All right, Psalm 59. It says
in verse one, deliver me from mine enemies, O my God, defend
me from them that rise up against me. So this is David, and if
you look at the Psalm in the Bible, you'll see that the beginning
before the first verse, this was given by David when Saul
had sent messengers to his house where he and his wife, Michael,
who was Saul's daughter, were living and the messengers were
sent by Saul to kill David, to wait until morning to kill him
and so that's what this psalm is about. You can see in the
very first verse, deliver me from my enemies, O my God, defend
me from them that rise up against me. Verse 2, deliver me from
the workers of iniquity and save me from bloody men. So these
men sought for his life, they were going to kill him and so
they were bloody men. Verse three, 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 my fault, awake to help me, and
behold. Thou therefore, O Lord God of
hosts, the God of Israel, awake to visit all the heathen, Be
not merciful to any wicked transgressors, Selah. Now that's an unusual
statement. I mean, we don't expect to find
that. We're expecting to find that God is merciful to sinners.
But here he says in prayer, don't be merciful to any wicked transgressors. Verse six, they return at evening. They make a noise like a dog
and go round about the city. So these men who came for David
were like dogs. and they were dogs, they howl
and they hunt and they hound their prey, and these men were
after David. Verse seven, behold, they belch
out with their mouth, swords are in their lips, for who, saith
they, doth hear? But thou, O Lord, shalt laugh
at them. Thou shalt have all the heathen
in derision. Because of his strength will
I wait upon thee, for God is my defense. David's saying in
verse nine that God is his strength and that's why he waits on him.
Verse 10, I'm sorry, the God of my mercy shall prevent me.
Prevent in the King James Version means go before, it doesn't mean
to keep from happening. The God of my mercy shall prevent
me. God shall let me see my desire upon my enemies. Slay them not,
lest my people forget. Scatter them by thy power, and
bring them down, O Lord, our shield. So God himself is our
shield. He says he prevents, he shall
prevent me, go before me, and he is my shield. And he says
in verse 11, he's asking God not to kill them outright, but
to scatter them so that God's people would remember. Verse
12. For the sin of their mouth and
the words of their lips, let them even be taken in their pride,
and for cursing and lying which they speak. Consume them in wrath,
consume them that they may not be, and let them know that God
ruleth in Jacob unto the ends of the earth, Selah. And at evening
let them return, and let them make a noise like a dog and go
round about the city. Let them wander up and down for
meat and grudge if they be not satisfied. So when they were
starting out, they went out hounding after David like dogs barking.
Here they're returning without finding their prey and groaning
like dogs with empty stomachs. Verse 16, but 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. You see how David in this Psalm
is so dependent upon God. Verse 17, unto thee, O my strength,
will I sing, for God is my defense and the God of my mercy. All
right, the last two verses of this song, we see David singing. And if you look at this in the
beginning, he's talking as an individual man. But then, if
you look at verse 11, he says, So he's talking here in a plural
sense, not just as an individual, but as a man with others. And then at the end, as I pointed
out here, he's raising his voice in song to God, which obviously
is a song directed to, in order to instruct the people he's referring
to with the word our in verse 11. All right, so if we step
back and look at this psalm, it's helpful for us to get a
little bit of the context from 1 Samuel chapter 19, where this
context is given. The history is that Saul was
made king over the nation of Israel, all 12 tribes. When God
made Saul king, it was against the advisement of Samuel. Samuel warned the people not
to reject God, who had given them judges, like Samuel. He
was the last judge. And they rejected God's rule
over them as their king, and they desired a man to be their
king. So God gave them a man after
their own heart, who was Saul. And Saul turned out to be a horrible
king. He served himself. He made others serve him. He
was always promoting himself. In most ways, he was a bad king.
