The God You Can Depend on

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Transcript:

So if you’ll turn with me to Psalm chapter 18, we’re just going to look at a couple verses tonight that really echo the message from this morning, which was that God is faithful and that we can know for sure He’s faithful, that we can be convinced of His faithfulness. This evening we’re going to look at this passage from the Old Testament that God had shown His faithfulness, you know what, even long before the cross. If we think back to this morning’s message, what John had said was he had given a list of things.

God did this and God did that and God has given you eternal life. And it centered around the fact that he sent his son for us. And his point was that if God has given his own son and God has promised you eternal life, if God has given you all of these things, then we can have confidence that God will hear us when we pray, that he’ll answer, and he went on to talk about that, that we could basically have confidence, as we’ve boiled it down to this morning, that God is faithful, and that God will walk with us, and that God will take care of us.

The point I left off with at the end of the invitation was that God would not have brought us out of Egypt to let us die in the wilderness. That was something that they dealt with throughout a long period of Old Testament history as they wandered for 40 years, really not even in the wandering yet. They were already saying this as soon as they got Egypt.

Oh, we should have just stayed in Egypt. God led us out to the wilderness to die. Woe is us.

Really? God would not have gone through the long, and really nothing is too difficult for God, but it’s still a time-consuming process, still a lot of work to go through for God to deliver you out of Egypt just so you could die in the wilderness. Folks, that’s not what he did with us either, but we can go back and see that God was proving his faithfulness to his people even before the cross.

Now I don’t want to minimize the cross ever or its importance. The cross is central to everything. But what I’m telling you tonight is that God, that was part of John’s argument, but God was demonstrating his faithfulness way before that.

God didn’t just start being faithful when he sent Jesus Christ to earth. God is faithful. It’s part of his character and God has been faithful to his people for as long as he has had people on this earth.

And one of those examples is of King David. And King David, in spite of the troubles that he dealt with, in spite of the trials and circumstances that he dealt with, looked at God and realized that God was someone he could depend on. Now it’s getting harder and harder to find things that we can depend on anymore.

I hear polls from time to time. And I don’t always put a lot of stock in polls. It’s fairly easy when you look at it to manipulate numbers and make polls say what you want to say.

But when you see numbers that are consistent over a long period of time, it starts to paint a clearer picture. And I see polls from time to time that talk about the confidence of the American people in different institutions. Now, I’m not talking about the approval rating of different things.

I think, for example, Congress, what do they have, like a 6% approval rating? I’ve heard 19, it’s 6, somewhere in there. See, it fluctuates, but it’s not good.

What we can learn from that is not good. Approval and confidence are two different things. I can disapprove of the job that you’re doing, or I can disapprove of your policies, but still be convinced that you’re a good man, that you’re a good person, have confidence in you personally.

And I will tell you, I won’t name any names, but I will tell you there are presidential candidates right now that I think I would disagree vehemently with some of the policies that you’re running on. And I’m talking about from my own party. There are policies that you would push forward that I would disagree with vehemently, but I’m still convinced you’re a good man.

Have confidence in you as a person, not necessarily in what you do. Those are two different things. But I see poll numbers from time to time that talk about Americans’ confidence in different things.

And the bottom line is that that level of confidence has dropped. Americans just don’t feel like they can have a lot of confidence in much of anything anymore. They’re not as confident as they once were in our government.

They’re not as confident as they once were in our churches, sad to say. People are not as confident as they used to be that their churches are telling them the truth. Part of that could be because some churches aren’t really standing for any form of truth.

They’re not confident in our media anymore that they’re telling them the truth. You know, there was a time in our country when it was all about the facts and integrity and making sure that you instill confidence in the people that you were reporting to. And today, a lot of it is agenda-driven on both sides.

So the people don’t have confidence that the media is telling them the truth anymore. There’s not a lot of confidence in the American dollar. People are betting against the American dollar that when it shorts out whatever the technical term is for it, that they’re going to make money on these other currencies.

People are losing confidence, folks, in the things that we used to look at and say, they stand for something. They won’t let us down. They won’t steer us wrong.

Just thinking about this today, talking to a friend of mine, has been a friend of mine since we met in seventh grade. She was my best friend through junior high and high school. Talking to her today up at Southgate and asked her if she’d gotten her invitation to the wedding.

I never saw an invitation. Mailed it out two months ago. But you know, we send invitations to stuff and there are still invitations that are now just getting to the people that they were sent to.

Some that are coming back when we’ve got the address correct. I don’t understand what’s going on right now. And forgive me if you work for them or used to, but right now as of today, I don’t have a lot of confidence in the U.

