Let's turn in our Bibles to Psalm
28. And we'll just read the first three
verses. Psalm 28, verse 1. It says, A
Psalm of David. Unto Thee will I cry, O Lord
my Rock. Be not silent to me, lest if
Thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the
pit. Hear the voice of my supplications
when I cry unto Thee, when I lift up my hands toward Thy holy oracle,
toward Thy mercy seat. Draw me not away with the wicked,
and with the workers of iniquity, which speak peace to their neighbors,
but mischief is in their hearts. The child of God knows that but
for the grace of God choosing me in salvation, we know that
but for God's grace in sending Christ to redeem us by His blood,
and but for the Holy Spirit sanctifying us and giving us the heart to
believe on Him, there'd be no difference in us than any wicked
sinner on the top side of this earth. God made all the difference
and God alone made the difference. And we depend entirely upon God
to continue to make the difference. We continue to pray to Him to
keep us. And we need Him to keep us. And
so, we know ourselves to be poor, weak sinners with no strength
in us whatsoever. Christ said, without Me, you
can do nothing. And that's so. We can't do one
thing spiritual without Christ. We can do nothing honoring to
God without Christ. And so, we fear. being drawn
away with the wicked. That's a fearful thought to a
child of God, being drawn away with the wicked. When we encounter
anything in our lives that looks like we're being drawn away,
it causes fear to a believer. Whenever we're fearful and weak
because of the reproach that men cast upon our God and our
gospel. That makes us fearful and weak
and we want to be strong, we want to be bold and we're fearful
we're being drawn away when we're not, when we're weak at that
reproach. When we're unable to bear witness
as we ought to in the midst of the ungodly because we fear that
reproach. That makes us cry unto the Lord
to strengthen us and give us an ability to bear witness of
Him as we ought to. Whenever we tolerate this or
that sin just to get along with ungodly associates, that makes
a believer fearful. Or when we feel ourselves being
led away by an inordinate affection for this world or for loved ones,
and we feel ourselves being drawn away. That is a frightening thing
to a child of God. When I was a young person in
the faith, one of the greatest dangers I encountered was peer
pressure. And I'm sure that's so today
for young believers. Peer pressure. It's very difficult
and it's hard to stand with God when everybody around you is
against Him. So knowing we do not have strength
in ourselves, the child of God is constantly casting ourselves
upon the Lord. And this is our prayer. Unto
thee will I cry, O Lord my rock, be not silent to me, lest if
thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the
pit. Now what I want to show you here
is we pray aright. We pray a rite when we pray importunately, that is, without any strength
whatsoever, looking to the Lord our Rock alone and desiring Him
alone and His voice to speak into our hearts. That's when
we pray a rite. One thing, we want the Lord our
Rock, we want Him to speak into our hearts. That's when we're
praying a rite. Now, first of all, the believer's safeguard
is to be always engaged in prayer. He says there, unto thee will
I cry, O Lord. Now, Christ is who we learn everything
from. We learn everything from Christ.
And so, think about when Christ walked this earth. When He walked
this earth, He was the one righteous and holy man. that had ever walked
this earth after Adam fell. He's the only holy and righteous
man. And he faced a multitude of enemies
when he walked this earth, many that we couldn't see. He faced
Satan and a host of his wicked angels that we couldn't see.
He faced Him in that wilderness when He led Him away into the
wilderness, or when the Spirit led Him into the wilderness.
He faced Him at the Garden of Gethsemane. And I'm sure from
between the two, every step of the way, Satan was trying everything
he could to tempt our Lord. And then the Lord, His second
greatest enemy was religious men. That was His second greatest
enemy, was religious men. Not sinners, not harlots, not
republican, religious folks. And then the weakness of human
flesh. You know, our Lord had no sin.
