Praise - Psalm 18:2-3

I love you, O Yahweh.

This is a unique love. In fact, this is the only time this word is used this way in the Hebrew Bible. It denotes an emotional or an impulsive love rather than an action or promise. So we could say that David feels affection for the Lord. It's like this, you know that feeling you get when you're really proud of someone? It's not really something you can choose, you just kind of feel it. And you can reignite that feeling by remembering what that person did to make you proud. That's what David is doing here. He's remembering what God did and it's reigniting his affections because the Lord is his pride and joy. The Lord is his glory. Like we sang earlier, he's the best thought by day or by night. And he knows, and David knows that if that's all he has, he still has everything. And do you know that if you're a Christian, Christ is your glory and you ought to be able to say the same? Maybe we could just pause here and just ask and reflect in our own hearts for a moment. Where is your glory? You could find it in past accomplishments. They may be abundant. You could find it in present potential. Oh, there are just so many things you could do. You might find it in the esteem of others. You might find it in having a great family. You might have it in being a moral person. And yet, if you place your security, value, identity, if your glory is in anything of this world, not only are you committing treason against the God of the universe, but you are robbing yourself of your greatest good and investing very unwisely because the troubles of this world can wipe it all out and you'll be left like a child chasing after a bubble on a summer day. As soon as you grasp for it, gone. But if you rest your glory in Jesus Christ and him crucified, resurrected, glorified, who will reign over the nations, if that's where you find your glory, then you have a glory, an identity, a security, a value that cannot be assaulted by anything of this earth. And you can say whatever afflictions or troubles arise in your life, Christ is my glory, the Lord is my portion, and it is well with my soul. That's where Christians have our glory, in the Lord. And that's what David is saying when he says, I love you. He remembers what God did and is so overwhelmed by it, he couldn't help but feel love. And so we see next this outpour of analogies to describe God, which is the second area where we can draw praise for God. Remember God's attributes. Look at the end of verse one and verse two, my strength. 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. You get the sense that he's just so overwhelmed by what he's feeling about God's attributes that he just begins listing whatever words come to his mind. And I want to point out that the focus here isn't so much on the diversity of the phrases, but rather their similarity. You'll notice that it's all military language. And that makes sense, since David was a soldier who had actual enemies. I mean, if you think about it, if you're a soldier, and you're maybe on some sort of expedition, and you're attacked, what do you do? You'd probably blow a horn to summon for help, and you'd retreat to the nearest fortress. And this stronghold would be the safest part of that fortress. And if there's not a fortress around, you would hide behind your shield. And if you didn't have a shield, you would hide behind a rock. And notice David describes Yahweh this way. In other words, when I call for help, I'm calling God. He is my help. He is my refuge because He is constant despite all the chaos. And so no matter what situation I'm in, I hide behind Him and I trust He will always be there. David's reminding himself of these basic realities and we ought to do likewise. The Lord is my rock. The Lord is my shield. The Lord is my horn. The Lord is my deliverer. But before we move on to my last point, I think we ought to ask a question. And that's this. How can David know this is true? I mean, everything else has failed in his life. How can he know that this is true? And the answer to that is rather important. The first time the word shield is applied to Yahweh is in Genesis 15. It's Yahweh using it of himself and there we see Yahweh is reaffirming his promises to Abraham by making a covenant. Symbolizing to Abraham, I will fulfill my promises to you and I will bless you even if I have to be cut off to do it. That's how David who, David is a man who surely knows his texts and may even be referencing it. That's the way David can know. It's because God is a God who will keep his promises even at his own expense. And as a Christian, do you know that in the new covenant, you can know that God's promises to you are sure. God's promises that he will work everything for good, everything together for good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose, That is sure and you can know it because 2,000 years ago, God entered this world and sealed that covenant by the price of the blood of his own son. So that now you can look to the promises of God and you can bank on them because God already shed the blood of his own son. He will not withhold the lesser promises to you. And this brings me to my last point. Since we know that the Lord will keep his promises, We can draw praise for the Lord by remembering his promises. Remember God's promises. You may not have noticed, but David is doing this all throughout the text, but especially verse three. In the midst of trouble, I want you to make a crucial observation about verse three. Where does David say he goes? The answer is simple yet profound. Verse three,

I call upon. Yahweh.

He goes to the Lord and calls Him Yahweh, His covenant name. In other words, the basis upon which David goes to the Lord is nothing he has done, nothing about him at all. The basis upon which David goes to the Lord is who God is and the covenant he made with him. He doesn't go before the Lord and plead with him anything of his own goodness, any of his own past. No, he remembers the promises God made with him, and so he goes before God and pleads who God is, pleads the covenant, pleads the promises that God has made with him. And because God is a covenant-keeping God, He knows that He is saved from His enemies. Did you know that if you're a Christian in the New Covenant, you have a relationship with God that is just exactly that? A covenant relationship. The covenant we enjoy with the living God is a covenant sealed by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. By the work of Christ, God enters into this covenant relationship with us, washes away our sins, brings us into his family, secures our souls for eternity, and he has pledged himself to be our father, to hear our cry, and to save our souls. And it might be good for us to remember why these promises had to come this way. And that is that though God is a God of love, he has promised justice. And if God is to be loving and deliver his people into a kingdom of justice and peace, then he has to eliminate the world of injustice and evil. But if he does that, then he must eliminate us too. That is why we need the cross. At the cross, God satisfies his own demands for justice, that evil be punished, and he satisfies his desire to save. And he extends his love to us through the cross. And as you come and you reorient your heart with God's truth, the cross is restored to the center of your view of reality. And at the cross, you see a God who is so loving and so holy that you can trust in him. You can know that the Lord will hide you because he was exposed at the cross. You can know that the Lord will shield you because he was pierced for you. You can know that the Lord will be your horn because as we saw this past Sunday, he was abandoned. And you can know that the Lord will be your deliverer because he was forsaken. You know, especially in the midst of life's troubles, we need to become experts at seizing these truths and preaching them to our own hearts. Every Christian is responsible to become an expert preacher, if to no one else than to your own soul. You need to learn to say like the psalmist in Psalm 42,

why are you cast down, O my soul? Hope in God, I shall again praise him

and seize on these promises and preach them to your own soul. The Lord is my rock, he's my shield, he's my horn, he's my deliverer, and I know all this is true because

he who delivered up his own son, how will he not also, along with him, freely give us all things?

You can find refuge in the God who has promised these things. And if you do that, if you place your hope in the Lord, then you'll end up in the same place David does, confidently praising and worshiping, not because you have escaped life's troubles, but because you are safe in the midst of them. So how can you praise the Lord who, verse three, is worthy to be praised and thereby reorient your hearts to confidently trust in him? You remember God's work, you remember God's attributes, and you remember what he will do. Please bow with me in prayer. Father, you are our rock and our refuge and our strength. And we thank you that you have given us an example of how to praise you. And we pray that as we leave this service, your spirit would apply these truths that we read from your word to our hearts. And we pray that we would constantly remember your works, reflect on your attributes, and hope in your promises. And we pray that this would cause us to praise you and love you and trust you more. In Jesus' name, amen.