Book of Psalms - Psa. 18, Vs. 27-30 (09/03/2023)

All right, let's start with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that it's truth.

We thank you that we can apply it to our lives and experience experiential righteousness in our lives.

Lord, we ask that you help us to better understand your truth, better understand the practicality of it, and to be more disciplined in applying it to our lives.

Lord, help it to change us, help it to open our eyes to weaknesses that we have, and help us to give those weaknesses up to you, that we might run through a troop, as we're about to learn how to do today.

Lord, we love you. It's in Jesus' name we ask these things. Amen. All right, well, we've been going through Psalm 18, and we've really slowed down quite a bit, taking our time going through this psalm.

We started off looking at the background behind the psalm, and we saw that this was written at a time when

David has finally come to a place of peace in his life, when he has been given rest from all his enemies, including

Saul, and all the kings that rose up against him, and even his own family members and friends that rose up against him.

So we saw David, for the first time, kind of reflecting back on this really hard life of war, and how he recognized that God is the one that brought him through all that war.

And we also know that a lot of what he suffered through came as a direct result of a curse put on him for his own disobedience to God.

And so a lot of what he experienced, a lot of the hardship, a lot of the trial, a lot of turmoil, it came kind of at the hand of God, kind of directly from the

Lord. And David started this whole psalm off, having realized that he started the whole psalm off with a resolution to love the

Lord, which is really what the whole point of chastisement is supposed to be.

It's supposed to bring you back in right standing with the Father. It's supposed to get you to the point where you submit to His will, you recognize that His way is better than your way, and that you put your trust back in the way of the

Father. When we discipline our children, it's supposed to be the same way. It's supposed to be with a purpose, and the purpose isn't as much to punish as it is to correct.

I had a friend one time tell me, God cannot punish you because He's already punished

His Son. It's already pleased Him to bruise Him. He can correct you, but the

Son has taken your punishment. He will punish those that don't put their trust in Him.

And at first, that kind of rubbed me the wrong way. It just kind of irked me, like what do you mean

God can't punish me? I have experienced conviction of the Holy Spirit, and the more

I have read about the Holy Spirit, the more what he was saying seems to be correct because the

Holy Spirit convicts us of righteousness. I studied that a few weeks ago, I believe.

But because He convicts us of righteousness, and He finds us guilty of the righteousness of Christ, we have this ideal that we are supposed to adhere to, this perfect model of Christian walking that Jesus displayed for us, and we get to receive

His righteousness, so we get that as our conviction. And when we look at that through our natural state, we recognize because of the conscience that God has put in us, and because of the accuser that is constantly telling us we aren't good enough to go to heaven, which is true, we're not, our righteousness is filthy rags, because Satan accuses us, and our conscience recognizes that we don't adhere to that perfect model of righteousness that Jesus displayed, and that perfect model of righteousness that the

Holy Spirit says is who we are now. We tend to go, ah, I fall short.

That's a healthy thing, right? That's a good thing for us to recognize, but we also see in Revelation that we overcome the accuser by the word of our testimony and by the blood of the

Lamb. Right, and so we overcome guilt, shame, regret.

We overcome past mistakes. We overcome obstacles that are in front of us.

The fight that is before us, right, like in the present, we overcome all of that by the blood of the

Lamb and the word of our testimony, and so that's kind of what we're gonna focus on today in Psalm 18 is what does it take to overcome?

What is the practical application to the idea of overcoming by the power of God?

As He's given us a spirit of power and of love and of sound mind, we know that. He convicts us through His Holy Spirit of righteousness.

We know that, so we have righteousness positionally, but how do we take that positional righteousness and abide in it, abide in Him, to the point in which it results in experiential righteousness?

It's something that we tend to conceptualize, the idea, we know we're supposed to do it, but I don't think we get very nitty gritty into like what do we actually do?

What is our part in that? We understand that it's God doing the work, so we go, okay, then

God has to do it, and sometimes we get to the point where we go, okay, grace covers everything, which very obviously where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more, so it does.

It covers us when we mess up, but what does our part look like? How do we get to the point where we're doing what we're supposed to do, and what is that thing that we're supposed to do?

