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November 14/15, 2015
Jason Meyer | Psalms 12:1-8
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.
—Psalm 12:1–8
Introduction
I would like everyone to put on their “cultural awareness” hat for a moment. Think with me about what kind of world we live in today. Here is your pop quiz for today (some of you are so excited—I can tell already). In two paragraphs or less, answer the following two questions: First, what are the two top things in today’s culture—the two things touted as good and true and beautiful? Second, what are the two worst things in today’s culture—the two things vilified as bad and false and ugly? This will help us identify who the good guys and the bad guys are today in our culture’s story. By the way, I am only giving you 10 seconds to think about it. Go!
I know that I am cheating because I got more than 10 seconds to think about it, but I will give you my answer in two paragraphs. Perhaps the top two cultural virtues today are authenticity and tolerance. Conversely, the worst two would be hypocrisy and bigotry (intolerance). Let me try to explain why I think they are bound up together. Authenticity is almost universally regarded as one of the most attractive virtues today. The flip side—hypocrisy—is deemed one of the most distasteful vices. Notice that both authenticity and hypocrisy have only one gold standard—the self. Therefore, the greatest thing we can do is be true to ourselves—the worst thing we can do is pretend to be someone we are not—because we would be lying about ourselves (betraying ourselves).
The premium that we place on authenticity means that we prize tolerance above all. Tolerance is thus defined as not interfering with someone’s quest to be true to themselves. The opposite of tolerance, bigotry or intolerance, is regarded as the most disgusting vice imaginable. Someone that tries to force their views on someone else is basically forcing them to be a hypocrite—forcing them to be a liar with their life—not being true to themselves. The good guys are tolerant chaps that live for themselves and don’t get in the way of anyone else. The bad guys are people that believe truth exists outside of them and is binding on everyone and they aren’t afraid to testify to truth (even if it makes someone feel bad).
Taking a trip into Psalm 12 will feel a little bit like putting on a spacesuit and landing on a different planet—like bizarro world where everything feels opposite. Psalm 12 does nothing short of turning today’s concept of “truth” completely upside down. It will feel to some as disturbing as saying that the South Pole is actually the North Pole.
Psalm 12 has three stanzas—and thus the sermon has three points. We will hear:
Psalm 12 brings one main point to bear through these three stanzas:
We can trust God’s truth even in a world of lies. So trust him!
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,
he tongue that makes great boasts,
those who say, “With our tongue we will prevail,
our lips are with us; who is master over us?”
Verse 1 is a powerful prayer. Don’t think that prayers have to be long to be strong. Sometimes the most powerful prayers are short because they are chock full of urgency and desperation. One of the strongest prayers ever recorded in the Bible was Peter’s prayer when he started to drown: Lord, save me! (Matthew 14:30)
That is David’s prayer here. Save! He is not drowning in a literal sea of water, but he is drowning in a world of lies and deception. “Save!” I am looking around and all those who are faithful and trustworthy are gone. I can’t trust anyone anymore!
Save, O LORD, for the godly one is gone;
for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man.
Then he describes the deception he sees.
Everyone utters lies to his neighbor;
with flattering lips and a double heart they speak.
The scope of this verse is staggering. Verse 1—all the trustworthy people have vanished. Verse 2—everyone now is untrustworthy—they lie and flatter and speak with a double heart.
David’s distinguishes between “godly” or “faithful” people (God is the standard of truth; their speaking conforms to God), or people who speak “lies” and “flattering lips.” So before you just up and denounce these people (they are bad—they are liars), let us try to understand why someone would lie, flatter, or speak with a double heart. The next two verses are really, really insightful.
David now prays that the Lord will cut off the lips and tongues of flatterers.
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?”
What a vivid image! Flattering lips and tongues that make great boasts should be cut off. But look deeper. David actually distinguishes between two types of lies: (1) lies we tell, and (2) lies we believe. And he relates them in the following way: we tell lies because we believe lies. Look at the motto or the mantra of the liar in verse 4: “With our tongue we will prevail, our lips are with us; who is master over us?”
