Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

Do you ever feel like God doesn’t hear you when you pray?

Do you have prayers that you have been praying for a while and it seems like God isn’t listening?

We know that God’s timing is not our timing, and that his ways are not our ways, but it is still frustrating.

The Psalms provide us with many wonderful examples of prayer and praise.

Psalm 28 in particular is one of my favorite.

Verse 7 is one of my personal go to reminders that the Lord is with me, working for me.

What he wants from me is my praise and adoration, especially in difficult circumstances.

This Psalm can be broken into 4 stanzas.

David’s prayer to be heard.

Prayer for justice.

Prayer of praise.

Prayer for the nation.

Pray to be heard.

1-2

How often do you really call out to the Lord?

What sorts of situations cause you to pray?

We know it is good to pray frequently and pray often, we looked at some of that together as we walked through Colossians together.

But there are also times in our lives that really drive us to seek the Lord.

Those situations are often ones involving loss of some sort.

David begins his prayer here in Psalm 28 with an attitude of desperation.

He is desperately seeking, desperately praying to the Lord.

Beginning in confidence.

In the opening of his request, he is still stating his confidence in God, To you, O Lord, I call; my rock.

The beginning of this Psalm shows David’s belief in the Lord as his protector, defender, refuge.

Opening in confidence, he is expecting a response from the Lord.

Deaf and Silent

This is apparently something David has already been praying about.

His plea is that the Lord not be deaf or silent on his account.

David’s fear is that God will remain silent.

If God remains silent, he fears the result.

Be not deaf to me, lest, if you be silent to me, I become like those who go down to the pit.

Pit here is uses as a synonym for Sheol.

As we read scripture we see mention of Sheol in a number of other places.

Psalm 30 is one example.

Sheol is also a synonym for grave and death.

There is judgment implied as well.

David is likely not referring to his own death here because of how the sentence is written.

He is more likely referring to his worth.

God, I have confidence in you because I know that if I don’t have you, I am in no better a position than those who don’t have a relationship with you.

Without hearing your Word O Lord, I am perishing, I am in a position of judgment and death.

Have you ever thought of your life in those terms?

As Christians we speak about the spiritual life, and how much more important it is than our mere physical reality.

We quote Mt. 16:26

But if the only way life is received, sustained, and preserved is by hearing the words of God, shouldn’t we be much more serious about developing and growing our relationships with God?

Wouldn’t we study our Bibles more?

Wouldn’t we pray more?

Wouldn’t we be always crying out to him in prayer and seeking his face regularly through the means He has given us?

I am as guilty of this as anyone else.

All to often the business of life gets in our way.

We might imagine it this way.

David uses the word pit for a reason.

Imagine yourself on the edge of a great pit.

Maybe you have seen a picture of one of those large sinkholes, black, dark, ominous at the bottom.

You are on the edge, about to topple in to certain death.

Wouldn’t you cry out for help in that circumstance.

If you knew someone was near who could help you, wouldn’t you keep calling until they did?

Hear the voice of my pleas for mercy, when I cry to you for help!

God is the one who is near, he is the one who hears our pleas for mercy, when we cry for help.

Even when we feel or think he is not acting, we must trust and believe that He is.

The attitude we have is an important one.

David is not praying arrogantly or belligerently, as if God was required to do something for him.

Remember, God is no man’s debtor, he owes nothing.

David’s plea, and ours as well, must be one of mercy.

David lifting up his hands toward God’s “Most Holy Place.”

This refers to the innermost part of the tabernacle or temple enclosure, where the Ark of the Covenant rested.

It was there where the blood sacrifices were offered for the nation’s sin on the annual Day of Atonement.

So when David addresses his appeal toward God’s Most Holy Place he is telling God that he is coming on the basis of the shed blood, a sinner who knows that his sin must be atoned for before he can approach the Almighty.

This is the way the tax collector approached in Jesus parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18

We do good to remember the Canaanite woman as well in Mt. 15

Charles Spurgeon captured something of this model approach to God when he wrote, “We stretch out empty hands, for we are beggars; we lift them up, for we seek heavenly supplies; we lift them towards the mercy seat of Jesus, for there our expectation dwells.

Especially when we least feel like it, our prayer must be on the basis of what Jesus has done for us.

Pray because God is just.

3-5

In verses 3-5 David expresses his thoughts, his feelings.

David asks that he not be treated the same as the wicked.

He describes them as people who put on a face of friendliness, but really plot evil against them.

David is not taking upon himself to hurt these wicked evil people, but is turning to God.

The one true judge.

He believes as in verse 26 of the proverb that they will be exposed.

He asks God to judge the wicked.

This can be difficult for us, especially in our non-judgmental culture today.

We also think of Jesus teaching, not to judge others, lest we be judged, and to pray as Jesus did, Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.

David is not self righteous in these statements though.

David is approaching God on the basis of his own sinfulness.

David’s request is that he not be drug along with those wicked people.

That they would not influence him away from his faith and trust in the Lord.

David knows that he is capable of acting in the same manner as the wicked he speaks of.

If we were to put it into our own terms, what we see David requesting in these verses is for God to prove that crime doesn’t pay.

The way of the ungodly can’t succeed.

He is not praying for final judgment, but that they will get what they deserve.

When we think of wages as being tied to performance, in this case we know the quality of their work, it is in God’s hands to pay them.

His justification for this prayer is because these evil doers he speaks of have a complete and utter disregard for God and His works.

They have completely rejected God.

The response, as with the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, that they will be torn down and never return to their former status.

Built up no more.

It is hard for us today when we see injustice in the world isn’t it.

Especially if that injustice is directed towards us, or directly effects us.

It is all the more important for us to pray, especially when we don’t feel like.

To pray to God, to voice to Him what is on our hearts, on our minds.

We ought to pray when we don’t understand a situation.

When we don’t understand what is going on inside of us.