And I think we're gonna see that as we continue through Psalm 18. Last week, we were looking at how

God shows Himself pure with those who are pure, and He shows

Himself forward with those who are forward, right, and we noticed that the word for pure was the same for God showing

Himself, and for man, right, are the same because we're supposed to be like God. We're supposed to look like God.

We're supposed to act like God tells us to act. Be holy for I am holy, right, and when we do that, we begin to understand the purity of God better.

He'll show that facet of Himself in a light that we can't understand when we are forward.

Then you have those who will never come to know the Lord, who are always gonna be forward, and He will show

Himself forward towards them, but you also have those who know the Lord, who get back into the flesh, who occasionally sin, and when we do that, we look more like the world and less like Him, and so God shows

Himself forward when we show ourselves forward, but the word for forward is two different words.

The word for us meant perverse or messed up, right, like sinful.

It depicted being at odds with the

Spirit, and the word for God's word for forward, right, when describing

God, it was just that He would wrestle, so we get this picture of Jacob wrestling with the

Lord, and we see, okay, Jacob's wrestling with the Lord, but Jacob belongs to the

Lord, and ultimately, when we see God wrestling with Jacob, it's when he comes out of that wrestling.

He has the scars of his past sins. He even walks with a limp, but he walks in a newness of life that empowers him for the rest of his life when he finally, at that point, seems to give up the past life.

He seems to give up the idols and things of that nature, and so that is gonna be the activating mechanism that we're gonna see in this week's lesson is the concession part, so when

God shows Himself forward, it doesn't mean He's perverse. It just means He's gonna wrestle with those who do show themselves perverse, whether it be one that is not belonging to Him.

He's definitely gonna wrestle them, and defeat them, and send them to eternal damnation, but with His own children, when they start to look like that,

He wrestles against it, and ultimately, the goal of that wrestling and that chastising is to bring them closer into conformity with who

He is, and so that's where we left off last week.

That was verse 26 in the Psalms, Psalms 18,

Psalm 18, verse 26 is where we were, so we're gonna pick it up today in verse 27.

For thou wilt save the afflicted people, but will bring down high looks. So recognizing that God is going to wrestle against sin,

He's going to be at odds with anything that does not conform to His righteousness.

When you look at two different groups of people, you have

God's people and everyone else, you'll see that they're often contrasted.

They're contrasted with each other, God's people and everyone else, but everyone else is also contrasted with God.

God's people are not contrasted with God, and we're gonna see that contrast between the world and God in this verse.

For thou wilt save the afflicted people. That right there shows contrast.

God is going to save who the world is afflicting. You see, there's a contrast between the world and God, the world's ways and God's ways.

The world is going to put down, afflict, cast off, try to break the cords asunder, as we learned in earlier

Psalms, right? They're going to try and decimate or disband

God's people, and when they do that, we have one hope.

We have one savior. We have one way of being saved from this affliction, and that is

God. At the same time, the very people, as we see the very people that the world wants to put down,

God wants to lift up, we're also going to see who the world wants to lift up, and God's gonna put them down.

So there's contrast even in that, right?

We see the contrast between the world wants to put some people down and God wants to lift them up, and will lift them up, but then there's a contrast in who the world thinks should be put down and who the world thinks should be put up, and we see that next, but will bring down high looks.

So God's going to bring down the high looks. The world wants to uplift itself.

It wants to look down upon everyone and anything that conforms or looks like God, so the world puffs itself up.

It says, you don't need that. You need us, and sometimes

I don't even say you need us. You just need you, because the world is okay with you just not needing

God. Remember, you have three enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil, and they all work together.

The flesh has the sinful desires within it. That's where the sinful desire originates.

You have the devil, and his job is to bring up the temptation, so he's the tempter.

He's also the accuser, so he brings up this temptation, and he uses the lie of sin to tempt.

He says, this is gonna fulfill you. This is going to make you feel better. This is gonna get you out of trouble.

This is going to make you avoid a bad situation, and the lie of sin is that it's going to fill some sort of need, so you've got this sinful desire that resides in your flesh.

Satan is going to appeal to that. Satan can't make you have the sinful desire, so this whole idea of Satan made me do it, that's false teaching.

He can't make you do anything. You do what you wanna do, and what you do, and what you want resides in the flesh, and Satan just brings that up, and so he starts with the lie of sin.

It's gonna fulfill you. It's gonna save you. It's gonna protect you. It's gonna make you feel good.

