All right, 2 Samuel, chapter
22. 2 Samuel, chapter 22. Getting fairly
close to the end of this book. Oh, before I forget, there will
be no prayer meeting next Wednesday night. Bonnie and I, at this
time, will probably be boarding a plane in Denver to go up to
Great Falls, Montana. So, yeah, Bonnie gets to go with
me, so that'll be kind of nice. Yeah, and yeah, we're going to
go ahead. And actually, we're supposed to visit
with Steve and learn the grind while we're up there. Yeah, they
contacted me. What? No. Well, I talked to the
pastor there and he has met them and they have some relative that
goes to that church. But I know they I'm not sure where
they live. They built a new house within
the last year. But anyway, that'll be nice to see them again. She
saw that I'd put it up somewhere that we were going to be there. So she said, hey, we can visit. And I said, OK. And I will have
to get, I told her I'd get back to her once I've got tickets
bought. So I'll need to do that. And OK, 2 Samuel chapter 22. Let's pray. Father, thank you
for this day. Thank you for the beautiful weather
we've had. We thank you for your Son, the Lord Jesus, who loved
us and gave himself for us. We thank you that we can know
that our sins are forgiven and that we are without sin in your
sight. Now, Lord, as we look at this
portion of Scripture, may we see in it things that move our
hearts to love you more, praise you more, glorify you more. In
Christ's name we pray, amen. 2 Samuel 22 is the very same thing
as Psalm 18. The same psalm is recorded twice
in the scriptures. Now, if you look at the first
verse, it says, David sang to the Lord the words of this psalm
when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and
from the hand of Saul. Now, that was years ago. If you're
trying to follow the timeline, that is, that was years before
some of the events we've already passed through. But as I pointed
out, these Old Testament histories are not necessarily written the
same way we write histories. You know, we start at a point
in time and just record the succession of events. God inspired these
writers to write a series of stories. And sometimes the timeline
overlaps. Sometimes one story over here
really happened way back there. But the reason that the Holy
Spirit inspired them to be in this order was that... Well, I guess we thought we needed
a weather report right now, but it's all right. Even though we
understand that these things didn't happen. chronologically,
in the order that we find them, doesn't mean that we're not supposed
to understand the Spirit had them put here so that we would
recognize them within the context of whatever's just been written.
Now, what have we just gone through? We have gone through, and I think
you have to go clear back to I can't remember what chapter
it is now, that begins with, you know, the events that begin
to unfold right after David's sin with Bathsheba. And that's
the infighting within his own household. It is the recording
of Absalom trying to take over and actually being successful
for a little while. And then we have that son of
Micri, and we have Amasa, we have all these people that have
tried to undermine David, and now every one of them is gone. And therefore, God inspired the
writer of, writer or writers of 2 Samuel, to put this psalm
right here. Because this song, as it said,
it was a song that David sang to the Lord when the Lord had
delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and the hand
of Saul. Of course, we're fairly near the end of David's life
at this point. But David had trouble all throughout
his life. Troubles would rise and then
there'd be a little bit of peace. But isn't that the way it is
in the world now for any government, you know? I remember back in
the 80s when the Berlin Wall fell and the
Soviet Union started to break up. And right away, there were
people in our federal government clamoring that, OK, we need to
not spend so much money on our military. And they said, you
know, we need to take advantage of the peace dividend. They call
it. They just wanted to grab the money for their other projects.
They had mine. It's not like they were going
to take less money from us. We weren't going to get anything
out of the peace dividend. But I remember thinking, well,
that's just plain silly. Do you think that they're the only enemies?
And how long? It wouldn't be any time at all.
We realize how much danger then was coming to us from the Middle
East. There's always trouble brewing somewhere. Why? It's the nature of man.
