Tawa Baptist

Psalm 36

Scripture: Psalm 36

Video Link: https://youtu.be/HYK-TE2dACc

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • Prophecy (1-4)
  • Praise (5-9)
  • Prayer (10-12)
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Kai ora whanau and good morning everyone.

Tell me, what do these things all share in common?

The Screwtape Letters, The Problem of Pain, The Great Divorce, The Abolition of Man, The Four Loves and The Magician’s Nephew. [Wait]

That’s right, they are all books written by C.S. Lewis.

Clive Staples Lewis was a wonderful servant of the Lord whose writing continues to bring light and clarity to our thinking about God.

In his book, The Great Divorce, Lewis says: There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to him and bad when it turns from him.   

I quite like that quote. It sums up our reality as human beings. We depend on God for our goodness and indeed for our very lives. Lewis’ words here remind me of Psalm 36, the focus of our message today.   

The title of this Psalm reads: ‘For the director of music. Of David, the servant of the Lord’. There are only two psalms which describe David as the Lord’s servant. This one and Psalm 18. 

From verse 1 of Psalm 36 we read…

1 I have a message from God in my heart concerning the sinfulness of the wicked: There is no fear of God before their eyes. 2 In their own eyes they flatter themselves too much to detect or hate their sin. 3 The words of their mouths are wicked and deceitful; they fail to act wisely or do good. 4 Even on their beds they plot evil; they commit themselves to a sinful course and do not reject what is wrong. 5 Your love, Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. 6 Your righteousness is like the highest mountains, your justice like the great deep. You, Lord, preserve both people and animals. 7 How priceless is your unfailing love, O God! People take refuge in the shadow of your wings. 8 They feast on the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights. 9 For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light. 10 Continue your love to those who know you, your righteousness to the upright in heart. 11 May the foot of the proud not come against me, nor the hand of the wicked drive me away. 12 See how the evildoers lie fallen—thrown down, not able to rise!

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.

David, the servant of the Lord does three things in this psalm: prophecy, praise and prayer. As the servant of the Lord David knows the truth about humanity, he adores God’s goodness and he prays in faith.

Prophecy:

In popular culture a prophet is thought to be someone who predicts the future. In the Bible though a prophet is someone who communicates God’s message. He or she sees the truth of the present situation and speaks that truth to the people; how the people respond shapes their future.

Broadly speaking, the prophets of the Old Testament gave two kinds of messages: messages of judgment and messages of hope.

Those who were proud and had turned away from God tended to get a message of judgment. You’re on the wrong track, change your direction in life before you end up destroying yourself.

While the humble poor, who were suffering oppression, tended to receive a message of hope. Keep looking to the Lord and trusting in him. He will deliver you and restore you.     

Messages of judgement and hope are not either / or. They are both / and. They go together. There is hope in God’s judgement. When we return to God we are saved.

C.S. Lewis was somewhat of a prophet during the 20th Century, although he probably would not have seen himself in that way.

In his book, Mere Christianity, Lewis writes: No man knows how bad he is until he has tried very hard to be good.

Lewis goes on to say: ‘Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of an army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness — they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means — [Jesus is] the only complete realist.’

Psalm 36 begins with David giving a prophecy. Verse 1 reads: I have a message from God in my heart concerning the sinfulness of the wicked: There is no fear of God before their eyes.

Sometimes prophets are called Seers because they have the God given ability to see into a person’s heart. David’s message, from God, is not a prediction of the future. Rather it is a vision of what goes on inside an evil person. David knows the truth about humanity and it is not pretty.

In some ways the human heart is like a loaded gun waiting for the wrong circumstances to pull the trigger. I remember my systematic theology lecturer, saying: ‘Christians should be the least surprised by sin’. When people do bad things we should not be shocked by it.

We should not look down on the wicked nor think of ourselves as too good to commit evil. That potential is within each one of us. Those who think they are not capable of evil are like the person C.S. Lewis described as never having offered any real resistance to sin. 

David knows his potential for evil and he knows what it is to suffer at the hands of evil doers. That’s probably how God gave him the insight.

There’s a scene in the movie Shawshank Redemption where Andy, a wrongly convicted prisoner, approaches the boss of the prison for justice. The prison boss won’t help Andy and so Andy says to him, ‘How can you be so obtuse?’

To be obtuse is to be insensitive or hard hearted, lacking compassion. The wicked are obtuse, they are deluded. In their own eyes they flatter themselves too much to detect or hate their sin. The boss of the prison is like that; he does not fear the Lord. 

Usually the term ‘fear of the Lord’ means having reverence and respect for God. But in Psalm 36 the word fear leans more towards terror and being afraid for your life.

