MO 38 TAKING REFUGE IN THE FORTRESS OF GOD, PT. 2 II SAMUEL 22:5-51 8/2/2026 MICHAEL OTAZU If you have a copy of God’s Word, open it up with me to II Samuel 22 to be specific. As I mentioned, we are working our way through this occasional sort of series. We call it Hearts Aflame. We’re taking the different prayers that we find throughout Scripture, and we are studying them in depth. We are expositing them and we’re mining them for the gold that is hidden within them, and we are applying it to our hearts. Last Sunday night we started out on this prayer that we found in II Samuel 22. It’s David’s prayer of deliverance. David’s worshipful praise saturated prayer. We only got through four verses. Now in my defense, the first four verses are the most meaty of the verses and so we needed to take all that time to consider those first four verses. We’re going to get through the rest of it tonight. But before we do that, let’s read those first four verses again to get our mind back into the place they were in last Sunday night, seven days ago as we were tracing David’s thoughts as he prayed to his Lord. II Samuel 22:1-4 says this, “And David spoke to Yahweh the words of this song in the day that Yahweh delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. He said, “Yahweh is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, My shield and horn of my salvation, my stronghold and my refuge; My savior, You save me from violence. “I call upon Yahweh, who is worthy to be praised, And I am saved from my enemies.” That took us most of last Sunday evening working through those very vivid pictures. Those metaphors that David gives us. He calls God his rock which is this foundational fortified bedrock upon which strong things can be built. And then he calls Yahweh his fortress, a defensible place. A place that he can go for safety. He calls Yahweh his deliverer. Yahweh delivers him, takes him out of the struggle, the pain, the suffering, the danger of his life and delivers him to better circumstances. Then He says my God my rock again in whom I take refuge. My shield, the horn of my salvation. The shield is a defensive tool and then the horn of course is to bring our minds to the horn of an animal which can be used defensively by also offensively. God pokes through. He pierces through with His horn of salvation all things that might keep David from being safe and He does so. He provides that safety. He says I call upon Yahweh who is worthy to be praised and I am saved from my enemies. That’s verses 1-4. Then we took an excursus over to Proverbs 3:5-7 which say “Trust in Yahweh with all your heart And do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; Fear Yahweh and turn away from evil.” We spent a considerable amount of time last Sunday evening studying those three verses and we got three principles out of it. Those are very practical principles which keep us off both ditches on the side of the road. Keeps us on the center of the road, because on one side we can force ourselves to just relax so much and just trust God, just be still and let God do His thing, such that we don’t even take accountability for our actions. But then on the other side, the other ditch on the other side of the road, we rely only on our grit. We forget to even consider praying to the Lord when we hit trials. And so, Proverbs 3:5-7 keep us in the middle there. The three principles we got out of those three verses were that we ought to trust God, know God, and fear God. I don’t want to spend any more time recapping last week because we have 47 verses to go. Let me give you an outline that we’re going to work through here. I’ll just give them to you all at once. Then we’ll work through them again as we get through this long passage. The first one we already looked at last week out of verses 1-4 which is Appreciate His Protection. Then in verses 5-20 we’re going to see that we ought to Acknowledge His Control. Then we’re going to see that we ought to Account for His Rewards. Then we ought to Admire His Protection. And finally, we ought to Ascribe to Him Glory. That’s our road map. That’s where we’re headed. That’s what we’re going to start right here, right now. Look at verse 5 under the main heading, the second main point, Acknowledge His Control. Look at verse 5, “For the waves of death encompassed me; The torrents of vileness terrorized me;” We’ll stop there. He’s using his typical Davidic poetic flair to describe the hardships which the Lord has sent his way. His point is ultimately to worship, to acknowledge the Lord’s control, but he wants to make that point about the Lord’s control over his circumstances by first describing those circumstances. He’s going to get to the point where he acknowledges that God is in control of it all, but he needs us to know at least in his prayer, he needs God to know, he needs himself to know, he needs his own heart to know how bad it really was. He goes on in verse 6, “The cords of Sheol surrounded me; The snares of death confronted me.” You know, a lot has been made in recent years of depression and anxiety. There are such clinical, psychological terms, those two, for such nebulous, hazy things. In our world right now, it’s obsessed with labeling phenomena that happen in our hearts. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that. It seems like everyone these days is grasping for a diagnosis to make sense of what they’re feeling. I’m sure you’ve noticed that. Theres a sense in which people feel validated in their feelings if there’s a doctor somewhere who tells them that what’s going on inside them is just the product of chemical imbalances or there’s a phycologist out there who tells them that their struggles are the result of uncontrollable things which happened to them in their childhood. Just so we’re clear, you won’t hear me saying that chemical imbalances and childhood trauma are irrelevant. I’m not a medical professional and I don’t have the expertise in the details of brain chemistry. But I do have access to this book, and I do have the Holy Spirit in my heart, and I know how to read this book such that the wisdom from this book comes off the pages and into my heart and mind. I think I can say without too much controversy, that what we see in the world today, the obsession