He began with some spurts and starts that seemed to be partly
in the right direction, but he always seemed like he was just
in the wrong job. He was like somebody who is not
really qualified, but they're in that job anyway. And so this
was Saul. But after a time, after several
failures on Saul's part, God told Samuel to go to the house
of Jesse and find there the man God would identify to be a man
after God's own heart, which was obviously David. And if you
remember, as things progressed, David found favor, and every
time Saul was troubled by a spirit from the Lord to trouble him,
an evil spirit, then he called for David, and David would play
with his harp on his instrument, and it pleased Saul, and the
evil spirit would depart from him. So Saul grew fond of David,
and then there was a battle, and in the battle, the Philistines
had come against the nation of Israel, And you know the story
in 1 Samuel 17 where Goliath boasted against the entire army
of Israel. He said, send me a man that we
may fight and whichever of us wins, the man who wins will be
the side that rules over the other people. So if Goliath won,
then the Israelites would be the servants of the Philistines
and vice versa if someone from Israel won. And then in 1 Samuel
17, it describes the attitude of Israel and their armies. They
were terrified. They were in dismay of Goliath.
They didn't know what to do. And Saul, I mean, David comes
along. He was sent by his father to
that place. And when he came, he looked on
his brethren. He gave them, he took their word
to find out what was going on. And while he was there, he heard
Goliath. And you know the story. He heard Goliath defy the armies
of Israel. And so he told King Saul, I will
go fight. Don't let any man be afraid.
I will go fight for this man, for Israel. And Saul looked at
him. He was just a young man. It doesn't
even call him a young man. He was a youth. probably not
even in manhood yet. It describes him when Goliath
saw him that he was young and he was ruddy or red, reddish
color, and not leather and tan, but ruddy. And also he wasn't
a man of war, rugged looking. He was very fair to look upon. So obviously a very young person. Not looking at all like a man
of war and Goliath threatened him. He says I'm come to me I'm
gonna give your body to the to the fowls of the the birds of
the air and David said No, no, actually the way it's gonna work
is I'm gonna give you and all of the armies of Philistine the
Philistines To the to be eaten by the their bodies to be eaten
by the birds of the air. So you know the story David killed
Goliath and He said, God is going to deliver you into my hand.
And the reason he did this was several reasons. First of all,
he said that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.
All right, so that's the first reason, that there's a God in
Israel. And the second reason was that all would know that
the battle is not, that the Lord doesn't fight with sword and
spear, not with the instruments of men, not with the strength
of men. He says, because the battle is
the Lord's. And then David also said this,
he said, and I come to you in the name of the God of Israel,
the Lord, the God of Israel. So clearly in everything David
said, he was directing his own confidence. He was telling Goliath
and everyone who heard him that his confidence was in the Lord,
his God, the God of Israel, the one who would fight in the battle,
the one whose name he came in. OK. And then after that, of course,
he killed Goliath. He paraded around with Goliath's
head after he chopped his head off. And then there were several
other fights that came along. And in all those, David was very
faithful to King Saul. He went out. He behaved very
wisely. God delivered the enemies, the
Philistines, into his hand, and everyone in Israel loved David. Even King Saul loved David, except
for the fact that when David killed Goliath, the women of
Israel would sing songs in their dances, and they would say, David
has, I mean, Saul has slain his thousands, but David, his tens
of thousands. So they were ascribing much greater
ability to David than to the king, and that made the king
very envious. So David was faithful, there
were several battles that he won, and eventually King Saul
so envied David that he wanted to kill him. and he told his
men to talk to David secretly. He plotted against David to try
to ensnare him by telling David he could have one of his daughters.
Now, King Saul had already promised that whoever killed Goliath would
be his son-in-law and he would have his daughter to be wife,
but now it's as if he It was going back on that oath, and
he's promising this to David only on another condition, as
if he killed 100 Philistines. And David did. He killed actually
200. But in everything David did, he acted so commendably
that everyone, his men, loved him. They all understood that
God was with David. And that was the key. God was
with David. And yet, the more that God was
with David, and the more the people recognized that, the more
Saul hated David. And it came to this point here,
that led up to this psalm, is that David now is at his house,
his wife Michael is there, and Saul sends his men to wait for
him, and in the morning they're going to kill him. Michael learns
about what they're doing and she tells him, you need to leave. You need to flee. He went out
of a window and ran away. And while he was running away,
Michael made up a story. She put what looked like a man
in the bed and put some goat's hair over the head of that thing,
that image. and tricked the servants of Saul. So they went back to Saul and
said, yeah, he's sick, he's laying in his bed. King Saul said, I
don't care, go get him, bring his bed up here and I'll kill
him in his bed. They went back down to get him and they found
out it was a trick that Michael, his wife, had played. trick them. And so Saul called Michael in
and probably would have killed her. But she lied and said, well,
David told me he was going to kill me if I didn't let him go.
