Psalm 18. I want to look at the
very beginning of the psalm. This psalm is actually recorded
in 2 Samuel, chapter 22. And if you were to look at it,
the opening part of it, it says it's written to the chief musician,
a psalm of David, the servant of the Lord. So it emphasizes
that he is a servant of the Lord. And it says that he spake this
unto the Lord, the words of this song, in the day that the Lord
delivered him from the hand of all of his enemies and from the
hand of Saul. So that's important to understand
the background to this psalm. If you look at 2 Samuel chapter
22, you'll find all the words of this psalm recorded, very
minor differences. One of the differences is the
first verse, which is not found in 2 Samuel 22, but it is here. The fact that the psalm is repeated
is significant. Whenever God repeats anything
in scripture, it's not by accident and it's not without a purpose.
And the purpose, of course, emphasizes the importance of this psalm.
And the first verse opens up this way. I will love the Lord,
I'm sorry, I will love thee, O Lord, my strength. That's the
first verse. I will love thee, O Lord, my
strength. And that sets the tone of the
whole psalm. Clearly, the psalmist is saying
that he has a love for the Lord, but here it says, I will love
thee, O Lord, my strength. And there's two things I notice
in that. First of all, love is not, a
feeling. True love is not a feeling, it's
a decision, a will to show, to give and to show kindness to
someone else. And so when this psalm says,
I will love thee, O Lord, it's showing that love is giving. It's a will to love not only
the Lord, but he says the reason why he loves him is because he
is his strength. And we're gonna get to that Now,
I want to jump to the end of the psalm, and I want to show
you at the conclusion of the psalm, because this is the way
God writes in scripture oftentimes, especially in a lengthy psalm
like this. He's going to say a lot of things
here, but he's going to conclude it at the end, and it's good
to look at the conclusion so that we can see a summary, really,
of the entire psalm. If you look at Psalm chapter
18 and verse 47, it says, it is God that avengeth me and subdueth
the people under me. So there's two things in view
here. First, vengeance from God towards the enemies of the psalmist. And then secondly, subduing the
people under him as the king. And then verse 48, he delivereth
me from my enemies Yea, thou liftest me up above those that
rise up against me. Thou hast delivered me from the
violent man. So here we can see that the emphasis
of this psalm is going to be on deliverance from enemies.
the Lord is going to deliver him from his enemies. Verse 49,
Therefore will I give thanks unto thee, O Lord, among the
heathen, and sing praises unto thy name. So it's clear that
the psalm is a psalm of praise to God for his salvation from
his enemies and the The song is saying that he's going to
give thanks to God, the Lord, among the heathen, and that's
just a synonym for the Gentiles, and sing praises to his name.
Turns out this is quoted in Hebrews chapter two, where the Lord says
about the Lord Jesus Christ, when he says that he is one with
his brethren, he says, I will put my trust in him, I will declare
thy name unto my brethren, I will give thanks unto thee, I will
sing praises to thy name. All these things are said in
Hebrews chapter 2, verses 12 and 13. We'll look at that a
little bit. So, just by this verse here, you can see that
this psalm is applied to the Lord Jesus Christ in prophecy.
And it has to do with the salvation, his salvation from his enemies
by the Lord Jehovah, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And he's
summarizing that and he's saying here he's going to sing praises
to his God and Father in the congregation of the heathen.
Then he says, great deliverance giveth he to his king. He's talking
about his king now, and who is the king? Well, David was a king,
but David just simply represented the Lord Jesus Christ. David
represented the anointed of God, and the anointed of God is the
Messiah, or Christ. So it goes on, great deliverance
giveth he to his king, and showeth mercy to his anointed, to David,
and to his seed forevermore. So his seed would be the seed
of his anointed. David's seed, I mean, the Lord
Jesus Christ by physical birth was a son, was a physical son
of David and a son of Abraham and so on. You can read that
in Matthew, for example, chapter one, he descended from David.
But most importantly, he was called the son of David to indicate
that God was speaking of Christ when he spoke of David in the
Old Testament scriptures. And this you can see throughout
the book of Acts, for example, in Acts chapter 2, where Peter,
on the day of Pentecost, explains that David in Psalm chapter 16
and Psalm chapter 2 was speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ. Okay,
so here we can see, I just read those last few verses there of
Psalm 18 to show that The psalm is about the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's about the deliverance of him from his enemies by the Lord. Now go back to verse one. I will
love thee, O Lord, my strength. Now you can see here in the beginning
of the psalm that this psalm is the song or the prayer and
the praise. It really is a recounting of
the Lord Jesus Christ about God's deliverance of him from his enemies. And he's going to sing about
that. He's going to sing God's praises to his people, to the
Gentiles. The Gentiles are going to be
some of those who are his people. All right. So let me just ask
some questions at the outset here. Who is speaking in this
psalm then? Well, from the little bit that
we've looked at here, we can say that it's Christ who is speaking.