And man always rises up and tries to overthrow others to take what
they have. You know, when the Lord said, to the disciples, you know, they
wanted to know when the last days were going to be. And he
said, well, in those days, nation shall rise against nation. Well, he doesn't mean that it's
going to start just before. Actually, all the things he mentioned
there are things that are always going on. And that was his point. He said it'll be just like in
the days of Noah, when people were eating and drinking and
marrying and giving in marriage until the day Noah went in the
ark. And I've heard people say, yeah, people now they're gluttons
and drunkards and all kinds of marriage. No, all the Lord was
saying was things are going to go on just like they always have
gone until that day. And you know, that's what Peter
points out in his epistle. when he says there shall arise
scoffers who shall say where is the promise of his coming
for things are happening now like they always have and that's
the way it is all the time things just keep going on as they always
have but this caught my eye in verse one it said david sang
to the lord sang to the lord the words of this song Now normally
when we think, you know, if we had in our mind to write a poem
or a song or something like that, we'd think about singing it to
people. It might be about the Lord, but we'd be singing it
to people or with people or something like this, if David sang this
song to the Lord. And you know, when we gather
for worship and sing, that's what we ought to be doing. Now,
David did say, singing to one another, not David, Paul said,
singing to one another in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual song. True,
we sing to one another, or we're with one another, and all that,
but our heart ought to be, this is a song unto the Lord. Sang to please Him. You say, well,
my singing can't please Him. Well, remember the Lord There's
nobody in earth that can sing like they do in heaven. I remember
Henry once making the remark about those that try to put on
a big show of their talent in their singing specials and stuff.
He said, do you realize he hears angels sing? So don't think you're
going to impress God with your musical talent, no matter how
good you are. And anyway, the Lord is not looking
at the outward appearance or listening. to the outward sound
of our singing. It's what comes from our heart.
And so here is this song that David wrote and sang, and he
sang it to the Lord when the Lord delivered him. Remember
in the book of Revelation, it says,
and they sang a new song. Well, there was a deliverance.
This is what causes our hearts to sing to the Lord. Now, here
is the Lord, his song. He says, the Lord, this is verse
two. The Lord is my rock, my fortress,
and my deliverer. My God is my rock in whom I take
refuge, my shield and the whole of my salvation. He is my stronghold,
my refuge, and my Savior. From violent men you save me.
I call to the Lord, who is worthy of praise, and am saved from
my enemies." Now, whenever we read the Psalms, we keep in mind that these words
can be applied to the Lord Jesus Christ, and they can also be
applied to us. Now, sometimes it's more easy
to take a section and apply it to us than the Lord, and sometimes
the other way around. But the life of our Lord Jesus
Christ is so entwined in the life of His people that what
happens to one happens to the other. That's why the Lord said,
for as much as you did it unto the least of these my brethren,
you did it unto me. And likewise, when we look at
what God did to the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary,
we recognize that what the Lord did to Him is taken as though
He's done it to us, and all the judgment against our sin has
been satisfied. That's why Paul says, if any
man be in Christ, he's a new creation. He's not talking there
about the new birth. What he's saying is, in Christ,
that person who had sin has been killed. And therefore, now that
you think, well, I'm the same person. Yeah. And then again, no. Because you
raised with Christ. And from God's viewpoint, you're
a brand new person. All the old things have passed
away. And what are the old things? Everything that has to do with
this life, even things that have not yet happened, are old things,
because though they had not yet happened, they had been laid
on the cross and they're gone. Behold, all things become new.