So that's why this story is as it is. OK, so that's the background
there. So you can see that David did
nothing wrong in all this. And the reason these men were
there was not because of anything he did wrong. In fact, they were
there because Saul hated him. And there was no reason for Saul
to hate him except for his own envy because he wanted the praise
of the people for himself and not for another. And these people
recognized David. They gave him such a commendations
and their and their and their affections and everything that
you can see that they really really love David and it's good
for you if you want to go back and read those chapters beginning
at You know first Samuel chapter 1 and read on through there.
It's it's very moving It's very easy to read through that and
see how God developed that that greatness of David and the fondness
of the people for David and the hatred of that Saul had for him
and how the men of Saul, in their attempt to be loyal to Saul,
would also go out and try to kill David unjustly. All right. So what is this all telling us?
Well, it tells us that wicked men came against a righteous
man and the reason for their hatred of him had nothing to
do with anything he did wrong, but only for their own evil hearts.
Secondly, it says that David, in escaping through the window,
he had no way to escape these men. They were stronger, they
were more numerous than he was, and he would have lost his life.
Michael, his wife, said, they're going to kill you in the morning.
And so that's what caused this psalm to be poured forth from
David. But when you read this psalm,
even though historically many things fit here, there are things
that don't fit. And that's what I want to show
you here. Look at the first three verses again. He says, deliver
me from mine enemies, oh 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 transgressions, nor for my sin, O Lord. They
run and prepare themselves without my fault, awake to help me, and
behold." So he's asking for God to judge between him and his
enemy. And he's asking God to judge
against his enemy because he had no fault. He had no transgression
for which they should kill him. Historically, it makes sense.
It fits. But in the larger context, it
doesn't fit, does it? When we're, as believers, when
we pray to the Lord, if we start asking the Lord to help us because
we don't have sin or because we don't have fault, then our
conscience will rise up and condemn us, won't it? We'll always find
a reason why God shouldn't help us because we know what we think.
We know the motives of our heart. Even when we're trying to do
our best, our motives betray us as being sinners. So we can't
make this claim that there's no sin, there's no iniquity in
us, no transgression. And when you read about David
and King Saul, it was incredible how David responded to all the
hatred of Saul. But it's not true with us. Has anyone ever Has any of us
ever been wrongly accused and not felt some of our hackles,
our self-righteous response rise up and say something negative
about that accusation? That's just our nature, isn't
it? We can't take accusations. In fact, we usually, if we don't
think of something to say, we'll be quiet for a while and then
we'll think of something clever. Then we harbor it and we rub
our hands together, as it were, in our heart and think of how
that person was so totally wrong and we were so right. That's
our sinful nature. But we can't really claim that
we're without transgression, without fault, can we? That's
certainly not the way we pray. And that's not what Jesus taught
us to pray either. When he talked about the publican
and the Pharisee in Luke 18, he didn't say, now, when you
come to God, make sure you don't have any sin, so that when you
pray, you can pray on the basis of not having a transgression
or fault. That's not the way it is. He
says that he came to save sinners and that's good news. The other one, that's not good
news. So what is this psalm? How can this psalm be of comfort
to us then? How can we who have enemies be
delivered from our enemies who do come against us because of
our sin? Now think back in the Garden
of Eden. In the Garden of Eden, Adam sinned
against God. There's no question about that.
God told him, don't eat of the tree of knowledge of good and
evil. He ate, and when he did, his eyes were opened. He and
his wife Eve tried to hide from God, and they tried to cover
themselves with fig leaves, and the Lord appears in the garden.
The voice of the Lord was heard in that garden. And he was hiding. And then when the Lord called
him out and said, where are you? What did you do? And he said,
well, Yeah, did you eat of the tree? I told you not to eat.
Well, the woman that you gave me, she gave me the fruit and
I did eat. So again, he's shifting the blame.
He's just doing what we as sinners do. He's just a weasel, right?
