Strong in Him • 2 Samuel 22
1:01:40 Teaching begins
Notes
Thinking about what did God do right today, David realised one day that God had saved him from all his enemies and all his difficult situations. God had promised that He would be with David, and He kept His promise.
This song is David thanking God for helping him.
It’s important for us because what God did for David He also does for us. God has given us valuable things. We face enemies who want to take them away. God wants us to become strong in Him to hold on to the things He has given to us.
I’m reading in 2 Samuel 22.
1. The Lord delivered David from all his enemies and unresolved situations, vv. 1-4.
A. David wrote this when he realised that the Lord had saved him from his enemies and out of every bad situation.
1. David had lots of enemies. He faced lions, bears. Goliath the giant. The Philistine armies. Jebusites had a walled city that could not be taken. He faced the nations of Moab, Edom, Ammon, and Syria. Absalom had all Israel backing him up.
2. Notice how God saved David from the hand of all his enemies, and the hand of Saul? David did not count Saul as an enemy. But Saul considered David his enemy. For David, Saul was an issue that he could do nothing to resolve, that would not go away. God saved David out of his issues that wouldn’t go away.
2. David praises God because God defended him and his rights, vv. 2-3.
A. You notice all these descriptions of God have this one thing in common: They are all defensive, not offensive. David never describes God as his way to get anything, my sword, my spear, my tactical nuclear weapon.
B. David isn’t trying to get anything. He’s keeping what God gave to him, rights, benefits, privileges.
1. God called David to be king of Israel when he was a kid. Saul did not want that to happen.
2. When David became king nations wanted to take his country.
3. Absalom decided he wanted to take the kingdom and David’s wives.
4. They all wanted to take his life. The cords of Sheol is about death. When you die you lose everything you have received from God: rights, benefits, and privileges.
C. They hated David. That’s amazing, because David didn’t do anything to any of these people or nations. He didn’t take what didn’t belong to him. He didn’t oppress, he didn’t threaten. But they hated him without a cause.
3. The opponents are overwhelming, vv. 4-7.
A. In every situation the enemy was greater, stronger, more numerous than David. Think again of Goliath, nine feet tall, huge armour. Saul chased David with 3000 men, that’s outnumbered 7 to 1. Always it was overwhelming odds. Naturally speaking David should have been completely defeated. Notice v. 18 they were my strong enemy, they were too many for me.
B. The stakes are life and death. Do you keep what God has given, or do you lose it all?
4. God heard David’s prayers and came into his situation, vv. 7-20.
A. David cried out to God. That’s how David handled an overwhelming situation: he turned to God and asked God to be in his situation.
B. You see that God was angry that these people ganged up on David. God saw that it wasn’t right that David be attacked, that they gang up on him to take him down and take away his rights and privileges. Imagine you find someone trying to beat up your child to take what you gave them. Are you happy with that?
C. So God got involved with David’s situation.
1. David describes God coming down from heaven in this dramatic way. We never read of God doing that. It’s either poetic or a prophecy of something greater than David to happen in the future. I wonder if this is the way that Jesus will return to the earth, with the clouds, the fire, the hailstones, not here, but in Psalm 18. Just a possibility.
2. The point is that God got involved in David’s crises as surely as coming down from heaven in a dramatic way. That part is not poetic. In every situation God practically helped David. Once or twice might be coincidence, but over and over, and every time is not a coincidence. You might not see God at work, but definitely He was at work.
5. God saved David because He was pleased with David—he was in right relationship with God, vv. 18-28.
A. You read these verses and the first thing you think is, “Yeah, but what about Bathsheba?”
B. Look at David’s righteousness.
1. David kept his ways according to God’s ordinances and commandments. His steps were established by walking in God’s ways. All God’s ways, he says in Psalm 25, are lovingkindness and truth. That is the result of all God’s commandments, right relationship with God, right relationship with men.
2. Look at how David describes relationship with God in verse 26: kind, blameless, pure. How can David describe himself in this way? Psalm 119:9-11 How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Your word. With all my heart I have sought You; do not let me wander from Your commandments. Your word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against You.
3. That is only possible by faith. You only walk with God by trusting in Him, not in your own strength. Always in Psalm 119 the psalmist prays for God to teach him, lead him, cleanse him, do not let sin have dominion over him. He doesn’t look to himself but God. He depends on God and that is faith. By faith David walked with God. The righteous shall live by faith.
C. So what about Bathsheba? It’s actually the exception that proves the rule.
1. He fell into sin because he neglected his relationship with God.
2. God helped him even there. God in faithfulness told Nathan so he could rebuke David and bring that sin to light. God provided redemption so that David didn’t die. David believed God and kept on living by depending on God.