There are basically two reasons why a person obeys God. The first reason is because they love God and want to please him. But if a person does not love God they might still obey him just to save their own skin, because they are afraid of what God will do to them if they don’t act justly. 

Obviously, the ideal is to obey God because we love him. But God is gracious enough that he will still accept the person who obeys him out of fear. However, God will not accept the person who neither loves him nor fears him. The wicked are so obtuse that they don’t even fear God, much less love him.

In verse 3, David says the wicked are deceitful and they fail to act wisely or do good. In the Bible, wisdom is not about being brainy or super smart and intelligent. Wisdom is about doing the morally right thing, the good thing.

Being a Christian is not easy. There are times when it is frustrating and difficult and confusing and humiliating and painful and a whole list of other unpleasant things. But don’t let that put you off. It’s not all bad and it is worth it in the end. In the meantime, it helps to be very clear in your own mind, about why you are a Christian.

Perhaps, like me, you started the Christian journey from a place of fearing the Lord and wanting to avoid hell. That’s okay. We all have to start somewhere. It is better to fear the Lord than ignore him.

But fear of the Lord by itself is not enough; it won’t get you through this life. At some point you need to grow in your love for the Lord. And the only way I know of growing in your love for the Lord is to focus on his goodness and to enjoy his love for yourself.

In verses 5-9 of Psalm 36, David praises God for his goodness and love.     

Praise:

In his book, Reflection on the Psalms, C.S. Lewis writes about praise. He says,

I thought of praise in terms of compliment, approval or the giving of honour. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise…

We delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment… It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.

Lewis is pointing out here the relationship between praise and enjoyment. God does not need our praise. He is not insecure or vain. We praise God because we have experienced his love and we enjoy him. We can’t help but praise him. 

It’s like when anyone in our family sees a rainbow and has to tell the others. Or when the surf is going off and you just have to tell your mates to get out there and catch a wave. Or when you hear a really good joke and need to share it. Praise is essentially the expression of enjoyment. Praise liberates joy.

In verses 5-6 of Psalm 36, David liberates some joy when he praises God by saying: Your love, Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the highest mountains, your justice like the great deep.

The first thing we notice here is the spaciousness of God. God is not small or stingy. He is roomy and generous. The love and faithfulness of the Lord is sky high – it has no limits. His righteousness is as solid and dependable and unmissable as the highest mountain range.

I remember waking up at Aoraki Mt Cook and looking out the window at Mount Sefton, on a beautiful cloudless blue sky day. It was spectacular. I couldn’t stop looking at the mountains all around us. That’s what God’s righteousness is like. It is awesome and beautiful and impossible to miss.

Once again our friend, Mr Lewis, clarifies things when he writes: We may ignore but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with him. He walks everywhere incognito. (Letters to Malcolm)

God’s justice is like the great deep. The great deep refers to the ocean.

Like the ocean, God’s justice is a powerful force that cannot be manipulated or controlled by human beings. God’s justice has hidden depths. There is a certain mystery to it. God’s justice is teeming with life and it feeds us, it supports our life. God’s justice is also patient, turning rock into sand. 

Returning to verse 5, the word translated as love is actually hesed. (My apologies for not pronouncing it correctly.) Hesed is steadfast love, loyal love.

Hesed is not just a feeling. It is an action. Katherine Sakenfeld, who did her PhD on this subject, outlines the three main criteria of hesed. [1]

Firstly, the action is essential to the survival or the basic wellbeing of the recipient – so it’s a big deal.

Secondly, the needed action is one that only the person doing the hesed is in a position to provide – given the circumstances no one else can do it.

And thirdly, hesed takes place in the context of an existing relationship.

Unlike human hesed which is limited, God’s hesed (his loyal love) is unlimited, it crosses boundaries reaching to the heavens. This is like saying, ‘No one and nothing is beyond the reach of God’s love’.  

In the gospels, Jesus crossed boundaries in a righteous way, extending divine hesed to people he did not know. In doing that he transformed their lives and created a special kind of relationship with them.

When Jesus healed the man born blind on the Sabbath, that was hesed.

When Jesus delivered a man from a legion of demons, that was hesed.

When Jesus protected the woman caught in adultery, that was hesed.

When Jesus forgave the man who was paralysed and then healed him, that was hesed.

When Jesus invited himself to Zacchaeus’ house for dinner, that was hesed. 

When Jesus died on the cross to make us right with God, that was hesed.

Verses 5-6 are about the greatness of God, while verses 7-9 are about God’s care and providence. Or, as verse 8 puts it, People feast on the abundance of your house.