But notice in that account in the Garden of Eden, what happened
when Adam was uncovered as a sinner? What happened then? Well, God
went down the line first from Adam and Eve, then to Satan. And when he got to Satan, he
said, he said this, he pronounced this, he said, the seed of the
woman will bruise the head of the serpent. Okay. So it was
Adam's sin, it was Adam and Eve who sinned, but who was the one
who was going to bruise the head of the serpent? It wasn't Adam,
was it? Adam couldn't defend himself against his enemy, Satan. He couldn't defend himself against
the justice of God. It was his sin. It was all his
fault. He had nothing he could do about his sin or Satan. He
had no power, did he? He was a sinner. He was under
the condemnation of death. And yet God himself said, the
seed of the woman will bruise the head of the serpent. And
notice also that when the Lord said that, the one who is the
seed of the woman was Christ. When he came and did bruise the
head of the serpent, it cost him, didn't it? Because it says,
and thou shalt bruise his heel, meaning the cross of Christ.
He would pay with his life, but he would utterly crush Satan.
But this was all because of Adam's sin. Christ stepped in by God's
purpose and promise, and what he ordained, Christ stepped in
because Adam sinned. And this is the gospel, isn't
it? And so here in this psalm here, the good news here, is
that when he says in verse one, deliver me from my enemies, O
my God, defend me from them that rise up against me, all of us
naturally, because of our sin, like Adam, are sinners against
God. It's our fault. We might try
to shift the blame, but we can't. God's going to hold us to account.
And that fact and our guilt before God leaves us under the consequences
of our sin, which in this case, the enemies of God were against
David, and he couldn't escape. The enemies of our souls are
against us, and those enemies start with our own sin against
God, because it's the guilt of our sin that brings the condemnation
of death. The wages of sin is death. So
death from God is because of our sin, even though death itself
is our enemy. And not only do we have guilt
from sin, but our own nature. When Adam sinned, his spiritual
self died. He was no longer alive to God
spiritually. And so all of his children are
no longer alive to God spiritually either. As we sinned in Adam,
we also died spiritually in Adam. And so, We not only have our
guilt and the condemnation of death, but we also have a sinful
nature. And we could go on and on. Satan
himself is our enemy, isn't he? Just like he was the enemy of
Adam and Eve. He's the enemy of all of humanity,
especially of God's elect. He was the enemy of Christ. And
the world, the Bible says, is our enemy. The world is our enemy. In fact, if you look at James
chapter four, I want you to look at this verse of scripture, because
it uses this word enmity there. In James chapter four, which
is just after the book of Hebrews, he says, no, you adulterers,
that's people who commit adultery, And adulteresses, know ye not
that, notice, friendship with the world is enmity against God. If you're a friend of the world,
you're an enemy of God. That's what he's saying. Whoever,
therefore, will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
All right, so he calls them adulterers because that friendship with
the world is adultery, it's unfaithfulness to God. Okay, so that's pretty
clear, isn't it? That our enemies are many, and
they start from our sin with all the consequences, death,
a fallen sinful nature, Satan, this evil world, and our sinful
nature is inclined by lust and pride to love the world. And how can we deliver ourselves?
Like Adam and Eve, they couldn't. We can't. And that's the story
that gives the context of the good news of the gospel. We're
defenseless against our enemies. Our enemies come to us from God's
hand because of our own sin. But we can't get out of it. We
can't get ourselves out of our sin or out of the consequences
of our sin, which is these enemies. And you can read about our enemies
being sin throughout scripture. In Micah chapter 7, it says,
the Lord will cast all of their sins or their iniquities into
the depths of the sea. So that's clearly like the Egyptians.
They were cast into the Red Sea. In Psalm 65, verse 3, it says,
Iniquities prevail against me. That's enemies. My iniquities
prevail against me, like an enemy. And then in Romans 7, it says,
There in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. To will is present
with me. How to perform that which is
good I find not, because in my flesh there's nothing good. So,
and then in Ephesians 6, like we read last week in our Bible
study, Ephesians 6, 10 through 18, the wiles of the devil, the
devil through his wiles, through his deceitful temptations and
accusations against us, he's our enemy. And as I also mentioned,
death and the grave and hell, all these things are our enemy.
The curse of God's law is our enemy because it's gonna take
our life. And who can deliver us from these
enemies? Well, that was the context of this psalm that David gave
here. Many enemies, and he had no power.
He couldn't escape from them. And so, what does David do? What
does David do with these enemies? He was a capable fighter, wasn't
he? Look what happened to Goliath.
