Taking Refuge in the Fortress of God, Pt.1 (2 Samuel 22:1–4) | Hearts Aflame (Part 8)

Transcript

MO 36
TAKING REFUGE IN THE FORTRESS OF GOD
7/26/2026
II SAMUEL 22:1-4
MIKE OTAZU

We are adding another installment to our Hearts Aflame series. This is that occasional series whenever I get the chance to be up here in the evening pulpit, I’ve been trying to lead us through some of the most profound prayers that we can find in Scripture. I’m doing this because I think that there’s just so much in these prayers, for us to chew on as Believers who serve and pray to the same God to whom the writers of Scripture served and prayed. There are not just tips in these prayers for cultivating a better prayer life on a practical level, though there are those things. There are also some really profound doctrines embedded in these texts, and I think we would do well every time we get the chance to study them deeply and feed our souls with them. So far, we’ve considered seven prayers if you can believe it.

We began the series in I Samuel 2 with Hannah’s prayer of praise. This was last summer and we considered how she prays to the Lord in prayer when the Lord granted her a child. It’s a beautiful expression of excited joyful praise. Then we looked at Paul’s prayer for the Bin Ephesus as he sought for them divine help from God as they would grow in sanctification, that was Ephesians 1. Then in Psalm 51, we saw David’s prayer of confession and repentance after he committed adultery and murder. Then in Exodus 32, we traced out Moses’ prayer of intercession to the Lord when he stepped between the sinning Israelites and God and pleaded with God to show mercy on them even though what they didn’t deserve any mercy. That was a very interesting prayer to say the least, theologically speaking. Then we went to Ephesians 3 and we saw Paul again pray for God’s power to be brought down and used to strengthen the saints in Ephesus as they learned to love each other and live with each other in harmony though they came from so many diverse backgrounds that it was really hard for them to get along. Then we dipped our toes into the Gospels, and we considered God the Son’s prayer to God the Father in Matthew 26. That was where we saw Jesus on His knees in the Garden of Gethsemane crying out to the Father in a very real display of emotion. That might have been probably my favorite prayer that we have done so far because it really gave us a glimpse into the God-man, to the heart of Christ the Son. He felt real feelings and experienced real stress and real sorrow and real grief. We saw in Jesus’ example, an exemplary understanding of the proper place for emotions in our prayer lives. We saw how grief and sorrow and emotional agony aren’t necessarily sinful in and of themselves. They’re not things about which we need to be ashamed of.

God Himself, Jesus, felt those feelings to a far greater degree than any of us I might add. Yet forced His own heart into submission to the Father’s will in that prayer. Jesus asked for the cup to be taken from Him you’ll remember. In a very real sense, He didn’t want to go to the cross and He didn’t want to experience all the pain and heartbreak that would accompany it. But He did it anyway. He prayed perhaps the most profound line of any prayer ever when He’s prayed, “yet not as I will, but as You will.” That line should be echoing off of our tongues as we pray to the Lord about whatever it is we’re taking before Him. I think we would do well to adopt that mindset that Christ exemplified for us. That was Matthew 26:39.

Then most recently, we looked at Elijah’s prayer in I Kings 18 when he prayed to the Lord while he was competing with the prophets of Baal and he wanted to show for all of Israel and for the prophets of Baal and all the wayward ones that Yahweh is the One true God. That was an interesting prayer as well. There were a number of really good principles out of that one. We saw that earnest prayer ought to be ignited by trouble. It’s good to be praying when bad things are happening around you. We also saw that prayer ought to be reverential. We looked through number of other principles that came up from that passage as well including that we ought to be bold in our supplication like Elijah was. And that we ought to be eager for God’s glorification. And that last one, God’s glorification is going to be a theme that comes up constantly in all these prayers. It’s going to come up again in this prayer as well. You’ll see that soon.

But tonight, I want to introduce it by just saying that we’re going to take up another profound prayer in Scripture and this one is back in the Old Testament again. In fact, in II Samuel. So, if you’ve got your copy of God’s Word, join me in II Samuel if you would. We’re going to be in II Samuel chapter 22. This is certainly the longest prayer which we will have studied so far in this series. In fact, I was actually waiting for the calendar stars to align for me to have two consecutive Sunday evenings to be able to tackle this prayer because it’s 51 verses. We’re not going to get through it all this evening. It’s going to be in fact that most of the real estate in this prayer is going to be considered next week as we consider verses 5-51. But I want to focus on the first four verses this evening and set up the prayer, talk a little bit about the theology that undergirds David’s prayer here and then apply it to our hearts. I actually want to only get through four verses because I want to take some time to make an excurses over to Proverbs 3 and really talk practically about how we should be thinking about God as our refuge, especially as modern day Believers.

So, we’re going to be in II Samuel 22:1-51 over the course of this and next week but just tonight we’ll be looking at the first four verses. Look at them with me on the page in front of you. I’ll read them all together, then I’ll come back and march through it verse by verse.

II Samuel 22:1-4 says this, “And David spoke to Yahweh the words of this song in the day that Yahweh delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. He said, “Yahweh is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; 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. “I call upon Yahweh, who is worthy to be praised, And I am saved from my enemies.”

Out of these four verses, we’re going to take our first point out of the whole prayer in total. This first point which is all we’re going to look at this evening is that we ought to appreciate the Lord’s protection. Appreciate His protection.

