Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
A score of 0.5 or higher indicates the tone is likely present.
Emotion Tone
Anger
0.1UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.09UNLIKELY
Fear
0.55LIKELY
Joy
0.55LIKELY
Sadness
0.63LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.46UNLIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.52LIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.79LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.8LIKELY
Extraversion
0.14UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.87LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.65LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
As we work our way slowly through the Psalms in our series: “Psummer in the Psalms”, we come this morning to Psalm 28.
Next week is Psalm 29, if you couldn’t guess.
Psalm 28 is what some call “A Royal Prayer”.
This psalm is a prayer of David who is, almost certainly, at this moment the king of Israel.
As with any psalm, if the occasion isn’t mentioned for us, we can’t place the psalm at any one particular moment in the psalmists life.
We simply know who wrote it.
We can imagine these words—this prayer—coming from David at a number of different points in his life.
At whatever moment or occasion this was, this is what David prays:
If you have your Bible (and I hope you do), please turn with me to the book of Psalms.
Turn to Psalm 28 and keep your Bible open there as we eavesdrop on David’s prayer.
One of David’s fears—possibly his main fear—is that the LORD would turn a deaf ear to him.
David couldn’t deal with silence from God. Unresponsiveness from the LORD is something David dreads.
We’re probably all right there with David.
We spoke about prayer on Wednesday night while studying a parable about prayer.
To think that God has turned a deaf ear or that He might simply not respond at all—that would be deflating at best.
I would struggle greatly if I thought the LORD didn’t listen to us.
If the LORD Yahweh—the covenant God—doesn’t hear, what then?
David uses a pretty bleak metaphor for this scenario: For if you remain silent, I will be like those who go down to the pit.
The “pit” is sometimes the same thing as Sheol (the realm of the dead.
Sometimes “pit” is synonymous with death itself.
Allen Ross explains what this means:
“Those going down to the pit are not just dying, but dying without hope.
In this simile, David is comparing himself to the ungodly: if his prayer goes unanswered, he will not appear to be different [from them].
He will die as they die, without any reprieve from the LORD.”
While David is pleading with the LORD, to make sure He listens, there is some encouragement.
David refers to the LORD as “my Rock.”
That the LORD is known throughout the Old Testament as “the Rock” brings to mind security and stability—strong, steady, dependable, able to hold you up.
There’s likely even more to the image of the LORD as Rock.
Do you remember when the LORD told Moses to strike the rock at Horeb when the Israelites were grumbling and complaining about being thirsty?
The LORD had Moses strike the rock, and the rock became the source of life-giving water (the LORD standing there before Moses by the rock at Horeb).
Rock may not be simply security and stability, but provision and sufficiency.
The term— “My Rock” — is loaded with truth.
It’s to HIM that David prays.
Do you see the posture David takes in prayer (at the end of verse 2)?
David lifts his hands.
This was the characteristic stance of prayer for the Hebrew people.
Standing, hands raised, palms up, reaching toward heaven.
The kneeling, folding hands, eyes closed was an innovation from medieval times.
David’s praying, hands raised, facing the LORD’s Most Holy Place, the place in the temple that housed the ark of the covenant, where the glory of the LORD dwelled between the two cherubim.
Only the High Priest could enter there, and then, only one day a year—Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
David couldn’t go into that place—into the Most Holy Place—but he trusted his prayers could.
And they did, because we pray to
The One Who Hears
If the LORD doesn’t hear our prayers, it’s all over.
David knew that.
I think we know that, but sometimes, if we’re not careful with our words, it could start to sound like we believe the power is in the prayer and not with the One who hears.
To say a prayer is nothing, to speak a prayer is nothing, prayer on its own is nothing—NOTHING if it isn’t directed toward and trusting the God who hears.
If the LORD is silent, or deaf, if the LORD doesn’t hear, well…that’s the ballgame.
If the LORD doesn’t hear, there is no hope.
Not for David.
Not for you.
Not for me.
No hope for anyone if the hearing LORD is not there.
My best friend in college worked across the street from campus at a 24-hour gas station.
Kwik-Shop in Manhattan, Kansas holds a lot of memories for me (odd as that sounds).
Many a night spent hanging out there, eating the old hot dogs they were about to throw away, drinking endless free refills of Dr. Pepper.
During my Junior and Senior year of college, I logged hundreds of hours in that Kwik Shop.
If you happened to walk into Kwik Shop early in the morning during those years, you might have decided there was no employee working, only a few hungry college kids eating Cheddarwursts and downing free soda.
Several times, I know that’s exactly what it looked like to customers who came in.
My friend, Richard, would be in the back working on something and Nathan and Cory and I would just be standing there eating our free hot dogs and drinking our free sody-pwop.
Customers would come in and stand at the register for a bit, waiting for someone to help them.
Eventually, they’d look around and find one of us.
They’d ask:
“Do you guys work here?”
“Nope.
Wanna a hot dog?”
The confusion on their faces was priceless.
They had come to a 24-hour gas station and no one was there to run the place.
So with David’s prayer.
If the LORD is not there to help, if HE is silent, then David’s prayer is a non-starter.
But here, as with other psalms, the LORD is the One who hears.
In Psalm 65:2 for instance, David addresses the LORD by saying “You who answer prayer…”
We pray to the One who hears.
These verses are David’s main petition, especially verse 4. David is praying to the One who hears and to the One who works justice, because there are wicked, evil, malicious people.
David isn’t necessarily thinking about other nations, but those within Israel who hate and oppose him and his reign as king.
He’s dealing with two-faced people: they wave kindly at their neighbors and talk to them over the fence, but inwardly, they’re full of hate, and they turn and gossip about them behind their backs.
They make a good show, but their intention is to harm.
David’s enemies couldn’t care less about what the LORD has done.
It seems they might have known who the LORD was, but they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking grew futile and their foolish hearts were darkened (Romans 1:21).
Because of their behavior, David prays against them—and prays to
The One Who Works Justice
David wants God’s retribution— “Repay them for their deeds…repay them for what their hands have done.”
As much as David probably wanted to pay them back, to get back at them, to take revenge upon his enemies, he knows that the LORD will exact justice.
Vengeance is the LORD’s.
Not ours.
Not ever.
We don’t take revenge; rather, we pray for the LORD to avenge.
Commit vengeance to the LORD.
Pray that God will do it.
Pray, like David, for God to take them out.
At times, we might start to think that there is “nothing we can do” about the evildoers and wicked people among and around us.
But Psalm 28 says we can do something.
We can pray.
We can pray against them.
We can pray God will punish them.
We can pray God will take them out.
You see, our God is the One who hears and the One who works justice.
We leave that to Him, for He is just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
What the LORD does is always right.
He will come and set the world at rights.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9