Sermon Tone Analysis

Announcements

This Sunday, November 7th, we have several events going on that I want to be sure that you’re aware of:

Of course, we have our normal worship service on Sunday morning at 10:30am, here in the auditorium.

We do have a quarterly and annual business meeting right after the service on Sunday morning.

This meeting has a few items that require voting, so if you’re a member, please plan to be there this Sunday in order to vote.

I’m hoping that this meeting will last no longer than 25-30 minutes.

If you aren’t a member, please feel free to stick around during that meeting, all of our business meetings are open to the public, so if you have any interest in the church’s comings and goings, please feel free to stick around.

After the meeting, we’ll have a meal in the Activity Room.

This meal is to celebrate our one-year anniversary as a church.

There is a sign-up sheet available at the entrance for those of you that would still like to sign up to bring food, but even if you aren’t able to sign up tonight, but still want to bring food, please feel free to do so.

As always, let me remind you to continue worshiping the LORD through your giving.

To help you give, we have three ways for you to do so: (1) in-person giving can be done at the offering box in the front of the room.

If you give a check, please write it to Grace and Peace and if you give cash and would like a receipt, please stick it in an envelope with your name written on it; debit, credit, and ACH transfers can be done either by (2) texting 84321 with your $[amount] and following the text prompts or (3) by visiting us 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

Our passage for this evening’s message is Psalm 7, which is a Psalm of David.

As you turn there, I’m going to give you just a little bit of background information concerning this psalm based on the superscription of the text.

Psalm 7 tells us this in the superscription, “A shiggaion of David, which he sang to the LORD concerning the words of Cush, a Benjaminite,” which despite how much detail is in that sentence, we know very little of what the details mean.

Let me explain:

The Bible says that this is a Shiggaion, but much like the words sheminith from Psalm 6, and Selah, which is spread throughout the book of psalms, we actually have no idea what a Shiggaion is.

The most common suggestion is that it, like sheminith is some sort of musical term that was utilized during the years of Ezra who remember, compiled the book of Psalms.

The other suggestion, from Allen Ross is that it “may mean a poem written with intense feeling,” but I’m more inclined to believe that shiggaion is a musical term because most of the psalms were written with intense feelings.

We’re told that this is a psalm of David, “which he sang to the LORD concerning the words of Cush, a Benjaminite.”

And you’d think that with the name of the person that this psalm concerns, that we would be able to dig up some additional details, but beyond knowing that this person’s name was Cush and that he was of the tribe of Benjamin, we have no clue who he is and we have no clue what exactly the events surrounding Psalm 7 are because this is very literally, the only time that Cush the Benjaminite is mentioned in the Bible.

Reading the psalm critically with some discernment we can deduce that Cush had made some accusations against David that were completely false, but caused people to want to pursue him and tear him apart.

Essentially, we can determine that someone was gossiping or bearing false witness against David, which resulted in other people reacting negatively toward David; and in the midst of these false accusations David cries out to the LORD.

Read with me Psalm 7 and I’ll explain how we’ll break down the passage:

As we study this psalm, we’re going to split it into two primary sections: (1) Vs. 1-7 is David’s Prayer for Deliverance, and in his prayer, he cries out to the LORD as his refuge and he does something bold in the fact that he tells God that if he is guilty of sin to “let the enemy pursue my soul and take it,” which is definitely a protestation of his innocence.

He asks the LORD to vindicate him.

In (2) Vs.

10-17 is David’s Description of God’s Justice, David essentially gives reasons as to why he thinks God should vindicate him or deliver him and it’s all based on God’s justness or God’s justice.

Or in other words, because God is just, David has prayed for God to vindicate him and because God is just, David will thank him and praise him.

This sermon will teach us how to pray when we feel wrongly or falsely accused of sin and it’ll teach us of God’s just character.

Prayer for Illumination

David’s Prayer for Deliverance (1-7)

This psalm of David starts very simply with a prayer for God’s intervention.

Vs. 1-2 is David very simply asking God to step in and help him, “O LORD my God, in you do I take refuge; save me from all my pursuers and deliver me, lest like a lion they tear my soul apart, rending it in pieces, with none to deliver.”

Much like other psalms, I do want to point out David’s understand of who God is and who he is in God.

The phrase, “O LORD my God” in Hebrew is literally Yahweh ʾǎnî elohim.

Or put differently, David starts by giving the personal name of God—Yahweh, which shows a personal relationship with the one he speaks of; and then he says ʾǎnî elohim or “my God,” which relates how he views Yahweh in that relationship.

Yahweh speaks of a personal relationship, but ʾǎnî elohim speaks of submission.

In some ways, you could say, “Yahweh, you are my God,” which David does make that explicit statement in Psalm 63, “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you.”

In Psalm 7:1 and Vs. 3, David utilizes this phrase “O LORD my God,” to express his relationship with the LORD and his submission to the LORD.

David says, “in you do I take refuge; save me from all my pursuers and deliver me.”

He’s speaking, of course, of God and he states that he takes refuge in him.

To take refuge in something means to utilize something for shelter (e.g., you can take refuge in a building during a storm), but to take refuge in someone is a little more figurative.

You’re typically not going to ask someone to stand over you so that you can hide underneath them for shelter.

But you might ask someone to protect you in other ways.

Andrew Smith, “One can take refuge in mighty nations or in foreign gods; the righteous, however, take refuge in Yahweh.”

David goes to the LORD for protection and he prays for the LORD to “save [him] from all [his] pursuers and deliver [him].”

David utilizes vivid imagery to describe how this attack is happening.

