PSALM 18
“MY ROCK AND MY FORTRESS AND MY DELIVER”
This is a royal psalm, Psalm 18. It was written by King David. It is a victory song, a praise poem. And we know this psalm was written toward the end of David’s life because the words of Psalm 18 are essentially the same words that you find in 2 Samuel 22 (a few differences, but basically the same). So, we have some historical context for when this psalm was written. David is reflecting back over his life. The quarterly says that “hindsight allows us to see the past more clearly. It also allows us to see how blessed we are.” And that is expressed very beautifully in Psalm 18.
I have pictured up here the well-known fortress at Masada, which is in Israel. The website www.holylandsite.com says this: “After a confrontation between King Saul and David close to En Gedi (which is near the Dead Sea), David likely hid out on top of Masada afterward.” So, whenever David uses terms like “my rock,” and “my fortress,” and “my stronghold,” what I envision is that he had a place like this in mind. A place that he was familiar with where he had hidden.
Psalm 18 begins with a long title…
“To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, the servant of the LORD, who addressed the words of this song to the LORD on the day when the LORD rescued him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul.”
Based on the title, this psalm was written by David TO the LORD. The word LORD is in all capital letters, Yahweh, the most holy name for God. That is how David addresses God.
David knows that he would not be where he is (as he writing this psalm) had the LORD not “rescued” him earlier in his life. David had many enemies and chief among them was King Saul who he actually names here. David recalls how God protected him from Saul. If you will remember, Saul chased David for years all over Israel trying to kill him. He was jealous of David. David and his men were constantly on the run. Eventually Saul was killed in battle. God then gave David victory over the rest of his enemies. And that paved the way for David to establish his kingdom and rule over a unified Israel. So, v 1, David says…
READ Psalm 18:1-3
David’s relationship with God is deeply personal. We know what most of these terms mean, but one that may not be familiar to you is “the horn of my salvation. That is a reference to power. David recognizes that God gave him the power to be victorious in battle. So, as he begins this psalm David is praising God for His protection and strength. When I was younger, in the church that I attended we would sing this song and it goes like this: “I will call upon the Lord, Who is worthy to be praised, So, shall I be saved from my enemies, I will call upon the Lord.” Do you all remember that? Those words are taken from right here in Psalm 18, straight out of this passage. The chorus to that song says, “The Lord liveth and blessed be my Rock, And let the God of my salvation be exalted!” That will come later in Psalm 18. That was one of those choruses that we used to sing that we don’t sing much anymore, but it is a good one.
READ Psalm 18:4-5
David here is describing the distress that he faced. Death appeared to be imminent. So, the question I have for you is, what do you do when you find yourself in this kind of situation? You do what David did.
READ Psalm 18:6a.
That is pretty good advice. And when David cried out for divine intervention…
READ Psalm 18:6b
God heard David’s cry and then He responded. For the next 23 verses, David vividly describes how God came to his rescue.
READ Psalm 18:7-8
God’s presence shows up. David uses imagery from natural disasters like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. V 7 says that God is angry. Here we see the wrath of God on display. So, why is God so angry? Well, read your Bible. From Genesis to Revelation God’s wrath falls time and time again upon the enemies of His people. David is God’s man. He is God’s chosen servant. David was anointed by Samuel, hand-picked to lead the nation of Israel. But there were people, like King Saul, who stood in the way and who tried to thwart God’s plan. They tried to kill David. When David cried out for help, it wasn’t like God did not know, right? But it was a catalyst for things to start happening. He cried out for help and God came to his rescue. David could sense God’s awesome presence shaking the very fabric of his life.
READ Psalm 18:9-12
Matthew Henry in his commentary said, “God did not send an angel, but came Himself.” These verses right here in Psalm 18 that we just read are the basis for the lines in the hymn “O Worship the King All Glorious Above.” One of the verses to the hymn goes like this: “O tell of His might and sing of His grace, whose robe is the light, whose canopy space. His chariots of wrath the deep thunder-clouds form, and dark is His path on the wings of the storm.” Remember that? It comes right out of Psalm 18.
READ Psalm 18:13-15
These words conjure up a picture of a thunderstorm. It builds. The clouds rise up. Have you ever watched that? In the afternoon the clouds rise, building, and then at some point lightning and hailstones and intense rainfall are produced. The sheer power we see exhibited by God in nature with our physical eyes, like in a thunderstorm, David could see all around him through spiritual eyes. He felt the presence of God in his life.
READ Psalm 18:16
God saved David. “He drew me out of many waters.” We saw this on display last week during the tragic flooding in the Texas hill country. People were pulled to safety off roof tops and out of trees. Charles Spurgeon was commenting on this verse and he said, “Some will not see the hand of God, but I warrant you, brethren, those who have been delivered out of the deep waters will see it. Their experience teaches them that God is yet among us.” And God was among the people that were delivered this last week. He was with David and David knew that. Those rescuers were as real to those in the floodwaters as God was to David in his hour of peril.
