David's Song Of Deliverance Series

Lesson

Second Samuel 22:1-51 teaches us to praise God for his deliverance.

Let’s use the following outline:

1. The Context of Praising God for His Deliverance (22:1)

2. The Content of Praising God for His Deliverance (22:2-3)

I. The Context of Praising God for His Deliverance (21:15-17)

First, let’s look at the context of praising God for his deliverance.

The author of 2 Samuel writes in verse 1 of chapter 22, “And David spoke to the Lord the words of this song on the day when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul.”

Almost identical words are found as the title to Psalm 18, “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 delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul.” The song in 2 Samuel 22 is almost identical to the psalm of Psalm 18.

Commentator Gordon Keddie observes,

It may be that the fuller version in the Psalter was David’s final version for public use in the worship of God. The differences are fairly numerous, but the teaching is the same. Both are the inspired Word of God: the one set in a historical context, the other in the manual of praise.

David wrote this song of deliverance in 2 Samuel 22 after “the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul.” David looked back over his forty years as king over all Israel and also the many years prior to his coronation. He saw how the Lord had delivered him on numerous occasions from many enemies. He recalled also how the Lord had delivered him from Saul’s many attempts to kill him.

So, David wrote a song praising God for his deliverance.

II. The Content of Praising God for His Deliverance (21:2-3)

And second, let’s learn about the content of praising God for his deliverance.

There are fifty verses in which David praised God for his deliverance. However, we are going to focus our attention on just for the first two verses to learn how David praised God for his deliverance.

David’s praise of God included several ascriptions of how David saw God.

A. God Is My Strength (22:2, 3)

First, God is my strength.

David saw God as a “rock” in verses 2 and 3. He said in verse 2, “The Lord is my rock,” and again in verse 3, “…my God, my rock.”

In the Bible, a “rock” often conveys the idea of strength and a foundation. It is something solid and stable. David said that the Lord is his strength and his foundation. God was able to deliver him from many situations because the Lord is solid and stable.

Do you remember Jesus’ most famous sermon? We call it “The Sermon on the Mount,” and it is recorded in Matthew 5-7. Jesus was teaching his disciples how to live as citizens of his kingdom in world full of sin. He concluded his sermon with an application to his listeners to build their lives on the rock. This is how Jesus expressed it in Matthew 7:24-27:

24 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. 26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”