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

Prayer, Psalm 18 Background, and the Meaning of Chastisement

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.

He'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? Like 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, 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.

God Saves the Afflicted and Brings Down the Proud

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 Psalm. 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 simple 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? 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? 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 a clerical who's teaching false things who's given the accepted Bible all the time. Right. And his Bible is not lit.

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 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.

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, goes. 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 them how not to act.

Right after he's told them 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, 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 puffing 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 of it.

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 and 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?

A single, single or 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 things as to the Lord. 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 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? Like, 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, 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 actions. Okay, so Katie says,.

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?

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 we're going to Jesus and talk about these different words. False, which means light. So you have, like you mentioned, you know, you got a lamp, but a lamp can't light itself.

So false 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, 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 that. 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.