I'd like us to turn to Psalm
25, which we read earlier. Of course, we have a lovely psalm
here, maybe one that is very familiar to you. There's much
comfort in reading it. As a heading this morning, as
we look at this psalm, it's a psalm from a heart alive to God. Of course it's a psalm of David.
He wrote perhaps at least half of the psalms. And there's the
themes we look at this morning. We're certainly going to look
at the Christian life, and that's the life of faith, because that's
very much in this psalm, and it's a psalm, we're going to
think about psalms, and it's full of praise to God as well. I thought it would be interesting
before we look at some of the things in this lovely psalm to
think about the psalms themselves as their place in scripture.
Scripture is a remarkable thing and we have a book of psalms
and the Hebrew word for hymns is actually Tehillim But it's
actually in the Septuagint that they have the word for this book
of Sarmoi. So it's a Greek word and it's
not just a hymn, it's more the sense of praise. It's a book
of praise. We know there are those amongst
us in the Reformed community who say this is a hymn book and
it's the only hymn book. but we don't say we only say
the prayers in scripture, we only have the sermons or the
words of scripture and so on. God has not limited us in that
way. But we have, and we sing them
here, which Mr. Matronola introduced, which is
good, I think it's good that we do come to the Psalms and
sing them, we know them. And they're praise, they're to
be sung, and they have a place in scripture, and I'll come to
that. and of course the scriptures are remarkable things aren't
they because in them they contain history and instruction and so
much and people of course have questioned historical evidence
in the psalm in the books that that's just not true and the
more they look into it and we do archaeology the more we find
that the bible of course is a hundred percent correct and as a young
man I remember saying there's no such place as Nineveh then
they found there was and they said there's no such person as
Pilate, and they found that there was, and so on. Of course there
are many in our society today who tell there never was a person
Jesus, but of course there was, and he's recorded in history
by Josephus and others. So we have every confidence in
this book in terms of the facts, we need spiritual Confidence
and the richness and the breadth. I mean I have a Quran at home
Which I look at occasionally and it is it's only a small book. It is awful to read and When
you read things that parallel the scripture, it's it's so poor
But the Bible is is light years just ahead if you just look at
it as a book on the way It's written and the care and the
tension and the way things are written that they want to be
worshipping God, they want to be glorifying God. There's a
soberness, there's a carefulness in the way that scriptures are
written. Ultimately, it's the word of God. It's the written
word. And God, it's God's means to
bring the gospel to us in this age. And does it move us and
does it touch us? That's the test of our faith.
If you read Psalm 25, Did it touch you? It always moves me
every time I read it. Can we remain untouched? Now
we have other favourite psalms. I was just going to rattle through
some psalm numbers and see if they're the ones that you know.
Just off the top of my head there, before we come to that, we can
think of 2 Corinthians where Paul opens his heart up. The
Psalms are an opening up of the heart, aren't they, of David
and others. 2 Corinthians, David opens his heart up, the troubles
he has, what they think of him, small and mean, his voice, and
so on. He tells you exactly his problems. Or we get the prophet Jeremiah,
you know, we don't demean other prophets, but you learn a bit
about Jeremiah and the way he was handled and treated. They
put him in a pit and so on. You feel for these men, you can
see the feeling, the intensity in their writing. And of course,
Job opens his heart, confesses all that's in his heart. And
he's not right with God. There's still things, even though
he's a righteous man, there's still something to be dealt with
in Job. How about Psalm 2? Isn't it a wonderful psalm? It's a great psalm. God is king.
And people don't know that. They think there's no gods. But
God is king. And he declares Christ, he says
in verse 7, I will declare the decree the Lord hath said unto
me, Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. As Henry
often says, Psalms like this are messianic. They point to
Christ. That's another reason we like
them. And we, in Psalm 22, isn't that intense? We read there the
sufferings of Christ. They go to verse 14. He says,
I'm poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart is like wax. It is melted in the midst of
my bowels. My strength is dried up like
a possard, and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws, and thou hast brought
me into the dust of death. Oh, doesn't that reflect the
cross, isn't it? Remarkable. And of course, Psalm
23, everybody's favourite. In my younger days, I told you
I was a choir boy. We used to get a little bit of
extra pocket money for going to weddings and funerals, and
the people liked to have a choir there. And they always had Psalm
23. And they always had the tune
Crimmond. And I remember a dear Sidney
Norton when he was here, he said he didn't like that. That was
the tune he liked least. It's not a bad tune. He said
because he had been an Anglican and he'd heard it so many times
and chosen by the godless. They didn't want to hear it again.