Now it all started to make sense. Why do we lie? We look at life like a “choose your own adventure” novel. I loved those books as a kid. Do you want to go fight megatron and starscream now (go to p. 55) or wait for the other autobots to join you (go to p. 60)? I was such a predictable, impulsive kid—“go fight them now!” Page 55 says they get me—I am now scrap metal. So what do I do? I go back and choose the other path—go to page 60 (I win—so thankful I waited for the others). Change the page; change the outcome. You made your life better.
Lying gives you a chance to choose a better future. I could tell the truth and get in trouble and have to suffer the consequences—or I could lie and get a better future. Lying is like a verbal “easy” button to push. Lie and all the consequences go away. I can rig the results. Telling the truth in a tight spot feels like losing—lying feels like winning.
I want to invite you to get to know yourself for a moment. Why do you lie? Some lie because they don’t want to lose acceptance (if I tell you the truth you will think less of me). Some lie because they do not want to give up freedom (if I tell you the truth about my availability, then I will be obligated to do something I don’t want to do). Lying is fundamentally self-protecting.
Is this starting to become clear? Let us see if this thesis holds true with “flattery?” It is not surprising to see “lies” mentioned, but why mention “flattery” in the same breath as lying? Answer: both are self-serving and deceptive. Lying is fundamentally self-protecting. Flattery is fundamentally self-promoting. Flattery is essentially saying nice things to someone so you will have a better future. Lying asks the fundamental question: “what can this person do to me if I tell the truth?” (you fear the consequences that might come from telling the truth and you lie to try to avoid them). Flattery asks “what can this person do for me?” (what can this person do for me if I kiss up to them and pretend to be interested in them). You are not trying to serve them—you are trying to leverage how they can serve you. Flattery at first glance looks like you are thinking of the person you are affirming, but it is deceptive because you are really thinking only about yourself. They are boomerang words—words you say to someone else so that they will come back to you in good ways. You are trying to manipulate them, not affirm them.
Do you see the common denominator with lies and flattery? Words are self-serving (self-protecting, self-promoting). You are not trying to conform to some external standard out there (like God’s truth). You become the standard. Words exist to serve me, advance my agenda, make a better future for me.
This old Psalm is shockingly contemporary in terms of the way that our world views truth and language. We don’t serve truth anymore—no - we say instead that “truth” is something that serves us. If something aligns with my life and I like it and it will serve me, then it is true. We don’t say anymore - this is true, so I will align my life with it. We say, “this aligns with my life—so it is true.”
Telling lies is based on believing a fundamental lie: We are lord of our life. We are back to verse 4: “With our tongue we will prevail, our lips are with us; who is master over us?” I’m in control of my future. I get to call the shots. I can lie and life will go better for me. I will not be mastered—I will be master. And my lips will speak a better future for me. If my lips are for me, then I will prevail. We will use our tongue to advance our agenda and to fulfill our dreams and to build our kingdom and to establish our lordship. If our lips are for us, who can be against us?
If people use words in self-advancing ways, then it means that others will be used and abused. We advance on the backs of others. The Lord sees it too and so he speaks. We move now from the words of the wicked to the words of the Lord in verses 5–6.
“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.
David now hears directly from God. God sees what David sees. The poor are plundered. The needy groan. People are being used and abused. Perhaps we should ditch truth and just look out for #1 like everyone else. If I don’t look out for myself no one will. God tells us not to believe that lie. He says, “I am the protector of the poor—I am the deliverer of the needy. I give hope to the helpless and rest for the weary.
Therefore, I will now arise. The safety they are yearning for—only I can provide it. These words are so profound. Our true security is in God, not God plus something else (like what we can provide for ourselves).
Verse 6 helps us properly value verse 5. It pauses to say—do you realize the worth of what you just heard? The words of the Lord are so pure and undiluted and untainted and uncorrupted! I guess if I had to compare it to valuable things in the world—I would compare it to silver that has been purified perfectly (the number seven in Scripture is often a number representing completion or perfection.
God’s word is perfectly pure. No contaminants. No impurities. Do you see the breathtaking point for us living in this world of lies? If God’s word is perfectly pure it can be completely trusted. We can trust God’s truth even in a world of lies. That is what David models for us in the next section.
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.
