Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

<<READ Ps 24>>

Week 3 in Advent/Christmas Series: Your King Has Come - looking at texts that show us how Jesus came in fulfillment of all of God’s promises to rescue the world from sin & death.

Structure - 3 stanzas (vv1-2, 3-6, 7-10).

Begins & ends w/ YHWH // fourfold question: Who can ascend, who shall stand, who is this King of Glory (twice)?

//

The first stanza emphasizes the LORD’s sovereignty as Creator, and the last stanza emphasizes His glory and might.

In the middle, we have the questions: Who can go up the hill & dwell with Him?

The answers come in the middle of the Psalm

Week 3 in Advent/Christmas Series: Your King Has Come - looking at texts that show us how Jesus came in fulfillment of all of God’s promises to rescue the world from sin & death.

Dec 1, read from , God’s promise that the Messiah, the King, would come humbly, mounted on a donkey, righteous and bringing salvation with him.

And preached from - God’s promise that on the mountain He would give us an eternal feast and He would swallow up death forever.

Last week, read from and God’s promise, fulfilled in Jesus, that God Himself would dwell with us, as the Word made Flesh, and Pastor Steve showed us from that Jesus, the Son of Man and the Son of God, gives us hope, even when it seems like the kingdoms of this world are triumphing, because God, the Ancient of Days, has promised to give the Kingdom to His people.

Today, with , in the coming of our King, we are promised victory.

In , which we heard earlier in the service, we find out that righteousness and salvation are His to give.

And says that God has promised to give them to those who seek His face.

CONTEXT

David wrote in 3 stanzas, vv1-2, 3-6, 7-10.

The Psalm doesn’t tell us when David wrote it, but it’s pretty clear that he’s singing about when he brought the Ark into Jerusalem, and looking forward to the day when the LORD would come into Jerusalem to bring salvation to the world.

Story starts way back in .

Long before David, before King Saul, the Ark - the sign and symbol of the LORD’s presence & covenant w/ Israel, was taken by the Philistines in battle.

And they took it back to their city, Ashdod, and for the next 7 months, the Philistines were hit by disaster after disaster.

Finally, they had enough of the plagues that had struck them, and they sent the Ark back to Israel.

But instead of bringing it to Jerusalem, where the LORD had determined His Name should dwell, for the next 20 years, the Israelites kept the Ark in a town called Kiriath Jearim.

But now, after David was confirmed as the King, the LORD led Israel to new victories over the Philistines and in and , we read that David brings the Ark to its home.

, (cf. , )

The Ark - the sign and symbol of the LORD’s presence & covenant w/ Israel

Victory over Philistines - the LORD victorious over Israel’s enemies

As the Ark made the ascent up to Jerusalem, David rejoiced and worshiped God the whole way.

And

2 sam 6:14-15

David leapt and danced in the equivalent of his underwear.

Why in the world did he do that?

David, the King of Israel, the champion who slew Goliath, stripped down and made himself undignified as if to point towards heaven and say <<POINT>>, “He’s the real King.

He gets all the glory.”

2 sam 6.17

2 sam 6.

2 sam 6:

begins and ends with the fundamental reality that the LORD reigns.

It leaves no question who David thinks is the King of Glory who deserves all praise.

And it raises a question:

In , David’s songs of praise hearken back to God’s covenant with Abraham and how He brought Israel out of Egypt & into the Promised Land

the Holy Spirit, who carried David along as he wrote,

In English, the basic element in poetry usually - lines of equal length, with rhyming words @ end.

More advanced poetry develops more complicated rules of rhyming, similar sounding words, riffing on ideas, etc.

Question: What does God’s kingship mean for us?

In Hebrew, the basic element in poetry is parallelism - the repetition of words, ideas, sounds, imagery in complex relationships.

Often two lines seem to say the same thing, requires time to wrestle w/ it.

(Example?

v7?)

Hebrew poetry is famous for its brevity.

An idea that takes 9 words in English might only require 3 words in Hebrew, and it’s the reader’s job to wrestle with just how to put the meaning together.

In , the key idea is the Kingship of God.

But the thing that held the psalm together poetically was a repetition of a cluster of sounds - the Hebrew ear hears the pleasing echoes of similar-sounding words from verses 4-9 - you might have noticed in your English Bible that there will often be footnotes that say things like “Such-and-such name sounds like the Hebrew for this”.

<<POINT OR REMOVE>>

Maybe you can hear it if I try to read verse 4 in Hebrew -

lo-nasa lashav nafshi velo nishba lemirmah

Yisa berachah me-et Adonai utsedaQAH

Proposition: Rejoice!

Your King is mighty to save!

Question:

I. Bow to the sovereign King who created (vv1-2)

<<READ vv1-2>>

Note the polemical response to both Egyptian & Canaanite religion - the whole earth is the LORD’s

Note the polemical response to both Egyptian & Canaanite religion - the whole earth is the LORD’s

<<READ vv1-2>>

These words stand in absolute opposition to the deep-seated rebellion of sinful humanity.

David’s poetry here uses parallel lines to advance his thoughts.

He starts with the earth and its fulness, and then the world and is inhabitants.

And in verse 2, he uses synonyms - founding and establishing.

Here in these two short verses, David aims five smooth stones at every rebellion against God.

First, he says that all these things belong to the LORD.

In Hebrew, the title of the Psalm is, “Of David, a Psalm,” and then immediately after that David writes in Hebrew, “Of the LORD, the earth.”

In the same way that this Psalm belongs to David, because he wrote it, the world belongs to the LORD.

He spoke it into being.

Second, he says “the fullness” of the earth belongs to the LORD.

This word means the full produce, the richness, the full wonderful extent of a thing.

When I was an elementary school kid, in music class, we spent a lot of time singing patriotic songs, and two that I remember were “This land is your land,” and “America the beautiful.”

We sang about sea to shining sea, and amber waves of grain, and purple mountains majesty.

Also the most patriotic song of all time, Texas Our Texas.

David says that all of the good things that you see, all of the things to which you lay a claim, the fullness of the world belongs to God.

Third, he switches to another word for “world,” and this time he says “and those who dwell therein.”

This is where things really get spicy.

The people belong to Him, from toe to head.

In the same way that the Psalm belongs to David, David belongs to God.

And so do you.

Because He spoke you into being.

And that means He is the one who says what you mean.

Fourth, David says that the LORD established and founded the world.

Like a king who establishes a kingdom, the LORD is the one who reigns.

And fifth, He did so upon the seas and upon the rivers.

He actually kills two birds with this fifth stone.

First, he points us back to , where God spoke and gathered the seas together so the dry land would appear.

In other words, God governs His world and always has.

He is not far from us, not distant from us.

He is intimately involved in His world.

This also happens to be a big thumb in the eye of all the false Canaanite religions that surrounded Israel, because they all believed that the seas and rivers were powerful forces under the authority of different gods, and David says the seas and rivers and land all belong to the LORD, and when He said “let the dry land appear,” there was no power or authority that could stand against Him.

In fact,

APPLY:

As we consider this first stanza, and the question, “What does God’s kingship mean for us?”, as the Creator, He is our rightful King.

As