Out of the rest of the prayer, we’ll also get a number of other principles, in fact four more. I have already mapped it out and done a lot of the exegesis and I’m excited to share all that with you, but it was just way too much to fit into one sermon. So, we’re going to limit ourselves here to just this first part and we’re going to try to take away with this main point that we ought to appreciate the Lord’s protection.

Right as we begin the chapter, and before we actually even get to the first line of David’s prayer which comes in verse 2, we’ve got to deal with verse 1. We see in II Samuel 22:1 this, “And David spoke to Yahweh the words of this song in the day that Yahweh delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul.”

So just a few notes about the context here, literarily and historically, this chapter, II Samuel 22, is virtually identical to Psalm 18. You might even be noticing wow this sounds a lot like that famous Psalm that Martin Luther wrote his major hymn, “A Mighty Fortress” after. That is Psalm 18 and you’d be right. This chapter in II Samuel is virtually identical to Psalm 18. What we have here is in II Samuel the narrative version. This is the most pure version of what we have as David wrote down his prayer to the Lord in the historical context in which he wrote it. In which he prayed it.

Then it was transferred into a hymn of sorts for the rest of Israel to be singing together in community. And so, in Psalm 18 we get a slightly more abbreviately or slightly more smoothed out version of this prayer. But I have chosen to attack this prayer and for us to work through this prayer because I think it gives us a bit more of a raw insight into what David was thinking as he uttered these words to the Lord. It was like a sort of prepublished version of the record. This is David’s raw prayer to God. Here it’s coming at the end of II Samuel and that’s because at the end of II Samuel there’s a few chapters in which the writer gives us kind of a summery or an overview, sort of a conclusion to David’s life. This is at the end of David’s life. David is about to exit the scene here off the pages of Scripture and this is one of the last things that the author wanted us to think about as we consider David. It was so important to the author as they were compiling all these narratives and this history to get us to think about David’s prayer life. To think specifically of all the Psalms that David wrote, this one in particular because it encapsulates David’s heart and his relationship to the Lord so purely. That is why we’re seeing it here. It’s also coming off the heals of a lot of narrative in which David has had a lot of trouble. I won’t take us back through it all, but you can go back and read I and II Samuel, and you’ll see that David had a life that was filled with trials. A life that was filled with a lot of affliction and uncertainty and enemies seeking to get him and to hurt him and even to kill him. There’s a lot of adversity.

Some of it was brought on by his own sin, sure. But a lot of it was out of his control such that he would pray a prayer like this. This is born out of difficulty. This is born out of suffering and affliction in David’s life. And so that’s why the writer here gives us verse 1 that He spoke to Yahweh the words of this song in the day that Yahweh delivered him from the hand of all of his enemies and from the hand of Saul. The prayer begins like this. II Samuel 22:2-4 He said, “Yahweh is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; 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. ‘I call upon Yahweh, who is worthy to be praised, And I am saved from my enemies.”

So right off the bat here as we trace out David’s thoughts, we see that he’s already using an array of metaphorical images. Surprise surprise, it’s David. He doesn’t start out with just a plain statement or a description of God, which would be perfectly acceptable. Rather, he opens with this colorful imagery. You can tell he had an artistic streak in him. This prayer poetry is prayer poetry at its finest. Look at the first metaphor here. He says, “Yahweh is my rock.” The opening line carries a lot of weight here. David’s pointing to the foundational sturdiness of His Lord. He’s trying to get into words the feeling he’s felt when the circumstances around him have been so bad that the only way he can face them is by knowing that the foundation that he stands on is set by the Lord. In fact, it is the Lord.

Just think of how often David was facing dire trouble. Think back in your Bible reading days to when David was hiding in a cave or on the run, away from somebody seeking to kill him. Or dealing with politics, dealing with assassination attempts in the capital. Just think of how David was constantly in trouble. Think of how often it must’ve felt like a tornado of bad luck was ripping through everything in its path and headed right for him. The level of turbulence in David’s life was really remarkable when you sit back and look at everything he went through. All you have to do is read through the narratives leading up to this chapter and you see that David’s life was very much not peaceful and very much not predictable. It was a life of constantly changing factors and unforeseeable troubles and temperamental enemies who were constantly shifting the way they thought of him and how badly they wanted to kill him or not kill him. They wanted him dethroned often times. Other times they wanted to befriend him. David would have been confused in these situations. He faced storms that he couldn’t withstand on his own foundation. He couldn’t face the winds of adversity and rely on his own well-set foundation of stones. Rather, David knew this well judging by the fact that the first words of his prayer point to it. Rather he knew that the only reason he made it through those storms and winds and earthquakes, was because he wasn’t established on a man-made foundation. David knew that he was standing on a foundation that was supernatural by its very nature. This is what we’re meant to pick up on as we begin wading through the shallows of this prayer. The very first words which we’re to consider as we follow along with David hearing him pray to his God, are these words, that “God is his rock.”

God’s attribute of strength is set over and against anything that might come to threaten that which he has established upon the foundation of His very self. God is a God who serves as the metaphorical rock, the massive, the weighty, perfectly placed and robust and immovable foundation of all that He has purposed in His will, including David’s life. David is just saying that. He’s acknowledging that from the outset.

