Sermon Tone Analysis

Announcements

This Saturday, we’re going to have a booth set-up right outside our front door during the Philipsburg Revitalization Corporation’s Halloween parade and harvest event.

We’ll simply be passing out some candy, some popcorn, and hot apple cider, we do have some volunteers already, but we could use with a couple more people.

If you’re interested in helping, please contact Natalie ASAP.

Not this coming Sunday, but the following Sunday on November 7th, we have a quarterly business meeting and an annual budget meeting right after the Sunday morning service.

We have several things to vote on, so please plan on being there if you are a member, if you aren’t a member, but you’d like to see what all is going on in the church, you’re more than welcome to sit in during the meeting—all of our business meetings are open to the public.

Right after the business meeting on the 7th, we’re going to have a celebratory meal to celebrate our one-year mark as an official church—the church will provide the main dish for that meal, we still need some help with side-dishes, desserts, and drinks.

If you’re able to help with any of those, please check the sign-up sheet by the entrance.

Let me remind you to worship the LORD through your giving, in order to help you give we have three ways for you to do so: (1) you can give in-person at the offering box at the entrance.

If you write a check, please write it to “Grace & Peace” and if you give cash and you’d like a receipt, please slip it into an envelope with your name on it; if you’d prefer to give via debit, credit, or ACH transfer, you can do so by (2) texting 84321 with your $[amount] and by following the text prompts or by (3) visiting online at graceandpeacepa.com and selecting giving in the menu bar.

Everything that you give goes to the building up of our local church and the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Prayer of Repentance and Adoration

Sermon

Introduction

This evening, we’re finally back in the book of Psalms, which we started at the end of July, but took almost two months off so that I could utilize the time that I would normally spend preparing sermons on Wednesdays to get work done on this building—essentially, to help us move into this building sooner.

Now that we’re back to meeting on Wednesdays, I do want to just give a brief introductory message to remind everyone of what all we’re doing in the book of Psalms.

Much like our Sunday mornings series through the Gospel according to John, we’re working our way verse-by-verse, thought-by-thought through the book of Psalms.

There’s a little bit of a difference however, because unlike the book of John, the book of Psalms isn’t one cohesive, chronological historical account.

The book of Psalms isn’t a narrative, which means that each psalm is typically a stand-alone unit that was written at different time periods.

Each one of these psalms are a poem written by their own author, in their own life situations, with their own stylistic approach—some were written during particularly great times of the author’s life, some (like today’s) was written during a time of distress in the author’s life; which were then compiled by Ezra for the Israelites to be able to utilize them for worship.

I’m saying all this just to remind you of some details before we jump into Scripture this evening.

The psalms were written to be utilized by the Jewish people in a way that’s very similar to our modern-day hymnals, which means that each psalm is a poem that they would sing to music as they worshiped the LORD.

The book of Psalms includes some of the most familiar texts for Christians today and part of the reason for the familiarity is quite simple, the Psalms are highly relatable.

We relate to the psalms filled with sorrow and distress just as much as we relate to the psalms filled with praise, adoration, and worship of the LORD.

The Psalms speak of times of struggle concerning illness, pain, death, and suffering and they point the reader straight back to God each and every single time.

Of course, because of the familiarity that many Christians have with the Psalms, it can be easy to read and read the psalms and completely miss the point.

So, a big part of this series has been simply learning to read the psalms as they were meant to be understood, with the point of utilizing them for our own worship of the LORD.

If you have your Bible with you this evening, please turn it to Psalm 6. Psalm 6 is a short psalm written by David.

The superscription to the Psalm tells us that it was written “to the choirmaster: with stringed instruments; according to the sheminith.

A psalm of David.”

There’s very little I can actually say about the superscription, simply because it doesn’t give us much details.

The psalm is a psalm of David, but it doesn’t tell us when exactly he wrote the psalm.

Occasionally, through the details in a psalm, we can attempt to pinpoint a date during David’s life as to when it happened, but this is not the case of Psalm 6, we simply do not know.

What we do know is that David wrote this and he sent it to the choirmaster to be sung with stringed instruments (and let me just point out, that these were not violins and cellos, these were more likely lyres, which were like harps or lutes, which were like guitars).

And we know that it was to be sung according to the sheminith, but we actually don’t know what the sheminith was—it is a term that has been lost in history.

Most scholars believe that it is some sort of unknown musical term, probably concerning the meter or the melody of the song, but again, that’s just an educated guess, because we don’t know what the word means.

This is the first psalm in our series that fits the category of penitential psalms, which simply means that in this psalm, David acknowledges or confesses his sin before the LORD and he recognizes the need for God’s forgiveness.

Or in other words, this is an excellent psalm for someone who is being convicted of their sins because it shows us what it’s like to experience punishment for sin, what it’s like to struggle with conviction, and what the proper response to these issues are.

Read with me Psalm 6:1-10.

As we study this passage, we’re going to look at it in two sections Vs. 1-7, which is the longer section, is a series of prayers and a lament from David, which express his frustration, his struggle, and his agony in a time of great distress.

This should be very relatable, because often in times of great distress, we feel the same way.

As we work our way through these verses, we’ll explore a bit of how these ideas and feelings affect us; the second section Vs. 8-10, which is much shorter is David expressing assurance of God hearing his cry and accepting his prayer.

It’s a section of David expressing the simple truth that God will restore him, which is something we can all be confident in if we are truly believers in Jesus Christ.