All these things, and as soon as you do it, he switches roles from tempter to accuser.

Look what you just did. How could you call yourself a Christian? You don't belong.

You're not God's. God's doesn't look like that, and he starts accusing, and so then you have the world, so you have the flesh.

Its job is to have sinful desires. That's your enemy, right? We're supposed to put to death the deeds of the flesh and the desires of the flesh.

Satan is gonna try and keep you from doing that by tempting you and then accusing you, and then the world's role is to make sin accessible and acceptable, right?

So they make it acceptable to say, oh, no, we like you just the way you are. No, just come as you are, just like that, yeah?

And you don't need to change. You're perfect the way you are. Everyone should accept you the way you are, and that is a way to get you to go, no,

I don't need to change. Nothing needs to change. I'm okay just the way I am. So if the

Bible tells me I need to change, if the Bible says I need to conform to God's word and his righteousness, if the

Bible says that old things should pass away, behold, all things should become new, then I'm not being accepted for who

I am. You see the trap? And so the world doesn't need you to need them. The world just needs you to not need

God. The world just needs you to be okay with just needing yourself.

They make that acceptable. Then they make it accessible because you see that message everywhere. And they also make the temptation of sin accessible through technology, through just the ability to move to and fro quickly, right?

There's instant gratification everywhere. So the world makes sin easier to get to.

And that's how the three enemies work together. We've discussed this before. And so the world always appeals to pride.

I mean, we have a whole month dedicated to pride, right? Like we pride month.

Now we know that ultimately that's supposed to be for a specific group of people, but they want everyone to celebrate it because they want everyone to be okay with this idea of pride.

And so the world has high looks. You see, there's pride there. God's going to cast that down.

It says that he hates, what is it? He hates a prideful walk. The Lord hated a prideful walk.

That's somewhere in Proverbs, I believe. And so what we see in verse 27 is the world, the flesh and the devil are diametrically opposed to all the ways of God.

Whoever God wants to save, the world wants to afflict. Whoever God wants to put down, the world wants to puff up.

And so they're completely and utterly against. They are opposed. They are, what is that word we used that was earlier in the

Psalm that meant to confront is put in front of, it'll come to me a little bit later.

I can probably look back, but I don't want to lose my space in my notes. Before, I think it was put before me or something like that.

So that's what we get out of verse 27 there. Any thoughts about that before we keep moving on?

I'm going to ask you guys a couple of questions here in a little bit. Okay, so let's move on to verse 28.

For thou will light my candle. The Lord, my God will enlighten my darkness.

Here's my question for you guys. How does God light our candle? And how does he enlighten our darkness?

Was it even me? I mean, it sounds good. We all want it to happen, right? Obviously it happened for David, but how does he do that?

Through the Holy Spirit. Okay, through the Holy Spirit. That's a good answer. That's part of the correct answer for sure, but how else?

Through the Father. The Father is one. Ah, now we're getting there,

Pop. Okay, you nailed the exact verse I was going to go to. Well done. Okay, so for thou wilt light my candle.

If you look up the word candle, the word means lamp. Now, if you hear the word lamp, what's the first verse you think of?

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path, right?

Okay, good. So Pop said the word. So here's my next question.

What is our lamp? I mean, if we want to get really practical about this and we say, okay, awesome.

Thou, for thou wilt light my candle, which could also be red. Thou wilt light my lamp.

Now, Pop gave us a clue. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.

So the word is part of how God lights our candle. He lights our lamp.

What's our lamp? Maybe our lamp is, but it lights, it's our teacher.

I believe that is almost exactly what I'm looking for because it really is the, it is the activating mechanism that causes the lamp to work.

It's the difference between that in an assembly professor who's lost and liberal and he's teaching false things to get success and buy it all the time.

Right. And his life is not lived. Ooh, okay, so you're really, you're bringing a whole new flavor to this.

So David said it's the difference between those who have been given understanding of God's word, basically, and those who just read

God's word and teach false doctrine and twist God's word. Their Bible is not lit.

Their understanding of the word has no light. Huh? It's not very close.

It's really, really close to what I've come up with here. So what, there's actually a verse that gives us a clue as to what our lamp is.

I am the way, the truth, and the light. Okay. So pop says, I am the way, the truth, and the light.