He knew no sin. But our Lord took human flesh
like unto His brethren. And when He was in the garden
of Gethsemane and He sweat great drops of blood and He came to
the apostles, you know, and He had told them to pray with Him
and they couldn't. And he said, pray with me. Watch and pray. And he said,
the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. He was speaking
from experience. He experienced the weakness of
our flesh. When he sweat great drops of
blood and God had to send an angel to strengthen our Redeemer,
he experienced the weakness of flesh. There was no fault in
him. It was the weakness of human flesh. And that's what He experienced
in the garden. And so, in all of those cases,
you find our Lord Jesus Christ praying to the Father. And most
of all, you find Him on the cross praying to the Father. Almost,
and I would say all these Psalms are Christ, and almost all of
them are Christ on the cross praying to the Father. beseeching
the Father. You look at this Psalm right
here for example. He says, Under thee will I cry,
O Lord my rock, be not silent to me, lest if thou be silent
to me I become like them that go down into the pit. Look back
at Psalm 22. Psalm 22 and look at verse 1. My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? Now watch this. Why art thou
so far from helping me and from the words of my roaring? He is saying, why are you silent
to me? Look down at verse 15. My strength
is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaveth to my
jaws, and thou hast brought me into the dust of death, into
the dust of the pit. the dust of the grave. That's
what he was praying not to be delivered unto. If you're silent
to me, I'll be like them that go down into the pit. You see,
when we find our Lord Jesus constantly engaging in prayer, in all these
different situations, morning, noon, and night, alone or in
the midst of a crowd, in good times and in the very biggest,
most painful suffering this world has ever known on the cross.
You find Him constantly engaged in prayer. Now, if Christ did
that, who is the spotless, holy servant of God, if He constantly
cast Himself upon the Lord Jehovah, His rock, shall not we who are
sinful, helpless sinners do so more than He did? We have more
of a need than He has. to be constantly engaged in prayer. You who work in a public place
around sinners that don't know God, you ought to always throughout
the day be crying unto the Lord our Rock constantly. You don't
have to put on an exhibition of prayer. You can be doing it
without anybody knowing you're doing it. And that's how you
ought to do it. That's how you ought to do it. If we find ourselves
slipping away from the assembly of the saints, If we find ourselves
disobeying God and forsaking the assembling of ourselves together
with God's people, we ought to cry fervently unto God to help
us. And if we see a brother or sister
doing that, we ought to pray for them, for God to help them.
Whatever the situation, whether it's sickness or prosperity,
joy or sorrow, We ought to constantly be calling upon the Lord. Mr. Spurgeon said that more than
any other reason he saw sinners fall away, he said the number
one reason was prosperity. That's the number one reason.
We ought to constantly be calling upon God. God says in His Word,
pray without ceasing. Paul said, ìPray always with
all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, watching thereunto
with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.î Thatís constant. Thatís constant. Now what is
it we pray for? What are we praying for? Are
we praying for houses and cars and jobs and stuff? Is that what
weíre praying for? Thatís what James spoke about
when he said, We don't pray aright, we pray amiss to consume it upon
our lusts, to have what our flesh lusts after. No, the prayer God
makes His child pray, and that's important to know, the prayer
that God puts in our heart, the prayer that God gives us to pray,
is for Christ our Savior alone. We have it right here in our
text. When Christ was hanging on the
cross, there was only one thing He wanted. There was one thing
He was praying for. That was for the Lord His Rock
to not be silent to Him but to speak. That's all He wanted.
And that is praying a rite. That's when we're praying a rite.
Our chief need, our only need, is to have the voice of Christ
our rock spoken into our heart. Look at our text. Unto thee will
I cry, O Lord, my rock, be not silent to me. Now, every true
believer has but one solid rock and that's Christ. Every believer
that's ever been called by God's grace has one sure foundation
and that's Christ. Moses preached Christ our Rock. Moses did. Way back there. Moses
preached Christ our Rock when he said this, He is the Rock. His work is perfect, for all
His ways are judgment, a God of truth and without iniquity,
just and right is He. He was preaching Christ our Rock.
Hannah. Remember when Hannah prayed unto
the Lord and He gave her her petition and gave her a child,
this is what she said, there is none holy as the Lord, for
there is none beside Thee, neither is there any rock like our God. She was praising Christ our Rock.
Whenever Isaiah preached He preached Christ our rock when He said
this, sanctify the Lord of hosts. Let Him be your fear, let Him
be your dread, and He shall be for a sanctuary unto you, but
for a rock of stumbling to your enemies. That same rock that
we stand on that shelters us and preserves us is a stumbling
stone to our enemies which they trip upon. Isaiah preached him. The reason we sing the songs
we sing, do you pay attention to the words we sing? The reason
we sing the songs that we sing is because they glorify Christ. They glorify Him. I ask three
songs to be sung tonight. The first one we sang was, He
hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock. Where did Miss Fanny
Crosby get that idea? Well, it's in Christ the rock
where we behold the glory of God. That's where God put Moses,
remember? Put him in the cleft of the rock.
