Brother Joe Bryson, back in the
study a while ago, before we had prayer, he read from Hebrews
chapter 10, where there's a verse there that says, of the Lord
concerning his people, he says that their sins and iniquities
will I remember no more. And of course, what he's talking
about there is that he won't charge us with sin. He won't
hold them against us because Christ, our Redeemer, has taken
the full brunt of his wrath and justice in our place. And I was
thinking about that, James, as you were singing. He doesn't
remember our sins and iniquities, but thank God he remembers me.
He remembers us. And over in 2 Samuel 22, if you'd
like to turn in your Bibles there, this is a psalm of praise and
thanksgiving for that very truth. The comfort and the security.
that a sinner saved by the grace of God who is hedged about and
surrounded by the glory and the grace of God in Christ has, as
David is singing praises unto his Lord. This is a psalm, and
hopefully maybe you've gotten an opportunity to read Psalm
18, because this is the same thing. It's the same psalm. Psalm 18. Last time, I dealt
with the first four verses in laying the foundation for everything
that David writes by inspiration of the Holy Spirit throughout
this psalm until the end of it. And I entitled that message,
The Glory of God in Christ. And that's the same title of
tonight's message. This is just part two, The Glory
of God in Christ. It's what this whole psalm is
about in 2 Samuel 22. And as David in his old age,
before his deathbed utterance that we'll read in 2 Samuel 23,
in reflecting over his life and reflecting upon the fact that
he is soon to be with the Lord, he sings these praises of worship
unto God. He announces in his prayer here
and in his song, you might say, the glory of God in Christ. And
I thought about that, that's why our head brother Terry reads
Psalm 17, which appears before obviously Psalm 18 in the Psalms,
where he spoke of being delivered continually from his enemies.
And then he concluded that Psalm with saying this, he said, I'll
be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness. I'll be perfectly
conformed to the image of Christ. The Bible says in Romans chapter
8 that that is the goal of God's purpose. in our salvation by
his grace through Christ, that he might populate the new heavens
and the new earth with a people like his Son, perfectly conformed
to the image of Christ." Well, let's read the first four verses
so we can keep the context. Here's the foundation of it. I told someone that I set an
alternate title for the last message on this, as I entitled
it, The Glory of God in Christ, because that's what it is. But
an alternate title might be something like this, Christ from bottom
to top. Because he starts out here, verse
1, David spoke unto the Lord the words of this song and the
day that the Lord had delivered him out of the hand of all his
enemies and out of the hand of Saul. It's not talking about
a particular calendar day, but he's talking about all the days
accumulated of God's grace. and mercy towards David in Christ,
even reaching back to the day that God delivered him out of
the hand of Saul. And here's what he said, verse
2, the Lord is my rock, my foundation, he's my fortress, surrounds me,
he's my deliverer, my savior, the God of my rock, literally
the God of my strength, in him will I trust, have no trust in
myself, have no trust in men, only trust in Christ, for he's
able, he's my shield, He stands between me and all the accusations
of Satan, all the accusations of the law, for who shall lay
anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifies.
He is the horn of my salvation that speaks of power. He is my
high tower. He sets me above all my enemies,
not that I am holier than thou, but that my position is in Christ. For as He is, so are we in this
world. We are in Christ, and as long
as we are in Him, We're above all that can harm us. And he's
also our high tower so that we might foresee the enemy coming
as he guides us. And as he warns us through his
word and go on and said, my high tower and my refuge, we hide
in him the rock, the cleft of the rock. He hideth my soul. He's my savior. Thou savest me
from violence. And therefore, because I have
Christ as my foundation. Because I have Christ as all
these things. I'm completely surrounded by
the power and the mercy and the grace of God in Christ so that
nothing or no one can touch me except by divine permission.
And even when that happens, it's for my good and His glory and
for the deliverance of my soul. And so out of that, he says,
I will call on the Lord. In Psalm 17, he said that, I'm
going to call on the Lord, hear the right, hear the justice of
this matter. Here's a just matter, he's saying.
