Psalm 52 - True Colors

Summer Psalms 2021  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented   •  36:49
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Apart from the New Birth you cannot be a "good Christian"

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Introduction

The title of this morning’s sermon comes from a saying that you probably have heard before—the idea that people will almost always show their “true colors” eventually. According to one source:
...the idiom has a nautical origin. During the 1600s, the term colors refer to [the flag which each ship is legally bound to fly] at sea. Soon after that, it also became a common scam of pirates to “sail under false colours” and hoist a friendly flag to get within close range of a targeted ship without alerting them... And when the pirate ship reached close quarters, would it unfurl its true colors. (Source: theidioms.com)
And so today when we talk about someone “showing their true colors” it’s often in the context of someone who betrays or deceives someone else: “My manager always told me I could trust him, but when I told him about how much I was going to make on that sale, he showed his true colors and closed the sale the day I was out of the office.”
It’s one thing for a co-worker to snipe a sales client out from under you, or for a politician to get elected and then “show his true colors” once he gets into office (we pretty much expect that, don’t we??) But it’s something else again when that betrayal, that deceit comes from a friend—when someone that you have loved and trusted suddenly turns on you and reveals that they never really were your friend to begin with.
And worst of all is when that sort of thing happens in the church. And it does—we like to focus on how healthy and God-honoring our relationships are in a church family, but the reality is that far too many people have had a fellow “Christian” show their true colors and turn on them. Even some of you here have experienced firsthand the deceit and pain of a self-described “Christian” revealing their “true colors”—to your dismay and heartbreak.
And so what I want us to see from our psalm this morning—and what I want to help you consider in your own life is that
The “true colors” of RELIGION are UGLY apart from the NEW BIRTH
Apart from the supernatural work of God in the heart of a repentant sinner transforming the heart from the ground up, any religious expression will eventually show itself in the ugliness of its true colors. The theological term for what Jesus calls the “New Birth” in John 3 is regeneration:
REGENERATION: The TRANSFORMATION of a person’s spiritual condition from DEATH to LIFE through the work of the HOLY SPIRIT.
The psalm that we have before us this morning comes out of an event in David’s life when an individual who claimed to be a faithful covenant member of God’s people showed his “true colors”. In the heading of the Psalm we read that David wrote Psalm 52 “When Doeg, the Edomite, came and told Saul, ‘David has come to the house of Ahimelech”.
The story is recorded for us in 1 Samuel 21-22. (Turn with me there, since we’ll be referring to this story as we study Psalm 52—it’s on page2 244-245 in the pew Bible). It takes place right after David was forced to flee from King Saul because of Saul’s murderous hatred for David—in Chapter 19 we read about Saul’s son Jonathan helping David escape.
In Chapter 21, David comes to the town of Nob, where Ahimelech was the priest of the Tabernacle—David doesn’t tell Ahimelech that he’s fleeing for his life from King Saul; he says the king has sent him on a “secret mission” and so he didn’t have time to get food or weapons (1 Sam 21:1-9).
So Ahimelech gives David the sacrificial bread that was offered to God each morning (the “showbread”) and gives him the sword of the giant Goliath, who David had killed years earlier (1 Sam 14). And so, with bread for him and his men and Goliath’s sword for defense, David and the few men with him escaped from Israel and went to the Philistines.
But sitting there watching all of this unfold between David and the priest was a man named Doeg:
1 Samuel 21:7 (ESV)
7 Now a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before the Lord. His name was Doeg the Edomite, the chief of Saul’s herdsmen.
We don’t know why Doeg was “detained” there at the Tabernacle—perhaps he was bound there because of a vow he was under, or perhaps he was dealing with some sin that required him to be there for sacrifices—but whatever the particulars it seems that Doeg was not there voluntarily. He didn’t want to be at the Tabernacle; he didn’t want to be carrying out the duties he had there. In other words, it seems as though Doeg’s heart wasn’t in it.
And in the next chapter, when King Saul is complaining that everyone has conspired against him and hidden David’s movements and whereabouts, Doeg pipes up:
1 Samuel 22:9–10 (ESV)
9 Then answered Doeg the Edomite, who stood by the servants of Saul, “I saw the son of Jesse coming to Nob, to Ahimelech the son of Ahitub, 10 and he inquired of the Lord for him and gave him provisions and gave him the sword of Goliath the Philistine.”
Immediately Saul calls for Ahimelech and sentences him to death for treason—aiding and abetting David, the enemy of the crown. He commands his bodyguards to execute Ahimelech and the priests, which they refuse to do (v. 17), and so he tells Doeg to kill them—which he does without hesitation:
1 Samuel 22:18–19 (ESV)
18 Then the king said to Doeg, “You turn and strike the priests.” And Doeg the Edomite turned and struck down the priests, and he killed on that day eighty-five persons who wore the linen ephod. 19 And Nob, the city of the priests, he put to the sword; both man and woman, child and infant, ox, donkey and sheep, he put to the sword.
It is a ghastly scene—the priests who, just a short while before, were ministering to Doeg as he carried out his worship before YHWH, the men who served him and supported him before the LORD at the Tabernacle—he now turns against and slaughters them in cold blood.
One single priest manages to escape (v. 20), and finds his way to David in hiding to tell him about what Doeg had done:
1 Samuel 22:22 (ESV)
22 And David said to Abiathar, “I knew on that day, when Doeg the Edomite was there, that he would surely tell Saul. I have occasioned the death of all the persons of your father’s house.
And so, in his grief and rage over what Doeg had done, he does a very “David-like” thing: he writes a song about it:
Psalm 52:1–4 (ESV)
1 Why do you boast of evil, O mighty man? The steadfast love of God endures all the day. 2 Your tongue plots destruction, like a sharp razor, you worker of deceit. 3 You love evil more than good, and lying more than speaking what is right. Selah 4 You love all words that devour, O deceitful tongue.
This is the first thing that we see about the “true colors” of religion apart from the experience of being born again:

I. Your WORDS are DESTRUCTIVE (Psalm 52:1-4)

Psalm 52:2 (ESV)
2 Your tongue plots destruction, like a sharp razor, you worker of deceit.
Doeg carefully crafted his words to cause maximum damage to Ahimelech and the priests—religion that is unconnected to a new birth of regeneration in the heart leads to
DESTROYING what you should be HONORING them (vv. 2-4)
If you turn back to 1 Samuel 22, you see just how deviously Doeg plotted the destruction of Ahimelech and the priests. Look again at verses 9-10: When Saul complained that no one was helping him in his search for David, Doeg said,
1 Samuel 22:9–10 (ESV)
9 ...“I saw the son of Jesse coming to Nob, to Ahimelech the son of Ahitub, 10 and he inquired of the Lord for him and gave him provisions and gave him the sword of Goliath the Philistine.”
Notice that he didn’t tell Saul that Ahimelech didn’t even know that David was on the run, that David had told him that he was on a “secret mission” from King Saul—if Doeg hadn’t conveniently left out that bit, Saul wouldn’t have blamed Ahimelech, and would most likely have let him live.
But Doeg wanted Saul to be incensed with anger against Ahimelech—and he knew just how to play on Saul’s paranoia and mistrust. He says in verse 10 that Ahimelech “inquired of the LORD” for David (which was often done before a battle). He described the sacrificial bread the priests gave him as “provisions” (a term for military rations), and he specifically said that “Ahimelech gave David the sword of Goliath—the giant that he killed that gave him all his fame and showed you up as a failure! (Remember it was David’s victory over Goliath that started all of Saul’s paranoia over David taking over his throne!)
You could hardly craft a more potent statement to throw Saul into a rage of fear, bitterness and resentment than what Doeg said to him—and there’s no way to avoid the impression that he was doing it deliberately. Doeg hated being “detained before the LORD”—he hated the covenant that bound him, and so when he had the opportunity he used his deceitful words to slice and hack and destroy the priests of the LORD, to whom he owed honor and love and esteem.
The “true colors” of religion are ugly apart from the new birth—your tongue is destructive, destroying what should be honored, and in verse 1 we see the ugliness of unregenerate religion
DESPISING the One you should be LOVING (v. 1)
Psalm 52:1 (ESV)
1 Why do you boast of evil, O mighty man? The steadfast love of God endures all the day.
In other words, David says, “God has offered you His steadfast love through His covenant with you—why in the world would you want to turn away from that and make your boast in your evil instead??” Remember, Doeg is called “the Edomite” in this passage—the nation of Edom were at this time very hostile to Israel (and to God’s people—they refused to let Moses through their territory back in Numbers 20).
But when we first meet Doeg, he was in the Tabernacle, participating in the Covenant with God’s people! The grace and mercy that had been extended to Doeg, that an enemy of Israel was being welcomed before God as a friend, that he was given such a place in the Covenant people as to be bound by its vows and sacrifices and offerings—what a grace it was to him, and yet he despised it instead!
Here in Psalm 52 David is bewildered and taken aback by Doeg’s scorn of God’s grace— “Doeg, you had God’s everlasting covenant love offered to you! How in the world could you turn your back on that and boast in your evil schemes instead??!?” But Doeg loved his sin and his rebellion more than he loved God’s gracious call to repentance and everlasting love.
The true colors of religion are always ugly apart from the new birth. Apart from God regenerating your life, your tongue is destructive—and as David goes on in verses 5-7