You say, well, I don't feel all that new. Well, you'll eventually
catch up to what God has already done. Time will catch us up to
heaven's timeline. But Excuse me, this scripture here,
you can see, of course, how we might look at it, because we
look at our situation, our troubles in this world, and most of all,
our spiritual troubles in this world. Paul told us we wrestle
not against flesh and blood. Our people, the people of this
world, are not our enemies. They may be tools of the enemy,
but they are not the enemy. Who is our enemy? Well, our true
enemy is the devil. It's Satan. And all that all
his minions, all his lesser demons that follow him. But primarily,
our enemy is Satan himself. He goes about as a roaring lion,
seeking whom he may devour. And his enmity towards us as
believers in the Lord Jesus Christ is, quite frankly, the only way
he has to express his hatred of the Lord Jesus Christ. He tried to express it directly
against Christ, and what happened? He got defeated horribly. And so he's turned his wrath
against us. And this he knows, if he is able to destroy even
one for whom Christ died, he has completely robbed Christ
of all his glory. Christ's glory is wrapped up
in this, that He's utterly successful in fulfilling all that His Father
gave Him to do. He said, this is the will of
my Father, that of all that He has given me, I would lose nothing
but raise it up in the last day. What's going to happen? If that
doesn't happen, what happens? Christ fails. But He says, You saved me, I'm
saved from my enemies, and it uses several images of salvation
and the way the Lord saves us. And of course, we've got to look
at this from the viewpoint of a man living, you know, a thousand
years B.C. The Lord is my rock, my fortress,
my delivery. Now, a rock, the scriptures often
refer to God as a rock, and a rock to someone, particularly in the
wilderness, provides several means of help. First of all,
if you are being chased, or if you are in battle, rock is generally
the high ground. And you're up on a rock, you're
in a place of advantage. Or a rock may just provide cover. You can be behind a rock. you
can actually burrow under a rock and then camouflage the opening.
Or do you remember that when it talks about God and compares
him to the shadow of a rock in a dry and thirsty land? Now, where I come from, there's
shade just about everywhere because there's trees just about everywhere.
If you were hot, you didn't have to go very far, but you could
step out of the sun if you wanted to. I remember when I moved here,
and the very year I moved here, it started a drought cycle and
a warm cycle. And Molly and I arrived in November
for at least 10 days. The high was between 105 and
110. It just plain didn't rain. And I remember thinking, you
know, the sun comes up around here, 530 in the morning. It
doesn't set till 930 at night, and there's nowhere to hide.
I'm used to trees and, you know,
mountains, you know, the sky will light up long before it
comes over the top of the mountain, you know, same way in the evening,
sun goes down behind the mountain, you got a long twilight and all
that, but not around here. All you got is the horizon. Oh,
the Lord is the shadow of a mighty huge rock in a dry and thirsty
land. He is the one in whom we take
refuge. He's the shield, it says, and the horn of my salvation.
And the horn was always a symbol of strength, so he's the strength
of my salvation. So in verse 4, he says, I call
to the Lord, who is worthy of praise. in doing some research on the
subject of limited employment. You know, I go on the internet
and one of the most well-known treatises on that subject was
written by a man named John Owen. back in the 1600s. It's called
The Death of Death and the Death of Christ. I do not recommend
you read it. In fact, I don't really recommend you read anything
from John Owen, because that man is so difficult to read.
Find someone who can wade through that and has written it down
in that version. But actually, the argument that
he made is the argument that caused me to understand the theology
of it. But anyway, I'm studying this. And I click on one of the links
and actually it was called the death of John Owens argument.
And this guy did all he could to unravel and undermine John
Owens argument. And it was just plain silly.
But I thought, you know, these people that want to present the
idea that God loves everybody and is doing all he can to save
everybody. Jesus Christ came with the intention
of doing a work that he hoped would save everybody, and the
Spirit is coming, and he's doing all he can to get people to believe. That kind of God is not worthy
of praise. He is, for the most part, a failure. there are about
2 billion or so people that profess to be Christians in this world.
And you know that the greater portion of them have no clue
what the gospel is. Because that includes every,
well, it includes the Roman Catholic Church, it includes all the cults.
You know, that's the way, when they're doing these comparative
religion things, when you say Christian, anybody who calls
himself a Christian is getting included in those 2 billion.
I don't have any idea for sure. You know, I can't tell you how
many. It says the foundation of God stands sure the Lord knows
them that are his. I don't. But I'm sure it's far,
far less than two billion. And if the Lord is trying to
save everybody, and he can't even round up a billion of them
out of a world with seven billion, what's that say of God? But he's
most certainly not worthy of praise. But that's what I like
about this. He says, I call to the Lord who
is worthy of praise. I remember someone putting up
the objection. This was early in my years in believing in the
absolute sovereignty of God. They said, God's absolutely sovereign,
why pray? I read the perfect response.
