War of the Words
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As we did last summer, we are going to spend a few months in the Psalms. The book of Psalms, the collection of Psalms, is a great book to study during the summer, and this for a couple of reasons:
Because the Bible—every word of the 66 books—is inspired and purposed by God for us to read. There’s not a bad book of the Bible.
Because the Psalms express the full-range of human emotion and our experience with God. It’s good for us to witness how others deal with their situations and how they deal with God through the good and the bad.
Because, unlike other books of the Bible, most of the individual psalms stand independent of the others. So, if you’re not here one week, you’re not going to be lost when you are. For instance, those who aren’t here this week aren’t going to have trouble understanding Psalm 13 just because they didn’t hear today’s sermon on Psalm 12. They’ll only have trouble understanding Psalm 13 because the preacher is difficult to understand.
So, during June, July, and August, we will take a look at Psalms—these poems, these songs, these prayers inspired by God and recorded for us. The psalms are meant for the people of God—to teach us, to resonate with us, to help us feel our feelings and submit ourselves to God.
The Psalms are a gift to us. I can’t recommend enough the daily reading of the Psalms. In fact, it’s my prayer that we will, as individuals of this church family, each commit to reading three psalms a day. If you do this, you will read through the Psalms in a month. If you start today, you’ll read through the entire book before July comes around. Try it, would you? And then, when you’re finished, start over.
>This morning, we’re going to pick up where we left off last August. So, if you have your Bible (and I hope you do) please turn with me to the Book of Psalms. If you are able and willing, please stand for the reading of God’s Holy Word. Psalm 12 (page 848 in the red pew Bible in front of you).
For the director of music. According to sheminith. A psalm of David.
1 Help, Lord, for no one is faithful anymore;
those who are loyal have vanished from the human race.
2 Everyone lies to their neighbor;
they flatter with their lips
but harbor deception in their hearts.
3 May the Lord silence all flattering lips
and every boastful tongue—
4 those who say,
“By our tongues we will prevail;
our own lips will defend us—who is lord over us?”
5 “Because the poor are plundered and the needy groan,
I will now arise,” says the Lord.
“I will protect them from those who malign them.”
6 And the words of the Lord are flawless,
like silver purified in a crucible,
like gold refined seven times.
7 You, Lord, will keep the needy safe
and will protect us forever from the wicked,
8 who freely strut about
when what is vile is honored by the human race.
May the Lord add His blessing to the reading of His Holy Word!
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Did you notice in verse 1 how David feels? He feel all alone. He cries out to the Lord: “Help, Lord! No one is faithful anymore…all the loyal have vanished...”
He feels he’s all alone. There’s no one on his side of things; all those around him are wicked, liars, flatterers, deceivers.
David could be writing this at any number of moments in his life. If you’re familiar with the story of David, you know that he had quite the history with several people. King Saul and the not-yet-king David is the stuff of soap operas and scandal. Honestly, I can’t believe Shonda Rhimes hasn’t written a political drama based on the lives of Saul and David.
Verse 2 is an apt description of the relationship between David and Saul;
2 Everyone lies to their neighbor;
they flatter with their lips
but harbor deception in their hearts.
Lies. Flattery. Deceit.
Sadly, this is pretty common in David’s life and in the lives of those who are faithful.
The way Absalom, David’s own son, behaved toward him, stealing the hearts of the people of Israel and stealing the kingdom from his father. David has to flee, fearing the retribution of his child. 2 Samuel 15-18 gives the sad details of yet another lying, deceitful person in David’s life.
It’s this—or something like this that causes David to cry out to the Lord:
1 Help, Lord, for no one is faithful anymore;
those who are loyal have vanished from the human race.
He’s feels all alone, and he might as well be.
This seems a little mellow-dramatic, and maybe it is. But David’s not the only Biblical character or writer who has expressed this same sentiment:
Elijah has this conversation with God after his victory on Mt. Caramel:
10 He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”
The prophet Micah says this as he speaks of Israel’s misery:
2 The faithful have been swept from the land;
not one upright person remains.
Everyone lies in wait to shed blood;
they hunt each other with nets.
It’s not uncommon, feeling alone in this world. Faithfulness to God, loyalty to God are sometimes rare, hard to find, lacking.