with medical diagnoses for things of which the Bible speaks of primarily as spiritual matters, is at the very least concerning. What were once considered the normal pressures of navigating life on earth are now widely considered triggers for anxiety. Those difficulties which were once esteemed as the good and beneficial challenges which young people face as they grow up into manhood or womanhood are now considered “factors leading to Major Depressive Disorder.” Perhaps the most alarming part of it all is that today, the popular opinion is that the solution to our problems is to avoid friction altogether. To avoid the hardships and the triggers and the precipitating factors and the elicitors and the comorbidities and the traumas that lead to states of mind which we like to explain away with clinical psychobabble. Make no mistake about it. We’re steeped in a world which is more inclined to look to soft pseudo-science for answers to its problems than to the God of the universe. We are in a world which likes to hypothesize and theorize and call those things real and true and scientifically verified, instead of just trusting the God who made all things intimately orchestrated all things and carefully controls all things. We want labels instead of wisdom. We want shaky statistical correlations instead of absolute Biblical truth. Now again, let me make it clear that chemical imbalances that some people experience are very real. Biological deficiencies and traumatic experiences are not to be wholesale dismissed just because we’re Christians. I’m not arguing that we should ignore our God-given rational abilities to use scientific testing to study ourselves. We don’t need to all become luddites who exit the system and live off the grid and use nothing but herbs and leeches and local honey to treat our ailments. But we should probably be a little bit more careful than the rest of the world when it comes to the question of where we turn when we feel the pressures of this life bearing down on us. The worldly-minded person immediately reaches for the quick fix, the fast-acting, trendy solution to whatever the problem is. But the Biblically-minded person sees everything, first and foremost, as a spiritual issue which ought to run through the filter of Biblical wisdom to understand and combat. I bring all of this up because I think we need to realize as we study David’s prayer here in II Samuel, that David is an admirable model for us in this. His prayer here exhibits for us the proper Biblical knee-jerk response to the troubles in this life. He lays out his afflictions in verses 5 and 6. He says that “For the waves of death encompassed him; The torrents of vileness terrorized him; The cords of Sheol surrounded him; The snares of death confronted him.” It doesn’t get much more worse than that. That’s just about the most extreme description of circumstantial affliction possible. David was anxious. David was depressed. He was surrounded on all sides by worries. He had troubles pounding him into the ground. He was the fugitive of a national manhunt based on false accusations. He had hidden in caves for days without eating. He looked imprisonment, torture, and death in the face and hung on by a string. As we read this prayer, we’re looking through the window into a distressed heart. Forget about all the psychological labels. Everyone means something different by those words anyway. This heart is a distressed pressured heart and what does he do in that distress? Well, what it is, is exemplary. Look at verse 7, “In my distress I called upon Yahweh, and I called to my God.” David’s reaction to the struggles was to turn to God in prayer. He didn’t pick himself up by his bootstraps and rely solely on his own grit. Neither did he wallow in his misery and do nothing about it. What he did took a lot of grit. Don’t miss that. David was a tough individual. But he didn’t rely upon his own strength in this moment of extreme trial. Rather, he slowed down. took a breath, took a moment to gather his thoughts, and set his heart to prayer. He took his troubles before the Lord in humble, worshipful prayer. He “called upon Yahweh” it says. He called to his God it says. Look at the rest of verse 7, “In my distress I called upon Yahweh, And I called to my God; And out of His temple He heard my voice, and my cry for help came into His ears.” Here we see David highlight God’s attentiveness. This might be one of the most comforting of all of the attributes of God. The fact that He hears us should give us the same feeling of reassurance that David’s feeling here in this prayer. God Almighty, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, the One Who upholds the universe and has no limit to His power and might, that God listens to our prayers. Isn’t that amazing? This is what sets the God of the Bible apart from the gods of all of the false religions of the world. The God of the Bible is the only true God and as such, He’s the only God who could possibly hear the prayers of His creatures. But not only that, He’s not in any way required by some contract somewhere to listen to us. You ever thought of that? He’s not bound by some agreement to listen to us. He’s not being paid to check His voicemails every night. He actually wants to hear from us. He intimately is interested in us. He cares. Isn’t that mind-blowingly awesome!? I mean if we would just meditate on that, I wonder how much it would cure our aliments. This isn’t just something that David in the Old Testament had access to. In fact, in the New Testament, in our context, we have access to God in our own mind-blowing way. In his letter to the churches in and around Ephesus, the Apostle John wrote of the access that we have to God through prayer. He says that we can make our supplications heard directly to God and that God will not ignore us. I John 5:14-15 say this. “And this is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.” That is a powerful couple of verses. If we are Believers, if we know that we are Believers, if we come before our God in whom we believe, and by whom we were saved, and in whom we trust, and who we know definitely listens to us and wants to bless us, if we come to that God and ask for something in accordance with His will, His revealed principles for