The righteous are those who put their trust in God’s word. They say, “I’m with God. He is right. I trust what He is saying. He can’t lie. I take him at his word.” David now puts his trust in the words of the Lord. He aligns his heart with God’s word. Yes, you will keep them. "You will guard us from this generation forever." You can do what you said (because you are strong) and you will do what you said (because you are good and true).
But now comes the clincher. This is the point that landed on me most powerfully in terms of expectation management. What David sees by faith (God will arise and keep and guard) is not what he sees by sight. By sight, it looks like nothing has changed. He finishes his prayer and says “amen” and what does he see? The wicked are still prowling everywhere. Vileness is still exalted. What is bad is being touted as good. It is all still so upside down.
Did anything really change? Yes. David still sees the wicked, but now He sees them from God’s perspective. Without God in the equation—it looks like the wicked are winning—they are cheating the system and getting away with it. But God is the great game changer. If God is against them, they are not getting ahead—they are just running up a debt and their bill is going to be due soon.
God defines right and wrong and He is the enforcer of right and wrong—Judge, Jury, and Executioner. So the wicked tell lies because they believe lies—specifically the lie that if their lips are for them, no one can be against them—no one is master over them. But God speaks and now we can all see that it is a lie. David believes the truth that God will act and so he aligns his heart with that truth—so he is content to wait. He waits with confidence because God’s perfectly pure words can be completely trusted.
Application
So how shall we respond to these things? Let us all be very clear about how relevant Psalm 12 is today. Our whole culture has moved towards widespread agreement on the fact that we can’t trust anyone except ourselves. We now have a shared cultural attitude of distrust. Modern society believed that truth was an outside standard that we had to align with. It was the height of arrogance to put yourself above truth. How times have changed. Now it is considered arrogant to put truth over anyone. People today don’t just put themselves above truth—they make themselves the definition of truth.
In the past, two people would have a debate about which view most closely aligned with some external standard outside of themselves. One was under obligation to then change their beliefs based on which view best conformed to the truth.
Today the ground rules have completely changed. You can tell people what you believe and they will not want to debate you—they will just say that they are glad your beliefs work for you—they just do not work for me. At that point, the expectation is that you will leave them alone. Trying to persuade them at that point is offensive and bigoted because you are acting like your beliefs are better and they should conform to your views.
Sirens go off in people’s minds at that point. Red alert. Red alert. They are trying to control you. They are trying to tell you who you should be and what you should believe. Go back to the basics.
We should be suspicious that everyone is trying to gain power over us and use us. Therefore, if you start with suspicion, this is where you end up. We know that people will use their words to try and gain power over us—so when other people claim something is true—they do it to try and get power over us. Careful. Watch out! You can only trust yourself. You are the measure. You are the standard. You know that you are not going to give yourself a raw deal—you can trust that what you believe is good for you. Reject everything unless it agrees with you believe—otherwise it could come back to bite you.
The problem with this system of thinking is that it is self-defeating. The fancy term is self-referentially absurd. What it means is that the view does not even live up to its own standards. It can even pass its own test. You can’t trust what people say because they are trying to get power over you. So in response I say, “so why should I trust what you are saying? I think you are just trying to get power over me.”
Richard Rorty was a postmodern philosopher and he said truth is just a man-made concept that we use for our own advantage. He gave a long presentation at a professional society trying to prove his thesis that truth is whatever people will let you get away with. Then came the time in the program for the respondent to give a long, scholarly rebuttal to his views. The Christian philosopher, Alvin Plantinga, got up and gave a one-sentence response. “Richard, I am not going to let you get away with that.” Debate over. Game. Set. Match.
The Bible lays out a much more satisfying perspective on all of these things. It may surprise you to know that the Bible agrees that people are hard-wired to look after themselves. This is not necessarily a bad thing to avoid—this is something that God built into all of us that we can’t avoid. It can’t be avoided, but it can be abused.
Listen to Ephesians 5 when it calls husbands to love their wives as they love their own bodies. “For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it” (Ephesians 5:29). Paul says that you become one flesh—so give her the same kind of care you are used to giving yourself. If you hurt her, it is not just sinful, but stupid. Like taking a brick and dropping it on your toe because you don’t like something about it like a hangnail. You are only hurting yourself more when you hurt her because you are failing to realize that you are one flesh now.
