Sermon Tone Analysis

Fear the Lord and Taste of His Goodness

Introduction

Good evening, brothers.

Please turn with me to .

While you’re turning there, I just want to give you a brief background on before we read it together.

Background

If you know much about poetry, is an acrostic psalm.

That is, the psalm is written in such a way that each verse begins with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

The English parallel would be as if the verses in the Psalm started with A, B, C, D and so forth until the end of the alphabet.

That’s important to know because, at times, the language of an acrostic psalm may seem a bit odd or repetitious and there may not be a single progression of thought throughout the Psalm but, for many such Psalms, and such is the case for , there may be multiple themes or thoughts woven together.

For , those themes are thanksgiving for God’s deliverance and wisdom in the fear of the Lord.

Another important thing to know is that this Psalm was written after an actual historical event in David’s life.

Notice the title of the Psalm:

“Of David, when he changed his behavior before Abimelech, so that he drove him out, and he went away.”

We find this Psalm rooted in .

David, who is to eventually be God’s anointed king over Israel, hasn’t yet risen to the throne at this point in his life.

At this point, Saul is king over Israel and he is currently intending to take David’s life.

He sends men to find David so he can kill him.

Of David, when he changed his behavior before Abimelech, so that he drove him out, and he went away.

But David, fleeing from Saul, came to Achish the king of Gath, whom this psalm refers to as Abimelech which is just a title for a Philistine king such as Pharaoh of the Egyptians.

And, as we see in this passage in 1 Samuel:

"the servants of Achish said to him, “Is not this David the king of the land?

Did they not sing to one another of him in dances,

‘Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands’?”

and David his ten thousands’?”

Now, this was the song that Israelites sang after David returned from defeating Goliath, the Philistine of Gath, a few chapters earlier.

So, here David is alone in the Philistine city of Gath, in front of the king, and his Achish’s servant’s mistakenly call him the “king of the land” and reminded him that David killed tens of thousands of his people, so the folk song goes.

Understandably, the text says that “David took these words to heart and was much afraid of Achish the king of Gath.”

What’s interesting, here, is that earlier in —in fact, in the verses immediately preceding this account with Achish—David, who in his hasty flight from Saul was without a weapon, obtains the sword of Goliath that he had previously given to a priest in a city he just came from.

So, I just imagine this scene from the Hobbit where Thorin and the dwarves are taken captive into the goblin kingdom and are taken in front of the Goblin King.

The king tells his servants, “Don’t just stand there, search them!

Every cleft, every crevice!” and then, after seeing a sword on the ground, the king retreats in fear, saying, “I know that sword!

It is the goblin-cleaver!”

And everything gets crazy, Gandalf comes, and the dwarves escape.

And David took these words to heart and was much afraid of Achish the king of Gath.”

So, I just imagine this scene from the Hobbit where Thorin and the dwarves are taken captive into the goblin kingdom and are taken in front of the Goblin King.

The king tells his servants, “Don’t just stand there, search them!

Every cleft, every crevice!” and then, after seeing a sword on the ground, the king retreats in fear, saying, “I know that sword!

It is the goblin-cleaver!”

And everything gets crazy, Gandalf comes, and the dwarves escape.

So, I just imagine David, being backed into this corner and confronted in front of the Philistine king and his servants, whips out his sword of Goliath, strikes fear in all the Philistines, and then escapes.

That would be awesome.

So, I just imagine David, being backed into this corner and confronted in front of the Philistine king and his servants, whips out his sword of Goliath, strikes fear in all the Philistines, and then escapes.

That would be awesome.

Yet, David has a different idea.

He pretends to be insane.

He starts going around, graffitiing their gates, and letting spit just run down his beard.

the Philistine city where Goliath came from whom he just killed four chapters earlier.

David’s fleeing from Saul.

In David’s flight from Saul, he came to Achish king of Gath (23 mi.

SW of Nob).

His servants mistakenly called him “the king of the land” and heard the song: saul thousands, david ten thousands.

So, out of fear , David pretended to be insane in front of Achish the king of Gath.

After he was driven away—and, thus, saved out of his hand by the Lord—he sings this song of praise!

This is a Psalm of deliverance.

This is important to know since this theme of deliverance pops up time and time again throughout the Psalm.

Eventually, the king says, “ Behold, you see the man is mad.

Why then have you brought him to me? Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this fellow to behave as a madman in my presence?

Shall this fellow come into my house?”

And he sends him away.

Hey, it worked, I guess.

He reached the same goal, which was to escape.

So, here we are, then in .

Rather than boasting about outsmarting the Philistines, about escaping death from Saul, etc. David praises the Lord.

Why?

Because he recognizes that he was saved out the hands of these men by the Lord Himself.

He was delivered by the Lord.

How

And so, he sings this song of praise, this psalm of deliverance.

Let’s hear from the Word of the Lord:

Read .

I went back and forth last night on whether I should have titled this sermon “The Life of the Redeemed,” and I very well could have—I just want to be careful about making one-to one applications from everything included in this text, but what we see in this Psalm is the response of one who has experienced God’s deliverance.

This is God’s Word.

Thanks be to God.

Pray

I went back and forth last night on whether I should have titled this sermon “The Life of the Redeemed” and then made the main points application-driven based on the actions of the delivered one in this very well could have—I just want to be careful about making one-to one applications from everything included in this text, but what we see in this Psalm is the response of one who has experienced God’s deliverance.

Main Idea:

I understand the Psalm to be divided into two parts:

I understand the Psalm to be divided into two parts:

- vs. 1–10: which deal primarily with David praising God for His deliverance and inviting others to join him in that praise and

- vs. 11–22: which deal with instruction in the fear of the Lord.

Spurgeon calls the first part a hymn and the second part a sermon.

Thus, my two main points are:

Taste and See that the Lord is Good (v.