We can say that, first of all, in this first verse, I will love
thee, O Lord, my strength. will to love the Lord. And what
does it mean to love the Lord? Well, Jesus himself answered
in Mark chapter 12 verses 29 and 30. He says that the first
and greatest commandment is that we love the Lord our God with
all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, and with
all of our mind. So it's love to God is the first,
the most important commandment. And really everything is contained
in that commandment. If we love God with all of our
heart, soul, mind, and strength, then we fulfill the law. But
no one does. No one can say, no person on
earth can ever say, except Christ, that he has loved the Lord with
all of his heart, with all of his soul, with all of his mind,
and with all of his strength. It's just not possible. We've
never done it, not even once. And since we haven't done it,
If we had only broken it once, we had broken all the commandments.
But we haven't just broken it once. We break it daily, don't
we? And that's a grief to us who
know the Lord. It's a grief of mind. We want
to love the Lord, but we find ourselves falling so far short
that we can't even begin to pretend to truly love the Lord. But here,
the Lord Jesus Christ, as man, could say without hypocrisy,
I will love thee, O Lord, my strength. And so we see here,
he's speaking here of his utter dependency upon God as his God. And the word Lord here is Jehovah. So it's on the Lord God, Jehovah,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He depends upon him. He is his
strength. And it goes on here. He says,
The Lord, notice verse two, the Lord is my rock, and my fortress,
and my deliverer, my God, my strength, in whom I will trust,
my buckler, and the word buckler means, can also be shield, my
buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower. So he just
stacks these things up, one right after the other. None of these
words are insignificant or superfluous, all of them have meaning. But
if you step back a little bit and look at all of them, you
see that What he's saying here is that as a man, the Lord Jesus
Christ found his God to be his all. All of his strength, his
rock, his fortress, his deliverer, his God, the one he trusts, his
shield, the horn or the power, his strength of his salvation,
and his high tower. So he just wants you to know
at the very outset that all of his all of his hope, all of his
strength, everything he found in God. And he loves God with
all of his heart, mind, soul, and strength. And so we can see
that the one speaking here is Christ, and we can ask this question,
who does he sing of? To whom is he singing, and of
whom is he singing in this psalm? Well, clearly he's speaking about
God, his God, and his Father, and God the Son, and God the
Holy Spirit. So, the one singing, or the one
speaking, is Christ. He's the promised one, he's the
anointed king, and we will see in this psalm that it is by his
death that he would utterly defeat and subdue his enemies by the
strength and power, by the safety he finds in God, and by the purpose
of God in his work. So the subject of his praise
and the subject of his prayer is his victory, his total victory. And it's also, as we're going
to see, of his blessings and both of those, his victory over
his enemies and the blessings he receives from God are both
going to be attributed to his own righteousness. If you look
over in verse 19, it says, Actually, let me back up to verse
17. It says, he delivered me from my strong enemy, and from
them which hated me, for they were too strong for me, which
is showing that Christ as man did not have power as a man,
not in himself. He didn't have power over Satan,
and he didn't have power over the rulers and the Sanhedrin
and the political powers. He was subject to the same kinds
of things that we are, which shows how far he stepped down
in his humility and suffered in humiliation. He suffered sorrow. He suffered pain. He suffered
frustration, all those things that a man would suffer because
he's limited. And so he's saying here, they
were too strong for me. They prevented me in the day
of my calamity. Prevented in the King James Version,
it means they went before. They anticipated and they laid
snares for him. They prevented him. They went
ahead of him. They prevented me in the day
of my calamity, but the Lord was my stay. God was his trust,
the one he leaned upon like a staff. He leaned upon his God. Verse
19, he brought me forth also into a large place that speaks
of his blessings. And he delivered me, that shows
he was saved from his enemies, because he delighted in me. That
shows why the Lord Jesus Christ was delivered from his enemies
and why he was given the blessing. Why was he delivered? Why did
God bless him? Because he delighted in him.
Verse 20, the Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness,
according to the cleanness of my hands hath he recompensed
me. So God rewarded him. Does God
owe any man? Of course not. God is the creator.
All that we have comes from Him. We can't provide anything to
God to earn again from Him. God will not be any man's debtor.