READ Psalm 18:17-18
David attests to God rescuing him from Saul and many of his other enemies. So, why did God rescue David? Well, David tells us why in v 19...
READ Psalm 18:19
That is quite a statement by a man who we know – because we have read our Bibles, we know a little bit about David – he was far from perfect, wasn’t he? And yet God delighted in him. Now, the reasons for God’s delight of David would be a lesson by itself. But, suffice it to say, that David was a man who was honest with God. He was submissive to God. And he was patient. This was evident on several occasions when David had the opportunity to kill his enemy Saul. One time he was in a cave, Saul was by himself, but David refused to harm Saul because he recognized Saul as being the Lord’s anointed. He was not going to take matters into his own hands. Instead, David waited patiently – for 20 years – until God finally removed Saul.
There is another thing about David. He was repentant. He owned up to his sins. Benjamin Franklin said this about David: “Many princes sin with David, but few repent with him.”
David truly was a man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14, Acts 13:22).
READ Psalm 18:20-24
Now, there are a couple of ways to interpret these verses. The first one is that this is a Messianic reference. He is talking about righteousness, right? We know that the Messiah is going to be righteous. We know that is one of the attributes of him. So, a lot of people believe David is just talking about the Messiah here. We know that the future Messiah will be righteous and that David certainly was not righteous (because we know a little about his history). So, some people will say that this is purely a Messianic reference. Which I suppose is a reasonable interpretation, but I will just be honest with you, I see it differently. And that leads to the second interpretation that I embrace.
This psalm, as you read it, is David’s personal testimony. It is something about what happened to him, right? So then, David IS talking about himself. I find that quite interesting if you know anything about David’s past history. As David reflects back on his life in his later years, he could have easily lamented the terrible sins that he had committed years before. Do you ever look back at your own life? Maybe there are some regrets, some things that had happened in your past. David could have done that, but he doesn’t do that here. He could have beat himself up over all the mistakes that he had made. And he made plenty of them. Second Samuel Chapter 11 lays out all of David’s sins. He committed adultery. And then he had a man killed in order to cover it up. But David doesn’t mention any of that here and why not? Because he had already dealt with those sins. See Psalm 51. David was honest with God about what he did. He confessed and repented of those sins, terrible as they were.
Here is the good news… God forgave him. David learned from his mistakes. It changed him. It humbled David. So, while David was obviously not perfect, he WAS forgiven.
Now, I believe in these verses here that David understands the doctrine of “imputed righteousness.” He sees himself as clothed in the righteousness of his Redeemer. As New Testament believers we understand this doctrine. We have passages like Philippians 3:9. Paul says, “I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ.” But what about David? He is an Old Testament believer and this is 1000 years before Jesus was even born. And yet, I believe that David is spiritually perceptive enough to realize that, positionally, he stands righteous before a holy God based on God’s forgiveness and grace.
Our pastor preached a sermon and he talked about this. I wrote down what he said. I think David understood this – “You stand approved by God. You stand accepted by God.” It does not matter what you have done. You deal with it with God. You ask forgiveness. You repent. God forgives you. And then you can stand in righteousness before God. That is imputed righteousness, the righteousness of Christ. David’s Redeemer – he did not know His name was Jesus, but he knew he had a Redeemer who was coming. David knew God. He knew His character.
So, having offered testimony to God’s hand upon his life, David turns his attention directly to God and addresses God. That is what he does beginning in v 25.
[Class discussion about how David dealt with his sin and how he knew that God forgave him]
READ Psalm 18:25-26
In v 26 that word “tortuous” in the ESV means “painfully unpleasant.” I like the way they said that. This is a spiritual principle that Jesus actually taught in the Sermon on the Mount: “For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you” (Matthew 7:2). In other words, God will measure unto us according to the same measure we use for others. And David understood that about God.
The last part of v 26 is confusing: “with the crooked you make Yourself seem tortuous [painfully unpleasant].” I want you to think about it like this: If a person is devious in their dealings with God (they are not completely honest, trying to get away with things), God will outwit them, as they deserve. Examples of this in the Bible include Jacob, Pharaoh, Jezebel, Judas. You may think that you are smarter than everyone else, you have everybody fooled. But you cannot fool God. He doesn’t play games. God expects total honesty, submission, and obedience; and nothing less. You want to do things your way? Whether you are a believer or not, don’t expect it to end well for you. And David understood this about God and how He deals with people.
READ Psalm 18:27
There is a New Testament counterpart to that verse. It is James 4:6: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
Now, contrary to what people think (a lot of people out there have this concept of God), that God is just sitting up in heaven and just passively observing what is happening down here. That is not at all what is going on and, of course, David knew that. David knows that God is active, that He interacts with His creation; He interacts with people.
READ Psalm 18:28
This is more than just guidance. There is something much deeper going on here. This gets back to what we have talked about before. David is offering personal testimony of how God had preserved his life. Death (darkness) threatened David on many occasions. He says, “For it is You who light my lamp.” But God had a purpose for David and kept him alive to fulfill that purpose. So, I think that is what he is really talking about in this verse. He is talking about preserving his life. It is fitting with the rest of the psalm.