That’s what David wants known first and foremost. This prayer which David surely knew would be recorded and be one of the most popular hymns in Israel, is meant to not only be a reflection of David’s own heart as he approaches the Lord in intimate prayer, but it’s also meant to be instructive to the people who follow him in this prayer. Who pray this prayer after him. He’s trying to instruct them on how they ought to view the Lord. You can almost imagine the people being curious and wanting to ask the aging King David as he gets gray and fades toward the end of his life, how he made it through all of the trials. King David, how did you get through the threats? King David, how did you navigate the dangers? You can almost feel here that David is preempting that question as he writes this prayer poem toward the end of his life which he knows will be read and eventually sung widely. David answers this question with the very first line. He doesn’t beat around the bush; he’s not taking any credit for himself. He says how did I make it through? What’s the secret to my success and longevity? Well, it actually has little to do with me and much to do with the foundational rock upon which I stand.

That’s the first thing that David wants to get across here. It is not just instructive. He’s not primarily concerned with teaching the people, though that is probably in the back of his mind, he is actually trying to get his real prayerful thoughts down on paper. This is a raw insight into David’s mind and how he approaches the Lord. He’s letting the rich thoughts of clarity which come to him in his time of prayerfulness overflow into this record of truth. This is raw. It’s David’s genuine reflection on how he made it through. When all else is said and done, this is the line that should stand the test of time, and I think that’s why he puts it first. “Yahweh is my rock.” Put it on my gravestone if you want. This is what I want to be know by. David’s God is a God who can be trusted as a sturdy foundation. He won’t shift or slide or erode over time. He’s a rock. He’s David’s rock. David claims him as such.

Next, we see that the next metaphor in this opening list here describes the Lord as David’s fortress. He says, “Yahweh is my rock and my fortress.”
If the metaphor of a rock was intended to bring to mind the robustness of God as a foundation for building and longevity, then this metaphor of the fortress is more defensive in nature. The idea of a fortress in the mind of David would have been one which brought out the image of a structure probably out in the wilderness, tucked away in the mountains. In fact, this is the same word which he used a number of times in the narrative sections of David’s history. Saul would come to seek to destroy David, chase him, send his men after him. David would run out into the wilderness with his men, or some other enemy would assail him, and his escape to safety was to a place described by this very same Hebrew word, a place of security and defensibility. We get a good picture of this over in Psalm 31. In fact, let’s flip over to Psalm 31 if you would with me. We’ll just look at the first stanza here in Psalm 31 to pick up on this concept of the Lord as a fortress. Psalm 31:1-5 We see God as fortress. It says this. “In You, O Yahweh, I have taken refuge; Let me never be ashamed; In Your righteousness protect me. Incline Your ear to me, deliver me quickly; Be to me a rock of strength, A fortress to save me. For You are my high rock and my fortress; For Your name’s sake You will lead me and guide me. You will bring me out of the net which they have secretly laid for me, For You are my strength. Into Your hand I commit my spirit; You have ransomed me, O Yahweh, God of truth.” Be to me a fortress to save me.

You can just feel the sincere thankfulness of David here, can’t you? David is a man who’s well acquainted with his own weaknesses and he’s also well-acquainted with the strength of his enemies. He knows that the only way forward when his enemies are out to kill him is to run to the safety of the Lord.

Not too many people can say that they’ve been in this situation. If we’re really thinking about the dire situations in which David has been, I don’t know that too many have been in that one. Many of us have experienced affliction and trial. We’ve been on the wrong end of tough circumstances, sure. But few of us have actually been on the run out in the wilderness. Our eyes hopefully searching the landscape for any sort of structure which might serve as a place of defense against those who are following us and trying to kill us. That’s a very real experience for David here. He’s definitely using metaphoric imagery here, surely, but he has a physical idea in mind that’s very real and very vivid. God not only provided places of security out in the hills when he was on the run, but God personifies those places. You see how David is trying to communicate that here? God not only provides fortresses for David to hide in and defend from. God IS the fortress. God is like a fortress to which all Believers can look in times of trouble. He’s always there, He’s always immovable, He’s always defensible, He’s always unassailable.

You can turn back to II Samuel 22 with me. David’s imagery here continues as he prays on still verse 2. He adds another metaphor to the list. He prays, “Yahweh is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer.” Here, by this new element added to the mix, our direction is turned from God as a safety and immovable Protector of David, to an active intervener for David. Do you see that shift here? Whereas the first two elements point to God’s sturdy foundation as a rock and a defensible structure as a fortress, now David identifies the Lord as operative in real time. God is taking action. The God to whom David is praying here is a God who’s dynamic, able to move and act within the confines of time and space as we know it. This God is effectual and able to accomplish things for David.
To communicate this concept in prayer, David calls God his deliverer. The Hebrew word in the original text carries the concept of escape. It should bring to mind a daring getaway or an evasion of danger. God knows well that he’s had numerous close calls. He’s had more than his fair share of brushes with catastrophe. And he knows well that he can’t point to luck or happenstance to explain how he’s come out safely on the other side. He knows that the only explanation for why he’s alive and why he is well is that God stepped in and delivered him from disaster. Delivered him. That is what David can bank on.