II. Your DESTINY is DESTRUCTION (Psalm 52:5-7)

Psalm 52:5 (ESV)
5 But God will break you down forever; he will snatch and tear you from your tent; he will uproot you from the land of the living. Selah
Just as Doeg utterly destroyed the priests and their city:
1 Samuel 22:18–19 (ESV)
18 ...Doeg the Edomite turned and struck down the priests, and he killed on that day eighty-five persons who wore the linen ephod. 19 And Nob, the city of the priests, he put to the sword; both man and woman, child and infant, ox, donkey and sheep, he put to the sword.
So, David says, the day will come when Doeg will be utterly destroyed as well--
God will RIP your LIFE away (v. 5)
David says he will be broken down (shattered, knocked to pieces), he will be torn from his tent (he won’t have a place in Israel any longer, his “tent”—his family—will be eliminated, just as he tore away all the families of the priests), he will be uprooted from the land of the living (utterly cut off, removed never to return).
Those who make a great show of their religious faithfulness but who have never submitted themselves to God in repentance—those who claim to belong to Him but whose hearts are far from Him and have never been transformed by the New Birth—are headed for utter destruction someday. They may be like Doeg, people of power and position and authority who make a good show of their religious faithfulness, but who are gritting their teeth and inwardly despising the faith the whole time.
And God’s Word here says that eventually those true colors will show through—the day will come when they will receive their reward for their deceitful and treacherous dealings with God’s people. The scorn and hatred for Biblical faith that they have secretly nourished in their hearts all their lives will be exposed as God tears down their pretenses and uproots their security and rips away their lives and their futures.
And all of this will be done so that
God will be FEARED and GLORIFIED (vv. 6-7)
by His people.
Psalm 52:6–7 (ESV)
6 The righteous shall see and fear, and shall laugh at him, saying, 7 “See the man who would not make God his refuge, but trusted in the abundance of his riches and sought refuge in his own destruction!”
So many times throughout the Scriptures, when treacherous and deceitful enemies of God’s people try to destroy them God defeats them in such a way that His people can see and rejoice in their downfall—Haman built a gallows for Mordechai and Mordechai lived to see Haman hanged on it, for instance. And elsewhere in the Psalms David sings
Psalm 9:15 (ESV)
15 The nations have sunk in the pit that they made; in the net that they hid, their own foot has been caught.
And the response of God’s people when they see God’s enemies fall into their own trap is of laughter—but it is fearful laughter. It is a realization that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10:31). As Matthew Henry puts it:
“God’s judgments on the wicked should strike an awe upon the righteous and make them afraid of offending God and incurring his displeasure.” (Henry, M. (1994). Matthew Henry’s commentary on the whole Bible: complete and unabridged in one volume (p. 820). Peabody: Hendrickson.)
Because Doeg (and all those like him) would not make God his refuge, he is like the fool who built his house on the sand “and great was its fall” when the floods came. Mark it well, beloved—you can either glorify God by your obedience and reverent submission in this life, or He will get glory over you in your destruction!
The “true colors” of religion are ugly apart from the New Birth—your words are destructive and your destiny is destruction. And so the last two verses of this psalm give a contrast between the “true colors” of unregenerate religion and the new colors of true faith—what it looks like when you

