Psalm 12

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Intro:

What are we to do when it seems like society is falling apart around us? When it people have turned their backs on God and faithfulness to His truth and His ways. When people tell lies to each other and seek to flatter each other while not actually caring about the other persons wellbeing, when people are duplicitous? When those who seek to remain faithful to God are maligned and because they can not and will not submit to the culture and retell its lies they are marginalized at best or outright persecuted and condemned at worst? When you look around you and the situation seems utterly hopeless? What do you do? Where do you turn? What has the power to stay the soul of a child of God in the midst of such things?
Sounds familiar I hope! Sounds like the day in which we find ourselves. It is also the sentiment, the question that faced David as he sat down and composed the 12th Psalm.
Just as with Psalm 11 I find this Psalm so practically applicable to our own day and time. It really is incredible when you think of how long ago this was written and how far removed from us Davids day was and yet here we can still pick up this book and turn to it and find everything that we need to be strengthened and encouraged to live our lives faithfully to Christ in our own day. It truly is a mark of the divine nature of this book that we don't need to seek out some sort of fresh revelation from God, because He is God in His infinite wisdom and marvelous grace He has delivered; across a significant period of time and yet to us now a long time ago a full cannon of scripture that does not leave us in want of any essential answer or point of doctrine or truth that is needed to navigate faithfulness to God in any time, in any age. If Christ tarries for another 5000 years, still those people then will be able to turn to these same words and still will there and then find everything that they could ever need to live out their faith in God! Its incredible!
This is actually central to this Psalm as well, the truth about God’s own Word is where this psalm is headed. The central truth proclaimed by this psalm is: (v. 6)

The words of the LORD are pure words,

like silver refined in a furnace on the ground,

purified seven times.

We hold in our hands a vast treasury of heavenly words, divine revelations, truths that God has chosen to make known to sinful men that they might, by His grace, be transformed by them and made into His very own children and be enabled to live as His children in the midst of this wicked and ruined world.
That is where we are headed today but before we go any farther lets take a moment to thank God for this precious word and ask that He would once more, through grace, enable us to be edified by it.
PRAY & READ
As we jump into this Psalm we need to note that this again is one of those psalms that is impossible to pin down to a specific moment in history. Commentators have argued for several instances in the life of David that could form the backdrop for this Psalm. Many point to Saul’s murder of all the priests of Nob as a good guess for the timing of this Psalm. As David laments the disappearance of the faithful and godly from his world it is not hard to imagine that this or some similar situation like this could well be in mind. Can you imagine? The King of Israel in a fit of jealous rage sends a wicked Edomite to slaughter all of the Priests of God? One can only imagine the sorrow in David's soul, especially knowing that it was his visit to those priests that occasioned their murder. You can read that story in 1 Samuel 21 & 22.

Verse 1: The Cry

Regardless of the specific circumstances that occasioned the writing of this Psalm David begins:

Save, O LORD, for the godly one is gone;

for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man.

Save! The opening cry of this verse. It is interesting to note that when this word is used it is typically followed by an object to be saved, as in “Save ME.” However this cry is cut short, and it is very likely that we are ment in this to note the desperation of David. He hardly has time for a long cry, a lengthy and well thought out petition. He simply has the time to utter a desperate “save.”
We also see to where David turns for help. We must not miss this though it isn't some earth shattering revelation, but David turns to God for his desperately needed help. Whether at this time David was a King, a general in Saul’s army, fleeing from Saul, or maybe even yet a shepherd boy keeping watch over his father’s flocks in the pasture he knew exactly where to turn for help. We need to be tuned to this. We need to drive this into our souls and secure it there with as many pegs as possible. Turn to GOD! If you are in the 5 day Bible reading plan you will note that David didn't always do this. We read of David and his sin with Bathsheba this week and though David was, through out the entire course of that episode, tempted time and time again to sin and to continue sinning we find that at no point, until confronted with the wickedness of what he had done by Nathan the prophet, does David turn to God. Imagine if in that moment of temptation on his roof he had turned to God as he does here? The story would likely have had a very different ending, or better yet it may have never even been a story at all.
We say we know where to turn but ho often do we fail to turn there?
I love what Spurgeon has to say of David’s little cry:

“Help, Lord,” is a very useful ejaculation which we may dart up to heaven on occasions of emergency, whether in labour, learning, suffering, fighting, living, or dying. As small ships can sail into harbours which larger vessels, drawing more water, cannot enter, so our brief cries and short petitions may trade with heaven when our soul is wind-bound, and business-bound, as to longer exercises of devotion, and when the stream of grace seems at too low an ebb to float a more laborious supplication.

Now we read that David is seeking this help because as he looks around himself he feels alone. David is not the first man to feel this way and he wont be the last. Remember Elijah in 1 Kings 19 as he cries out to God:

I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.”

Here David notes that:

the godly one is gone;

for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man.

The descriptors of these people who are not to be found is significant because these are descriptions of what it looked like to be faithful to the Covenant. David is saying that there is no one around him that is seeking to follow God in obedience to His covenant with Israel.