If he's not sovereign, why pray? If he's not in charge, what's
the use asking him? I have, and as a young man, it
never crossed my mind, the illogic of this. I've seen preachers
stand in the pulpit, beg people to come forward, telling them
that God's done all he can. The rest is up to you. And then
say, let's ask that God will save sinners. You just told me
He's done everything He can. Why pray to Him? It's time to
pray to men, because evidently it's in their hands now. None
of them. God is worthy of praise. It's
a God that's in control. And therefore, we call to Him.
He says, I'm safe from my enemies. Now, these next few verses, five
through seven, the waves of death The waves of death swirled about
me. The torments of destruction overwhelmed me. The cords of
the grave coiled around me. The snares of death confronted
me. In my distress, I called to the
Lord. I called out to my God. From his temple, he heard my
voice. My cry came to his ears." Now,
I suppose in some small fashion, We can apply this
to us. We might compare our troubles
to this. But the fact of it is, none of
us has ever died yet. Torrents of destruction have
not come upon us. And quite frankly, if we're in
Christ, they never will. Not destruction, just the death
of this body. We can most easily apply these
to the Lord himself. death did swirl about him, and
torrents of destruction did overwhelm him. The cords of the grave did
coil around him, and the snares of death did confront him. And
in his distress, and our Lord, you know, through the mouth of
the prophet Jeremiah did say, look upon me, and see if there'll
be any trouble, any distress like mine. I called to the Lord. I called
out to my God. Now, in the recorded words of
our Lord from the cross, and my understanding is there are
seven sayings, seven things that he said that the Holy Spirit
saw fit to record for us, seven things from the cross. Twice,
he spoke directly to God. He said, my God, my God, why
have you forsaken me? Now, you say, well, how do you
fit that into this framework? I called out to my God. From
the temple, he heard my voice. Well, actually, God didn't respond. That was, he cried those words
while he was in the midst of that time when God was, faced
him not as his father, not as his savior, not as his deliverer,
but as a judge, and judged him for all the sins that he bore. Now, our Lord said that in the
form of a question, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
but it's not as though he didn't know the answer. I just think it's a way and possibly
the only way for the God man to communicate to us what he
was going through. And those are some of the most
awful words that have ever been uttered. I cannot, I mean, I've
seen videos of people who've been confronted with disaster.
You know, I've read about people confronted with just awful, awful
tragedy. And your heart goes out for them,
and if you do see a video or even hear the audio, oh, the
heart-wrenching cries they let out. But it's nothing compared. What lie behind our words? What
lie behind the words of our Lord? My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? For all our troubles, from our
conception till now, we have never been forsaken by the Lord. He may have hidden his face so
he couldn't see it, but he was there. Our Lord Jesus was truly forsaken
of God. David said, I was young, now
I'm old, and I have not seen the righteous forsaken. But on
one day, it happened. Now, I realize, technically speaking,
in the sight of God, he wasn't righteous, because he bore our
sin. But we know that in his nature
and in his historical record, he was a righteous man, and he
was forsaken by God. so that you and I never need
utter those words, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? But later on, just before he
died, he said, Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit. He'd already cried, as I understand
it, he already cried, it is finished. And what was finished? All the
suffering. And so he said, I commend my
spirit into your hands. And from his temple, God's true
throne, in the most holy place, not made in hands, he heard the
Lord's voice. And the cry of the Lord Jesus
came to his ears. And now, Here is God's response. The earth trembled and quaked.
