Alright brethren, let's turn
in our Bibles to Psalm 59. David prays here in this first
verse. He says, deliver me from my enemies,
oh my God. Defend me. It means set me on
high. from them that rise up against
me. Now if you look back up in the
title, you see at the time that David wrote this, it says it
was when Saul sent and they watched the house to kill him. Now if
you want to turn there, back in 1 Samuel 19, we find what
happened. 1 Samuel 19 And it says there
in verse 11, Saul also sent messengers unto David's house to watch him
and to slay him in the morning. And Michael, David's wife, that
was Saul's daughter. So Saul that's trying to kill
him is David's father-in-law. And so Michael, his wife, told
him, saying, if thou save not thy life tonight, tomorrow thou
shalt be slain. If you don't do something tonight
while it's dark, you're going to be slain. Now you picture
David, you put yourself in David's shoes. David is, he's in a house,
he's up on an upper floor, probably in the wall of the city, and
he He sees, hears that these men have surrounded the house.
And so he, you can picture him going from window to window and
looks out the window and he's completely surrounded by Saul's
men. They've got the house totally
surrounded. And so Michael tells him, if
you don't do it now, under cover of darkness, come morning, you're
going to die. They're going to kill you. And
so that was what was going on when David wrote this psalm.
That was the condition he was in. And that condition is the
condition of every sinner. That's the condition every sinner
is in by nature. We're surrounded by enemies by
nature. We come into this world surrounded
by enemies. First of all, we have the enemy
that scripture calls the wiles of the devil. The devil is a
cunning, beguiling, tricking devil. And the scripture tells
us that most of the enemies we have are unseen enemies. We wrestle
not against flesh and blood, but against principalities. and
against powers, against rulers of the darkness of this world,
against spiritual wickedness in our places. We don't even
remotely enter into how many enemies we have surrounding us
all the time that we don't even see. And then on top of that,
our enemy is we dwell in the midst of this present evil world. And it's not just that the world
is evil, but it's evil because of the lust of our sin nature.
That's what God was talking about through John when he said, all
that's in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of
the eyes and the pride of life, that's not of the Father, that
is of the world. That's what every unregenerate
person that makes up the world is concerned about. The lust
of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.
And we have that same lustful spirit within us. And we're surrounded
by this all the time. And then the very worst enemy
is that it is the sins of our flesh. And when I say flesh,
I mean our nature, our corrupt nature that we got from our father
Adam. Paul said, I know that in me,
that is in my flesh, in my nature, my sin nature, that nature that
came from Adam, in my flesh dwells no good thing. He said, to will
is present with me. If I have a new nature, I have
a will to do what God says is right, but how to perform it,
I find not, because I have this sin nature. And like David that
night, we're helpless. We're helpless to save ourselves
from these enemies. We can't save ourselves from
the devil and all these unseen foes we have. We cannot save
ourselves from this wicked world. We can't save ourselves from
our own sinful nature. David saw it that night because
he was surrounded by enemies. But it's just that real all the
time. We're that helpless all the time. But sometimes God brings
His people to see how helpless we are. When He brings you there
and He brings you to do what David did that night, David prayed
in verse 1, deliver me from my enemies, oh my God. Now picture David going from
window to window and looking out and seeing these enemies.
And as he's doing this, he's praying to God and asking God,
deliver me from my enemies, oh my God. He's saying, defend me,
raise me up on high from them that are risen against me. This
was real to David and it's just that real. For us, right now,
all the time, that's how helpless we are against these enemies.