It says in Romans chapter 4, to him that worketh is the reward
not reckoned of grace but of debt. We can't make God our debtor,
we can't earn from God, but here the Lord Jesus Christ speaks
of God rewarding him according to his righteousness, according
to the cleanness of his hands. He has recompensed me. In verse
21, for I have kept the ways of the Lord and I have not wickedly
departed from my God, for all his judgments were before me
and I did not put away his statues from me. So you can see here
that now we're beginning to get a sharper picture of what the
psalm is about. It's about the greatness of God
as the strength and the shield and the fortress and the rock
and the horn of his salvation and his high tower, all these
descriptions in verse 2, all of that God is going to do for
Christ, the anointed, the king over his people who were including
the heathen and he was going to save him from his enemies
and he was going to deliver him and give him not only from his
enemies but he's going to bless him with a large place and all
of it because of his righteousness. because of the cleanness of his
hands. And so now, with that in view, I think when we read
through this psalm, we'll be able to see that this psalm is
very similar to the other psalms we've looked at. For example,
Psalm 2, if you remember, that psalm was quoted in Acts. It
says, why did the heathen rage and the people of the earth imagine
a vain thing? They were gathered together against
the Lord and against his anointed, which is Christ again, But all
those things were done, and the Lord who sits in the heavens
laughed at them, because He had set Christ, His King, on His
holy hill of Zion, and He would bless Him by giving Him the heathen
for His inheritance. And then He speaks in Psalm 2
about how He was going to take vengeance on His enemies. And
so you can see that in Psalm 2 and Psalm 3 and Psalm 4 and
Psalm 5 and 6, 7, 9, 11, just keeps right on marching through
until you get to Psalm 16 and 17 and now Psalm 18. The theme
is recurring. It's recurring over and over
again because the Old Testament, the Psalms included, are about
the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow.
It's about His submission to the will of God as a man, trusting
His God and receiving strength from Him to do the will of God,
and that will was to overcome His enemies his own deliverance
in that fight for the salvation of his people and his blessing
with them as a reward for his obedience and his sufferings.
Okay, so first two verses, Christ speaks here about his love for
his God, how he completely depends upon him for all of his strength.
He goes on, he says in verse two that he is his rock is rock. Now, when you think of a rock
in scripture, this is a frequently used term. What does it mean?
Well, one of the things you see about a rock is that it's trustworthy. A rock, you can rely on it, right? It's strong. You cannot easily,
you can't hurt a rock. You can beat on it, it doesn't
change it. It's just really hard and immovable
and unchangeable. A rock doesn't fail you. If you
have a rock under you, there's a place not far from here, maybe
an hour or so away, it's called Bald Rock, and it's this big
mountain of granite. And you can stand on this, and
you get the sense that you're standing on a big, big rock. And that's the way it is. It
won't fail. It's immovable. You can see these big earth moving
equipment. They have difficulty moving rocks
that may be larger than a man. But think of trying to move a
rock. The only way they can do that is to use dynamite or something
to break it up. So it's immovable. It's unconquerable. And it's enduring. It's everlasting. The Lord is our rock. He's enduring.
He's everlasting. He is an unchanging. He has been
tried. We saw that last week in Isaiah
28, 16. He is a tried stone, a precious
corner stone. He's a stone of stumbling and
a rock of offense. So the term rock is used to describe
God as our rock. He's the foundation on which
we stand and he is immovable. And the Lord Jesus Christ is
our cornerstone because God built the entire church. All of Zion,
the city of God, is built upon the Lord Jesus Christ, our rock,
the precious cornerstone. And so we see these things Jesus
said in Matthew 16 when he asked his disciples, whom do men say
that I am? And Peter said, thou art the
Christ, the son of the living God. And Jesus told him, he says,
upon this rock. I'm going to build my church
and the gates of hell will not prevail against it." There you
go, the rock. Jesus said, if a man builds his
house on the sand, his house will fall when the rains come.
But if his house is built on a rock, even though the rains
come, he will not fall because it's built on a rock. And so
the Lord is our rock. Secondly, he's our fortress.
Now, in Deuteronomy 33 and 27, it says, the eternal God is our
refuge. That's what a fortress is. It's
a refuge. The eternal God is our refuge, and underneath are
the everlasting arms. He shall thrust out the enemy
from before thee, and he shall say, destroy them. So here we
can see that these are terms a man used to war, he's used
to fighting in battles, he's used to facing enemies that are
unconquerable in his own strength, he's relying on God to deliver
him. He's relying on God as his strength,
his refuge, and to be his rock, to be immovable. The enemy can
come against him, but if he's behind the rock, if he's upon
the rock, if he's founded on the rock, the enemy can do his
best. He cannot hurt him because he has to overcome his rock,
and he can't do that. And then he goes on. He says,
he is my deliverer. A deliverer is a rescuer, someone
who leads those who are captive out of their captivity and takes
their captors captive. So he sets his captors, he sets
the captivity free, and he takes into captivity their captors.
That's a deliverer. He rescues his people. A deliverer
is a place or a person where you escape to, a place of safety
out of the hand of the enemy. So you can see all these terms
have to do with the deliverance from the enemy and the safety
God is to his people. He is our God and when that term
here, it says here, he is my deliverer and my God, It brings
to our mind the covenant, doesn't it? The new covenant where God
has sworn to his people, I will be a God to you and you shall
be my people. He establishes a relationship
between himself and his people that nothing can break. He has
pledged Himself to be their God. He has made them His people.
And here the Lord Jesus Christ is saying He stands in the same
relation to God as His people. God is His God. God is His Father. And this is what He says in John
chapter 20 and verse 17. I go unto my God and to your
God and to my Father and to your Father. What a blessed thing
that is that the Lord Jesus Christ would become so one with his
people that he would identify with them as they identify with
God. And they can say what he says
about his God. They can say that of themselves.
