Hope From the Word

Guest (Male): Would this be described as a difficult season of life for you? Pastor Bill Luebkemann says God is there for you through it all. This certainly was the case with David. When he was in great peril, he sought refuge in the Lord.

Bill Luebkemann: Look, he makes it very clear here. Number one, his enemies were powerful. Number two, they were stronger than he was. He was tired, he was weak, he was worn out, he was out of gas, out of time, out of luck, and out of everything else. He was on empty, zero, zip, nada. You see God working in that situation.

His enemies were powerful. His foes were too strong for him. They confronted me in the day of my disaster, but the Lord was my support. It was the bad guys that were working against him, but it was the Lord he was relying on.

Guest (Male): We're glad you could be with us for Hope from the Word. We're continuing our study of 2 Samuel today. There have been many great songs written by believers throughout the years which testify of God's goodness and grace. Both believers and unbelievers alike are familiar with John Newton's "Amazing Grace."

In 2 Samuel 22, David offers his own song of praise written during the last years of his life. He testifies of how gracious God is, and I think you'll be encouraged by it. Here's our pastor, Bill Luebkemann.

Bill Luebkemann: Well, if you'll open up to 2 Samuel, chapter 22. I found this to be a very difficult chapter to look at. David's song of praise, it's called in a nearly inspired version. I'm better with facts and figures and history and stuff like that than I am with all this emotional stuff. I guess that's because I'm an engineer.

So when I read the emotional stuff, it's more difficult, and you have to bear with me as I go through this here, because it's the hardest chapter really to grasp ahold of for me anyway. The imagery in here, it's a lot of that. David sang to the Lord the words of this song.

Now, I thought maybe it'd be a good idea if I sang this to you, except that Hebrew songs are a little different than ours. They don't necessarily rhyme the way we think of rhyming. A lot of times, the thoughts are parallel or opposite, and that was their rhyming back then, more along the line of what the thought or the meaning was than the rhyming of the words like we know today.

David sang to the Lord—we're going to read it. David sang to the Lord the words of this song when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. Now, look, there, if you go ahead to Psalm 18, you will find that Psalm 18 is virtually identical to this chapter here.

Word for word, verse for verse, it's almost an exact matching Psalm 18. So some people feel, well, he wrote this song, and over the years, they sang it at different occasions, and he changed it around a little bit, and somewhere along the way, it also became one of the Psalms. And that's very, very likely, of course.

As far as when he wrote it, there's much disagreement about that also. Some people feel, well, it was added on here at the end of 2 Samuel, but he really wrote it earlier. It says David sang to the Lord the words of this song when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul.

Now, you know over his entire career, he was delivered from the hand of Saul. He became the king in Judah. He reigned there for seven years. He moved to Jerusalem. He became king over the entire land. And over a period of time, God gave him victory over all his enemies.

And then he had quite a bit of period of peace and prosperity before his whole incident with Absalom, his son, trying to steal the kingdom from him. And now, of course, he's back in the land. So did he write this towards the end there after the incident with Absalom, or was it earlier, sometime maybe not too long after Saul perished?

Don't really know the answer to that. I think there's some reasons to believe each one, so I'll let you make your own decision on that. What we do know is David sang this song, and he sang it after a major victory or after a bunch of victories at some point in his life when he was redeemed from his enemies and from the hand of Saul.

It makes you think it was closer to the time of Saul because it specifically mentioned Saul. It specifically mentioned Saul, "all his enemies and Saul." It's hard to believe it would be worded that way if he really wrote it 30 years after Saul perished. But you know what? It doesn't really matter.

He said, "The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer. My God is my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation. He is my stronghold, my refuge, and my savior. From violent men, you save me. I call to the Lord who is worthy of praise, and I am saved from my enemies."

So he starts out here by praising the Lord. It's almost like he knew the Lord's prayer before it was given. Jesus said, "After this manner pray ye, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name." That starts with words of praise to God, and we see the same kind of thing happening here as well, starting out with words of praise to God.

And we also see a variety in here. He doesn't just say God is good, God is great, why do we have to eat this broccoli that we hate? Yeah, yeah, yeah, God is good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, God is great. There's some variety in here. So he's praising God, and he's given us some variety.

And we also see in here that he's also giving us ways that he has encountered God or experienced God, if you like Henry Blackaby, who says you experience God in different ways. You experience Him as your provider; you call the Lord is my provider. You experience Him as your redeemer, you experience Him as your savior, as your healer, or what have you.

So these words are very suggestive of ways that David also experienced the Lord. The Lord is my rock. You get the impression there something that is immovable. I'm thinking Rock of Gibraltar, only bigger. You can push, you can pull, you can try to move it around, it don't move. You can walk on it, you can stand there.

