Expository Sermon on Psalm 25
by Maylan Schurch
Bellevue Seventh-day Adventist Church 7/13/2024
©2024 by Maylan Schurch
(To watch the entire worship service, click the link just below.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQASqMxb8oA&t=3075s
Please open your Bibles to Psalm 25.
There is no real way to tell for sure if you’re using a Bible in any other language besides Hebrew, but Psalm 25 is an “alphabet acrostic” poem. There are only seven or so such Psalms, maybe a few more depending on which Bible scholar you talk to.
But what happens in Psalms like this is that the first verse starts with a word that begins with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and the second verse starts with the word that begins with the alphabet’s second letter, and so on down through the Psalm.
As I say, there’s no way of telling this from English or any other language besides Hebrew. But as you’re paging through the Psalms, you can keep an eye on the number of verses in each one. If a Psalm has 22 verses, there is a possibility that it might be in alphabetic acrostic one. That’s because there are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet.
You probably are well acquainted with the most famous alphabet acrostic Psalm – Psalm 119. This is the longest Psalm. It is divided up into sections. Each of those sections has eight verses, and in some Bibles, each of those sections prints a little Hebrew alphabet letter at the top. And what is so mind-boggling, in each of those sections, every one of the verses begins with the Hebrew letter at the top of that section.
Okay. How important is this? Probably not that theologically important. The thing is, the Psalms – in whatever format they were written – are all song lyrics. As you know, there are many different styles of lyric-writing. There is the cheerful country-Western-style of the songs we sang at the praise time a few minutes back. There is the thoughtful, carefully-written classic poetry which our Adventist hymnal is filled with. Over the years, people have used their creativity to make their poetry or their lyrics interesting and memorable.
If you listened to Lee Venden preach during camp meeting a few weeks back, you know that at the start of his messages, he sometimes read from a book of poetry which he had written which told stories about Jesus. The poetic form he used was a very common one called “ballad meter,” or “seven stress” meter. “Amazing Grace” is written in ballad meter.
Again, this is interesting, and I believe it is proof that the Holy Spirit, who inspired Scripture, is absolutely fine with human beings using our God-given creativity to tell God’s story, or sing God’s story, or portray God’s story.
So this means that, as David was writing this Psalm – because it is a Psalm of David – he had some main ideas in mind, guided there by the Holy Spirit, but he had to pause and say, “Okay, how can I start this out? What’s a word starting with aleph (the Hebrew language’s first letter) which I can use to begin with?” When we meet up with David in heaven, we’ll have to ask him if this kind of Psalm was harder to write than other kinds.
Aside from its relationship with the Hebrew alphabet, this Psalm is quite a famous one. Even if you just glance through it, the lyrics of a famous Christian chorus will come to mind. “Unto Thee, oh Lord, do I lift up my soul,” and so on. We’ll be using that song as our closing song this morning, and we’ll be singing several verses you probably didn’t know existed. I know I didn’t.
But as I studied through Psalm 25 this week, I decided to call this sermon “Alphabetic Asks.” The reason I called it this was that David does a lot of asking in this Psalm. And I think that the reason this Psalm has become so familiar is that a lot of other people down through the ages have wanted to ask God these same questions.
So let’s pull some of them out and ask these questions of God ourselves. There’s nothing wrong with questioning God. Just like a good teacher’s eyes brighten and his or her face lights up when kids ask serious questions, God is exactly the same way.
I can find at least four “alphabetic asks” in these 22 verses. Let’s start our search, and see if any of these apply to us.
Psalm 25:1 – 3 [NKJV]: To You, O LORD, I lift up my soul. O my God, I trust in You; Let me not be ashamed; Let not my enemies triumph over me. Indeed, let no one who waits on You be ashamed; Let those be ashamed who deal treacherously without cause.
What is David’s first “ask” here in this alphabetic psalm? Here comes Sermon Point One in case you’re taking notes. Here’s the first “ask.”
Lord, shift the shame!
When I was first getting acquainted with the song “Unto Thee, O Lord,” I remember being startled that shame was mentioned almost immediately. Sure, it says this in the Psalm, but in a cheerful Christian chorus – especially one written when this one was – you don’t often hear such abrupt vulnerability.
But shame is the first subject David brings up. He lifts up his soul to the Lord, and he immediately asks the Lord to not let him be ashamed, but let his enemies who deserve it be ashamed.
I’ll have to confess that I personally don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about shame. If I were writing a Psalm, I don’t know that I would bring up shame the first thing, unless it were at the very top of my mind.
But it seems to be, for David. Even though David was mostly a godly crown prince, and then king, he did do some staggeringly shameful things. These things got him into deep trouble with God. And the more prominence he reached in the nation, the wider David’s shameful deeds reverberated. And on more than one occasion, God had to make an example of him.
