A Tale Of Two Words

Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church

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Let's prepare ourselves for prayer this afternoon with a few thoughts from Psalm 12.

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In the midst of lies, in the midst of falsehood, in the midst of hidden motives, the psalmist who is

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David, Israel's poet, he feels besieged. He feels surrounded by men with flattering lips and double heart, as we will see.

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And he cries out to God, without being specific about the things that were happening to him, he simply says, oh

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God, if you will, oh God, you must put an end to this, because I am surrounded and all

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I hear is flattery and double talk. And how much like the 21st century, in these fractured times, in these polemic times, is this similar?

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Much like what we live in today, where we can't trust our politicians, we don't know who's telling the truth, we don't trust motives.

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And this is what was surrounding King David at the time. And as it were, he just throws up his hands and says, there's nothing

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I can do about this. God, you must cut them off and do something about it.

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So let's read this psalm. Let's look it over for a little bit and just prepare ourselves for prayer with just a few thoughts from this wonderful psalm,

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Psalm 12. Where David, Israel's poet, he says, save, oh

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Lord, for the godly one is gone, for the faithful have vanished from among the children of men.

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Everyone utters lies to his neighbor, with flattering lips and a double heart they speak. May the

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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?

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Because the poor are plundered, because the needy groan, I will now arise, says the Lord. I will place him in safety for which he longs.

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The words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times.

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You 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.

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Let's ask God for his help and enlightenment once again, Heavenly Father. We are again assembled in your presence here this day to worship

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Jesus Christ and to look to your word and to hear from the one true and living God. And once again,

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Father, I pray that you would open our hearts and our eyes to know and to see the truths of your word and to impress them upon us that they might change us and make us closer to the image of Jesus Christ.

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In whose name we pray, amen. The words of ungodly men sometimes seem to have such sway that it seems as though godliness has disappeared from the earth, does it not?

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David cries out and he says the godly one is gone, which reminds us of the cry of the prophet Elisha where he says, only

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I am left and they're trying to kill me. And God's response to Elisha, much as the response we would have today if you would cry out against the wickedness and what we see around us, we say, how small are we?

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And yet the Lord told Elijah, Elijah, excuse me, I've reserved 7 ,000 who have not bowed the knee to Baal.

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But in the midst of this time, it seems that wherever we go, that the vileness, that the evil around us, that the double -mindedness, that the flattering talk, that the untruths that come out of so many mouths, mouths of people we're supposed to trust, people who lead us, people who

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God has ordained to govern his people, even in this secular sense, even through government.

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And we can trust none of them and it seems that it's everywhere around us and we have no effect, we have no impact as Christians, as those who with one heart will call out the word of God.

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And yet it is repressed, it is put down, it is mocked, and vileness, even as David says, seems to increase and grow denser and all the more intractable and all the more entrenched as we see even today as vileness becomes more and more a part of the way of this culture and even is glorified in so many ways.

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Do you feel that way? Do you ever feel like there's just nothing we can do? In one sense, that's true.

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There's very little we can do. But here is one thing we can do and this is great comfort.

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And this isn't just something we can do because there's nothing else. This is the thing to do, which is to call out to God, as we will do in our prayer meeting, as we do call out to God on behalf of ourselves, individually, the needs we have as members together of this church, and on behalf of the world, including our leaders.

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The psalm will lead us in understanding this and some will help us to call out to God even in a short while when we join together in our prayers.

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There are two words in this psalm. I call this a tale of two words. There is, of course, the word of man.

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With our tongue we will prevail. Our lips are with us. Who is master over us? And then the

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Lord's immediate response, this other word, because the poor are plundered, because the needy grown,

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I will now arise, says the Lord. I will place him in safety for which he longs.

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Two words, and we don't have to wonder very long which word will ultimately prevail.

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There's an observation in the first couple of verses, save, O Lord, for the godly one is gone, for the faithful have vanished from among the children of men.

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Everyone utters lies to his neighbor with flattering lips and a double heart they speak. Save because the godly one's gone,

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I have no friends, I have no protection in this world. There's nowhere to turn.

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There's nothing I can do. Everyone I look to speaks falsehood. David writes of flattering lips literally, it's smooth talk.

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Double heart, and actually in the original language the heart is there twice. So they speak with heart and heart.

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Something like that. Derek Kinder points out that they become their own victims ultimately because they have no truth to unite their heart.

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They're double minded, they're going to different places. Spurgeon thought that this psalm refers to Saul's slaughter of the priests, the ones that Doeg spied out for him and then obeyed the king's command and murdered.

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These are acts of evil that we see that are so great that one can only surmise that the faithful have vanished.

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How could something like that have happened if there is a God? Where is any godliness if such things of this nature can occur?

