David’s Praise to God
1David spoke to Yahweh the words of this song in the day that Yahweh delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies, and out of the hand of Saul, 2and he said: “Yahweh is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer, even mine; 3God is my rock in whom I take refuge; my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, and my refuge. My savior, you save me from violence. 4I call on Yahweh, who is worthy to be praised; So shall I be saved from my enemies. 5For the waves of death surrounded me. The floods of ungodliness made me afraid. 6The cords of Sheol were around me. The snares of death caught me. 7In my distress, I called on Yahweh. Yes, I called to my God. He heard my voice out of his temple. My cry came into his ears. 8Then the earth shook and trembled. The foundations of heaven quaked and were shaken, because he was angry. 9Smoke went up out of his nostrils. Consuming fire came out of his mouth. Coals were kindled by it. 10He bowed the heavens also, and came down. Thick darkness was under his feet. 11He rode on a cherub, and flew. Yes, he was seen on the wings of the wind. 12He made darkness a shelter around himself: gathering of waters, and thick clouds of the skies. 13At the brightness before him, coals of fire were kindled. 14Yahweh thundered from heaven. The Most High uttered his voice. 15He sent out arrows, and scattered them; lightning, and confused them. 16Then the channels of the sea appeared. The foundations of the world were laid bare by Yahweh’s rebuke, at the blast of the breath of his nostrils. 17He sent from on high and he took me. He drew me out of many waters.
Every life has times of peace and times of hardship. There are seasons of joy, and there are seasons of pain and anguish. Life is what collapses in a moment just when you think you have achieved it all; and life is what rises up, when you least expect it, just as you are about to let go of everything you held and give up.
To us, who can do nothing in such a life, Jesus promised that he was going to prepare a place for us, that he would surely come again and receive us to himself, so that where he is we may be also. He gave us this hope: however hard the affairs of the world may be, we are not to let our hearts be troubled, but to hold fast to the promise and stay faithful with all our hearts. And the Holy Spirit is with us, bearing the whole weight of our lives so that we can lay the world’s burdens down before the cross.
David was moved by the vastness of God and the depth of his love, because he had known God lead him faithfully through every circumstance to make him a blessed child. He had thought he had loved God and lived earnestly, but standing on the last hill of his years and looking back over his life, he realized that not once had he kept his faith by his own will. God’s mercy had made it possible for him to forgive, and God, refusing to give up on him, had protected him and kept him safe from his enemies. The cords of Sheol were around him and the snares of death came upon him, but with God beside him, he could overcome Saul’s relentless persecution.
Overcoming such trials takes great endurance. Friends, the relentlessness of a person who has received the spirit of Satan is hard for a good person to bear. Such people do not fear God, so they behave beneath all common decency, and it is always the good who suffer. Because Satan works to make God’s people stumble, the struggle is twice as hard. A good person cannot avoid a double burden: they must not sin against God, they must overcome Satan by faith, and they must also set an example for others. God knows all this, and yet he wants his people to overcome Satan’s trials and to triumph wisely. He does not leave them in such circumstances because he fails to understand how hard it is for them. Just as he knew Adam would be tempted by Satan to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and still wanted Adam to overcome sin by his own will, he wants you to overcome sin out of your love for him.
All his life, whatever problem David met, he poured out his heart in prayer and received an answer. In every moment of danger he could experience miracles through prayer. Those are miracles no one can experience without steadfast faith. How hard must those days of fleeing from Saul have been, for him to pray that the waves of death surrounded him on every side to bring him down and the floods of ungodliness made him afraid? Like a hunter catching animals in a snare, Saul, gripped by an evil spirit, saw David as nothing but prey. However far David fled, Saul, the king of the land, was pursuing him, and there was nowhere for him to hide.
You too must have known suffering that left you hardly able to breathe. Perhaps you were at your wits’ end with no way to solve a problem, and wept your heart out.
There were probably times when you looked all around and found no one to help, when you dreaded the coming of morning and wanted to hide somewhere. I can imagine times when you sank to the ground under the blazing sun as if thrown out on the street in broad daylight, and times when people mocked you. In situations where you could not tell who was on your side and who was against you, you may have despaired and lost heart, and even failed to think your own life precious. When Satan, the ruler of this world, sets himself to attack you like this, you can never hold him off by your own strength.
If you now feel at peace, it is entirely because the Holy Spirit stands around you as a fence and protects you. The only one who can face Satan, the ruler of this world, and defeat him is the Holy Spirit. I hope you will never forget that if you do not rely wholly on the Holy Spirit, you will be exposed to Satan’s attacks like a young lamb standing alone where there is no fence.
Because David knew that his only way to survive was the grace of the Spirit, he exalted God and praised him. He praised God as the only one who lights up darkness, turns death into life, and gives the wisdom to overcome the world’s torment. God’s wrath against the world and Satan, who torment those who live by faith, is a high fortress they can never scale; that is what makes God a refuge for his people. To grasp the greatness of God as deeply as David did is a great blessing. If God protects us as he did David, Satan will not dare to plot an attack.