He is my God. He is my rock. He is my fortress,
my deliverer. And so he says, in whom I trust.
The one you trust, that's your God, isn't it? And Jesus said,
don't lay up store or treasure on earth. Unrighteous mammon,
men tend to trust in riches. That's just the nature of things.
When I have enough money in the bank and something happens, you
say, it's okay, I've got more money where that came from. So
you trust in your money, right? But if you don't have anything,
But one thing that is your confidence, and that confidence is the Lord
himself, then you're safe. Then you have a place of refuge.
Then you have salvation. And that's what he's saying here.
The Lord alone is my trust. I have no other. I need no other. I don't want any other because
the Lord is my trust. Take verse two now and apply
it to the Lord Jesus Christ. And what would you say? He's
confessing here. His God is his all. He's everything. And isn't that
what Christ is to us? He is our all. He's our righteousness,
our sanctification, our wisdom. The list just goes on and on.
In Colossians 2, verse 10, you're complete in him. Christ is all. He says these words are used
throughout scripture. He's our life, our treasure,
our wisdom. He's just everything. And so
we can identify here that the one who is man, speaking these
words, is also God. He's the God-man mediator. He
is our all because he stepped into our place as our substitute
and our surety and God became his all independence as we are
independent on God, only he did it in our place perfectly and
God delivered him. And he was under that, he was
under the enemy, he was under the afflictions here spoken of
in this psalm because he stood in the place of his people. Okay,
so that's the opening of the psalm. Christ expressing as a
man his utter dependence on God and finding God to be all sufficient
in the battle against his enemies. Do you see that? He loves the
Lord because the Lord is his strength, the Lord is everything
to him, his rock, his fortress, his deliverer, his God, his strength
in whom he trusts, his buckler or shield, the horn of his salvation
and his high tower. A high tower means that God is
above all. He's unreachable. God has lifted
up his people so that the enemy cannot touch them. That reminds
me of Romans chapter 8, who shall lay anything to the charge of
God's elect? They can't be touched. God has
justified them. And who can condemn them since
Christ died and is risen again and now is seated at the right
hand of God and makes intercession for them? Go ahead. Try to scale
that tower. Try to overcome that height.
You cannot do it because it reaches to the highest heaven. The supreme
court of heaven has justified his people in the blood of his
son, and no one can change it. No one can overthrow what God
has done. Okay, now in verse three, what we're gonna see here
is that the Lord says, our Savior says, I will call upon the Lord
who is worthy to be praised, so shall I be saved from mine
enemies. Here we have a general principle in scripture. We are
saved by looking to Christ, aren't we? And the Lord Jesus Christ
was saved by expressing his dependence upon God and praising him for
his promises, for his strength, for his upholding grace, all
those things to him as a man. And so he says, I will call upon
the Lord. In Christ's trouble, he called.
And he said, he's worthy to be praised, so shall I be saved
from mine enemies. God is worthy of my praise. Now, God is certainly worthy
of our praise. But how much more significant
is it when the Lord Jesus Christ says that he's worthy of his
praise as man? He was perfect man. And so the
Lord was worthy of his praise. How much more worthy than should
he be of ours? Because we're nothing. We're utterly dependent upon
him, so weak and sinful. But when he says he's worthy
to be praised, so shall I be saved from mine enemies, we look
like Jehoshaphat did in 2 Chronicles 20, verses 12 and 17 and all
those verses around there. When the enemy came against him
and he didn't know what to do, he says, We don't know what to
do and we have no power, but our eyes are upon thee. He was
looking to God. And so the Lord said, you go
on out, you won't have to fight in this battle because the battle
is the Lord. So the Lord fought for them.
And what did Israel do? They simply gave thanks and praise
to God for his salvation. And this is what you see throughout
scripture. It's, more we remember it when we see
it, but sometimes it's helpful to point it out. Psalm 106 and
verse 47 says, ìSave us, O Lord our God, and gather us from among
the heathen to give thanks unto thy holy name and to triumph
in thy praise.î Our triumph is expressing our praise to God
for our salvation. We didn't contribute to it, He
did it all, and therefore our enemies are going to have to
sit down and shut up because God has done it. Now, we're going
to read from verse 4, Psalm 18, verse 4 through verse 26. And
as we read these verses, I want you to try to appreciate the
picture that's being drawn here in these verses of scripture.
It's a picture of God avenging his beloved, his anointed Christ. He's avenging him of his enemies.
Christ expresses in verses one and two his utter dependence
upon God, his love of his God, and in verse three he says, I'm
gonna call upon the Lord, he's worthy of my praise, and this
is the way I'll be saved from my enemies, by calling on him
who is worthy of my praise. Notice how praise and dependence,
praise and trust, praise and thanksgiving and trust on God
are all connected. When we depend upon Christ to
save us, that's praise. When we depend upon God in Christ
to save us from our sins, that is expressing in worship. We
are worshiping God because we're depending upon Him to do what
He has promised. We're crediting His word with
truth. We're crediting all merit and all power to God and none
to ourselves, and we're trusting Him. as helpless and utterly
dependent and his strength is made perfect in our weakness.