And he says, who is worthy to be praised, worthy as the lamb
that was slain to receive power and honor and glory. So shall
I be saved from mine enemies. Now we're going to see specifically
what David was crying out to be delivered from. He says here
in verse 5, and we can see both here as we go through some of
these verses. Now, we can see two things I
want you to think of. Number one, think of David as
a type of the Lord Jesus Christ, who in himself as our substitute
suffered the torments and agonies of death and hell in our stead
to save us from our sins. He who is God in human flesh,
he who came down from heaven's glory, and dwelt among men, and
who took upon himself, into union with himself, that sinlessly
perfect human nature, with all the infirmities and weaknesses
of humanity, created humanity. But he came and he suffered the
full measure of hell and death in our stead." And some of this
language here describes that as we look at David as a type
of Christ. But then we can also secondly
look at this as David personally. As he himself had suffered, as
we all do, and certainly we cannot in any way or degree compare
the sufferings that we go through with the sufferings of our Savior.
I'm not saying that at all. That cannot be. I've often said,
a lot of times when you go to a funeral or something, you might
hear someone say something like this, especially with a person
who became terminally ill and suffered quite a bit. They might
say something like, well, I know they're in heaven because they
suffered so much here on earth. Well, my friend, there's no amount
of suffering that any human being and I hate to see human beings
suffer. I hate to suffer myself. It tears
my heart out. But we got to accept the truth
here. There's no amount of suffering that any human being can go through
on this earth. to merit and earn salvation in
heaven. That's why Christ had to come
and suffer in our stead. If we could suffer and get the
job done, pay the debt, Christ would not have had to have come.
Another verse, Brother Joe, that you read there in Hebrews chapter
10 says where remission of these is, talking about where the forgiveness
and pardon of our sins is a fact based upon the suffering and
the death of Christ, it says there is no more offering for
sin. Notice where Christ has suffered and died and fulfilled
the justice of God and brought in everlasting righteousness,
there's nothing else to be done. One offering, you see, the Scripture
says, He did it once, and that's all it took for the God-man,
for our Savior. And so this is not comparing
David's suffering or our suffering to Christ, but we do suffer.
And God delivers us from this suffering, from this torment.
We do have opposition. And God delivers us from that
opposition. He will not let His people be
overtaken so as to lose our souls. He's going to save us from them.
Now, the foundation of that's already been laid in the first
four verses. He's my refuge. He's my refuge. And whatever
He allows to come my way in this life by His sovereign will and
good pleasure, I guarantee you, it's for my good and for His
glory. And He's going to deliver us. So this is what David prays. Now look at verse 5. Here's David
crying out to the Lord. Look at it. He says, when the
waves of death, when the waves of death compassed me, that means
surrounded me, no way out, the floods of ungodly men made me
afraid, overflowing like a flood, just like our sins. We read that
in Romans 5.20, where sin abounded. That literally means overflowed
me like a flood. That's what we are by nature.
drowning in a sea of sin. And we cannot swim in that sea. We cannot deliver ourselves.
And he says, when the floods of ungodly men made me afraid,
he says here in verse six, the sorrows or the cords of hell,
like it's almost like we're trapped and tied up with cords and hell's
dragging us in. That's the picture here. Think
about that dragging you in and you can't get away from when
the sorrows of hell compass me. about the snares of death prevented
me, stopped me from doing what I want to do. And that's the
way it is with us, isn't it? That's why David said, I'll be
satisfied when I awake with thy likeness. He says in verse 10,
in my distress I called upon the Lord. And that word called
there is literally shrieked. All I could do was shriek. I
could do is holler, that's what he's saying. Out of my distress,
in my distress, I called upon the Lord. The name Lord there
is Jehovah, the God of grace, the God of promise, the God of
salvation. He says, I cried to my God and
he did hear my voice. Where did he hear? Out of his
temple, out of his dwelling place. And you know, in the old covenant,
that was the tabernacle. in the holiest of all, above
the mercy seat, where the high priest went in with the blood."
