Sermon Tone Analysis

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Sometimes, praise comes out of nowhere, spontaneous or planned, and it’ll burst forth in the midst of the mundane events of every day life.

Maybe you’re sitting at the mall, enjoying some Sbarros Pizza or some greasy Chinese food.

Maybe praise to God will burst forth while you’re at work, sitting at home, or hanging out with friends.

Or maybe, like David, you’ll find yourself at the end of a life full of walking with God in the ups and downs, through the good and bad, praising God all the same.

Psalm 18 is a psalm of praise.

It begins with praise and ends with praise.

It’s characterized by a deep love for God and a high view of God.

And it continues.

David’s praise just goes on and on and on and on.

David praises the Lord with a great claim and praises Him for a wide kingdom.

Psalm 18 shows us that praise is deep and high, great and wide.

And the praise goes on...

In the second half of this psalm, David makes an absolutely blatant claim of his own righteousness.

A lot of people bristle when they read this; it doesn’t seem to fit the theme of praise to God.

What it seems to be is David praising himself, David praising David.

But we know that’s not the case.

Look with me at verses 20-29:

Some of these phrases make me terribly uncomfortable.

I was raised, as were you, I’m sure, to avoid speaking highly of yourself.

It’s rude to be arrogant.

We shouldn’t brag on ourselves.

I never had the problem of being more athletic than anyone else, so I never was tempted to brag on myself where sports or physical events were concerned.

I couldn’t ever rub in how I schooled someone in basketball or ran circles around them on the football field.

That wasn’t me; it couldn’t be said, even if I was stretching the truth.

But academically, it’s always been a temptation.

I was even in the habit of correcting a few of my teachers; granted, they were wrong…but, all the same, they didn’t need a snot-nosed kid rubbing it their face.

I once told my high school government teacher that I was smarter than her.

Not good.

No one likes the person who brags.

So when David says things like: “The Lord has dealt with me according to my righteousness” or “I am not guilty of turning from my God” or “I have been blameless before him”, it’s as off-putting as a kid bragging about how smart they are or how good they are at this or that.

But David’s claims here can’t be read in light of our cultural understanding.

We can’t say, “Come on, David!

You’re being a poor sport.

Let’s try a little humility.”

David praises the Lord by making:

A Great Claim

What we find here in Psalm 18 (also, remember this is in 2 Samuel 22) is what we saw in Psalm 17: not boasts of self-righteousness, but professions of loyalty and overall obedience.

He’s not claiming sinlessness, but he is denying faithlessness.

He lives in obedience to God and lives under God’s Word.

He’s loyal to God.

And he’s obedient to Him.

If David was being boastful and self-promoting, some of what he says would be contradictory; some of what he says wouldn’t make any sense:

If David was just bragging and boasting, the Lord would bring him low.

But this isn’t the case; David isn’t bragging.

If David were bragging or thinking too highly of himself, he probably wouldn’t go on to proclaim that all his sufficiency comes from God:

David knows it’s God who keeps him and helps him and empowers him.

David is asserting his faithfulness and his loyalty, but also praising God’s faithfulness and God’s covenant loyalty (LORD=Yahweh, the Covenant-Keeping God).

Some Christians (myself included) are hesitant to make such claims of personal faithfulness: “The Lord has dealt with me according to my righteousness” or “I am not guilty of turning from my God” or “I have been blameless before him”.

If you’re hesitant, I’m tempted to say, “Rightly so.”

As Dale Ralph Davis puts it: “For by grace, we have become painfully aware that our own hearts are bottomless cesspools of iniquity; our minds and imaginations will ponder any filth; our motives we find are twisted and self-serving; what seems our most laudable designs are often quests for self-deification (making ourselves God).”

A regenerated person easily begins to see the pervasive and pathetic corruption of their own soul.

All this makes me weary of speaking about “my righteousness.”

It’s good we have Psalm 18.

It might bring a proper balance to our perspective.

And maybe it will make us more willing to acknowledge and live with yet another paradox.

Let’s illustrate with a few of our friends from the New Testament.

Do you remember what Paul had to say near the end of his life before Nero finished him off?

That’s a pretty blatant claim to righteousness.

Yet the same Paul had previously said this:

This is Paul the Christian speaking.

And he definitely says, “I am the worst,” not ‘I was’ or ‘I used to be’, but “I am the worst [sinner].”

Let’s think of Peter.

When Jesus told Peter to put out into deep water and let down his nets after a long, fish-less fishing trip and Peter ended up catching more fish than he knew what to do with, what did Peter say?

“I am a sinful man.”

Beside that verse, put Luke 18:28

Peter said this after Jesus’ encounter with the rich young ruler who couldn’t leave his wealth.

Peter says, “See, we left our homes and jobs and families to follow you.”

It’s matter-of-fact.

Two statements, very different; both true.

“I am a sinful man…and I’ve left all I had to follow you.”

The people of God throughout history live in a similar paradox.

God’s people know they aren’t perfect, but they can claim that they’re walking in basic 1st-2nd Commandment devotion (they have no other God and they are worshipping Him alone).

Both our sinfulness and our faithfulness may stand side-by-side.

It’s like the old spoof, the Celebrity Roast line, where I’d say something like: “Some of the finest people I’ve ever met are right here in Rich Hill, Missouri.

Unfortunately none of them are here with us this morning.”

Two affirmations, both true, but opposites of one another (and, of course, a joke).

Both our sinfulness and our faithfulness stand side-by-side.

If we are Christians, this is where we stand.

On the one hand, we admit how extensive and overwhelming our corruption is (scumbags); on the other, we contend that by grace we are still holding fast to and following our Savior (righteous).

No one really likes the thought of being a scumbag or being called a scumbag, so let’s call ourselves “Righteous Scumbags”.

“Scumbag” should keep us from pride; “Righteous” should save us from despair.

Along with David, we can make a great claim to righteousness without bragging, without being arrogant.

We rightly praise the Lord and the Holy Spirit for leading us in paths of righteousness.

What’s more, where our righteousness fails (and it will), where there are gaps in our righteousness (and there are; large gaps.

Our righteousness looks like a slice of Swiss cheese for all the holes)—where our righteousness fails, we have the perfect, spotless, matchless righteousness of Christ imputed to us, credited to our account.

We can claim a righteousness of our own and a righteousness that’s not our own.

By faith in Christ, we make this great claim as we praise our Lord and Savior.

>And the praise goes on:

None of this psalm is startling to you if you’re familiar with the overall narrative of the Bible, if you’ve read throughout the Old Testament about the coming kingdom.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

This is a song of David’s based on David’s experience with and relationship to the Lord.

We need to step into David’s sandals and go back to square one.

When David became king, it was a pretty pathetic start.

Saul had taken his own life and so David and his men moved to Hebron (south of Jerusalem).

There, in Hebron, the men anointed David as king over Judah.

At this point, it could be argued that the Lord Yahweh’s chosen king now reigns.

But it’s not much of a kingdom; David reigns over exactly one tribe.

In Hebron.

One measly little, backwater town.