how we we ought to want things in the Bible, He’s going to give it to us. Now of course the harder part is wanting the right things and asking for the right things. But man, isn’t that a reassuring reality? As we move on through the broader, more sweeping sections of this prayer, we’re going to pick up our speed here as we take these larger principles on display in David’s prayer. So, follow with me here. We’re going to read a little big, larger chunk here. Look at verse 8 and following. II Samuel 22:8-20, “Then the earth shook and quaked; The foundations of heaven were trembling and were shaken, because He was angry. Smoke went up out of His nostrils, And fire from His mouth devoured; Coals were kindled by it. He bowed the heavens and came down with thick darkness under His feet. He rode on a cherub and flew; And He appeared upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness canopies around Him, A mass of waters, thick clouds of the skies. From the brightness before Him, Coals of fire were kindled. Yahweh thundered from heaven, And the Most High gave forth His voice. He sent out arrows and scattered them. Lightning and threw them into confusion. Then the channels of the sea appeared, and the foundations of the world were laid bare by the rebuke of Yahweh, at the blast of the breath of His nostrils. He sent from on high, He took me; He drew me out of many waters. He delivered me from my strong enemy, from those who hated me, for they were too mighty for me. They confronted me in the day of my disaster, but Yahweh was my support. He brought me forth also into a broad place; He rescued me, because He delighted in me.” This is all in the same little group of verses, perhaps some of the most scary and yet also simultaneously the most comforting descriptions of God in the whole Bible. This God is a God who kindles coals of fire simply with the residue of His brightness. This God is a God Who can send arrows and lightning in an instant and scatter entire armies. It says that this God is a God who opens up channels in the sea and simply speaks that into existence. The bedrock of the ocean floor is uncovered at His will, simply to display His power. Then David tells us that this same God is a God who stoops down to human level and cares tenderly for His sensitive and helpless creatures. God is a support David says. He’s a deliverer David says. He’s a rescuer. Elsewhere in Scripture this attribute of Yahweh is describes as Him being a Keeper. Let’s go to the passage I read to open up this worship service this morning. Psalm 121. Psalm 121 really explains this concept that David is getting at in a different way from a different angle with a different poetic strategy. Let’s see it together. It’s a short Psalm; it’s just 8 verses. Psalm 121, “I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; From where shall my help come? My help comes from Yahweh, who made heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to stumble; He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, He who keeps Israel will not slumber and will not sleep. Yahweh is your keeper; Yahweh is your shade on your right hand. The sun will not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. Yahweh will keep you from all evil; He will keep your soul. Yahweh will keep your going out and your coming in from now until forever.” This is one of the most comforting Psalms because it sits right in the intersection of God’s immense power and man’s feeble neediness. That’s where this Psalm sits. There’re a few truths here which I’d like to pick up on. I’d like us to extract out of this Psalm before we go back to II Samuel. First, look at how the psalm identifies the source of these pilgrims’ help. “I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; From where shall my help come? My help comes from Yahweh.” This is a song that is a pilgrim’s song. It’s a song that would have been sung every time the pilgrims went up along the road through the hills, he calls them mountains here. (Maybe flatlanders like us would also call them mountains. But if you’ve seen real mountains, these are more like hills.) Going up through these hills, which were still very dangerous because a lot of robbers hid in them and wild animals hid in them, they would go up through these hills, up to Jerusalem and they would worship, usually annually. These mountains though were filled with dangers. They were walking right through them to get to where they were going. And if this song was sung in the post-exilic period, which surely it must have been at least, even if it was written and sung before the exile, it probably was sung even after the exile. In that post-exilic period, it would mean that these hills, these very hills that they are singing about that are in the lyrics of this song, were populated by foreigners, people who didn’t like these Israelites. These pilgrims would not be able to look to these people for help. In distress, they could look to no one but Yahweh. There is no alternative source of real help. Not in their situation, not in any situation really. They couldn’t look to themselves. They couldn’t look to their fellow distressed pilgrims. The powerless cannot help the powerless. All true help comes from the Lord who is the only sovereign source of help. It’s been said before that, that which we latch on to is that which either stabilizes us or pulls us further into instability. I think that’s just a general truth. That which we latch onto is that which stabilizes us or pulls us further into instability. Everyone anchors themselves to something, don’t we? It’s just a matter of the structural integrity of that thing. The question isn’t whether or not you look for help as you walk through life. The question is to what have you tethered yourself? This truth here in Psalm 121 is echoed by the psalmist in Psalm 118:8, “It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in man.” There’s a contrast right there. It’s better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. The same truth is in Psalm 56:4, “In God I have put my trust; I shall not be afraid. What can mere man do to me?” Also, Psalm 23:4, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.” The greatest cure for anxiety and worry isn’t found in psychological counseling