In a hurricane, it isn't going to go anywhere. In a tornado, it isn't going to go anywhere. Somebody emailed me pictures today of this tornado that went through this town. And this town was just the entire town—now, it wasn't that big of a town, but the entire town—it was an aerial view.

This whole entire town this way and this way and just everything there was flattened except for like one building standing up in the middle. Just totally flat. I got an email from another Calvary pastor who went there, and he said I don't think he was able to quite get in, but he said he was talking to the police or whoever he was talking to there, emergency workers.

And they said the difference between this one and other places is at least when there's been other tornadoes, there was some place to go back to. There was a town; some of the homes got destroyed, but there were other homes there. Maybe a store got wiped out, but there was another store or some restaurants got wiped out, there were other restaurants.

This town, he said, there was nothing there. Just nothing to go back to. The town is gone. And you get the idea that would not be the case with the Lord. If you're standing on the Lord—and I'm not in any way connecting the Lord to that particular tornado, by the way—I'm just saying that David experienced the Lord as a rock, as someone who was immovable in his life.

As a fortress, and you get the idea that you're behind these very thick and very high walls with barbed wire on the top and you're safe from your enemy. He's your fortress and my deliverer. So He's going to get me out of this mess either. I don't have to worry about what's going to come at me.

I don't have to worry about the enemy attacking me. And my Lord is going to deliver me somehow from it. It doesn't mean you're not going to have a tornado take away your house. It doesn't mean you're not going to lose your job. Or it doesn't mean that you're not going to get sick or have some kind of a problem.

But you can rely on the Lord Himself to be the immovable one in your life that you can rely on, that you can stand upon, that you can trust in like a fortress, and as a deliverer. My God is my rock in whom I take refuge. So you get the idea that I'm running to you, Lord.

I'm not going to go in the basement if a tornado's coming. Of course, you're going to go in the basement. But you're not—if you're sick and you need an operation or something and you're worried about that and you're trusting in God, well, going in the basement isn't going to help you.

And nothing else is going to help you except that you go to the Lord in prayer and you rely on Him and you cling to Him. And David says, "My God is my rock in whom I take refuge." I think it's interesting the whole idea that you even can take refuge in Him.

Some people today wouldn't understand what that means. You crazy nut Christian nitwit you, how do you take—there's no such thing as God, you're crazy. But we know as believers, we can go to the Lord and take refuge in Him, that He'll under the cover of His wings, that He'll provide for us and maintain us and whatever it takes.

Even if it's a sickness unto death, if that's what His will is, that He'll sustain us through that. My shield and the horn of my salvation. Again, the picture there of protection and provision, that He's going to protect you and that He's going to provide for you.

He is my stronghold, my refuge, and my savior. Again, a stronghold like a fortress, a fort, a place where you go, a bank vault, some safe place, a cave where you're going to be protected. My refuge and my savior from violent men you save me. Well, now there's something David could talk about.

Look, the Lord saved him from Goliath, and he went storming into that one. And the Lord saved him from Saul. Talk about violent man, I'm not sure who was worse, Goliath or Saul. Goliath at least David got it over with real quick. Saul went on for 10 or 15 or 20 years, and he tried to kill David numerous times.

From Absalom, if this was written after the time of Absalom. From the various enemies of Israel, of which there were many. God saved David from all of those things. I call to the Lord who is worthy of praise, and I am saved from my enemies. You see the Lord always provided for him.

The Lord saved him. And I'm not saying here the Lord's going to save you in the way you want to be saved. You may still have a calamity or disaster or a tornado in your house. You may still have a flood, you may get water in the basement, your car may break down, you may lose your job and have a medical crisis.

But you'll be able to cling to the Lord and have that peace that surpasses all understanding because you know where it's coming from, and it's coming from Him. So we see here David starting out what I read as genuine praise here. That the Lord is someone I can count on, He's someone I can cling to.

He's someone that is going to get me through. I can be happy and making jokes with the nurses when they wheel me in the operating room because I know someone greater than anyone here is in charge of this thing. And it's Him. And that He's going to—whatever happens—if I die in there, it doesn't matter, because then I'll be with Him forever.

So He's going to see me through it no matter what. The waves of death swirled about me. Now David moves into a section here where he seems like he's now describing what his life was like during some of these bad periods. Whether he's talking about the time when Saul was chasing him or his enemies, or this sounds more like what was going on with his son, Absalom.

