we are going to look at Psalm
86 tonight that we read earlier and we shall be singing part
of it after the study and it's a lovely psalm we won't be able
to look at all of it in great depth but I trust we shall find
tremendous encouragement in the psalm I was reading this and
I gave note to verse 6 and that if you like is the foundation
for our comments tonight where David says, give ear, O Lord,
unto my prayer, and attend to the voice of my supplications.
And I was interested, there was this sort of forcefulness imperative
in David's voice in this, and I was thinking, well, can we
say to God, listen to me, which is almost what David is saying. But then we see in verse 1, He
has a different tone. Bow down, bow down thine ear,
O Lord, he says. And in verse 5, he sees a God
who is good, ready to forgive and plentiful in mercy. unto
all them that call upon him so there's a background isn't there
a foundation for David's words here and it's an appropriate
psalm it deals with the life of faith it deals with what we've
all got every day and The thing about David is that David writes,
doesn't he, from a real Christian experience. He's not writing
just theoretically. He's not just sort of setting
forth ideas out of his head. This is somebody whose walk we've
got. This was a man after God's own heart, and therefore we see
that experience, that revelation of God that will be coming out
so strongly in David and of course we see in David's writing a very
clear understanding of salvation that God is his saviour I was
going to say it later in the talk, but there's a real sense,
the right sense, that David was very much a theologian. You might
think, oh, we're going back a long time in history, but his theology
was there, he understood God, he understood the key doctrines,
and you see that comes forth so strongly in the Psalms, and
of course by the grace of God he had a revelation, did he not,
of Christ, and we see the Gospel manifested, that sense of that
greater son yet to come, you know, he had that vision. It comes out in verse 13 of the
gospel, he says, for great is thy mercy toward me, thou hast
delivered my soul from the lowest hell. The confusion in our day
about salvation, what is salvation? How does it work? What is the
process? Who saves who? David had no doubts. Salvation
is to do with the mercy of God towards us. It is the grace of
God. It's God who saves. God has a saving purpose and
he has delivered. David, you, he says, thou hast
delivered my soul from the lowest hell. I didn't save myself. I
didn't call upon thee. I didn't seek thee. God, in his
sovereign majesty and might, David's Saul, was the saviour. And these are the truths, of
course, that we know and we love. And there's that teachable heart
in David. We can identify with him because, like us, sadly,
he was a sinner. He committed gross sins. It's remarkable to us. And yet
God forgave him. God dealt with him, though there
were consequences. God saves, God delivers by mercy
and of course in our day we would see that perfectly expressed
wouldn't we in the person the work of the Lord Jesus Christ
we know that David like Abraham, Moses they all looked to that
day they looked to Christ that was the faith that was the object
of their faith that they trusted in Him well and then we see his
humility he says bow down thine ear O Lord hear me again quite
firm but why he says that because he says I feel poor and needy
and is that how we are when we think of prayer do you come as
those poor and needy as our Lord said on the Sermon on the Mount
Matthew 5 3 blessed are the poor in spirit this is what we mean
by poor and needy poor in spirit are you poor in spirit? poor
and needy in spirit Because theirs is the kingdom of heaven, says
our Lord. Isn't that wonderful? David says,
I'm poor and needy. It's that spirit that the Lord
was addressing there on the Sermon on the Mount. And do we feel
that need to pray? David did. He had a sensitive
soul, didn't he? Preserve my soul. He said, don't
just save me, don't just keep me physically, but he felt he
needed to be kept alive, preserved spiritually. He makes this remarkable
statement, for I am holy. He means by that, I am set apart
from thy service. As it were, I am one of the sanctified
ones, not like there are those in other religions, the holy
men, there's one who calls himself the holiness, we know that's
a blasphemy. He said, I'm holy, I've been
set apart for thy service. Oh God, he says, save your servant
that trusts in you. He needs God to save him and
keep him. like those who say oh you know we've arrived i've
met people say oh we we know so many spiritual things we've
become mature we're now going on into all sorts of visions
