We could
not satisfy God for our sin. How am I going to pay for my
sin? They said when the gospel was preached to them there in
the book of Acts, men and brethren, what shall we do? We've killed
God's son. How are you going to make up
for that? People talk about their good
outweighing their bad. Maybe you'll run into somebody.
I've run into a lot of people in life that say, well, I've
done some bad things, but I just hope my good will outweigh my
bad. How is your good going to outweigh murdering God? What
are you going to do that's going to make up for that? You don't have any good, and
if you did, it wouldn't be good enough. Listen to what the question
asked in Micah 6.6. Wherewith shall I come before
the Lord and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before
Him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Is that
going to satisfy Him? Will the Lord be pleased with
thousands of rams or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall
I give my firstborn for my transgression? the fruit of my body for the
sin of my soul. If I took that which was most
precious to me and offered it unto God, would that be enough?
No way. No way. There's only one thing
that will satisfy God for sin. It pleased the Lord to bruise
him. And don't ever be misled by that
word bruised there. It means God crushed his son. He crushed him. He hath put him to grief. When
thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin. The soul of God's son. Now, what if that's offered for
my sin? The question there in Micah,
what about thousands of rams and ten thousands of, what about
a river of oil? What about my own firstborn? But when thou shalt make his
soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed. He shall
prolong his days and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in
his hand. He shall see of the travail of
his soul. and shall be satisfied. That's
how God is satisfied for sin by his very own only begotten
well-beloved son offering his own soul for my sin. Because of who David represents
in our text, these verses of scripture concerning his life
are rich with gospel. They taunted David. That might
have been confusing in the verse. It was to me at first. I looked
into that when they talk about the blind and the lame. Unless
you first defeat the halt and the lame, among us in order to
take our stronghold. You can't take this stronghold
unless you defeat the blind and the lame first. They're taunting
him. They're saying, they're implying there that even the
halt and the lame would be more than a match for David and his
men. Nevertheless, they mocked our
Lord as well. Nevertheless, I love that word. Nevertheless. Think about this word regarding
the saving of our souls. Regarding the driving out of
our spiritual enemies. It's an unwinnable war. The Jebusites
felt like there's no way David can, he can't, they're thinking,
you notice in the verse, they're thinking, he can't come in here,
he can't come in here. So they taunted him, they mocked
him. And our spiritual warfare is
unwinnable, nevertheless. The Jebusites never had been
able to be driven out by anybody, nevertheless. My sin is infinite. It's a debt that can't even be
calculated, much less paid. Nevertheless, God requires perfection
from me and I can't even, you think about this, because I know
you probably hadn't thought about it yet today. I wouldn't have
either if I hadn't had to study that. God requires Perfection
in thought, word, and deed from birth to death. Perfection. And you cannot do one good thing. You've never done one good thing
in your life. Not one. And I hadn't either. You might think, well, I believed
on Christ. Chris, that was good. Even that's full of sin. Faith is indeed the means by
which God unites us to Christ by grace, but your faith is not
meritorious. That is in itself deserving of
reward from God. Faith simply unites us to Christ
who is both all of our merit and all of our reward. Your faith
is full of sin. It's full of unbelief. You've
never done one thing that was good. Not one thing. So what
are you doing judging others? What am I doing looking down
ever on anybody? So back to our premise. God requires
spotless perfect holiness and I can't do one thing that measures
up. Nevertheless. The Jebusites say it can't happen.
They're thinking, he can't do that, he can't do this, he can't
get it done. Nevertheless. My sin, dad, is paid in full.
And I'm without blemish and without spot before God. For as much as you know that
you were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold, from
your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers
but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish
and without spot. The Jebusites were right except
for David. And there's no hope for me except
for Christ. So where do we live now? The city of David. The city of David. That's what
they called it from that time on. First of all, as we've already
said, David got all the glory, didn't he? They named the city
after him. He deserved it. That's why they did that, because
he deserved it. And our Lord Jesus Christ is going to get
all of the glory. And the city is called by his
name. David's name means beloved. Beloved, do you know why God
loves me? Does God love you? You know, people argue about
whether God loves everybody or not. I don't know what they're
arguing about. God said he doesn't. It's not
much of an argument, is it? When God said, Jacob, I love
you, Esau, I hate him. And thou hatest all workers of
iniquity, Psalm 55. God pretty much settled that.