Then, as we look down into verse 3, we see another metaphor. David calls the Lord, his shield. This again directs our attention back to God and His defensive power. The ancient shield was a tool made of mostly hardened leather at this point I think, and it was often rubbed with oil to harden it and make it more slick and be more effective and to withstand weather. It would be used as a defensive weapon in combat, of course, so it would have to be strong enough to withstand the enemy’s attacks. If a sword were slashed against it, the shield would be relied upon to deflect the blow. If an arrow were launched, the shield would be expected to block it. The shield revolutionized hand-to-hand combat in this day because it allowed each individual soldier to have a way to defend himself. A soldier without a shield was a soldier who could only be expected to survive as long as his offensive strength kept his opponent at bay. But God doesn’t just have offensive strength. He also has a shield behind which He can put David. When David prays to the Lord as his shield, what he’s doing is drawing his own heart’s attention to the invaluable defensive nature of God’s ability to block unwanted attacks.

The metaphor is all over the Bible, of course. We see it everywhere. One of my favorite verses that uses it is in Psalm 3. There we see a short 8-verse prayer from David again as he’s literally fleeing from his own son Absolom, who’s out to kill him. David prays there in Psalm 3:1-4, “O Yahweh, how my adversaries have become many! Many are rising up against me. Many are saying of my soul, “There is no salvation for him in God. But You, O Yahweh, are a shield about me, My glory, and the One who lifts my head. I was calling to Yahweh with my voice, And He answered me from His holy mountain.”

The Lord is a shield about him. Not just a shield for him. That proposition is interesting. He’s a shield about him. Not just a shield in his hands to use whenever David feels like he wants to use it. The Lord protects David from danger on all sides. He positions Himself between those whom He is determined to protect David from, and David himself. When the threats are in front, God-shield is in the front. When the danger is in the back, God-shield is in the back. When the danger is on the sides, God’s shield is over there too. God’s shield is everywhere. It’s about him. Then God puts His protective power everywhere around David when it matters most. David recognizes it. He recognizes God’s divine shielding of him. There’s no other way to explain how it made it through all these situations. That’s the fourth metaphor here used by David.

The fifth one’s an interesting one. David calls Yahweh, “the horn of his salvation.” This is meant to bring to mind the horn of a horned animal and that is both for defensive use and offensive use.

You know when I was younger than I am now, when I was in my extreme youthful ignorance, I thought it would be really fun to go do the Running of the Bulls, (in Spain.) That sounds like a lot of fun to me. You get to run down the alley ways, and then they let these bulls out behind you and there’s really no where for you to escape unless you can jump 6’ over a wall. You just got to run straight and just hope the bull doesn’t gore you in the back. That sounded fun to me. I’m a little older now and I think I’d like to stick around for my kids. But the image, and I’ve seen some videos of people being gored from behind, it’s gross and disgusting and I’m sure people die from it. The idea here is that a horn is extremely powerful. If you’ve seen an animal flip someone up with a horn, gouge them underneath and then throw them 20 feet in the air, you know how powerful horns can be. That’s the idea here that David has in his mind. A horn of salvation is not just something that you bugle. That’s not what’s in view here. It’s not a declarative statement about salvation as some people might take it. This horn is something that is a weapon, naturally designed by God on animals who need to protect themselves and hurt others when necessary.

David calls Yahweh the horn of his salvation. In fact, if you’ll remember back when we were in the beginning of Luke, Pastor Jesse took us through Zachariah as prophecy. This is, I think, in Luke 1 and Zachariah calls David’s line. Well, he’s talking about Christ in that instance and he calls Him the horn of our salvation. Meaning he has pierced through the thickness of the circumstances. We had no hope for salvation and then Christ came. Through David’s line I might add and was a horn of salvation for Israel. Also, we know now for many who are in the church. David calls Yahweh “The horn of his salvation.” God can pierce through the thick of the crowds and get done what He needs to get done and keep David around. Then he adds a few more here, the stronghold, the refuge, the Savior. A lot of these just repeat the same concepts with different terms what we’ve already discussed. The stronghold of course is somewhere you can go as someone who is seeking to avoid danger, and you can be held strong. Refuge of course is somewhere you can go and take refuge. Then as a Savior again, repetition of the horn, salvation. David understands that all of these things are wrapped up in who God is. This God who he’s praying to. He begins his prayer, not by accident, but by intentionally describing God this way.

I think that there is a point of application there for us, or at least implication. Perhaps we ought to practice describing God more. How often when you start praying, do you just say Dear Lord? Nothing is wrong with that. But how often when you sit down to pray do you grab a scratch piece of paper and start describing God and the things He’s done for you. How often do we sit down and look back on the journals of previous years and meditate on how much God has delivered us from and call Him our deliverer. How often do we sit down to pray and talk about how God has been our rock through the years. Or our stronghold through the years. David does it. Just an implication, a thought, maybe try it sometime. I think that would help in our relationship with the Lord.

What all of these metaphorical expressions are trying to get across is that God is a God of personal protectorship. God is a protective God, yes. He safeguards those in His care. Yes. But we need to notice here that this isn’t a sort of protectorship that’s distant or stoic. God isn’t some far off God who kind of just orchestrates circumstances to make them alright for us. Rather, He is intentionally involved in the lives of those whom He’s called out of the world for Himself. He’s not aloof. He is what David is highlighting here at the front end of the prayer. God is personally interested in His subjects.

