Liberty Baptist Church
July 26

      • Psalm 85:4–8ESV

  • MY GOD IS STILL THE SAME
  • I NEED THEE EVERY HOUR
  • SPEAK O LORD

      • John 10:27–29ESV

  • If you have your Bibles, and I hope you do, go ahead and grab them and open them to Psalm 12.
    Like many of the Psalms this was written by David and interestingly it’s a communal lament—specifically toward the words of those within the community.
    Now we’re not totally sure when David wrote this psalm, but we do know that it is something that would’ve actually been sung by the people of God. So this communal lament then is something that might look outward. It might look at the surrounding world and go, what happened to trustworthy people? What happened to those who were faithful to the Lord? Or maybe he was looking inside his own family. Maybe he felt betrayed, lied to, and manipulated. Maybe he looked inside his people, what we would know as the church, and what was supposed to be a safe place had become a palace where people fought for promotion. He could’ve been looking in his own court going, who do I trust? What do I do when I live among a people who no longer mean what they say?
    Regardless of whatever the specific context was, the answer remains the same: Trust in the Lord to provide the safety you need in the midst of a deceptive and lying world. That’s the message of Psalm 12.
    So follow along with me as I read this text. We’ll pray, and then we’ll see 3 reasons from these verses as to why we can trust the Lord.
    Psalm 12 ESV
    To the choirmaster: according to The Sheminith. A Psalm of David. Save, O Lord, for the godly one is gone; for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man. Everyone utters lies to his neighbor; with flattering lips and a double heart they speak. May the Lord cut off all flattering lips, the tongue that makes great boasts, those who say, “With our tongue we will prevail, our lips are with us; who is master over us?” “Because the poor are plundered, because the needy groan, I will now arise,” says the Lord; “I will place him in the safety for which he longs.” The words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times. You, O Lord, will keep them; you will guard us from this generation forever. On every side the wicked prowl, as vileness is exalted among the children of man.
    This is God’s Word for God’s people. And we respond: Thanks be to God. Let’s pray.
    There’s 3 things David gives us to trust the Lord in the midst of a deceptive and lying world. Here’s the first:

    Cry out to the Lord.

    You can hear the desperation in David’s heart from the very first word. All he can utter is, “save.” Not save me, not oh, Lord, how awesome you are and I need you to save me, just save. It comes from deep in his heart, like the people of Israel in Exodus 2. They were oppressed by Pharoah and cried out to the Lord. Next week, Frank is going to preach on 1 Kings 19 in which Elijah finds himself experiencing the same sense of isolation.
    Like the saints before him, and those who would come after him, David looks around and it feels as if there is no one who remains faithful to the Lord, which is important for us to understand. What psalms of lament teach us is that it’s ok to feel. We aren’t required to pretend that things are better than they feel, but at the same time, they don’t leave us there. They teach us where to take what we feel. Save, O Lord!
    So even if we don’t go any further into the psalm you can find in this lament a word of hope from just the first few words. On this side of history you know that God did save the Israelites out of Egypt. He did deliver Elijah. He did save David, and more than all of them, we think of Jesus who had lies uttered about him. Yet even though he was crucified, he cried out to God and God delivered him by raising him from the dead.
    When the rest of the world is pressing in, when you’re isolated and alone, when lies are being spoken, where’s your hope?
    Think with me about the seriousness of David’s situation. Again, not sure where we are in the timeline of history here, but as a king the people around him are uttering lies, and not just to him, but to their neighbor. Meaning, there’s a whole cultural problem here in which people’s language is empty. And it’s not just not telling the truth, it’s saying things you don’t mean.
    For example, if you tell someone, “Oh you’ll be so great at that!” but you really don’t think that, and maybe even deep down you hope they’re not, then you may not be lying per se, but you aren’t being honest.
    Or the next line, flattering lips with a double heart. You say, “Oh you’ll be so great,” all the while your calculating how you might use this person to move up in status or benefit your own position. What you say outwardly doesn’t match what you desire inwardly.
    So David looks around and what does he see? He sees a people who weren’t honest. They just said what they wanted so that they could save face or even gain position, but what happens to a community of people when are words are like that? Our words actually undermine and divide the people.
    Our words have so much power. James 3:5
    James 3:5 ESV
    So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire!
    With our words we can unify and build up the body and with our words we can tear it all down. This is why Paul spends so much time talking about the unity of the body in the NT. When our words are used to self-promote or self-preserve or to gossip; when our words are not forthright but instead are veiled comments, then we undermine our declared love for one another and are actually participating with the wicked declaring the same thing at the end of verse 4: “who is master over us?” You see the problem isn’t just that they lie; it’s that they believe their lips answer to no one.
    I can say what I want to say, I can do what I want to do, because all these other people are just pieces in a puzzle that I should use to make me the center of it all. I’m the master here. Allen Ross points out, “When such arrogance is joined with deception there is no limit to the destruction that can follow.”
    So I think there’s two question that come from these first four verses. One challenges and the other encourages. When you think about your words this week or this summer or maybe this year, overall, has the conversations you’ve had and the words you’ve spoken reveal a heart that is governed by truth, or a heart that is governed by self-preservation?
    Now that can be kind of tricky because you can think, I told the truth, so my heart is governed by truth, right? No, truth telling can be flattery. Or it can be done with the intention of hurting someone, or protecting your image. Biblical truthfulness is not just giving factual accuracy. It’s truth in love. It’s truth with grace. So how do we know what our heart is governed by? Well here’s a couple questions that might help:
    Do I say things because they are true and loving, or because they protect my image?
    Do I speak differently about people depending on which group I’m in?
    Do my words make peace, or do they quietly recruit people to my side?
    Maybe spend sometime this afternoon examining your words and your conversations to see what truly governs your heart.
    But then there’s the flip side of the coin. Maybe you’re here today and you can identify with David. You feel alone. You feel betrayed. You feel deceived because people have flattered or straight lied about you, to you, or behind your back. You feel as if they’re using you in their game. If that’s you this morning, you’re not alone. There’s saints that have gone before you and they all cry out to the Lord, Save!
    And here’s the thing about the Lord…he delights in saving. So much so that he sent his son to save you not just from faithless people, but from becoming a faithless person. He can save you from the lies spoken against you and from the lies that live within you. So whether you feel lonely, lost and alone, or you’ve said things that have been for nothing more than self-preservation or self-promotion you can look to Jesus and know that at the cross he paid the price for your sin, and he guarantees that no sin commited against you will escape the justice of God.
    So cry out out to Jesus and know that he doesn’t just hear your cries, but our second point this morning:

    The Lord arises for the oppressed.

    David has made his petition to the Lord for four verses, but now the Lord steps onto the scene. Look back with me to v5
    Psalm 12:5 ESV
    “Because the poor are plundered, because the needy groan, I will now arise,” says the Lord; “I will place him in the safety for which he longs.”
    David cries, “Save, O Lord,” and the Lord moves to action. From his throne the Lord looks down and he sees the poor being plunder and the needy groaning. I agree with Charles Spurgeon that those are two different classes being identified. The poor are those who can’t help themselves. The systems they live in, the culture they’re apart of, the political and economical climate they endure restrains them from ever bettering their position, but it’s not just that they struggle, it’s that they’re being taken advantage of.
    This happens in our own community. I bumped into another pastor in town a week or so ago and he said one of the biggest ways they’ve supported people in our town is by advocating against landlords. There are people here who rent houses and parts of the house don’t work, like their water heater, or they aren’t sealed and in the winter there’s snow inside the house, yet the landlord won’t fix the problem. He just plunders the poor for his pocket.
    The poor will always be among us, but the poor are not always needy, and the needy are not always poor. Sometimes you have what you need, but life is hard. You get news that devastates. You receive a phone call that flips your world upside down. You lose a job. And all of those things are hard, but when we step back and we look at this passage as a whole we see a world dominated by deception and tyranny, and haven’t we already discussed how that’s true of our world?
    So in a real sense in which we can all identify with the needy. But the hope of Psalm 12, as Spurgeon so eloquently put it is this: “Poor, sick, needy, sorrowing, sighing child of God, it is you who can bring him into this marvellous state of activity.” The groan that seems too weak for anyone else to hear is enough to move the Lord to action.
    You see, God moves, he arises for the needy and the poor. Isn’t that who he sent his own Son to? You see Jesus didn’t come for self-righteous people. They have no need of him. He came for those who are sick, those who are sinners, those who are needy. God saw us as needy, and God moved. He arose and he sent his son into a world full of people who flatter, boast, lie and think they are masters of their own destiny. Jesus allowed himself to be plundered, condemned, and crucified. Yet through the resurrection, God vindicated his Son, broke the power of sin and death and opened a place of eternal safety for everyone who takes refuge in him. That’s what Jesus truly did: he made a way for us to be placed in “the safety for which we long.”
    Which leads to the question: what is the safety for which we long? We can begin to think that safety = a new set of circumstances. Like if God will just take me out of this and place me into that I’ll be safe. But that’s not always the case. In the Garden of Gesthemane Jesus, cried, Lord, let this cup pass, but not my will but yours be done. The Lord led him to the cross, not away from it.
    So safety doesn’t necessarily mean a change of circumstances, but it also doesn’t mean that we remain in our circumstances but now have the ability to control them or even the ability to understand them. We can begin to think I can survive anything if I can control or manipulate the outcome.
    Safety doesn’t even mean that I have the grit to persevere by my own willpower.
    And safety also doesn’t mean that I just throw up my hands and go, it is what it is so I guess I’ll go on.
    Look, I’m sure David would’ve felt more safe if he had a righteous & wise group around him who always spoke honestly and purely. Who wouldn’t want that? But a faithful community cannot provide ultimate safety. Which is important for us to understand because we can have a tendency to want to withdraw from community because we’ve been genuinely hurt in it, or because we think it’s not capable of responding to us perfectly. Because there isn’t a community on earth that will always speak purely and honestly.
    The church itself is a community of sinners who are learning to repent, forgive, tell the truth, and bear with one another because their safety is found in Christ.
    You see David safety wasn’t found in a flawless group of people. What made David safe was the Lord who arose…the Lord who spoke. And because his safety was in the Lord, he could risk entering relationships with imperfect people instead of demanding that those people make him feel completely safe.
    God actually used the faithlessness surrounding David, and the suffering he witnessed, to strip away every false refuge and remind him that safety was found in the Lord alone. So David cries, “Save, O Lord,” trusting that God hears and will act according to his perfect wisdom.
    So friend this morning what are you counting on to keep you safe? What are you imagining will give you the security for which you long? It’s only found in the Lord who speaks and who arises.
    Which leads us to our third point:

    The Lord will keep you forever.