But the key thing about David is that, when he realized he had sinned, he immediately became deeply ashamed. And immediately he went to talk to God about his guilt.
King Saul had never done this. King Saul disobeyed the prophet Samuel, God’s spokesman, but when Samuel called him on it, Saul tried to justify himself, make excuses. David had a sensitive shame-detector, but Saul had suffocated his early on.
Okay, what we do with this? David has just told us that shame is a real thing. It seems to be often on his mind. I think what I plan to do more frequently is to follow what David did. Listen to the first few verses of Psalm 139. Notice what David says about how well the Lord knows him:
Psalm 139:1 – 4: O LORD, You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, And are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word on my tongue, But behold, O LORD, You know it altogether.
And David is okay with that. He’s comfortable with how well God knows him. And he’s so comfortable that when he (David) gets involved with Bathsheba, and even has her husband murdered, David can turn his face remorsefully, ashamedly, but confidently in God’s direction. In Psalm 51, he first asks forgiveness, and then says:
Psalm 51:14 – 17: Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, The God of my salvation, And my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, And my mouth shall show forth Your praise. For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, A broken and a contrite heart— These, O God, You will not despise.
So David is a man who truly understands shame. He knows how he himself had caused it, and how bad it makes God look.
Now back to Psalm 25 for another “alphabetic ask.”
Psalm 25:4 – 5: Show me Your ways, O LORD; Teach me Your paths. Lead me in Your truth and teach me, For You are the God of my salvation; On You I wait all the day.
Here comes Sermon Point Two. What is something else David is asking of the Lord?
David asks,
Lord, shift the shame! And then he asks, “Lord, educate me!”
For some reason, as I read these two verses this week, the idea of teaching came into my mind. How many of you have ever taught classes in a public or private school system? Raise your hand.
How many of you have ever taught any kind of Sabbath school class? Raise your hand. How about teaching a course in anything, maybe for a community center?
If you’ve ever had training as a teacher, or just learned how to be an effective teacher on the job, you can probably relate to David’s comments here. Notice the steps he asked the Lord to take with him.
“Show me Your ways, O Lord,” he asks in verse four. The first thing the teacher is trained to do is to show the students something related to the topic. Back when I taught college English, before I assigned my students a theme, I would assign it to myself. I would write up a sample theme, print it out for the students, and show it to them as an example what I wanted from them.
The next thing David says is, “Teach me your paths.” Once I gave my students those copies of my sample theme, I then taught it to them. I taught them about paragraph structure, and transitions, and of course the usual spelling and grammar issues. I gave them information which I wanted them to effectively use.
But notice what else David asked the Lord.
Verse 5: Lead me in Your truth and teach me, For You are the God of my salvation;
David finally asks God to “lead” him. “Show,” “teach,” and “lead.” As my students were working on their team papers, they would once in a while come to me for questions. And of course when they handed them in, I would get out my marking pen and go over areas I think they could improve. I was doing my best to lead them to become better writers.
And I was always overjoyed to discover when a student was actually taking me seriously. One young man, whose name I will not mention because you might actually know it, always sat on the back row in the room, watching me with twinkling eyes. He always wrote his themes perfectly, exactly as I asked him to, but his twinkling eyes told me, “You and I both know that this is pretty elementary stuff. I could do better than this.”
And from the way he wrote, I knew that he could. I would tell the kids, “Look. To get a good grade in this class, just do exactly as I tell you. Show me that you can write according to the formula that I have prescribed for you. Then, on your own time, you can write whatever you want.”
And this young man went on to work at the Review and Herald Publishing Association, and later wrote a humorous magazine column, and eventually at least one book. He knew what he was doing – but he was humble enough to play along with my ideas until he got his grade.
So what do we do with this part of Psalm 25? We do what David did. In many ways, both in his songs and in his life as a follower of God, David asked the Lord to guide him. At one point David wanted to start building a temple for God. His prophetic advisor, Nathan, assumed this was God’s plan also, and gave him the okay. But God said no, and David swallowed hard, but humbly accepted God’s plans in place of his own.
And that’s what I need to do. I need to say, “Lord, educate me. Teach me what You want me to do.”
Now let’s look for the next “ask” which David has for God.
Verses 6 – 7: Remember, O LORD, Your tender mercies and Your lovingkindnesses, For they are from of old. Do not remember the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions; According to Your mercy remember me, For Your goodness’ sake, O LORD.
Here comes Sermon Point Three. Here is David’s third “ask” in this Psalm.
David says —
Lord, shift the shame! And “Lord, educate me!” And then David asks, “Lord, use Your selective memory!”
Notice all the “remembers”?