Look what happened to those 200 Philistines. Look what happened
to so many of the Philistines when David went against them.
They couldn't stand before him. God was with him. Why couldn't
he just go out with his slingshot or his sword or spear and shield
and fight against all of Saul's men? I mean, surely if he was
in the right, he could have done that. But that's not the weapon
of God against our enemy. It's not our strength, it's not
our weapons. And what is it then? Well, the
battle is the Lord's. David fought Goliath and won
because he came to him in the name of the Lord. And so David's
response to the enemies he has no power against to escape or
to deliver himself is he turns to God. That's what faith does. Faith in Christ causes us to
go to him, to come, to call, to cry, to trust, and to wait,
to wait, and to look for the deliverance that he himself alone
can give us. So he says, deliver me from mine
enemies, oh my God. He calls God his God. He says,
defend me from them that rise up against me. He needed a defense.
He's depending upon God to do that. Deliver me, defend me,
oh my God. Deliver me, he says in verse
two, from the workers of iniquity. Save me from the bloody men.
Those are words of a believer. When we trust Christ, we talk
that way. Deliver me from this enemy, this
sin. from judgment day, because if
I'm judged for my works, I won't pass the test. At all times,
we want God's blessings. We want God to give us grace
and faith to know Christ and to live to God by Him in spite
of our sin, to not consider our sin, but to consider Christ for
us. And so that's what faith does. It brings that plea to
God that He Himself would plead against our enemies for us. If God is for us, who could be
against us? That's the trust of the believer. But now, in this psalm, God is
revealing how he delivers us from our sins and from all of
our enemies. And that's the second part here.
David was in trouble. He couldn't get out and couldn't
escape. He believed God, therefore he called upon him, and now God
tells us in this psalm how he delivers us from our sins and
from all of our enemies. And how does he do that? Well,
the one who wrote the psalm, David, wrote as a prophet. And
he wrote about the Lord Jesus Christ. The prophecy was about
the Lord Jesus Christ. He himself was the son of David. David was anointed by Samuel. God sent Samuel to anoint David
to be the king over Israel. And David was a man after God's
own heart. And David spoke God's words.
But the son of David, the Lord Jesus Christ, was not just a
man after God's own heart. He was the son of God. He was
in every way the exact transcript of his father. Okay, so David
pictured Christ in that way. And as David was anointed king
over Israel, so the Lord Jesus Christ from eternity was anointed
by God to be Christ, to be the anointed, to save his people. Over all those people, he's the
king and he's the one who tells them, who reveals God to them
as the prophet and the priest who offers himself to take away
their sin. So here we see then that this
psalm in fulfillment is speaking about the Lord Jesus Christ.
And he prays in verse one, deliver me from mine enemies, oh my God.
Now this is a great mystery. But we shouldn't be troubled
by it because the New Testament reveals the mystery. When the
Lord Jesus Christ came into the world, he was the son of God. But when he came, he took on
our nature. He remained God in every way
as God the son, but he now became also man. And he had to become
a man in order to save his people from their sins. Why? Well, because
man sinned and therefore man had to die. And so the Lord Jesus
Christ would have to bear the sins of his people and die for
those sins. A man was commanded to obey God
and therefore man had to obey. The Lord Jesus Christ obeyed
in everything. But because we sinned and Christ
had to bear our sins, therefore the consequences of our sins
also came upon Him. When He was on the earth, they
accused Him of doing wrong. They accused Him of blasphemy. They accused him of breaking
the Sabbath. They accused him of many things. They accused
him of being a Samaritan. They accused him of being a drunkard.
They accused him of many things. He wasn't guilty, but they accused
him. And so these people who did that
were the enemies of Christ. They hated him. They envied him
just like Saul envied David. So you can see the parallel here,
and you can see the reason God did this in scripture is to teach
us about the Lord Jesus Christ. How are we delivered from our
enemies? That's the question. First of all, we see that in
the Lord Jesus Christ, in this prayer, He trusts in His Father. You see that? The prayer, deliver
me from mine enemies, it shows us that He's already under the
consequences of our sin, and under that, He is asking God
to deliver him, to defend him, to save him. And these are expressions
of his trust in God. He prayed, he made supplication
to God. He had not done any wrong. In
fact, he had done all that was right. And part of his obedience
was to take the sins of his people and own them as his own sins. So that he, instead of them,
would bear them. The substitute would bear the
sins for his people. And not only would he bear their
sins, but he would bear the consequences. The enemies of our soul would
come against him. That's why he had to be betrayed
by Judas. That's why he had to be condemned
by Pilate. That's why he had to be beaten.
