Now if you could turn to psalm
number 5, that will be the core of our consideration this evening. Of course it's a psalm of David
and I think as I said before, we see in the psalms an expression
of David's experience of God. He isn't writing, I've said this
before, he's not just writing literature. There are people
who come to such books as this, and they see it just as literature,
and they say how wonderful it is, and you can see it in the
commentaries sometimes, they see the style and the structure
and the use of Hebrew characters, but we mustn't be beguiled by
that. Yes, they will be, that they were written well and set
out well, but this is expression of a heart that's towards God
and it's not poetry either and there are some people who love
parts of scripture and we all do, we all have our favourite
parts of scripture and part of it is the language and we must
be careful that it's not just the language that we're remembering,
that we are understanding and taking on board the truth that
we're looking at. I'm guilty of this, there are
parts I like because I like the words, I like the way they're
written, like the author and finisher of our faith you know,
and Tyndale who coined that phrase could have said the beginning
and ender or some other expression like that but we like the way
it's written but we should love the truth above all things and
David was a man after God's own heart and we've said that psalms
are a wonderful thing they're an amazing part of scripture
and they're always very often people's favorite parts of scripture,
because it expresses so much of the experience of God, it
experiences so much that's gospel. Though they were written before
the revelation, the full revelation of Christ, yet they're full of
Christ, remarkably. And they reflect prayer, as we
shall consider this night. Appropriate for a prayer meeting,
a meditation, and we'll have something to say about meditation
tonight too. And of course they express God's
truth, the great revelations of himself and of the human heart
and of his saving purposes. And David and the other psalmists,
there's a confession of their faith, isn't there? Their dependence
upon God. And there are warnings, imprecations,
even as in this psalm. There are those who are against
God and there's a word for them and there are warnings for them
in the psalms. not to sing these, don't we,
some of the imprecatory parts, although I think if you were
in some churches you might, because they sing all the psalms. And
there are godly thoughts, there are things that we can sit and
read and mull over and think about what the psalmist is saying,
to try and possess those same thoughts. and made them our own.
That's a good habit, if you could ever do that. Going through the
Psalms, you take the Psalter and you go through it. Treat
it like a prayer book and try and, as it were, pray your way
through it. You find it's a tremendous encouragement to us. And there
are blessings expressed, which of course is wonderful. God's
favour is towards his children. Never forget that. Desires that
we should have blessings. They may not be the ones that
our carnal hearts desire, God desires that we have blessing
and there's that seeking of God. There's also in the psalm, there's
joy and we see that towards the end of this psalm. Shout for
joy. We may not do that in our church. Some churches they do.
It's quite legitimate really to say Hallelujah. I think we
perhaps hold back sometimes, don't we? That's how the faith
takes us. We isolate from the pulpit sometimes. Well, we have a great faith in
God. And the psalmist shouts for joy. But also there, as it were, tears.
There's mourning. There's grief. Psalm 51. All that repentance and grief
that David pours into that psalm because of the offence of his
great sin. The offence was against God.
It was against many other people as well, but it was chiefly against
God. All in the Psalms. But we find
a lot about prayer in the Psalms. You don't have to look far from
where we are. You could look into Psalm 3 and
verse 4. I cried unto the Lord with my
voice and he heard me out of his holy hill. And that's, when
we come before God, that's the basis of prayer. God hears. I
think I've said before again that our whole notion of prayer
is based upon the doctrine of God. If our doctrine of God is
poor, our prayers and understanding of prayers will also be poor. We have a God who hears, who
sees, who knows, who understands. And in chapter 4 and verse 1,
Hear me when I call, O God, of my righteousness. Thou hast enlarged
me when I was in distress. have mercy upon me and hear my
prayer." As David pours out his feelings, he says, have mercy
upon me and hear my prayer. And surely that's the basis on
which we meet tonight, that we want God to hear our prayer. And Psalm 6 and verse 9, the
Lord hath heard my supplication The Lord will receive my prayer.