First David says, “Lord, remember Your mercy.” Then he says, “Don’t remember the sins of my youth.” And finally he says, “According to this mercy of Yours, remember me.”
Does God have a selective memory? Sure He does. In Jeremiah chapter 31, He promises something that is repeated in the New Testament in Hebrews 8:10 and 10:16. God promises to make a new covenant with the people, where He puts His laws within their minds and hearts. And at the very end of that statement, God says (Hebrews 8:12): “For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”
As I say, David knew that God has a selective memory.
In recent years, my brother has taken to preparing a monthly newsletter which he sends to me and to my two sisters. He fills it with stories and photos of what he remembers from our growing up days in South Dakota. It always surprises me how differently he and I will remember certain events. After all, I am seven years older than he is, and I would often witness these happenings from a different perspective.
And sometimes his stories show that I have a selective memory. Some things I have simply forgotten. And because of this age difference, he will often attach different emotions to the stories he tells, emotions he felt, but I didn’t.
So I think that once in a while you and I need to ask the Lord to bring to our memory what we need to remember, but also to help us remember how easily He allows Himself to forget.
There’s a lot in this Psalm, even though it has only 22 verses. But I’m going to introduce us to just one more “ask” that David mentions. This is a particularly touching request. Listen as David pours out his heart:
Verses 16 – 22: Turn Yourself to me, and have mercy on me, For I am desolate and afflicted. The troubles of my heart have enlarged; Bring me out of my distresses! Look on my affliction and my pain, And forgive all my sins. Consider my enemies, for they are many; And they hate me with cruel hatred. Keep my soul, and deliver me; Let me not be ashamed, for I put my trust in You. Let integrity and uprightness preserve me, For I wait for You. Redeem Israel, O God, Out of all their troubles!
There’s a lot in those verses, but I’m going to take the final sermon point from verse 16, where David says to God, “Turn yourself to me.”
Here’s Sermon Point Four, one more “alphabetic ask” from David’s alphabet-acrostic Psalm:
Lord, shift the shame! Lord, educate me! Lord, use Your selective memory! And finally, “Lord, stay facing me!”
David must have had such a comfortable relationship with God. He knew all the stories about how you couldn’t—yet—really see God face to face. He could probably imagine the ground at the foot of Mount Sinai shuddering as God descended. He had read about how Moses’ face glowed so brilliantly after being in God’s presence that he had to cover his face with a cloak so that the people wouldn’t be intimidated.
David knew all this. Yet in every reputable English translation I could find, he says in verse 16, “Turn to me.”
David wants God facing him. He is not afraid of the face of the living God.
In fact, you could even put it like this. David might as well say, “Lord, do the ‘daddy dance.’”
What on earth is the “daddy dance”? You’ve all done it, if you had kids. Mommies do it too. In fact I’ve never seen any difference between the daddy dance and the mommy dance. Same steps, same moves.
I saw a neighbor of ours do the daddy dance. I think it was on the morning of July 4 or within a couple of days of that. This family has two children, a girl age 4 and a little boy who has just had his first birthday. Shelley had found a gift for him, and when she and I saw the whole family outside, we walked over with it.
Mom and dad had had the two kids dressed up in Fourth of July costumes, and they looked really cute. The little boy was a recent and over-confident walker, and when his dad set him down, the boy started to totter forward, wandering around.
And that’s when I saw the “daddy dance.” The boy tottered ahead, and Dad sauntered casually after him. Suddenly the boy shifted left, and headed that way. With the grace of a trained ballroom dancer, dad glided left. The boy went right, dad shuffled right. We were all standing on our cul-de-sac street right then, and Dad wanted his son to be safe.
I’ve seen daddies and mommies do this dance in our church foyer. I was once talking to a new father whose boy had just learned to walk. Dad and I were having a thoughtful conversation, when Dad abruptly vanished. Some parental radar had tipped him off that his boy had gone too far away, and that was supremely more important than a pastoral conversation.
Until heaven, we will never know how often God – or more likely His angels – have done the daddy dance with us. You can be sure that angels are storing up stories to tell us.
But I hope we can take what we’ve learned from Psalm 25 with the sins of the coming week, and remember how much God loves us.
I’m hoping we can remember how, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness – and shift our shame away from us, because it is already been laid on the shoulders of Jesus.
I’m hoping we can remember to ask the Lord to educate us, to teach us His ways.
I hope we can remember how quickly and truly He is able to forgive and even forget what we have done, because His Son has paid the ransom for our sins.
And I hope we can ask, as earnestly as David asked, in as vulnerable a way as David asked, that the Lord turn toward us, face us, and stay with us.
Would you like to join me in doing this, this week? Raise your hand if that’s your desire.