Sermon Tone Analysis

Announcements

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We’ll have a children’s class in the Activity Room and an Adult Class in the Auditorium.

For those that have been watching services exclusively online, let me encourage you to come in-person; Discipleship Groups will not be live-streamed or recorded.

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We’ll still have discipleship groups and our normal AM worship service here in the building, but plan on sticking around to enjoy some food and a fellowship opportunity with us across the street in the field.

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Prayer of Repentance and Adoration

Sermon (Ps 35:11-18)

Introduction

If you have your Bible, please turn it to Psalm 35:11-18.

Last week, we started working through Psalm 35 together and what was made clear when we read the passage was that David is giving a series of laments—he’s crying out to the Lord in anguish and in sorrow for three particular reasons.

Last week, we saw him ask God to contend for him and to fight against those who fight against him.

He describes those who seek to do him harm as those who devise evil against him despite him not doing anything against them.

Our text for this evening will build on those who devise evil in such a way that David will describe a bit of what they’re doing against him.

Note that he still retains his innocence—that he did nothing wrong against them; and just like his previous lament, he ends with prayer and praise.

Though we’re focused primarily on vv.

11-18, let’s read the full psalm together to keep it in context:

As we study this passage, we’re going to break it into two parts: (1) David’s Lament (11-16) and (2) David’s Prayer and Praise (17-18).

You’ll note that this section of the psalm follows a similar pattern as the first section vv.

1-10, which makes sense because its part of the same psalm.

You’ll also note that the application for this section is fairly similar as well.

The repetition will help us to remember the meaning and application of this psalm.

We’ll see David cry out to the Lord again, but we’ll also see him praise the Lord as well.

Prayer for Illuminations

David’s Lament (11-16)

David is in the midst of a series of laments and he already has expressed his first lament in vv.

1-10 before getting to his second lament in vv.

11-18.

This time around David sort of builds on what he’s already lamented about in the first section, which makes sense.

Remember that the Old Testament is primarily a book written from an Eastern perspective—David is from the Ancient Near East.

Whereas, in today’s western writing, we write in a very straightforward manner by laying down the premise and the giving support thoughts to that premise through a paragraph, ANE writing isn’t quite the same.

Eastern writing tends to be cyclical to emphasize a point, particularly when we look at poetry from the Old Testament—vv.

1-10 brought up the issue, vv.

11-18 emphasizes the issue, and next week’s passage vv.

19-28 will re-emphasize the issue.

So, in today’s passage, David speaks again of the sin or the evil that’s been committed against him in vv.

1-10, but this time around, he describes it more.

He says in vv.

11-14, “Malicious witnesses rise up; they ask me of things that I do not know.

They repay me evil for good; my soul is bereft.

But I, when they were sick—I wore sackcloth; I afflicted myself with fasting; I prayed with head bowed on my chest.

I went about as though I grieved for my friend or my brother; as one who laments his mother, I bowed down in mourning.”

Remember, back in vv.

1-10, David’s complaint against those who were his enemies included the idea that he had done no wrong towards them and yet, they were still trying to harm him.

V. 4 speaks of them devising evil against him and seeking after his life to kill him.

V. 7 speaks of them hiding a net to trap him and digging a pit for his life.

V. 7 also makes it abundantly clear that he did nothing to warrant them doing any of these things—that they did all these things “without cause.”

You’ll notice that the statement in vv.

1-10 are a little vague—this is intentional because of that Ancient Near Eastern Style of writing.

David continues in v. 11-12 and then 15-16 by giving essentially four different ways that his enemies have come against him.

V. 11 gives the first one—“Malicious witnesses rise up; they ask me of things that I do not know.”

You can consider someone who is a malicious witness as a false witness that happens to be more ruthless or slanderous concerning the false witness that they offer.

They aren’t just lying about David, they’re lying with the intent of doing harm.

And its made clear in the second part of v. 11, that the lies are so malicious and so blatant, that David doesn’t have a clue what they’re talking about.

Essentially, they’re falsely accusing him of doing things that are so far-fetched that he’s clueless as to where the accusations could even come from.

V. 12 gives the second one—“They repay me evil for good; my soul is bereft.”

This verse along with vv.

13-14, which we’ll get to later, maintain David’s innocence.