and revelations there was nothing of that kind of arrogant spirit
about him at all i mean the whole psalm is is merciful and it and
it's all this psalm is perfectly brought together and it's in
its fulfillment in the work of Christ and you will see that
and I would commend the psalm to you to meditate on, just to
read through, it's a very rich psalm indeed. Now do we feel
that mercy? He says, verse 3, Be merciful
unto me, O Lord, for I cry unto thee daily. Well, I think if
you have a great need, do you go daily? If you read the best
Puritans and the best books and the best commentators, they all
will address this at some point. You need a daily time. I have
to confess, years ago when I was busy with work and having to
get out the door, I found it quite difficult in the morning
and often would set time aside in the evening. One of the advantages
of being somewhat older I'm creaky in the morning as I can take
time in the morning but it's good to have a set time. This
can be very important to us, very precious to us and it will
hurt if we do that. If we find we can't give a lot
of time one day. Do we cry daily? And that's a
great confession from David. It tells you a lot about his
heart. And we need lifting up as well
when we come to God. He says, rejoice the soul of
thy servant. And sometimes we all feel somewhat
down, don't we? We sometimes feel low. We feel
like depression is coming upon us. Things aren't what we had
hoped for. There are difficulties. There
are problems. Great sadnesses in life come
to us. Many things in human experience
are quite difficult to cope with, aren't they? I think we all come
to see that. And so David says, rejoice. my
soul and the great source of rejoicing is to know the hope
of the gospel is to know faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ
nothing can lift us like that you know people in the world
they're depressed they go out down the pub or whatever with
their friends and they go drinking or whatever but that does nothing
for them but we come to the Lord that could do everything for
us he says for unto thee do I lift up my soul he is who opens his
heart He looks to God. He wants that relationship with
God. He's had a great revelation of
God and His mercy and His goodness to all who seek Him. He says,
for thou, Lord, art good. And the good there is in an absolute
sense. As you know, we use, in England,
we use good as, you know, I bought that today, it's quite good.
You know, it's quite nice, really. Interesting, our American cousins
still use the word good in rather more absolute terms. Rather more
perfect, rather grander terms. When David says, thou art good,
we are looking at the perfections of God. It reads to us, because
of the way we use language today, like he's not saying very much.
you know, like you would say to a young child who's behaved
himself, you've been a good boy, well we're not saying, we're
saying about God how good, all that good can mean is that it's
the perfections of God, ready to forgive our God, humans are
very poor in that respect, God is ready to forgive and plenteous
in mercy and to all that call upon him. Now, in one of the
sermons, I think it might have been a Bible study recently,
we talked about calling upon the Lord in the context of prayer.
And we see great worship in this knowledge of God. I love this
goodness of God. If you look from verse 10, Thou
art great, doest wondrous things. Thou art God alone. His vision
of day of God. And you hear the atheists talking
today about God, they have no concept of this. They just think we live in, we
just believe in myths and fables. They have no sense of the wondrous
things around us, like the universe. They look into the universe and
I see some of the pictures from this Hubble telescope and they're
fabulous. Some of these spiral nebulae.
And I just say, praise God. When I see them, they say, oh
that's very interesting, I wonder how that happened, you know.
These things are wonderful. Thou doest wondrous things. Thou
art God alone. Teach me thy way, O Lord. So we do need a teachable heart. He says, I will walk in thy truth.
Unite my heart to fear thy name. I will praise thee, O Lord my
God, with all my heart. And I will glorify thy name forevermore. David has a heart that, as he
meditates, you see, on God, his heart is led to worship. Isn't that wonderful? And that's
that calling. So verse 6, he says, again it's
Hebrew poetry, it's a repetition, isn't it? Give ear, O Lord, unto
my prayer and attend to the voice of my supplications. It's this
lovely way that some of the Psalms and other books are written where
you get these two lines saying the same truth but slightly differently.