That's why he had to be whipped and nailed and pierced and die
on the cross. That's why God forsook him. It
was for our sins. And you can read this in Isaiah
53. When I read this, I mean, I know
it's very familiar to you, but listen to how the Lord says this.
In Isaiah 53, beginning at verse 4, he says, Surely He has borne
our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem Him stricken,
smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions. We see Him on the cross. Why
is He there? Because of our transgressions.
He was bruised for our iniquity. Why was His face beat up? Why
was His back laid open? Why was He pierced in His hands
and His feet and in His side? For our sins. He was wounded
for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement,
the beating that our sins deserve to make peace with God was upon
Him. And with His stripes, we are
healed. You see there? His stripes healed
us. Just like God said when Adam and Eve sinned and Satan was
the culprit, He said the seed of the woman will bruise his
head. So here it is. Christ is bruising the head of
the serpent here. He was oppressed, he was afflicted,
verse seven of Isaiah 53, yet he opened not his mouth. He is
brought as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before his shearers
is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. See, this is amazing. First of all, it's amazing beyond
all comprehension that God, the Son of God, would become a servant. He's the only one who is the
sovereign. He's the sovereign. Why would
the sovereign become a servant? Because that was his father's
will, that he stoop to become a servant to bear the sins of
his people in their own nature. So in all of this that we read
about him in Isaiah 53 and then Psalm 59, we're seeing the Lord,
who is the Son of God, Christ the Lord, taking our nature,
and in our nature now, bearing our sins and the consequences
as the enemies of God come against him. But notice also, when he
is in that condition, he prays himself, trusting God. He expresses
his faith in God. And here's the second part of
that, that he not only prayed and trusted God, but that his
trust, his faith in God, was absolutely perfect. It's expressed, his faith is
most perfectly expressed in the context of his sufferings and
death. It was when he was dying, when
he was suffering, for sins that were not his own, but he took
in obedience and in submission out of love for his people. The
Son of God loved me and gave himself for me. He took our sins
in love and in submission of obedience and in humility, and
with our sins then, He is in a position of complete dependence
on God, his father. He will not lift his own hand
against his accusers. When they accused him, he was
silent, as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth
not his mouth. When he was reviled, he reviled
not again. When he was threatened, when
they spoke against him, he threatened not. But what did he do? He committed
himself. He committed himself to him who
judges righteously. You can read about that in 1
Peter 2. Now we see it in the prayer.
In faith, he is asking God to deliver him, to defend him, to
save him. He's there in that position because
he's bearing the sins of his people. His prayer itself is
an expression of his faith. And his faith is not only faith,
that God would deliver him, but trusting God that when he gave
up his life in death, that his father would raise him again
from the dead, and all that he did, he would do for his people,
and God would deliver them in him. And this is so critical,
so that we see that Christ is praying in this psalm, not as
an individual, but as a public head of his people. The seed
of the woman would bruise the head of the serpent, not just
for himself. He didn't need the seed, he didn't
need Satan to be bruised for his own sake. It was for the
sin of Adam and Eve and all their posterity. In fact, only the
elect among their posterity. So you see that. First, Christ
took this. He took our sin. Then, he suffered
the consequences for it. Under those consequences, under
that suffering, for him it was unjust, but it was justice from
God poured out on him for us. And in that justice poured out,
he cries out to God in utter trust and faith. And this is
why, and this is how, he is the object of our faith. So much
so that we don't depend On our faith, we depend on Christ, the
object of our faith. and I want to re-give an illustration
I've given many times. But it gets down to this. Our
faith is so weak, it's pathetic, really, in our understanding,
in our confidence, in the purity of our faith. It's so small,
as Jesus said, if you have faith as the size of the grain of mustard
seed. So it's incredibly small, and
it's always mixed with some doubt. Help my unbelief Lord The father
cried out in Mark 9 24. So all these things are talking
about It's not our faith that saves us. It's not the merit
of our faith It's the object of our faith the Lord Jesus Christ
The strength of a bridge is not in the confidence of the person
standing on the bridge. It's in the structure of the
bridge You understand? People can jump up and down on
bridges because they're overly confident and maybe they'll make
the bridge rock back and forth and it won't break. And then
they'll boast in their confidence. But it wasn't their confidence
that kept the bridge together, it was the strength of the bridge.