or therapy. When it comes to sinful anxiety, there is no man-made fix. In fact, the whole Bible teaches the exact opposite. The cure for sinful anxiety and worry is a bigger, and grander, and more accurate understanding of God. You want to heal? Develop, meditate on a bigger view of God. A more accurate view of God. A deeper understanding of His extremely comforting attributes. David knew this truth in II Samuel 22. The pilgrims here knew this truth in Psalm 121. That’s why, when faced with looming danger, they didn’t get tunnel vision. They didn’t focus on their problems. They didn’t look at the hills. Instead, they looked to Yahweh, their LORD who supplied them all that they needed and the lyrics demonstrate that. I don’t want to leave this Psalm quite yet, there are more parallels. I think what David is teaching us in his prayer over in II Samuel. Look further down into the second half of verse 2 of Psalm 121, “I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; From where shall my help come? My help comes from Yahweh, Who made heaven and earth.” An important descriptor there. Yahweh’s authority as the source of help that comes from His status as the Creator. The one who creates is the one who has control over that creation. Make sense? Yes, it’s basic. If God has created everything, then those very hills, which looked so daunting to the pilgrims, were crafted by Him. He determined the sloping gradients of each hill. He decided which species of predatorial animals would be native in that landscape. He even designed the sharpness and the angles of their teeth that He put within them to kill and to eat flesh. He crafted the caves in which the robbers hid. He chose each type of tree that would offer shade for wearied pilgrims. He meticulously created every blade of grass and every wildflower that He commanded to bloom on the hillsides. He created those hills, and as their Creator, He is sovereign over everything that did or did not take place in those hills. He was sovereign over those hills at the time of the pilgrims’ journey through Jerusalem to the feasts. He is in comprehensive control over those same hills even today. Don’t miss the relevance of this truth to David’s own experiences. Don’t miss the relevance to your own life even. If He’s sovereign over those dry, dusty hills in Israel, He’s sovereign over our corn and soybean hills too. He created them all and He reigns over them all. That which He creates, He controls. He created everything therefore He controls everything. There is not a single area of our lives so far that has not predetermined and carried out according to the way God wanted it to be carried out. There isn’t anything about our futures that He has not already planned out. You can rest in that. Good, bad, ugly, blessed. It’s all part of God’s plan. The Psalm goes on in verses 3 and 4 to say that “He will not allow your foot to stumble; He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, He who keeps Israel will not slumber and will not sleep.” In addition to being the sovereign Helper, He’s the ever watchful/constantly active Helper. It wouldn’t be very comforting to know that we have an all-powerful God, the One who created all things, but is not consistent in His concern for His creation. That wouldn’t be very helpful. That wouldn’t be very comforting. It would be no consolation to know that God could help but might not be paying attention in our time of need. It would be of little aid to belong to God who is powerful enough to protect us as we traverse the mountains but isn’t actually paying attention to the fact that we’re entering into danger. Thankfully, we don’t belong to a God who slumbers. We belong to an ever-active, attentively vigilant, consistently interested, omnipresent God who cares for His faithful pilgrims. Because of this truth about God, we can confidently know that He is a perfect protector. For Him to be distracted or disengaged from reality is an impossibility. It would be a violation of His attributes. David knew this and his prayer in II Samuel drips with his confidence in it. There is not one thing that will happen to us as we go through this life that He has not intended to happen to us. And David knew that. That’s what colors his prayer. Look at the last part of this Psalm before we turn away. Psalm 121:5-8, “Yahweh is your keeper; Yahweh is your shade on your right hand. The sun will not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. Yahweh will keep you from all evil; He will keep your soul. Yahweh will keep your going out and your coming in from now until forever.” Again, here we encounter Yahweh the sovereign. Nothing is outside of His meticulous control. In verse 6, He provides the shade when protection from the sun’s heat is needed. In verses 7 and 8, we see a shift in the language and imagery. The type of protection shifts away from physical/material/temporal protection to explicit spiritual protection of the soul. The psalmist is no longer singing about the hyenas and robbers lurking the hills before him. He’s now thinking about that which lies beyond the treacherous hills. His worry of the temporal has been replaced by a concern with the eternal. I think we should do the same. I love this Psalm because it celebrates what David exemplifies in his prayer back in II Samuel. You can turn back there now if you would. II Samuel 22. David’s first priority in this prayer is to Appreciate the Lord’s Protection. That’s what we looked at last week. Then he Acknowledges His Control and that steadies him and gives him a spiritual anchor through trials and difficulties no matter how hard they are. And now, as we’re going to see in this next section of his prayer, he Accounts for His Rewards. Look at II Samuel 22:21–30, “Yahweh has rewarded me according to my righteousness; According to the cleanness of my hands, He has recompensed me. For I have kept the ways of Yahweh and have not wickedly departed from my God. For all His judgments were before me, And as for His statutes, I did not depart from them. I was also blameless toward Him, And I kept myself from my iniquity. Therefore, Yahweh has recompensed me according to my righteousness, according to my cleanness before His eyes. With the kind You show Yourself kind, With the blameless