What is that? That's a picture of Christ and our salvation and
our deliverance by Him alone. And what he's saying, that's
God, He hears His people, He hears our cries, He hears our
voice through Christ. Because Christ is the ever-present
dwelling place of God. The Bible teaches that in Colossians
2 and verse 9, for in Him dwelleth the fullness of the Godhead bodily,
and you are complete in Him. So if you want God to hear you
out of your distress and out of your cries, come to the mercy
seat. Come to Christ. Go to the throne
of grace and mercy to find help in time of need. Why? Because
you have a great high priest who suffered and bled and died
and was buried and raised again the third day, who's now seated
at the right hand of the Father, ever living to make intercession
for us. And that's what that temple represents. That temple,
that tabernacle is a picture of Christ in every way, His person,
who He is, God in human flesh. His office is as mediator. He's
our surety. He's our representative. He's
our substitute. He's our prophet, our priest,
our king, all of it right there. He's our altar. He's our sacrifice. He's the Lamb slain from the
foundation of the world. It's by His blood that my sins
are remitted and washed away. It's by His righteousness imputed
that I stand before God complete and whole and justified. He's
my mercy seat. You see, it's by him that I enter
the holiest of all, Hebrews chapter 10, with boldness. That's godly
boldness because it's based on God's promise and it glorifies
him. And he said, and my cry did enter into his ears. Here's
the waves of death, like a small ship lost at sea in the storm.
Here's the floods of ungodly men, just like a person in a
low piece of ground about to be overwhelmed by a flood. And
the floods of ungodly men made me afraid." Now, we can certainly
see how that applies to David himself. The floods of ungodly
men made him afraid. How about you? How about me? Have the floods of ungodly men
ever made us afraid? They sure have. But how would
that apply to Christ, David as a type of Christ? Well, it would
apply to him only in this sense, in the infirmities and weaknesses
of human flesh, even though he was without sin. You know, when
our Savior was on this earth, walking among men, he contracted
no contamination from sin. He wasn't born in sin. He was
born of the Virgin Mary, conceived in the womb by the Holy Spirit,
not born of men. He didn't inherit that sinful
human nature from Adam as we did. That's why he had to be
the woman seed and not the man. That's why he had to be born
in the way he was, conceived and born. And when he walked
among men, he dwelt with publicans and sinners, and yet he didn't
become one of them. He did not become one of them.
He went to the cross and died for the sins of publicans and
sinners, like us. But He didn't become one of us,
no sir. He didn't become a God-hater.
He didn't become a blasphemer. There wasn't one word out of
His mouth on that cross that was dishonoring or disobedient
to His Father. Isn't that right? Everything
that was in His mind and in His heart, His human mind, and his
human heart united with his divine mind and his divine heart, which
I can't explain. I can't explain that, can we?
But it's there. Everything, every thought that
passed through his mind was a pure thought, a holy thought. We don't know what that's like.
I don't. You don't either. I can tell
by looking at you, you don't. We just don't know that. That's
why it does not yet appear what we shall be. But we know we'll
be like him. We'll see him as he is. You imagine
looking out with pure and perfect eyes. We just can't imagine what
that's like. And so when he went to the cross, when he began to
suffer, we go through that process of suffering in our stead as
our sin bearer. He was going through things that
he had never experienced personally. And he expressed that in the
book of Matthew chapter 26. Let me just read this to you.
Verse 38. This is when he was in the garden of Gethsemane.
And I'm going to tell you something about this now. And you all know
this is so. There's a lot of things here we cannot explain
in human terms that our Lord was going through in his personal
suffering. How it applied and how it worked
out, I don't know. But here's how he expressed it.