Notice how David phrases these descriptions (of) the Lord. They’re so personal. You could even underline them if you want. There’s a lot of repetition here. II Samuel 22:2-4, He says that the “Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; 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. “I call upon Yahweh, who is worthy to be praised, And I am saved from my enemies.” You can’t read this prayer and come away thinking that it’s possible that David doesn’t have a personal relationship with his God to whom He’s praying. There’s no way you can trace out this first stanza from David and conceptualize this God as anything but a personal God and this is no throw away observation.

Think of the false religions competing for the people’s attention in David’s day. All of the nations around Israel worshipped gods which were impersonal. The Canaanites worshipped Baal, who apparently would decide whether the storms would hold rain to nourish the crops or hail to destroy the crops based on the Canaanites seasonal performative rituals.

The Egyptians worshipped Ra, the sun god, and Isis, the goddess of motherhood and magic. The Egyptians would go to great lengths to try to appease these gods, to keep themselves on good terms with these gods so that they could best avoid punishment and hardship. The Babylonians worshipped Marduk, the god who supposedly held the keys to the Babylon’s national success or demise. The Ammonites worshipped Molech, who apparently demanded child sacrifices in exchange for prosperity and blessing. In virtually all of these false religions, the people who worshipped their gods understood themselves to be mere slaves to these gods. They conceptualized themselves as being mere cogs in the system. Puppets to be manipulated for these god’s pleasures. That’s how they thought of themselves. The best one could hope for was to please their gods enough to a satisfactory degree such that those gods might take it easy on them. Perhaps even bless them maybe with something good. These people would go to temples or to the high places of worship and they’d do despicable things to try to sway the whims of their gods. They’d commit disgusting sexual atrocities in the temples. They’d victimize children and even kill them and let their blood run freely down the alters of worship. There’d be mass hysteria in these worship services. All sorts of chaos and distortion of reason. They’d do all of this to try to somehow avoid the anger of their gods and perhaps increase the chances of getting something favorable out of them.

Worship, in other words, was transactional. Worship of these gods was a business. It involved a lot of money and a lot of blood and a lot of sin. When good things happen to those people, they would think that their behavior somehow earned them those good things. When calamity hit, they would lament in confusion. When bad things happened, the first thing they would be said is, “Well perhaps my god is angry. Perhaps, Baal was not pleased with the most recent bloody sacrifice. Perhaps, Molech did not appreciate how few children we cut up on his altar. Perhaps he demands more. Maybe Chemosh didn’t give us the victory in battle because we failed to give to him enough spoil from last battle’s victory.”
The institutions of idolatry were mechanistic in this day. They sought to avoid exploitation by manipulation. There was no concept of personal relationship between a person who served one of these gods than the God Himself. Then you contrast all of that with what we see here in David’s prayer. Those Israelites. That David guy talks as though he knows his God personally. Talks as though that God actually cares about him. This is breaking the mold of the day. We’re often so desensitized to this because a lot of false religions around us today will, twisted religions of Christianity will over emphasize God’s perfect love for you to the exclusion of his wrath.

But in this day false religions were mechanistic, not personal. But for David it was extremely personal. He could pray “God is my rock, my fortress, my deliverer, my God my rock in whom I take refuge, My shield, my salvation, my stronghold, my refuge, my Savior.” David knows Yahweh. Even calls Him by His personal name here, Yahweh. He has a relationship with Yahweh. There’s an intimacy between them and it comes out in his prayer. You can’t miss it. We can see this contrast really clearly in Psalm 115, in fact let’s cross reference that. Let’s go over to Psalm 115. We can see that the contrast between the personal nature of Yahweh and His intent interest in His people and that of the impersonalness of the gods around David.

Look at Psalm 115, “Not to us, O Yahweh, not to us, But to Your name give glory Because of Your lovingkindness, because of Your truth. Why should the nations say, “Where, now, is their God?” But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases. Their idols are silver and gold, The work of man’s hands. They have mouths, but they do not speak; They have eyes, but they do not see; They have ears, but they do not hear; They have noses, but they do not smell; As for their hands, they do not feel; As for their feet, they do not walk; They do not make a sound with their throat. Those who make them will become like them, everyone who trusts in them. O Israel, trust in Yahweh; (see the contrast) He is their help and their shield. O house of Aaron, trust in Yahweh; He is their help and their shield. You who fear Yahweh, trust in Yahweh; He is their help and their shield. Yahweh remembered us; He will bless us! He will bless the house of Israel. He will bless the house of Aaron. He will bless those who fear Yahweh, the small together with the great. May Yahweh give you increase, You and your children. May you be blessed of Yahweh, Who made heaven and earth. The heavens are the heavens of Yahweh, but the earth He has given to the sons of men. It is not the dead that praise Yah, And it is none of those who go down to silence; But as for us, we will bless Yah from now until forever. Praise Yah!”

Our God, the same God described here, is a caring God, is He not? He’s a God who is unlike any other God. He’s over and against, He’s set over and against all other gods. This psalm here echoes this truth beautifully. There’s a difference between the impersonal pretend gods of the world and the personal God of reality. There’s a difference between the God of David, the God of Israel, even in our context, the God of the Church and all the made-up gods, or the distortions of the One true God.

