Psalm 18:1-19

July 7, 2019

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts at 16:25 in the audio file.

Or, Exalting in the God of Deliverance

Series: The Soundtrack of the Righteous

In Jonathan Edwards’ treatise, The Religious Affections, which is, in my estimation at least, his most important work, he introduces the “greatest advantage” the devil has in his battle against Christ.

It is by the mixture of counterfeit religion with true, not discerned and distinguished, that the devil has had his greatest advantage against the cause and kingdom of Christ all along hitherto. (17)

There have always been hypocrites, posers, and abusers of God’s grace among those who are truly humble and faithful recipients of God’s grace. This is not new, and it affects a number of areas, not just in identifying who belongs to the church, but also in considering how the church lives in the world.

One of those areas is the desire to succeed. I believe that many Christians have seen the desire for success/prosperity abused and so have come to conclude that any and every desire to win must necessarily be wrong, worldly, ungodly. But there is more to distinguish than simply between those who want to succeed and those who are resigned to suffer. That is too simple, too surface.

Many Christians have become afraid of prosperity. And, have men become preoccupied with the world to their eternal danger? Of course (Matthew 13:22). Has materialism even happened in the name of Jesus? Sadly, yes. But as usual, there is more than one way to disobey.

We have to look at more than what a person wants. We also have to consider:

What is their attitude when they haven’t won yet?

What is the nature of the Help they look to?

What are their expectations for personal expenditure in the process?

What is their response when it is over?

I say all of this because Psalm 18 is a song of triumph. In Psalm 17 David prayed for vindication; he was singing in the middle of his need. In Psalm 18, as we’ll see by the end, the vindication has come through great victory. In the song we see David’s attitude (he submitted to God), we see David’s understanding of the nature of his help in God (God is not a candy dispenser), we see David’s effort and sacrifices (he got his armor sweaty and his sword bloody by God’s strength), and we see David’s response (he gave all the credit to God). The inspired song is a worship song about winning, and we should learn how to sing it.

I mean, what if we…won? Or is winning not for us? Does God not give victory to His people anymore? Maybe He will vindicate us, but really, He’s going to vindicate His name, and we’re only going to participate in that after we’re dead, so basically we probably shouldn’t worship like David here in Psalm 18…?

We’ve transferred the fear. We shouldn’t fear prosperity, we should fear God. He is the source of victory, and He is the purveyor of vengeance. Remembering both of those parts protects us from errors on either extreme. So the question is not whether we should desire prosperity at all, it is whether we desire prosperity from a position of integrity or hypocrisy? It is appropriate to desire deliverance from distress, and it is appropriate to praise the Deliverer when He delivers.

This is the context of the Psalm, as the heading reveals. The heading is on the longer side of those in the Psalter.

To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, the servant of the Lord, who addressed the words of this song to the Lord on the day when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul. He said:

When a Psalm has a heading it was probably written by the arranger of the Psalter, and because this contains so many details, we can assume that the arranger knew his facts. These details were known because this song had its public release near the end of David’s life. It doesn’t mean [...]