He said in verse 38 of Matthew 26, he says, My soul is exceeding
sorrowful. And when he said, my soul, he
was talking about his whole person. He said, even unto death. Somebody
said this. They said it's almost like he
thought he was going to die before he got to the cross. Now, I don't
know about that, but I know here's what he says. My soul is exceeding
sorrowful, even unto death. And he went a little further,
it says in Matthew 26, and fell on his face and he prayed. Now,
this is the son of God. God in human flesh submitting
himself in prayer unto the Father. And here's what he said. He said,
Oh, my father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will,
but as thou will. That's what he said. Now, again,
I can't explain all that to you and you can't explain it to me.
And if you try, I won't listen. Cause I've just read so much
on, but I know this. The Bible says in Hebrews, I
believe it's chapter two, that our savior, our savior was made
perfect by the things which he suffered. That wasn't, that's
not a moral perfection within him. That's talking about is
he had to go through this process in order to complete and perfect
the work that God gave him to do. And he was experiencing things
here in himself, in his own soul, that he had never experienced
before. And so it's not that he himself, like us, you know,
when we get afraid, we'll get afraid of men. We'll be afraid
of men. He was never afraid of men. I
know that so. You remember when they came to
arrest him? And Judas came with him, he kissed him, and he asked
him, he said, who do you seek? Who do you want? Who are you
coming here to get? And they said, we're coming to get Jesus
of Nazareth. You remember what happened? He said, I am, and
they all fell backward. The power of God. He wasn't afraid
of men. He said that. He said, nobody
takes my life from me, he said, in the book of John. He said,
I lay it down of myself. You see, He gave Himself. He wasn't taken by force. He
gave Himself. You know why He did it? John
13, verse 1 tells us, because He loved His own unto the end. He loved His sheep, His people,
to the point that He was determined, set His face like a flint, the
scripture says, to complete the work. What work? Dying, suffering,
bleeding, dying for our sins. And so he suffered those infirmities
of the flesh. And it says in the Bible, in
the book of Hebrews chapter four, that he did that to the point
that he can identify with us. He was not, we don't have a high
priest who was not touched with the feelings of our infirmities,
but he was tempted in all points, like as we are, except there's
one exception though, it says there, yet without what? Without
sin. And that's even while he was
on the cross. Did you know that? That's not just talking about
some point in time leading up to the cross, and then stop,
and then he was made a sinner. Oh, no. Oh, no. He was tempted
even on that cross. Tested. That's what that means.
Tested even on that cross. Just like, hurt just like you'd
hurt. Suffered, sweated, cried, bled,
just like, but his, without sin. You say, well, how could he digest
it? He was made sin, the scripture
says. Sin was charged to his account.
And then we can identify with that in the sense that we suffer
for him, not like he suffered, not near. In verse six there,
he mentions the sorrows of hell, the cords of hell bound by the
cords of condemnation until Christ set us free. And he did. The
snares of death like a bird caught in a trap and cannot fly away.
That's how we were by nature until the sun set us free indeed. And all of this describes the
extremity of our natural condition in Adam and in ourselves. And
it's also Christ, it describes Him who suffered these things
in Himself as to the infirmities of the flesh. The Bible in 1
Peter chapter 2 and verse 24 says this, talking about Christ
who His own self bear our sins in His own body on the tree.
That is, in a human body He bore our sins to that cross. God-man. And why did he do it? That we,
being dead to sins, should live under righteousness by whose
stripes you were healed. It all goes back to the cross,
doesn't it? It all goes back to his death, all based on the
merits of his obedience unto death. And so David says here,
he says, in my stress I just cried out unto the Lord. Well, as I said, that cry means
literally shriek. That's a cry of desperation.
That's what that is for us. a cry of utter despair. I've
got no place else to go. That's why I say salvation is
not by our choice, because literally we have no choice. There's only
one way out of this thing. Christ said, I am the way, the
truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father
but by me. And if you ever come under conviction
of the Holy Spirit to see ourselves the way we really are as sinners
who deserve condemnation and death based upon our best efforts,
we're going to see there's only one way. We don't have any choice. Christ is the only choice. He's
the only one. Now, how did Christ cry out Himself? Well, you remember that. Boy,
that's an awesome thought, isn't it? One of the seven saints on
the cross. But it's not just one of them,
it's something else. Our Lord hanging on that tree.