This evening’s message will show us that it is perfectly acceptable to have emotions—you can feel distress, you can express weakness; it is acceptable to sob and experience grief.

Even when those emotions are due to your own sinful behavior.

And it will show us precisely what to do when we experience those sorts of emotions, when we are grieved, when we sob, when we are weak and distressed, we ought to cry out to the LORD, we ought to depend on the LORD, and we ought to have confidence in the LORD.

Prayer for Illumination

David’s Prayer for Relief and Deliverance from suffering (1-7)

Psalm 6 starts with David making a statement concerning God’s anger and wrath.

Vs. 1 says, “O LORD, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath.”

And in this first statement, we get a strong impression that the reason for whatever suffering David is going through is a result of rebuking and disciplining from the LORD, which brings up and excellent question.

Does God punish his people?

There are some today who would argue that since Jesus has taken all our sins—past, present, and future to the cross and those sins have been taken care of in our justification, that God no longer punishes sin.

And that argument is true in one sense alone—it is true to say that a believer will no longer face eternal punishment for his sin, meaning that you, if you believe, will not experience hell due to your sin.

However it isn’t completely accurate to state that God doesn’t punish sin on this side of eternity when it comes to believers and even just a cursory look throughout the Bible shows us this.

We could look at Proverbs 3:11-12, in which Solomon tells his son to “not despise the LORD’s discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the LORD reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.”

The author of Hebrews quotes this Proverb and continues in Hebrews 12:7-8, “It is for discipline that you have to endure.

God is treating you as sons.

For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?

If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.”

The authors of Proverbs and Hebrews tells us that God disciplines his children and that if you don’t experience God’s discipline, you aren’t actually his child.

James 1:2-4 tells us to expect hardship in life because “the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.

And . . .

steadfastness [when it has] its full effect” will make you “perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

Part of those hardships include being disciplined by the LORD for your sins.

But let me also say that not all consequences of sin are the discipline of the LORD.

Just because you’re facing some sort of tremendous difficulty, doesn’t necessarily mean that the LORD is disciplining you.

We lived in a sin-cursed world, which means that on occasion, life is simply terrible, but what James 1:2-4 tells us is that even when life is terrible, God will still utilize those hardships to make you perfect and complete if you endure in faith.

So yes, hardships in life can be God’s discipline because God does discipline his own people when they sin, but that isn’t always the case (consider Job).

Regardless of the reasoning for the suffering, God is still sovereign and he’s utilizing it to help you mature spiritually.

David prays to the LORD and he asks the LORD not to rebuke him in his anger nor discipline him in his wrath, but rather Vs. 2, “Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am languishing; heal me, O LORD, for my bones are troubled.”

It’s clear that David is experiencing some sort of distress, but we’re not exactly told what that distress is, it seems to be some sort of physical ailment (as seen in the phrase, “heal me, for my bones are troubled.”)

This could be tremendous illness or it could be some other affliction, but whatever this affliction is, it brought to his mind the remembrance of his sin; and he took the suffering that he was experiencing as part of God’s displeasure against him.

Or in other words, this hardship in life is causing him to reflect on his sins, which is a proper response to hardships in life.

Often, our tendency during hardship is to sulk or get bitter and than blame other people and God (or really blame everyone except for ourselves), when we really should utilize each hardship in our life to cause us to reflect to be sure that we aren’t in any sin that is causing us to experience consequences.

David is doing this in Vs. 1-3, “O LORD, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath.”

The LORD wouldn’t rebuke nor discipline David unless he was in sin.

Just like the LORD wouldn’t rebuke or discipline you unless you were in sin—very rare are the times when we, like Job are experiencing calamity simply due to the consequences of other people’s sins—it’s mostly due to our own sins.

David reflects on his own spiritual condition, and he cries out for the mercy of God.

In the midst of tremendous suffering, David expresses his emotional state and he cries out to God and this crying out to God is in a real, emotional, and authentic way.

He doesn’t try to make his prayer eloquent or pompous, he simply says how he feels and he asks for God’s mercy.

We can see David’s authenticity and lack of eloquence in Vs. 3, “My soul is greatly troubled.

But you, O LORD—how long?”

And that authenticity and lack of eloquence is really in the incomplete nature of what he says here.

“My soul is greatly troubled.

But You, O LORD—how long?” Allen Ross suggests that this shows a level of intense frustration and a longing for God’s healing, which I think is completely relatable to anyone who has experienced great distress in life.

Considering that this is an expression of intense frustration with the suffering that he’s experiencing, the almost disjointed nature of the verse makes sense.

He starts off by saying “But you, O LORD” as if he’s about to express another statement and pauses that statement by simply crying out “How long?”

You can almost finish that question, “how long will I suffer?”

It’s a physical ailment so, “how long will I ache?” “How long will this last?”

Which is actually a question that is expressed through several different psalms:

Psalm 13:1-2, “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heard . . .

How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?”

Psalm 79 and 80 both express that same question in concern with God’s anger towards sin, “How long will you be angry with your people?”

Psalm 94, “How long will the wicked exalt?”

How long will the wicked seem to prosper?

It’s an expression of suffering, but it’s also an expression of longing for something better; and we see what that better thing is in Vs. 4-5.

Vs. 4, continues “Turn, O LORD, deliver my life; save me for the sake of your steadfast love.

For in death there is no remembrance oF you; in Sheol who will give you praise?”