3. God’s salvation saves you from your sins. It’s not much of a salvation if God doesn’t save you from your sins.
D. Faith pleases God. God was pleased with David. If God accounts you righteous, you are righteous, regardless of what anyone says.
E. Because God was pleased by David’s trust, He helped David against his enemies and against Saul.
6. God became David’s strength, vv. 29-37.
A. He was David’s light in the darkness.
1. Light is about purpose. He didn’t wander, groping for some kind of meaning for his life. He had a calling from God, and a covenant that had eternal significance and leads to the fulfilment of God’s plan for the ages.
2. Light is about understanding, grasping where I am now. This is God’s world. I am God’s man. My life is about living with Him. Understanding is about where I’m going. This life is temporary. I am headed to God in eternity. That makes what I do now significant and loaded with meaning. What I do now affects my future and others’ futures for eternity.
3. Light is about courage and strength. Since God is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? I don’t measure my opponents in size and number, I measure them against God. Who measures up to God? These poor guys have one lungful of air in them. God keeps them alive. They sin against their own lives when they come against me.
B. God was David’s strength through His word. When you keep your life according to God’s word you are clothed with power because God is faithful to His word. There is no God that can save like the God of the Bible. That word is tested and pure. It enables you to live in God’s Spirit. Heaven and earth will pass away, but not that word.
C. God’s way is to enable you to do things that you could not naturally do, and go where you could not naturally go. He makes my feet like deer’s feet. I can walk on sheer hills where predators can’t go because they can’t walk there. There are heights where you can go but they can’t.
D. He trains you to go there. This is the crazy thing—that God Himself teaches you His ways. He trains you, disciplines you. Makes you do repetitions so that you become stronger, disciplined, better at what you do.
E. His humility makes you great. Imagine God taking time to be your coach, your teacher, your trainer, so that you are benefited and you grow, you become more than you could ever be without God. Why? Because He’s not thinking about Himself; He thinks about you and benefitting you, and enabling you to hold on to what He gives you. He not only gives you what is yours, but He also enables you to keep it against anyone who wants to attack, oppress, take it, steal it, ruin it, and kill you.
7. David fulfilled God’s will against his enemies, vv. 38-46.
A. Beating them fine as dust is not just David being enthusiastic. He is doing God’s will.
1. They have attacked God’s man, who is doing God’s will and never attacked them. God is angry, they picked on the wrong guy. They cry out to the Lord but He doesn’t listen to them. He’s not going to help them pick on His man.
2. Psalm 149:5-9 Let the godly ones exult in glory; let them sing for joy on their beds. Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand, to execute vengeance on the nations and punishment on the peoples, to bind their kings with chains and their nobles with fetters of iron, to execute on them the judgment written; this is an honor for all His godly ones. Praise the LORD!
B. This seems to have greater fulfilment than David’s kingdom, I suspect it refers to Jesus’ kingdom, which will rule over all the nations and over all the earth.
8. David praises God for delivering him from his enemies, now and forever, vv. 47-51.
9. So what?
A. You are a believer in Jesus, you live this life of warfare.
1. Not because you were looking for a fight any more than David wanted a fight. Whether you like it or not, you have a fight on your hands.
2. We are outnumbered and overpowered by the enemy. He is not flesh and blood but spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
3. The battle is to possess all that God has given and to keep it, unto eternal life.
4. Have you understood that your life is a conflict? If you don’t know you’re in a war, you’re going to be picked off quickly.
B. You overcome directly as you have relationship with God.
1. Your ability to withstand develops as your relationship develops. As your relationship declines, the attacks increase and are effective.
2. This means your greatest priority is to grow in your relationship with God. That’s your protection, your fortress, your shield, your defense.
3. Your ability to withstand proves what kind of relationship you have. It’s not what I say about myself or what I think, the proof is, do I withstand the attacks of the enemy or do I fall? If you are slack in the day of distress, your strength is limited. Proverbs 24:10
4. If you fall, that means you press into knowing God. You don’t try harder, you don’t make promises you can’t keep. It means you need to know God better. If your life shows you your poverty of spirit, your limited strength, this works in your favour. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. You look away from yourself to save yourself. You look only to Jesus to work in you.
C. The Lord gives great deliverance, literally, salvation, to David and David’s descendants. This promise is for you.
1. Matthew shows that Jesus is the Son of Abraham and the Son of David. As a believer in Christ you are made a descendant of Abraham and also a descendant of David.
2. Therefore the promise of God’s deliverance belongs to you who have received Jesus.
3. You are not presuming on God, you are not assuming His help when you have no right. This is your right, your blessing, your privilege. The devil would like to take that away and kill you. You can resist him fully established in your faith, your relationship with God, that He is going to strengthen you, deliver you, and save you from every enemy and all those issues that take a long time to get resolved.
Let’s pray.