Verses 2-4: The Situation

Rather they are to be described this way:

Everyone utters lies to his neighbor;

with flattering lips and a double heart they speak.

Now we need to be sure that we understand what is going on here. When we read lying we tend to think of telling lies to seek to mislead someone else. Like when one of my children tries to tel me that they did not do what ever it is that has caused their sibling to cry or be angry. They don't want to get in trouble and so they lie, they mislead or seek to mislead me.
The picture though that David presents here is rather one in which everyone is lying by speaking approvingly and even flatteringly about what others are doing. Remember, David has noted that godliness and faithfulness are not to be found and so there is a lot going on that is sinful and wrong, people are living lives that are not pleasing to God not in step with the demands of His covenant with them and rather than challenging one another as that covenant demanded, calling each other to the carpet for their deeds these people do nothing but speak approvingly of others actions though they know them to be wrong, hence the lie.
To bring it into our time and situation you could say that everyone is affirming that men can become women and women can become men, butchering language via new and insane pronouns to make speaking of these individuals even possible; seeking to gain and maintain the approval of those around them, though, as I believe is the case for many, they know full well that this is utter nonsense.
We also see this idea of their double heartedness. The Hebrew here is literally that thy have a heart and another heart, they are two hearted individuals. When they talk to you they seek to flatter you but when they are in another room talking to someone else and the topic of you comes up their heart that they bring into that conversation about you may be quite different than the one they showed to your face. They are two hearted.
David implores that these types of people be cut off:

May the LORD cut off all flattering lips,

the tongue that makes great boasts,

4  those who say, “With our tongue we will prevail,

our lips are with us; who is master over us?”

We see the heart of these people in this imprecatory statement and it again rings so familiar to our own day.
These people say that they will prevail with their tongues, they boast of this, “our lips are with us” they say, “Who is master over us.”
The reasoning is that they can do what every they say they can do. All they have are their own words, their own reasonings and flattering of each other but it, to them, seems to be working. As they speak society seems to be taking shape according to their words. Just as Eve in the garden had desired to be an autonomous creature and make the rules for herself, shaking free the confines of God’s good plans and His one restriction on Her; so these people to an even greater degree desire the same thing, to be master of their own lives, captains of their own ship, to speak into existence what they deem to be acceptable and right ways of living and interacting with others. And again, to them it seems to be working. “Who is master over us?” They answer this haughty rebellious question with the obvious rhetorical answer, “I am” I am my own master, no God or no covenant has any right to tel me what I can and cant do. I am autonomous and free.
The insolence! An insolence that is running rampant in our day. But as we saw in a great illustration from the movie Even in Exile on Thursday, when you try to play basketball without lines or a net you don't make the game more free, you actually ruin it and this is what David is lamenting, the ruining of society around him and longing to see those who are doing this cut off so that faithfulness and godliness can again be the mark of the day.

Verses 5&6

Finally then in verse 5&6 we see David’s Hope arise in the midst of the situation:

Because the poor are plundered, because the needy groan,

I will now arise,” says the LORD;

“I will place him in the safety for which he longs.”

6  The words of the LORD are pure words,

like silver refined in a furnace on the ground,

purified seven times.

We see the natural outworking of a society gone awry in this manner. The poor and the needy are mistreated and they begin to groan under the persecution that they experience. We can see the general poor in these statements and that would not be incorrect but we should also note that it is quite likely that it is the faithful who are becoming the poor and needy. These ones are crying out to God. It is not hard to understand why those who are faithful become poor and needy. A society built on lies will do all that it can to marginalize and limit its exposure to those who would be honest and seek to call the light of God’s truth to bear on their lies and falsehoods. Those willing to speak the truth in a society filled with lies and self flattery will be mistreated and abused.
But we see here the Grace of God. God hears, not a cry of His children passes beyond his ears. And then, God moves!
Here we need to note an important truth that we have seen before. God doesn't often move exactly when we think that He shoudl or in the way that we think that He should. We will actually see that second part in the last verse of the Psalm. We can grow frustrated because God sometimes, may times in fact, seems slow to enter in and write the wrongs we see around us.
First we need to note that God’s moving to act on behalf of any of us is owing all to grace. There is nothing that binds God to move, that forces His hand. That God moves at all is grace to the creatures!
However, knowing this, God has assured us that He will move. This is the staying truth for the world weary soul. To the one so tired of living in the midst of the lies and in the eye of the hatred of this world; God has promised that He sees and that He will move. God has promised to act on behalf of His people. David anticipates that movement.
But what is it that God does?

I will place him in the safety for which he longs.”

God moves the needy to safety.
This verse is hard to translate. It can be read as the ESV has it here or it can be read that “God will place him in safety from the one who puffs at him.”
Puff being the key word in the Hebrew. The ESV takes that word to describe the longing of the needy. That he is weary and exhausted from living in the midst of these things and is panting, huffing and puffing as it were from exhaustion and longing for safety. It could also be that God is indeed promising to move the needy to safety from specifically those who are puffing at them, those who are seeking to blow them away.
To this promise from God, to these words from the Lord David exclaims:

The words of the LORD are pure words,

like silver refined in a furnace on the ground,

purified seven times.

