Sermon Tone Analysis

*Who and What Do You Fear, Love, and Hate? (Psalm 119:113-120)*

/Preached by Pastor Phil Layton at Gold Country Baptist Church on January 25, 2009/

www.goldcountrybaptist.org

What things do you fear the most in life?

What things do you love most in life?

What things do you hate most in life?

Your truest and greatest fears, loves, and hates reveal as much about you spiritually as anything else.

The secret of the godly life of the man who wrote Psalm 119 is found in where his fears, loves, and hates were found and focused.

*Psalm 119:113-120 (NASB95) 113 **I hate those who are double-minded, But I love Your law.** **114 **You are my hiding place and my shield; I wait for Your word.** **115 **Depart from me, evildoers, That I may observe the commandments of my God.** **116 **Sustain me according to Your word, that I may live; And do not let me be ashamed of my hope.**

**117 **Uphold me that I may be safe, That I may have regard for Your statutes continually.**

**118 **You have rejected all those who wander from Your statutes, For their deceitfulness is useless.**

**119 **You have removed all the wicked of the earth /like /dross; Therefore I love Your testimonies.**

**120 **My flesh trembles for fear of You, And I am afraid of Your judgments.*

My life has been changed by expository preaching and continues to be.

I count it a great honor and joy and privilege and weighty responsibility to seek to pass on God’s truth in such a manner.

By expository or expositional teaching I mean studying a Bible text – usually one primary passage – examining it in its original contexts by deep study to determine its original meaning and then seeking to exposit it (preach by exposing and explaining and applying) the God-inspired big idea of the passage, rather than my ideas.

There are times where on a given Sunday I may preach from a different part of Scripture than the week before, but all preaching should be  expository in nature (truly text-derived, text-determined, and text-driven).

/Consecutive/ expository preaching (where you work through a long passage or book of the Bible verse-by-verse, week-by-week) is the healthiest regular diet of the church.

/Advantages of Expository Preaching that is consecutive:/

1. It’s the way God wrote it, one verse after another, in context

2. In the long haul, it’s more likely to be faithful to the biblical mandates to “declare the whole counsel of God” (rather than just our favorite subjects or passages) and the solemn charge to “preach the Word.”

When Paul says “preach the Word,” it’s not /what men want to say or hear/, but what /God has said - the way He said it -/ without reshaping, twisting, distorting, or watering down God’s intent, bringing His whole truth to bear with humble boldness.

‘We must resist the urge to merely incorporate Bible verses into our messages to support our own opinions and agenda.

To preach expositorily is to actually /preach /Bible verses … we are going /to the Bible /to find out what we will say.

In the end the preacher does not use the Bible to preach his own message; /instead, it is the Bible that uses the preacher to preach its message … /Those who try to preach [mainly topically] often end up using the Scriptures to preach their own message.

Most preachers will find it safer to make a regular practice of seeking to convey the message of God in one passage per sermon.

While other passages may be mentioned to reinforce the meaning of the text at hand, one primary passage should drive each sermon.’[1]

3. I don’t have to cleverly think up and decide what to teach on next, or what /I/ want to say to get /my/ agenda and ideas across, and then try and find a verse or two to throw in for good measure.

It’s freeing (not to mention good for my conscience) to simply go to the verses that come next in our consecutive study and study them and do my best to communicate /what God wanted to communicate/ in the next passage.

And I never cease to be refreshed and blessed by how relevant the next text is.

 

4.

Scripture stretches you and says things you wouldn’t normally say or think about and it challenges the way you like to think of things.

Ex:       v.

113a “I hate those who are double-minded”

– I didn’t think we were ever supposed to hate?

            v.

113b “I love thy law”

– how can someone love a law?

I can see loving the gospel, but the law of the OT (Leviticus, etc.)?

            v.

120 “My flesh trembles for fear of You and I am afraid”

- believers aren’t supposed to fear, tremble, be afraid of God, are we?

That’s just for unbelievers, right?

Doesn’t love cast out fear for God’s children?

 

Expository preaching forces us to deal with such tough questions.

As we seek to deal with each section each week of this Psalm (the original writing treats each section as a unit), we don’t have time to exhaust every possible truth or question in all eight verses.

But I do want to always seek to cover the major truths, and today to answer those 3 questions which will in turn cover the 3 major truths.

3 key words that stand out in this text: *Hate, Love, Fear.*

* *

*1.

