1-2 Samuel Week Fifty-One: 2 Samuel 22:1-51

¹ And David spoke the words of this song to the Lord in the day that the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. ² He said,

“The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer;
³ My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge,
My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold and my refuge;
My savior, You save me from violence.
⁴ “I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised,
And I am saved from my enemies.
⁵ “For the waves of death encompassed me;
The torrents of destruction overwhelmed me;
⁶ The cords of Sheol surrounded me;
The snares of death confronted me.
⁷ “In my distress I called upon the Lord,
Yes, I cried to my God;
And from His temple He heard my voice,
And my cry for help came into His ears.
⁸ “Then the earth shook and quaked,
The foundations of heaven were trembling
And were shaken, because He was angry.
⁹ “Smoke went up out of His nostrils,
Fire from His mouth devoured;
Coals were kindled by it.
¹⁰ “He bowed the heavens also, and came down
With thick darkness under His feet.
¹¹ “And He rode on a cherub and flew;
And He appeared on the wings of the wind.
¹² “And He made darkness canopies around Him,
A mass of waters, thick clouds of the sky.
¹³ “From the brightness before Him
Coals of fire were kindled.
¹⁴ “The Lord thundered from heaven,
And the Most High uttered His voice.
¹⁵ “And He sent out arrows, and scattered them,
Lightning, and routed them.
¹⁶ “Then the channels of the sea appeared,
The foundations of the world were laid bare
By the rebuke of the Lord,
At the blast of the breath of His nostrils.
¹⁷ “He sent from on high, He took me;
He drew me out of many waters.
¹⁸ “He delivered me from my strong enemy,
From those who hated me, for they were too strong for me.
¹⁹ “They confronted me in the day of my calamity,
But the Lord was my support.
²⁰ “He also brought me forth into a broad place;
He rescued me, because He delighted in me.
²¹ “The Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness;
According to the cleanness of my hands He has recompensed me.
²² “For I have kept the ways of the Lord,
And have not acted wickedly against my God.
²³ “For all His ordinances were before me,
And as for His statutes, I did not depart from them.
²⁴ “I was also blameless toward Him,
And I kept myself from my iniquity.
²⁵ “Therefore the Lord has recompensed me according to my righteousness,
According to my cleanness before His eyes.
²⁶ “With the kind You show Yourself kind,
With the blameless You show Yourself blameless;
²⁷ With the pure You show Yourself pure,
And with the perverted You show Yourself astute.
²⁸ “And You save an afflicted people;
But Your eyes are on the haughty whom You abase.
²⁹ “For You are my lamp, O Lord;
And the Lord illumines my darkness.
³⁰ “For by You I can run upon a troop;
By my God I can leap over a wall.
³¹ “As for God, His way is blameless;
The word of the Lord is tested;
He is a shield to all who take refuge in Him.
³² “For who is God, besides the Lord?
And who is a rock, besides our God?
³³ “God is my strong fortress;
And He sets the blameless in His way.
³⁴ “He makes my feet like hinds’ feet,
And sets me on my high places.
³⁵ “He trains my hands for battle,
So that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.
³⁶ “You have also given me the shield of Your salvation,
And Your help makes me great.
³⁷ “You enlarge my steps under me,
And my feet have not slipped.
³⁸ “I pursued my enemies and destroyed them,
And I did not turn back until they were consumed.
³⁹ “And I have devoured them and shattered them, so that they did not rise;
And they fell under my feet.
⁴⁰ “For You have girded me with strength for battle;
You have subdued under me those who rose up against me.
⁴¹ “You have also made my enemies turn their backs to me,
And I destroyed those who hated me.
⁴² “They looked, but there was none to save;
Even to the Lord, but He did not answer them.
⁴³ “Then I pulverized them as the dust of the earth;
I crushed and stamped them as the mire of the streets.
⁴⁴ “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.
⁴⁵ “Foreigners pretend obedience to me;
As soon as they hear, they obey me.
⁴⁶ “Foreigners lose heart,
And come trembling out of their fortresses.
⁴⁷ “The Lord lives, and blessed be my rock;
And exalted be God, the rock of my salvation,
⁴⁸ The God who executes vengeance for me,
And brings down peoples under me,
⁴⁹ 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.
⁵⁰ “Therefore I will give thanks to You, O Lord, among the nations,
And I will sing praises to Your name.
⁵¹ “He is a tower of deliverance to His king,
And shows lovingkindness to His anointed,
To David and his descendants forever.”