You show Yourself blameless; With the pure You show Yourself pure, and with the crooked You show Yourself astute. And You save an afflicted people; But Your eyes are on the haughty whom You bring down. For You are my lamp, O Yahweh; And Yahweh illumines my darkness. For by You I can run upon a troop; By my God I can leap over a wall.” It’s a lot of poetry there. It’s a lot going on here but the main thread of David’s thoughts and the main principle which I want to draw out here and we’ll leave the rest for a deeper study some other time when we have more time, is that it’s OK to look forward to and enjoy the rewards of your faithfulness. That’s OK. It’s OK to look forward to and enjoy the reward of your faithfulness. This is a major theme throughout the Bible. It’s not like sort of an allowance system with your kids. It’s not like when your kids do their chores and you stipend them a few dollars or a few cents or whatever it is. It’s not like when you Venmo them just a few bucks so they can go out with their friends. This is not what that is. It’s more like a basic feature that God has built into His creation. This is how God has decided to design His world. The more faithful you are in general, the more blessed you are. It’s not always a perfectly straight line through that principle. It’s more of a truism. In general God has thus decreed it, that the more faithful His creatures are, the more He likes to bless them. That just makes normal sense. That’s how we even operate. I Corinthians 15:58 tells us this, “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.” Now these Corinthians in I Corinthians 15, back in the first century, had a rough go of it. I don’t know that many of them would be saying, hey pastor, yeh, I’m really blessed for my faithfulness these days. No really, they were looking death in the face. They were being persecuted heavily. They’re mostly looking forward to the pleasures, the blessings that are coming in the next life. I think that’s a good thing. Not always are we blessed in this life for our faithfulness. Sometimes the most faithful folks end up getting nothing in this life. Rather they’re accruing all of that blessing in the next. Revelation 2:10, “Do not fear what you are about to suffer. (Jesus says to a church that’s in persecution) Behold, the devil is about to come cast some of you in prison, so that you will be tested, (boy that’s a hard letter to receive) and you will have tribulation for ten days. (so specific) Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.” Boy that’s motivating. You get a letter from Jesus Himself through the apostle John, through the mail carrier, off the island of Patmos, all the way to your church and your pastor reads it to you, the very words of Christ in the first century, while you are in the midst of persecution. And he says watch out. In the next week some of you will be cast into prison so that you’ll be tested and you’ll have tribulation for 10 days. Be faithful until death. Death? Yes death. And I will give you the crown of life. It’s OK to look forward to the blessings of faithfulness, especially when you have to go through that. In fact, you ought to look forward to the blessings of faithfulness, when you have to go through that or anything else in life. Galatians 6:9, “And let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.” Paul’s motivating the Galatians. Hey don’t lose faith. Don’t lose heart. Don’t slow down. We’re going to gain a lot from this. Don’t grow weary. In due time we will reap, he says. Proverbs 28:20, “A faithful man will abound with blessings, but he who makes haste (to be) rich will not go unpunished.” Colossians 3:23-24 is probably the best cross reference for this. “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance.” As Believers, we don’t just labor and work and carefully obey because God said to do so. That’s surely one reason, but it’s not the only reason. We don’t even just act faithfully and diligently as worship to God. That’s one very good reason, maybe a dominate reason but not the only reason. As Believers, we also work and we also labor and we also pursue righteous endeavors for a future paycheck that’s going to be paid out after this life is over and it’s OK to look forward to that. It’s a good thing to look forward to that. Let’s turn over to II Corinthians 5. I want us to see this the way Paul explains it to the Corinthians in II Corinthians 5. Look at the first 10 verses in II Corinthians 5:1-10, “For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked. For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life. Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge. Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. We are of good courage and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. Therefore, we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him. (here it is, listen to this) For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.” That moment that was just described there at the end of what I just read, is coming for each of us. Everyone in this room will be before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad. That day to which we look ought to be something that motivates us in the moment. In the hardships of this life. One of the greatest blessings given by God to the faithful is the blessing of steadfastness even. James 1:2-4 makes that point clear. Not all of these blessings come after we die. Some of them have come before. One of them is steadfastness. James 1:2-4 “Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith brings about perseverance. And let perseverance have its perfect work, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” One of the blessings of pushing through trials of laboring faithfully no matter the hardships is that you get perseverance so that you can have more trials. So that you can give God more glory. It is a cycle of this over and over and over again in this life. It’s a short life. That’s the good news. But it’s going to happen like this a lot. You go through a trial, you do if faithfully, you hunker down, you praise the Lord, you balance the grit verses laziness, and you praise the Lord through it, you pray to the Lord like David does in II Samuel 22. You push through it and you get perseverance