What He Hates*

Verse 113 begins with what this godly man hated, a jarring verse.

*113 **I hate those who are double-minded …*

 

Question: I didn’t think we were ever supposed to hate anyone?

He says He loves God’s law at the end of the verse, but doesn’t the 2nd greatest commandment of that law forbid hating others?

Leviticus 19:17-18: “You shall not hate your brother in your heart … You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

You can avoid difficult questions by not studying the Bible verse-by-verse paying attention to details, but we want to seek God’s whole counsel as best we can

 

There are 3 other verses in this psalm where it says he hates falsehood or false ways, but here he seems to hate the false teachers themselves?? Let’s start with the term “double-minded.”

1395 Wycliffe translation “I hate wicked men”

1525 Coverdale translation “I hate ye ungodly”

1611 KJV “I hate vain *thoughts*” (the Heb.

word is more, though)

NKJV “I hate the double-minded” [f.n.

/divided/ in heart or mind].

Scholars today recognize the term refers to those who are double-minded people.

Even hundreds of years ago, before modern studies understood the term better, Puritan commentator Matthew Poole wrote ‘the ancient interpreters understand this word not of things, but of persons, and so it may be understood of men that think evil, that devise wicked devices, or that have false and evil opinions, opposite to God's law, or tending to seduce men from it.’[2]

One translation has “I hate people with divided loyalties” with the footnote: /Heb/ “divided ones.”

The word occurs only here; it appears to be derived from a verbal root, attested in Arabic, meaning “to split” … Since the psalmist is emphasizing his unswerving allegiance to God and his law, the term probably refers to those who lack such loyalty.

The translation is similar to that suggested by L. C. Allen, /Psalms 101–150 /(WBC), 131.[3]

This verse is not referring to purely pagan unbelievers or even his personal enemies like other verses in this Psalm.

The term seems to refer here to professing believers who preach or practice contrary to the faith, intentionally not trying to be devoted to God alone.

-         They don’t outright /disown/ God, they just think they can have /double /lives, /dual /loves, /deceptive /lips (cf.

v. 118b)

-         They are /disloyal/ to the God they profess, /divided/ in soul.

-         They have split souls, minds in the middle, they’re /half-hearted/, perpetual “partial” believers.

One foot in, one foot out, they’re on the fence.

-         They’re like an expired bad coffee creamer box of half and half.

They want to mix or combine the things of God with the rotten things of the world, but the result is a bad taste to God, deserving only to be dumped out and thrown away.

-         Anytime we try and stir in or syncretize or integrate God and His Word with something less and something else – the true and jealous God of Scripture must depart because He will not be shared with another, as He has said so many times in His Word.

So many verses teach this vital truth.

-         To try to only partially please God is to displease God.

-         Half-truths are actual lies.

There is no middle ground, no compromise, no combination – this is not Burger King where you can “have it your way.”

The King of Kings says it is my way or you’re on another highway.

God frequently draws a line in the sand and says essentially I am either Lord of all or I’m not Lord at all.

“Choose you this day whom you will serve.”

“No man can serve two masters.

For either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and [anything else].”

“There can be no fellowship with light and darkness.”

The greatest commandment is “love the LORD your God” – not with half your heart, or divided mind or some part of your soul – but “with ALL your heart, all your soul, all your mind.”

“Double-minded” in v. 113 comes from the same root as the word translated “two opinions” in 1 Kings 18:21: Elijah came near to all the people and said, “How long will you hesitate between *two opinions*?

If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.”

But the people did not answer him \\ \\

Double-minded people are those who know about God but who are not fully determined to worship and serve him only.

They want Baal as well as the benefits of the Lord, they want a Savior and they want their sin.

God hates that, and so does the man after God’s heart in this passage.

James Boice adds: ‘I believe he is also saying he hates the same double-mindedness in himself.

Otherwise, why does he continue by asking God to sustain him, according to his promise, and uphold him so that he might be kept from sin?

These verses breathe out love of God’s law and determination to avoid double-mindedness, as Maclaren says, but it is only against the dark background of his tendency to be lukewarm that the strong fixing of his mind and will to obey God’s law makes sense.’[4]

So David prays in Psalm 86:11 “Unite my heart to fear thy name”

 

It’s possible for a believer’s heart to be divided, so we need to pray for it to be united, and we must pray without doubt or divided mind

 

James 1:6-8 (NASB95) 6 But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.