That is praise. And so, no wonder when Jesus
was riding into Jerusalem and the children were saying, blessed
is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna, oh save us,
to the son of David, Jesus says, out of the mouths of babes and
sucklings thou has perfected praise. Doesn't he say that?
In Matthew, I think it's chapter 20. So here, we're going to see
in the next few verses, from verse 4 through verse 26, we're
going to see what God does in response to the cry of his Son
in our nature. Let's read it. The sorrows of
death compassed me, and the floods of ungodly men made me afraid. The sorrows of hell compassed
me about. The snares of death prevented
me. The snares were in front of me.
They anticipated my movements. and they laid a weight for me.
In verse six, in my distress I called upon the Lord and cried
unto my God. He heard my voice out of his
temple and my cry came before him even into his ears. God heard
his prayer. Then the earth shook and trembled. The foundations also of the hills
moved and were shaken because he was wroth. There went up a
smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured.
Coals were kindled by it. He bowed the heavens also and
came down, and darkness was under his feet. He rode upon the cherub
and did fly. Yea, he did fly upon the wings
of the wind. He made darkness his secret place. His pavilion round about him
were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies. At the brightness
that was before him, his thick clouds passed, hailstones and
coals of fire. The Lord also thundered in the
heavens, and the Highest gave His voice, hailstones and coals
of fire. Yea, He sent out His arrows and
scattered them, and He shot out lightnings and discomfited them.
Then the channels of waters were seen and the foundations of the
world were discovered at thy rebuke, O Lord, at the blast
of the breath of thy nostrils. He sent from above, he took me,
he drew me out of many waters. He delivered me from my strong
enemy and from them which hated me, for they were too strong
for me. They prevented me in the day
of my calamity, but the Lord was my stay. He brought me forth
also into a large place. He delivered me because He delighted
in me. The Lord rewarded me according
to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands
hath he recompensed me. For I have kept the ways of the
Lord, and have not wickedly departed from my God. For all his judgments
were before me, and I did not put away his statutes from me.
I was also upright before him, and I kept myself from mine iniquity. That reminds you that the Lord
Jesus Christ did no sin, He knew no sin, in Him was no sin. Verse 24, therefore hath the
Lord recompensed me according to my righteousness, according
to the cleanness of my hands in His eyesight. The Lord Jesus
Christ was rewarding according to His own righteousness. Then in verse 25, listen, with
the merciful thou wilt show thyself merciful. Was God merciful to
Christ? With an upright man thou wilt
show thyself upright. Was he upright? Did God show
himself upright to him? With the pure thou wilt show
thyself pure. Did God show himself pure to
the Lord Jesus Christ? Was he pure? And with the froward
thou wilt show thyself froward, or perverse, or unsavory, says
in 2 Samuel 22. All right? So do you see those
verses? Here you see a picture of God responding to the cries
of his anointed one. And what is his response? Utter
vengeance upon the enemies who dare to approach and to oppose
and to hate his anointed. He speaks to them in wrath, displays
of his power against them. It's incredible. It's hard to
find a comparison like this in scripture of the response of
God in his fury against an enemy on behalf of his anointed. And
so, when did this happen? When was this occurring? Where
do we find these things elsewhere in Scripture? Well, there's one
place for sure that we can be certain that this occurred. Look
at Matthew chapter 27. In Matthew 27, the Lord Jesus
Christ was on the cross. And listen to these words in
Matthew 27 and verse 29. Well, actually, let me back up. It says, In verse 24, when Pilate
saw that he could prevail nothing, but rather that a tumult was
made, Pilate took water and washed his hands before the multitude,
saying, I'm innocent of the blood of this just person. See ye to
it. He was not innocent. He's the
one who gave commandment, according to Acts 4.28, to put him to death. Verse 25, then answered all the
people and said, his blood be on us and on our children. Verse
26, Matthew 27, 26. Then released Heber Rabbis to
them, and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be
crucified. See, Pilate was not guilty. Then
the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall
and gathered unto him the whole band of soldiers. All the soldiers
now in the common hall are gathered there against the Lord Jesus
Christ. Doesn't that sound familiar from
our reading of Psalm 18? And they stripped him, and they
put on him a scarlet robe. Why did they put on him a scarlet
robe? Because our sins were scarlet. He was stripped naked and clothed
with our sins, that we might be clothed with the white linen
of his righteousness. Verse 29, And when they had plaited
a crown of thorns, they had made it, and they put it on his head,
And you know they didn't just lay it there, they pushed it
and pressed it down into his head. And a reed in his right
hand, because they wanted to mock him. His scepter was a scepter
of righteousness and power. But they were showing by that
reed in his hand that they were trying to mock him as a king
who had no power. And so, with that reed in his
right hand, he accepted the reed of humiliation and shame. They
bowed the knee in mocking worship before him and mocked him, saying,
Hail, King of the Jews. And he was the king of gods.