No man cometh to me except by the father, right? Or, but except the father draw him.

So, but here's the thing. That's the light. He's the light. Can you have a lamp with no light?

You can. You can have a lamp with no light. So we gotta light the lamp.

We don't do it. God lights the lamp. So what's the lamp? Matthew 6, 22 will give you a hint as to what the lamp is.

The light of the body is the eye. If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

Now, when you read that, you have to kind of read it in context because you wanna make sure we understand what's it actually talking about.

And there's a lot of attention where intention follows, which is how Brother Myron likes to talk about this concept.

Wherever your attention goes, your intention will follow. So we're gonna leave

Psalm chapter 18 for a second. And we're gonna jump over to Matthew chapter six and go to verses 17 through 23.

And we're gonna see where people's attention go, where people's attention goes.

Yeah, that's the right way to say that. Okay, so verse 17, but thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head and wash thy face.

This is Jesus basically telling us how we should act when we fast, right? Right after he's told him how not to act.

Right after he's told him how not to act. And the way that many act when they would fast is they would look sorrowful and they'd let the whole world know,

I'm fasting because I'm so holy, right? And so he's saying, don't do that.

Make it look like you're not fasting. This is between you and God. It's not between you and the world. This is entirely for your relationship with the

Lord. So do it in secret. Like when you're fasting, I know you're hungry. Wash your face, make it look like you're fine, right?

Put on a smile because you're not performing for other people, you're doing this for God. That is all like not in the

King James version, what I just said, all right? That's more Dave's modern take on the

King James version. But essentially that's what Jesus is saying. Here's where he starts to tell us how we should act.

He says, but thou when thou fastest, anoint thine head and wash thy face, that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy father, which is in secret.

And thy father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly. Lay not up for yourselves treasure upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal.

But lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.

So now we're seeing that we are told to shift our focus or our attention from the things of the world to the things that are beyond this world, right?

And in other words, as we store up treasures, we're not supposed to try and store up earthly treasures as much as we're supposed to store up heavenly treasures.

So our focus has to be different. Would you agree with that, that your focus would have to be different? It's not that it's bad to store up.

We know obviously that it's good for a man to leave an inheritance to his children, his children's children.

So that's not what this is necessarily about, but it is showing us that there is a shift in what our focus should be, right?

Like when we are trying to do the things that we are called to do in obedience to God, our focus should be, this is an obedience to God and it's for my relationship with God.

It's not for huffing myself up. There's pride by the way, right? It's not for making myself look good to the people around me or making myself look more holy.

You see how this is kind of paralleling the whole idea of the world wants to puff us up? Jesus is getting to the heart of that.

He's saying, this isn't about puffing yourself up. This is about having your focus entirely on your relationship with God.

Y 'all following so far? Okay, so, huh?

Yeah, so the next verse really nails that and that is the verse 21, correct,

Pop? For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Now, one thing that I really find very interesting that Brother Myron teaches and I've heard

David talk about this before too and that is, there is a very like earthly practical application to this verse and I love the idea that for where your treasure is there, your heart will be also.

If you take money and spend it somewhere, especially if you spend a lot of it, it's going to change where your focus is, right?

Because now, like the more you spend on something, the more attention you're gonna give that something.

For instance, you go and buy a brand new car, it's gonna cost a lot of money. What are you gonna do? You're gonna take care of that car because you spent a treasure on it, right?

So there is this very earthly practical application to this but what we're seeing in the context is there's a more spiritual application as well and that is, where is your attention?

Is it on the things of the earth or is it on the things above? And look at what follows that concept of puffing yourself up and gaining earthly treasures or working on your relationship with the

Lord. The very next verse is, the light of the body is the eye. If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

So that's our, if you look in some translations, it even says the lamp of the body is the eye, right?

So there's our lamp, our light. So if that light is lit, if it's single, if it's got its attention where it belongs, it's not divided, right?

A double -minded man is unstable in all its ways. If the attention is where the Lord says it should be and it's single and it's where it's supposed to be directed, your whole body becomes full of light.

So what I'm trying to get at here is our responsibility in the relationship because it's still

God who lights the lamp as you're going to see here in just a second in Psalm but we still have a responsibility in that relationship.