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This was in David's time, if Spurgeon is correct, that in David's day, so many centuries ago, these priests were simply slaughtered and because they were accused without trial, without indictment, without justice, they were accused of having hidden David who

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Saul was looking for. So many of the atrocities that go on today that we think, how can something like this happen in a world where there is a

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God? Well, we don't think that, but many do. Sometimes it seems as if the faithful are gone, perhaps

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God has translated all the faithful to himself and did with us, or with the faithful as he did with Enoch, and was leaving the world to its own devices, all restraint now removed.

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How different though, how different must the people of Christ be from this smooth talk, from this double heartedness?

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Ezekiel 36 says that the people of God are those who have received from God, from the Spirit of God, a new heart, a heart of flesh, because the heart of stone has been removed and put aside, thrown away.

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It's no longer that heart, there's one heart, the heart that God gave. How different are we?

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Not by any works that we have done, not by any righteousness found in us, but by a work of God, by his

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Spirit. How different must we be if we have one single heart, and that a heart of flesh given by God?

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David writes of a double heart, there's one heart presented to men, the one heart that wants to look good before men, to get something from men, the other heart hiding ulterior motives, ulterior purposes.

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Doeg, if Spurgeon is right that that's the context, helps Saul to continue in his sin.

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He flattered Saul by finding the priests, his motive was self -enrichment by ingratiating himself on Israel's king,

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Saul being the first king. Double hearts work like that, do they not? And can we not sometimes sense that we're talking to somebody, and we just, he wants something from me.

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He's maneuvering me. He's manipulating me into a corner where I'm going to give him what he wants because he wants something from me.

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It's like those sales calls that we get at home sometimes. The ulterior motive is not for our good, they're trying to make some money.

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That's pretty clear usually, but they try and ingratiate themselves. It's that double heartedness that happens.

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It's what David laments, you know, flattering tongues and double hearts.

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How different must we be? Psalm 86 11 says, Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth.

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Unite my heart to fear your name. Unite my heart to fear your name.

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We have that heart of flesh, we have that heart that the Spirit of God has given, and yet we must always be so careful that the flesh doesn't overwhelm that heart.

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That heart is the one that desires God. That heart is the one that desires to be like Christ. And the flesh is that which always pulls us away and back to our old ways and back to our sinful patterns.

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So Psalm 86 11 is a wonderful prayer for us. Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth.

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Unite my heart, bind my heart together. Not with duct tape, as good as that might be.

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Not with Gorilla Glue to hold it together, but by your Spirit, Father, and make me love your truth more and more, and study your

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Word, and obey it more and more. Bind my heart together so that it is in you,

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Father, that is bound to you, that it desires only to be like Christ. Even as David speaks of the double -heartedness and the flattering lips all around him.

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You need to remember, not so many psalms later, Psalm 86, he pleads with God to unite his heart, to keep it from fracturing, from unraveling, and giving way and giving openings back to the worldly influences that Christ has called us away from.

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Have you known that pull, that tug, that draw away from Christ, that difficulty of maintaining the good things that we're supposed to do, we spoke of this morning?

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Here's a good prayer, right here in Psalm 86, 11. Unite my heart.

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Lord, patch up those little leaks, like a great ship with teeny leaks, eventually it's going to go down, like the

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Titanic that just tore one little patch at first, and eventually the whole ship went down.

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Lord, unite my heart, and keep me on the safe path.

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And let not those little leaks continue, but may I study your word, may

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I pray, may I join together and be in the communion of saints, so that those small openings will be patched up and united together, and my heart will be strong and singular in its desire to be like Christ.

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David here sees in this psalm the danger, the need for God to constantly wrap him together into one whole person in Christ, into one desire to be like Christ, so that we as a church can call out to God with one voice and with one accord, because there's one faith and there's one baptism, there's one

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Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ. The antithesis to this double -hearted, smooth -talking way of being is exactly this, one -heartedness in Christ.

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And so he calls out to God in prayer, and this is what we do when we see this around us. I have no problem with Christian activism, with being on the street, with protesting, with writing letters to our politicians, whatever the case, at whatever level, but here's the most powerful thing we do.

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We call out to God. We are to be involved in our communities, and again, as we spoke this morning, from the

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PTA all the way up to the White House, should such a thing happen, be involved, yes, but prayer, prayer is the power that we have.

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As Spurgeon was once asked, what is the secret to your success here at the

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Metropolitan Tabernacle, and he took them and he showed them a room full of people praying, and these people had their heads bowed and their hands clasped together.

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He said, this is the powerhouse of the Church, not the people, not the eloquence of the prayer, the fact that they were praying in faith to God, may the

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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, this is human pride, this is hubris at its best or at its worst.

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Notice repetition, repetition, flattering lips, our lips are with us, tongue that boasts, our tongue will prevail,

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David would have the whole cacophony cut off, done away with, like the beast from the sea in Revelation 13 .6

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that calls out blasphemies against God, that boasts of itself, that says we're going to prevail,

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I have a mouth, I'm able to speak, I'm my own man, I am worthy, and all the other self -aggrandizing statements that we hear around us so often.