Saul and his house, who had tormented David, were judged by God. When God judged Saul and his house, he hid his kind face and took their lives in fierce wrath. In an instant Saul met his fate, dying together with his sons. Judging by how it ended, Saul may look like a wicked man from the start, but he too was a king God had raised up. There was a time when God himself called his name, and Saul hid, shy and ashamed. It was after he became king that he cast off that innocence and began to grow proud. He came to have absolute power and wealth in abundance, and as people exalted him, he began to look to the world rather than to God. Once he thought he had everything he wanted and lacked nothing, he clung to the world more than to God, and his humble heart turned proud. Even though his faith had gone bad, God gave Saul chance after chance to turn back.
But his proud thoughts led him down the road to ruin. In the garden of Eden the serpent told the woman that if she ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, her eyes would be opened and she would be like God, knowing good and evil. Just so, once King Saul was driven by an evil spirit, he believed his own decisions were always right. He had eaten the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil that Satan offered. I hope you will not trust in your own wisdom. However wise a person may be, how far can that wisdom reach? And however sound their reasoning, it can never be sounder than God’s. All such thinking is pride, and it leads to ruin. If King Saul had turned back when God gave him the chance, he could have lived a different life. Instead he chose the world’s broad road, which seemed to promise to lift him up.
The judgment the world will receive from God is a great terror to the wicked. But since for God’s people that same judgment will be a refuge, may you never forget this for a moment, and may you rely on God.
2 Samuel 22:17-18
17He sent from on high and he took me. He drew me out of many waters. 18He delivered me from my strong enemy, from those who hated me, for they were too mighty for me.
There is no doubt that the world is a fearful thing for God’s people. But because God always guards them as the apple of his eye, he himself rescued them whenever they were attacked. Moses looked as though he had been abandoned on the Nile, yet God drew him out of the water through Pharaoh’s daughter. In the same way, God gathers his people in his arms so that they are not swept away by the muddy waters of the world, which never stop flowing. It was this deep love of God that David knew, and it moved him to praise God for saving him by the hand of Yahweh.
2 Samuel 22:21-23
21Yahweh rewarded me according to my righteousness. He rewarded me according to the cleanness of my hands. 22For I have kept Yahweh’s ways, and have not wickedly departed from my God. 23For all his ordinances were before me. As for his statutes, I did not depart from them.
David did not doubt God, and because his faith was true, he was able to live righteously. That trust enabled him to keep the ways of Yahweh and to observe all his ordinances and statutes. David knew God’s grace for the true grace it was, and when God saw this, he was greatly pleased and blessed him for his obedience. It is like what we feel as parents. We feed, clothe, and protect our children, and when a child does not take that love for granted but gives thanks, we find ourselves grateful to that child.
We never begrudge a child who is truly grateful. But a child who receives kindness and never learns to thank their parents only grows worse the more they are given, until we hesitate to give. God’s heart is the same. When a problem is solved, people foolishly say they were lucky, or that it worked out because they did well. But God’s grace is never luck. When we strive to live blamelessly and righteously, God sees that heart as humble faith and rewards it.
Saul offered sacrifices before the people to show off his faith, but God looks at the heart, and he is not fooled by a pretense that has no faith in it. If God had accepted as faith the false sacrifice Saul offered, then the faith of the seven thousand who served faithfully out of sight would have been in vain. God’s people make the same mistake as Saul. Worship offered for our own blessing, when trouble comes or when we want something, is no longer for God’s glory; that makes it false. Do not misunderstand me here. We should worship God at all times and in all places. What I am saying is that we must not worship for our own sake rather than God’s. If like David we cast off our own righteousness, fall down before God, and seek him and seek him again, he will meet with us. But a pretended faith like Saul’s, which has no love and tries to use God for worldly glory, will surely be rebuked. God is the one who will judge your faith, so may you offer, in your place as his saints, worship that exalts his name.
2 Samuel 22:26
26With the merciful you will show yourself merciful. With the perfect man you will show yourself perfect.
With the merciful God shows himself merciful, with the perfect he shows himself perfect, and with the pure he shows his own purity. We must know what kind of God he is as we follow him. Because God is merciful and perfect, just as he rewards his people for the service they give in secret, he also knows every sin the crooked commit in secret, and he will surely judge it. It was because David had such true faith that he could endure to the end under Saul’s attacks. God showed his mercy to David, whose heart held a godly love. Whenever David trusted in the Lord and strove to keep far from sin, God showed him his perfection and helped him not to fall into sin.
It is because the merciful Lord took on a human body, came to this earth, condemned sin in his own body, and rose again that we his people have come to enjoy such grace.