The foundations of the heavens shook. They trembled because
he was angry. Smoke rose from his nostrils,
consuming fire came from his mouth. Burning coals blazed out. He parted the heavens and came
down. Dark clouds were under his feet. Now, In one sense, this describes
what God did for our Lord Jesus Christ. It also describes what
he did to the Lord's enemies in response to what they did
to the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, all of these images are
simply, you know, he's not talking literally. David knows that,
you know, that smoke doesn't really come out of God's nose.
you know, and coals don't really come out of his mouth any more
than when John said, out of his mouth, go with a sharp sword,
that with it he should smite the nations. These are the visual
symbols, and all of them are given to picture God's unstoppable
power. The earth trembled and quaked. You know, We live in the area
described as Tornado Alley, and tornadoes are scary things. But
when a tornado is coming, if you know it ahead of time, most
of us, we have a place of relative safety we can go to. And there's
a high likelihood we'll survive. I cannot imagine what it's like
to be in a major earthquake. There's nothing to do about that.
I mean, the earth opens up and swallows you. It just did. There's
no place to go. And I remember way back, I think
it was in the early 90s, when there was a pretty big quake
over there in Los Angeles. And I remember seeing pictures
of, you know, one of those where the interstates intersect and
bridges and collapsed on top of each other. People were trapped
under there for days. A lot of them had been mashed. You know,
the earth trembled and quaked. The foundations of the heavens
shook. They trembled because he was
angry. And then it speaks about smoke
and consuming fire and burning coals. In the book of Hebrews,
While the writer there was writing to encourage them, he also realized
sometimes we need a good warning. And after warning them from departing
the gospel in order to avoid persecution, he said, our God
is a consuming fire. And what was his point? In a fire, there's only one place
of safety, and that's where the fire's already been. You've heard
me tell the story about how they used to deal with prairie fires,
when they were the pioneers crossing here. The prairie fire started
up, and of course, the little boy was terrified, but they circled
around and got behind the fire. And the little boy, excuse me,
they quickly set a fire and burnt an area, and they all got in
it. But there's that fire that's coming this way. The little boy
was scared. He says to his dad, he says, how do you know that
we won't get burnt? He says, we can't. We're standing
on burnt ground. Fire can't pass over the same
ground twice. Fuel's already been burnt up.
And this fire, this consuming fire has already passed through
Christ, He's the burnt ground on which we stand. We leave that,
where are we? We're confronted with a consuming
fire. And so His unstoppable power is mentioned. Then He says,
He mounted the cherubim and flew. He soared on the wings of the
wind. Now the cherubim, they're mythical
creatures. But they're just symbolic creatures.
That's why the Holy Spirit was not hesitant to use them in all
of your ancient imagery. Cherubim, and they're like, they're
the creatures that look like lions, but they got wings and
things like that. That's what a cherubim was. And
what it pictured was guardians of the firm. That's why You know the Ark of the Covenant?
That was considered to be God's throne. That's why there were
cherubim either side of it. And so they were symbols of authority,
unrivaled authority. So he mounted the cherubim and
flew. And then it said he soared on the wings of the wind. Now
when our Lord Jesus Christ talked to Nicodemus and said, that man
must be born again. Of course, that just, you know,
Nicodemus couldn't understand that. And of course, that was
exactly the Lord's point. You can't understand, you can't
perceive the kingdom of God unless you've been born again. And so
Nicodemus says, how can a man enter his mother's womb and be
born a second time? The Lord said that which is born
of the flesh is flesh, that which is born of the spirit is spirit.
Now, the word spirit in both the Hebrew language of the Old
Testament and the Greek language of the New Testament, the word
can be translated spirit, breath, or wind. And so the Lord, when
he was speaking to Nicodemus, he was using a play on words. He says, gotta be born with a
spirit in there. He's using the same word. that
normally they could be translated wind. And then he goes on and
says the wind blows where it wants to. You hear it sound,
but you don't know where it comes from. And you really don't know
where it's going. You can't do anything about it.