and then you do it all over again when the next trial comes. You glorify God over and over again. You’re little factory of glory. Turn back to II Samuel if you would. We’ve gotten all the way up to verse 30, now we’re peering into verse 31 here. I want to pull out our fourth principle. We’ve seen already that we ought to appreciate his protection, acknowledge his control, account for his rewards and now we’re going to see that we need to Admire His Reputation. Look at verses 31 and following. II Samuel 22: 31-46, “As for God, His way is blameless; The word of Yahweh is tried; He is a shield to all who take refuge in Him. For who is God, but Yahweh? And who is a rock, but our God? God is my strong fortress; And He sets the blameless in His way. He makes my feet like hinds feet and sets me on my high places. He trains my hands for battle, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You have also given me the shield of Your salvation, and Your answer to me makes me great. You enlarge my steps under me, And my ankles have not given way. I pursued my enemies and destroyed them, and I did not turn back until they were consumed. And I have consumed them and crushed them, so that they did not rise; And they fell under my feet. For You have girded me with strength for battle; You have subdued under me those who rose up against me. You have also made my enemies turn their backs to me, and I destroyed those who hated me. They looked, but there was none to save; Even to Yahweh, but He did not answer them. Then I beat them fine as the dust of the earth; I pulverized and stamped them as the mire of the streets. You have also delivered me from the contentions of my people; You have kept me as head of the nations; A people whom I have not known serve me. Foreigners cower before me; As soon as they hear, they obey me. Foreigners fade away and come trembling out of their fortresses.” This is quite the descriptive prayer from David. We can see in these 16 verses that I just read, an encapsulation of David’s thinking on the matter of how and why he was able to achieve all that he achieved. That’s what we ought to get out of this. The last few verses which I just read from about verses 37 to 46, are an account of that which David was empowered by God to do. All of those things David points back to God as the fuel which allowed that all to happen. He was enabled by God’s power to, verse 37, move quickly on the battlefield without injury. He was enabled by God’s power to, verse 38, follow up a good offensive attack with an effective pursuit and route. He was enabled by God’s power verse 39, to win total and complete victories in battle such that they completely fell powerless before his armies. He was enabled by God’s power to, verse 40, subdue any army which was foolish enough to stand up to him. He was enabled by God’s power, verses 41 and 42, to see the enemies who hated him flee from him in fear of the great strength delegated to him by God. And then in 43-46, all recount David’s feats which God accomplished through him. But notice this because I think this is the main point of these verses. David does not attribute any of these great successes to his own strength. There’s not a single thing here that you can point to and say that David was being selfish in his relaying of these accomplishments. Or David was showing everyone all that he had done in and of himself. This was not David’s dying tone about how strong he himself was. This is actually the opposite. This is David telling everyone who actually did it all. Everybody wanted to ascribe it to David. The masses who looked up to David, the Israelites, even the foreigners, the nations around them who were conquered by this great king, looked at David and said wow that king is something. He whipped us. David here is saying listen, in this published prayer for everyone to hear. It wasn’t me. I didn’t do any of it. Rather it was God who did it all through me. I was just a tool. This is one of David’s greatest strengths throughout his life. That he could say stuff like that. He’s well acquainted with the fact that he’s not really impressive on his own. In fact, he did make a lot of mistakes to teach him that lesson. Funny enough. You might remember when he ignored Yahweh’s prohibition against taking a census and he went ahead and did it anyway. That exemplified the exact opposite of this admirable trait. He counted the people in an act of independence of the Lord. His heart was in rebellion, and he sought to measure the population as though it somehow measured his own might and strength. This is all recorded actually just a couple of chapters after this prayer. David relied on his own strength there. Numbered the people and then paid the price for it. Yahweh came and the angel of the Lord slayed around 70,000 people because of that sin. God wasn’t playing around with David and cutting him slack. To whom much was given by the Lord, much was expected by the Lord. David did not have a perfect track record in this. David learned that lesson well in the end and he could pray something like this in honesty. But it’s interesting because David has known this all so well throughout his life. In fact, at the very beginning, he was very clearly acquainted with the fact that he relied upon God for his strength. If he relied upon God for his strength, he knew that he would prevail. If he relied on his own strength, he knew that he would fail. David knew this and it’s even celebrated in this prayer right here in II Samuel 22, but he was inconsistent in applying surely. One instance in which he did a great job rather than a bad job was actually at the very beginning of his career when David was preparing to fight Goliath. In fact, let’s go back there and see it. We aren’t too far from it. I Samuel 17. There’s a really good verse in here that I want us to see which really crystalizes what we’re talking about. I Samuel 17:31-37, “Then the words which David spoke were heard. And they told them…” (we’re picking up in the middle of a narrative here. David is here. He shows up at the battle front and there’s this big guy named Goliath and he’s trying to fight everyone. I assume you know some of this stuff. David says hey what’s going on here and this is where we’re picking