Scripture says, The Lord said, Behold, there's a place by me,
and thou shalt stand upon a rock, and it shall come to pass while
my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock,
and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by. And that line
she had in there about a rock that shadows us in a dry and
thirsty land, she got that out of Isaiah. He's that rock. A man should be a covert from
the tempest, like a shadow of a rock in a dry and thirsty land.
That's Christ. The glory of God that we behold
in Christ our rock. Lord willing, I'm going to preach
on it Sunday. But just to give you the brief,
Brief declaration, it's to behold how God can be just and justify
sinners like us. It's how God can by no means
clear the guilty and at the same time have mercy to His chosen
people. That's only in Christ. Christ
came to declare the righteousness of God. When Moses said He does
that which is right and just, that's all He does. God will
never pour out judgment on a man that is not sinned and He'll
never impute righteousness to a man that's not been made righteous.
You just bank on it. Because God does what's right.
He said, Thou shalt have perfect and a just weight, a perfect
and a just measure shalt thou have, that thy days may be lengthened
in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, for all that
do unrighteously are an abomination unto the Lord thy God. He only
does what's right. That's why He sent Christ. That's
the glory we behold in Christ. And then we sang, ìThe church
is one foundation.î Paul said, ìOther foundation can no man
lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.î Heís
our rock. Heís our foundation. The Lord
said in Isaiah, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion
for a foundation, a stone, a rock, a tribestone, a precious cornerstone,
a sure foundation. And he that believeth shall not
make haste, he shall not be ashamed, he shall not be confounded. And
we are going to end tonight and we are going to sing the solid
rock. Turn over to Matthew chapter
7. Let me quote the words to you while you turn there. My
hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest
frame, not mine, not my dearest friend, not my dearest loved
one. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly, with all my
weight, lean on Jesus' name. On Christ the solid rock I stand,
all other ground is sinking sand. Where did that come from? Look
here in Matthew 7.21. Our Lord said, Not everyone that
saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.
But he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven.
Do you remember what He said the will of His Father was? That
you believe on Him whom He hath sent. That's it. Believe on Christ only. Everything
our Lord spoke in that Sermon on the Mount, right up to this
point, right here, He's teaching you and me to be planted on Christ
the solid rock in Him alone. Everything He taught was telling
us to believe on Christ only. Everything. Watch this. He says,
Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied
in that name? What I'm doing right here now,
preaching, that's not going to get me entrance into heaven.
That's not going to make me accepted with God. Look here, and in thy
name have we cast out devils? I could turn from all my wicked
sin and you could turn from all your sin and we could cast out
everybody we don't think measures up and try to create a perfect
environment right here. That won't gain us any entrance
into heaven. Look here, and in thy name have
we done many wonderful works. We could feed the whole impoverished
world and it would not gain us acceptance with God. Look, then
while I profess unto them, I never knew you. Depart from me, ye
that work iniquity. Therefore, now listen to this,
whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will
liken him unto a wise man which built his house upon a rock,
on a foundation. And the rain descended, and the
floods came, and the winds blew, and it beat upon that house,
and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock. You know, I know
that the men here, and probably most of the women, you know what
this means, but you young folks might not know what it means.
You know that if you took all the structure off of this building
right here, and you could see even below this concrete around
the edge right here, there's a foundation under there. that
goes down in the ground, a footer that goes down in the ground
that this house is built on. And that's what keeps it from
falling away because it's on a foundation. That's what we're
talking about. Christ is the cornerstone. He's the footing. He's the foundation
on which His whole house is built. So it's solid. The storms of
life can rage against it. False gospels can come up. Brethren can divide and bicker
and carry on. Nothing can separate God's people
from Christ. And nothing is going to separate
His people. They are going to be under His
gospel, here in Christ, rejoicing in Christ, and He is going to
keep them there. Keep them right there. But watch this now. Verse
26, And everyone that heareth these sayings of mine, doeth
them not. That man that is not looking
to Christ only, not trusting Christ only, not relying on Christ
only. Let me tell you how you know
a man is not trusting Christ. If he is looking back at an experience,
and he is using that experience as being the infallible rule,
and he is trying to make God's Word line up with his experience,
And anywhere he hears the truth preached and it doesn't line
up with his experience, so he sides with his experience and
forsakes the Word, that man hadn't believed on Christ. Anybody who's
looking at their baptism and trying to justify their baptism
as being real baptism when it was in the midst of false religion,
they're trying to justify their baptism. They're trying to justify
their experience rather than trusting Christ and confessing
Him. They haven't done what Christ said which is believe on Him,
rest in Him. And He says this, that man should
be likened to a foolish man which built his house upon the sand. Have you ever built a sand castle? That sand castle is about as
strong as if we built this building right here down there on the
beach somewhere. It doesn't have a foundation, it's just going
to go back out to the sea eventually. built on sand. He says, the rains
ascended, the floods came, the winds blew and beat upon that
house and it fell and great was the fall of it. Christ is our
solid rock. He is our solid rock of righteousness
whereby we are justified from all our sin. He is our solid
rock of sanctification. He is our sanctifier and He is
our sanctification. And through this gospel, through
the Holy Spirit, He gives us a pure, holy heart and keeps
us cleansed, keeps that heart pure and holy, looking only to
Him. Christ is our solid rock of acceptance with God. The only
way we're going to be presented faultless and without blame to
God is for Christ to do it. He's the solid rock of acceptance
with God. But right now, right here where
we are, in the midst of all the storms and the trials and all
the troubles of life, Christ is our solid rock of preservation.