And all that He said, and He cried out. And you remember He
quoted the Old Testament. I think it's Psalm 22, isn't
it? He quoted it in the Old Hebrew. They didn't speak Hebrew in His
day. That wasn't the common language. The common language of the day
was Aramaic. And so he cried out in Hebrew, and it went something
like this. You know, we don't really know how to pronounce
it, but we'll try. It says, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani. That's what he said. It's recorded
in the book of Matthew 26, isn't it? Which being interpreted out
of the old Hebrew, ancient Hebrew tongue. My God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me? He wasn't asking a question,
trying to find out information. All the time in his earthly ministry,
leading up to the cross, he continually told his disciples that he must
go to Jerusalem and suffer and bleed and die for the remission
of their sins, be buried and raised again the third day. He
told them, he said, this is the very reason I came into this
world. Now, do you suppose that when he got to the cross and
began the process of that suffering and dying that he all of a sudden
forgot what he was there for and had to ask the Father, why
am I here? No, that's not what was happening at all. He was
simply, one thing, he was fulfilling the scriptures, the prophecy
of the scriptures out of Psalm 22, the Messianic Psalm, the
Psalm of the cross. And in that language, he was
testifying that he is the fulfillment of the messianic promise in himself.
And secondly, he was making a point. You might say it was a rhetorical
question. Why did God forsake him? Why did the Father forsake
him? I'll tell you why. Because he was made sin, Christ
who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of
God in him. That's a great type of Christ there, and that's a
great reality. Now, as this applies to David and to us in our distress,
I thought about this verse in the book of James, chapter 5,
verse 13. It says, Is any among you afflicted? Well, let him
pray. Cry out unto the Lord. Is any
merry? Let him sing songs. If God brings
us to see our lostness in ourselves, If God really ever brings us
to see our sin and depravity, I'll tell you exactly what we'll
do. We'll shriek out for mercy, just like David here. We'll cry
out for Him to be merciful unto us. And why does God bring us
to such depths of distress and sorrow? Is it just to leave us
there? Well, no. He brings us to such
depths of sorrow and suffering in order to deliver us. He strips
us naked to show us that He clothes us in the righteousness of His
Son. He shows us our filth to show us that the only way we
can be washed from our sins is in the blood of the Savior. He
makes us hungry, starving, that He might feed us with the bread
of life. And He makes us thirsty, dry and thirsty land, that He
might give us the water of life. Does He do it to show that we
must partially pay Him with our tears? No. If that's the truth,
we've got room to boast, don't we? Is it to show us that our
remorse and our repentance is a condition we must meet before
we're qualified to be saved? No. No, we'll never be remorseful
and repentant over our sins until we see a saving view of Christ
on that cross, dying for our sins. The reason is to show that
he alone can save us, and he alone is worthy to be prayed.
That's what David's expressing here in his distress. I've got
no place to go. Just like Peter said, Lord, to
whom shall we go? You have the words of life. You know, we can take no credit
for our salvation and our well-being and our eternal glory. We can
take no credit for it. Not even in our wills. Not even
in our choices, not even in our faith, and certainly not in our
works. It's not of him that willeth, it's not of him that runneth,
it's of God who shows mercy. And so he slays us by the law
to show us forgiveness and righteousness in him by Christ. Well, look
at God's response now. Look at verse 8. Here's God's
response. He gives two responses here. Now, there's two parties
involved here. You have David. The child of
God, the sinner saved by grace, and then you have the enemies.
David representing all children of God. And as we apply it as
a type of Christ, Christ against the world. You could say it this
way, but here's God's response. He has two responses. First,
here's his response to the ungodly, to those who are determined and
insistent on standing in opposition to God's glory, to God's way
of salvation, to God's Christ. And it says in verse 8, then
the earth shook and trembled, just like an earthquake. The
foundations of heaven moved and shook because he was angry. He was wroth. That's what that
means. God's angry with the wicked, the scripture says. And there
went up a smoke out of his nostril, the fire out of his mouth devoured.
