McIntee, Arnot: Studies In Psalm 18:-01 ~ Gratitude To Our Lord

On Sunday evening, our brother Woodhouse was mentioning that he, like many of us, has difficulty with his memory on occasion. And I'm remi- I was reminded of a gentleman who was a chairman in my school a number of years ago, and uh, he enjoyed telling the story of when he was an undergraduate. He was walking across the campus of Western University in London, Ontario, and, uh, just about noon hour, he met one of his professors, and, uh, they stopped to have an enjoyable chat, and as they were about to part, the professor turned to my friend, and he said, by the way, he said, which direction was I going? He said, well, you were going that way. He said, oh, that's good. He said, that means I had my lunch. I hope none of us get that bad. My brethren have kindly giving me, given me permission to, uh, place some Family Bible Hour material on the table as you go out the door on the right. Family Bible Hour is an assembly produced radio ministry. It has been the pleasure of the board to have as its American treasurer for a number of years, our brother Art Wilder. I don't know whether it's good or bad, but he's moved here now to Park of the Palms and taken himself out of the Cleveland area, so, uh, he is now, uh, still a member of our board, for which we're very, very thankful. We appreciate his, uh, service over a number of years as treasurer of the US board. There's, uh, a number of pieces of information. This is one which will give you some, uh, idea and, uh, information on the Family Bible Hour. An assembly produced international radio ministry will be heard this week in a hundred, on a hundred and thirteen stations and in nineteen languages. So we'll value your prayers on behalf of the Family Bible Hour. Please take some of the material and pray for the work. Turn with me, please, to the eighteenth Psalm, Psalm eighteen. During our morning sessions, I'd just like to spend some time in the early verses of this Psalm. Not going to try to cover a great deal, but just to pray as we do that the Spirit of God in his goodness will just speak to each and every one of us, and that we might be warmed a little in our love for our beloved Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Let's read together verses one and two of Psalm eighteen. I will love thee, O Lord my strength. 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. Father, just present thyself, please, through the Spirit of God. May each of us know the warmth of fellowship with thee this hour. We pray in our Savior's precious. Amen. We have read together what I would suggest are some of the most expressive, some of the most melodious notes of adoring praise by the Psalmist to his God. What a wonderful way to begin an expression of gratitude to God, as David says, I will love thee, O Lord. I will. The psalmist pen, it seems to me, has been dipped in the sunlight of inspiration. He knows the loving kindness of his great God, and as he handles the instrument with care, he expresses out of a heart that is in love with his Lord, his deep, deep gratitude. God's glory, his blessings, his favors have been known and experienced by David, the psalmist. Seems to me that this is, as I have said, one of the most expressive portions in the canon, and particularly in the book of the Psalms. David's psalm here appears at the beginning of the Psaltry. Rather interestingly, almost the same words are to be found near the close of the second book of Samuel, as he writes there in a similar fashion in the twenty second Psalm. I would suggest that the reason the word of God finds on its holy pages these statements reviewed and restated is simply that David wanted to make it abundantly clear that the God he knew was the God he loved. It might be interesting at the commencement of our meditation just to take a few moments to review some of the highlights in the life of the man after God's own. This shepherd lad, this one who knew the joy of caring for his father's sheep, this lad who knew what it was to, uh, rest under the star-studded sky on the hills of Judea, to care for the sheep, but more importantly, to commune with his God. He knew the joy of fellowship with his God, and no doubt on many of those occasions, they presented to him opportunities to express his deep feelings for his God, to commune with him, to enjoy those hours, those nights of fellowship with a God who loved him and a God he deeply and dearly loved. Wonderful, isn't it, dear fellow saint, to have the joy of just communing with him? Visited with a dear sister in the care center yesterday, and I tell you, I came away with a heart full, as she expressed to me things she was enjoying about the person of her beloved Lord. I'm confident that there are times when that room is aglow with a fellowship that is enjoyed between that dear sister and her beloved Lord. David knew that as a shepherd boy. David knew the care, the keeping, and the power. He knew the strength and the wisdom that came as a young man when he went off into the valley