But when God brings you to that place, to where you see your
helplessness, you see your sin, you see something of the enemy
of your flesh, and you see your sin, and He brings you to cry
out to God, whatever pain, whatever suffering you encounter to be
brought to that place, it's worth it entirely when God brings you
to cry out to Him to save you. Now, you know what happened when
God brought David to cry out for God to deliver him? Scripture
says, back over there in 1 Samuel 19.12, it says, So Michael let
David down through a window, and he went and fled and escaped. God provided a way of escape
for David. He asked for God to give him
a way of escape, to deliver him, and God provided him a way of
escape. Now, I want you to see that that
way of escape is the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the way of escape
from our sin, from our wicked nature, from all the devil and
the wiles of the devil, from this evil world. Our escape is
the Lord Jesus Christ. And I want you to see that. And
the way we're going to see that is we're going to hear Christ
speak in this psalm. We're going to hear Christ speaking
in this psalm. And we see three things that
was necessary for Christ to be the way of escape. One, it was
for Him to be sinless. He had to be sinless. Two, He
had to be perfectly faithful to God. And three, He had to
exalt God and reveal Him to us in order for Him to be the way
of escape for every believer. Now first of all, Christ is the
way of escape because He is the sinless substitute of His people. Read verses 1 and let's read
down to verse 4. Now hear Christ speaking this. Hear this as the Lord Jesus Christ
speaking. The Psalms are the Lord speaking,
and so when we hear this, hear Christ speaking. He says in verse
1, deliver me from my enemies, O my God. Defend me from them
that rise up against me. Deliver me from the workers of
iniquity and save me from bloody men. For lo, they lie in wait
for my soul. The mighty are gathered against
me, not for my transgression, nor for my sin, O Lord. They
run and prepare themselves without any fault, awake to help me and
behold." Now the devil and wicked sinners arose against our Savior
when he walked this earth. When he says there in verse 1,
he says, they rise against me. they rise against me." Our Lord
was surrounded by the workers of iniquity. The workers of iniquity. Anytime a sinner does something
against God or against his people that is contrary to God's Word,
that person's being a worker of iniquity. If I do anything
against God or against another fellow sinner, I'm working iniquity."
And that's what they were doing against Christ. They were working
iniquity. They were bloody men. That means
they were bloodthirsty. They were seeking His death.
He said, the mighty are gathered against me. Now go over to Acts
4, and we hear this spoken again about Christ in Acts chapter
4, and he's quoting Psalm 2 here, but listen to Acts 4, 25. He
says, By the mouth of thy servant David hath said, Why did the
heathen rage, and the people imagine vain things? The kings
of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together. Christ said, The mighty men are
gathered together against me. He says here, the rulers were
gathered together against the Lord and against His Christ.
For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus whom thou hast anointed
both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the people
of Israel were gathered together. But here's the good news. They
were gathered to do whatsoever God's hand and God's counsel
determined before to be done. But do you see Christ now in
our psalm? This is Christ speaking when
He speaks of these mighty men gathered together against Him.
And they charged our Redeemer with sin. They charged Him with
blaspheming God. And our Lord says here in verse
3, It's not for my transgression, nor for my sin, O Lord. They
run and prepare themselves without my fault. They're charging me
when there's no transgression or sin or fault in me. Now brethren,
as far as David's concerned, David could say that about Saul
because he had done nothing against Saul. And you and I should try
to always make it so that men can't charge us with transgressing. But our Lord Jesus Christ could
say this without any reservation whatsoever. He was without sin
and without transgression and without fault. in thought, word,
and deed. He was sinless. He was reviled
as a blasphemer and a gluttonous man, and yet he did not sin by
threatening back in any way. Look over at 1 Peter chapter
2. This is how you'll see right here, I think you'll see this.
This is why we need a sinless substitute. 1 Peter 2 and verse
22 He says, Christ did no sin, neither
was guile found in His mouth. There was no guile in His nature,
there was no guile in His heart, and so there was no guile in
His mouth. He did no sin, He knew no sin. When He was reviled,
reviled not again. When He was reviled, He didn't
revile back against the people. When He suffered, He threatened
not. but committed himself to him
that judgeth righteously." Now who of us have ever been reviled
and did not revile back? And you might say, well I held
my tongue, I didn't revile back. Was there no guile that came
up inside your sinful nature and your sinful heart? Was there
no guile that you felt swelling up in there? Who has ever been,
who has ever suffered and threatened not? Not one of us can say that,
that there was not an ounce of sin in us. God looks on the heart. God looks on the heart. Usually
when a sinner charges another sinner with being a reviler,
that very charge is itself an act of reviling, usually. Usually when somebody feels like
they've been reviled against, and they accuse that person of
being a reviler, Their very act of accusing them of that is them
reviling back. Christ didn't even do that. He
didn't even do that. He kept his mouth shut. There