This is the heart beat of this Psalm. This is where the godly, the faithful, the needy, the poor are to turn to for there hope and help. The words of the Lord!
God’s promises are precious. They are also tried and true! David describes the process through which metal would be made pure. It was heated until it melted and the dross or the impurities would float to the top and be removed. This would be done as many as 7 times, 7 being the number of divine perfection and signifying that divine perfection rather than actually meaning to state that this as a process that needed to happen exactly 7 times.
The sense of the word pure here is to be free of extraneous elements of any kind.
David here is drawing now a contrast between the Word that he has recieved from the Lord and the words, the many haughty, boastful, lying, flattering words that he has heard from the mouths of the wicked.
In Psalm 19 David takes even more time to expound on the qualities of God’s words. There he says:

The law of the LORD is perfect,

reviving the soul;

the testimony of the LORD is sure,

making wise the simple;

8  the precepts of the LORD are right,

rejoicing the heart;

the commandment of the LORD is pure,

enlightening the eyes;

9  the fear of the LORD is clean,

enduring forever;

the rules of the LORD are true,

and righteous altogether.

10  More to be desired are they than gold,

even much fine gold;

sweeter also than honey

and drippings of the honeycomb.

11  Moreover, by them is your servant warned;

in keeping them there is great reward.

When the child of God is facing difficult circumstances like the ones that open this Psalm the right and proper response is to flee to God for help and we do that through prayer and also through immersing ourselves in and clinging to His Word!
David in Psalm 19 describes the desire that ought to be manifest in our hearts when we truly understand the magnitude of what is before us in this book! More to be desired than gold, even much fine gold! Sweeter than honey.
What would you do if someone said that there was a bunch of gold buried a the top of one of the mountains around here and you could have it if you just went and got it? Maybe not even gold, just think of hearing that something that you really wanted was available for a screaming deal at a local yard sale. How many of us wouldn't rush right over and grad it happily?
And yet all to often we can be so slow to seek out the word of God.
Think of that purity, that sense of the word being no extraneous material! Do we sometimes wish the bible weren't such a big book? Have a tendency to wonder why in the world some of that is in there. Ill be honest here, I don't have the answers to that question for every passage and I am not saying that you should just magically now find yourself enthralled by each and every passage in the Bible. I don't think that that is the case that David is making either. Rather he is drawing our attention to this, He is trying to help us see the weight, value, and glorious nature of this thing that we have before us.
It is probably also important to note here that what we are doing is not, you might say, seeking the 4th person of the Trinity as though God’s word was somehow worthy of some sort of worship. That we shoudl set our Bibles up and sing praise songs to them. It is the “God” in “God’s Word” that gives them their significance and value. I know that some have said we worship the Bible but that is just not true, we worship God and we treasure His word because it is His not because of any intrinsic value to the words themselves.
The note that I hope that this Psalm rings with which we ought to be tuning our hearts is this though, do we view the word like this? Do we treasure it, value it, turn to it in times of need and times when we aren't in need yet we know we still need it? Do we treat this word in a way that shows that we understand with David the immeasurable value of what God has give us here in His word?

Verses 7&8

The Psalm ends now though in an interesting way:

You, O LORD, will keep them;

you will guard us from this generation forever.

8  On every side the wicked prowl,

as vileness is exalted among the children of man.

David first reflects on the promise from God that He has recieved from the word of God. God will indeed move, He will put His own children into the safety that they long for. He will guard them from the wicked generation and that protection will last forever and will never fail. David has utter and complete confidence in His God!
However, the Psalm doesn't end that way. It ends with the wicked everywhere, with the same lies and vileness being exulted among these double hearted people.
The external situation hasn't changed!
But, David has! David has found his assurance, David has turned to the Lord in prayer for help and has found in God’s words the staying power to hold his soul steadfast as he awaits God’s full and final deliverance which that same precious word has assured him will be coming.

Closing

SO as we close this morning I encourage us, flee to God through His word. Treasure it, internalize its truths. Encourage others to do so. This can be really hard to do if it is not true of yourself, it become easier as this reality reflects our own lived to greater degrees.
There seems to be a fundamental problem with the way in which we make Christians, to use the language of the great commission in Matthew 28, the way we disciple the nations. When so many followers of Christ have not even read through the whole council of God’s Word and do not regularly spend time in God’s Word we know that we have failed to impress upon those who are responding to the gospel the vast importance and immeasurable treasure that we have here in this Word.
That needs to change, that was one of the key driving desires in establishing this church, to have a place where people were admonished and encouraged to dive deeper and deeper into their Bibles, to treasure this Word.
There is no magic bullet here, David was a man who had his heart formed tough countless hours of meditating upon God’s truth starting as a young man with His fathers flocks but the promise of God is that if we apply ourselves to this task we will find the Word to be overflowing with all that we need, with wonderful truths that have the power now to stay our lives in the midst of this increasingly crooked world.
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