Sermon Tone Analysis

Hello ROOTS family...

Chris and Nicole are up in Breckenridge at Pastor Jimmy Humphrey’s church this weekend.

Jimmy is one of our board members.

Chris is guest teaching and leading worship there this weekend so he asked me to fill in this morning.

Here at ROOTS we are always going to be in God’s word so If you need a Bible raise your hand and we will put a Bible in your hand.

Turn in your Bibles with me to the book of Psalms….chapter

39.

A message I’ve titled:

“The Inner Struggle Released Upward”

Ill read our passage this morning and then we will pray and dive in.

lets pray.

Intro

This psalm really lets us see the struggle of King David as he battles with sin.

Especially in regards to the temptation that comes from being in the presence of evil and the strength and staying power that only the LORD provides.

The battle is with sin but we will see that the tongue in this psalm is where the battle begins but is also where the battle is ultimately won too.

The answer is in WHO we speak to and the way in which we direct our words.

The condition of our hearts will ultimately express itself in our words and we must be careful to be prayerful and aware of our thoughts in any given situation and direct our words to God for help rather than in gossip, complaint, or argument with man

This takes a humble heart and a willingness to yield to God.

I had fully prepared to preach a different text this week and while I was sitting in service last week and listening to our pastor preach from James 3, I felt led to share this psalm with you all.

Here at ROOTS we very much believe in unity and continuity in our body.

Our 4th-6th graders, our Grounded middle and high school ministry and our main service all go through the same text each week.

So I thought it would be fitting to share this psalm that will sort of piggy back off of the text we just finished in James 3.

Like Chris mentioned last week, our speech is tied directly with our hearts and minds.

Jesus tells us in

we should not "trust our heart" and If our hearts and minds are the roots of our speech, then it is sure that what comes from our mouth really shows the condition of our hearts.

We will see all these things factor in in our text this morning and we will get a glimpse of how this heart problem and the difficulties it brought caused David to rely on God’s staying power in his time of need.

Lets take a look at the text and see what God wants to teach us..

In the first 3 verses we see the awareness of King David’s situation, the need to keep silent, but also the pains it brings deep down to stifle his words.

Ill call this section

Psalm 39:1-3: The Purposed Desire to not Sin and Its Internal Conflict

In verse 1 David says that he will guard his ways and restrain his mouth as with a muzzle.

David was in a situation where he was tempted to sin.

He was in the presence of the wicked.

The Bible says in

David knew this.

Probably because he understood temptation fully in this moment.

So he takes action and decides he is going to keep silent at all costs.

He is purposeful in what he is doing and saying because he understands his condition as a sinner and is aware of his surroundings in the presence of the wicked.

Awareness of our condition paired with awareness of our situation is important if we want to have victory over sin.

Understanding that we are sinners by nature and therefore, prone towards sin even without external help gives us the foundation to know that when we add this already sinful nature to a sinful environment, the result will likely end up…..well sinful.

We don't need help being conformed to the world.

David also knew that the tongue was where he must first be guarded.

as we learned last week, James speaks to why this was important.

James might well have had this psalm in mind when he was writing his epistle.

The use of fire as an analogy for the spread of sin and the understanding that that fire could be spread with something as small as our tongues is not a new testament idea alone, we see it here in David’s day as well.

So we know that the tongue has power over the whole body.

We also see in Verse 1 that David was “in the presence of the wicked”

So there was this outside influence that could have fanned the flame and led to more ungodliness.

Verse 2-3 says that David kept silent and didn't even speak good, probably for the fear that evil might be mixed in.

Our hearts are so geared towards sin that if we aren't guarded with our words, sin will undoubtedly be present.

in Proverbs 10:19 we are taught that

the more we speak, the more sin is likely to increase.

This isn't always the case, but it is a principle that shows why David chose to hold his peace in the situation he was in.

So David did a wise thing in guarding his tongue at the beginning of this psalm..

However, as he held all of this in, his sorrow increased.

The word “musing” here basically means “meditating.”

whatever David’s situation was, the more he thought about it and dwelt on it, the worse it got.....the text says “a fire burned within him”

So restraining his tongue, at least in this example, brought with it another set of problems...

David was in a conflict….

Door number 1: He could speak in the presence of the wicked and risk the fire of sin spreading out of his heart through his mouth

or..

Door number 2: He could keep silent amidst internal agony and his heart would continue to burn within him causing more longer lasting sin effects.

Are either of these the best options?

I would argue that door number 2 was necessary at least initially to keep door number 1 from flying open, but we cannot possibly endure in the room that door number 2 leads to for long…

Spurgeon puts it this way…

“Silence is an awful thing for a sufferer, it is the surest method to produce madness.”

- C.H Spurgeon

And

Thomas Watson says:

“When lust or anger burns in the soul, Satan warms himself at this fire.”

- Thomas Watson

Either place he turns will ultimately give place to the devil..either in immediate sin by word and then deed, or by the internal torment that is produced by holding onto such a burden as striving against sin in our own power.

Now David was attempting to not sin here when he was suppressing his words and thoughts, but we can at times also hold things in that we shouldn’t and therefore cause us to put up walls in our heart and cause bitterness and resentment to spring up.

For instance, If someone does something to hurt us and instead of approaching them one on one like Jesus teaches us in Matthew 18 and hashing it out and reconciling the relationship, we can hold a grudge in our hearts and let a root of bitterness spring up.

then this will likely reverse engineer this Psalm and cause gossip and murmuring to then proceed from our mouths....

it is a 2 way street when it comes to our hearts and mouths.

the same fountain that produces fresh water can sometimes be a monsoon that muddys up our lives and floods into our relationships.

Now striving to “kill sin” in our lives will only produce frustration when we fail and discouragement that can lead to us giving up.

Don't get me wrong, we should never willingly continue in sin.

But putting sin to death is a backwards way to approach it…sin has already been put to death by Jesus at the cross.

We simply walk from the reality that we are already dead to sin and present ourselves to God as alive from the dead.

(read chapters 6-8 of Romans)

David understood that door number 1 and his attempts to strive against sin by muzzling his mouth could never be sustained.

He also felt the burning in his soul that was eating away at him with door number 2....

that’s why i believe he opened door number 3....cry out to the Lord!

look at verses 4-6

lets call this segment..

Psalm 39:4-6: The Outward and Upward Release of Pride

as we see, the struggle with sin was too much for David.

His strivings were burning within him and to release this toward man would have most definitely resulted in sin.

To keep this bottled up inside would have slowly eaten away at him.

It had to be released......look where David decided to direct his words and yearnings…

To the LORD.

If you are taking notes, write this down.

the main difference between a complaint and a prayer is who you direct it to.

David could have spoken in the presence of the wicked but he chose to cry out to the Father.

This is the answer to defeat sin.

Cry out to Him who defeated sin and death on the cross

Philippians 4:6–7 (NKJV)

6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; 7 and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Notice how Paul says that we should make our requests known to God in order to receive a guarded heart and mind.