was no guile that welled up in him at all because he knew no
sin at all. None whatsoever. And that's why
we need a substitute. And we need a sinless substitute
because we're sinners. We're sinners. But Christ is
the way of escape. He's salvation because He is
sinless. He knew no sin. Go to Isaiah
chapter 53. And listen to verse, let's read
verse 7. Isaiah 53, 7. He was oppressed
and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth. He's brought
as a lamb to the slaughter, as a sheep before her shearers is
dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and
from judgment, and who shall declare his generation? For he
was cut off out of the land of the living. For the transgression
of my people was he stricken. God said, for the transgression
of my people was he stricken. And he made his grave with the
wicked and with the rich in his death because, here's why he
was fit to be our substitute, he had done no violence, neither
was any deceit in his mouth. but having laid the sin of his
people on Christ, and having made him sin for us, it pleased
the Lord to bruise him. He hath put him to grief, when
thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed,
he shall prolong days, the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in
his hand." And it did. Our Lord Jesus put away the sin
of his people, he brought in everlasting righteousness for
his people. But I want you to see there, and what I'm showing
you is, never let anybody say that Christ was made a sinner
on the cross. He was not. He was not. At no
point was He a sinner. Indeed, He hath made Him sin
for us. But, Christ is He who knew no
sin. In himself, he knew no sin. He
owned our sin to be his. When he was made sin, he says
in these Psalms that they're my sins. But, as far as him personally
sinning against God, he tells us in this Psalm right here that
he had no sin. It was not for his own sin. He
had no sin. It was for the sin of my people
that He was stricken, God said. You see, in order to be the holiness
and righteousness of His people, our Lord Jesus had to be made
of a woman and He had to be a sinless man. He had to be made under
the law and He had to walk under that law in perfection and He
had to obey the Father without sin and He had to do so all the
way unto the death of the cross. In other words, from Conception
to the grave, our Lord was without sin. He personally was without
sin. That's why He's the way of escape.
He was able to bear the sin of His people because He knew no
sin. And having borne the sin of His people, He pleased God. He satisfied the justice of God
for His people. So He's our way of escape. Now
secondly, He's escape because He's the author and finisher
of our faith. And by that, I mean he committed
his cause into God's hand in perfect faith. Scripture says
we're saved through faith, and he gives us faith, we're saved
through faith, but we can't look to our faith. What does our faith
look to? Who does our faith lay hold of?
We lay hold of Christ, and it's His faithfulness by which we're
saved. Let's see it in this Psalm. Psalm,
back in Psalm 59. In verse 1 he says, deliver me
from my enemies, oh my God. Who's he trusting? He's trusting
God. Defend me from them that rise
against me. He's looking to God. Deliver
me from the workers of iniquity. Save me from bloody men. Deliver
me, defend me, deliver me, save me. He trusts that God's going
to have them in derision. In verse 8, he says, Thou, O
Lord, shalt laugh at them. Thou shalt have all the heathen
in derision. It's God who gets the last laugh
on those that would laugh and mock His servant. But in order
to be the faith of our faith, I mean by that to be the author
and finisher of faith. Our Lord Jesus Christ committed
all His care into the Father's hand in perfect faith. That's what we hear Him doing
in this psalm. He's committing it all to the
Father in perfect faith. In order to deliver His people,
He had to trust the Father to deliver Him. In order to deliver
His people, He had to perfectly, faithfully trust the Father to
deliver Him. He prayed, deliver me, O my God. In order to be the defender,
that word is the high tower. Our God is a high tower. In order
to be the high tower, the defense of His people, He had to trust
the Father to be His defender. He couldn't defend Himself, He
had to trust the Father to defend Him. In order to save his people,
he had to believe God the Father would save him. Remember he said
through Isaiah, He is near that justifies me, who will contend
with me? He knew that it would be the
Father who would eventually justify him and raise him from the grave.
And he trusted the Father. You talk about faith. You talk
about faith. He's trusting the word of that
covenant that the Father made with Him. That once He bore the
sin of His people, and God poured out justice on Him, and He gave
up the ghosts, and He laid down His life and was buried in a
grave, He trusted the Father that the Father would not suffer
His Holy One to see corruption. That's faith, brethren. That's
faith. trusting that God would bring
him again from the dead. Now don't make any mistake about
who this is. Christ is God. He's God of very
God. He's the one who created the
heavens and the earth and all things that are made. He created
them. It's by the word of His power that everything's upheld.
He is God. That's who He is. But as the
servant of the Father, as one who come and made himself a servant
to serve God in perfection, in perfect faith, and to serve for
His people, to represent His people, to be the head and representative
of His people. In order to be our defense and
the God of our mercy, He had to wait upon the Father to be
His defense and the God of His mercy. That's almost too much
for us to take in, isn't it? that God would come so low as
to put Himself in a position where He's a man having to trust
God? It's hard to even grasp that.