It's not the confidence in the ice that holds us up on a frozen
lake, it's the thickness of the ice. And so it is with the Lord
Jesus Christ. It's his strength. His faith
that saves us, and we have confidence in Him. That's why this Psalm
is so comforting, because we hear Him pray in perfect faith. We hear Him pray according to
the understanding of the true will of God, which was to deliver
Him and His people and to destroy His enemies. Alright, I hope
you get that as the context. Notice in verse 3, here's another
aspect of this. Here we see the other part of
this. The way that God delivers us
from our enemies, the way we're enabled to escape, that God saves
us from our enemies, is because the Lord Jesus Christ had no
sin. He had no transgression. That's
why he prays this way. Only he could pray that way.
And that because he had no sin, therefore he could bear the sins
of his people. If he was a sinner, he'd have
to die for his own sins. But he wasn't a sinner. He had
no sin. He knew no sin. He did no sin. And yet he was
made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of
God in him. He was a perfect substitute. In the Old Testament,
the sacrifice had to be perfect to be accepted. Christ was perfect. He was holy, harmless, undefiled,
separate from sinners. Therefore he could not only bear
our sins, but he could offer himself to God as a perfect sacrifice. And so that's what we see here.
Because he had no transgression, it was not for his sin, not for
his fault, therefore he could bear the sins of his people.
He was the perfect substitute. able to bear their sins, able
to offer himself for their sins to God as a substitute to bear
all the wrath of God against him that they deserved and take
it from them. And this tells us that God justifies
his people for what he received from Christ. There could be no
better news to a sinner than that. There could be no greater
confidence in God than in that. That the reason that God considers
us righteous in his sight is not for what we do, it's for
what he did in the Lord Jesus Christ. The reason that David
himself could pray this way is because he understood the Lord
Jesus Christ would pray this way as his substitute, as his
surety. And it says in Hebrews 5, verse
seven and eight, that though he were a son, yet learned he
obedience by the things which he suffered, therefore he is
the author of eternal salvation. So he shed tears, he poured out
his heart to God, he was heard because he feared, and even though
he was the son of God, he was in obedience to God, and he learned
that obedience through the suffering that he had to suffer, because
that's what the obedience consisted of, was suffering in submission
to God for the sins of his people. And God says, because of that,
he was made the author of eternal salvation. That's what this psalm
is talking about here. Okay? And there's many other
things we could point out here, but that's the main thing. First,
it's about Christ. Do you know what the gospel is?
It says in Romans 1, the gospel of God concerning his son, Jesus
Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according
to the flesh and declared to be the son of God with power
according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the
dead. So Christ rose from the dead. God justified him. The
Spirit of God raised him from the dead, justifying him. Everything
he did answered God. Fully bore death. Fully took
away our sins. Fully fulfilled the righteousness
of God. Made his people perfect. Sanctified them forever by that
one offering. He justified them by his blood.