But it's a lovely psalm. Oh, let's not say, oh, we're
too familiar with the psalm. It's a lovely psalm. He restoreth
my soul. Don't we want to come to that
psalm? He leadeth me in the paths of
righteousness. Well, we need to know that. And
we're in trouble. Sometimes we think we walk through
the valley of the shadow of death. I will fear no evil. When great,
terrible things come to us, they can really oppress us. But he
keeps us. We read his rod and his staff. They comfort us. He's there to
look after us. He's there to lead us. He's there
to defend us. That's what we read, isn't it?
Isn't it wonderful? And then Psalm 25, we're going
to come back to that one a little bit later. That's the one I want
to center the focus on this morning. We read from Psalm 34 this morning,
I will bless the Lord at all times. So much intensity in that
Psalm, and there's the poor man who cries out, we read that,
don't we, in that Psalm. Oh, isn't it wonderful that we
read, the Lord, the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous,
and his ears are open unto their cry. And then we have Psalm 51,
I hope you know that's the one where David has to confess, it's
after that terrible adultery with Bathsheba. Have mercy upon
me, he says. Oh, he opens his heart out. Oh, he says, purge me with hyssop. He sees his need. Do we see,
do we feel our sin? And don't look to the ungodly. We live in a day where people
talk about cults and celebrities and wealthy people. And in the
psalm of Asaph, Psalm 73, he reflects on these people. He
says, there are no burns in their death. Their strength is firm.
They're not in trouble as other men. and so on. Don't be like
that. He's just holding that up. No,
we shouldn't be looking to such people. Don't envy them at all. See them with spiritual eyes.
What do we read? He said, verse 17, I went into
the sanctuary of God, then I understood therein. Surely thou didst set
them in slippery places. Thou castest them down into destruction. Oh, don't idolize the world as
some do. and then we come to worship and
David loved to worship and he loved, I think, to go to the
house of God and we see that in Psalm 84, isn't it? Well, it doesn't say David, but
it says, how amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts,
my soul longeth, yea, fainteth for the cause of the Lord. Well,
you may not have been fainting this morning, but I hope in your
heart as you came this morning, There was a longing he wanted
to come I want someone some mornings are not well enough Sundays,
but I want to come here That's my desire the most important
thing to come here to this place with my dear friends and worship
the Lord Blessed are they that dwell in thy house. They will
be still praising me. That's what the psalmist says
Psalm 119 you know that well, that's It presents before us the perfections
of God's word, his law, and it does it in so many ways, 176
verses. and then finally another one of my favourites is Psalm
148 it's praise the whole as it were the whole creation praises
God some of those latter hymns Psalms are of praise but this
one he says praise ye the Lord praise ye the Lord from the heavens
praise him in the heights and then we read of angels praising
the sun the moon the stars all praising him praising the name
of the Lord for he commanded and they were created. That's
what we read. So we love the Psalms. And this morning we're
going to come back to Psalm 25. The most quoted Psalm of course
in the New Testament is Psalm 110. The Lord said to my Lord,
sit at my feet till I make thy enemies thy footstool. And and
that's where we read of course thou art a priest forever after
the order of Belchizedek that comes from psalm 110 and I trust
you have your favorite psalms and it's good when you pray to
come back to the psalms perhaps when you're praying just to read
through them and use them. There were things in there, of
course imprecatory parts we might not want to use, but there were
things and thoughts in there that really will help us in our
prayer. We come to this very lovely psalm
of David and again he says he pours out his heart. Interesting
I was reading on this psalm. There are 22 verses And some
of us know there are, we don't know very much, but we know there
are 22 characters in the Greek alphabet. And like Psalm 119,
which is also an acrostic based upon the Greek alphabet, the
names of the words, each of these verses is headed by, I think
it's an order of a character in the Greek alphabet. I never
knew that before. and it may well give us a clue. Maybe David,
it tells us David was the author of Psalm 119. We don't know,
do we? I believe it's in some other
Psalms, but I've not, I couldn't, I couldn't guarantee that. But
the occasion, it is felt there was a time of trauma and it may
well be, it doesn't tell us at the heading, maybe that time
of the rebellion of Absalom, because he talks about those
who surrounded him and are his enemies, verse 19, they are many,
they hate me and that was awful for his son to turn on him and
he cries to God and these verses are good, they focus our attention,
the contest is important, you see what we read here is David
is dealing with life, he's dealing with real circumstances, he's
dealing with those who would oppose him, perhaps overthrow
him uh... isn't this is not fancy when
we come to the bible we're not dealing with sort of dreams and
illusions you can buy many fictitious books we're dealing with people
think we read the bible we're in a dream world we're not we're
dealing with reality david was dealing with reality and he's
helping us through these words It's not easy. What is life like?