    Typically, psalms of lament end in praise, but that’s not the case in Psalm 12. This communal lament ends in a renewed faith with a realistic perspective. In V7 the Lord keeps and guards, yet in verse 8 there’s a recognition that there still are wicked people prowling and vileness being exalted amongst man. Psalms 12 doesn’t end with a new group of faithful men surrounding David. Rather it ends with a renewed trust that the Lord will keep him & guard him in the midst of a group of people who lie and are self-promoting. But what does that look like? What does the Lord’s keeping and guarding actually look like?
    Well, what was the danger for David in Ps. 12? It was the words of the people. They lying, the deception, the double heartedness. Yet at the same time, where is the hope for David found? It’s in the words of the Lord! Deliverance is found in the God who acts, but the way David knows about the God who acts is through the words of that God. What Psalm 12 shows us is that God keeps us and guards us by the truth…His Word.
    Charles Spurgeon said, “Make the Word of God your daily companion, and then, whatever may grieve you in the false doctrine of the hour, you will not be too much cast down; for the words of the Lord will sustain your spirit.” Isn’t that what the words of the Lord did for David? Didn’t they guard him and keep him in the midst of a lying world?
    Think about this song being sung in the temple by the people of God. They’re reminded that as David suffers and cries, groans, the KJV says he sighs, they are reminded that there is a God who hears. He hears the desperate plea of Save!
    And the Word of the Lord shows that he is a God who will be just. He will act on behalf of the poor & needy. He will execute justice on those who live as if they are their own masters.
    His acting isn’t just justice against the wicked though, it’s deliverance into safety. Safety of his working, safety of his keeping and guarding.
    That’s what the pure words of the Lord do. They remind us that when our faith is in him we are kept and we are guarded by God. The battle may rage, oppression may remain, but when we trust in him our soul is safe. He has dealt with our biggest problem…not the deception of others, but the deception of our own hearts. He has dealt with our own declared and lived out mastery of our own hearts. On the cross he paid our debt by his blood, and he purchased our position as his child. And if you have placed your faith in what Jesus has done for you then you are kept and guarded by him so that you can walk through the gauntlet of persecution, or work alongside flattering, double hearted liars and yet never be alone, never not be safe. And what tells us of all of this? The Word of God!
    You see, the pure words of the Lord kept and guarded David by granting him the faith in who God is and what God would do, and his trust in that then empowered him to restrain himself. Instead of flexing, or evading, or isolating, he could engage. Yet he didn’t engage on his own power, what is Psalm 12? It’s a cry to God! It’s a prayer!
    The word of God guarded him and kept him by pressing him deeper into prayer and dependence on the Lord & in doing so it deepened his relationship wit the Lord so that even when the wicked prowl and vileness around him was exalted, he could stand firm he could be safe, he could even serve those who sought to usurp his authority.
    And in doing so, the Word of the Lord guarded and kept David by keeping him from becoming a deceptive person in the midst of a deceptive world. The Lord keeps and guards through his word.
    Students, isn’t that what you learned at camp this week? Rom 12:1-2
    Romans 12:2 ESV
    Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
    The pure word of the Lord renews our minds to show us a God who acts, a God who hears, a God who is just, and a God who loves. And the way you know that God is through His Word.
    This Word tells us of the Word who became flesh and dwelt amongst us, full of grace and full of truth, who now, by His Spirit, keeps us and guards us, who provides the safety we need in the midst of a deceptive and lying world. The question is, do you trust in him?
    Do you trust in his work on your behalf, or are you trusting that you can rule and reign over your life? By your words, your understanding and your abilities you can manipulate and maneuver so that your safe? Psalm 12 calls us to trust in the Lord.
    But specifically, how do we do that?
    MPS: Trust in the Lord to provide the safety you need in the midst of a deceptive and lying world.
    So what do we do with this?
    Trust the Lord by…
    Knowing His Word
    We tend to listen to the lies of men...
    You are alone. You must protect yourself. You need to control the outcome. Words are merely the tools for getting what you want.
    But the Word of God tells us that God...
    Hears. Sees. Acts. Is just. Cares for the poor and the needy. and keeps his children in the midst of it all.
    Submitting to His Word
    We obey
    We entrust ourselves to him

      • 1 Kings 19:1–18ESV

      • 1 Kings 19:1–18ESV

  • HIS MERCY IS MORE
Liberty Baptist Church
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