S. Postal Service. I used to think, man, I used to be impressed even just a couple years ago.

I’d mail something, they’d say, we estimate it’ll be there in four days, and it was there tomorrow. I was like, this is great. Folks, the things that we used to have confidence in, it seems like they let us down.

And I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that way. It seems like the things that we put our confidence in are crumbling. But there’s one place we put our confidence, there’s one place we put our trust, there’s one place we depend on who will never let us down.

We put our trust and our confidence and our dependence in God, and he will never let us down. I, unfortunately, will let you down. I don’t know how, but I’m sure I will.

You will let each other down. I’m not saying you do it on purpose, but it’s going to happen. I will let my kids down.

I took Benjamin this afternoon to Walmart there in Moore to see the Paw Patrol characters. If you don’t know what that is, don’t worry about it. It’s dogs who fight crime and stuff.

They were supposed to have the characters in the big suits there. And I took Benjamin to Walmart to go see them. And we got to Walmart.

And the line to see them was wrapped around the parking lot three times. And I said, we’re not doing this. I let him down.

Now, he was fine when I took him for ice cream instead. But he wanted to go see his Paw Patrol. And I couldn’t make that happen.

I would still be there in line is why I couldn’t make it happen. Folks, we will let each other down. I’ll let you down.

You’ll let me down. We’ll let each other down. Let our kids down.

God will never let us down. He never will. And what we’re going to look at just in the next few minutes in Psalm chapter 18 was written by King David at one of the darkest times in his life.

Now I don’t know for sure at what point, at what specific moment it was written, but historians and Bible scholars generally agree that it was written during the time that he was being chased by King Saul. And when I say I don’t know the exact moment, I don’t know if it’s at the beginning of that time, I don’t know if it’s in the middle. I don’t know if it’s right before Saul died.

I don’t know. But it’s generally accepted that this was written during the period of time when Saul was chasing him. Folks, Saul was not chasing him like I’m going to get you, like I chase the kids and I’m going to get you.

I have no idea what I’m going to do with you when I get you, but I’m going to get you. He was chasing him trying to kill him. Saul by this time had lost it.

He started out as a king anointed by God and ended up a tyrant. ended up somebody who was only concerned with preserving his own power. Started watching a documentary last night about Saddam Hussein.

Fell asleep in the middle of it, so didn’t see how it ended. I know how it ended from living through that period of time. But one of the things that they said that stuck in my mind as I was drifting off to sleep, that everything, it was not about governing Iraq, it was not about taking care of the people, it was about securing his own power.

That’s why he tortured people. That’s why he murdered people. You know what?

Saul’s pretty close. He may not have hurt as many people as Saddam Hussein, but it had become all about preserving his own power. Why was he after David?

Because he considered David a threat. Saul had sinned, he had disobeyed God, and he had disobeyed God to such an extent that God had said, you’re out of here. Your kingdom is over.

It didn’t mean that God was taking his kingdom away from him immediately, but if you’re a king, you want to make sure governing stays the family business. You want to make sure that you have your throne to pass down to your children, to your posterity. And what he’s saying basically is the house of Saul, you’re cut off, you’re done.

And so God had then chosen David to be the king. And Saul, for some reason or another, thought, well, God has picked him to be king. I’ll make sure he’s never king.

It doesn’t work that way. When God says he’s going to be king, I don’t think Saul gets to decide that he doesn’t get to be king. But Saul, as I said, was just out of his mind.

He was losing it at this point. And so he saw David as this threat. Saw David as the one who was going to take not only his kingdom, but his children’s kingdom.

And he said, I’m going to kill him. I’m going to chase him down and I’m going to kill him. And God protected David.

And God kept David out of Saul’s clutches. There were some close calls, but God always came through for David. We wouldn’t look at it and say it’s the most wonderful time of David’s life.

What a joy it was to be running away from Saul. I mean, he’s running in the desert. He’s hiding in caves.

It’s not anything that any of us would enjoy. But David, even in the midst of these difficult times, looked at God and realized that he could depend on God even if he could depend on no one else. Think about how hard that would be because David started out as a friend of King Saul.

Saul was a friend of his and had turned to this. Folks, part of the lesson we can take from this is that even when we have nowhere else to turn, even when there’s no one else we can depend on God will never let us down he won’t always give in to everything we want he won’t always meet all of our wants he won’t always do things exactly the way we think they ought to be done but God will never let us down he will never leave us or forsake us starting in verse 1 of Psalm chapter 18 it says I will love thee O Lord my strength I will love thee oh Lord my strength. I don’t want to skip over that little verse.