But you know what the real issue is? Does God love you? What difference
is it going to make to you if He loves everybody but you? You need to find out whether
God loves you or not. And it doesn't matter if He does,
it doesn't matter who else does. I'm glad to have some folks that
love me. But that's not my hope. I need
to know whether God loves me or not. That's the question. I believe He does. Do you know
why? It's not an easy question to
answer. But every blessing can be traced
back to the love of God for me. If I know Him. Do you know Him? Do you believe Him? Do you love
Him? If you love Him, do you know
why? Because He loved you first. Or else you wouldn't. You'd still
be spitting in His face. But every blessing can be traced
back to His love. You can ask a thousand questions
about salvation. I've asked quite a few of them
in my mind. and all of them will trace back eventually to the
love of God for me. Why did God save me? You say,
well, Chris, He saved you because Christ died for you. Why in the
world would He do that? God so loved that He gave His
only begotten Son here in His love. Not that we loved God,
but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation
for our sins. Why did God save me? Well, Chris,
because you believed on Christ. Why did I believe on Christ when
so many don't? So many wiser and more noble
do not. Why did I believe on him? Because
God gave you faith. Why would he do that? Here we are again. Why did God save me? Just because
He wanted to. That's a good answer. But why
did He want to? It all comes back to the love
of God. But can we still ask why? We come back to that, because
He loved me. Because He loved me, He gave
Himself for me. Because He loved me, He put me in Christ. Because
He loved me, He drew me with cords of love and brought me
to Himself and caused me to love Him. I love Him because He first
loved me. He gave me faith in His Son.
He put me in His Son. And He did it just because He
wanted to. And He wanted to because He loves me. But why does He
love me? Can we even ask that? Why does God love me? I think
the only answer to that question from the Scriptures is because
he loves his son. The answer is Christ. That's
why God loves me. God's love for me is in Christ.
We are accepted in the David. That's what David means. It means
beloved. We're accepted in the beloved. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as he hath
chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy and without blame before him in love." Now some put those
words in love with the next phrase, in love having predestinated
us. unto the adoption of children
by Jesus Christ to himself. You can read it either way. It
all is because of his love for sinners in Christ. According to the good pleasure
of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein
he hath made us accepted in the beloved, in David. You see what David signifies
in his very name. He is the answer. He is every
spiritual blessing. If David is their king, all of
their enemies have to come through him now. They're gonna be well
provided for. He's gonna make their decisions
for them. He's gonna keep them safe. He's wise. He's proven
that he's brave and strong. He'd been saving them since before
they even knew who He was. And oh, Christ is the fulfillment
of all of that in the Beloved. Now think about this with me
in closing. To the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein
He hath made us accepted in the Beloved. That word accepted there
means to make graceful. charming, agreeable, lovely. He hath made us lovely in the
beloved. We are lovely in the lovely one. That's what it says. We live in the city of David. the city of the Beloved. We live
in Christ and to live in Christ is to live in the love of God. It's to fear no enemy, not even
ourselves, our worst one. It's to have peace and comfort and joy protection to live in Christ is to live
in the love of God and every blessing is traced back to that
to be loved to be lovely in the lovely one to be loved of God
in the beloved He loves us because he loves
his son. And that's where we live, the
city of the beloved. No wonder David said in Psalm
48, too beautiful for situation. The joy of the whole earth is
Mount Zion on the sides of the north, the city of the great
king. It's good to live in the city
of David. Let me read you the next verse. I want to read it
over again, and then that's verse 2, Psalm 48, 2. Beautiful for
situation. The joy of the whole earth is
Mount Zion on the sides of the north, the city of the great
king. Verse 3, God is known in her
palaces for a refuge. By God's almighty grace, that's
where I live. Omer Febesheh came and lived
in the city of the king and sat at the king's table and the king
ordered that everything be done for him. And he just enjoyed
all of the blessings that the king was able to give. That's
me. Let's pray.