This is the judgment of God against sin. Coals were kindled by it. That's how hot it was. He bowed
the heavens also and came down, and darkness was under His feet.
He rode upon a cherub and did fly, and He was seen upon the
wings of the wind." This is the glory of God in His justice.
And He made darkness pavilions round about Him. There's a surrounding
darkness, you see, no light at all. Dark waters, He says, thick
clouds of the sky. And through the brightness before
him were coals of fire kindled." That's the glory of God in His
justice against the wicked. The Lord thundered from heaven.
And the Most High uttered His voice, His word. He spoke. He
spoke. And it's a word of judgment here.
And He sent out arrows and scattered them, lightening and discomfited
them. That means He upset them. They were safe and secure, you
see, at one time in their own minds. in the world, but he's
going to turn that upside down. Verse 16, the channels of the
sea appeared, the foundations of the world were discovered.
What that means is reality was brought to light. You see, people
like to, they love to hear lies. They get good preachers who will
tell them lies, who will build them up, who will boast about
them. We'll talk about how good and how great they are and what
a great addition they are to the church and to the kingdom
of God and how we ever got along without you. Before you came,
we just don't know. That's the way people like to
talk, you know. How much they've done for the Lord and all that.
Their great works, their great accomplishment, their own righteousness. But he says here, the foundations
of the world were discovered. It's open now. Everything's open
and above board. God's going to set reality straight.
by the light of his word, and he says it's done at the rebuking
of the Lord, at the blast of the breath of his nostrils. God's
judgment upon the earth. That's his response to David's
prayer. It may not happen all at once, but it's going to happen. And when it happens, finally,
it'll happen all at once. And it's going to be done. These
are expressions of God's justice and wrath against sin. We see
expressions of that all the way through redemptive history. You
see Adam and Eve cast out of the garden, never to return.
We see Cain marked and rejected because he came to God seeking
salvation by his works. We see the Tower of Babel crumble
to the ground, confusion among their language so that they couldn't
even communicate. We see God's wrath upon Sodom
and Gomorrah. We could go all the way down
through redemptive history, you see. We see even the children
of Israel brought into captivity. Jerusalem destroyed. We see all
natural disasters. Why do these things happen? So
that we can look back and make this assessment and say, well,
those folks got what they deserved. Ha ha. Or so that we can say,
well, they made a, what was the fellow said on TV about Hades?
He said they made an agreement with the devil. Well, let me
tell you something. You know, that's a good description
of every sinner who's not trusting Christ and resting in Him for
all salvation. If you're sitting here tonight
and you don't believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you don't
run to Him and rest in Him and see Him as your whole salvation,
as David described in the first four verses here, you've already
made a pact with the devil. Why does God bring these These
episodes of judgment down upon the earth. Well, Christ said
it in Luke chapter 13, when he asked those fellows, do you suppose
they were greater sinners than you? He said, not so, except
you likewise repent, you'll perish. He brings these things down to
show that God is a God who is holy and just, and he must punish
sin. And my friend, if we don't get
the same thing, it's only by his mercy and his grace. It's
of the Lord's mercy that we're not consumed. And our only hope
is in Christ. Well, you know that everything
that's described here from verse 8 down to verse 16, I want you
to see this. Everything that's described,
those awful things, that's what we've earned. That's what we
deserve. But you know why we who are in
Christ won't get those things? Because Christ experienced the
full measure of it and more on the cross. That's what He went
through. Every measure, every ounce of
God's judgment against all the sins of all His elect, all the
sheep, all the church, were made to meet on the Lord Jesus Christ. And He suffered and drank damnation
dry. That's what this gospel is all
about. And that's how God can be just, and yet justify sinners
like us. But now, here's the second response.
I won't get to all this, but I want to start it right here.