It's a wonderful way of expressing truth. And as I said at the beginning,
it's quite bold, isn't it? It's listen. He's asking God
to hear me. Are we warranted? You and I,
are we warranted to pray like this? Something to think about,
isn't it, when we come to God? Give ear, says David. Attend. to the voice, but there's an
urgency, I think that's what we take from it in our prayers
and when we come to God, be careful, we come with the right things,
we come with the right heart and trust that God gives us an
urgency and we see in verse 7 that in the day of trouble I will
call upon thee and we all know that, every single one of us
knows the day of trouble and we all know what it is to be
in trouble And then we pray, don't we? If we didn't pray much
before, when we're in trouble, we then pray. We all want to
pray. When we're ill, things are going
wrong, or whatever it is, or something rotten's happened,
we cast upon God. But he says, Thou wilt answer
me. And we will think about answers shortly. But there's a boldness,
isn't there? We can come with a degree of
boldness. And David is not speaking out
of turn here. In Hebrews chapter 10 there are
some great verses that encourage us in this boldness. Verses 19
and 20. he says now having therefore
brethren boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus
by a new and living way which he hath consecrated us through
the veil that is to say his flesh and then he says having our high
priest over the house of God let us draw near with a true
heart in full assurance of faith having our hearts sprinkled from
an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. It's
there, isn't it, in the gospel. We have a boldness to enter. David is speaking in a bold way,
but I believe it's Paul who writes Hebrews. Paul is saying in Hebrews
there is a kind of boldness, an assurance in the right sense,
not a presumption. And it's all based upon this,
on the blood of Jesus. That is the only ground we have
for prayer, the only ground we have for approaching unto God
is Christ. Because he's gone before, you
know, as it were in that tabernacle of old, he's gone into that holy
place where only the high priest could go, and only the high priest
could go properly attired and cleansed and only the high priest
could go with the blood of the correct sacrifice Jesus took
himself as high priest Jesus took his own blood and sprinkled
it as it were for us and therefore there is a new and living way
which has been consecrated it's been opened And we all know that
when he was crucified, there was that rending in the temple,
wasn't there? The curtain was from the top to the bottom. Not
bottom to the top, top to the bottom. It was rent. Symbolic
of the... People could then gaze. People
could look in, which they weren't supposed to. Symbolic, isn't
it? That Jesus had opened up this
new, this living way for us. That's what it is. It's for us.
All of us. through the veil, and that veil
of course is now revealed as his flesh. It's all those things
that were typified, that's why on Sunday morning we were looking
at some of this, why they're all important. All these elements
of worship are all important. Why? Because they all speak,
all look forward to Christ, and all are perfectly fulfilled in
the Lord Jesus Christ who is our High Priest over the house
of God. We don't need any other priest.
That's why it's a gross and utter blasphemy to call a man a priest. Have you noticed how, just an
aside, the Church of England, they used to call them vicars
or ministers. They're always called priests
now and there aren't any priests because they offer no sacrifice.
It's a great sadness in our day that there's this blindness that's
come that our basis for coming is the Lord Jesus Christ. As
we were reading there, verse 22 of Hebrews 10, let us draw
near. If you were in, I think again
I was saying this on Sunday, in certain churches they have
this idea of the priesthood and the clergy and the laity and
certainly when I went to the Church of England there used
to be like a rail at the front of the church and the laity stayed
that side and the priest stayed this side and the Jews also had
that. There were the Levites and the
priests and they performed the work of the temple and the service
and other people stayed away. It was a pain of death to get
involved wasn't it in those things. I mean the kings died and suffered
because they took upon them the role of priests they suffered
death and leprosy and so on but that's not the case in the gospel
at all is it? we can draw near because of this
new and living way in full assurance of faith and we need to understand
that it's a sad day when there's great confusion over assurance
of faith but there's no doubt in the book of Hebrews Paul has
no doubt How else can we come but in the full assurance of
faith? That's not presumption. That's believing the Word of
God. And we have our hearts sprinkled.