III. Set your DELIGHT in the FAITHFULNESS of God (Psalm 52:8-9)

Doeg boasted in his evil, he plotted the downfall of those he should have honored and hated the God he should have loved. But David closes by singing of his trust in God’s faithfulness—he sings of his
ABUNDANT LIFE before God (v. 8)
Psalm 52:8 (ESV)
8 But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. I trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever.
The faithful steadfast love of God that Doeg hates (v. 1) is what David trusts in. He says he is like “a green olive tree in the house of God”—Doeg despised being “detained” in God’s presence in the Tabernacle—but David is happy to be planted there!
Olive trees are some of the longest-living trees on the planet; it is not unusual for olive trees to live for thousands of years! The oldest living olive tree on record is actually in David’s hometown of Bethlehem—the “al Badawi” tree (“The Big One”) is estimated to be over four thousand years old! If that’s accurate, it would have sprouted sometime after Noah’s Flood! It would have been ancient in David’s day!(https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/the-tallest-strongest-and-most-iconic-trees-in-the-world-759955/
What a beautiful picture of steadfast, sturdy, abundant life that God’s people have in Him! Christian, when you came to Jesus Christ and repented of your sin, when you laid down your scorn and disdain for His Word and confessed your wickedness to Him and He transformed your heart from death to life, the life that He brought you into is not just a life that is full and joyful here—but you have a life that will continue for all eternity in His presence!
And that eternal life has been guaranteed by the steadfast love of the LORD—He has sworn that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life—a four-thousand year old olive tree is nothing compared to the life of abundance and joy that God has for you, Christian!
1 Corinthians 2:9 (ESV)
9 But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”—
David calls us to delight in God’s faithfulness to promise us abundant life before God, and finally to have
GRATEFUL PATIENCE before God (v. 9)
Psalm 52:9 (ESV)
9 I will thank you forever, because you have done it. I will wait for your name, for it is good, in the presence of the godly.
Doeg may boast in his evil, he may plot and scheme, he may pose as an upright and pious individual while hating God and His people in his heart—but David will trust in God’s timing and His purposes to prevail. Doeg may chafe at being in the presence of God’s people, but that’s right where David wanted to be! He is happy to go into the presence of God and His gathered people in worship and wait on God to carry out His plans for rescuing him from his enemies!
Beloved, we live in a time when a lot of “true colors” are coming out —a lot of people who have great reputations for piety and religious devotion are beginning to show that they are willing to tear down the religion that they claimed to be a part of. We’re seeing it every day, and there’s no reason to expect that we won’t continue to see people who can no longer hide their disdain and rebellious attitude towards God and His Word behind a facade of “good Christian behavior”.
But we have to be careful—because it’s far easier for us to sit here and look down on those sorry 21st Century Doegs than it is to look for evidence of that same resentment and rebellion in our own hearts. Is the ugliness of unregenerate religion beginning to show through in your life—the ugliness of a destructive tongue that tears down people you should be honoring, that speaks lightly or harshly of God’s steadfast love for you?
The Apostle James warns about how destructive the tongue can be:
James 3:8–12 (ESV)
8 but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. 10 From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. 11 Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? 12 Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.
Do you see what James is saying here? If your heart has been re-born by the power of the Holy Spirit, if you have been born again in salvation by Christ, then why is your tongue still sounding like an unregenerate Doeg? Why are you seeking to slice up and cut down your brother or sister in Christ? Why are you letting half-truths do the work of whole lies, why are you throwing another member under the bus because it gets you what you want? James says “these things ought not to be so”—and David warns that those who do such things, those who reveal their “true colors” of deceit and hatred and animosity by tearing down others will themselves be torn down by God.
If you hear your words starting to sound cutting, if you find yourself formulating a reply or concocting a story in order to do harm to your neighbor, then you need to repent and confess your sin to God lest He tear you up and throw you away!
And if you have suffered the cutting, tearing words of someone who has been flying a “false flag” of Christian, and you have seen their true colors in the way they betrayed you, see here from Psalm 52 that your response is clear:—you are to trust in the steadfast love of God forever, and you are to wait on Him to act on your behalf for the sake of His name!
Just because a false-flag Christian hurt you is no reason to remove yourself from the presence of the godly. You are to come to God in the presence of His people, not forsaking this assembly because you have been hurt in the past—your hope is in God, and He will someday make it right. And you will see it and praise Him with godly fear!
And if you are here this morning and you have to admit that you have been attending Bethel under a “false flag”—you outwardly look like a good, faithful Christian but your heart is far from Him and you secretly chafe at His commands and look down on His people—if you have been going through the motions of being a “good Christian” but do not belong to Him, understand two things: First, the moment is coming when your “true colors” will come out. You will not be able to hide your unregenerate heart forever. And the second thing is this: You can make it right today!
Let this be the day when you come to Him in repentance, when you come to Him confessing that deceitful, false heart of unregenerate religion. Aren’t you tired of pretending, of hiding, of keeping the steadfast love of the LORD at arm’s length? He has extended His invitation to you today: He will forgive you, cleanse you, make you one of His beloved people—and you can finally really be what you have been pretending to be all this time! Make your “true colors” the new colors of a brand-new, born again heart of holiness, purchased for you by your Savior, Jesus Christ!
BENEDICTION
1 Thessalonians 5:23–28 (ESV)
23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it... 28 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. AMEN

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION:

What are some areas of life where people can become resentful of God’s commands? How can that resentment show up in the words that we speak to one another in our church family? If your words are cutting or tearing down people you should be honoring, what does that say about the state of your heart?
Read Psalm 52:8-9 again. David said that he would wait “in the presence of the godly” for God to vindicate him against the slander and deceit of his enemies. What do these verses instruct you to do when you have been deceived or hurt by someone who claims to be a Christian?
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