It's just there. And it comes through and does,
goes where it will, does what it will. And the most we can
do, if you think of it in terms of a destructive wind, is try
to patch things up once it's passed through. That's what he's
talking about. He's sold on the wings of the
wind. We don't know where he's coming
from. We don't know where he'll go next. But we know this, God
goes where he wants to and does what he wants to. He made darkness
his canopy around him in dark rain clouds of the sky. Here is a picture of the mystery
of God's actions. You ever said, man, I just can't
understand what God's doing. That's right. You can't. He doesn't
intend for you to. The book of Ecclesiastes says
he's put the vanishing point in our hearts so that we won't
know what he's doing. You know, we live in this little
slice of time, you know, well, Moses said 70 years, maybe 80,
you know, medicine has given us a few more. And then some
die long before they reach 70. But, you know, no matter how long a man lives
in these days, it's just a blip in the whole of time. And to
be able to make sense out of the world and what's going on
simply by looking at that. We can't do that. We can't figure
out what God's doing. That's why it says that we don't
live by sight. We live by faith. We don't know what God is accomplishing. We don't know what his purpose
is in all the details of our lives, but we trust him. We know what the end purpose
is, is to glorify His Son through the salvation of His people.
And if we're among His people, then we can know that in all
these things He's doing, which don't make any sense to us, but
we know this, He's weaving them all together for our good. But
we cannot see how all these things are going to work out to our
good. It doesn't make any sense. And it says, out of the brightness
of His presence, bolts of lightning blaze forth. It is darkness in
terms of us being able to understand what He's doing, but there is
no question He's doing something. We've been given eyes to see
the brightness of His glory by faith. And we see the Lord dealing
with his enemies all the time. And we understand that that's
what's happening. He raises them up. He puts them
down. He gives them good days and they think they're prospering.
And in one place, it says that they think the Lord never punishes
sin because the Lord waits. I don't know if the scriptures
ever put it this way, but he's just setting them up. That's
all you're doing. Because time will come when like
lightning out of the sky, boom. Now, what can you do about lightning?
It's got you before you know it. Yeah. The Lord thundered
from heaven, the voice of the most high resounding. He shot
arrows and scattered the enemies, bolts of lightning and routed
them. The valleys, in verse 16, the
valleys of the sea were exposed and the foundations of the earth
laid bare at the rebuke of the Lord and the blast of breath
from his nostrils. Now, possibly, he is making reference
to the Lord opening the Red Sea so that the Israelites could
pass through. That's maybe the historical reference he's talking
to, but he's applying that to his own experiences as simply
a demonstration, again, of the Lord's power. And when it says
the valleys of the sea were exposed, in other words, God pushed the
waters back and you could see, you know, the mountains and valleys
that make up the floor of the sea. And it says the foundations
of the earth, the very bottom. You know, you've got to look
at that from the perspective of them, you know. Now, I know
that out in the Pacific Ocean is what is considered to be the
lowest place. It's seven miles deep, you know. And so we're here standing on
what we think is level ground. And then you look at a hole that's
seven miles deep. That's foundations of the earth. Bottom of the ocean. And all
this from the blast of breath from His nostrils, His Spirit. His Spirit goes forth, and He
even, now we normally think of the Spirit of God going forth
in terms of God's grace being applied, and that's true, but
part of God's grace to His people is the destruction of His people's
innocence. Now look at this, verse 17. He
reached down from on high and took hold of me. He drew me out
of deep waters. And so he's picturing his troubles
as the waters of the sea. And he's at the bottom. This
very much resembles the story of Jonah. The things that Jonah
said, but then by his spirit, he blows the waters out of the
way, lays bare the valleys of the ocean and the foundations
of the earth, and reaches down and takes hold of his beloved
one. And he did that. Now, here's
one we can easily say both applies to our Lord Jesus and to us. For our Lord was encircled by
death, by the tomb, by the grave. He was, as it were, at the bottom
of the sea. And yet the Lord reached down
and rescued him out of death. We'll find out why. Well, might
not get to it tonight, but he drew me out of the deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful
enemy. Paul says the last enemy to be
destroyed is death. Now, Paul said, I desire to depart
and be with Christ. And therefore, anyone who is
a believer does not need to fear the death of the body. But that
does not mean that death is really our friend. If it were our friend,
he wouldn't raise us from the dead, would he? Death's an enemy. Death's an enemy to us when it
strikes our loved ones and friends and takes them away from us.
