Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

How many of you growing up used to hear (or used to say) the old rhyme, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me”?

How many of you wonder what happened to that saying?

It seems as though we have entered a time when anything you say can be construed as “violence”—if your words make someone feel bad, then they will accuse you of making them feel unsafe, or that you are attacking them.

Now, we are Christians, which means we are governed by the Word of God, and not the snowflakes and SJW’s around us.

Contrary to the old schoolyard rhyme, words can be destructive:

Psalm 64:3–4 (ESV)

3 who whet their tongues like swords, who aim bitter words like arrows, 4 shooting from ambush at the blameless, shooting at him suddenly and without fear.

But the nature of their destructiveness is not what the intoleristas of cancel culture say they are.

God’s Word defines for us the way that words can harm and destroy, not the opinions of people with all of the emotional control of a toddler past her nap time.

It’s been well-said by others, that “Truth sounds like hate to those who hate the truth”.

And so when we are talking about the weaponization of words and destructiveness of the tongue (as we read earlier in James), we are not just talking about the fact that truth hurts sometimes—we are talking about the destructive effects of lies and slander :

James 3:8–9 (ESV)

8 but no human being can tame the tongue.

It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.

9 With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.

If you want proof of the destructive power of lies and slander and bitter words, just look around you.

Over the past several years you have watched a once-great nation reduced to a pitiful shell of its former greatness.

And what has happened to reduce us to this state?

We have not been invaded by an enemy army, we have not suffered catastrophic natural disasters, we have not been brought to our knees by an attack of radioactive hamsters from a planet near Mars.

But we have been lied to—a lot.

We have been lied to about Darwinism, lied to about multiculturalism, lied to about racism, about gender, about the unborn, about climate change, about white privilege, and on and on the list goes.

We have been lied to over and over again, constantly and without relent, for decades—and you see the result all around you in what used to be a great people and a great nation.

Lies and slander and bitter words will destroy a nation, they will destroy a family, they will destroy a church, they will destroy a marriage, they will destroy friendships.

Here in Psalm 64 David is calling out to God to be his refuge from the lies and slanders coming from his enemies.

And so what I aim for you to see this morning from the Scriptures is that

God’s LOVING FAITHFULNESS is your refuge from the HATEFUL LIES of your enemies

I don’t know how God will use this psalm in your life this morning; I don’t know what kind of struggles or attacks you have been going through.

But I know that God has gathered us together to hear His Word, and He has given us these verses this morning to strengthen, encourage, rebuke, uphold and sustain us in a world gone mad with lies and slander and bitterness.

And the first thing that we see is that God is

I.

Our HIDING PLACE from attacks (Psalm 64:1-3)

Psalm 64:1–3 (ESV)

1 Hear my voice, O God, in my complaint; preserve my life from dread of the enemy. 2 Hide me from the secret plots of the wicked, from the throng of evildoers, 3 who whet their tongues like swords, who aim bitter words like arrows,

David calls out in confidence that God will hear him, and that God will be his refuge.

But look with me at the way David prays for protection—he doesn’t just call on God to “preserve his life from the enemy”; he calls on God to

PRESERVE him from DREAD of the enemy (v. 1)

David is asking God for something very specific here, isn’t he?

Because one of the ways that slander and lies and bitter words affect us lies in their power to intimidate us or bully us.

How many people are afraid to speak the truth or stand up and be counted for Christ because they are afraid of what others may say?

David looks to God and asks that he would not be fearful or cowardly in the face of their attacks, that he would not be anxious over the prospect that his enemies are lying about him or slandering him.

See here that this kind of courage is not a natural ability; it is a gift given by God.

When Jesus tells you to rejoice and be exceedingly glad when you are reviled and slandered for His sake (Matt.

5:12), He is not telling you to screw up your courage and brazen it out; He is promising to give you a gift!

David calls on God to be his hiding place from the bitter words and lies of his enemies—in verse 3 he calls on God to

PROTECT him from their SLANDER (v. 3)

Psalm 64:3 (ESV)

3 who whet their tongues like swords, who aim bitter words like arrows,

The imagery here is exquisite in the way it describes lies and bitter slander.