Israel, wasn't he? Verse 30, and they spit upon
him, and they took the reed and smote him on the head, of course,
hitting the crown of thorns and driving it into his head. And
after that, they had mocked him, they took the robe off from him,
and they put his own raiment on him, and they led him away
to crucify him. where, you know what they did,
when they hung him on the cross, they took his own clothes off
of him again, and they parted his raiment by gambling. Verse
32, and as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon
by name, him they compelled to bear his cross, and when they
were coming to a place called Golgotha, that is to say, a place
of a skull, they gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall, and
when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink it. and they
crucified him. And they parted his garments,
casting lots, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by
the prophet. They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture
did they cast lots." And that's in Psalm 22, I believe. Verse
36, and sitting down, they watched him there. They thought they
had won, didn't they? Just watching him die. And they set up over his head
his accusation written, this is Jesus, the king of the Jews.
So they knew it, didn't they? He was a king. Verse 38, then
were there two thieves crucified with him, one on the right hand
and another on the left. And they that passed by reviled
him, wagging their heads. These insignificant, sinful people,
wagging their heads, bragging, boasting, mockingly, speaking
against the Lord of glory on the cross, they reviled him.
Did he revile again? No, he committed himself to his
God. Verse 40, and saying, this is
what they said, thou that destroyest the temple and buildest it in
three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come
down from the cross. But that's the reason he came
into the world, wasn't it? No, he wasn't going to come down.
Verse 41, likewise also the chief priest mocking him with the scribes
and the elders. Here's the Sanhedrin now. He
saved others, himself he cannot save. True words. He did save
others, and also true, therefore he could not save himself. If
he be king of Israel, Let him now come down from the cross
and we will believe him." What a lie. He didn't come down because
that's the only way he could save his people. He trusted in
God, true enough. Let him deliver him now if he
will have him for he said, I am the son of God. What cruel words. The thieves also which were crucified
with him cast the same in his teeth. Now from the sixth hour,
There was darkness, that would be noon. There was darkness over
the land until the ninth hour, or 3 p.m. And about the ninth
hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lamas
abachthanai, that is to say, my God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? Some of them that stood there,
when they heard that, said, this man calls for Elijah. And straightway
one of them ran and took a sponge and filled it with vinegar and
put it on the reed and gave it to him to drink. The rest said,
let be, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him. Verse
50, Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded
up the ghost. And you know what he said, don't
you? It is finished. And verse 51, now listen to these
words, and behold, the veil of the temple was torn, or rent,
entwined from the top to the bottom, and the earth did quake,
and the rocks rent, or the rocks were ripped apart, and the graves
were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,
and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and they went
into the holy city, which would be the heavenly Jerusalem, and
they appeared to many. Verse 54, Now when the centurion
and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake
and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying this,
Truly, this was the Son of God. Now, when you hear about the
temple veil being torn from top to bottom, the old covenant being
done away, in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, you hear about
the earth itself shaking on its foundations, and you hear about
the graves of God's people being opened, and their bodies arising
from the dead and going into glory, and you hear the centurion's
words, truly this was the Son of God. What you're hearing there
is the result, the answer to Christ's prayer, in the sufferings,
in his agony, to his God, to his savior, to his deliverer,
to his rock, to his fortress, to his trust, his strength, all
the things we've read about here. And what we see in Psalm 18 verses
four through 26 is the avenging of Christ for his enemies, what
they did to him. And who were these enemies now?
Well, we see the men around the cross, we see the soldiers, we
see the mocking of the thieves, we see the mistreatment by the
governor, Herod, and we see the fox, that wicked man, Herod,
who had also joined in them to accuse Jesus. Neither Pilate
nor Herod found any fault with him, and yet they put him to
death. and they crucified him in the most painful and shameful
way and they mocked him in the process. They were merciless
and cruel in a way that's never been seen before and never seen
since because this was God's will for him to lay his life
down. And God himself visited him with
the judgment of God because of the sins laid upon him and made
to be his for his people. And yet God took vengeance on
his enemies. Who are these enemies? What vengeance did God take?
Well, first and foremost, we know that whatever enemies were
destroyed, they were destroyed because Christ was obedient to
his God and trusted his God to deliver him from death. They
were the enemies that caused his death. They were the enemies
he overcame by his death and by his obedience. They were our
enemies, the enemies that would bring us to death. And so what
were they? Well, they have to be first and
foremost our own sin against God, aren't they? Look at a few
verses with me. Look at Micah, the book of Micah. It's in the Old Testament in
the Minor Prophets. I'm going to have to find it
because I never remember exactly where it's at. So let me find
it and I'll tell you where I found it. I think it's after Jonah. It's after Jonah in chapter 7.