So we've got to figure out how do we get our attention where it's supposed to go? Because if it's in the wrong places, we may end up with the second half of verse 20, no, with verse 23, we may end up with verse 23.

But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness?

All right, so Pop nailed it a second ago when he said, Jesus is the way, the truth and the what?

The light, okay? So he's the light, we have a lamp.

We got to put those two together or our lamp will be full of darkness. So the only way we can have the light of the eye, the lamp to be lit and single is if the light touches the lamp.

You can't, have you ever seen a lamp can spontaneously combust on its own?

No, you have to bring the flame to the lamp and that's what turns it on, right?

But without the bringing of the flame, the lamp will never light. It can be full of oil and it will never light, it'll never give light, which means it will never shine.

It will never bring revelation to the environment around it.

I think of a video game when I think of this concept because there's this thing they put in a lot of video games.

There's almost always a map in a video game, whether it be a shooter game or an exploring game of some sort.

They always have a map somewhere in the game and the map is mostly dark.

It's all just black. And as you explore and go into new areas of the map, it brings light to the areas of the map.

They do this in video games all the time. And so as you go into new environments in the game, those environments are illuminated.

Well, that's what we're supposed to do in the world. We're supposed to be a light into the world, right?

And a city on a hill cannot be hid, right? Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, right?

We are supposed to be the light as he is the light.

So we can't be the light without the flame being brought to our lamp.

Now, who brings the flame? Us? All right, Christ brings the flame.

We don't even have the ability to light the lamp. It's impossible.

Apart from me, you can do nothing. So Jesus is the light.

We have a lamp and our responsibility is to put our focus on the right things, but we can't put our focus on the right things unless we have the light.

So how do we do our responsibility?

That's my next question. How do we do our responsibility? If Jesus is the light that lights the lamp so that our eye can be single and our whole body full of light, what can we do?

I have an eye that's single, single according to the blue letter, it says good fulfilling of its office.

All right, so we have to have an eye that is single, which according to blue letter, the word single means a good fulfilling of its office.

All right, so we're supposed to do what we're supposed to do. So that's my question. What are we supposed to do? We're supposed to do all the things as it's recorded.

Okay. Anything we do, we're supposed to do it as though we're doing it for the Lord. So how?

Isn't that really what we wanna know? It's like, we know what we're supposed to do, but we often lack the ability to do it.

The practical application of how am I supposed to do it? And it's especially hard when we think of the fact that God is sovereign, right?

Like, how do we marry these two ideas that God is sovereign and man has a will? If that's true, that means man also has a responsibility.

So what is it we're supposed to do? Yes, sir. Brian Christopher said abide in him and he will abide in you.

Okay, we're getting there. Abide in him and he will abide in you. Good thought, Brian Christopher. You're right there.

Yes, ma 'am. Yeah, you looked like you had something to say. Matthew 5 .16, it's my favorite verse.

Matthew 5 .16, Katie's favorite verse. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your

Father which is in heaven. So I think it has to do with, yes, he brings the light, but your good works are the things that people see that then they're supposed to be able to see

Jesus through you and your action. Okay, so Katie says, let your good works so shine, let your light so shine before all men that they will see your good works and glorify your

Father which is in heaven. So then there's this idea of these good works causes the environment.

So you're kind of a step ahead there. The environment is what is illuminated by the good works. So the question is, how do we get to that point of the good works?

Brian Christopher said, abide in him. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, right?

So there is a responsibility to know God's words. We have to read his word to know his words.

But we also, we have to let him do the work.

In a way, we have to concede. What you're gonna see, now it's time to go back to Psalm 18 again.

And you're gonna see that. Yes, sir. It's interesting, in Matthew where it come out, your eye is the light.

Mm -hmm. That word in Greek is leptos which means lamp. And then

Jesus talks about being the light. It's different words, false.

Mm -hmm. Which means light. Yes. So you have, like you mentioned, you got a lamp.

The lamp can't light itself. So the boss has to light it.

Okay, so David's bringing out the fact that the word for light, which is sometimes translated as lamp, when it says the light of the body is the eye, right?

The eye is the light of the body. That is a different word for light than the word that Jesus uses to describe himself as the light.

Because the lamp, it's like we call a light bulb a light, turn on the light, right?

But the light bulb doesn't give light unless it receives power, right?