Well, the life you read in magazines and television, it's all got
to be wonderful and glorious and you have a new car and your
holiday abroad, you see it all every time in the adverts. But
the reality of life is often they're trials. There are difficulties. We get illnesses, we get challenges.
And we are not exempt so much believers. God has ordained it.
That we should come through these things. That is his order. Look
at the life of David. Trial after trial after trial.
It's set before us. Not that our life will be like
David, but it's a pattern. Look at the life of our Lord.
Look at the life of Paul. Look at the life of Jeremiah
and so on. You can see they faced challenges and triumphs. the
Lord brought them through, again we can look back at Moses and
Abraham, some of the vast challenges that they faced the Lord kept
them but there was joy and there was happiness you see, true happiness
and joy in the Lord, walking with the Lord and knowing he's
keeping And therefore, the scriptures, I think, are realistic. They
tell us the truth. You can go to other places, and
I've heard it, I've heard this from people, where they're taught,
if you're a Christian, you're no wealth. prosperity, you'll
know happiness, you'll know peace, the Lord will deal with all your
problems for you, and you'll stay healthy. And when we were
amongst the Pentecostals we could see a bit of that, that there
was this expectation that you would be brought out of ill health,
but the Lord has ordained that. Some of us as we get older know
a lot more about it. But this is the reality of life. but most of all we must know
God that's what we must say this morning, do you know God? because all of this will mean
nothing, all we must know God, we must seek him because these
things will then, they will touch us if God is in our hearts it
will touch us, David cries out unto thee oh Lord do I lift up
my soul that's unto thee, it's to God, he's so focused isn't
he David on God is that how our lives are? look at you, you've
got friends and they talk about you, what do they think about
you? I can remember often being challenged
because of my faith and people could see it, I wasn't aware
of it but they could see you were different and sometimes
they would try and make you make a mistake, they would attack
you but once they knew you were genuine they would back off somewhat
But what do people think of us? They say, oh yeah, so-and-so,
or he's a Christian, or she's a Christian. Is that the thing
they notice? With David, he said, unto thee,
O Lord, do I lift up my soul. Oh my God, I trust in thee. Let
me not be ashamed. Let not my enemies triumph over
me. You see, he had enemies. We may
not have enemies. We might have people who who
are against us, but let them not triumph over us, says the
Psalmist. He cries to God, he wants to
know God's leading. He says, show me thy paths, O
Lord, teach me thy paths, teach me thy ways. Is that how our
heart is? Do we say, verse five, lead me
in thy truth? Because that's what we should
want as believers, we want to be led in the truth of God. But we recognize our sins, verse
seven, remember not the sins of my youth. You know, these
are old sins. We may have forgotten things
we did, but oh, remember them not. We have in Christ that perfect
covering for sin, but we are still sinners. until we die the
spiritual man looks to God he says blessed and for the name
sake of the Lord pardon my iniquities great what man is he that feareth
the Lord him shall he teach in the way he shall choose I like
verse 13 if you go God's way it says his soul shall dwell
at ease and his seed shall inherit the earth it doesn't say he will
be completed at ease you see his soul Do you want your soul? I do. I want my soul to be at
ease. There are many trials and troubles
in life. They come. Sometimes it's amazing. I have a list of things I pray
for and there are a number of very difficult things that have
arisen recently. Surprisingly, they never go away. But can your soul be at ease
that's what David says and we're going to come back and look a
bit more at verses 16 to 18 this morning but these verses really
touch the believer I find these some of the most precious verses
in the scripture when you are in trouble you're ill or you're
hurt or you're afflicted come to these verses they will be
such a strength and comfort to you as David says you've got
enemies troubles of his heart they're enlarged bring me out
of my distresses well we can cry cry that to God can't we
so let's know disgresses. As Paul says, there's no temptation
that will overwhelm us, 1 Corinthians 10, 13, but he will provide a
way of escape. Have you ever sought the Lord?