He is the solid rock that keeps His people. He begins the work
in us through this gospel and He continues the work in us through
this gospel. He is the solid rock of preservation
who preserves us by speaking into our hearts. And so our chief
need above everything else, more than anything else we need, we
need Christ our rock to speak into our hearts. He says there,
under thee will I cry, O Lord my rock, be not silent to me. You who believe the gospel. You've
had seasons where the heavens were brass to you. You've had
seasons where the Lord didn't speak into your heart. And that's
a terrible thing. That's the most painful thing
a believer goes through when you don't hear Christ speak. Now, understand, we're not talking
about Christ speaking in an audible voice. We're not talking about
Him speaking like I'm speaking right now. We're talking about
Him speaking into the heart, in spirit, in truth, moving you
inwardly to Him. That's what we're talking about.
Now, how does He speak to His people? Well, He speaks to those
that He's redeemed, in creation. There's times when you see Christ
in something in creation and your heart's moved. And you look
at it. I remember one time we were out
in Oregon two or three summers ago and maybe longer than that.
We were out and we camped out on a beach one night. And we
were sitting there looking and we just, I mean the sky was so
large and we were looking out west and into the ocean. We watched
the moon go down in the ocean. Emma said, it's just impossible
to look at this and not just think of God and rejoice that
God made this. When you look into creation and
it draws you to God, that's Christ speaking to His child. Christ
speaks to His redeemed in providence to teach us by experience the
Word that He's taught us. You know, I've said don't judge
providence by providence. You take providence to the Word
of God. and see and be reminded what God taught you already and
you see it in that providence that it's so, what God said is
so. That's when providence is really speaking to you. That's
when Christ is speaking to you in providence. But brethren,
above all of that, above all of that, Christ speaks savingly
to His child through what we're doing right here, right now.
He speaks savingly to us through the preaching of His Word, through
the preaching of His Gospel. God chose to do it that way.
You have to be willfully blind and willfully rebellious against
God to reject that, because it's all through the Word of God.
After God proved that man by his wisdom could not know God
and could not come to God, It pleased God by the foolishness
of preaching to save them that believe. You know, I had books. I had all different resources
to read about God. I had the Bible. And God used
those things. But the thing God used to speak
into my heart in the first hour He ever spoke to me and made
me hear Him in spirit and in truth was through the preaching
of the Gospel. through the preaching of the
gospel. And I'm telling you, brethren, that's how He doesn't
just save in the first hour that way, He keeps saving His people
that way. Why is it that so many preachers
hazarded their lives, like Paul and Peter, and suffered cruel
suffering, and then ended up suffering a martyr's death, and
were crucified, hung upside down, and crucified like Peter was,
or had their head cut off like Paul supposedly did, and all
of these things. Why didn't they just stop preaching
the Gospel? Because they knew. This is how
Christ is speaking to His people and calling out His people. What
a shame it is to shame all those preachers to say otherwise, to
say God saved some other way. Well, if He did, why would He
even send those preachers to suffer those things if He was
going to save some other way? No, this is how He speaks to
His people, through the preaching of the Word. The very reason,
remember Christ said that His preachers, the people are going
to say their feet are beautiful. Beautiful are their feet that
preach the Gospel. And He said in Isaiah, the reason
they are going to say that is this. He said, My people shall
know My name. Therefore, they shall know in
that day that I am He that does speak, behold it is I. And He
was talking about preaching the Gospel. He said, through preaching
the Word, My people are going to know it's Me speaking. I'm
going to speak affectionately. They're going to know it's me
they're speaking. Christ laid this message on my heart. I don't
know why. I never know why. Why is it that
you go through the Scriptures and one passage just jumps out
and grabs you and you're drawn to it. And you start looking
into it and the message comes. And sometimes you think it's
another passage. You think it's one over here, and you start
studying that one, and you wrestle and struggle, because it's never
easy. And you think, well, eventually
the Lord's going to give this to me, and you just don't do
it, because that's not what He's going to speak through. And you
end up going to another passage, and it may be the final hour,
and it just comes to you as fast as you... you just write it as
fast as you can write it, like you're taking dictation from
somebody. Because that's the passage he's
going to speak to somebody through. So I don't know why he gave me
this, but I know this. He's going to speak to somebody
through it. I know that. I know there's somebody that
he's teaching that Christ is the only solid rock. And he's speaking that to their
heart. They're going to hear it. They're going to know it.