We still need that cleansing. We still need to hold the profession
of our faith. These are wonderful truths. Christ
fulfilled that priestly office. Again, just a bit earlier in
chapter 10 of Hebrews, verse 11, we read every priest stand
if daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices
which will never take away sins that was the practice wasn't
it in Jerusalem that was the pattern laid down in the Levitical
law but then we read but this man after he had offered one
sacrifice for sins forever sat down on the right hand of God
and verse 14, for by one offering he hath perfected forever them
that are sanctified. There are no more offerings,
are there? There are no more masses or offerings or whatever,
nothing that you and I can do even, that can add merit or do
anything, because a perfect work, salvation has been procured perfectly. Everything that needs to be done
to save you and I has been done. The life of faith is not about
works, not about a credit of good works and merits and all
that nonsense that you see in other churches. No, that is all
to do with love. Jesus said, if you love me, you
will keep my commandments. Yes, we must be obedient because
we love him, not because it gains us salvation. And we draw near. We draw near, like tonight, I
trust we're going to be enabled to draw near in faith, and draw
near is what we do in prayer, I trust. And there's that sense
when we sit down to pray, that we, as it were, prepare ourselves,
and we mentally draw near, we look to God, we trust that God
will draw us, will open our hearts to him, will bring the truth
to him. And is there that urgency from
David, Well, are our supplications right? There's always a big question,
isn't it, about how we should pray. And there's a great challenge
here in the whole question of praying, what we pray and how
we pray. The prayer says God will answer. Verse 7, I will
call upon thee and thou will answer me. And Jesus says very
much the same sort of thing, doesn't he, in the Gospels. We
call upon you, ask and you shall receive and so on. That's a big challenge for the
believer. What is it we believe? What are we expecting? My experience has been this,
that the whole area of prayer and waiting on God is an area
of great faith and great patience. If you study the life of David,
All that time before he became king, he had the anointing, he
had the promise, he waited patiently on God. We know he penned many
psalms in that time. He had to learn faith. He had
to learn patience. So you and I do. The other thing
is we don't know the mind of God. We know the revealed will,
as it were, the written word of God. We don't know what God's
purposes are. Every time you and I make a prayer,
We say what may have come to our minds, our heart, what seems
right, but we don't know necessarily what is that will of God. We
may pray for something that might seem to us absolutely essential,
but God answers this prayer. I've been in many, many years
ago prayer meetings where people were quite bold and almost demanding
things from God which quite shocked me at the time and we don't come
to God in that way. God does answer. He hears every
prayer. It was put to me many years ago
as a young believer that God can say yes and God can say no.
Well, I think it's a bit more complicated than that, but I
think there's something in that, you know. We might desire something
but God might say no. You might be ill and you don't
get better and God says no. That's his purpose. You have
to wait upon him. You have to trust him. That's
what we're called to. It can be very difficult at times. Can we trust God in his dealing
with us? We have to, as it were, leave.
Bring our requests, which we have thought about, perhaps prayed
about, we bring them to him, then we have to kind of leave
them. Because God has a sovereign will. God is working out all
things together for good. Sometimes we see that remarkably.
and we have to leave things to God's good will that can be very
difficult because we can get quite frustrated and we can find
matters pressing in upon us but let me also say that sometimes
my experience I have had some remarkably clear I would call
almost amazing answers to prayer occasionally almost your breath
is taken away and you you think well I prayed and what you know
and God has answered and you're almost surprised God will answer
prayers in a request and and there are times when he comes
and he gives you great encouragement to pray and great assurance for
doing that but that these are these are moments to treasure
and I'm sure we've all got matters that we pray about that are burdens
to us that we would like answers, you know, like Paul had the thorn
in the flesh that he asked God about three times, and God said,
my grace is sufficient for thee, and we must always remember those
particular words. But mostly, we have to be honest,
we can't be sure. In a sense, we live in an uncertainty,
not that God doesn't know, God knows all things. He knows what
he's doing. We have to trust what God is
doing. And therefore there are things
that we feel we want, that perhaps even should happen, and they
don't happen. And we think, well, I can't understand. That obviously
should happen, and yet you have to say it's the will of God.