I have and said, Lord, I'm finding I can't cope with this. I need
a way of escape, not to get out of it, but I need, as it were,
to to know how to deal with this, to come forth from this and it's
good sometimes to reflect in prayer how the Lord has brought
us thus far and we can think back of trials and tribulations
in life, I certainly can and I thank God that he's brought
me out of them he's brought me thus far by his grace and we
thank him for that now I was going to point us to Romans and
chapter 7 because in there we see Paul
I mentioned Paul opens his heart out and it's good to go to these
passages because we see that maybe we have feelings like that
I think I've said before from the Paul for here when I was
a young believer It was wonderful. It was just so good being a Christian. I felt so good about it. And
I went away to university and I was busy with the Christian
Union. I was on the committee. After two or three years as a
Christian, I started having darker thoughts. And I thought, you
know, I'm not any better really than I was. I've still got things
that I want to get out of my way and dark thoughts come to
my mind and I got quite concerned about it. It took some while
before I realized that I'll never feel really good about myself. I'll never feel I haven't got
sin. I'll never feel I haven't got dark thoughts because I've
got the old man. And I can remember Mr. Matronola was preaching on
it. He was so good at so many things
but on this and saying he had the same experience as a young
man until he realized he had these two natures. And as he
realized, as our walk with God grows, and we know more of God,
and light, and truth, and holiness, so we see the sin within us. It doesn't get smaller. We become
more aware of it. We see it for what it is. We
see that it needs dealing with. And that was my experience. And
that was Paul's experience. People get confused about this
great chapter seven in Romans. But they think this is Paul in
his unconverted state, but it's not true. I think Dr. Lloyd-Jones
takes that position. I don't know how he can, because
it's clearly not the case in the verse. He says, sin taking
occasion by me, verse 11, deceived me, and by it slew me. Oh, he
felt the pain of that. He says, for that which, he says,
we know the law is spiritual, and I am carnal, he says. But
that, verse 15, that which I do, I allow not. I don't really want
to do it, he says. But what I would, that I do not. But what I hate, that I do. You
see that battle, isn't it? It's stark. These words are so
stark. For people who aren't used to
self-examination, they might find this very hard. He says,
for I know that in me, verse 18, that is in my flesh, dwelleth
no good thing. for to will is present with me,
but how to the form, that which is good I find not." There's
no inherent good within us, that's the lie of the Church of Rome
and their saints and the rest of it. No, we need the grace
of God. For the good that I would, I
do not. But the evil which I would not, that I do. And I'm sure
we can all say we know what those verses mean, we've been there.
He says, verse 24, a wretched man that I am. Who shall deliver
me from the body of this death? And you might say, oh, what a
terrible state Paul is in. Oh, he must be lost. But he says,
I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind,
I myself serve the law of God. I'm a Christian, born again,
but my flesh is still, there's still sin. And isn't that the
Christian position? Unless we understand that, we
can't. fully come and comprehend the words of David in this great
psalm, these petitions that are before us. He says, verse 16,
he says, I'm desolate, He says, I'm alone, afflicted. He says, turn unto me. Have you
not prayed that? Have mercy on me. You felt so
low. We get there. We do. And in a
sense, that's not a sin. That's how we are. The world comes at us. Situations
come and assault us. We are weak flesh. We have to
recognize that. And we can feel desolate and
afflicted. We're not to, as it were, to
stay there spiritually. We are to look up. And I'm sure
maybe you've felt some of that recently, how we desperately
need God's help. Sometimes we feel we're just
on our own. We're just coping with something. There's no one
there to help us. But what can we do? Where can
we turn? Well, we turn by faith. We turn to God. And we can have
those. We can share these things with
those. We can pray with. We can go to
a faithful church like this one. And we can receive that faithful
ministry. And that will help us and bring
us out of all these things. David was a king. Yet he knew
in himself his feebleness. He knew within himself his weakness. He knew of his need for God. He had learned not to always
trust in men. People around us trust in all
their friends and neighbors. Everybody has lots of contacts
and friends and they let them down. And often they're very
disappointed. Worldly people often fail. They often let people down because
they haven't got that within them. It's not the rock Christ
Jesus. They haven't got that firm foundation. Their life is
built upon their own views and beliefs. And as Christ says,
that's sand. When the storm comes, and we
see this with people, when the storm comes, they're blown away. Where are we? Oh, we need to
be, don't we? Firmly standing on that rock,
Christ Jesus. I feel it more and more, it's
probably as I get older, you feel weaker, oh, feel my need
of him. Is that where we are? We don't
put our trust in God, we put our trust, our trust, we put
our trust in God, not men. Where is our foundation? He says
in verse 17, the troubles of my heart are enlarged. And that's
the case, isn't it? I'm sure all of us have known
difficulties of one sort. And the more we think about them,
they seem to become bigger and bigger and bigger, don't they?