The problem, as David sees it, is not just occasional—not just a once or twice in a lifetime Saul or Absalom problem—no, the problem is pervasive: “everyone lies to their neighbor.”
All of this erupts in an urgent prayer from David that the Lord would silence all flattering lips and every boastful tongue. David is hoping, praying the Lord will take care of those who speak wickedly and live as such.
Psalm 12 expresses for us the War of the Words. There are, first and clearly,
The Words of the Wicked
The Words of the Wicked
David is overwhelmed by the lying, deceitful, flattering words of the wicked. Like Elijah and Micah, David is sinking beneath the weight of what the wicked are saying and doing. David feels all alone.
There are times when those who love God and want to be faithful to Him really do feel alone.
Haven’t you felt that way at times? Trying to do the right thing at work, and everyone ignores you because they don’t want to be judged by your standards. Maybe you’ve felt isolated at home or at school. Christians in government say they often feel that “the godly are no more” and that “the faithful have vanished from among men.”
David’s feelings of isolation and aloneness spring from his experience with the lying society, where speech is empty, flattering, deceptive, and arrogant.
We, today, are living in a similar society, aren’t we? I hardly need to ask. It’s clear. We run into false advertising, but we expect this. We know we’re being conned. We’ve put up with it for so long, we expect nothing different. It even involves our hamburgers. Our hamburgers, you guys!
Burger King once ran an ad in which a girl complains that McDonald’s burgers were 20% smaller than Burger King’s. Of course, she neglected to say that Burger King’s cost 20% more. And no one told the truth about both McDonald’s and Burger King being absolutely disgusting.
We expect this as much as we expect to face lying politics.
Richard Nixon once told a crowd at an airport that he majored in French—that he took four years of it, could speak it, write it, converse freely but had since forgotten most of it—when the truth was that he actually majored in history; he merely wanted to impress the French.
John F. Kennedy was pictured as a family man and doting father when really, the secret service agents guarding his bedroom could reveal what he was actually about.
“Everyone lies, [everyone] harbors deception...”
I could tell tales of our judicial system, every corner of the media, but this doesn’t have be all secular. We are becoming quite used to religious lying. You can turn on TBN and find more than your share of religious-sounding outright lies and deception. But sometimes, it’s closer to home.
Pastor Kent Hughes tells a story about a friend who was a pastor of a small church. His friend confided in him that he was struggling to provide for his family on what his small church was paying him. Hughes wrote him a check from his personal account for $2,000 only to find out later that this ‘friend’ had scammed at least $50,000 from others with the same song and dance.
We’re just used to this; it doesn’t surprise us. I wish I was shocked when I heard of deceit and lies from the political realm, from the media, from advertising. I’m just not.
Carl Jung once said, “No nation keeps its word.” No need to retract that anytime soon.
1 Help, Lord, for no one is faithful anymore;
those who are loyal have vanished from the human race.
2 Everyone lies to their neighbor;
they flatter with their lips
but harbor deception in their hearts.
The words of the wicked are pervasive; they run deep.
But when David encounters these wicked words, what does he do? What’s his initial inclination? What’s his go-to response?
David prays. He implores the Lord to act, to silence all flattering lips and every boastful tongue.
And in answer to the words of the wicked, we have:
The Words of the Lord
The Words of the Lord
Here in verse 5 is a word from the Lord Himself! Some think the words of verse 5 may have come to David through a prophet serving at the sanctuary, but we simply don’t know.
They may have been an assurance given directly to David as the prophet/psalmist. Whatever this may be, we know this is not David putting words in God’s mouth. If anything, this is God putting words in David’s mouth!
The Lord hears David’s prayer, his cry for help; the Lord knows the situation and He answers. He asserts Himself.
And so we hear what the Lord has to say:
5 “Because the poor are plundered and the needy groan,
I will now arise,” says the Lord.
“I will protect them from those who malign them.”
The Lord Yahweh (notice the word “LORD” in all caps), the covenant God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, speaks. He gives David an assurance of His action.
God will act. He will respond to the sufferings of His people—the poor, the afflicted, the needy. He’s going to protect them. In response to David’s cry of Help, Lord! the Lord replies, “Okay. I sure will. I’m on it.”
He even says He’ll do this “now”. “I will now arise.”