READ Psalm 18:29-34
We know David as the shepherd boy, the psalmist and the king. But do not forget about him as the great warrior that he was. He was a mighty warrior, one of Israel’s greatest warriors and a brilliant military tactician. And here David acknowledges that it was God who gave him his ability and strength.
READ Psalm 18:35-40
God is the One who gave David all of his military victories. In v 37 David talks about pursuing and consuming his enemies. And then in v 40 he mentions destroying them. These are the enemies that would have been primarily those foreign adversaries like the Philistines. We all know about them, right? And we know about the Moabites and the Syrians, all of these foreign adversaries. Here David is giving God full credit for his military success.
READ Psalm 18:41-42
The simple reason why God did not answer David’s enemies’ cries for help is that David’s enemies were God’s enemies.
READ Psalm 18:43-45
David says that God is the One who ultimately gave him his throne. Now if you will recall, a little bit of history, David was first anointed as king by Samuel when he was a teenager (1 Samuel 16). After Saul’s death, twenty years later, David was anointed as king of Judah (2 Samuel 2). And then seven and a half years after that David was anointed as king over a unified Israel, over Israel and Judah (2 Samuel 5).
David fought against many foreign armies. Through his military conquests he took much land. Most people do not realize this – during David’s military campaigns, Israel expanded its borders; from the Euphrates River to the north all the way down to Egypt to the south; from the Mediterranean Sea into present day Jordan and Syria. If you look at that on a map, that land area is about twice that of modern-day Israel.
READ Psalm 18:46
So, that is the chorus to the song I mentioned earlier.
READ Psalm 18:47-48
We do not know for sure who David had in mind here in these verses. It could have been King Saul. He certainly qualifies as a man of violence, if you know anything about Saul. But it could have also been David’s own son Absalom. If you remember, Absalom was a man of violence also. He led a revolt against David, tried to kill his own father. It could have also been Ahithophel or Joab or Shimei or Sheba. All these guys resisted David and caused him much grief. But here is the thing – every one of them was eventually subdued by the hand of God.
Well, with that David closes the psalm…
READ Psalm 18:49-50
So, David’s final testimony of praise to God is in these verses. He is approaching the end of his life. I believe that what David has in mind here is what we call “the Davidic Covenant.” That is the covenant promise that God made to David is in 2 Samuel Chapter 7 – that David’s house and his throne are going to be established forever. That is quite a promise!
David knows that he (David) is not the fulfillment of that covenant (promise). He knows his days are numbered and he does not have long to live. The fulfillment of that covenant is going to come through the Messiah, which will be from his offspring. That will ultimately be the fulfillment of this covenant promise, the reign of a future Messiah King. Just to drive this point home, the Apostle Paul quotes v 49 in Romans Chapter 15. And there Paul affirms that Jesus IS the fulfillment of this promise. That is further scriptural evidence, support, that Jesus is the Messiah (because this is clearly talking about the Messiah).
So, in closing, although I do not see Psalm 18 necessarily as a Messianic psalm (there are certainly some references to the Messiah in it); rather, I see it as David’s personal testimony of God’s faithfulness to him. That is how I view this psalm. However, with being said, there are some interesting parallels in this psalm to the work of Jesus. I want to reference a great preacher of the recent past that you may have heard of, James Montgomery Boice. He draws this parallel to Jesus from Psalm 18, which I thought was interesting. He gives us another perspective.
Psalm 18:1-6 suggest Jesus’s DEATH. “The cords of death encompassed Me… the snares of death confronted Me.” Unlike David, however, God did not spare His Son Jesus, did He? While God had a purpose for David to live, He had a greater purpose for Jesus to die.
Psalm 18:7-18 suggest Jesus’s RESURRECTION. “The earth reeled and rocked; the foundations also of the mountains trembled and quaked… He sent from on high, He took me; He rescued me from my strong enemy.” Though Jesus died, God raised Him back to life again, thus conquering our strong enemy, death.
Psalm 18:19-27 suggest Jesus’s EXALTATION. “I have kept the ways of the LORD… So, the LORD has rewarded me according to my righteousness.” After being obedient to the cross God raised Jesus up and then exalted Him at His right hand.
Psalm 18:28-42 suggest Jesus’s VICTORY. “For by You I can run against a troop… I pursued my enemies and overtook them.” Jesus was victorious over death, hell and the grave and one day He will defeat Satan, the evil one.
Psalm 18:43-50 suggest Jesus’s KINGDOM. “You made me the head of the nations… foreigners came cringing to me… You exalted me above those who rose against me… For this I will praise you, O LORD, among the nations.” Therefore, God has highly exalted Jesus and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name!
So, here you have in Psalm 18 David’s testimony of God at work in His life. But it can also be seen, as Boice says, as Jesus’s work for us.