You know exactly what I'm talking about. You may have something
at the moment, but things can get out of proportion. One thing
can totally dominate you. dealt with this, I can't do it,
I've got other things I'm supposed to do which I can't deal with,
I have to deal with this thing because that is life and David
says he was a great spiritual man, man after God's own heart
but he felt like this, there's no shame in it, we can feel like
this and his cry to God Again, I'm sure we can echo this. Bring
me out of my distresses. Oh, we know distresses. I know
distresses. I'm sure you do at times. Oh,
we must cry to God that he will keep us. It may not be easy,
but we will be brought out of those distresses. As I said, there is that way
of escape. There are other verses we could
bring in. Verse 18 is reality again. Look upon mine affliction.
people who go to other churches who think that we shouldn't have
big trials and troubles, we shouldn't have illnesses, we shouldn't
have affliction. I can remember a chap who converted
later in life saying he'd been told by his church that God was
an extra resource to help him with life. Wasn't that, how blasphemous
can you be? God is a resource to help you
with your life. What sort of church was that? I think he moved
on from that, but isn't that awful? No, that's not the case.
We know that you and I will never escape trials. We will never
escape troubles. We will never escape afflictions.
Why? Because that is God's will. How do we learn holiness? How
do we learn obedience? How do we learn faithfulness?
God keeps us under trials. We read in the scriptures of
the men of Scripture, they all had trials and tribulations of
different sorts, whether they were dear Jeremiah, who I love,
being cast into that miry pit, but being brought out there and
being respected by the King of Babylon, not by the people in
Jerusalem. Isn't it remarkable? God preserved
that dear, dear man. Think of Abraham and Isaac, our
pastor minister on this recently, having to take that knife. Can
you imagine that? that God provided himself a lamb. God has provided himself a lamb
for us. If so be we are in Christ. We
have that perfect, that dear lamb of God. Takes away all our
sins and we are complete in him. Are we in him? That's where we
need to be. But we have to live in this life.
God has ordained life. People get confused about life. I've worked with people. And
maybe you have, who say, life, I remember one man saying life
was a one-shot game. Isn't that dreadful? And you
only get one go, and you've got to get as much out of it as you
can. This is my boss. I try to disabuse
him of that. But no, it's not. God has, it's
a gift. God has given you the gift of life, and if you be in
Christ, he's given you the gift of eternal life. We didn't get
it by making a decision. It's sovereign grace. Salvation
is the gift of God, is it, by grace? Faith is the gift of God. He gives it to us. It's not of
ourselves, not of works. Any man should boast. We thank
God. But we know trials. and they
can be enlarged. We know afflictions and pain,
but it doesn't have to be physical pain, does it? It can be stress,
it can be mental pain. Very often it is the latter,
isn't it? Things come on, we can get so uptight, worked up,
they can be very difficult. Often it's dealing with certain
people. David had terrible trouble with
people, and you can see the strials, the strains, and the stresses
of that. And we can know that. Oh, bring
me out of that. But he says, when he considers
his afflictions and his pain, he says, forgive all my sins. He doesn't forget his sin. It's
not just bring me out of this. He recognizes the man he is. He recognizes what his own heart
is. He recognizes that he's a sinner
in great need. Where are we this morning? Do
these things speak to us? They should. But there's complete forgiveness
only in Christ. There is forgiveness. We can
know in this world, even in the midst of the greatest afflictions
and trials, we can know a peace, that perfect peace, peace of
God, the possible understanding. We can know calmness, in a sense,
in Him. When there's a storm raging all
around, we can see as it were with the eyes. the eyes of the
Prophet when he looked at the city. He could see the armies
of God encamped against the city. We, by faith, can see God and
the resources for us. We must there's a true prayer
and I was minded in looking at these verses to go to Matthew
and we go to chapter 6 and you know these these verses very
well in the Sermon on the Mount what a wonderful part of scripture
that is the Sermon on the Mount oh we should go back there more