This is what sets us apart from all the false religions even of our world today. We often think about our world today as having outgrown the idolatry of old. Perhaps in some ways, the world has become more rationalistic, I’ll grant that, after the age of enlightenment and the spread of globalist thinking. That has sort of quelched a lot of cultish practice. But in reality, I think that this sort of impersonal conception of God is what still dominates false religions today. You don’t have to go far to find cultist groups walking neighborhoods even here in our area, trying to tell people about a god that they don’t even personally understand fully. You don’t have to look very hard to find folks who call themselves agnostic but have some sort of gut feeling and some sort of customized-personal backroom deal with whatever the higher power is that they believe then, who’s probably just going to let them off the hook in the end because of all the good stuff they did.

People know deep down that there is a God. It’s in everyone’s hearts. But they fail to realize that they can actually know that God. They can be like David in II Samuel 22. If you’re not back there, come back there with me. They can be like David here in II Samuel 22, who prays to His personal God in such a way that it demonstrates a personal intimacy that’s inexplicable apart from God’s realness and His personal protectorship of his servant David. You see we have a point of agreement actually with the idol worshippers of the Ancient Near East. We also view ourselves as slaves of God. The difference is that our Master is a personal Master. We are also slaves of the God we worship. The difference is that our master cares for us. He loves us. He’s trying His best to make our slavery a joyful slavery, a fulfilling slavery, a safe slavery.

Our God is the same God to whom David’s praying right here. We can echo David’s prayer with confidence. We may have different difficulties and different challenges and different sorts of enemies than David did. We live in much different context than David did, but the principles which undergird David’s prayer here have not changed in the thousands of years since He set this prayer to paper. We can pray along with David that our God is “is our rock and our fortress and our deliverer; Our God, our rock, in whom we take refuge, Our shield and the horn of our salvation, our stronghold and our refuge; Our Savior.” That’s something we ought to do. It’s the same God.

That’s the first main principle that I want us to pick up from this prayer in II Samuel 22. I want to leave room to talk about how we should process this. This first principle is that we need to Appreciate His Protection. I think we have enough here already for some personal reflection. There’s a lot more coming in this prayer that will help us search our hearts to see how we might better understand how we can take refuge in this fortress of God. But just right here in the first four verses, we see that we ought to more fully appreciate that our God is a God who personally cares of us. He’s a protective God who offers us refuge along with salvation. We know this right. Let’s zoom out for a second. We know this. We’re well studied. Nothing I’ve been saying here is groundbreaking cutting-edge theological research. It’s basic Biblical truth that the God of the Bible and the God of Israel and the God of the Church cares for those Whom He saves.

The real question here, and this is what I want to think about for the next few minutes, the real question I think we should be asking ourselves as a we put our hearts before this passage is, “Do we live like it?” We know that our God cares. We know that our God can protect us. We regularly repeat these phrases in the hallways of this building like, Well, brother, God’s sovereign. He’ll get you through this. Or sister, you can trust in the Lord to fight for you. We all speak Christianese. We all know the rehearsed statements. There is nothing wrong with saying those things. Those are perfectly true and good things to say. They’re all true statements. We should be reminding ourselves of those things. But what I’m poking at here is the question of what we do with that information. What do we do with the truth of God’s omnipotence over all things including our trials? Does it change the way that I’m actually thinking? Do I live like I know these things to be true of my God? Do I actually take refuge in the fortress of the Lord? Or do I have a tendency to take refuge in my own abilities to get myself out of trouble?

Do I have a tendency to affirm verbally that my God is sovereign and able to help me, but when the rubber meets the road and push comes to shove and it all gets real, do I look to my own strength for the solution? Do I get tunnel vision in tough situations and does my mind begin racing to find a solution for myself before the problem becomes so big that everyone will just know about it or so bad that it’ll bring down everything I’ve worked to build? Instead of taking refuge in the Lord, do I take refuge in my grit. Instead of taking refuge in the Lord, do I take refuge in my independent ability to tough it out? Pick up myself by the bootstraps. You get the point. Instead of taking refuge in the Lord, do I rely upon myself.

These are hard questions to answer. I’m not going to stand up here and tell you that I don’t struggle with the very same thing that I’m poking at here. I think there’s a degree to which we ALL are tempted to rely on ourselves as we look for a solution to the problems that we face. We need those solutions fast or else it’s all going to fall apart. We don’t have time to just sit and wait on the Lord, right? I’ve thought that very thought before. Lord forgive me.

You see, there’s a level of discomfort that we all face when it comes to applying these truths. They’re so big and lofty and almost ethereal that we fail to struggle with how to act on it. How do we do it? We know that God cares and that He’s personally interested in our well-being. Everyone says Amen. But then when Monday morning hits like a ton of bricks and the stresses of this fast-paced modern cut-throat life put their stress back on our shoulders and the job isn’t paying enough and the spouse isn’t understanding enough, and the bank isn’t patient enough or whatever it is.
When REAL life gets hard, we can sometimes divorce our trust in the Lord for our actual actions. We can fall back to what feels most secure, most tangible in crisis. For many of us that’s our own selves.

Now what I don’t want to encourage is some sort of careless, mystical version of “give it to God,” or “let Jesus take the wheel,” or “just be still and it’ll all work out.” I don’t want that sort of thinking to prevail in my mind. I don’t want to become apathetic. That’s the ditch on one side of the road. In an effort to not focus on my own grit as the solution, I can veer too far over and overcorrect into just being still and let God. Now there’s some truth to that, just like there’s truth in also being gritty and working hard. These are two ends, two extremes and it’s really hard to stay on the crown center of the road. I don’t want to say that we all just need to let it go and stop trying because God will handle it for us. That’s not what David did. You read any of the narrative sections, David never just gave up and said God, whatever you want to do, do it. I’m here for it and then just sit down and let his enemies overtake him. He never did that. He kept running. He trusted in the Lord for the fortress to come up over the hill. He trusted in the Lord for circumstances to change.