He was delivered for our offenses. He was raised again because of
our justification. There's no more glorious news
in all of scripture. Our enemies are many. We have
no power against them. Those enemies became the enemies
of Christ. He has all power. The way he
had that power was by submitting himself as a man in total dependence
upon God and fulfilling the law of God in obedience and fulfilling
the law of God for sacrifice in order to take away our sins,
to please God in all that he did. And that's what this is
saying here. These men were sent by Saul,
they were wicked men. And they represent, reprobate
unbelieving men. Now there were many people in
scripture who were unbelievers that were turned from unbelief
to faith in Christ. But those in Scripture who went
on in their unbelief, hating Christ and trying to kill Him
to the bitter end, that's a person who never believed Christ. They
opposed Him and they opposed His people. And in 1 Thessalonians,
and this will be the last verse we can look at tonight, in 1
Thessalonians chapter 2, I want you to see this here. because
the kingdom of Satan, Satan himself and his servants have the same
attitude. Look at 1 Thessalonians 2, verse
14. Paul writes to the Thessalonians,
he says, you brethren became followers of the churches of
God, which in Judea are in Christ Jesus, for you, here's how you
were followers, you also have suffered like things of your
own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews. So the Thessalonians
had countrymen, and their countrymen, the other people in their country,
persecuted them, just like the Jews persecuted other believers
who were in Judea. In verse 15, speaking of the
Jews, he said, who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own
prophets. They not only killed Christ,
but their own prophets. And they persecuted us and they pleased
not God and are contrary to all men. That describes these people
in Psalm 59 in the New Testament way. Psalm 59 uses the men of
Saul and their power to kill David and sets them up as wicked
transgressors and says, don't have mercy on them. Here, God
is describing the same sort of men as those who killed Christ,
who persecuted the apostles, who killed their own prophets,
who don't please God, who are contrary to all men. In verse
16 of 1 Thessalonians 2, he says, forbidding us to speak to the
Gentiles that they might be saved, So that's what they also do.
They try to prevent the gospel from being preached to fill up
their sins always. These people who try to prevent
the gospel being preached, they're filling up the sins that God
had ordained that they would fill up until, he says, for the
wrath has come upon them to the uttermost. There was no turning. There was no salvation for them.
The will of God toward them was that they perish under their
sins. And Christ, knowing that will, prays according to that
will here when he talks about those who in their reprobate
unbelief, their refusal, absolute hardness of heart, and refusal
to submit to his righteousness, they continue to hold to their
own and try to kill him, claiming in their hypocrisy that they
did God's service. That's what Saul's men were doing
to David. And so this psalm is all about the deliverance. And
one last thing here, at the very end of the psalm, he says, but
I will sing of thy power, verse 16. 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. Here
what we have is, just as the Lord Jesus Christ said he would
do in Hebrews chapter two, he sings to God in the midst of
his people, he declares to them his Father's name." Now, this
is a great and very important truth and a wonderful truth,
that what we know of God, we only know from what we learn
of the Lord Jesus Christ. We can't know God except what
we learn from God about the Lord Jesus Christ. He is God. The
fullness of the Godhead dwells in him bodily. He is man. He took not on angels, He took
on the seed of Abraham. And as both God and man, we see,
we can see man, and as man, we can hear His words. We can see
what He did. It's visible to us from Scripture. We know what He did. We know
why He did it. He did it for his father. He
did it for his people. He did it in love. He did it
in submission and humility. He did it at full cost to himself.
He did all these things according to his wisdom and power and grace.
So we see these things in Christ. And what he's saying here in
his singing to God. In the company of his people,
he's revealing to us who God is in himself. So that in the
Lord Jesus Christ, we see the son of God, but we see him as
a man. We see him in our own nature.
This is amazing, isn't it? God in the flesh. That's what
it says, the word made flesh. Sorry, I dropped the microphone.
So this is what the song is concluding
with. His trust was in God. as his
father, as a man he had to trust God in order to fulfill the will
of God, to commit himself into the hands of his father. But as God, he needed nothing.
And that's the great mystery, the great stoop that God would
so stoop. to take our nature in order to
bear our sins and to satisfy his own justice and magnify his
own name. The battle is the Lord's. David,
i.e. Christ, came against our enemy
in the name of the Lord. The battle is the Lord's and
he defeated our enemy so that all of Israel, all of God's people
would know that God doesn't save by spear, He doesn't save by
sword, He doesn't save by anything that man provides. It's His battle
and He does it so that everyone would know there is a God in
Israel. There's a God in the church and
that God is the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father, thank you
for this word from your psalm, Psalm 59. We pray, Lord, that
we would rightly divide it. We would understand from the
revealed gospel that you've given in the New Testament, the truth
of Christ and him crucified throughout the Old Testament as well. We
would see our Savior on display there in all of his glory. The
glory of his humility, the glory of his obedience, the glory of
his love and grace, the glory of his wisdom and power against
our enemies. Power even to satisfy God and
to answer God in justice and fulfill all judgment so that
he might justify the ungodly in his own blood. What a magnificent
savior. What a magnificent word. We pray,
Lord, that you'd bless it to your people. In Jesus' name we
pray, amen.