of Elah to meet his God. He went with confidence, knowing that the God who had kept him from the power of the lion and the bear was the God who would keep him even from that uncircumcised Philistine. Did he not say to Saul, as Saul questioned the wisdom of this stripling going to meet the giant, the man trained in the art of warfare, why he said, you're just a boy. Ah, but, says David, there was a time I kept, and I love this phrase, I kept my father's sheep. Thank God for every dear brother here who keeps the people of God, the sheep of God. But David says, I kept my father's sheep, and when the lion and the bear came to attack, and only interestingly to take a lamb, just a lamb, David went after them, and he wrestled that little creature, that object of his love, from its jaws, and he slew them. Yes, this was David. David, the mighty young man used of God, and the one that had been trained in the keeping of the sheep, was the one who was to deliver Israel from the threats and the concerns of a powerful Philistinean giant. The day came when he firmly implanted a stone in his brow and brought him crushing to the earth, and he did it empowered by his God. This was the young man who was anointed as the king, anointed by Samuel, the prophet of God, to be Israel's monarch. What an experience that day when he was called from minding the sheep to become Israel's newly anointed monarch. This was David, the man who was ri- to rise to great crests of popularity. He would hear the women singing in the streets, why Saul has slain his thousands, but David his tens of thousands. Of course, this didn't make him too popular with Saul, did it? And consequently, he was the hunted and the hounded as the deranged king sought to take the life of the young monarch. Yes, this was David, the man of love. He deeply loved Saul's son Jonathan. You remember as they warmly parted, he said to Jonathan, Jonathan, your love to me was great, passing the love of women. What a love he enjoyed, and what a love he expressed to young Jonathan, the prince. This was the young man who was eventually... eventually the hatred and the concern of Saul would be abated. It would end with his death on the slopes of Gilboa. David is no longer the hunted and the hounded. Now he is to become the monarch. Eventually, the kingdom is to be united under David. Israel and Judah are one, and David is upon the throne. This young man is the young man who would be the young man victorious in the fields of battle, led to the Lord to lead the people of God in victory and to experience the blessings of God. Yes, this is David. This is David, the man who's looking back over his life. There were the times of sunlight and brightness. Tragically, there were the times of the thunderclouds and the blackness as David grieved his Lord and fell into sin. But David is at the end of life. He's on the shore. Soon he's to set sail for the presence of his God. And he could write in the fortieth Psalm, is it, and say, I will declare, O Lord, thy faithfulness. He looks back over life, and he sums it all up, considering the faithfulness of God and saying, I will love thee, O Lord. I really, I truly love thee. Before life is over, he recalls the goodness and the favor of God. Beloved, I'd like to live that way, wouldn't you? With the constant recall of the goodness and the favor of God, the one who is so richly and so abundantly blessed both you and me. He's a God whose favor we've known. But why read Psalm eighteen verses one and two? Well, I suggest for several reasons. I believe that David was a man of successes. And I'm confident that I'm looking into the faces of my brethren and sisters, and you have known success under God. God has been good to you, and you look across or back over life, and you can say, hitherto hath the Lord helped me or blessed me. He's been good. We've been successful, but then there have been times when we've been utter failures. I'm not going to share yours, mine with you, nor you with me, but in the secret recesses of our hearts, we can recall, oh, I wish I hadn't done that particular thing. I wish that experience had not been mine. In spite of that, we have known the faithfulness of a loving, caring God. Beloved, we can say, I will love you of heart. A patient God who could save us in the first place, make us his own for time and for eternity, and then put up with us, even his redeemed people. As I look back over the life of David, I look at a man who had problems in his position. As king, as Israel's greatest monarch, there were times there had been real problems. As he went out to meet the foe, as he sought to administer within the realm, there were problems. We can look back over life and we can say, boy, there sure have been some problems. It may have been in the workplace, may have been in the assembly, may have been closer home, it might have been in the family. Yes, David knew problems in the family, in the, in his position. Whatever those problems were, he gave God the assurance he loved him. Not only did he have problems in his position, he