and more Jesus taught the disciples how to pray they obviously there
were pattern prayers, John the Baptist had taught his disciples
how to pray, how should we pray? And people pray this prayer,
of course you know it's prayed all over the world regularly
in the Church of England, yes it can be prayed as a prayer,
I'm not one of those who say it shouldn't be, but it's a pattern isn't
it? It's a pattern prayer, it's a basis from which trust, our
prayers will spring from the base of this prayer. And we start there, don't we,
in verse six. Let me just get the right page. It will tell them, we'll get
there in the end. Well, we know, we know the words. I can't get
it. Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Isn't that a great start for a prayer? You know, we can only
say, our Father, because we are in Christ and with Christ how
could we call God Father? Jesus called God Father, I was
reading that in John's Gospel and they wanted to kill him because
he was associating himself with God because he said my Father
which is in heaven but we can say our Father only if we are
in Christ and we are in Him and He in us in the Old Testament
you won't find our Father you'll find the Lord In the New Testament
there's that revelation of Christ. Now we can say, our Father, which
are in heaven, and we need to understand heaven, the eternal
glorious state of God, hallowed be thy name. God's name, Christ's
name are blasphemed all the time. Hallowed be thy name. And that's
where we start in prayers. Isn't it wonderful? Now, the
Lord is very practical. I love this. Very practical. We're not to use vain repetitions
and so on. Like them, we are to come to
our, go to our closet, says the Lord, doesn't he? I've got the
page to turn now. He says, enter into thy closet. And when thou has shut the door,
pray to thy father, which is in secret. Now, I was going to
say, do you have, as it were, that closet? It's good, do you
have that place? Do you have somewhere? Do you
take the time to go somewhere? To pray, you have a set time
you go, and that's important to you, that's how long it is,
and that's what you're gonna do. The door is closed, that's
what the Lord says, not what I say, the door is closed, and
it's just you. and the Lord. One of the great
things about being retired is I have the time in the morning.
I go down to our sitting room and that's my closet. The door's
closed, I've got my Bible, my reading book, that's my time
we've got. It's so precious to me. I've
said to Henry many times, it's really the best time of the day.
Often I'm not feeling very good, I go there And it really, I need
to do it. It's very good. And Jill was
upstairs and she's doing the same. And it's so important.
Do you have that? Do you do that? Do you have a
closet? We must. It's not because I say it. It's what the Lord has taught
us. We must, must do that. I was going to use the word,
I say, we've got to do business with God, if I can say that. We're not playing. Oh, we have
religion. When we come to this church, this isn't just coming
on Sunday and hello and say, Good morning to everybody, sing
a few hymns and go home and feel good about ourselves. No, we're
here because we're serious. This is life. There isn't any
other life. This is life, living in Christ. This is newness of life in Christ. We're very serious and we want
to open our hearts because we recognize also that we are needy
and dependent as well, we know that. and you close the door,
this is as it were, it's you and God in Christ, alone. That's
true prayer, isn't it? It's good when we come and pray
together, that is part of the church life, that's not the topic
this morning, I could say so much about that. This is the
foundation, when we've come to the chapel, I trust we've come
because we also pray, pray for the worship before we ever come
to the door. We've said, thy will be done. We know it's done in heaven,
my kingdom come, not the kingdom of God, Jesus, it's the kingdom
of righteousness, not the kingdom of this world, it's the kingdom
of the human heart, isn't it? It's a kingdom of the true church,
the ecclesia, the saved in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, of course,
in our prayers, let's be realistic, we're often in trouble. And all
of us at times, you know, we want a miracle, don't we? We
really want something. We've got a big problem and we
crave something. Sometimes the Lord grants you
that. You pray for things. I remember
I prayed for things in the past and I've forgotten. And they've
come. And I'm completely not for six.