Notice what he says here about these enemies. He says in Verse
17, they shall lick the dust like a serpent. They shall move
out of their holes like worms of the earth. This is Micah 7,
verse 17. They shall be afraid of the Lord
our God and shall fear because of thee. Verse 18, who is a God
like unto thee that pardoneth iniquity and passeth by the transgression
of the remnant of his heritage? He retaineth not his anger forever
because he delighteth in mercy. He will turn again, He will have
compassion upon us, He will subdue our iniquities, and that will
cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. Doesn't that
remind you of Pharaoh and his armies being cast into the Red
Sea? God is saying, just as they were the enemies of Israel, our
sins are our enemies. And God has pardoned our iniquity
because he has cast our sins into the depths of the sea. He
has done that in the cross because when Christ was on the cross,
he bore our sins as a body. And in His body died with those
sins and our sins were put into the grave and that's where they
lay. God buried our sins in the death
and the burial of the Lord Jesus Christ. Look at Isaiah chapter
40. In Isaiah chapter 40, the same
enemy is dealt with in the death of Christ. Isaiah 40 verse one,
comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably
to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is accomplished,
that her iniquity is pardoned, for she hath received of the
Lord's hand double for all her sins. God dealt our sins a double
death blow just like David. Through that stone, it penetrated
the skull of Goliath. He fell down and David took Goliath's
own sword and cut his head off and paraded around with his head
to show he had put him to death. So our enemies are put to death
in the Lord Jesus Christ. Look at Luke chapter 1. In Luke
chapter 1, Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, said the
same thing. In Luke 1, in verse 68, he says, blessed be the Lord
God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people. He has
raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant
David. There it is, David is connected to Christ the anointed.
As he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been
since the world began, that we should be saved from our enemies. and from the hand of all that
hate us, to perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and
to remember his holy covenant." Do you see? The covenant is connected
with what? The destruction of our enemies.
In Romans chapter 11, and I think it's verse 27, this is my covenant,
when I shall take away their sins. So he says, verse 73, Luke
1, 73, "...the oath which he swore to our father Abraham that
he would grant unto us that we, being delivered out of the hand
of our enemies, might serve him without fear in holiness and
righteousness before him all the days of our life, There you
go, so you can see here that the enemies were destroyed by
Christ, and the enemy that is our greatest enemy, look at verse
77, he says, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by
the remission of their sins. through the tender mercy of our
God, whereby the dayspring from on high has visited us, to give
light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to
guide our feet into the way of peace. And so the Lord Jesus
Christ made peace by putting our sins away. Throughout scripture,
God uses our, he speaks of our sins as our enemies. We were
the enemies of God, weren't we? In our minds and by wicked works,
and what did he do? When we were the enemies of God,
he reconciled us to himself by removing our offenses against
him and his justice by the death of his son, Romans 5 and verse
10. And while I'm speaking about
Romans 5, let me read another scripture to you about this in
Romans chapter 5. He says this, he says, as sin
reigned like a king unto death, even so might grace reign through
righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. Our
sins reigned over us like a king, bringing us to death. The wages
of sin is death. They paid back. God, in justice,
not only judged us as guilty, but condemned us in Adam and
for our own sins. And we were under the dominion
of the reign of sin and death. And then he says here, in the
same way, grace now reigns. And how does it reign? How does
grace reign? Through righteousness unto eternal life. That's the
reward of righteousness, eternal life. And all of it is by Jesus
Christ, our Lord. And then in Romans 8, he says,
as I said before, when he starts cataloging all those that cannot
separate us from the love of God, he says, who can lay anything
to the charge of God's elect, it is God that justifies. And
he goes on through there, and he lists every possible enemy. And all of them are put to silence. None of them can separate us
from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. And
all of it is because Christ died for us. So when we go back to
Psalm 18 now, What we see here is that the Lord Jesus Christ
was delivered because God was his trust, God was his all, he
cried to him, God took vengeance on his enemies, which were our
sins, not only our sins, but also Satan and his kingdom. Remember, Satan was destroyed
by the Lord Jesus Christ and his kingdom too. The gates of
hell shall not prevail against my church. He was the strong
man, Satan was called the strong man, and Christ was stronger
than he, and he overthrew him. Alright, so back to Psalm 18
now. So notice in verse 19 again,
he brought me forth also into a large place. What is the large
place that God brought the Lord Jesus into? He made him heir
of all things. He gave him everything. All that
was his father's was given to him as the son, not only as the
son, but as the son of man. In Hebrews chapter two, in verse
five and following, it says that when God created man in the beginning,
he put all things under his feet, and yet not all things were put,
or didn't seem like all things were put under him. He didn't
leave anything out when he said all things, and yet not all things
were put under him. But we see Jesus, who was made
a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned
with glory and honor. And the reason he was made lower
for a while than the angels was to taste death for every son. So all this speaks of the reward
given to Christ because of his obedience and his righteousness.