He calls those that are against him as pursuers, which involves an intentionality, they are intentionally chasing him; and his prayer for God to save him and deliver him implies that David cannot get away from them on his own.

In fact, David describes this attack in a devastating way, “Save me” and “deliver me” “lest like a lion they tear my soul apart, rending it in pieces, with none to deliver.”

Remember, this is poetry and in poetry it is common to utilize figurative, colorful imagery to paint a picture.

And in this case, David’s picture of what they’re doing to him isn’t pretty—an animal being torn to pieces by a lion is something that you typically don’t want to see, and in fact, anytime you see a video of a safari and someone captures a lion going after an animal, it’s typically to hear a groan or two from the group of people watching as that lion devours the animal.

This is how David is describing himself as he’s being attacked by these people—if God doesn’t save him and if God doesn’t deliver him, his soul would be torn apart, so much so, that there won’t be anything left.

I do want to clarify, that in this context, when David says his soul will be torn apart, he isn’t utilizing the term soul in the same manner that we do today.

When we talk about a person’s soul today, we’re speaking of the immaterial part of a person, which is what eventually leaves this earth and goes to be in God’s presence in heaven, but often, when the term soul is utilized in the Old Testament, it’s the word nephesh, which isn’t necessarily talking about a person’s immaterial being.

Rather, it’s talking about a person’s whole being—body, soul, spirit, and mind.

With this in mind, David is wrestling with the idea that if God doesn’t rescue him, his whole being will be torn apart; there will be nothing of him left.

We can actually relate to this, because we’ve all faced times in our lives in which people have brought forth accusations against us and attacked us for whatever their reasons are.

And many of us can relate to the feeling of our whole being pulled apart by the emotions that these attacks bring about.

Many times, when there are attacks like this, there is a bit of blame on both sides of the fence, they’re definitely attacking you, but you’ve done something deserving of that attack.

Occasionally, you’ll be attacked by someone for no fault of your own and this is what’s occuring to David and we can see this as he continues his prayer, because he makes a tremendously bold statement.

David continues in vs. 3-5 with this, “O LORD my God, if I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands, if I have repaid my friend with evil or plundered my enemy without cause, let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it, and let him trample my life to the ground and lay my glory in the dust.

Selah.”

What David says here, is only wise to say if you know for sure that you did absolutely nothing wrong.

Because his argument in Vs. 3-5 is that if he did something wrong, then God should let his enemies overtake him and trample him.

David is sure that he hasn’t done anything worthy of what’s happening to him, so he asks God to judge him.

“If I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands, if I have repaid my friend with evil or plundered my enemy without cause.”

David is sincere and he’s sure that he hasn’t done anything worthy of judgment—in fact, I would argue, that if he wasn’t sure, he would be a fool to say what he’s saying in these verses because invoking God’s judgment on yourself is utter foolishness if you’ve been in unrepentant sin (which by the way, is precisely what you do when you take communion in an unworthy manner).

Again, if you wasn’t sure that he had done something worthy of judgment, he would be foolish to call God’s judgment upon himself, but as Matthew Henry says, “When a man has made peace with God about all his sins, upon the terms of grace and mercy, through the sacrifice of the Mediator, he may, in comparison with his enemies, appeal to God’s justice to decide,”

Which is precisely what David does as he continues in Vs. 6-9 "Arise O LORD, in your anger; lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies; awake for me; you have appointed a judgment Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you; over it return on high.

The LORD judges the peoples; judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me.

Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end, and may you establish the righteous—you who test the minds and hearts, O righteous God!”

Because David knows that he did nothing wrong, and because he realizes that his enemies are accusing him false, he calls on the LORD to make the judgment.

You might question why this seems as if he’s asking God to judge and punish his enemies, which I’ll explain just simply.

It’s because by falsely accusing him of whatever they’ve accused him of and by attacking him in the way that he did, they’re actually sinning.

They’re sinning against David, but not only are they sinning against David, all sin is an affront against a holy God; thus, they’re sinning against God as well.

David can rightly call on the LORD to have fury against his enemies and to in anger judge them because their sin separates them from the LORD.

As David says, “The LORD judges the peoples; judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me.”

I do want to pause here just momentarily, because I want to talk about the idea of God judging people.

In our modern world, it’s common to hear people make the argument that only God can judge them

Psalm 7 makes it clear that that is a true statement because it is the LORD who judges the people, but I do want to make it clear that the way that people utilize that phrase today negates the fact that God’s judgment ought to bring forth fear and repentance.

Often, when people make the statement that only God can judge them it’s because they recognize that they’re doing something sinful and you’ve just called them out for their sin.

They’re making the statement to stop you from telling them that they’re wrong.

Quite frankly, the fact that God is their judge ought to cause fear and trembling because God does not hold the guilty sinless.

“The LORD judges the people” and that means all people.

For those that are in unrepentant sin that are acting in wickedness, that should cause fear; but for those that are righteous, that should cause praise.

Now the question that you might have is, “How can I be righteous?”

Righteousness is closely tied to the idea of justification by faith alone.

Galatians 2:16 teaches us that a person is justified through faith in Jesus Christ.

As someone who is justified, Proverbs 15:9 teaches us to continue pursuing righteousness in our lives

And I think the best way to figure this out is by recognizing that you cannot please God when you’re in sin and allowing that recognition to cause you to repent and turn to God.

How do we pursue righteousness?

By desiring for God to transform our minds and conform us into the image of Christ.

It is genuine faith and pursuit of Jesus that makes you righteous

David was righteous and he knew he was righteous based on his genuine faith and belief in God.