—2 Samuel 22:1-51

Sermon Outline

1. The Deliverance of God is (MULTILINE)
2. The Deliverance of God is (MULTILINE)
3. The Deliverance of God is (MULTILINE)
4. The Deliverance of God is (MULTILINE)
5. The Deliverance of God is (MULTILINE)

References

Weekly Study Guide

We have undertaken quite a journey during our time together in 1^st & 2^nd Samuel. We’ve embarked on a jet tour through the covenants that God made with Israel, as those covenants form the foundation of—and are the major building blocks upon which sits—the unfolding of God’s plan of redemption. Through these covenants, God reveals how salvation and the restoration of all things will occur. So far, we have covered 7 of the 8 covenants that God enters into in the Bible. After we make our way through the final covenant, we will wrap up this journey with an overview of God’s plan and discuss some of the ramifications of this discussion.

So, briefly, where have we come from? In broad strokes—we have seen that God’s promise to bless Abraham and his offspring (and ultimately the world) was given in the Abrahamic Covenant. Later, the means by which the people of Israel could appropriate those blessings was given to them through Moses in the Mosaic Covenant. Then, as the form of the government in Israel changed into a monarchy, God then clarified and narrowed the focus of that Abrahamic promise through the Davidic Covenant, which revealed that the coming blessing would take the form of a king—and, eventually, an everlasting Kingdom. We are now going to see that there is going to be a need for a new type of administrative covenant when Messiah comes. This is because when Jesus comes, He will fulfill the purpose of—and the need for—the Mosaic (administrative) Covenant. A new administrative covenant will also be necessary because, after the cross, the identity of the people of God will be undergoing an overhaul. This brings us to the New Covenant. As we have highlighted before, the New Covenant is the elaboration of the Spiritual Blessing aspect of the Abrahamic Covenant.

We return again to this foundational truth: we absolutely must not confuse Israel with the church. We have discussed this several times before, but in our exploration of the New Covenant, this truth comes even more into focus. Both Israel and the church are part of God’s family, and each are used by God to accomplish His purposes. But they are distinct and separate. God created each, and uses each, in different ways in different time periods. It is when we fail to recognize this distinction that so many passages are misunderstood.

“Israel” refers to the Jewish people and the land God gave to them. It is a physical nation with a distinct history and ethnic identity. The “church” refers to the community of believers in Messiah (between Pentecost and the Rapture)—a spiritual body that transcends ethnicity and nationality. God worked in the world through Israel before the church began, and will once again work in the world through Israel after the church is gone. How else might we see this contrast? God made covenants with Israel as salvation history was unfolding. He did not make any covenants with the church. Israel was a nation that was set apart for service among other nations. The church is not a nation. It is made up of people from every nation who are called out to share the good news about God in the places where they live.

In the Mosaic Covenant, God gave Israel specific instructions on how to live lives that were pleasing to Him. These laws were the means by which Israel would be able to experience the blessings promised to Abraham and his offspring. Thus, the Mosaic laws would not be appropriate for the church as a means for us to be able to experience His blessing in the world today. So, knowing that the identity of His family would undergo an overhaul, God promised through the prophets that a “New Covenant” would replace the “old” Mosaic Covenant and enable God’s newly reconstituted people to experience His blessing in whatever nation they lived. This is why the Gentile believers in Messiah are not bound to keep the Mosaic Covenant. God’s plan still revolves around Israel, even though presently He is doing a work through the Gentile church to reach the nations.

The Mosaic Covenant provided the administrative structure for the regulation of life for God’s people during that specific time period—a period in which Israel experienced the Abrahamic blessing. We’re going to see that the New Covenant is the administrative structure in which the church experiences the Abrahamic blessing during our current time period. The New Covenant was not a promise God gave to the church; rather, He gave it to Israel. But when they rejected Him, God pressed “pause” on the fulfillment of that promise to Israel, and will re-institute it with them once Israel repents. In the meantime, the church—having been grafted into God’s family through having the faith of Abraham—gets to experience some of the blessings of that New Covenant.