up) “Then the words which David spoke were heard. And they told them to Saul, and he sent for him. And David said to Saul, Let no man’s heart fail on account of him; your servant will go and fight with this Philistine. (David’s volunteering himself to go fight the big Goliath) Then Saul said to David, “You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him; for you are but a youth while he has been a warrior from his youth.” But David said to Saul, “Your servant was shepherding his father’s sheep. (he’s telling him a story now) And a lion and a bear would come and take a lamb from the flock, and I would go out after it and strike it and rescue the lamb from its mouth. Then it rose up against me, and I would seize it by its beard and strike it down and put it to death. Your servant (himself) has struck down both the lion and the bear; and this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, since he has reproached the battle lines of the living God.” (Now perk up here. This is where we get it, crystallization of the principle we’re talking about) And David said, “Yahweh, who delivered me from the hand of the lion and from the hand of the bear, He will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.” And Saul said to David, “Go, and may Yahweh be with you.” Probably half expecting not to see him again. David knew well that he could walk right up to a big giant like Goliath and slay him because God was with him. He knew that those things were unexplainable how he was able to fight a bear off with his own bare hands and a lion. And to kill them, to slay them. It was unexplainable for little David. He was scrawny. And yet these things happen. The narrative continues on and you know the rest. David kills Goliath and he does it in such a way as to cast little doubt on who was, who actually had the real power behind it all. The point of the narrative of David and Goliath isn’t that we should all go and slay the giants of our hearts as you might hear in other churches. Or that we should go and act boldly against the enemies arrayed against us in whatever situation we’re in. That’s not what this is about. Those things are fine to do in and of themselves. You should be slaying the giants of your heart, flowery language for my taste, but OK. You should probably go and fight the enemies that are arrayed against you in whatever situation that is. But that’s not the point of why this account is included in Scripture. The reason we have this narrative, the thing we’re supposed to learn from this is the same thing that undergirds the section of David’s prayer which we’re considering over in II Samuel 22. We’re supposed to walk away from the account of little shepherd-boy David slaying giant- warrior Goliath with a deep-seeded appreciation, not for David and his abilities, but for what a great and powerful God Yahweh is. That’s the point. God’s faithfulness and God’s honor is the point of everything. If you’re ever reading the Bible and you’re just wondering how does this story fit in. Why am I supposed to be reading this right now. The answer, I guarantee you is so that you can have a bigger view of God. So that you can understand His faithfulness better. His honor is better. His glory better. David understood that. You can flip back to II Samuel 22. He understood it from His experiences both good like when he slayed Goliath and bad when he both committed adultery, murder and took a census that he ought not to have taken. David was all over the board. But here in II Samuel 22 what he’s telling us is that he finally understands it’s not of him. It’s all of God. And listen here to how he closes out his prayer. Look at the very last section, the last few verses 47-51. We’ll put it under the main heading, our last main heading. Ascribe to Him Glory. Look at II Samuel 22:47-51, “Yahweh lives, and blessed be my rock; And let God, the rock of my salvation, be lifted high, The God who executes vengeance for me, And brings down peoples under me, Who also brings me out from my enemies; You even lift me above those who rise up against me; You rescue me from the violent man. Therefore, I will give thanks to You, O Yahweh, among the nations, And I will sing praises to Your name. He gives great salvation to His king, And shows lovingkindness to His anointed, To David and his seed forever.” David ends on this note of praise as he should. I don’t know if there’s another way that he could have ended this prayer that would have been better. The response to everything that we know about God, the response to everything we know about what God has done for any individual, especially David here, is to praise Him. And David says it. I will sing praises to your name. Notice the language he uses here. He says, “Yahweh lives, and blessed be my rock; And let God, the rock of my salvation, be lifted high” verse 47. David wants everyone to know that His God is worthy of being praised and honored. He says that this God, this steady rock upon which David’s salvation is anchored, is a rock worthy of being lifted high and displayed for all to see and to worship. This God, verse 48 and 49, has done wonderful things during David during his life. And so, the natural response for David here as he closes his prayer is to pray exultantly. To pray worshipfully. To pray with a contagiousness in his ascribing his Lord praise. That’s what he’s doing. That’s why he sent this prayer from his personal journal, polished it up a little bit and sent it out to the choir master to end up being Psalm 18. So that everyone would know that they ought to praise God. Why ought you to praise God? Listen to what He’s done for me. In II Samuel 22:50-51 He prays “Therefore I will give thanks (he models this) to You, O Yahweh, among the nations, And I will sing praises to Your name. “He gives great salvation to His king, And shows lovingkindness to His anointed, To David and his seed forever.” There’s so much here exemplary in David’s heart. I love these windows into these prayers because we get to see exactly what is going on in the hearts of those who uttered these prayers. It’s one of my favorite things about this Hearts Aflame series. Every time we just get a window into someone’s heart, into the most intimate moments in their heart as they come before the