Because He's speaking. He always speaks affectionately.
He's teaching somebody that it's not all the things you thought
you needed, it's Christ you need. Christ is who you need. Christ
is who you need. It's not that you need this and
that and the other. You need to hear Christ speak
to you. He's teaching somebody here who's been praying for what
their flesh wants. And He's teaching you that's
not the prayer He gives. The prayer He gives is for Him
only. That's when you pray and write. Whatever the text is teaching,
that's what Christ is teaching. And He's going to teach it by
speaking it into somebody's heart. Somebody needs this. Somebody
needs this. I need it every time I start
working on it. I need it because I get it because
He's speaking it to me. He's drawing it to me. He's drawing
my heart to it and making my heart overflow with it and rejoicing
what He's showing me. So I can come preaching to you.
Brother Henry used to say, if it grips your heart, it will
grip their heart. Who grips the heart? Christ does. He makes
it grip your heart. Now look here, the last thing
here. So our safety, brethren, is to
pray aright. Our safety, our security is to
pray aright with importunity. It's to be ever confessing to
God that we have no strength in ourselves and our only strength
is Him. He's all we want. That's true
prayer. Look here. Lest if thou be silent to me,
I become like them that go down into the pit. The pit is the
sewer. The pit is the grave. It's the
Maori pit. It's the place where they would
throw prisoners. Remember when Joseph's brothers
threw them in that pit? They used to throw men in pits
and keep them in prison that way. They had no water, nothing.
And then they dug pits to throw the sewer in. And they dug pits
to bury people in. That's what the pit represents.
The sin and the death of our sin. In eternity when God chose
His people by His grace and Christ became our surety, right then
God delivered us from the pit. That's when He delivered us.
He said, deliver him from going down to the pit. I have found
a ransom. I found somebody that's going
to pay everything they owe. And in time Christ came and He
took all the sins of His people and took them away into a land
not inhabited. He carried them away when He
bore our sins unto the death of the cross. And for that reason
now we can say, Thou hast in love to my soul delivered it
from the pit of corruption, for Thou hast cast all my sins behind
Thy back. And then when He comes to us
in grace and called us out in that first hour, you know where
He found us? In the pit. right there with every other
wicked sinner. And the psalmist said, He brought me up also out
of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and He set my feet
upon a rock, and He established my goings, and He put a new song
in my mouth, praise unto our God. And then now, we slide and
we fall and we stumble all along this walk we're going through,
but He continues, and promises to continue, to set our feet
on that rock and keep us lifted up out of that pit. And so, but
He's going to be, He's going to do it by us asking Him. And
so He's going to bring us, when we're praying for all, everything
under the sun, when we got stuff hide us and we're praying for
that stuff, He's going to keep silent till we can't do anything
else but say, Lord, I just need You. Just, if you're silent to
me, Lord, I'm going to go down like those that go down to the
pit. And that's the point, brethren. You notice from the urgency of
this prayer that there's been some silence from the Lord? This
is not just somebody on a pillow at night. This is somebody crying
unto the Lord, like a child cries out for its mother. This is somebody
crying in earnest and fervency to the Lord. Oh Lord, my rock,
be not silent to me. If you're silent to me, I'll
be like those that go down to the pit. But you see, even in
the silence, what does he do? He keeps praying. He continues
to pray. Don't lose heart in the Lord
if He don't speak into your heart, because the Lord never is not
answering us. There's never a time He does
not answer our prayer. But sometimes silence is the
best answer. because we need to be brought
to Him and Him only. We need to have all this other
stuff cast away. We need to be brought down to
just Him. Our one need is just Him. When
God forsook Christ on that cross, God in judgment would not answer
our Lord Jesus. He would not do it. And do you
remember what our Lord said in Psalm 22? He justified the Lord
for not doing it, for not answering. He said, our fathers prayed to
you and you answered them. He said, but I am a worm and
no man. He confessed owning the sins
of His people. He confessed that in justice
He did not deserve to be answered. Because what was happening was
the satisfaction of justice. What was happening was God's
righteousness being satisfied and God couldn't answer Him.
