Sermon Tone Analysis
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Psalm 4
/Answer me when I call to you, O my righteous God.
Give me relief from my distress; be merciful to me and hear my prayer.
How long, O men, will you turn my glory into shame?
How long will you love delusions and seek false gods?Selah Know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself; the Lord will hear when I call to him.
In your anger do not sin; when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent.Selah Offer right sacrifices and trust in the Lord.
Many are asking, “Who can show us any good?”
Let the light of your face shine upon us, O Lord.
You have filled my heart with greater joy than when their grain and new wine abound.
I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety./
Calvin Trillin, in his book /Remembering Denny/ tells us about Denny Hansen.
Everyone knew that Denny was headed for privilege and prestige.
He was one of these young men that seemed destined for success.
A rising star in everything that he did.
He was a varsity swimmer.
He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
He won the Francis Gordon Brown Prize as a junior at Yale.
He was a Rhodes Scholar, sent to Oxford to study on the expense of the state.
He was a member of the Elizabethan Club and the Skull and Keys.
/Life /magazine covered his graduation.
He talked often of becoming Governor of California, but everyone thought that was aiming too low.
They assumed that he was going to be President of the United States.
This poor man, however, never fulfilled people's expectations.
He never became the success that seemed his destiny.
He could not live up to the expectations of his culture.
He slowly sank farther and farther into despair, and at the age of 55 he took his own life.
After the memorial service for Denny someone said this, “What struck me this afternoon is that his story is really not all that unfamiliar.
It's a matter of degree and not difference in kind, I think.
I've come to believe that we live in a time when those people who were golden boys of one kind or another have to take great falls at some point in their lives.
And if you don't figure that out in some way and don't perhaps find a different spiritual basis to go on with your life, then it is indeed over, whether it's suicide or drugs or one thing or another.
...
You know, the unhappy truth about our time, I think, from the fifties until now, is that you're either a winner or a loser, and that makes most of us suffer.”
(pp.
49-50)
Most of us suffer, because, in the eyes of society, most of us are losers.
Our culture measures success in specific ways, and when we fail to measure up in those ways, then we are failures.
There is always someone better than us.
There is always someone more successful, someone who has a better family, someone who has a better life.
According to the cultural rules of the game, we have lost.
We are here this evening because we know that we have to find a different spiritual basis to go with life than what the culture presents to us.
We know that we cannot live on our own merit.
We know that our lives, if guided and directed by what the world thinks, will have no lasting impact.
We know this.
This is why we chose to trust in God.
This is why we are searching for answers and for fulfilment in him.
This is why we come to meet with him in worship.
This is why we read from this book.
We are looking for God to give us what we need.
With the psalmist we call out to God.
/1 Answer me when I call to you, O my righteous God.
/
/Give me relief from my distress; /
/be merciful to me and hear my prayer.
/
We come almost begging God to give us peace, to give us joy, to give us life.
We come knowing that we are not worthy of his love.
We know we cannot earn our salvation, yet this is something hard for us to swallow, something hard to understand.
The structures of society seem to seep into our faith, and we begin to judge our faith by the categories of our culture.
Are we successful?
Are we growing in our love of God? Are more people turning to God because of us?
Is the name of God held in more honour?
Often we seem to be failing.
We listen to the news and hear Christianity derided.
We tell our friends we are Christian and they put us down and call us names.
We tell people we go to church, and they mock us for our weakness.
We go to work and hear the precious name of Jesus bandied about as a curse.
The world takes the things that we hold dear and turns them into objects of scorn.
Our prayer goes up with the psalmist.
/2 How long, O men, will you turn my glory into shame?
/
/How long will you love delusions and seek false gods?/
How long will people turn away from the truth?
How long will they look with scorn on the free offer of salvation?
How long will people think that they can make a good life for themselves without Jesus?
How long will Christianity be looked upon as something outdated, antiquated, old-fashioned?
How long will people make idols out of themselves, or money, or fame, or their children, or their countries, or the environment?
How long will God allow the world to continue as it is without intervening in mercy or judgement?
How long do we have to put up with the world as it is and while anxiously waiting for its renewal?
How long do we have to put up with this unbelieving and perverse generation before Jesus comes to set all things right?
It is hard to pray a prayer like this.
It is hard to bring to God the issues and frustrations that we have with the world.
I was talking with a friend, Eric, not that long ago and he told me about a time when he had difficulty seeing the reason for praying.
He had lost his daughter to a drunk driver when she was 19 and on her way home from a friend's house at the end of the summer.
He told me he fought with the idea of praying for a long time.
He said, “At that time I thought that prayer made no difference.
God is all knowing, right?
And he sees and controls all things.
If prayer makes any difference, then why did my daughter die?
I prayed that God would keep her safe.
I prayed that God would bring her home to me.
I prayed that I would be able to spend a long happy life with her.
But he did not hear my prayers.
He is going to do what he wants to do, and there is nothing I can say to him that is going to make any difference.”
Sometimes prayer does not seem to make a difference.
The psalmist gives us hope.
/3 Know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself; /
/the Lord will hear when I call to him.
/
Even though the world is against us, God is for us.
Even though the world does not understand why we love the Lord, he has called us as his own and given us new life.
Even though the world loves delusions and seeks false gods, we follow the one true God.
We can have confidence that God will hear us because he has chosen us and set us apart as his children.
He has called us to him, and that causes us to turn away from the delusions and false gods of the world to follow the true God.
We can be confident that God hears our prayers if we have the seal of Jesus Christ upon us.
As it says in Hebrews 4:14-16
/“... [S]ince we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.
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