So the same thing with our lamp, we cannot give light, we cannot do those good works that illuminate the environment around us unless we receive power from the light, the source, which is

Jesus. So then what are we getting at? How do we receive that power from Jesus?

We're touching on it with this idea of abide in him, he'll abide in us, right? And the idea that we have to know his word, there are things that we can do to from our perspective, invite the presence of the

Lord, right? Like getting into his word, reading his word, hiding his word in our hearts that we might not sin against God.

There's all these acts of obedience, but there's one little thing that happens even before those acts of obedience that we're trying to get to.

Yes. Prayer and supplication. That's gonna be an activating agent for the thing we're looking for.

Prayer and supplication, it's gonna be a big part of it. Humbling ourselves. Meditating upon all the things.

Humbling ourselves, thinking on that, which is good and right and pure and holy, right? Okay, so the second part of this verse in Psalm, verse 28, for thou wilt light my candle, the

Lord my God will enlighten my darkness. Who's doing the enlightening? The Lord. The word for darkness here is a very interesting word.

It's the same word used to describe the darkness that was on the face of the deep in Genesis, right?

It's the same word used to describe the darkness that God separated from the light. It's the same word used for darkness when describing the darkness of Egypt during the plagues.

A darkness that you could feel. And so what we see is

God lighting that darkness. It is a very dark darkness, which is why in Matthew we see, if therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness.

Have you ever felt a spiritual darkness in your life? Or maybe felt being in the presence of spiritual darkness.

Does it feel like that is a darkness that can stop light? At times, does it feel that way?

Like people talk about it that way all the time, especially people that don't know the Lord. They say, well,

I've done too many bad things. I can't go to heaven, right? They recognize that there's a darkness that disqualifies them.

Now, they don't understand what it takes to be qualified to go to heaven.

They don't understand that Jesus is the qualification. But a lot of times, people who are just lost as a goose in a snowstorm, they recognize that they've done something that disqualifies them.

Some of them just resolved themselves to live it up on earth until they go to hell.

And so there's this idea of darkness, and it feels like it's something that can stop the light.

But what is darkness? It's the absence of light. Or at least so we've been taught it's the absence of light.

But there was a time in Genesis when dark and light were together, and God separated them, right?

And so because of what God has done, the separation creates this idea of darkness is now the absence of light because God has separated them.

They're definitely separate. Darkness cannot overcome the light, but it also can't comprehend the light.

We know that from Scripture. And so people, because of the darkness of their deeds, they will begin to avoid the light.

John 3, 19 through 20. And this is the condemnation, that light is coming to the world, and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.

For everyone that doeth evil, hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

If you can't come to the light, how can your lamp be lit? If you're doing evil and you hate the light, because when you do evil, you avoid the light because you don't want your deeds to be reproved, how can you ever have your lamp be lit?

It's gotta be by the force of God, right? Like the light bulb will not go running towards electricity.

The lamp will not run towards a flame. It's stuck where it is, it will not move, it cannot move.

And until the power is sent to it, until the flame is brought to it, it's dead, it's useless, it does nothing.

It can illuminate nothing until it receives that power.

So that's the part that's God's part, right? Here's our part. If the

Lord is drawing you to the sun, who is the light, if the Father is drawing you to the sun, he is literally carrying the eternal flame to the lamp.

And when doing that, he's drawing the lamp. In other words, he's saying, I'm coming, I'm coming and I'm bringing the light.

And when he does that, there is this ability he gives those who all of a sudden desire to call upon the name of the

Lord, our responsibility then becomes to do just that, to call upon the name of the

Lord. Those who shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. But when you go and read that in its original context,

David has shared this with us many times, that it's actually those who desire to call upon the name of the

Lord because they have no desire until the Lord gives it. So once they gives it, that's the responsibility part.

As soon as the calling is there, then man has a responsibility to walk in that calling and actually call upon the name of the

Lord. And he will, he has to. But what about once we're saved? Does that responsibility cease?

No, the responsibility is still there. And it is possible for us to get into sin and get to the point where, similar to what

God said to Cain. Now, there's not indication that Cain is one of God's people.

So it's maybe not the perfect analogy, but when Cain did not have a perfect sacrifice like his brother

Abel, God told him to correct it, lest sin be, like sin is crouching and waiting for you.