It would be easy to do. He doesn’t just say I love you. He says I will love you.

Now is he saying I don’t love you currently but I will at some point in the future. That would be an odd thing to tell God wouldn’t it? He’s not saying that.

He’s not saying I don’t love you now but he’s saying I will love you. That’s a promise that he’s making to God. That’s sort of a whatever happens kind of promise.

I will love you, Lord. It reminds me of Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. You may know them as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Those are the names I grew up using. Those are their Babylonian pagan names. I’m sure they’d appreciate it if we called them by their birth names.

But the three of them were about to be thrown into the fiery furnace because they wouldn’t worship the king’s statue. And it wasn’t just they were stubborn. They wouldn’t worship the king’s statue because they knew it was wrong.

They knew it was against God’s will. And so they said, we will not bow. And when he threatened them again, they said, the Lord will deliver us.

But even if he doesn’t, we still will not bow. Now the meaning of that is God will provide a way. We believe, we believe that God will provide a way out of this.

But even if he doesn’t, we still side with him. We still are with him. Whether he gets us out of fiery furnace or not, we are still with him.

And so when David says, I will love you, I can’t read that and not think of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, because the implication here to me is, what I understand this to mean is, I will love you, period. God, whether you rescue me this time or not, God, whether I suffer a little more or not, God, whether I fall into Saul’s clutches or not, I will love you. And so we could look at this as God will deliver me, but even if he does not, I’ll still love you.

There’s more to that verse than on first glance. It’s not just a statement. It’s a promise.

I will love thee, O Lord. He says, my strength. You know what?

There are days when it’s not just that God gives us strength. There are some days when God is all the strength that we have. Heard the phrase on the radio this week, talking about people going out and doing the right thing and talking about holding their arms up.

And I know that was a reference to Moses. I believe that was a reference to Moses. Sometimes when your arms need to be held up to represent God where you are, to stand with him where you are, to do what he’s commanded you where you are, and you don’t have any strength left even to hold your arms up.

So God provided others to hold Moses’ arms up. Folks, there are days that we don’t have the strength to hold our arms up anymore, and God is the one who holds our arms up. There are days that we don’t have the strength to go on.

We don’t have anything left. And it’s not just that God gives us strength to continue. That would be great enough.

But some days God is the only strength that we have to get through that moment. So David looks at that as someone who would have understood. Here I’m running from Saul.

I’m hiding in caves. I’m being treated like an outlaw and God is all I have left. And you know what?

I’m going to love you however this works out. Then he goes on to verse two, which is really where we’re going to focus in tonight for just the next few minutes. He says, the Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my strength in whom I will trust my buckler and the horn of my salvation and my high tower.

He says, I will call upon the Lord who is worthy to be praised. So shall I be saved from my enemies. He gives this list of all the things that God is to him and says, because of these, I will call upon the Lord.

And he says, by the way, who is worthy to be praised? You know, we can get so caught up in asking God to deal with our situation. We can get so caught up in asking God to do things for us, and there’s nothing wrong with asking Him to do things for us.

But we can get so caught up in making requests of God that we forget sometimes just to, some of the time we spend talking to Him, we need to spend praising Him. We need to remind ourselves He’s not an errand boy, that He’s the God of heaven and He’s worthy to be praised. And so He says, I will call upon the Lord here.

Who is worthy to be praised? Don’t forget that part. I’m going to call on him, but not because he works for me.

I’m going to call on him because he is mighty, because he is just, because he is good, because he is loving. All of these attributes that he has, those are the reasons we can call on him in the first place. He says, I’m going to call on God.

I’m going to ask him for what I need, but I’m not going to forget that even as I’m asking these things to acknowledge who he really is. And he says, so shall I be saved from my enemies. He says it with so much certainty.

I will call upon the Lord who is worthy to be praised. So shall I be saved from my enemies. This happened, and so this happened as a result.

It’s almost assumed here. I call on God. He saves me from my enemies.

David had immense confidence. And I know, sitting in a church setting 3,000 years later, And we’re looking at the book, and we’re reading what the Bible says. We can think, oh, that’s easy to say.

I called on God, and He took care of it. Folks, for David to say this, while he’s hiding in a cave under threat of losing his life, he had to know that it was true. This isn’t just Sunday school talk.

This was real life for David. And he said, I will call upon the Lord who is worthy to be praised. And because of that, I will be saved from my enemies.

Now I want to go back to verse 2. And look at, there are several things that he calls God in here. But I want to look at just three of these things very briefly that he calls God.

