Sermon Tone Analysis
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Big idea
Tension: Why should the Psalmist hope in God?
Resolution: Because he is his salvation.
Exegetical Idea: The Psalmist should hope in God because God is his salvation.
Theological Idea: Christians can hope in God because He is our salvation through the gospel.
Homiletical Idea: We hope in Christ because he is our salvation.
Introduction
Michael Wear, the expert on the intersection of faith and politics, says this, “The word hope is ubiquitous in our age.
It is slogan.
It is propaganda.
It is comfort… When our little hopes are disappointed, we find ourselves situated between the harshness of despair and the daunting, unusual existence of real hope.”
Hope is a commodity.
It is somethign people want and need.
When I was training to become a pastor, one of the things that was hammered into me in one of my pastoral care classes was that people need hope.
ANd when people lose hope, they become self-destructive.
We need hope, it is something that we will do a lot to get a hold of.
Of course, you can’t buy hope.
but you can sure sell it.
It was after all, the word, “Hope” which became the slogan of the political campaign of President Barack Obama.
Yet, as many of his followers, including Michael Wear, admit, there were many times which President Obama failed to live up to this standard.
The funny thing about hope, is that once we find a place to put our hope, so often it vanishes and disappears.
So as we’re getting started this morning, let me ask, where are you putting your hope?
Are you putting your hope in your family?
Do you think that if your marriage could just get to this point, or maybe if you could just get your kids to say this, or mabye if your siblings woudl just listen, everything would work?
Maybe you are placing your hope in your workpalce.
ANd you think, if I could just make this much, or if I could just do this, or if I could get this title, then I will be okay.
Maybe your hope is your retirement check.
AN dyou think, as long as nobody touches my 401k, as long as nothing happens to my pension, I”ll be okay.
Maybe you’re hope is in your political party, and you think, if I could just get my candidate in office or that candidate out of office, everythiung will be okay.
Here’s the funny hting about these hopes, they’re not necessarily wrong.
But these little hopes will always let us down at some point.
They will never ever give us the thigns that we want them to.
And very often, when we set our hopes on teh wrong things, and they let us down, our lives just fall into this pit of turmoil, this place where there is no hope.
And it is in this place, this lack of hope that our Psalm situates us today.
By this point, we have become familiar with the Psalms of lament.
Psalms of lament have four distinct stages.
They address God, they complain to God, they request from God, and they trust in God.
And is a Psalm of lament.
Some people think that is attached to , and there certainly are some parallels, although, I think that there is enough difference to consider them separately.
Because is all about how to find hope.
So, we might think of in three distinct stages.
First, we see the lack of hope, second we see the journey of hope, and third, we see the source of hope.
The lack of hope
Vindicate me: What we see in the first Psalm is that the Psalmist asks to be “vindicated.”
And this word for “vindicate” literally means “judge.” he says, God I want you to judge between me and this person.
He is saying, “God, take my side, declare that I am right.”
He is saying, “God take my side in this lawsuit."
But he does not just want God to be the judge, he also wants God to be the lawyer.
He wants God not just to judge his case, he wants him to argue his case.
He wants God to take his side and argue his case.
And look what he says at the end of vs. 1, he says, “deliver me.”
God judge my case, argue my case, but also deliver me.
He says, “help me escape.”
Bust me out of jail.
Look at how the Psalmist feels, he says, “God I need you to save me.”
You will notice that if the Psalmist is saying this, then he must feel like the opposite is true.
He must feel like God is not judging his case fairly, he must feel like God is not arguing his case in good faith, and he must feel like God is letting him rot in jail.
From the ungodly man: Look at what he says, “Deliver me from teh ungodly man.”
Now, so often, we have as we preached through the Old Testament, pointed out this word “hesed.”
And the word “Hesed” means God’s steadfast, loyal, faithful, kind, love.
It is God in all of his generosity to his people.
It really is one of God’s favorite ways to describe himself to his people.
Now, look at this word “ungodly here” this is really the Hebrew word which means, “anti-hesed.”
Unloving, unhesed.
The Psalmist says, “God, deliver me from these people who are so unlike you.”
Really, what the Psalmist is saying is that the situation that he is in, and the people that he is dealing with, and the circumstances of his soul are really antithetical to God.
He says, “God this place that I am is so unlike who I understand you to be.”
In our lives: Now, some of you are here today, and some of you are in this place.
You are living in a situation whree you feel like you are antithetical to God’s ways.
You are at work and you feel like the peopel that you work with are so against who you understand God to be.
You are dealing with a family member who you love, but who is so opposed to God.
You look at those who are in power in our government, and you wonder, “God could there be any who is as far from you as those who seem to make these policies?”
Some of you read the Bible and you look at your life and you wonder why the two don’t seem to match up.
And you want to cry out with the Psalmist this morning, “God, VINDICATE me!!”
And you can relate to the Psalmist in what he says next.
“if you are the God in whom I take refuge”: Now, if you look at this word “for” here, this is a notoriously hard word to translate.
In fact, if you want to do a little research, you can look at all the different translations and see how they translate this.
But this is the Hebrew word “ky” and it is a hebrew word that you basically use in a lot of different places.
It’s kind of like the English word “like”, you use it in a lot of different places.
And one of the meanings of this tiny little word is “if”.
And I think that word makes the most sense in this verse.
I think that means, “If you are the God in whom I take refuge…” In other words, the Psalmist says, “If tyhis is true.
God if it is true that I can take refuge in you, which you tell me to do in your word, if you really are a strong tower and a mighty refuge in times of distress....”
Then why?
Then why.
Why God, why hgave you rejected me?
Why6 have you abandoned me?
Why do I go about mourning?
Why am I oppressed?
He says, “God you say that you are on my side, but why in teh world w9ould ytou do this if you were on my side.
Why is this world so out of whack with how you say that it should be?
Why do the wicked triumph over hte righteous?
Why does goodness often receive evil as its reward?
Why do your people suffer?
God how could you let this happen.
I don’t see any way out of this situation.
In our lives: Many of you are in a similar situation in your lives.
You see an incongruence between the way things should be and betwen the way things are.
You see that, in teh words of the great theologian Cornelius Plantinga, things are not the way they’re supposed to be.
And you have no idea how things could improve.
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