It's at the door, right? Like there's always this opportunity there to fall into sin.

Cain ultimately does. And he just goes all the way through Romans chapter one, essentially, and gets to the point of a reprobate mind,

I believe. Ends up killing his brother. He doesn't really show remorse so much.

He's more just upset that he's gonna die, because that's the curse that he's going to receive. So he asks

God not to let anybody else kill him. But, so it's maybe not a perfect example, but it does show how sin can create a digression.

Well, even as Christians, if we get into the flesh, we can experience a digression of sorts into sin and become backslidden.

And so there's always this temptation, the world, the flesh, and the devil working together to put out the light.

And so our responsibility as Christians is to call upon the name of the Lord continually. Not in a sense of,

Lord, please come into my life and save me, because he's already done that. But, Lord, please take away the desires or lead me not into temptation.

Like, show me the way out, because there's no temptation that's given without also a way of escape.

So show me the way of escape. We're supposed to always call upon that name. And the way that we do that is shown in the very next verse.

Verse 29, we're not gonna get as far as I had hoped, but that's okay. We might get through 30. Verse 29, for by thee

I have run through a troop and by my God have I leapt over a wall. Now, when you read that, what does it sound like?

Okay, maybe run away or also run through, okay. But where does, we think of, like, there's this strength, right?

There's this power that David is talking about being empowered with, like, he is -

Yeah, he's been enlightened, right? Like, Lord's gonna enlighten him and now he has the power to run through a troop, right?

And he has the power to leap over a wall. That's kind of how we read it, right? Like, now, and it's true, what?

Yeah, leap over buildings in a single pound. While it's true that he receives power from the

Lord to run through a troop and to leap over a wall, that's the part we always seem to focus on.

The receiving, we receive power. And it's true, it's good, and we want that.

But by focusing too much on the result, we forget how to get to the result.

Watch this, for by thee I have run through a troop. If you look up the word by thee, there's not a strong dictionary word for by thee.

Yet, but if you look at the word for, you're gonna get something pretty interesting.

Let me pull it up here, interlinear.

Looking up the word for, the word is key. I don't know if I spelled that right, but it's cool that it is the key.

Here's how they say it. 88, key. It's a key.

Key. It's pretty straight and simple, right? Now, here's what it can mean.

That for, because, when, as though, right? There's lots and lots of things, right?

But the one I wanna focus on here is when. Because the question is, when can we overcome?

When can we run through a troop? When can we jump over a wall? It's when we are lit by the light, our lamp is lit by the light, and our eye is single, and the whole body becomes full of light.

When that happens, nothing's gonna stop us, right? So what is the key to that?

It's this. Quite literally, it's the word key, sort of. It doesn't mean key, but the word when of time is when, if, though, with a concessive force.

Anybody know what concessive means? Concessive.

What does it mean to concede? It means to relinquish or to submit.

And so, when we read this verse, what we see is when

I submit, when I can, by a concessive force, all right?

So I have a force. My force is concession. When I concede, by thee,

I have run through a troop. All right? So we have a natural power.

Our job is to concede that natural power. When we concede our force and our weakness, he is strong.

God comes in with his power, and he's the one that enables us with a supernatural power to run through a troop or to jump over a wall.

And I wanna get through verse 30, and then we're gonna have to call it quits because we're running out of time. And I'm gonna show you why it's that way.

As for God, his way is perfect. The word of the Lord is tried. He is a buckler to all those that trust in him.

If you wanna know how to overcome, you have to do it God's way. His instructions have proven to work for everyone.

So like every single person who has ever tried God's way has succeeded, period. Every single one. 100 % success rate.

Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, Daniel, David, Esther, Ruth, Rahab, Mary, you name them all, they have all tried

God's way and succeeded when they did God's way. So you can put your trust in that.

The next part of that, what that means is his word, his way has been tried. It has been tried, and it's a perfect 100 % success rate.

Testimonies left and right, right? He is a buckler to all those that trust in him.

See, when you are going to concede, you are putting your trust in someone else.

I picture it like this. You're on a battlefield. You're gun jams.

It's time to pick up a different weapon, right? Or maybe you have a gun that seems to work okay.

Let's go with that instead. Your gun still shoots, but the battle's getting worse, and you need something bigger.