Lord and write down these words to try to describe what’s happening in their minds. David here gives us the best example. The greatest of all examples. There’s nothing you can do to explain away everything that has happened in his life except to praise His name. I’d like us to finish by flipping over to Hebrews. Now I want to finish in Hebrews 13:20-21. This is a passage that is something we call a doxology. Maybe some people call it a benediction. It’s something that ought to cause people to glorify the Lord. In fact, many churches even today will say these doxologies. They might even chant them; everyone stands up at the end of the service. I’m going to read it. Then I’m going to explain it. This benediction, this doxology here Hebrews 13:20-21, is so good. Just listen. “Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, our Lord Jesus, equip you in every good thing to do His will, by doing in us what is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.” This God of peace here described in this doxology, this benediction, is the One to Whom all glory is deserved forever. He’s the rightful object, the recipient, of this honor. Look at it again. “Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, our Lord Jesus” (Who was Himself by the way the sacrifice for our sins and the Savior of our souls and if we’ve repented and believed in His death and His resurrection this great Shepherd of the sheep, this Lord Jesus, is ours.) May He equip you in every good thing to do His will, by doing in us what’s pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.” God equips those whom He saves to go and do His will, to do what’s pleasing in His sight. That is the purpose for our lives as recipients of that equipment. We’re not just along for the ride here in this life. God didn’t save us just to enjoy the blessings and comforts He’s chosen to give us. We’re here for a reason and that reason is to be little factories of glory, pumping out worship to the highest mark of efficiency as we possibly can. David’s prayer in II Samuel 22 exemplified that. David had never read Hebrews. This doxology had never crossed his eyes. But you can bet he knew his purpose. If you’re a sheep that belongs to the great Shepherd of the sheep who’s described here in Hebrews 13:20, then you have a duty for doxology. You have a duty to glorify God. You have an obligation to bring God glory with the short life that you’ve been given. You’ve been equipped for it, it says, and you’ve been exhorted to it. John 15:8 says, “My Father is glorified by this, (the words of Jesus) that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.” We have the doxological duty to bring God glory by bearing fruit, by proving with our actions that which we profess with our mouths. We glorify God by acting in accordance with the fact that we’re disciples of Christ. I Corinthians 10:31, “Whether then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all (what?) to the glory of God.” We have the doxological duty to bring God glory even when we’re engaging in seemingly mundane actions. Get this. There’s no such thing as a non-spiritual activity. Everything we do as children of a God who deserves glory is a thing that can be done intentionally to give that God more glory. We’re built to give him glory and so we have the doxological duty to do just that, no matter what it is that we have before us to do. You work in a secular job? You’re not a pastor? So, what? You can glorify God just as much as a pastor can. You have unbelieving family members? You don’t have a family? You don’t have a spouse who is a believer? Your kids aren’t Believers? So, what? You can glorify God in that situation just as much as anybody else. Perhaps even more. We need to take our doxological duty seriously, like David did. We could go all over the New Testament to see it. I Peter 4, Philippians 1, Romans 15, all over the place. Doxology is the purpose of the Christian’s life. It’s why God saved us. It’s the job for which He equipped us, and it should therefore be the defining factor in the way that we live these short lives here on this earth, even in this week, even this month, even this year. Look at the end of verse 21. Notice here the finality and the sureness of the recipient of glory. Hebrews 13:21, “(The God of peace) equip you in every good thing to do His will, by doing in us what is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.” The text doesn’t tell us that God might get glory. It doesn’t say that He’s up there looking down on us, hoping that He gets the glory for what we do. It doesn’t tell us that there’s a possibility that God might not get glory because it’s really up to us to force the issue and make Him be glorified. It says that the glory belongs to Him, the God of peace. There’s no chance that He might not get the glory. It is due Him because He is sovereign and He’s in control and He is not only in control of the big trends of history, but also over the details of our lives. Look at it right there in verse 21. Who does it say causes us to do what’s pleasing in His sight? Who’s the real actor here? It’s the God of peace. It’s Him who does it in us. It’s Him who is sovereign over us, in us and through us. Here we come face to face with this mind-boggling reality of God’s sovereignty and our simultaneous responsibility. Is God the One who causes us to be recipients of the faith that enables us to glorify Him with our lives? Yes! Is God the One who equips us in every good thing to do His will? Yes! Is God the One Who does in us what is pleasing in His sight? Yes! Are we the ones who’ve been called to actively and intentionally present our entire lives as living sacrifices, intentionally bringing Him glory with our whole-hearted, life defining worship? Yes. It’s an amazing reality, isn’t it? It’s an amazing responsibility. It’s almost like a shoulder breaking sort of responsibility, isn’t it? But God will equip you. He promises to do it. Take your doxological duty seriously and the Lord will supply the strength. It’s a sobering truth and an invigorating exhortation all at the same time. It’s exemplified by David in II Samuel 22 and put in doxological from here in Hebrews 13. May we not forget these truths as we go before our Lord in prayer. Let’s pray.