David's Gives The Explanation For His Triumph (Psalms 18:20-24).
David's explanation for YHWH's intervention on his behalf is simple. His attitude had been right towards God. He had been faithful to YHWH and His covenant. He had walked in YHWH's ways and had sought to please Him, not in order to earn His favour, but because he looked to YHWH as his life, and was ready to do His will, and maintained his life in cleanliness through the God provided means. It is only if we walk rightly as David sought to do that we can have the same confidence towards God that he had.
This was not boasting. It was indicative of a quiet confidence in God. He knew where his heart lay. There may be times when we are perplexed and overburdened by sin, but the man of God knows whether his heart is set right to seek to please God. He may sometimes regrettably fail, but he knows the intentions of his own heart. He loves God and wants to please Him.
‘YHWH has rewarded me according to my righteousness,
According to the cleanness of my hands has he recompensed me.
For I have kept the ways of YHWH,
And have not wickedly departed from my God.'
For all his ordinances were before me,
And I put not away his statutes from me.
I was also perfect with him,
And I kept myself from my iniquity.
Therefore has YHWH recompensed me according to my righteousness,
According to the cleanness of my hands in his eyesight.'
His words are not boasting, but a solid declaration of trust and faith. He had been YHWH's man from the beginning, brought up to faith by a godly father, and he had lived out that faith in uprightness and truth. Now he is receiving his reward. This central theme is vital to his whole message. It is only those who would be righteous who can depend on God's deliverance. In Psalms 18:50 the Psalm is applied to all Davidic kings who will follow him. But the indication is that if they are to enjoy the blessings, they too must be righteous like David. And when the greater David came, He would triumph because He was wholly righteous.
‘YHWH has rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands has he recompensed me. For I have kept the ways of YHWH, and have not wickedly departed from my God.' David has no doubt in his heart that he has always sought to please God, because he loves Him. There may have been the momentary failure, but such was an aberration, and he sought forgiveness then with strong crying and tears. And it was because of such a life, lived out in honesty and right living, that he was certain that YHWH would reward and recompense him as a forgiven and repentant sinner. God is always good to His own if their hearts are right, weak and failing though they may sometimes be.
He was not saying that he had never sinned. Indeed he had good cause to know that he had. But when he had sinned he would come to God in repentant faith, and offer the appropriate sacrifices, and make the appropriate cleansing. Thus was he kept righteous and clean before Him. He did not linger with sin. He dealt with it straight away. ‘If we walk in the light as He is in the light --- the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin' (1 John 1:7).
‘And have not wickedly departed from my God.' Note the ‘my God'. David's personal faith shines through. He had ‘kept the ways of YHWH'. To have departed from Him would to David have been the utmost wickedness. That was the final evidence of his character.
‘For all his ordinances were before me, and I put not away his statutes from me. I was also perfect with him, and I kept myself from my iniquity.' David had loved God's Instruction (Torah, Law). He had kept His ordinances before his eyes, he had clung to His statutes, not putting them from him, he had studied His word, he had meditated on His Instruction (Torah) day and night (Psalms 1:2). And he had sought to live out all His teachings fully and do what was right, and keep from all that would displease God. And we must remember that this was God's testimony of him too, that his heart was right before Him (1 Samuel 16:7). By ‘perfect' he does not mean literally so, but wholehearted and true.
‘Therefore YHWH recompensed me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in his eyesight.' So, confident that his heart had been right towards God, he repeats boldly what he had said in Psalms 18:20. YHWH rewarded and recompensed him because he walked rightly before Him, kept his hands clean from sin, and kept himself spiritually clean in His eyes, utilising the means that God had provided. He had not been perfect, but he had been true.
How important it was that the singers recognise this. Their hope too must lie in the fact of their righteous response to God. They too must recognise that God required them to be wholly righteous. It was only then that they could share David's experiences of blessing.