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That's exactly what's happening here in Psalm 12. Man is so proud, man is so sure of himself, who is master over you?

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Jesus told them, you are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires, so who is their master?

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The one whose will causes them to bow. The one whose desires they accomplish.

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If you feel the oppression around you, as so many of us do, here's the answer.

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May the Lord cut off all flattering lips, the tongue that makes great boasts, those who say with our tongue we will prevail.

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Only the Lord can do this work, and we can rebuke, and we might be able to argue them down and show them the error of their ways, but only the

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Spirit of God can stop these lips from flattering themselves and others. Only the

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Spirit of God can take out the double -heartedness and replace it with one heart.

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Here's a prayer, may the Lord cut off all flattering lips by converting them. May the Lord give them one heart, not just do away with them, but give them the heart to believe in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Take away the pride of prevailing. Take away this idea that when they say who is master over us, what's the answer they expect?

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Well, no one. You're your own master, master of my own destiny, that sort of thing. We need to pray.

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Here is the answer to this. It's pray, it's involvement, it's witnessing to Jesus Christ with our mouth, we speak of him, but without prayer, we're just meandering.

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But with prayer, we are powerful, powerful in Christ, powerful in the

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Lord, not of our own strength, not of our own abilities, but because of Jesus Christ.

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May the Lord cut off. And with that, may the Lord convert. May the

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Lord put a stop to it. And with that, give them a new heart to believe in Jesus. In verse 5, the

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Lord answers, and this is actually the first psalm where there's an oracle from God answering the psalmist.

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Verse 5, because the poor are plundered, because the needy groan, I will now arise, says the

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Lord. I will place him in the safety for which he longs. And he goes on this little section, the words of the

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Lord are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times.

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I'll speak about that second of those two verses, verse 6 for a moment. The words of the

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Lord are pure words, like silver refined. The finer things that we have are more vulnerable to debasement.

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Fine silver with all the dross removed is more delicate than the less pure stuff. So as the silver is refined more and more, it becomes more prone to corruption and tarnishment.

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That's why copper is added to pure silver to make sterling silver. It makes it stronger, makes it more durable.

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Tableware that is pure silver wouldn't last a single meal, but sterling silver would.

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But the sterling silver, the purer silver, is easier to tarnish and bend and break.

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The words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined. We have speech. God speaks to us in words and we speak in words.

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Speech is a gift from God, it's a precious gift. Animals can certainly communicate with each other, can't they?

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But only basic things that are essential to survival. Humans, you and I, can communicate feelings, we can communicate emotions.

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We can paint pictures to each other with our words. With our words we can encourage a saint or we can be a pile driver that pounds someone into the ground.

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There's a dichotomy here that we need to avoid, this two -heartedness maybe even. James speaks of it in his letter.

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From the same mouth come blessing and cursing, my brothers, these things ought not to be. The more pure things, like being a pure silver tongue but is more easily tarnished and takes more of that protection all the time.

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Unite my heart, Lord, remains a good prayer. But God's word is likened to silver not because it's delicate, but because it's pure.

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Seven is the number of completeness and so God's word is likened to seven times purified silver, meaning that when

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God speaks there's no alloy in it, there's no copper in it, there's no mixture of anything, there's no dross at all, it's pure.

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They're pure in motive, they are pure in intent, they are pure in clarity. As James writes, in God there is no variation or shadow of turning.

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Everything God does or says flows perfectly from his nature. He's holy, every word he speaks is holy.

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He is righteous, therefore every word he speaks is righteous. He is just, therefore every word he speaks is just.

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Speech is a gift. We put words together, we are communicating in a way that God has given only to us.

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Only to the humans in the world. But words have meaning. Ideas have consequences.

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When wicked people are not contested, when God's people don't answer back with God's pure words, the words that form the ideas take roots and then they grow up and then they flourish.

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David notices the oily veneer but he doesn't tell us what the consequences of all that were.

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You know, we live in a world not unlike what

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David describes here. We hear politicians all the time in our day speaking only to gain favor.

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We know they're not telling the truth, they're just trying to get votes. They're double -hearted with one heart. They speak to one crowd and tell them what they need to get this vote.

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And they might say something completely different to another crowd to get that vote. Or to get that favor or whatever the case may be.

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We live in a world where tax rates approach confiscation.

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Making it so people can't live from the fruit of their own labors. Making it so that we need government to help make up the shortfall.

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And we have shortfalls which we wouldn't have had had not the government by law put its hand in the people's pockets.

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The poor are maintained in their estate by flattering words. It's not your fault, it's their fault. If not for them, you would be quite well off.