had problems as a parent. Remember? I'm sure you do. Absalom tried to take his father's throne. And I have talked with many of the people of God, and as parents, they've had problems. When the heart has been broken, and you wonder if you can ever go on for God again. But in spite of that, God loves and God cares. And in such a situation, how well I remember resting heavily with Helen on Psalm fifty verse fifteen. As the psalmist says there, call upon me in the day of trouble. And there's not a period there. It says, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me. How can you lose with such a God? And David, as a parent, knew the strength that came from the lips and from his own words. Psalm um fifty fifteen, among a host of others. But then, David not only knew problems in his position, and as a parent, he knew problems as a person. He knew that he was subject to the temptations of sin, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, the pride of life. David came crashing down. Sad, sad, sad. But beloved, the man who experienced problems in these three important areas of his life, he says, Lord, I love you. I really, I truly love you. Beloved, is that not our testimony this morning? Can we not look heavenward and homeward and say, Lord, I really love you. I really, I do deeply do. I believe that many of the saints in nineteen eighty nine have problems in these areas of their life. And so I'd like, over the next few days, just to look at these two verses, and in doing so, ask myself, why could David say, Lord, I love you? And as I look at him, and as I turn the microscope and the telescope within, I can see reasons in my life for saying, Lord, I love you. Notice his statement. So simple, so clear, so direct, just six simple words. I will love thee, O Lord, O Lord. I was touched this morning before we left our room, how David puts this. He says, I will love thee, O Lord. To me, it gave the thought, Lord, I will not only love you now, but I will continue to love you. And is that not our desire this morning? Not only to love the Lord in the favored setting of part of the pond, but Lord, in the days and the years that lie between now and the moment that I lay my eyes upon you, I want to love you. I want to love you deeply and dearly. This was no frivolous expression or easily understood, uh, uttered statement. No, this was the utterance of a heart enraptured with his Lord and in deep love with the one he deeply appreciated. Beloved, his was an experience prior to Calvary. Yours and mine, this side of a vacant cross and an empty tomb. If David could say, Lord, I love you. How much more so men and women, blood-bought believers like you and me. I will love thee, O Lord. This was the deep passion, I suggest, of a grateful heart. I will love thee. That word love, I understand this is the only time that this word is used in this particular sense. It's the thought of a mother's deep love. No love like a mother's love for the child that she's been privileged to bear. And David says, Lord, that's how much I love you. As a mother loves her own, so, Lord, I love you. I like the way the Amplified renders it. It puts it this way: I will love you fervently and devotedly. I will. I will love you fervently and devotedly. Beloved child of God, if you and I could return home from Park of the Palms, be that necessary. If we don't already live here, but if we return home with a deeper love for our beloved Lord, then the stay at Park of the Palms will be doubly blessed. Lord, I love you fervently and devotedly. You see, David was in love. He was in love with his God. We'll see that tonight as we turn again to Peter's lovely epistle. How wonderful to be in love with him. But then there were reasons why David was in love, and we didn't read about them, but let's take a moment now to do so as we read the introduction to the psalm. For this too is inspired. To the chief musician, a psalm of David, the servant of the Lord, who spake unto the Lord the words of this song in the day that the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. And he said, I will love thee, O Lord. Why? Why did David love his Lord? Because he had a Lord who had delivered him. Delivered him from his enemies or some of his enemies? No, from all of his enemies, all of his enemies. Be it the Philistine, be it a deranged king, no matter who it was. Why, David had known, beloved, deliverance from all his enemies. But how about you and me? Delivered from the power of the greatest enemy that we will ever know, Satan. This, he was defeated at Calvary. Oh, I know there are times, are there not, when we still experience those times in life when it seems he comes in like a flood, but he's not the victor. Our beloved Lord is the victor. And the ultimate victory he won at Calvary. And I repeat the verse of the poem we quoted the other night. By meekness and defeat, he won the maiden crown. He trod his foes beneath his feet by being trodden down, and he delivered the likes of you and me from the power of Satan, and in this we rejoice. He did- died