When I first began to preach through the psalms as part of the Sunday evening services of Tenth Presbyterian Church, which I have served as pastor since 1968, I decided whenever possible to end the services with a hymn based on the psalm being studied. At first I did not know whether the hymnal would have many hymns based on the psalms, but I was surprised to find that it did.
And here is one link more, which brings us back to where we started. The dominant theme of Psalm 18 is that God is our Rock. In the first study, I pointed out that this means that he is a shelter beside which we can be protected and prosper, a fortress into which we can run and be safe, a firm foundation upon which our shaking feet can stand and upon which we can build. But I remember also the way in which the great eighteenth century preacher and songwriter Augustus M. Toplady (1740-1778) handled it in the hymn “Rock of Ages,” which has since become one of the best known hymns in our language
In the final five verses (vv. 46–50) we come back to the point from which we started out, namely, praise to God. And the theme of God being our rock reappears. Verse 2 says, "The LORD is my rock" and "my God is my rock." Now, in verse 46 we read, "The LORD lives! Praise be to my Rock! Exalted be God my Savior."
The fifth section of Psalm 18 (vv. 30-45) is the most obvious repetition of earlier material, in this case a repetition of verses 4-19. But it is neither a mere repetition nor a vain repetition. Charles Haddon Spurgeon said, "Second thoughts upon God's mercy should be and often are the best."5
In order to understand section four of this psalm (vv. 25-29), we need to back up to section three where David explained the reason for his deliverances by God. He said that the Lord dealt with him and rewarded him "according to [his] righteousness ... according to the cleanness of [his] hands" (v. 20). It was because he had "kept the ways of the LORD" and had not "done evil by turning from his God" (v. 21).