The image here is one of joyful celebration. In his book, The Weight of Glory, Lewis observes how ‘the sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal’.

Christians readily see connections in these verses with Jesus who identified himself as the light of the world, the bread of life and a well springing up to eternal life. 

Verse 9 of Psalm 36 is beautiful poetry, full of mystery. It says: in your light we see light. I’m not sure these words are fully knowable but, given the context, light suggests joy along with purity, clarity and truth.

Possibly C.S. Lewis had verse 9 in mind when he wrote: I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen – not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. (Is Theology Poetry) 

It is the light of God’s goodness and love which helps us to trust the Lord and to see what is right. 

Exuberant praise welling up out of enjoyment of God is one thing, but David (like us) was living in a fallen world. The Lord’s servant still had to contend with the difficult reality of wicked men who sought to do him harm. And so Psalm 36 moves from prophecy to praise to prayer.

Prayer:

Here’s another little gem from Lewis: Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.

This is something I have found to be true in my own experience. I imagine that after David had killed Goliath, it may have been tempting for him to stop relying on God. I expect a victory like that would make most young men a bit cocky, a bit over confident. But not David. He does not turn away from God in pride. 

The secret to David’s success is that he relies on God all over again, every day, as if nothing had yet been done. We demonstrate our reliance on God through prayer. That is, by asking for his help daily.

David’s prayer in verses 10-11 of Psalm 36 is this: Continue your love to those who know you, your righteousness to the upright in heart. 11 May the foot of the proud not come against me, nor the hand of the wicked drive me away.

Once again the Hebrew word for love, in verse 10, is hesed. David is asking God to support the righteous and the upright in heart. Righteousness indicates right actions in one’s relationships with others, while uprightness of heart refers to one’s inner life being true or without pretence.

The upright in heart are like the pure in heart. They are the same on the inside as they are on the outside. They don’t pretend to be something they are not.  

David stands in solidarity with the righteous and upright in heart when he asks God to protect him in verse 11. David wants God’s love (his divine hesed) to set the agenda for his life, not the power of proud men. 

Verse 12 is a statement of faith: See how the evildoers lie fallen—thrown down, not able to rise! David is voicing his confidence in God’s ability to protect him. His faith is not blind or unfounded. It is based on his experience of God helping him in the past.  

We, who are Christian, may feel a bit uncomfortable with David’s prayer. He was a soldier, having to fight for his life. Most of us know nothing of mortal combat. We may have occasional fantasies of violence against our enemies, when we feel angry or afraid, but we know this is wrong.

Jesus taught us to love our enemies and to pray for their well-being, not their downfall. So what are we to do with David’s prayer?   

Another word from C.S. Lewis on prayer may help us here: We must lay before God what is in us; not what ought to be in us.

The psalms are unapologetically honest. They reveal what is actually in the psalmist and not necessarily what ought to be in him. Our prayer life needs to be honest, otherwise it loses its power.

If we are not honest with God we risk resenting him or, even worse, becoming obtuse and deluding ourselves. The upright in heart are honest with God, even when their truth is difficult to say.      

Please hear me on this. Honest is not careless. We still need to keep our prayers respectful, remembering that God loves us and wants the best for us.

Conclusion:

There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to him and bad when it turns from him.   

So the question for each one of us is, which way are we facing?

Are you looking to the Lord, feasting on his goodness?

Or do you have your back to him, pretending he is not there?

Jesus shows us the goodness of God. He shows us what it looks like to be made in the image of God, what it is to be truly human in the best sense of that word.

When we look to Jesus, when we build our life on his teaching and follow his example, we become good.

Let us pray…

Father God, we thank you for your love and faithfulness, your justice and mercy, your grace and truth. Give us a vision of yourself, in the face of Jesus, that we would reflect your image and enjoy you forever. Amen.

Questions for discussion or reflection:

What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?

  • Do you have a favourite C.S. Lewis book or quote? What is it and why do you like it?
  • What do you think C.S. Lewis meant when he wrote: No man knows how bad he is until he has tried very hard to be good?
  • Why did you become a Christian? Is your reason for being a Christian the same now as it was when you started your journey of faith?
  • Discuss / reflect on the relationship between praise and enjoyment. Why do we praise God?
  • In what ways is God’s justice like the ocean? In what ways is God’s righteousness like a great mountain range? What does David mean when he says, “God’s love (hesed) reaches to the heavens”? What are verses 5-6 telling us about God?
  • Why does David pray? Why do you pray? Why is it important that we keep our prayer life honest?
  • Take some time this week to contemplate the various ways Psalm 36 connects with Jesus.

[1] Katherine Doob-Sakenfeld, Ruth, page 24