to deliver us from a greater enemy, the enemy of our soul, and for this we will be eternally grateful, won't we? We will thank him. David says, I will love thee, O Lord. Dear child of God, let me ask a personal question. You and I, who look forward to that day when we will see him with unsinning sight, when did we last get down on our knees and say, Lord, I love you. I really, I truly love you. I appreciate what you did for me at Calvary. I appreciate your keeping grace, your tender love, Lord Jesus. I really love you. I believe it's the desire of his heart to hear such expressions of love from the hearts of his people. As a young man, I was thrilled when my girlfriend said she loved me. And as her husband now, I'm still thrilled when she says, I love you. Do you love him this morning? I pray you do. Some years ago, I was speaking in Malagasy Bible Camp on the east coast of Canada, and I made the statement in speaking to husbands that so often there are two statements we are reluctant to make. Number one is, honey, I'm sorry. You don't have any problems that way, I know, brother. Sometimes I do. Maybe you sisters don't have that problem. Maybe you do. And I said, secondly, at times we're reluctant to say when we really should, honey, I love you. Well, at the close of the service, one of my dear brethren walked out of the chapel with his wife at his side, and then he took her in his arms, and he said, Honey, I'm sorry I love you. Now, that isn't really what I meant, and he knew it wasn't. He was just trying to get her eyes out of his wife, which he did very successfully. But the point is this, beloved, our Lord delights to hear his redeemed blood-bought people say, Lord, more than anything else, more than anyone else, I love you. I love thee because thou hast first loved me and purchased my pardon on Calvary's tree. Said John, we love him because he first loved us. Beloved, he surely did, didn't he? Oh, with such love. He made known his love with drops of precious, precious blood. Peter, in the eighth verse of this first chapter that we're examining, we'll hear him say tonight, we love him rather, whom having not seen, ye love. And we do love him, although sight unseen. Beloved, let us go in for loving our Lord this morning and through the day, moment by moment, to take those times and express to him our heart of love. Might be in a note of praise. It might be just with the expression of a full heart. Lord, I love you. Maybe that's all. But to tell him we really deeply and dearly do. I love the words of Peter, don't you? He's won my heart, that man. I see so much of myself, the failure and devotedness at times, but then devotedness that on occasions just doesn't rise to the heights it should be. But you remember, it's early morning. They're with their Lord on the beach. And the breakfast chef that morning was the Lord of Glory in the person of the incarnate Son of God. And when that freshly baked bread, he must have been a master baker. After all, he created the universe, and it was good. And I'm sure to have baked the bread by the shore of the Galilee would have been no problem. And when he broiled the fish, can't you taste that freshly broiled fish? When he served it, they noticed the wound mark still in his hand, and they enjoyed it, I'm sure. But there's a conversation going now, the meal having been ended, and possibly Peter and his Lord are just walking together. The Lord turns to Peter and he says, Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord, I do. Feed my sheep. Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord, I love you. Feed my lambs, Peter. Peter, do you love me? Yea, Lord. Thou knowest all things. Thou knowest that I love thee. Dear Peter, criticized possibly for not using the right word, but I like to think, beloved, from the depths of the heart of the big fisherman, there came an expression of love and gratitude to his Lord. And he said, Lord, you know all about me. And he surely did. He told Peter he would deny him. Lord, you know all about me. Lord, you know I love you. Beloved, does he know that I love him? I'm confident he'd delight in being told again that you do. That deep, moving, passionate, continuous love of a redeemed soul to the thorn-scarred man who sits exalted in the glory. Four-year-old little Martha stood at her mother's side as mother was busily involved in the preparing of her meal. As Martha stood at her side, holding ever so closely within chubby arms her little dolly. She said, Mommy, I love her, and I love her, and I love her, but she never loves me back. Oh, beloved, he wants us to love him back, never so simply to say, I will love thee, oh Lord. May it be so this morning. Let's pray. Such a way. Father. Father, loving Father, one would like to say for us all, I will love thee, O Lord. We really and truly love the Lord Jesus Christ. We love the Father and his love. We love the blessed Holy Spirit who takes the things of Christ and reveals them to us. Father, would it please thee to receive from our hearts this morning our love for the Lord