Now this is a complicated balance to strike. I’d like to take a minute here as we detour from II Samuel and go to Proverbs 3 with you. I want to see what David’s son has to say about this, Solomon. I think Solomon in Proverbs 3:5-7, strikes this balance very effectively. Solomon gives us principles here to consider. Of course, Solomon grew up in the temple. He understood how David worked. He has learned lessons from David.
It says here Proverbs 3:5-7, “Trust in Yahweh with all your heart And do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; Fear Yahweh and turn away from evil.”

I would like to briefly pull three principles out of these three verses. Verse 5 we’re going to see Trust God. Verse 6 we’re going to see that out to Know God. And verse 7 we’re going to see that we ought to Fear God. Trust God, Know God, Fear God. You want to apply some of the truths we’ve been thinking about for the last 45 minutes? This is how. Trust God, Know God, Fear God. Solomon is providing an applicational commentary here on the theology that is steeped in David’s first four verses of his prayer.

Look at verse 5, “Trust in Yahweh with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.” This verse is one of those verses that unfortunately has been often misinterpreted, especially by folks who’re of the sort of devotional, emotionally meditative mindset as they’re reading through Proverbs. At first glance, I can understand why it’s misunderstood. “Trust in Yahweh with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.” It almost comes across as trying to communicate that you’re trying too hard to figure out life on your own right? You’re relying too much on your intellectual ability to navigate this difficult situation, so just let go and put it in God’s hands. Let Him handle it. All you really need to do is to take your hands off the steering wheel and trust that He’s got you and that He’s got your best interests in mind. He’ll take care of you if you just stop struggling to think through your own problems. That’s how a lot of people take this.

But this isn’t what Solomon is saying. The trouble with this interpretation is that it misunderstands what it means to trust God. What it really means to trust God isn’t to let go of the steering wheel and to just relax your emotions and what it really means is to lean not on your own understanding. It doesn’t mean just taking your hands off the steering wheel and it doesn’t mean that you just need to cease trying to think our way through challenges. Rather what Solomon is saying here in verse 5 is that we need to positively recognize that God is the ultimate authority over our lives, not us. That’s what it means to trust. We need to actively inform our understandings or our intellects according to God’s revelation instead of our own preconceived notions of reality. That’s what he’s saying.

Let me explain. Look at the first line again, “Trust in Yahweh with all your heart.” He uses the word heart there. The heart is the intellectual core of a person. We use the word heart a little differently today. Often it is associated with emotions, and it can be associated with emotions in the Bible, but here, the way it’s been used is a reference to the intellectual core of a person. It’s where data enters, is processed and categorized and stored for future use. That’s what the heart does. It isn’t a command to trust God with all your emotions. Although of course that would be downstream of this. It’s an appeal to mental activity to intellectual commitment. What is it that our hearts are supposed to do exactly? What’s the verb? Trust.

The Hebrew word there that Solomon uses at the beginning of verse 5 for trust carries this concept of being confident in something worthy of trust or placing your reliance onto something that you deem sure. Verse 5 is not saying that we just give up our attempts to use our minds and figure out and navigate our situation by apathy. Rather, it’s saying that we DO need to use our minds and we DO need to employ the rational side of our intellect in order to navigate our lives. But we need to base our mental faculties not on our own perception of reality. Here’s the key, this is what he is saying. But instead base everything you think on God’s revelation of reality. The way it really is. That’s why Solomon wrote the second half of verse 5 here to go along with the first half, Proverbs 3:5, “Trust in Yahweh with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.”

Human knowledge and God’s perfect knowledge have a wide chasm between them. Our own understanding, last I checked, was fallible. God’s perfect word about reality is infallible. He’s calling us here to lean not on our own distorted version of our understanding but rather that which God has revealed about reality. One commentator said this. “We gain God’s perspective, embrace it, absorb it, and then act on it.” That’s what we ought to do here. That’s what Solomon is saying. Gain God’s perspective embraces it, absorb it, and then act on it. Because God doesn’t tell us exactly what to do in every situation. He gives us a lot of information that we ought to absorb. Embrace and then act accordingly.
Solomon here is calling us to assertive, intellectual, mental activity. He’s not saying that we should sit back and watch God make a masterpiece of our mess. He’s saying that we should sit up and focus in and remind ourselves of the guiding truths revealed to us in God’s perfect Word and then employ them as we trust in God for that outcome. We need to trust in Him with all our hearts. That’s all of our mental abilities. But that’s not all.

He says in verse 6, “In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight.” That first phrase there “all your ways,” is really a profound statement from Solomon here. He’s making a statement that has to do with competing priorities in our lives. All your ways represent all the things in which you’re engaged in this life. What does Solomon say that we’re supposed to do with all of these ways, just everything that is on our plate on our calendars? We’re to acknowledge Him, in those things. We’re to recognize God in His rightful place as Lord over all things in our lives. God isn’t the top priority above all other separate priorities. He is THE priority, IN all priorities. God’s prioritization as the top thing is not over an against different from our job or our commitment to our family or commitment to our church. We worship God in all of those commitments. That’s what He’s saying here. “In all your ways acknowledge Him.” Realize that He is over all of these things. It’s not God then the rest of the items on the list. It’s God in every item on the list.