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All your efforts have been made worthless by them flattering these people. Vote for me again and I'll make it right.

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In the meantime, here's enough money taken from them to keep you forever poor and always in need.

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Can we see that this might be the kind of vileness we need to pray against? The kind of wickedness

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God says, I will now arise because the poor are plundered. And he will arise against those who made the poor.

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I'll speak no more about politics, but we need to be aware that these things have meaning. When God gives us a psalm like this, and God rises up against the plunderers, we need to look around and say, well, where are the plunderers?

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Who are the victims? It could be you and me. It could be the poor, as I mentioned. When God rises up,

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Psalm 114 would tell us what that's going to be like. Imagine God sitting on his throne, sovereign over all, maintaining everything by the power of his word.

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Every moment, that God who called it all into existence, that God who is just and holy and righteous and omnipotent and omniscient, and that God is going to rise up.

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He's going to stand and take greater notice. He's going to come down, as it were, as he did in Genesis chapter 11 at the

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Tower of Babel. I will go down and see what they're doing. Genesis chapter 9, when he went into Sodom, I said,

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I will see for myself about the outcry against this place. God says,

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I will now arise, stand up from his throne. What a dreadful thing. Psalm 114, tremble,

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O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, who turns the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a spring of water.

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The nations are going to assemble before him, whether they will or not. The plunderers who created the needy will answer to him.

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His words, which have been given through the prophets, his nature, which has been published in the cosmos, his righteousness, his invisible attributes, his divine power, his eternal nature, that's all from Romans chapter 1, all this has been seen and ignored.

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And now he arises. Now he stands. The king's prayer has come to him, and he arouses himself.

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He stands from his throne and takes action. You, O Lord, verse 7, you,

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O Lord, will keep them. Now, them refers back to his words. The words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined seven times.

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You 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 men.

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He says, you will guard us from this generation forever. And this phrase really caught my attention.

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This generation, I think, has its clone in every generation. There's always a this generation around God's people.

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It makes me think of what Jesus said to the disciples in Matthew 24. Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.

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Now, that most probably refers to the people then living. But if we look at Psalm 12, and he says, you will guard us forever from this generation.

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Could it mean? There's always a this generation, a godless generation, a rebellious generation.

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An anti -God people surrounding the people of God. And that generation, that whole anti -God worldview, will not pass away until all these things take place.

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Not necessarily that generation that was alive then, but this generation as the rebellious from all generations.

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Their worldview is godless, as against the Lord's anointed Son as they can be.

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The weapon of choice is exactly what David saw. Vileness is lifted high and exalted.

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We see this today. We see the parades on teepee, where things that the Bible says is darkness is proclaimed as lightness.

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Where things that the Bible says are evil are proclaimed as good. We see this all the time.

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We don't need to go into a litany of examples. Things that ought not to be mentioned are treated in so cavalier and casual a manner as to remove any vestige of holiness, which

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I think is the point. And we think of things being exalted that ought to not be mentioned.

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I think when the love between a man and a woman is debased to the point of a moment's gratification, vileness is being exalted.

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And the woman whom they pretend to lift up has been degraded far below the true strength and the honor and the dignity that God always intended.

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When smart aleck women, or smart aleck children, excuse me, make their parents, usually the father, look like fools.

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Order in the home is set on a course towards ruin. A trajectory completed in schools where tax dollars pay for indoctrination into vileness.

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And teach that teacher, not father, knows best. And this is what we can look to in Psalm 12.

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You will guard us from this generation forever. Brethren, we must pray. We must acknowledge how difficult it is around us.

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How dense is the vileness around us. We must acknowledge, as David says in another psalm,

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I said in my alarm, all men are liars. Who can I trust? We can trust God in Christ.

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We can trust that God, when we go to Him, as we will in a few moments, and pray to Him in the name of the

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Lord Jesus Christ, He hears us. We can trust that one day God will arise and make all these things right.

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That He will send His Son, Jesus Christ. We will be resurrected in a resurrection like His. And God will then judge all.

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And bring history and His justice to final completion. The Lord does surround.

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The Lord does protect His people. Where we began,

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Pastor Owens called us to worship with Psalm 70. The end of Psalm 70, verse 5.

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O Lord, do not delay. God does help the poor and needy. The meek shall inherit the earth.

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Blessed are those who confess their need for God. Blessed are those who confess that they are poor and needy.

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Blessed are the poor in spirit, says the Lord Jesus Christ. But I am poor and needy. Hasten to me,

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O God. You are my help and my deliverer. May we be those who confess our need for God.

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Put all our trust and our hope in Him. And know that when we see the vileness around us.

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When we see those things exalted and lifted high. When we see the smooth talk, the flattering tongue, the double heart.

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That we resist it. That we pray for ourselves against becoming like that.

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But most importantly that we pray to God to protect us from it. And on behalf of those who are immersed in it.