But that's what He did. Look at verse 9. He says, Because
of His strength will I wait upon thee, for God is my defense. The God of my mercy shall prevent
me. It means he shall go before me
in mercy. Prevent there doesn't mean what
we think it means. It means God will go before me. He'll give
me mercy before mercy and mercy before mercy. Prevenient mercy. And he'll save me. And he says
God shall let me see my desire upon my enemies. Another time
or at your leisure you can read the rest of the Psalm and you'll
hear what his desire was upon the heathen. He prayed for God
not to have mercy on them. Not to have mercy on those that
commit the unpardonable sin of rejecting Him. He said have no
mercy on them. But in all of this we see what
the Apostle Peter said. The Apostle Peter said when he
was reviled, he reviled not again. When he suffered, he threatened
not. But what did he do? He committed himself. to him that judgeth righteously. He committed his entire cause,
all his care to the Father. To the Father. He's surrounded. His house was
surrounded. Surrounded by the wiles of the
devil. Surrounded by wicked men of this world. surrounded completely,
but Christ was faithful to God. And that's the perfect faith
by which God beholds each believer as perfectly faithful to Him. God gives us faith or we wouldn't
have it. But when He gives us faith, our
faith is so small and sometimes it's basically non-existent. And we just are so full of unbelief. There's more unbelief in us than
there is faith. But it's not the amount of faith
or the strength of faith that we have that saves us. If you
have faith as a grain of mustard seed, why can you do the unthinkable? Because that grain of mustard
seed, that faith that's the size of a little small seed of mustard,
that faith's trusting Christ who's perfectly faithful. And
that's the faithfulness in which God sees His people. Perfectly,
perfectly faithful. You won't find God's people boasting
in our faith. We're not going to talk about
how strong our faith is because it's not. You want to boast in
your faith and how strong your faith is, you just hang on. God
will show you just how opposite that is. You don't have strong
faith. He'll show you. But what do we do? We look unto
Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. He wrote the book
on it. He authored faith. He is the
perfectly faithful one, and He finished it. And we look to Him. He has gone to that cross, He
despised the shame, He put away the sin of His people, and He
never wavered from looking to the Father. And now He's seated
at God's right hand, having accomplished the redemption of His people.
Now lastly, Christ is our way of escape because in all that
He did, He makes us behold God the Father. And He makes us behold
God highly exalted. He says here in verse 16, But
I will sing of thy power. Now this is Christ speaking.
He's speaking to the Father. I will sing of thy power. Yea, I will sing aloud of thy
mercy in the morning. For thou hast been my defense
and refuge in the day of my trouble. Unto thee, O my strength will
I sing, for God is my defense and the God of my mercy. Christ
promised the Father. I won't have you turn there,
The Hebrew writer quoted this, it's in Isaiah and other prophecies,
but Christ promised the Father that he would sing of God's glory
in the midst of the congregation. In the midst of the great congregation,
I will sing unto thee, sing of thy praise, and thy honor, and
thy power, and thy glory. And he's talking about amongst
his people. Amongst his people he will sing.
of God's power and all God's attributes and all God's way
and all God's salvation. That's another way of saying
this. Christ is the fullness of the
Godhead bodily. You're going to see God and see
his attributes and see his fullness. You're going to see it in Christ
Jesus. Christ singing in the midst of the great congregation
is another way of saying we see the glory of God in the face
of Christ Jesus. He's going to reveal to us all
these glorious attributes of God the Father. Through the preaching
of the gospel, Christ sings to us. He preaches to us. He ministers
to us through the preaching of the gospel. He said in verse
16, but I will sing of thy power. And in Christ, When we behold
Christ and we behold Him being the power of God to put away
the sin of His people, He sings to us and He makes us to behold
God's power. We see God's power. We see this
man Christ Jesus called the power of God and the salvation. We
see Him called the wisdom and power of God and when we behold
Him, we behold the power of God to put away sin in Christ. He said, through the preaching
of the gospel, verse 16, yea, I will sing aloud of thy mercy
in the morning. In Christ's mercy toward helpless
sinners like you and me are, in His mercy toward us, He makes
us to see God the Father's mercy toward us. There's only one place
you find mercy. That's in Christ. And it's in
Christ that we behold God the Father being merciful to us.