I chose to look at this verse now however, because it still speaks of a way that his enemies have come against him.

“They repay me evil for good,” which means that David has been acting rightly towards them—he hasn’t done any wrong towards them and he hasn’t committed any evil against them.

In fact, he’s done only good things for them and towards them.

Skipping ahead a few verses (don’t worry, we’ll go back to them, we see in v. 15 the third one—“At my stumbling they rejoiced and gathered; they gathered together against me; wretched whom I did not know tore at me without ceasing;” Now stumbling sometimes refers to sin in the Bible—as in, someone might refer to their sin as stumbling, but because David has spent much of this psalm insisting on his innocence, I think we might be better off assuming that David means this in the sense of a calamity—some sort of great difficulty or hardship in life has caused him to struggle; and in stead of coming to help him, the enemies around him celebrated.

They saw what was happening to David and they rejoiced and gather together against him.

Not only is David in a situation in which he is experiencing hardship, the hardship is compounded because those that really ought to be helping him, are standing around, pointing and laughing, and celebrating his downfall.

We really see this in v. 16 as David gives the last way that his enemies have come against him—“Like profane mockers at a feast, they gnash at me with their teeth.”

Now, we’re a little uncertain as to what exactly this verse means because just reading the sentence is a bit confusing.

We understand what a profane mocker is and we understand what a feast is, but what does profane mocking have to do with a feast?

I personally, like the way that the NASB renders this verse, “like godless jesters at a feast, they gnashed at me with their teeth.”

Now a jester was a person who would be in the court of the king or a nobleman with the purpose of entertaining guests.

The Encyclopedia Britannica mentions that the terminology for a jester didn’t exist until much later in history, but the idea of what a jester did was fairly common even in the ancient world.

Jesters had the opportunity or the privilege to sort of mock the monarch or the noblemen without repercussion, but their jesting wasn’t meant to be malicious.

It was meant to sort of mock bad decisions made by the king, but not out of vindictiveness, but rather for the goal of the king changing.

David speaks of his enemies mocking him like a court jester would mock a king, but they’re doing it in a malicious way.

Note that the word profane in the ESV means godless and the gnashing of their teeth at him is simply a poetic way to talk about them snarling at him and attacking him with their words.

Note that David still maintains his innocence through all this.

Going back to vv. 13-14, David says, “But I, when they were sick—I wore sackcloth; I afflicted myself with fasting; I prayed with head bowed on my chest.

I went about as though I grieved for my friend or my brother; as one who laments his mother, I bowed down in mourning.”

What David says in vv.

13-14 is that before they had started rejoicing and gathering against him during his calamity, he had treated them as family.

To the extent:

That when they were sick—he wore sackcloth and he fasted and he prayed for them.

The idea of wearing sackcloth is that he grieved on their behalf.

The fasting speaks of the intensity of his prayer for them, we might say that he prayed day and night to the extent that he neglected his own meals for the sake of praying for them.

But note what the last phrase of v. 13 says, “I prayed with head bowed on my chest.”

The wording for this is a little unusual, but if you check the footnote that your Bible probably has, the idea is that the prayer returned unanswered.

In fact, that’s how the NASB, KJV, NIV, and NLT all render this verse, “Yet when they were ill, I grieved for them.

I denied myself by fasting for them, but my prayers returned unanswered.”

Derek Kidner says, “The Hebrew does not mention my head bowed.

The line runs literally ‘And my prayer will return (or, kept returning) to my bosom’, which [the] RSV and ESV [take] to be a reference to the prayer’s posture, but which seems more likely to mean that the prayer would return to him . . .

unanswered.” (Derek Kidner, Psalms 1-72: An Introduction and Commentary.

Vol. 15.

Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, 161)

Nevertheless, despite the unanswered prayer, v. 14 says, “I went about as though I grieved for my friend or my brother; as one who laments his mother, I bowed down in mourning.”

He genuinely did treat them as family and he genuinely cared for them as family, so much so that when they got sick, he prayed for them unceasingly, he grieved, he cried out to the Lord in anguish, and his posture did change for them to the extent that his body bowed in mourning.

Or in other words, despite what his enemies have accused him of, he’s done nothing against them to warrant their evil deeds; he’s done everything he can to help them and care for them, but they chose to sin against him anyways.