No one may enter the Kingdom of Heaven, which Christ has thrown wide open, except those sealed by the Holy Spirit. Heaven is a beautiful place where the water of life flows from the throne of the Lamb, where the tree of life stands on either side of the river, where there is no more curse and no more night, and where no lamp or sunlight is needed. It is a place made perfect by God alone. How sad it would be if those who have been assured of such a Kingdom made the foolish choice to give up heaven for the sake of this world’s desires! The moment our life in the flesh ends and soul and body are parted, we will go to the heaven or the hell that opens before our eyes. At that point no choice will be possible, so we must turn back as David did while we still have the chance.
Friends, we can share the gospel only while we are alive. Worldly people offer ancestral rites for the dead and pray for blessings, but because we know there is a life after death, we must preach the gospel for the salvation of the living. Whether we met as parent and child or in any other relationship, every relationship is formed in this world, and it ends the moment a life ends. After that it exists only in the memories of the living. What I am saying may sound cruel. But we must take this to heart and, while we live, give more love to those beside us and labor for their salvation. However deeply you love someone who has left this world, there is nothing you can do for them, so I hope you will be kinder now to the living who are at your side.
David said that to the crooked the Lord shows himself contrary. The crooked here are those whose thoughts or actions have strayed from God’s will and become twisted and warped. Those who do not go straight in the way of Christ but leave the leading of the Holy Spirit and wander off to the right or the left on crooked paths, and those who do not live by the word but by their own ideas, will receive the Lord’s wrath. To such people God will show himself contrary, and this means that he will deal with them so harshly that they will feel revulsion. People who cannot even set their own lives straight, if they meet God’s opposition, face a despair from which their lives cannot recover.
2 Samuel 22:29
29For you are my lamp, Yahweh. Yahweh will light up my darkness.
For David, God is a lamp that will never go out. However dark the world, those who carry that lamp do not stumble. Even if you have no strength to resist Satan, as long as you strive to walk uprightly you need not worry, because God has the power to make your life whole.
David knows that life does not go the way we want. That is why there were times when he begged for his life to the point of humiliation, until God restored him. He endured because he knew that the trials beyond his strength were God’s way of cutting and shaping him so that he would not be ashamed as one of God’s people. The suffering God sent was his voice telling David to stop his greed, and a stern rebuke telling him to turn back, because if he lived as he pleased he would end up a slave of Satan. When David realized that suffering had been the love God poured out to save his child, he could exalt and praise God from the heart.
We must grow until we have reached what David came to understand. We do not stand before God to have our wishes granted. We must worship him without conditions, because he is our Father.
2 Samuel 22:32
32For who is God, besides Yahweh? Who is a rock, besides our God?
David declares, almost boastfully, that there is no one to rely on but God. That tells us how genuinely he had met God. What do you rely on most right now? What is it that you think, “As long as I have this, I can live well enough”?
David confesses that God has ruled over his whole life. He praised God for widening his steps so that his feet did not slip, and for giving him the power to win in battle when he pursued his enemies, bringing them low before him. It was God who made his enemies flee, and God who cut off all who hated him, so for God’s sake David could give up the world without regret. Even one person in this world to lean on is enough to keep us from fear. How happy, then, must David have been when almighty God gave him what he longed for and brought to their knees those who had mocked and hated him? No one can understand a confession like David’s without having lived by faith themselves. It is a confession no one can make without having experienced God’s work firsthand.
As you well know, those who live faithfully have a remarkable radiance in their faces. Shining out from the soul, that light is unlike the light of the world, and it makes us think, “How truly beautiful,” without any adornment at all. If spiritual fullness looks so lovely even to human eyes, how beautiful will the saints be when they enter the Kingdom of God and receive the light of glory, brighter than the sun? God will remove every obstacle and every enemy so that those assured of such a blessing can make their way through this world. So I hope you will not be anxious.
2 Samuel 22:51
51He gives great deliverance to his king, and shows loving kindness to his anointed, to David and to his offspring, forever more.”
Jesus came as a descendant of David, just as foretold. The great deliverance and loving kindness of God were made complete when Jesus, the son of David, accomplished the work of atonement. David grasped this wondrous mystery of God and came to know that God had been with him in every moment of his life. Looking back, he saw the God who had kept him from sinning, and the God who had suffered with him even when he lay in agony as if on thorns. The almighty one who stands at David’s side now, always helping him, is the very God you believe in. If you rely on God in every moment, when you are in trouble, when you grieve, and when you rejoice, he will bless you so that you may enjoy eternal life in his beautiful Kingdom.
Do you believe that God is walking with you? What kind of face does the God beside you wear? This much is certain: as the years wind on, they paint a life in many colors and let anyone see at a glance what kind of life you have lived. Only when the painting is finished will you shake off everything and leave this world. So there is no need to lose heart because you have met hardship now, and no reason to grow proud because you have succeeded. What matters is where your final place will be when your life is over. Friends, when your life is done, that final place must be heaven, with God.
Like David, we must believe that God is alive and live wholeheartedly. We must believe that God is helping us through life, and believe that there is no other name than Jesus Christ by which we can be saved. May you always be saints full of faith who never lose their thankfulness.