And if you read this section here, it almost makes you lean towards the fact that it was written after that. But he's describing here some imagery of the way he perceived these events. The waves of death swirled about me. The torrents of destruction overwhelmed me.

The cords of the grave coiled around me. The snares of death confronted me. In my distress, I called to the Lord. I called out to my God. From His temple, He heard my voice. My cry came to His ears. You get the impression here of someone who's drowning, someone who's in a vortex.

I remember when we were up in Niagara Falls, downstream from Niagara Falls they have Horseshoe Curve where the Niagara River makes a right turn. The river makes a right turn, and there's a vortex down there swirling around that you don't want to get too close to that because they say you can get sucked under.

We went down there on a boat, but we didn't go near the center of it. And over top, a couple hundred feet in the air is a cable car. You can ride across and look down. I said, no way am I going to go in that thing, you got to be crazy. Oh, there's no problem, it's been here for 50 years, it's never fallen in. Yeah, well, guess what? You don't want to go in when I go on it.

I mean, if you get in line behind me at the bank, you'll find out it's always the slowest line. So I see the water swirling down there, I wouldn't even make it down there. Look, think about Jonah being thrown in and sucked under, but before he got swallowed up in the belly of the big fish.

The waves of death swirl about me. You just—you can't miss the imagery here that I'm getting sucked under and I can't get any air and I can't keep my head above water very long. And the torrents of destruction overwhelm and the cords of the grave coiled around me. It's almost like death is down there pulling you down.

This is the way David felt. This doesn't mean he was actually drowning in the ocean. This means this is the way he perceived this event. It was like he was drowning; it was like he was being sucked under. It was like everything is going wrong here, nothing is going right.

All around me, every time I turn around, I get some more bad news. My son is fighting against me. Many of the other people in the kingdom have gone over to his side. They're chasing me, they're pursuing me, the snares of death confront me. And what did he do?

Did he call out the army? Did he call out the National Guard? No, he probably did call out his army, but he also called out to his God. I called out to my God. Interesting thing about the Lord. He can hear it when we pray. No other God, none of the gods with little G's, the false gods that are in the world, the gods of the other religions.

People say, well, you Christians are too narrow-minded; there are other ways to get to heaven besides Jesus. But none of those other ways involve gods that can hear, the gods that are alive, gods that can do anything, that are powerful enough. There's only one God, and He only had one son.

And look, David says, I called out to my God, and God was listening. He wasn't on a journey, He wasn't sleeping, He wasn't watching television, He wasn't doing something else. He heard my voice from His temple, He heard my voice, my cry came to His ears. And we can know ourselves today that when we call out to God, that He hears our prayers.

And David says things were bad, and they were getting worse, and I was drowning, and I couldn't keep my head above the water, and there was nothing else to do but call out to God. Well, that should be the first thing that we do. And that's what he did.

And then David moves into this section here where he's singing about his perception of how God acted. It doesn't necessarily mean that these things happened exactly like they say here. It's possible some of them did. The earth trembled and quaked. The foundations of the heavens shook.

They trembled because He was angry. Smoke rose from His nostrils; consuming fire came from His mouth; burning coals blazed out of it. You get the idea that there's power here. That God is able to move mountains and change the course of rivers, bring things into existence that didn't exist before, make something out of nothing.

Change the course of history. He parted the heavens and came down. Dark clouds were under His feet. He mounted the cherubim and flew. He soared on the wings of the wind. You get the impression here speed was not an issue, that the Lord was on top of this right away.

I think what David's saying is when I called on God, He heard and He acted, and there was action. And all of a sudden, the enemy was killing each other instead of attacking me. Absalom and his followers were in the woods, and even the woods was devouring them.

He made darkness His canopy around Him, the dark rain clouds of the sky. Out of the brightness of His presence, bolts of lightning blazed forth. The Lord thundered from heaven; the voice of the Most High resounded. He shot arrows and scattered the enemies; bolts of lightning and routed them.

The valleys of the sea were exposed and the foundations of the earth laid bare at the rebuke of the Lord, at the blast of breath from His nostrils. Look, if you put all that together, you just get the idea of power and you get the idea of strength.

And you get the idea that the Lord stands up for what He believes in, and what He believes in is what He says and what He says is because His words bring things into existence, so He's a God of His word. And you see here a picture of speed and a brightness and bolts of lightning, and it may be that who knows, maybe there was a lightning storm when one battle was going on and maybe that's to be taken literally and maybe on the other hand it's just imagery.

The Lord thundered from heaven. He shot arrows and scattered the enemies. It may be that as David saw in certain cases his enemies fighting each other and routing each other and being sucked up by crazy things and as he saw the battles go his way, he perceived in his mind it's like God is just throwing lightning bolts around here.

