Sermon Tone Analysis

Psalm 56

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Introduction

                Those of you who are my age and a bit older may remember a program on TV that was called Razzle Dazzle.

The theme song of that show began like this,  “Sunshine, lollypops and rainbows, everything that’s wonderful…” It was a happy song which emphasized happy thoughts.

A few years ago, there was a song that came out called, “Don’t worry, Be happy!”

It too spoke of a carefree, happy life.

In the United States, the Declaration of Independence declared that the fundamental right of every individual was for “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

It would be nice if life was like that, always happy, always contented, never anything going wrong, but it just isn’t.

It was three years ago now that a devastating flood covered this area.

Three years ago today, you could not have been sitting here.

At this time of year, I hear a lot of people still talking about it.

I have seen the pictures and I have come to realize just how much that event impacted this community.

Some of you or some people you know are facing illness that is making life very difficult.

So much so that it takes up all your thoughts and changes your life.

Some of you have experienced losses that are irretrievable.

You still are in pain over these losses.

For some people at some times in life, everything goes just great, but most of us, if not all of us, will at some time in our life experience great difficulty.

Whenever we do, it is a spiritual issue and causes us to have to deal with how God fits into our struggles and trials.

How thankful I am that David has written the Psalms.

In them, we find great comfort and guidance to deal with the spiritual issues which arise in the midst of our struggle and loss.

This morning, I would like to examine Psalm 56 with you.

Let us read it so that it is fresh in our minds.

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I. Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Seen

Psalm 56:1-2, 5,6.

!! A. David’s Trouble

                The heading to this Psalm mentions that it was written by David at a time “when the Philistines had seized him in Gath.”

The story is taken from I Samuel 21.

It occurs early in the time of David’s conflict with King Saul.

Saul was jealous of David because he had come to realize that God favored David.

He pursued David and wanted to kill him.

Jonathan, Saul’s son and David’s friend had just come to realize that his Father hated his best friend and had warned David to flee.

David ran away with some of the men who were with him and went to Nob where Ahimelech was priest.

He asked for food for his men and also for any weapons that there might be.

The only weapon there was the sword of Goliath, whom David had killed.

When one of Saul’s men saw David, he knew that he could not stay there and so he ran away to the place in which Saul was least likely to find him and that is to Gath, which is one of the Philistine cities.

Interestingly, it was the city from which Goliath came.

He was certainly safe from Saul here, but suddenly realized that he was not safe from the Philistines.

They had recognized that this was David of whom it was said, “David has slain his ten thousands.”

Can you imagine how David must have felt?

Wherever he went, he was not safe.

In Israel, he was pursued by Saul.

In Gath, he was watched by his enemies.

Notice again the verses which describe what a terrible situation David was in and how he felt about it - “all day long they press their attack,” “many are attacking me,” “they are always plotting to harm me,” and “they watch my steps, eager to take my life.”

What a precarious and painful situation David was in.

It is in this difficult context in which David wrote this Psalm and expressed, not military strategy, not a plan of escape, but his relationship to God and how that relationship to God was a part of his current troubles.

!! B. Our Enemies

I don’t know about you, but I have never had to fight a Philistine and so we may wonder how this passage applies to us.

There are two reasons why I believe this psalm has many good things to say to us.

The first is that Saul and an army or persecutors are not the only enemies we can have.

I have often wondered how to read these passages that speak of enemies, and there are many of them in the Psalms.

I have come to realize that we can apply this to whatever enemies we might have.

The New Testament speaks about different kinds of enemies.

It speaks of human enemies that persecute believers and the spiritual struggle expressed here would certainly fit in that case.

But it also speaks about other enemies.

It speaks about death as an enemy in I Corinthians 15:26.

It speaks about Satan as an enemy in I Peter 5:8 and also many other passages.

We can apply this to whatever or whoever is an enemy in our life.

The other reason is that no matter who or what the enemy is, the spiritual struggle is the same.

Whether we are fighting Goliath, death or Satan, the things that David struggles with and finds hope in are the same for us.

What is the enemy that is attacking you today?

What is the trouble that you are facing today which is overwhelming you and putting you in a difficult place?

Let us listen together to what David had to say and be encouraged and helped by his struggle and faith.

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II.

God??!!

                The common thread between David’s situation and ours is that trouble is a spiritual issue.

How do you deal with trouble?

Do you deal with it on your own or do you deal with it in the presence of God?

What encourages me most by this Psalm is the way in which David deals with his physical enemies first of all by going to God.

Notice that the first words of David in the Psalm are “Be merciful to me, O God,…” His first response is not to complain about the trouble, but to go to God in prayer.

Spurgeon says, “The more violent the attack of Satan the stronger our plea for deliverance.”

How wonderful that when we are at the end of our rope, we can run to God in trust.

This is what David did and as we read on in the Psalm, we begin to understand what this trust in God involved and how he did it.

!! A. When I Am Afraid

Last weekend Jonathan was together with some of the college and career in Winnipeg.

We needed to know where he was because we needed to pick up the van and so he phoned us.

When he came on the phone, his first words were, “I’m in the ditch and I hit a telephone pole.”

For a brief moment, Carla’s reaction was a sinking feeling of fear until she heard the rest of them laughing in the background.

When a difficulty comes, our natural reaction is to be filled with fears or with tears.

What happens to us so often in that context is that we think that because we are overwhelmed by fears and tears, we don’t have faith.

The first thing I want us to notice is that faith is not mutually exclusive of fears and tears.

The text mentions fears.

David says, “when I am afraid.”

Later, in verse 8, he speaks about his tears.

We make a big mistake when we ignore, submerge, deny or bury our fears and tears.

I am so thankful that David acknowledged his fears and his tears.

The beginning of a trust relationship with God is not to deny, but rather to declare our fears before God.

It is an arrogant self sufficiency which denies that we are afraid or that we are sad.

When we deny our feelings, we are saying that either, we don’t have a problem, or that it isn’t anything that we can’t handle.

David does not deny his fear.

He does not say, because of God I have no fear.

Rather, he says, “when I am afraid…” So the first step of a healthy relationship to God in the midst of trouble is to acknowledge the presence of the trouble and to accept and own the depth of feeling about that trouble.

The first step in sorrow is to let the tears flow.

The first step in worry is to voice your fears.

I don’t like fears or tears, but they are part of life and denying them is not healthy.

The second step, however, is to go to God with them.

When we are at the end of our rope, when tears and anxiety are our only companion, then we need to go to God and throw ourselves upon Him.

We need to take our tears and cry them in his presence.

We need to take our fears and cast them all upon Him.

That is the beginning of trust.

Spurgeon says, “It is a blessed fear which drives us to trust.”