Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Fear
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Analytical
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!! Out of Your Impossible Situation
For the director of music.
Of David.
A psalm.
{{{"
I waited patiently for the Lord;
he turned to me and heard my cry.
He lifted me out of the slimy pit,
out of the mud and mire;
he set my feet on a rock
and gave me a firm place to stand.
He put a new song in my mouth,
a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear
and put their trust in the Lord.
Blessed is the man
who makes the Lord his trust,
who does not look to the proud,
to those who turn aside to false gods.
Many, O Lord, my God,
are the wonders you have done.
The things you planned for us
no one can recount to you;
were I to speak and tell of them,
they would be too many to declare.
Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
but my ears you have pierced;
burnt offerings and sin offerings
you did not require.
Then I said, "Here I am, I have come—
it is written about me in the scroll.
I desire to do your will, 0 my God;
your law is within my heart."
}}}
Psalm 40:1-8
Tony Chain, thirty-seven, and J. R. Hounchell, thirty-nine, went hunting the first day of duck season, September 1, 1981.
They were in an area called Duck Flats northeast of Anchorage.
Hours before, ten feet of tidal water had covered the gully where they now beached their boat.
As they began their trudge through thick mud, Tony's left wader stuck fast.
He yanked sharply against the ooze—but suddenly both feet were stuck.
He tried to pitch forward, sideways.
With each effort he sank deeper into the thick, gray glop.
Tony's chilling cry startled his hunting companion: "Quicksand!
Help me, J. R.!" The two men had been hunting together for fifteen years.
They both knew about Alaska's loose glacial silt—like quicksand.
Formed by grains as small as talcum powder, the sand looks like common mud—but is far deadlier.
Gingerly stepping toward his friend, holding out the belt from his trousers, J. R. tried to help.
Then he felt the surface become spongy beneath him.
If he got caught, both of them would drown.
He ran for help, knowing that time was against them.
Alaskan tides are among the fastest rising and most dangerous in the world.
In less than four hours, the water would sweep across the flats, rising at a rate of one foot every twelve minutes.
J. R. was able to get through to Elmendorf Air Force Base, where a special rescue team scrambled to the site of the sinking man.
But when the two Air Force rescuers tried to help Tony, they began to sink, too.
One rescuer sank up to his thighs and the other rescuer had to rescue him.
Everything they did seemed to worsen the situation.
Next, they passed a paddle seat attached to a helicopter and slipped the strap beneath Tony's arms.
As the helicopter tried to hoist him up, Tony signaled frantically, his eyes wide with pain.
The helicopter pilot knew that a similar rescue attempt some time ago had torn the victim in two at the waist.
The only possibility was to decrease the distance between Tony and the chopper, so that he could be pulled more slowly from the mud.
That meant hovering directly overhead.
The pilot lowered the helicopter to thirty, twenty, then ten feet, seven . . .
six feet above the muck.
Tony yelled, "No lower, no lower!"
At this point a gust of wind could have blown the copter down and broken his back.
By 1:45 p.m. the mud was up to Tony's armpits.
The tide could come in at almost any time.
Suddenly, there was a slight movement upward.
Little by little, Tony felt the waders slip off his legs and disappear into the bog as he was pulled free at last—just in the nick of time.
(/Reader's Digest, /August 1986, pp.
115F.)
!!! God Rescues Us from Impossible Situations
Like Tony Chain, the psalmist found himself in great difficulty.
But unlike Tony, the psalmist's troubles seemed to be beyond even the greatest human effort.
His own efforts only proved the final futility of the problem.
But God intervened, and the psalmist responded to that intervention with a fresh sense of praise and a new demonstration of obedience.
By asking God alone to act, you can find a way out of your difficult situation.
No matter how impossible things seem, you can come back to God.
The psalmist's words present a memorable picture of human helplessness: "He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire."
The words picture a deep pit where even deeper waters resound from a horrible cavern further below.
Such pits were used as dungeons (Jer.
38:6), pitfalls for wild beasts (Ps.
7:15), or even as a grave (Ps.
28:1).
The words could also refer to a horrible pit of desolation, a roaring, resounding pit of spiritual tumult.
The noise could be that of water at the bottom of the pit.
Or the noise could refer to the screams of soldiers, their armor crashing and clanging as they plunged into its depths.
We can imagine that the bottom of the pit was a muck of filthy mire.
The more the psalmist struggled to get out, the deeper he sank into the bog.
Such places were found at the bottom of disused cisterns in the Holy Land.
Jeremiah had known the experience of being placed in just such a place as this while he was a prisoner of conscience for his preaching.
The depth, the noise, and the sinking slime all add up to an unforgettable picture of an impossible situation.
What kind of experience led the psalmist to express himself this way?
It may have been a military defeat, the opposition of wicked people, sickness, or the impossible situation created by personal sin in his life.
We do not know—and perhaps that is best.
Not knowing the cause, we can identify our own impossible situation with the psalmist's.
Where is your place of absolute impossibility?
Is it a relationship?
You never meant it to become what it has become, but now there is nothing you can do about it.
Is it a habit?
At first it seemed harmless, superficial, nonthreatening.
You thought you could stop at any time you desired.
But now, like Tony in the quicksand, you are trapped.
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