Sermon Tone Analysis

Big Idea:

Tension: How do God’s people cope with the evil of the world?

Resolution: By identifying it as sin and trusting in God’s gracious salvation.

Exegetical Idea: God’s people cope with evil by identifying it as sin and trusting in God’s gracious salvation.

Theological Idea: Christians in cope with evil by identifying it as sin and trusting that God saves through Christ.

Homiletical Idea: We cope with evil by calling it sin and trusting in Christ’s salvation.

Introduction

J.D. Vance’s bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy tells the story of his family moving from the mountains of Kentucky to his home in the factory town of Middletown, Ohio.

There, Vance tells the tragic story of how he grew up with a drug addicted mother who kept moving from man to man, continually uprooting him and his sister.

He tells the story of how she took advantage of him and continued to ask for money only to spend it all on drugs.

As you read the story, there should be this agony welling up inside of you, this sense that you get that this is not the way that things are supposed to be.

And Vance’s story is not unique.

We all know many people who grew up in families that were abusive.

Or we have a friend who has betrayed us.

Or someone that we know has been left destitute bby the people that they cared abbout the most.

There are dark things that human beings do to one another.

Maybe you grew up in a situation like that, where someone that you knew and loved, someone who was supposed to protect you, someone who was supposed to take care of you, let you down and abandoned you.

When we look at our culture, at the society that we live in, and we see all the evil around us, how are we supposed to cope with it?

How do we make sense of all the brokenness in our world?

How do we make sense of all the hurt that we see.

How do we make sense of the evil that we have done to each other/?

How do we cope with the evil of this world?

Thankfully, the Psalms tell us how to do that.

And the Psalms give us two tools for coping with the evil in our lives and the evil in our world.

We cope with the evil in this world by calling it sin and by trusting in Christ’s salvation.

Let’s start with what it means to call evil, sin.

Calling it sin

The Fool: Look in vs. 1.

The Psalmist says that the “fool” says in his heart.

Now, that is the Hebrew word Nabal.

And there is actually someone named “Nabal” that David knew, and you can read about Nabal in .

Now, Nabal was a rich man, whose farmers were out in the fields.

And David and his men were travelling through that area and they saw Nabal’s men, and they were weak and vulnerable, so David and his men stayed with Nabbal’s shepherds and protected him.

So later on, David and his men were hungry and they were travelling through close to Nabal’s estate, and David sent a message asking Nabal for help.

And Nabal basically told him to get lost.

Now, you can read aobut the rest of that in and what happened after that.

What is interesting for us, is that David viewed Nabal as the epitome of the fool, the epitome of the unjust person.

He felt that he was someone who was a stereotypical wicked person.

So when David is writing this, and he says that “the fool” he is saying, “Nabal, that foolish person, people like him.”

Practical Atheism: And what the foolish person is, is he is a practical atheist.

Now you’ll notice that David describes the fool as one who says in his heart, “there is no God.”

Now, maybe the foolish person wouldn’t come right out and say it, maybe they would actually say the opposite, but in his heart, he says ,”there is no God.”

Maybe you have known somebody like this, who maye they say they’re a Christian, they say that they love Jesus, but when you look at their life, they do not walk according to God’s ways, they do not walk in line with Jesus, they do not follow him.

Maybe with their mouths they say they believe in God, but in their hearts, they say, “there is no God.”

They deny that God is holy, they deny that God is just, they deny that God is righteous.

And of course, as we see thorughout vs. 1, that leads to this progression.

So first they say in their heart there is no God, ut then they become “corrupt.”

It says they do “abominable deeds.”

Now, this word, “abominabble deeds” is used elsewhere to describe child sacrifice and all kinds of horrific things.

So you see how simply this small decision to say, “God does not exist” in the ehart snowballs into the worst kinds of deeds imaginable.

yet, the wickedness is not over, because the first verse ends by saying, “there is not one who does good.”

And what he means by that, I think, is that these people who have these abominabble deeds in them no longer do good at all.

They walk away from good.

They lose all sense of morality.

They lose all sense of right and wrong.

They don’t want to walk righteously.

Some of you need to learn how to talk this way: Now, here is what I want to say.

We need to learn how to do what David does here.

Because David looks at this injustice that happens to him, he looks at this person who wrongs him, and he is willing to call it what it is: sin.

We are so hesitant today to call sin sin.

And the result is that we have lost the aiblity to understand and describe the evil that we have experienced.

Some of you have experienced, horrific, awful, destructive things.

Someone you trusted has harmed you, has violently hurt you, has betrayed you and broken your trust.

And our society would try to tell you that its culture, or that its just media exposure or give you some other small explanation.

And without denying the nugget of truth in some of those, we need to look abbuse in its eyes and call it what it is: sin.

Listen, it’s not okay.

It’s not just something that happened.

THis person sinned.

They sinned against you.

It was wicked.

It was evil.

It was destructive.

It hurt you.

We need to learn how to do what David is, to analyzie it.

This is one of the hardest things that we have to do, but it is so important.

When we feel like someoen has hurt us, we need to look at what they did, and understand that, at least in some small way, they sinned against us.

If we never learn how to do that, then we will always be looking for an explanation that never quite matches up.

But if we see that people are sinners, then we come to a much more profound understanding of what we’ve had to experience.

The Lord looks down: Of course, while they are pretending in their hearts that God does not exist, God is watching them.

It says in vs. 2 that the Lord looks down on teh chidlren of man to see if there are any who unerstand who seek after God.” God is looking down to see if anyone gets it, if anyone is paying attention, if anyone is walking righteously.

The word here for “watch” kind of comes from this word for “rocky pinnacle.”

So you can imagine this picture of a hawk or an eagle looking down on the desert landscape from the cliffs abbove, well that is the picture of God looking down at man.

God is looking down like an eagle watching the desert floor to see if there is anyone who is not like this, anyone who does not say that he has done evil.

He is up high, and he is looking down to see if there is anyone who is walking according to his ways.

They have all turned aside.... Now, what the Lord sees is highly disappointing.

Becauyse there is nobody that he can find who walks according to his ways.

Nobody who seeks him.

Nobody who does what is right.

Nobody who says no to what is wrong.

Now this word for “corrupt” is like sour milk.

So if you leave milk for too long it sours, well if someone allows this unbelief to stir in their hearts for too long, it corrupts them.

And you’ll notice in vs. 3 that there is nobody who does what is good.

That is repeated from vs. 1, but it is used to include all of mankind.

Nobody walks according to God’s ways.

Nobody seeks him.

“Not even one.”

All the evildooers....

In fact, in vs. 4, he will call them “evildoers”.

These are people who eat up God’s people, who eat up any righteous people like bread.

They have no knowledge, and not only do they say with their hearts that there is no God, ut they say with their mouths that they will not call upon the Lord.