Now, the Lord doesn't always do that. But the Lord, let me
tell you, the Lord will at times, tell you he's heard, he's listened
and he's answered, he will and perhaps you can think of times
when he's really answered most amazingly for you, but sometimes
you have to weigh his time and sometimes that can be very hard,
it may be that you stay in a trial as a testimony to your faith
and sometimes we just don't know what the Lord's will is we have
to trust in him and his way, which may be hard It may be hard
to say to somebody, this is God's will for you, it isn't very pleasant
what's happening to you, but you may need great courage and
patience, and therefore we seek Him for that courage, for that
patience. If it's a difficult situation,
we make the best of it. We want to live for Him. We want
to glorify Him. And here, just in this psalm,
this lovely psalm, we see here a pattern. It's an example. It's a practice. This is what we learn from the
scriptures. We don't just come to it. I was
going to say, we don't come to the scriptures as it were poetry
or as literature. Some people do. And of course,
it is good to read, but it's not written as poetry or literary. You get people, like 1 Corinthians
13, it's become common for people to use that, and to recite that,
almost like a piece of poetry in public. And that's not why
it was written. That's a wonderful, and I've
preached on that, it's a wonderful, wonderful passage of Scripture.
love, charity, true love of God, that's what the word charity
is about, it's not just ordinary love, eros, it's a special word,
agape or agape, it's God's word for love, it's a New Testament
word, it's something different, spiritual and intense, oh we
need to know that, this life is not going to be easy but there
will be happiness. And I trust that we know that as well. If
we know the things that Paul says are in Galatians 5, we know
something about love, about joy. that peace we know long-suffering
we are able to stand in the faith the fruit of the spirit has come
to us and it brings us up as a person it should bring to you
and me as a person a wholeness it should bring a maturity a
completeness we should be as you were better people why because
we should be modeled and affected in grace by the Lord Jesus Christ
he is our example we look to him don't we and we think that
he's set before us, as Paul says in the first verse of Hebrews,
he's set before us. Not as people saw before, there
was the perfection of Christ, the express image, exact representation
of God set before us, in whom all things were made, without
him nothing was made that was made. He is before all things,
holds all things together. So we be realistic, that's what
I'm saying, be realistic. Let's understand what the Christian
life is, and understand that God knows that. And God has ordained
that, and he will be with us. He will walk through us, and
he's provided for us, and he's provided for us in part through
the words of scripture. That's why we must know those
words. The Psalmist, was it David, Psalm
190? Thy word have I hid in my heart,
that I may not sin against thee. Is that what we do? Have we got
words like these words in this psalm and other passages? I've
tried to memorize some. I'm not good at memorizing things,
but I have tried. And I want to pull out more verses
to try and remember them, that we come back to this. He understands
us. And be like David, verse 15.
mine eyes ever towards the Lord. Is that how you and I are? That's
how we've got to be. We want to live this Christian
life and then you hear our prayers. We want Him, we look towards
Him, but we want Him to turn towards us and have mercy upon
us. The Lord will have mercy upon
us in Christ. But let us be realistic. The
scripture makes so clear to us the Lord's will, the Lord's purpose,
he makes very clear to us what is the life of faith, he says
before us wonderful patterns in the Old and New Testament
of the life of faith and you can see the lives they led, the
trials and tribulations they knew, the joys they knew and
you can see how these verses 16 to 18 are a prayer for every
faithful child of God comes to God and feels these things and
that's the word to this morning I've been there. I'm sure you've
been there. Let's love these words and others.
Let's come to God. Let's make them, as it were,
part of our prayer life. And we come to Him. That's my
last thing. Oh, we come to God. Come to Him
in Christ. We must, to know these things,
we come to Him. We must come with an open heart. We mustn't come telling God what
He's got to do. We come seeking the will of God. Thy will be done. Every time
you're in difficulty or trouble, remember that. It may be hard,
but Thy will be done. That's what we must pray. Trust
the Lord will help us. But we have great comfort here,
isn't it? Because He will help us. He will keep us. He will
bring us through all trials, because He loves us. And by His
grace. Amen.