Listen to this. Here's God's deliverance of His people. Look
at verse 17. And I love how this starts out. Listen to it. He sent from above. Because, my friend, that's where
our help is going to come from. Not from the earth. Not from
below. Not horizontally, but vertically. Our only help is in God. He must send it. He sent from
above. What did He send? Who did He
send? He sent His Son. God sent forth His Son to be
made of a woman, to be made under the law, to redeem them that
were under the judgment of the law. God sent His Son. His name shall be called Jesus,
for He shall save His people from their sins. And His name
is Immanuel, which being interpreted as God with us. Christ Jesus
came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief. He sent from
above. And listen to this one verse
saying, He took me. I didn't give my heart to Him.
He took me. That means He literally took
me. I had to be taken. That's right. I had to be rescued out of this
sea of sin. Out of the depths of depravity,
out of the ruination of the fall, he had to take me. And he reached
down his sovereign hand of mercy in Christ, and he picked me up
and took me. He lifted the beggar off the
dung heap. That's what he did. And I'll tell you what, I think
David knew something about this, don't you? In his despair and
his sin, the chastisements that he was going through, the sword
never leaving his house because of his own sin, Because of his
own disobedience, he knew that if I'm going to be saved, God
had to send from above and he had to take me. Taken by the
Lord. It's almost like he kidnapped
me. But here's the point. He didn't do it against our will.
He made us willing in the day of his power. It says, he drew
me out of many waters, great waters. Again, Romans 520, where
sin abounded like a flood. God drew me out. He reached out
and drew me out of the flood of sin that was overflowing me.
In verse 18, He delivered me from my strong enemy. Our enemy
is a strong enemy, not a weak enemy. Stronger than us. And
from them that hated me, He delivered me. For they were too strong
for me. Too strong for me. Satan is too
strong for us. Sin is too strong for us. But
God delivered us. He's too strong for them. And
so He did it. He's the strong man. Verse 19,
they prevented me in the day of my calamity. They stopped
me. Whenever this trouble comes, they stop me from reaching my
goal. What's my goal? To be like Christ. That's my
goal. That's my desire. But they prevent
me. And David here is not blaming
them. He's not putting all the responsibility on them. He's
the problem. We're the problem. But here's
the case. Verse 19. But the Lord was my stay. How do you stay saved? By working
hard? By trying to get better? Well,
that's the case. We're not going to stay saved.
That's the case. We've never been saved. How are
you going to stay saved? Here it is. The Lord was my stay. He's my surety. He's the author
and finisher of my faith. Verse 20, He brought me forth
also into a large place. There's plenty of room here.
There's room here for everybody that Christ died for, for all
the blessings that He gives them. Brought me forth into a, He delivered
me, and listen, because He delighted in me. Now, how do you suppose
the Lord delighted in David? How do you suppose he did? And
I'll get to this next week on this verse 21. He talks about
my righteousness. How do you suppose David could
claim any righteousness? How do you suppose the Lord delighted
in him? Well, was it because David was such a good boy all
of his life? Well, you know, at the end, even
David denies that. His deathbed words, he said,
Though my house be not so with God. And he's not just talking
about his children. He's talking about himself, too. He said,
oh, Lord, if thou shouldest mark iniquities, who would stand?
He said, blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputed want iniquity,
whose sins are covered. So you wouldn't even if you say
that God delighted in David because he was such a good guy or such
an obedient person in every way, you couldn't get David to agree
with you. You might find a bunch of self-righteous
Pharisees who will, but not David. How do you suppose the Lord delighted
in David? He delighted in David as he viewed
him in Christ, a sinner saved by the grace of God, a trophy
of the glory of God in the salvation of sinners, justification of
the ungodly in and by the Lord Jesus Christ. For our Lord said
it. The father spoke from heaven.
He said, this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. Now
you hear him. You want God to be pleased with
you? I want God to be pleased with me. How are you going to
run to Christ? Just run to him and stay right
there. And the only way you'll stay
right there is because he's your stay. Isn't that right? All right,
we'll pick