Sermon Tone Analysis

2 Samuel

is a very unique chapter in the Old Testament.

The entire chapter is a psalm.

David wrote many psalms.

Of the 150 psalms in the book of psalms, just over half, 76 in fact, were written by David through the course of his life.

is unique though in two ways.

One, it is not in the book of Psalms and two, it is likely one of the last songs if not the last song he ever wrote.

David takes advantage of this opportunity to reflect on all that God has done for him in his life.

God Saves us According to His Character

The song is very rich with theology and is beautiful Hebrew poetry.

So much so we could have couple week series on this chapter and not put too much of a dent into it.

The reading for our sermon text this morning encompasses 11 verses that focus on the character of God and on God’s provision for David.

This morning, we are going to focus on the action of God in the song.

God

Merciful, blameless, pure, illuminating, perfect, true, refuge, defender,

God Reveals

David is near the end of his life.

He is living securely and his enemies are defeated.

He now takes some time to reflect upon his life.

One of the themes throughout our text this morning is the importance of God’s work in every aspect of David’s life.

There are especially two works of God that stand out to me as we look at this text.

The first work is that God illuminates.

The second work is that God equips.

God Saves us According to His Character

David is near the end of his life.

He is living securely and his enemies are defeated.

He now takes some time to reflect upon his life.

One of the themes throughout our text this morning is the importance of God’s work in every aspect of David’s life.

There are especially two works of God that stand out to me as we look at this text.

The first work is that God illuminates.

The second work is that God equips.

God Saves Us

God Equips the Saints

The first action of God we see is that God reveals himself to man.

The magnitude of this cannot be understated.

Verses 26 and 27 tell us about how God reveals himself to man and we are essentially given a this for that type of list.

If people are merciful, God is merciful.

If blameless.

If pure.

If crooked.

This is not saying David believed that you had to earn your way into God’s good graces.

That is, you don’t have to be the most merciful, blameless, pure, et cetera.

This becomes more clear as we go along in the text.

We get to verse 28 which explicitly states that God saves the humble and brings down the haughty.

God Sends Us

We often talk about the characteristics of God.

God is love.

God is omnipresent.

God is omniscient.

And so on.

David does something similarly here in this song.

He says, “you are merciful, you are blameless, you are pure.”

David here is summarizing God’s motive for saving him.

It is because of God’s character.

God saves David because God is a God of who is merciful, blameless, and pure.

This becomes especially clear as we look at the following verses.

David recognizes that mercy, blamelessness, and purity are gifts from God.

If they are not, how could a liar, adulterer, and murderer ever expect to be saved by God?

He sings that it is God who has revealed this to him.

David’s life was shrouded by his sin.

When we read his great confession psalms, and , we see the inner struggle and pain and sorrow that David’s sin caused in his own life.

In his own conscience.

He writes

We do this same type of thing in the Lord’s Prayer.

“Hallowed be your name.”

Repeating aspects of Gods’ character is a very intimate way to worship.

To repeat back to Him and say, “God you are Mighty.

You are Holy.

You are Grace.

You are a rock.”

This is a wonderful way for us to pray to God and to meditate on Gods’ Word.

Psalm 51.

Yet in David’s Song, there is a sense that God treats every man in accordance with his conduct toward Him.

For those who reflect the character of God, he treats them according to His own character.

To the merciful, God is merciful.

To the blameless, God is blameless.

To the pure, God is pure.

Then there is the trickier one.

“And with the crooked you make yourself seem torturous.”

This God whose way is perfect in justice and righteousness is also perfect in love.

God forgives David for his sin and David’s response in faith is to be merciful, blameless, and pure.

Not that he perfectly embodies these things, but any mercifulness that he has is a gift from God for Jesus’ sake.

It is according to Jesus’ mercifulness and blamelessness and purity by which God shows himself to be these things.

I had some wrestling to do with this one.

What does it mean, “And with the crooked you make yourself seem torturous.”

So I looked up the words from the Hebrew text as well as the Greek Old Testament which is called the Septuagint or LXX because it is usually a good commentary on the intended meaning of difficult phrases and long story short, the closest wooden translation I could find was

The idea is that for someone who shows themselves to be crooked or to be perverse, for one who proves to be a sinner, God will be a challenge for them.

No only that, but God actually gives them over to their depravity.

We can look at

Thus far, we have not talked much about that second line of verse 27.

“With the crooked you make yourself seem torturous.”

I had to wrestle with this line but it was helpful when I took at look at the original language and the Young’s Literal Translation which says,

This is in contrast to what God has done through His congregation.

The people of God are the merciful, blameless, and pure.

This is true, not because the people in His congregation have somehow vanquished sin from their lives and thrown down the giants of their life that keep them cooped up.

This is true, not because Christians are so much better than everyone else.

The truth is that God’s people are described this way because of Jesus.

It is true because God saves the humble and God brings down those who think they are above the Word of the Lord (v28).

He saves us, not because we are so incredibly humble, pious, and such.

He saves us through Jesus for his own sake.