Acknowledging God is the fundamental way by which we should engage every opportunity we have in this life. Acknowledging God is the foundational attitude with which we should approach all things that our hands find to do. In all your ways acknowledge Him. That word for acknowledge would be most literally translated know. It’s this idea of knowing something. In all your ways know Him. Remind yourself of your knowledge of Him perhaps. The idea is that you know Him so well that you can’t help but acknowledge your knowledge of Him even in areas that may not seem to have anything to do with Him. Does that make sense? God has to do with everything. Everything relates back to God. So, if you’re in one of those things, realize that God is here and that your knowledge of Him influences how you act here.

In the sense that Solomon is using it here, communicating this concept of recognizing as authoritative. The idea is being so intimately aware of the power of the object that you can’t help but acknowledge or affirm its authority. Then what’s the general result of doing this? Solomon says, “He will make your paths straight.” Now this is not circumstantial blessing necessarily, paths straight. It’s not that you do all this stuff and then everything just works out in the end. That’s not always how it works. It’s not even how it worked out for David. Some of the sins, the consequences of his sins, generations after him dwelt with. They paid for those sins. So, it’s not that you acknowledge him in all your ways and then everything is just peachy. Rather, what he’s getting here, the straightness of your ways has to do with morality. It’s a moral straightness. It’s a righteousness. In all your way acknowledge Him and everything else will become right. You will naturally have a moral compass that will set you on a straight path. That’s the concept here.

Then he follows it all up, Proverbs 3:7, “Do not be wise in your own eyes; Fear Yahweh and turn away from evil.” To fear God is to necessarily be humble he’s saying. To fear God is to submit to Him consciously. To fear Him is to place yourself in the right ranking in God’s economy. We’re not in authority and we’re not to acknowledge that we are in authority. We’re not the source of wisdom, and we’re not to think that we are the source of wisdom. Rather, we’re simply worshippers who as Solomon says here at the end of verse 7, ought to humble ourselves in reverence before the Almighty Yahweh and turn away from evil. That’s the conclusion.

The same man who wrote these words, Solomon, also wrote Ecclesiastes. At the very end of Ecclesiastes, the very purpose, the final concluding purpose statement of Ecclesiastes 12:13, he summarizes everything. This is “the end of the matter, all that has been heard: fear God and keep His commandments, because this is the end of the matter for all mankind.” You want a summary statement that just is as broad as broad can be? And is as helpful as helpful can be? Ecclesiastes 12:13. The end of the matter, all that’s been heard. Fear God.

Chase after the wind. Go look for satisfaction this way and that way. Try it out to your heart’s content. You will not find contentment. Satisfaction is not to be found anywhere but the fear of the Lord. The end of the matter, all that’s been heard. Fear God and keep His commandments, because this is the end of the matter for all mankind. Save you all the trouble, just fear Him. Then here he echoes the same truth in Proverbs 3:7. We don’t know which one he wrote first. Probably Proverbs 3:7, “Do not be wise in your own eyes; Fear Yahweh and turn away from evil.”

So, to what should we turn when the circumstances of our lives trouble us? To what ought we turn when we need guidance for that life? The answer can be nothing other than the three points which Solomon gives us here in verses 5-7. Trust God, Know God, Fear God.

Trust God with all of your intellect. With all of your mind by putting His perfect revelation about how to live this life into your mind and then absorbing that truth, that reality, his conception of reality which is the perfect conception of reality. Not our own. Trust Him. And instead of leaning on your own preconceived notions of reality, submit to those trustworthy words in Scripture. Trust Him.

Know Him. Know His authority and then live in light of it in every aspect of your life. Don’t make the mistake of just putting Him as the top priority on your priority list. Rather He is the priority in every item on that list. In all your ways know Him and submit to Him and then live your life necessarily morally upright in light of Him.

Fear Him. Fear Him to the exclusion of pride. To the exclusion of personal comforts. To the exclusion of temporal satisfactions. Reverence Him in humility. Realize that He is the only source of perfect wisdom and that we are not. Fear Him and turn away from evil. Trust God, Know God, Fear God.

Take this back to our prayer in II Samuel 22, and it makes so much sense, doesn’t it? Don’t end up on one side of the road in the ditch, relying only on yourself and your grittiness. Only to read II Samuel 22 about how great God is and how protective He is and comforting He is and what a refuge He is and veer all the way over to the other side of the road and just let God do whatever He wants while you sit there apathetically. Figure out the balance. Know God. Study Him. Fear Him. Trust Him.

This is how David, steeped in all this same truth, can say in the first few verses of his prayer. II Samuel 22:2-4, “Yahweh is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; 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. I call upon Yahweh, who is worthy to be praised, And I am saved from my enemies.”

So that was the first four verses of this prayer. We considered that we need to appreciate His protection. Next Sunday evening we’re going to get through the rest of the 51 verses. We’re going to consider also that we need to acknowledge His control, account for His rewards, assure His reputation, and ascribe to Him glory. All of that’s coming next week as we look at the rest of that prayer. Let’s pray.