That's Christ singing to us of the Father's mercy. That's Christ
exalting the Father's mercy to us. He says, When He brings us
to sing with one heart unto God our Father and to Christ, when
He brings us to sing to God and we sing to Christ, we're singing
to God our Father and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, exactly
what Christ is singing to the Father in this psalm. Look at
verse 16. He says there in verse 16, for thou has been my defense
and my refuge in the day of my trouble. That's Christ's song
first. He's preeminent in everything. That's His song to the Father
first. Thou has been my defense and my refuge in the day of my
trouble. But by exalting the Father to us, that's what He
brings us to sing. We sing this of Christ. We say
you've been my defense and my refuge and singing it to Christ,
we're singing it to God the Father. So by highly exalting God, by
coming and doing all these works the Father sent Him to do, by
being the sinless substitute, by being faithful to the Father,
He highly exalted God. He highly exalted God. He makes
us behold the fullness of the Godhead bodily in Him. He makes
us to behold the glory of God the Father in Him. And He brings
us to cry out what Christ cried to the Father in verse 17. Unto
thee, O my strength, will I sing. For God is my defense. He's the
God of my mercy. I want to end by you going to
Philippians chapter 2. It's this love and it's this
condescension and it's this perfect, obedient faithfulness of God
to the Father that constrains every true believer. It makes
us of one mind and of one heart. Because when Scripture says we
have the mind of Christ, this is the mind that the Spirit of
God puts in you and me when He makes us behold the Lord Jesus
Christ. He makes us imitators of Christ in how Christ served
the Father and highly exalted the Father. Look here. This is
what Paul is getting at. This is how he was teaching.
He didn't go and preach the law. This is what he was saying to
the saints at Philippi and to encourage them not to be fighting
and feuding with one another, not to be using malicious words,
and that he was encouraging them to be one. And listen to what
he says. I want to read from verse 1 down
to about halfway through the chapter. Listen. Philippians
2.1. If there be therefore any consolation
in Christ, do you have any comfort in Christ? He's saying if you
do, you have any comfort of love, If any fellowship of the Spirit,
any bowels and mercies, are your loins girt about with truth,
with the mercy and the truth of God, then fulfill ye my joy,
that you be like-minded. having the same love, being of
one accord and of one mind. Let nothing be done through strife
or vainglory, but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem other
better than themselves. Look not every man on his own
things, but every man also on the things of others. Let us
see how we can help our brethren. Let this mind be in you, which
was also in Christ Jesus. That's what he said. And everything
he just said, he said, let this mind be in you which was in Christ.
That was the mind of Christ. And he's going to show us now.
Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be
equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon
him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men,
and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and
became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. That's
what we've been looking at in our psalm. We've been hearing
Christ's faithful, sinless obedience to the Father. And in all of
that, what did He do? He said, I will sing unto you
in that congregation. I'm going to exalt you in the
congregation. And what did Christ do by everything He fulfilled
in this earth? Wherefore God also hath highly
exalted him. In everything he did, he highly
exalted God. And therefore God highly exalted
him. And he's given him a name which
is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee
shall bow of things in heaven, things in the earth, things under
the earth, and that every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ
is Lord through the glory of God the Father. Let me end with
this one thing. David prayed, and he said, Lord,
deliver me. He said, defend me. He said,
deliver me. Set me on high from them that
rise against me. Well, after David cried unto
the Father to save him, and the Lord provided that way of escape,
I want to show you where David ended up. In 1 Samuel 19, in
verse 18. So David fled and escaped, and
he came to Samuel. You know what that word means,
that name? It means heard of God. He cried out to God, and
for Christ's sake, he was heard of God. He came to Roma, that
means a high hill. He prayed for God to deliver
him, to highly exalt me above them that are risen against me.
He ended up highly exalted. and he told him all that Saul
had done to him and he and Samuel went and they dwelt at Nao. That
means a resting place that is an abode, a resting place, like
a residence where you dwell. Everybody that cries unto God
through Christ Jesus our Lord, they are going to be heard, they
are going to be exalted and saved in Christ our high tower, and
they're going to be brought to rest in Him from all their enemies. I pray God will bless that. Let's
go to the Lord in prayer. Our great God and our Father,
we thank You for this word. We thank You, Lord, that You
shut us up, hedge us about, and bring us to see our own helplessness
and our own inability. Father, we confess it's not a
place that we'd like to be, but it's because we like to believe
the lie the devil's taught us that we're as gods and able to
discern good from evil, and we're really not. But we thank You
for bringing us to that place, making us to be helpless, making
us to be unable to do anything. But crying to you, it's a good place to be. We're thankful for Christ Jesus
who served you perfectly and in whom we're complete. Keep
us trusting Him. Keep us looking to Him and give
us the mind of Christ, Lord. For His sake, we ask these things.
Amen.