And you're running, and your gun's too small, and you see a bigger gun. And you're ready to get that bigger gun, but in order to pick up the bigger gun, what do you have to do?

You have to put down the little gun. And when you put down the little gun, now you're completely vulnerable, right?

That's when you need the buckler. If you're gonna put your trust in a bigger gun, you're gonna have to let someone cover you.

That's why they say it in the movies, cover me, right? I'm gonna go get the bigger gun, right? And so this is what's happening in our spiritual battle is that we're asking the

Lord, cover me, because I need to be covered so that I can get the bigger gun. If you wanna take up the sword of the spirit, which is a much bigger gun than your own natural power, you've gotta be covered by the buckler.

And so you've gotta put your trust in him and concede your natural power, your smaller gun, and go to pick up the bigger power, the sword of the spirit.

In order to do that, you're gonna have to be covered in the battle. You're gonna have to ask for God to be that force.

Remember, we talked about the buckler. It's like a force field. It's all -encompassing. It's a shield that goes all the way around, up, down, left, right, forward, back.

And so in order to get the bigger gun, you gotta put your trust in the one who provides the bigger gun.

He's the one who can cover you while you pick it up. And so when David says, by thee,

I have run through a troop, it's because I am covered by you, right?

And I have leapt over a wall by my God. It's by the power of my

God that I'm able to do it. And when you look at, and by my God, it's not a word that means by, or with, or anything like that.

It's literally just the word Elohim. It's God who does it. The word for and by my

God, it's all one word, it's just Elohim. So God does his part.

He brings the light to the lamp, makes the light illuminate, makes it single.

Our part in that is as he's bringing the light, we ask the Lord, light me, show me the way of escape from temptation.

Show me how to overcome this situation. And so then when he does that, then we do what

Katie talked about and we illuminate the world around us. We say, this is how

I did it. This is how I leapt over a wall. This is how I ran through a troop. It was really just me conceding to the

Lord. And when I submitted my will to his and did it his way, I had a hundred percent success rate.

It's as far as we have time to go for today, but that's

Psalm, when we get through two verses, 18, 26 through 28.

I guess we got all the way up through 30, didn't we? Okay, we got through 30. We have about 20 verses left to go in this

Psalm, but anybody else have something you want to share? Yes. I was thinking about carrying a torch.

You've got a runner bringing the torch and the runner in this position has to stop.

It has to wait for the eternal flame during the Olympics.

He cannot, if he runs, then the other runner can't. It's catching him. Yeah. Stop and wait for that flame.

You gotta stop and wait on the Lord. You gotta submit to that runner who's coming to you.

Wait. That's an interesting - Pick up that torch and then go. That's an interesting analogy. Mom brings up the idea of the eternal flame in the

Olympics. You've got the runner bringing the flame and the next runner has to stop and wait. Similar to in our situations, when we find ourselves in a situation and it seems like darkness and we don't know how to overcome it, be still and know that I am

God. Wait on the Lord. Ask him for illumination and then take a step, right?

Like, okay, there's no light here. It's still dark here waiting for the

Lord. And when he illuminates your path, you take off, right? Thy word.

He's gonna do it through his word. So thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. It's a good thought there, mom. I like it.

Good analogy. What else? What else? Humble yourself on the side of the

Lord and he will lift you up. There's a concession there, right? Gotta concede. All right, well, let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your power. We thank you that you're the only one really that can wield your power, but we get to enjoy the benefit of that.

And you've given us a spirit of power, but it's your spirit. We tend to try to get all mannish on you whenever we think about, oh, the

Lord has empowered me and we can do it because I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, but it's still you doing the work.

It's through you. And so help us to not forget that you're not just here to empower us.

You are here to walk through the troop with us. It's you that busts through the troop.

It's you that leaps over the wall. We're just holding onto your hand. And by the very nature, that's how we get through.

It's like a running back trying to get through a line. He can't run up the field without his offensive line.

It's like you are our offensive line. And so Father, we thank you for that.

We thank you that you overcome, just like Queen Esther pointing to her enemy and allowing the king to take over.

That's how we're supposed to be. We're supposed to concede. Help us to do more of that on a daily basis and then just light us with your light.

Lord, we love you. We thank you for all the blessings, but especially the blessing of your son. It's in Jesus' name we ask these things.