I know with this radio thing, every once in a while things happen that just tell me the Lord's in control. Like all day today kept getting hit with all different things and I'm not getting done what I need to get done. I can't get to this, I can't get to that. This thing's happening, that thing's happening.

Lord, I'm never going to get this done. And then I got a phone call from a guy that actually called me to tell me what was going on and how he was going to have certain things done for me. And it was like no one ever calls you back. No one ever calls you to give you an update.

You always have to call them over and over and over again to find out things. And here's a guy actually calling me. And it's kind of like you hear the still small voice of the Lord saying, look, I'm on top of this stuff. And then after dinner hour tonight—I didn't eat dinner, but I'll get to that later.

But after the dinner hour an email came in from a guy related to next week, the engineer for this tower where we're going to be next week, who I really needed to talk to. And I wound up being able to accomplish a few things with him. And it's like you can see the Lord doing things, saying we're going to get this done on time because I'm doing the work.

Because I know it can't be me, because I can call the guy 10 times, they won't call you back. And then when you're just about at the last minute and you trust in God, then all of a sudden somebody calls you back. And so I try to rely on Him and let Him do it and not worry about it and just do what I'm confronted with.

And you can see David here the same way, trusting in God and reacting as best he could, but just allowing God to take care of things. And it's like the valleys of the sea were exposed and the foundations of the earth laid bare at the rebuke of the Lord, at the blast of breath from His nostrils.

So again, you see this picture of this huge amount of power. He reached down from on high and took hold of me. He drew me out of deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes who were too strong for me. Look, he's like, God reached down and took me out of this thing.

Again, not that he was literally drowning in the ocean. But he was literally drowning with his enemies all around him and being confronted on every side. And here is God in effect reaching down and lifting him right out of that. Not just showing him the way out but lifting him out.

Not providing him a way out but taking drastic action. Yes, God will lift you out, God will provide a way out. He'll do all those things. But the idea here seems like when you're in more drastic trouble, God does something more drastic to reach you out of it.

And while he felt like he was being pulled under the waves and unable to grasp his breath and when death was tugging on his door and when he figured Absalom's going to be here with the army and they're going to wipe me out any moment now. Check the watch. I know how long it takes for them to march from Jerusalem.

They're going to be here very soon. We're in deep doodoo here. And we see instead God reached down and drew him out of those deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes who were too strong for me. Look, he makes it very clear here.

Number one, his enemies were powerful. Number two, they were stronger than he was. If this was referring to when he left Jerusalem when Absalom chased him out, he was tired, he was weak, he was worn out, he was out of gas, out of time, out of luck, and out of everything else.

He was on empty, zero, zip, nada. If they had come after him right away, he would have been wiped out. It's a good idea that Ahithophel's good advice was counteracted by the other guy, the Archite guy, because David could have gotten wiped out. You see God working in that situation.

His enemies were powerful. His foes were too strong for him. They confronted me in the day of my disaster, but the Lord was my support. It was the bad guys that were working against him, but it was the Lord he was relying on.

Guest (Male): Because of God's grace, we have every reason to praise Him. This chapter in 2 Samuel reminds us of that. Join us tomorrow for more Hope from the Word. You can hear this message or more Hope from the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann by going to ccmarlton.org.

Pastor Bill's messages can also be found by downloading the Hope FM app on your smartphone or tablet. Or if you prefer to listen via podcast, go wherever you find your podcasts and sign up there. We'd love to have you join us at Calvary Chapel of Marlton either in person or online.

Our Sunday service begins at 10:00 a.m., and there's a Wednesday evening service at 7:00. To catch us online, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel of Marlton or just go to our website for the link at ccmarlton.org. And if you'd take a moment to write to Pastor Bill, it would be such a blessing to us.

We're thankful each and every time we hear what God is doing in our listeners' lives, and we want to pray for you too. Either email us through the website at ccmarlton.org or call 856-983-1662. We'll continue our study in 2 Samuel next time on Hope from the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann, a presentation of Calvary Chapel of Marlton.

Bill Luebkemann: To know and follow hard after you. To know and follow hard after you. To grow as your disciple in your truth. To grow as your disciple in this world is empty, deep and void compared to knowing you, my Lord. Lead me on, and I will run after you. Lead me on, and I will run after you.

Guest (Male): Lead me on, and I will run after you. Lead me on, and I will run after you. Lead me on, and I will run after you. Lead me on, and I will run after you. Lead me on, and I will run after you. Lead me on, and I will run after you. Lead me on, and I will run after you. Lead me on, and I will run after you.