But this now may not be immediate or complete in the sense that God is going to, right then for David, take care of all the wicked once and for all.
God’s protection of His people is certain. But, what’s also certain is the wicked strutting about, continuing to do their thing, at least for a while.
The Lord speaks, and in that moment, David is reminded that the words of the Lord are flawless.
What David feels (all alone, deceived, lied to)—what David feels is no match for what David knows to be true about the Lord.
6 And the words of the Lord are flawless,
like silver purified in a crucible,
like gold refined seven times.
His words are flawless. They are not wicked words; they are pure words.
The contrast should grab us: after wading through the slick double-speak and deliberate deception of a lie-infatuated world, we come to a God who sees and hears; we come to a truth-speaking God.
What an immense relief to have a steadfast God in the midst of all the falsehoods and infidelities of life as we know it.
The words of the Lord are more powerful, more precious, more significant, and ultimately more permanent than any of the words of the wicked.
The Lord speaks, flawless words, pure words, words without equal. What He says, He will do. What He says to us through His Word is unequivocally true.
We must learn to listen to Him and not the words of the wicked or even the words of the well-meaning.
The words of the Lord are flawless, and only the words of the Lord are flawless.
Our Response / How to live in bad times
Our Response / How to live in bad times
After I graduated from High School and went to college, my parents grieved deeply for several years. They then decided that the only way they could possibly begin to fill the gap in their lives caused by the absence of their beloved and near-perfect son was to open their house to some foreign exchange students. There was no way to possibly fill my shoes, this they knew, but decided the exchange program was a good way to help out.
Their first exchange student was from Sweden. Linnea lived with them during the 2006-2007 school year. Over Christmas or Thanksgiving, I was at my parents and we all went to the basement to watch a movie. We watched some chick-flick, whatever was on TV, and at the end of the movie, Linnea said quietly, almost to herself: “Well, that was a very un-American ending.”
I asked her what she meant exactly and she said, “Well, it didn’t resolve itself. They didn’t end up happily-ever-after.”
Thinking through it, immediately after she said that and ever since as I’ve paid attention, we really, really like when everything wraps up nicely. We want resolution. We want the last note to be played to round out that chord. We want happily ever after.
Psalm 12, like so many other Psalms, doesn’t resolve. It doesn’t end up all neat and tidy. It’s not all happily ever after. And I’m glad it’s not. I’m glad it doesn’t resolve. Because it’s realistic.
The beauty of the Psalms is their realism. This is the cold, hard truth of the matter. This is the harsh reality:
7 You, Lord, will keep the needy safe
and will protect us forever from the wicked,
8 who freely strut about
when what is vile is honored by the human race.
The Lord preserves us (v. 7) and yet crud rules the day (v. 8).
This is the paradox we find ourselves in. This is our scenario. We live in a reality where both of these are true.
The Lord is going to keep the needy safe. The Lord is going to protect His people from the wicked. And still the wicked are going to continue strutting about freely.
This is the Christian experience. David is dealing with the Lord in the midst of a deeply depraved generation (what is vile is honored by the human race). David is alone; faithful people are few and far between.
But David is reminded by God that God will keep and protect His people.
In the war of the words—the words of the wicked versus the words of the Lord—David knows that God will have the last word, flawless and pure.
1 In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.
We know that what is will not always be. We know this because God has spoken to us, definitively showing Himself to be good and in control. Jesus came to us, defeated death and darkness, took our sins and made us holy. And we know, because He has told us, that Jesus is coming again. And on that Day every wrong will be made right, every wicked and deceitful word will be accounted for, and everything sad will be made untrue.
In the meantime, we respond like David. In these bad times, this is how we live:
We pray. David’s first instinct. “Help, Lord!” That’s not a bad prayer. In fact, it might be the best prayer we can pray in these dark, depraved times. "Help, Lord!”
We trust. This is the posture of faith. “You, Lord, will keep us safe and protect us.” We trust God, just like David did. Though he felt all alone, he knew he wasn’t alone; not really. For God, as He promises over and over, is with His people.
We persevere. By God’s grace, through faith in Jesus Christ, we will persevere. We will remain in this world, as salt and light, seasoning and shining for Him so that people would see our good works and praise our Father in Heaven.
Pray. Trust. Persevere. This is our response; this is how we live in this world.