You have to leave it with him. It can be very, very difficult. But the other thing we have to
do is to try and pray and seek that will of God. sometimes you
start better taking on a problem or something and pray about it
and you know as you as the time goes by you find that you see
it differently sometimes you find that God shows you things
that you hadn't seen before and then you realize perhaps that
the thing you've been praying for in the first place Perhaps
that wasn't entirely correct. We have to be honest and say,
well, there's the wisdom of God. Sometimes I thought, if God had
answered my prayer, it would have actually not worked out
at all well. It was the wrong thing to ask. And you look back
and whether you had that experience, you can say, well, it's good
that God didn't answer that prayer. But he's working out his great
purposes. Now we have great help in all
this. We have that perfect work of
the Holy Spirit. You know, we're not alone. we
pray together which is one of the great things about a prayer
meeting when we come together isn't there something powerful
and encouraging when you think of the 120 waiting you know after
the resurrection what a great time that was and when they used
to meet in the upper room i'm sure there was energy there when
the spirit came upon them and they tumbled into the streets
you know It's good. I think when we come together,
God's purpose is to come amongst us, isn't it? He says when two
or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the
midst, and I'm sure that we need to know that. And we come to
that lovely chapter, Romans chapter 8. In these verses, he says,
but if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience
wait for it? I'm talking here about patience,
things that people are hoping for. He says likewise, verse
26, the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities for we know not what
we should pray for as we ought But the Spirit itself maketh
intercessions for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. We have
that gracious and glorious work of the Spirit with us, helping
us, praying. And verse 27, we read, He that
searcheth the hearts knoweth. What is the mind of the Spirit?
because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the
will of God. We have that help from heaven
in our prayers. Isn't that a great encouragement
to us that we might know the will of God. So when we're praying,
we're not praying alone. There is one alongside us. We
have that counsellor, the comforter, the paraclete. He's there, surely,
with us, helping us, leading us. and there are those sighs
and groans which we cannot understand that intercession we have one
in heaven as I said before interceding for us even Christ who ever liveth
and ever reigneth and we have one on earth even the spirit
of truth who Jesus said is with you and shall be in you we should
be encouraged therefore in our prayers Therefore we have great
grounds for hope because of God's revealed love for His Church.
The gospel is a great thing. I often say it's not a measly
thing. The world outside think it's
a miserable thing that we've got in here. It's a wonderful
thing. And I'd just like to just come with one more reference.
It might look slightly out of context, but it's very important. Figures 5, verses 24 and 25. Now we know this is in the relationship
here of husbands and wife. The church is subject unto Christ,
he says, and so wives unto their husbands, and husbands to love
their wives. But this is what we read, because
Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it. And
that's, isn't it, at the foundation of the gospel, the foundation
of everything we do. We don't just believe in a kind
of mechanical process. What we're looking at here is
the love of God. The love of God expressed to
us most perfectly in the person and work of Christ and that great
love of God that invites us to come to Him to bring our requests
to Him to pray to Him and that love of God that says I will
hear you the love of God that says I will answer and David
has that great confidence in the day of my trouble I will
call upon thee, for thou wilt answer me. Among the gods there
is none like unto thee, O Lord, neither are there any works like
unto thy works. So when we come now to our time
of prayer, we can come with a confidence, because there is, becoming Christ,
there is an access. God has promised He will hear
us. God says He will answer according to His perfect will. So we have
every encouragement to pray. So, David, said, bow down thine
ear, O Lord, hear me, for I am poor and needy. Give ear, O Lord,
unto my prayer, and attend to the voice of my supplications.
Amen.