He justified God for not answering Him. But then, eventually, God
answered him. When it was time, God answered
him. And God drew him out of the pit. He came out of the grave
and all his people came out with him. And God declared him justified
in everything he preached, everything he declared. He was justified
for telling everybody the truth. And God set him at his own right
hand and there he sits, the salvation of all his people. And that's
what God declared there. And look down at the end of this
Psalm. Lord willing, look at this another time. But Psalm
28, look down at verse 6. Blessed be the Lord, because
He hath heard the voice of my supplications. The Lord is my
strength and my shield. My heart trusted in Him, and
I am helped. Therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth,
and with my song will I praise Him." And then look what he says,
the Lord is their strength. He is the saving strength of
His anointed. Save thy people and bless thine
inheritance. Feed them also and lift them
up forever. And that's when Christ was heard,
and God set Him at His right hand, and now Christ is praising
God, and He's interceding for us, saying, Bless your people,
Lord. You hear them now. You lift them up out of the pit.
And because Christ is our righteousness, that's just exactly what our
Lord God will do. He'll keep us lifted out of the
pit. So, the Lord is silent to us sometimes, but He does it
to make us call on Him. I want to give you two parables
to read tonight. You go home tonight, you read
Luke 18. And you read verses 1 through 8. That's the one you
remember where the judge, he was an unjust judge, and the
Lord Jesus gave this parable. And that woman went to him and
she was crying unto him to take vengeance on her enemies. And
he said that he wasn't going to answer her. And it says, but
after a while, he said, though I fear not God, nor do I regard
man, he said, yet because this widow troubles me, I will avenge
her lest by her continual coming she weary me. She wouldn't quit
knocking at his door. And he finally said, she's just
going to wear me down. She's going to trouble me. And
so I'm going to awake and I'm going to take vengeance on her
enemies. And the Lord said, God will avenge His own elect. Now
listen to this, which cry day and night unto Him. Unto Him. Though He bear long
with them. He says, I tell you, He will
avenge them speedily. He may bear long with us, While
we're praying this and that and the other thing until we're brought
to just pray to Him. And then He will avenge us. And then there's another parable
I want you to read in Luke 11. Luke 11 verses 5 through 10. That's the one, you know, where
the woman went She said, lend me three loaves. A friend's come
to visit. Lend me three loaves. And the
man said, it's after midnight. I'm going to bed. I'm not going
to get up and open the door to you. But then he said this, yet,
he said he will not rise and give him bread because he's his
friend, yet because of his importunity. Because he can't provide for
himself. He got need. Real need. He will arise and
give them as many as He needs. And He says, now here's the lesson,
I say unto you, ask and it shall be given you. Seek and you shall
find. Knock and it shall be opened
unto you. For everyone that asketh receiveth,
and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall
be opened. Why then is the Lord not hearing me? Why is He silent
to me? Am I praying for Him only? Am I asking for Him only? Am
I saying He's my need and I have to have Him only? Because when
I ask that, I'll receive. You ask that, you're not for
that, the door will be open. James said, you ask and receive
not because you ask amiss that you may consume it upon your
lust. But He makes us truly importunate. He makes you... We hear nothing
but silence to where nothing else is important but Him. And
we pray aright. This was our lesson. We pray
aright, importunately, when our cry is for the Lord our rock
of all to speak in His strength and His wisdom into our hearts. That's when we're praying aright,
when that's what we want. Watch ye therefore and pray always
that you may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that
shall come to pass and to stand before the Son of Man. Always
be praying for Him. Oh Lord, my rock. That's who
we pray for. For Him. Amen. you