Sermon Tone Analysis

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).

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;

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:

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:

The prophet Micah says this as he speaks of Israel’s misery:

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

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.

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

Here in verse 5 is a word from the Lord Himself!