And what that would have meant to David, what it means to us today, how it reminds us that we can depend on God regardless. First thing that he does is he calls the Lord a rock. God is our rock.

Now, I know that word doesn’t sound all that impressive. I mean, I can go out in the parking lot and get a rock. I probably have some in my car from Benjamin.

Go out in the parking lot and get a rock and it’ll be that big. Not real impressive. Can’t do much.

Or I can go out in the garden and get one that’s about like that. I used to plow my garden in Arkansas and come up with boulders about the size of my head. Pretty, I mean, do some substantial damage to somebody, but it doesn’t do much as far as a foundation.

Plymouth rock. We’re not even talking Plymouth rock. You know, we have in our minds this giant thing that they stepped out onto like a cliff where they landed the Mayflower.

And I’ve seen photos of it now, and if memory serves, it’s about the size of that piano. It’s just not that big. Folks, that’s not the kind of rock here that David is describing. If you want to know the kind of rock David’s describing God as, think about the Rock of Gibraltar.

That thing sits in the middle. That thing sits on the edge of the Iberian Peninsula. It sits there on the edge of Spain.

It juts out into the Mediterranean. It is big. The British have been dug in there for 300 years now.

The Spanish want them out, but they can’t get them out. Couldn’t get them out in war because they were founded on the rock. Can’t get them out now through diplomacy because they said we’ve been there too long.

That rock is not going anywhere. It’s not by accident that the insurance, is it Prudential, the insurance company that uses the rock of Gibraltar as their logo? Because it represents stability.

Nobody’s pushing that big rock anywhere. Nobody’s shaking that big rock. What he’s talking about here is being a firm foundation.

Somewhere where, even if the world around me is going crazy, I can stand my feet on this foundation and I know I will not be moved. Somebody ought to write a song about that. I shall not be moved.

We know a little more about that than we used to here. We had earthquakes yesterday. I don’t know if y’all felt them down here.

I didn’t feel them up in the city either, but that’s because Madeline and I were in the car. But I walked into my mother’s house and she said, did you feel the earthquake? Like what, for me walking up the steps?

I hadn’t put on that much weight. No, there’s an earthquake. Now, I have felt them before.

And sometimes they’ll jolt you out of bed. Now, people who live in California have told me they just feel like the whole ground underneath them has turned to jello. Yet another reason I don’t want to live on either coast. When that happens, you know, we build foundations on the ground.

We anchor things into the ground. We expect the ground to be there and be the ground and not move. When the very ground shakes, nothing is stable.

But he’s pointing here to a rock that will not be moved. The Lord is my rock. You want to know where to stand firm?

Stand firm with the Lord. You want to know what never changes? The Lord never changes.

You want to know who’s going to be the same tomorrow as he was today and was the day before that? The Lord. If you’re looking for firm foundation in a world of quaking sand, the Lord is that rock.

And when everything else was going crazy around King David, soon to be King David, when there was no other solid ground, he said, the Lord is my rock. Folks, to us today, the Lord is our rock. He never changes.

He never moves. He never wavers. That may not be popular with the world.

Let me rephrase that. That is not popular with the world. God should have updated His opinion in the last 2,000 years apparently, but He doesn’t.

He is who He always has been and who He always will be, and we can depend on Him. Second of all, He calls God our fortress. The Lord is my rock and my fortress.

Now, this would have meant something more to people in their day. We don’t really have fortresses. Well, not that we use.

They used to build city walls. And even if you lived outside the city walls, you lived in close enough proximity that you knew where to run to when somebody came marching through with their invading armies. You would run behind the walls of the nearest city because that was your only place where you could be saved.

Now, I’ve seen walled cities. Several years ago, I got to go up and work with our missionaries in Quebec. Quebec City still has walls around it.

I want to say it’s the only walled city in North America, north of Mexico. I’d never seen anything like this. These thick stone walls that I think even today, other than airplanes, they might have a little bit of difficulty scaling those walls.

I mean, they’re tall, and they’re thick, and they look slippery on the outside. And I wouldn’t want to try to bust through them. In the old days, you would run behind the city walls and you would be safe.

You would find a fortress, a place of refuge. Thick walls, thick gates, watchtowers. People stationed on the walls to keep watch.

People stationed inside the walls who could fire things at the invading enemy. You would run to the walls. You would run to the fortress and you would be safe.

Outside of it, you’re a sitting duck. But inside the walls, you’re safe. And he says, God is my fortress.

Folks, God is our fortress. There are not a lot of safe places in the world for Christians. I mean that with varying degrees of safety.