Way back in Book One of our 1^st & 2^nd Samuel study guide, we discussed some of the aspects of the New Covenant. This was important to cover back then because we were establishing the primary place that Israel holds in the plan of God. We discussed how, when we talk about the New Covenant, many Christians mistakenly believe it is something that belongs to the church—to the church age. However, when we look at the primary passages where the New Covenant is discussed we see that it is Israel who is in focus:

‘Behold, days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers on the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,’ declares the Lord. ‘For this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,’ declares the Lord: ‘I will put My law within them and write it on their heart; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,’ declares the Lord, ‘for I will forgive their wrongdoing, and their sin I will no longer remember.’ (Jer 31:31-34—emphasis added).

The church is grafted into the family of God—a family whose original and primary member was, and continues to be, Israel. The church is not the family of God. But being grafted in “contrary to nature” (according to Romans 11) is how we Gentiles are able to benefit from the New Covenant—because we are grafted into the family of God alongside Israel.

Being grafted into the seed of Abraham as Gentile followers of Messiah merely gives us access to some of the rights and privileges that heretofore belonged only to the Jews. This makes us partakers specifically of the blessings of the Jewish covenants. It does not make us Jews. Yet, even still, we do not share in all the facets of the covenants, but only in the spiritual blessings. For example: we do not inherit the land, nor are we required to undergo circumcision.

When Israel rejected her Messiah, the complete fulfillment of this New Covenant promise was postponed. In the meantime, Gentiles, who have faith like Abraham, are now members of the family of God, and the New Covenant is beginning to be fulfilled with them. It will not be fully fulfilled until Israel acknowledges their sin of rejecting Messiah and petitions His return. Then the New Covenant will find its complete fulfillment. This statement we just read in Jeremiah is one of the clearest descriptions of what the New Covenant promises. But notice how Jeremiah puts a bold, underlined, exclamation point on his message as he continues in vv. 35-37 where he emphasizes how nothing will ever disqualify Israel from this special place of prominence:

This is what the Lord says, He who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, Who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar— The Lord of armies is His name: ‘If this fixed order departs from Me,’ declares the Lord, ‘Then the descendants of Israel also will cease to be a nation before Me forever.’ This is what the Lord says: ‘If the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth searched out below, then I will also reject all the descendants of Israel for everything that they have done,’ declares the Lord (Jer 31:35-37).

This passage in Jeremiah serves as the capstone of God’s promise regarding the New Covenant. God is speaking to the people, through Jeremiah, saying that just because Israel was unfaithful, does not mean God has abandoned them. The message is that God has this amazing New Covenant on the way that will be the fulfillment of what the Mosaic Covenant only foreshadowed. Through this New Covenant, God will write His law on their hearts, as opposed to the Law being written on tablets of stone. Through this covenant will come the forgiveness of Israel’s sins—not just the temporary covering over of sins they experienced through the sacrificial system. Yet there are more passages that highlight this truth as well.

In Ezekiel 36:22-28, another of the most prominent New Covenant passages, this expression of the New Covenant is, too, directed toward Israel—and to them being restored to the land:

Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD, “It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went. “I will vindicate the holiness of My great name which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst. Then the nations will know that I am the LORD,” declares the Lord GOD, “when I prove Myself holy among you in their sight. For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances. You will live in the land that I gave to your forefathers; so you will be My people, and I will be your God.”’

God expands on the provisions of the New Covenant here and says that He will give His people Israel a new heart of flesh. He will put His Spirit within them. This passage, along with the passage in Jeremiah 31, are the two major expressions of the New Covenant in the Bible—and they are both directed to Israel. The Holy Spirit, mentioned here in Ezekiel, was poured out on the world at Pentecost, demonstrating the New Covenant had begun. And the church is now given the opportunity to partake in some of the blessings of the New Covenant. But when Israel acknowledges their sin of rejecting Messiah, they will then receive the full benefit of it as well.

Our point back in Book One was that the New Covenant was a promise made to Israel, not to the church. Yes, Gentiles are beneficiaries because we are grafted into the family of God alongside Israel. But many in the church see the church itself as the replacement for Israel in the plan of God, and think that the New Covenant somehow only applies to us—this could not be further from the truth. We misunderstand both God’s plan and even God Himself when we believe these lies.