The Bible takes this even further when it says that we are to love our neighbors—as ourselves. We should imagine taking our skin off and putting it on someone else and then care for them like we would want to be cared for. Amazing.
But Christians are called to something even higher than self-love, loving others like you love your self (Matthew 22:39), love others like Christ loved you (John 13:34). You can’t love others this way until you experience the way Christ loved you.
Have you experienced this love? It is literally out of this world. God says we don’t have to be on our own. We all have orphan thinking because we turned away from God. Humanity as a whole believed the first lie ever told—Satan said that God couldn’t be trusted—that he was not fully loving and kind and generous and good—he was holding something back. We could make a better life for ourselves. We should go against God and find a full life on our own. We became self-made orphans trying to make it on our own.
God would have been in the right to just destroy all of humanity that has each turned to his own way. But the Bible says something amazing. There was a promise made already in the OT. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6).
That is not how you expect the verse to end. We have each turned to his own way and the Lord judged each one for turning away from him as shepherd. The shepherd was scorned. The sheep thought they knew better. They thought they could make it on their own. But they were wrong. They were lost and in danger and about to be destroyed forever—so the Shepherd left the heavenly country and came down to earth to look for his sheep. We have been living a lie. The opposite of lying would be to tell the truth about our sin (repent) and accept the consequences—but there is the beauty of the gospel—Christ accepted the consequences for our sin in our place. The punishment is complete. He paid it all.
So I call you now to look again at how God showed his love for us. God so loved the world that he sent his one and only Son not to condemn (destroy—that which is the worst possible thing for us), but to save (that which is the best possible thing for us). Receive this “out of this world, ridiculous, over the top love of God and let the lie die forever that says God is stingy and not loving and withholding. He gave all of himself so that we could have all of him. He didn’t hold anything back to save us. He did not withhold anything from us—even his own Son—sacrificed that we could live and not die. It does not get any better. Love does not get any higher.
When you receive Jesus, everything changes. He doesn’t just speak truth; he is the truth. Now you can’t go back to the way you lived before. It almost makes sense that someone would lie so that they can make a better future for themselves—when you think you are an orphan living on your own. But you are no longer an orphan. You are a child. A precious child—loved by your Father. He looks after your future. You can tell the truth even when it hurts because you can entrust your future to Him. The opposite of lying to avoid consequences is repenting—repenting that freely accepts responsibility and accepts consequences. True repentance—radical, bold abandon that refuses to try and manipulate a better future, but accepts Christ’s Lordship over your future.
Christian, I call you to trust him completely because his words are perfectly pure. I can understand why non-Christians have orphan thinking. They are orphans. But O Christian, how can we be such a walking contradiction. Here we claim to have God as Father. Jesus has saved us. He did not leave us as orphans. He sent the Holy Spirit to comfort us and to cause us to cry out “Abba, Father.” So how can we believe the lie that we are orphans? That we are on our own—and have to look after ourselves and care for ourselves and provide for ourselves? We can trust his promises. His word is perfectly pure and therefore we can trust it completely. When we lie it is because we believe that God is a liar. His word is not to be trusted.
Conclusion: What Every Tongue Will Do Soon
Christians, God is the great game changer and he is telling us to hold on as we await the Great Reversal that is coming. Jesus is coming again and he will turn everything right side up. A day is coming when everyone that got ahead through lying and cheating and stealing will realize that they have not only been telling lies and believing lies, but they have been living a lie. The last book of the Bible explicitly says that all liars will be thrown in the lake of fire (Revelation 21:8). No one will burn in hell and think they got ahead or got away with anything. O the horror of that thought. Don’t believe the lie! Turn before you burn. Turn to Christ. He gladly paid the price because he is saying to you right now—I want you back. I don’t want you to be an orphan anymore. I died so that you could have a home and a family and a future.
Here is what we know. One day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. One day everyone will confess with their tongue that they lied when they said they were lord of their life. Jesus is Lord—we can say it now with the tongue and be saved or be forced to confess it later to our eternal shame.
Discussion Questions
Outline
Main Point: We can trust God’s truth even in a world of lies.
Discussion Questions
Application Questions
Prayer Focus
Pray for a grace to trust God’s word in a world of lies. Pray that God would give us grace to believe the truth, tell the truth, and live the truth.