Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
A score of 0.5 or higher indicates the tone is likely present.
Emotion Tone
Anger
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Disgust
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Fear
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Joy
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Sadness
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Language Tone
Analytical
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Confident
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Tentative
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Social Tone
Openness
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Conscientiousness
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Extraversion
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Agreeableness
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Emotional Range
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Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
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Brothers and sisters, how great it is to be at the top of your game.
And I don’t mean only in sport.
I mean, at the top of your game …
at peace …with every day life … how great is that.
You are healthy; your relationship with your wife and children is good.
And you feel in your very being, that God is close to you in everything you do.
How wonderful it is to be at peace with God our creator!
David had days like this.
No doubt Psalm 23 was written on a day that he felt this way.
You know the words…“*1**** **The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
*
***2**** **He makes me lie down in green pastures, *
*he leads me beside quiet waters…” *
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But all of life is not Psalm 23 moments, are they?
And how often does it not happen that even though we may be feeling at the top of the world the one moment….
The next moment we find ourselves in the depths of despair.
Do you know the feeling?
Well, it turns out, we are not alone!
Feeling deserted, or depressed, or worried, is not just a disease of the 21st century.
The Psalms describe many a moment like this.
And David, in Psalm 42 and 43 portrays such moments.
Yes, the same David who composed Psalm 21, is most likely, also the author of Psalm 42~/43.
I find encouragement in that?
…in the fact that even the seemingly invincible ones among us,
also have desperate days,
lonely days?
*Where are you God?* days.
*And of course, we are reminded of another man, *
* the greatest of all men, who suffered a moment of total dejection, *
* a moment of agonizing loneliness?
*
*Will we not be encouraged by that?*
*(We will return to this thought in more detail…)*
Psalm 42 and 43 (and most scholars now agree that these two psalms are really just one Psalm)…is what is called a Maskil,
…which is the term used to describe a piece of poetry, or music, that has as its purpose, to instruct.
With other words, the Psalmist wants us to learn something from this song.
And the way David goes about it is to draw from his own experiences.
His experiences, as we have seen, are of course also our experiences,
even here in the 21st Century.
So we freely identify with David.
So what exactly does David want to teach as he composes this Psalm…
And…what does David learn as the words come to his mind?
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When we look at the structure of the poem, we soon realise that the author is trying to teach us …even as he starts out by pondering his misery.
David, clearly, is feeling *far removed* from God.
Whether it is because he is unable to visit the temple, as some commentators have suggested
- which in those days was a major disaster because the Israelites believed that the temple was the only place they had authentic access to God –
or whether he is feeling spiritually removed from God, perhaps due to an awareness of some unspoken sin that he had committed in his heart…
David feels deserted!
Perhaps one of the first questions we should ask ourselves then, as we read this Psalm, is this:
what is it that makes us feel distanced from God?
And note B&S it is not just any old feeling of being distanced – a feeling of missing someone
It is an agonizing realisation of the feeling that God is not present.
David is devastated!
~/~/~/~/~/~/~/Do you know the feeling?
Feeling out of God’s sight, far from God, is an awefull feeling.
And that is what David is experiencing.
It is terrible!
See how David puts it into poetic language…*” 1 As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. *
*2 **My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
*
*When can I go and meet with God? *
**
I might illustrate it this way…
Willie and Rialize Nel not too long ago went on an excursion into the NSW outback.
What they saw is far worse than what we see on our television screens.
They witnessed sheep carcasses rotting alongside the roads…l
live stock little more than walking skeletons….
*These sheep were panting for some form, any form of moisture…*
How these farmer and there livestock must long for the rains to return, for the drought to end?
Like a deer pants for water, that is how they must yearn for God’s mercy…
Some of you may have seen the film, Dirkie, a film by Jamie Uys in SA in the seventies…
In that film there is a scene that drives home David’s yearning, David’s thirst for God in two ways…
It is the story of a little boy, *probably about ten years old,* who survives an aeroplane crash in the desert, and who then tries to walk to a place where he might find help.
But he gets lost, and all forms of catastrophe overcomes him …
he is stung by a scorpion….and
worst of all, very soon he has no water…
As he stumbles along, near death, thirsty…the one think, the one thought he clings to,
are the words…”my dad loves me, he will find me”
A bit like David holding on for dear life to the words of the refrain he writes..,
It is as if David is reaching out to God, as if he needs to be held by God, but it seems to him like God is not there…
See his anguish…
*3 **My tears have been my food *
*day and night,*
Literally…my tears have been my meat…day and night.
Can you see the contrast…
David thirsts for God.
He longs to quench his thirst
But what does he have in the place of God’s living water, the water that willhave you thirst no more?
He has tears … and they are salty!
His tears are like meat to him.
Who needs meat, when you are thirsty.
And his anguish does not end there…
…as David thirsts for God, not only does he feel lost and lonely, distanced from God,
he also has to suffer the taunts of those mocking him about the very essence of that which he longs for.
He is down, and he is being kicked…
He reminds us of Job, that Leo is preaching on at present, doesn’t he?
*“men say to me all day long, *
*“Where is your God?””*
This is spiritual warfare at its best, brothers and sisters…
Of course, what the scoffers, as non-believing people, are really saying, is: Well?
Come on mate!
You’re forever saying you believe and trust in God.
Look at you!
Where is your God? You’re in a terrible state!
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