I don't call that a friend. Death's an enemy. even as it,
throughout our lives, it chases us with illnesses and all kinds
of maladies and accidents and everything on its way to completely
overwhelming us in our flesh. Anyway, it's an enemy. There's
coming a day when God's going to destroy that enemy once and
for all, and it'll never touch us again. That's why it's written
in the book of Revelations, there is no more death. Not just that nobody dies from
that point. It's even more than that. He
will have redeemed our bodies, says the scriptures, raised us
from the dead, and therefore there is no more death. Even
what it did to us is undone. And then there is no principle
of death at work in us after that. He said, he drew me out of the
deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful
enemy, from my foes who were too strong for me. I hear people
say, God will never give you more than you can handle. I beg
your pardon. He'll never give you more than he will save you
from. He'll never give you more than he'll uphold you through.
But he regularly sends to his people things that they can't
handle. And one of the things He's going to send to you someday
that you can't handle is death. It's just so. What are you going
to do about it? Nothing you can do about it. But He will eventually
do something about it. They confronted me in the day
of my disaster, verse 19, but the Lord was my support. He brought
me out into a spacious place. He rescued me because He delighted
in me. Why did God raise Jesus Christ
from the dead? Well, before, he said, this is
my beloved son, and I'm well pleased. But for a time, God was his judge. But so worthy
is the person of the Lord Jesus, and so meaningful is death. It actually put away the sins
that he bore. Now, there's going to be a lot
of people in hell, and hell will never end. Why? Because their
death can never satisfy the Lord. But our Lord said it is finished.
What? His death. He'd actually, really,
completely died. And then, having died, under
the full weight of divine wrath, he had no sin. Our sins have
been laid on him, and the wrath of God burned those sins up in
him. And he lived to talk about it. And then God not only delighted
in him as his son, who did always those things which pleased his
father. He delighted in him as the son who laid down his sonship
and for the love of his people became obedient to death, even
the death of the cross. Now, we take special pride and satisfaction
in delight when our children succeed at something, don't we?
I mean, we like them. We love them regardless, because
they're our children, whether they do well or not. And we like
them and love them when they're being obedient. You know, that's
particularly charming to us. But when they grow up and they're
out of our house, there's a certain kind of joy. and delight that
comes to us as we see them begin to flourish and to succeed. Well,
who could be more happy with his son than the Father? Who could be more happy with
his son than the Heavenly Father? For he not only, as a man, did
always those things which pleased the Father, he went above and
beyond what any man was required to do. Remember, the Lord said
he didn't have to suffer. He said, all I got to do is ask
my father, he'll send legions of angels and deliver me from
this. So he went above and beyond the demands of his father upon
him. And he did a work that no one
else in all the universe could do, not even the father. Why? The father never became
man. God the Son's the only one who
could do what he did. Therefore, have God highly exalted
him, says the book of Philippians, chapter two, and given him a
name above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee
should bow, of things in heaven and on the earth and under the
earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. God delights
in Christ so much that everything in this creation, which is capable
of making a confession, is going to confess that His Son is Lord. And here's the wonderful thing.
He delights in us with the same delight that He has on His Son. For He sees us robed in the righteousness
and success of His Son. And we can scarcely, it's almost
fearful to say things like that. We certainly wouldn't say it,
were it not that the Scriptures declare it. But as He is, says
the Apostle John, as He is, so are we in this world. Salvation is a bigger thing than
even we think of it. And we can't make a bigger deal
out of it than most people do. I think we've been given grace
to see it as a greater thing than most people, but it's far
greater. You know, when that woman came
to Solomon, Queen Sheba, wasn't
it? I think, yeah, came to visit
Solomon because she'd heard about it. Heard about the temple he
built. Heard about the palace he lived
in. Heard about the glories of his kingdom. Says, I gotta go
visit him. And so she came. And she said,
I heard of you, but the half has never been told. And when
we behold him, you can get some face-to-face understanding of
all that He is, and all that He's done for us, we will also
say, the half, yea, the tenth, the hundredth, has never been
told. All right, we'll pick up there
next time.