Only The Lonely?
Psalm 12: 1-8
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A PRESBYTERIAN PSALTER - by Pastor Max A Forsythe |
I have often wanted to run an advertisement as widely as possible ... "Are You Lonely & Reformed - in Ohio?" As we well know - the popularity of the doctrines of grace are not well received even within the organizations that function as churches of the living God. I recently talked with a Reformed Baptist pastor, whose church has grown and become fairly influential in its area. Like a lot of other serious people in church growth that I have talked to - the number 2% of the total local population seemed to be where their group was maxing out.
Now on the surface that percentage seems pitifully small. For years the Gallup poles indicated a 40% penetration of the population in our area of the country. That figure drops to 4% in Oregon and Washington State and in most of Europe. When we first started, my checking of our southeast area of the Columbus metropolitan market indicated a possibility of 38% participation in the local churches. Since that time the popular surveys have begun to ask harder questions and it may be more realistic to assume that 23% to 27% of the population is really serious about the Christian faith. Strangely enough that is just about the figure used by the US Army in the sixties for assigning Chaplains. It is also a number that John Calvin estimated in Geneva at the height of the Reformation.
Now, if Reformed congregations in the Mid-West can attain that 2% market share that the experts anticipate - that number is almost 10% of the total serious Christian population! This fact may well explain the real influence and impact of our PCA and sister denominations within the evangelical Christian community. Locally in Columbus - these numbers should encourage us to be about the Lord's work a little harder than we are.
After all in a metropolitan population of between 1 and 1.5 million people - there is still room for growth. All of the six or seven Reformed congregations together have a little less than a thousand people at this point in time. If the church growth experts are correct in their assumptions, we could all grow twenty-nine times over in our general area! And of course in a time where the Gospel were in season - we might do even better as the Lord allows. Ah yes, there is a lot of work to be done and our little Bible studies have not yet had much impact on their communities. And sadly to say - a group of supposedly Reformed families in Ohio have largely dissipated into various organizations - some of which are barely Christian.
We also regularly hear from lonely scattered families from the surrounding counties who want a more serious Christian witness in their areas. Our Reformed orthodoxy is difficult to find in the growing smogasboard of "Christian alternatives" and those who want what we have are lonely indeed. Well do we understand the first verse in our psalm today. "Help, Lord, for the godly man ceases! For the faithful disappear from among the sons of men." Whenever we begin to feel lonely, we would do well to remember the great prophet Elijah who fled Israel to God's holy mountain in the Sinai. There he poured out his soul before the Lord.
The Lord encouraged Elijah with the knowledge that He had kept for Himself seven thousand faithful in the midst of a paganized Israel. That same loneliness afflicted David as we see in this particular psalm. Thus, we who are Reformed and lonely in Central Ohio may learn an essential lesson from David the King. The pattern of David's psalm for the lonely is one of prayer, promise and prayer. David is assured of relief, but at the end the worldly conditions are still unchanged. Spurgeon notes that this psalm was probably composed after the murder of friendly priests when David was still in hiding.
One by one honest men were driven from public honor into the caves of the desert. There they had to lie low while the wickedness of Saul's servants reigned supreme in the land of Israel. That situation is becoming all too familiar in our own time. One Christian commentator noted last year that at Washington parties, sodomites are more welcome than Christians. We have only to consider the rulings of our courts in the last decades to realize that there is a growing public unfriendliness towards Christian values and ethics.
In another court case announced in this decade, a school teacher who merely kept a Bible on his desk was ordered to remove it from the public sector. The courts upheld that order. I had the Bible on my desk slammed shut by an adult in the 80's. But several of my students saw it and complained higher up! And since then a few critical cases have improved our rights somewhat in the public sector.
Certainly we understand that biblical content has been separated from all subject areas taught in the public schools and universities in the last fifty years. This is the main reason that the great classic writers have been removed from the list worthy of consideration in contemporary literature classes. Instead of literature, science and history filled with theological insight, we have a whole body of myths creatively conceived and modeled for public consumption.
Beyond the areas of intellect, in social relationships, even trust is breaking down. As David observes: "they speak idly everyone with his neighbor." The NIV uses the word lie in that context. Derek Kidner remarks that these words here include empty talk, smooth talk, and double talk.
One summer a bright shiny pick-up truck pulled into my driveway. The salesman opened with a line that his workers had fifteen tons of excess asphalt from a driveway project down the road. He was looking for someone to take it off his hands at a reduced price. I confronted him with some inside knowledge that I had about his operation. After all, he had pulled a fast one on one of the ladies we mowed for. She had fallen for the offer, hook line and sinker. An initial offer to pave her driveway for eighteen hundred dollars turned into a bill for almost five thousand instead. A mere week later, dandelions were pushing their way through the "two inch" layer of asphalt. The company was right in using the word cheap, but its reality was not in the price, but in the product! The salesman said that that project was none of my business. I told him that even if I could afford a paved driveway, his would be the last company I would ever consider to clean out my bank account.
If you have participated in any business deals in the last few years you probably realize that the old phrase "let the buyer beware" is certainly sound advice. If the deal is too good to be true, it probably is! Well does David understand our common experience. David in his hiding place, wishes that flattering lips and boastful tongues would be cut off. Publicly the worldly have announced "With our tongue we will prevail; Our lips are our own ; who is lord over us?"
More and more the powerful are circumscribing the freedom of people to speak. In Tennessee a few years ago, one lady wrote an article critical of the Educational Union. She was slapped with a libel suite which was soon canceled, but anyone in that area who had second thoughts about the wonderful educational opportunities available in Tennessee felt they needed expensive legal protection. Again in many places, employees are being made to understand that company policy is also their public policy as well.
Our learning today should be focused in the Lord's answer to David's prayer in verse five. "'For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, Now I will arise,' says the Lord; 'I will set him in the safety for which he yearns.'" Oh the promise of those words, and how earnestly we might wish for the Lord's speedy action in our own day and age. Well, the Lord does indeed have his way. And I feel much safer in my public space now than just five years ago.
In the Old Testament the Lord encouraged Israel to redistribute the land wealth every fifty years in what became known as the Year of Jubilee. I am certain that this idea would prove very unpopular in our day and age. However, one economist observed that about every fifty years there occurs some economic, social or political event which causes some evening out and sharing of hoarded wealth. In the eastern states of Europe, people are returning home from exile and filing in court for the return of lands confiscated earlier in this century.
The Lord has promised and David observes that his words are flawless like silver refined and purified. The implication here is that an honest currency must continually be refined from the tampered coins of the realm. Spurgeon notes that this process may be equally applied to the spiritual truths taught from God's revealed word. In spite of literary criticism, philosophic doubt and scientific discovery, the essential truths of the revelation record maintain their integrity.
David closes this psalm with a prayer that just as the Lord's word is kept flawless so too may He keep His own saints safe and protected from the worldly wise who doubt the fact and faithfulness of our God in heaven. And yet, David still has some time to spend in his caves. The worldly wicked will continue to strut about for a time. And what was good will be pronounced bad and what was once bad will be decreed "good".
Like David, we wait upon the Lord. Like David, may we learn patience as we wait for the Him to make His will known in our day and age. May we take strength and encouragement from David's wisdom today. Amen.
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Resources Used: |
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Kidner, Derek. |
Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries: Psalms. | |
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Spurgeon, C.H. |
The Treasury of David. | |
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The New
Geneva Study Bible -
Foundation for Reformation (1995) | ||
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Psm 012b |
09 August 92 & 28 March 99 | |