Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

This morning as we come to worship, and if you had a chance to read the passage and the title of the sermon, I have a question for you.

Where is your delight?

As I was looking over this Psalm for today, this phrase seemed to jump out at me.

Where do we place our delight?

There are many things that attract our attention in this world, but where is our real delight.

If you are a follower of God’s Word and have chosen to hold this Word as your guiding light for your life, I am sure many of you would say, God is our delight.

To be honest if it isn’t it should be.

If your mind has wondered off on the many things that delight you, I want to take a few moments to look at God’s Word this morning and discover in this Psalm where, why and how do we place our delight in God and His Word.

In order to do that, let’s take a look at today’s text

Turn with me to Ps 112

Praise the Lord,

The Psalm begins, like any other worship time should begin with a

Praise the Lord.

The Psalmist begins to draw the readers and possible singers of this Psalm with a Praise the Lord.

You must realize that this particular

Praise the Lord

it is both a response from what has been said and what will further be said in the following verses.

Let me explain.

Ps 111 and ps 112 are two parts of the same message.

It is good to note that these two Psalms are considered wisdom Psalms.

That they are written in a poetic form and function, but could very well be similar to the messages found throughout the Proverbs.

Wisdom comes from God and it can also be gained by experience

As many of you have read, Solomon was asked what he would want,

and God granted him wisdom.

I am reminded of a story a read once about a sunday school teacher trying to emphasis this particular story to his class.

It went like this,

teacher : If you are offered wealth and wisdom what will you choose ?

student : wealth

teacher: No. That's a bad answer.

I will choose wisdom .

students: that's ok sir.

We have to choose what we don't have.

Praise the Lord that is not our response.

But what the Hallelujah found in this verse is a response to

Praise the Lord is a response to Ps 111:10

The Fear or awestruckness of God is the first step in finding out true wisdom

It all begins with God.

One person wrote this,

The author moves back and forth between the ideal and the real.

At the heart of his concern is not so much the getting of God’s blessings as much as encouraging conformity to God in righteous acts, in cultivating qualities (gracious and compassionate, loyal and steady), and in developing a strong faith in the Lord.

The wise person is one of faith, hope, and love!

So the Psalmist begins with, this

ps 112:1

Blessedness of Those Who Delight in Wisdom (vs 1)

Blessed.

How often do we use the word blessed?

I often respond in an email with the word,

Blessings,

We look over our lives and compared to those who live in war torn countries, we consider ourselves, Blessed.

If you remember when we began the Psalms series and we looked at Ps 1 a

The Psalm opens up with “Blessed is the man”

Blessed- (< ASH WAY)

Characterized by one who is happy and being highly favored ( as by Divine Grace)

I brought to your attention the thought about blessings and stated that we desire deeply to be blessed by God, but when Psalm one begins with this phrase we must be careful to track how this blessing comes about.

Can and does God go around and randomly bless people, Yes

Is there some special thing we need to do so that we can get a blessing from God, No.

If you have accepted Christ and the work on the cross for your life, this verse applies to you.

The blessing described here is a Divine action toward you.

The english, blessing from the greek word here is different than the Blessed english word from the Hebrew

In Ephesians, we are blessed, but Do we, as followers of Christ, automatically receive this blessing described her in Psalm 1,

You see as it has been stated,

blessed or happy is not given directly by God...

It is not an automatic response from God says the writer...

but it comes from a direct result of one’s action - WBC pg 60

So if blessings is the result of our action this verse repeats that messages.

ps 112:1 “1 Praise the Lord!

Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commandments!”

It begins when we fear the lord, and begin to delight in God’s commandments.

So What does it truly mean to fear the lord.

One person states it this way,

The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Volume 14: Psalms 73–150 (Call to Worship and Blessing)

Verse 1 opens....with a call to worship: “Praise the LORD!”

This liturgical formula tells us what we are to do as it brings us into the presence of God and prepares us for the meditation that follows.

We worship Him because of who he is.

He is the God of creation,

He holds life in His hands,

He sustains life.

When we come into this mindset and approach for worship, the next steps become easy.

Delighting in God’s commandments.

What does it mean to delight in Commands,

Commands are rules.

How do we delight in rules.

To be honest with this, our culture doesn’t like most rules.

They don’t like to be told what to do.

If we are truly honest with ourselves, do we like rules.

A Toddler’s first words are not mommy and daddy, but, what.......NO

When asked to do something that we don’t like, what do we say.....NO

Some rules are good and we can all agree that they are good for us, like staying on the correct side of the road while driving.

But what about those rules that seem to be an inconvenience to us.

NO

It is easy to say we should not be following them.

Deep down, we don’t like being told what to do.

It’s almost like we have a rebellious nature.

Now we are getting back to the Text, God’s Commandments, statues,

Some faith practices have taken too many rules and made approaching God so cumbersome that people give up trying to please God.

They have walked away from God because of the limitations man have put on them.

Standards that are man made and not God commanded.

This is not new, Jesus confronted this when He was here walking with His disciples.

If you know of people or are one of those people today, you have left the faith or are not interested in the faith we as believers follow because of apparent rules, stay tuned.