And that's what he's talking about here. He says, in Psalm 18, he says, he brought
me forth in verse 19, Also into a large place he delivered me
because he delighted in me, and we know God delighted in his
son. The Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness, according
to the cleanness of my hands hath he recompensed me." When
Jesus says this, he's talking about his own righteousness,
his own personal righteousness before God. His submission to
his God and Father in love, in self-sacrifice, taking our sins
by the will of God and offering himself to God in sacrifice,
his life laid down for those who were by nature the enemies
of God, who had offended God, and having mercy upon sinners
who were unworthy of the least of God's mercies. That's what
Christ did. He loved them without cause found
in them because In so doing, he fulfilled the will of God
and the work of God. He made God's mercy and grace
known. He magnified God's perfections
in all of his character. in his own death by his love,
by his suffering, the judgment of God for sinners, his justice
was satisfied and magnified, God's law was magnified, God's
grace to sinners, all of it was magnified to the highest possible
extent. Christ did that, and that was
his righteousness. That was the making known of
God's righteousness. The blood of Christ shows the
righteousness of God. Now, that's the reason he was
delivered, but why are we delivered? He was rewarded for his righteousness,
but what are we rewarded for? Well, we just read it in Romans
chapter five. Grace reigns through righteousness
to us. because His obedience was not
for Himself. His righteousness was imputed
to us. Christ Himself was imputed to us in His righteousness, so
that His faith, His trust in God, which led to His submission
and His obedience unto death, laying His life down for His
sheep, and so fulfilling the will of God and magnifying His
greatness in the eyes of all, saving his people, destroying
his enemies, all these things were done by Christ. That is
what is imputed to us, what Christ did. His blood washes us from
our sins. The laying down of his life and
sacrifice to God for our sins washed our sins away. And it
also fulfilled all of our righteousness. So he was rewarded for his righteousness. We are rewarded for his righteousness
also. There is none other. Psalm 71
16 says, I will make mention of thy righteousness, even thine
only, because his is the only righteousness in which we can
appear before God. And so we trust only that. All
right. I'm gonna look at just one more
verse here, and we're gonna have to finish this the next time. Look at verse 25. With the merciful,
thou wilt show thyself merciful. With the upright, thou wilt show
thyself upright. And with the pure, thou wilt
show thyself pure. Christ fulfills all those, doesn't
he? Merciful, upright, pure. He was holy, harmless, undefiled,
separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens. He had
no sin, he did no sin. In him was no sin. He was absolutely
pure. He says, back in verse 23, I have kept
myself from mine iniquity. The sins that were imputed to
him were not sins he committed, but they were his. He didn't
do them, but they were charged to him because he owned us. And
he took our obligations as our husband and laid his life down
to make us holy and present us pure in his sight. But here he's
saying with the merciful, how merciful was Christ. The judgment
with which he judged was his own life laid down. He stood
before God as a substitute for his people. And God rewarded
him for that. and he was upright and pure.
God treated him as such, and he treated his people the same
way. He says, but with the froward, or with the unsavory, God's gonna
show himself unsavory. So this shows us that God treats
men on the basis either of Christ's own righteousness or upon their
own. And in mercy, God saves his people in love by treating them in Christ. That's the way he shows love
to sinners. He puts them in the Lord Jesus
Christ in love. He chose us in Christ before
the foundation of the world, that we might be holy and blameless
before him in love. But those who are in their own
righteousness, who boast in it and trust in it and seek no righteousness
from Christ, They're content with their own. And so he says,
with the perverse, he'll show himself unsavory. And so we can
see here, but thou, in verse 27, thou wilt save the afflicted
people. Who are his people? They're afflicted.
They mourn over their sins. They're poor in spirit. They
have nothing. And yet they have all things
in Christ. But he will bring down high looks, for thou wilt
light my candle. The Lord my God will enlighten
me. Okay? So we will finish this up next
time. We're gonna have to do a second part on Psalm 18. Let's
pray. Father, thank you for the Lord
Jesus Christ, our hope, our Savior, our Lord and our God. We see
in him as the head of his people, one who stood in our place and
did all for us and did it perfectly. He perfectly trusted, he perfectly
prayed, he perfectly obeyed, he perfectly gave himself for
those who were unworthy and and helpless in themselves and sinful
before God, and He did it in such a way as to make them holy
in His own righteousness, to present them before God and purify
them in His own blood. What a Savior! And also we see
the destruction of our enemies. Our sins are our most fearful
enemies because they are so part of us. We committed them. Our
nature is sinful. We have no power over our sinful
nature. We're dependent upon our Savior
for everything. And Satan and his kingdom are
much stronger than we are. We have no power over the men
of this world. We can't do anything about it.
We can't do anything about ourselves. We're totally dependent on our
Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So we pray, Lord, that you would
hear his work, hear his prayer, hear his intercession, hear his
obedience, and hear his blood for us. In Jesus' name we pray,
amen.