Psalm 52:1-9

January 5, 2020

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts at 15:52 in the audio file.

Or, What Are You Laughing At?

Psalm 52 is very personal for me. It was my meditation many days during the months around when TEC started. It portrays a righteous response when much is lost, when deceivers are at play. It is a song the godly should learn to sing. It is a song that teaches the godly to laugh.

TEC is one week away from our ninth anniversary. Every new year as a church, which conveniently correlates with a new year on the calendar, we have spent some Sundays learning about the importance of liturgy, that liturgy is inescapable, and the purpose for choosing the parts and the order of our Lord’s Day morning service. Most of us have come from the “sing to prepare for the sermon, and don’t miss the truth told in the sermon because that is the most important thing” style of service. We still have a sermon, but the sermon is in service of the assembly’s worship, not the object of the audience’s worship.

Let’s talk about worship and liturgy again for some Sundays this month. It will be like learning to breath, or remembering why it’s important, or focusing on a long inhale/exhale.

I’ve chosen Psalm 52 to kick off our liturgical repast because it shows the tone we aim for as an assembly, and because the tone of our worship is a tone desperately needed by so many sad and sorry and downhearted Christians. Whether we are on the brink of World War 3 (ha! not ha), or on the brink of Christian churches losing tax exempt status, or on the brink of Christian businesses being ordered to bake cakes for lesbian weddings, or on the brink of the rapture, here is a song for lyrical battle.

Psalms gives us our options, and Psalm 1 introduces the two roads. There is the way of the wicked and the way of the righteous. The wicked have a lot of doubts and complaints and ostensible friends, but they don’t have a permanent place in the Lord’s congregation. They are the dried up bits of chaff stuck between your sandaled toes. The blessed man doesn’t listen to the scoffers and needle-stitch quotes from the MSNBC podcast to hang around the house, he delights in the law of the Lord until the fruit is so large it can’t wait to be picked.

Psalm 52 finds both characters in play again. The “mighty man” is the lover of evil and lies, the “righteous” (verse 6) is the “godly” (verse 9), the one who fears God (verse 6). With the heading of Psalm 52, we even know the names of the two types.

To the Choirmaster. A maskil of David, when Doeg, the Edomite, came and told Saul, “David has come to the house of Ahimelech.”

Not every psalm has such a close connection to a day in David’s life, and not every day in David’s journal turned into a psalm. Psalm 52 was written when David was a fugitive, on the run from his King, Saul. Doeg, and his tale of tattle-taling, can be read in 1 Samuel.

In 1 Samuel 21:1-9 David was on the run and came to the city of Nob and Ahimelech the priest. David had just left Jonathan, knowing that Saul purposed to put him to death. David told Ahimelech that he was on a special, secret mission for the king and that he needed some food and a weapon. Ahimelech gave David the bread of the Presence, holy bread for worship, and the sword of Goliath.

But “Doeg the Edomite, the chief of Saul’s herdsman” was there that day (1 Samuel 21:7). It’s in the middle of the story between David and Ahimelech, and we find out the reason for the foreshadowing in chapter 22.

Saul was fuming that David had escaped, and Doeg told Saul that he had seen David in Nob. So Saul called Ahimelech to account, who really did have plausible deniability. Saul didn’t care. Saul commanded the guard who stood with him to kill the priest, to kill all the priests, but the king’s men wouldn’[...]