Think about it—have you ever used a whetstone to sharpen a blade of some sort?

Is it just a one-and-done process?

No—what do you do when you whet a knife?

You go over and over and over and over it, sharpening bit by bit, making that blade as fine and sharp as you can.

Is that not what bitter and slanderous people do with their words?

They go over and over and over the same lies, endlessly turning them over in their minds, constantly filling their mouths and hearts with the same accusations and slander and bitterness.

“Fresh faults discovered, evil motives imputed, exaggerations invented, lies forged, innuendo suggested, old slanders furbished, and ancient hatreds rekindled...” (Spurgeon, C. H. (n.d.).

The treasury of David: Psalms 56-87 (Vol.

3, p. 88).

Marshall Brothers.)

And that constant drip, drip, drip of lies and bitterness eventually starts to sink in over time as people listen to and eventually begin to entertain them.

And David says, “God, protect me from the constant motions of bitterness and slanderous lies that come out against me!”

Beloved, God’s loving faithfulness is your refuge from the hateful lies of your enemies—God is your hiding place from attacks; He is your refuge from

II.

The HIDDEN AMBUSH by the wicked (Psalm 64:4-6)

David says that his enemies

Psalm 64:4–5 (ESV)

4 [shoot] from ambush at the blameless, shooting at him suddenly and without fear.

5 They hold fast to their evil purpose; they talk of laying snares secretly, thinking, “Who can see them?”

Here is another characteristic of David’s slanderous, bitter enemies:

They thrive in DARKNESS (vv.

4-5; cp.

John 3:19)

Anonymity and distance are the best friends of slanderers, aren’t they?

It’s no coincidence that the explosion of lies and the destruction of bitter words and slander has coincided with the development of our ability to post anonymous messages publicly and say things online that we would never say to a person face-to-face.

God’s Word says that slanderers hit their targets from concealment; the ghillie suit of anonymity and plausible deniability provides them cover as they attempt to destroy lives with their bitter words like arrows.

As the apostle John would put it centuries later at the first coming of our Lord:

John 3:19 (ESV)

19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

Slanderers and liars and embittered enemies love the anonymity and distance that allows them to ambush innocent people.

And in verse 6 we see that not only do they thrive in darkness, but

They suffer DELUSIONS (v. 6)

as well.

Psalm 64:6 (ESV)

6 They search out injustice, saying, “We have accomplished a diligent search.”

For the inward mind and heart of a man are deep.

Now, there are a great deal of complications surrounding the translation of this verse; it’s one of those verses that is hard to render accurately into English from Hebrew, but the sense of the verse seems to be a description of the self-justification of someone caught in the throes of bitterness: They believe they are on the side of the angels, that they have found a great injustice that they need to set right!

They may believe that they are champions of justice and truth, diligently searching out injustice, but the truth is that they don’t know what spirit they are of—they are actually just acting out their own spite and bitterness and envy, but to them they are fighting the good fight.

David calls on God’s loving faithfulness to be his refuge from the hateful lies of his enemies.

God is his hiding place from their attacks, He is their refuge from their hidden ambush.

And starting in verse 7 the tone of the Psalm shifts—instead of describing the slanderous attacks of his enemies, David begins singing of God’s response to their attacks.

David is confident that

III.

God’s RETALIATION will be REVEALED (Psalm 64:7-8)

Psalm 64:7–8 (ESV)

7 But God shoots his arrow at them; they are wounded suddenly.

8 They are brought to ruin, with their own tongues turned against them; all who see them will wag their heads.

For all of their hiding, for all of their careful schemes to launch their arrows of bitter words against the innocent from the shadows, God sees them well enough to hit them with HIS arrows!

And just as their attacks on the innocent seem to come out of nowhere, so God will ambush them—His response will also seem to come out of nowhere--

It will be SUDDEN (v.

7; cp.