For some Christians in some parts of our world, what I mean by there are no safe places, they could lose their lives for being Christians. Here, we’re a little more fortunate. We’re a lot more fortunate here, let’s be honest. But even here, our faith is under attack constantly.

Culture wants to undermine it. Some in power want to undermine it. They want to make us be quiet.

They want to make us change our minds or suffer for failing to do so. Not everybody, but there are some out there. The world can be a very hostile place to the things of God.

Where do we run? He’s our fortress. He’s our refuge.

And no matter what we fall into, no matter what we are attacked by in this world, whether it be a literal physical attack in North Korea for a believer, Whether it be our faith under attack here in the United States, God is a fortress that we can run to. And we’re safe. We’re safe.

What I mean is He can protect us better than we can protect ourselves. God is big enough that the slings and arrows of the world just bounce off of Him. God doesn’t need us to defend Him.

We desperately need Him to defend us. He’s our fortress. When things get tough, when you’re under attack, when you’re under assault, Not even just for your faith, but you’re just under a salt period.

When it feels like the world is about to crush you under its heel, run to the fortress. Run behind those big sturdy walls. Third of all tonight, it says that God is our deliverer.

Now again, we could go further and look at all of these things, but I really just want to focus in on these three tonight. Because they are so important. He’s our deliverer.

A fortress is a great tool to have. It’s great to be able to run and hide behind the walls. but a fortress never goes on offense.

They say the best defense is a good offense, right? I enjoy the stories of General Patton. Now, I will say that some of his public statements and behavior may have been a little profane.

But overall, I think he was a brilliant military commander and quite an interesting character on top of it. I don’t know what the exact quote is from his life, that I remember from the movie, him saying that stationary fortresses are a monument to man’s ignorance, hubris. I can’t remember the exact word, but that’s the thought behind it.

His point was, it’s foolish to try to put all your stock in defensive measures. I’m going to build a fort here. I’m going to put defensive guns here.

I’m going to put this here, and we’re going to hide behind it. Patton’s thought was anything stationary could be overrun. He said, you need men on the attack.

And I don’t mean to lessen the importance of what I just said about God being our fortress. But folks, God doesn’t just sit there and let us hide behind him. God goes out and does battle for our people.

He goes out to deliver us. God isn’t just about defending us. God is about offense as well.

He goes out to deliver us. He goes out to actively do what’s right. He goes out to set things right.

It’s not just a passive defender. He liberates his people. God could have said to the people of Israel that I’ll just take care of you and your slavery in Egypt.

I’ll defend you. You know, that would have been nice. That would have been good enough.

But God didn’t just say, I’ll take care of you and your slavery in Egypt. What did he do? He raised up someone that he sent, that he directed, that he empowered to go in and free them.

And then he led them out. He led Moses and he led the people out of Egypt. God parted the Red Sea.

I know we always say just for brevity’s sake, Moses parted the waters. God parted the waters. God led them to the other side on dry land.

God swallowed up Pharaoh’s army in water. God led them through the wilderness with the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire. God provided manna and quail.

God brought them to the promised land. God let them cross over the river Jordan. God conquered Jericho.

God eventually conquered Ai. All of these things, God that were done to liberate his people, to deliver them, God did those things. And so it’s great to have God as a fortress.

It’s great to have God on our defense, but God is on offense as well. He’s our rock, he’s our fortress, and he’s our deliverer. It doesn’t matter what comes our way, God can rescue us from it.

He rescued us from the problem of sin. He sent Jesus Christ to die on the cross for that. He rescued us from death.

Folks, He can rescue us from affliction. He has promised to rescue us from temptation if we’ll just look for the way out that He gives us. All sorts of things that we could list. God is our deliverer.

He doesn’t just sit back and let us hide behind Him. He actually goes out to liberate us, to deliver us from the things that hold us hostage. We are living in a world where nobody feels like they can depend on much of anything.

Folks, it doesn’t matter whether the government lets you down. It doesn’t matter whether the media lets you down. It doesn’t matter whether churches in general let you down.

The post office, your children, it doesn’t matter who lets you down. We can still depend on God. Because the God who rescued David, the God who David knew very clearly and in a very real way, 3,000 years ago, was the only thing that kept him from dying at Saul’s hands.

The God into whose hands David very literally entrusted his life is the same God who today is our rock and our fortress and our deliverer. And just as David said, in whom I will trust, I’m telling you today, if he’s the same God today, still doing the same things that he did for David 3,000 years ago, then we too can trust him and depend on him. When life gets hard, when life gets scary, when life is just about to beat us to the point that we’re down and we’re done, folks, we have a God that we can depend on.