The Old Testament was not the era for the Jews, with the New Testament being the era for the Gentiles. The church did not replace Israel just because the Mosaic Law was fulfilled (Rom 4:13). The church does not intercept the blessings promised to Israel. The church does participate in the spiritual blessings of the New Covenant (a covenant made with Israel) in that she was grafted into the same vine along with Israel. This New Covenant was initially fulfilled for the Gentiles at Pentecost and then will be fully fulfilled for the Jews as a whole at the second coming—when God finally restores them to their place of prominence as He promised all throughout the Old Testament. The kingdom will then be established with Messiah on David’s throne in Jerusalem ruling the world with a rod of iron for a thousand glorious years.

What we see in the Bible is not two different stories—one in the Old Testament of a failed plan to build a kingdom through the Jews, and then a new plan in the New Testament where God discards the Jews and turns His affections to the Gentiles. No, it is one big, unified plan that starts in the Garden of Eden and is slowly but surely put in place as the subsequent eras of salvation history unfold. The New Covenant helps make that clear. The cross is the culmination of God’s promise to Israel, to bless them and to bless the world through them. But the cross should not be the starting point in our understanding of our own salvation (as it is sometimes taught), but should be the climax of a story that is still unfolding—the conclusion of which may not be too far off.

(MULTILINE)

Discussion Questions

1. In this song, David describes his understanding of God in a variety of ways. When you picture God, what is in your mind? Do you picture perhaps a throne, or ineffable light? What is your tangible picture of God? (MULTILINE)
2. What is the background for this song of David? Why do you think it would be included here rather than only with the other psalms? Other than a few variations, it is quite similar to Psalm 18. Do you think that perhaps this was a song David sang throughout his life, as the occasion arose? What is the main theme of this song? How does David describe God’s character in these verses? What were some of the times when David faced “waves of death” and “torrents of destruction”? How did David respond to these trials? How should we respond in similar situations? (MULTILINE)
3. This song can be seen as a perfect summary of David’s character and attitude through life. What are some of the convictions David reveals here? What are some of the many ways God delivered David? What are some of the images of God David uses in this song? How does God respond to David’s cry for help? What can we learn from David about how to praise God? What do we learn about God’s sovereignty in this song? (MULTILINE)
4. How does the world respond to stress and anxiety vs. how the believer in God does? What foundational differences inform those responses? Why is this an important worldview element to understand? How might it help you navigate the challenges of life in a more trusting way? How does this song give us a blueprint for how we might seek God first in our trials? (MULTILINE)
5. If you had to write a song of deliverance for your life, what would it include? How has God rescued you and delivered you? What has He saved you from? How do you want to praise Him for His work in your life? How would you like to become more aware of your need for him this week? How will continue to give God the praise He deserves? (MULTILINE)

Going Deeper

1. David’s words about God being his rock and his fortress point us back to the time when David had to flee from Saul and hide in the rocks of Ein Gedi. This is a place that is known as the rocks of the wild goats. The words of verse 34 are reflected in the famous passage in Habakkuk 3:19, “He makes my feet like hind’s feet, and makes me walk on high places.” How can David’s description of God as a rock and a fortress apply to your life today? In what ways is David’s song of deliverance an encouragement in your faith journey? (MULTILINE)
2. It has been said that faith does not completely depend on knowledge, but the right knowledge of God gives great strength to faith. What knowledge of God revealed here helps strengthen your faith? Verses 26 – 28 describe how God treats various groups of people. What do we learn about God from this? What did deliverance look like to David and what does it look like for you and me? This song appears as some of the final words of David. How might this help us understand the heart behind the song a little better? (MULTILINE)

Transformational Activity

Outreach

David ends this song by saying he will praise God among the nations (v. 50)? Glorifying God for all that He has done will naturally lead to sharing this good news with others. In what ways can you declare God’s goodness for all that He has done for you? Where can you seek to intentionally reach out to others with the story of God’s love? Take some time this week to ask God to spark in you the desire to become a person who continually seeks to share the good news with others. Pray that God will transform you into a person who truly delights in praising God like David.