Yes, God will receive our prayer, if we come to him in the right
way. And that, we have to say, is so important. And there's
that true religion expressed, of course, in these Psalms. and
we know in as in much of the Old Testament there is that revelation
of Christ we find Christ in all the scriptures and we find in
Psalms and we take great David's greater son and many other things
that we can read in the Psalms and the heart of David pointing
to Christ and both Old Testament and New Testament there was life
in the Spirit we know that When Christ came, He set forth the
Spirit and there was a renewing, there was something fresh in
the Gospel. But those Old Testament saints
had life in the Spirit. Abraham had life in the Spirit.
And he looked for that better day, didn't he, as Christ said
to the Pharisees. He looked to that seed, even
our Lord Jesus Christ. And we see so often life's experiences
caught up in the Psalms. That's why we can identify with
it. We sometimes can feel the things that are coming across.
They have been our experience, what we have experienced before
God. And we thank God for all that's
in this wonderful book. And we see, of course, underneath
this that doctrine of God is sovereignty. He's overruling.
Didn't David understand that? Isn't that what comes out in
David's psalms? That knowledge, amazing knowledge. We have all the scriptures. What
did David have? Yet he had that wonderful deep
knowledge of God and it comes out in the way he conducts his
life generally and it comes out in his prayers and there's urgent
cries and sometimes our prayers need to be urgent and we need
to cry unto God and trust that God will hear us and God does
hear us He says in verse 3, My voice shalt thou hear in the
morning, O Lord. So it's wonderful that we have
a God who hears. It's a mystery to me. Our human
minds can't understand it. How is it that God is infinite? He's all-knowing. He's omniscient. He's omnipresent. He is everywhere.
He can know all things at all times. We can't grasp that with
our mind. and thus he can hear and know
our prayers in a way no other so-called deity of course could
they are all lies and counterfeits and prayer at its root surely
is a major confession of the doctrine of God It must be. It must be. Or are we really
praying? What are we doing if we're not
really acknowledging who God is? If we're not coming to Him
with prayers and don't really believe He can hear prayer? Or
we don't believe that He will answer prayer? What is our prayer? What is the substance of it?
So we will have a look at some of the points, just a few points
in this particular psalm. Particularly taking a word for
our meditation tonight is hear me when I call. And we love to
believe that God hears us when we call unto him. Now, verse
1, it's that. It's a call to God to give ear
to my words, O Lord. Consider my meditation. Can we
be as bold as that? As bold as David? To say, O Lord,
hear me. Consider my meditation. And notice it's the meditation. It was that that I latched on
in preparing for this. And I thought, well, what is
my meditation? When I come into my times of
prayer, do I just start? Or what am I thinking about?
When you've come to the meeting tonight, what was in your mind? Were you preparing yourself?
for the prayer meeting. Have you come with the right
thoughts? Have you perhaps read the Scriptures? Have you thought
about what you might pray for when the men come? We need to
think about what we're going to say. We should do. If we're
going to stand up and lead the congregation, we need to be sure. There was a burden in David's
heart. That's what we find, don't we,
in the Psalms. That burden comes out, doesn't it, in the Psalm,
in his writing. The meditation, the burden, what's
in our hearts? I'm not going to ask you to tell
me what you're bringing here tonight, but we don't necessarily
always bring the right things with us. Perhaps we've been doing
other things. Other things are crowded in our day. But this
time, when we come to pray as the church, it's a very important
meeting, isn't it, for the church. We should be focused. And in
a sense, I think that's what we see with David. He's focusing
all his faith into his prayer and he's coming before God. He
says, consider my meditation. He said, I'm not just talking
to you now. I've meditated. I've thought
about what I'm going to pray. There are things already in my
heart He says, now hearken to me. He wants God then to hear.
God, of course, he knows that God already knows all the thoughts
of his heart. Isn't that amazing? Before we
could ever open our mouth, God knows. And yet he wants us to
pray. And there was that, as it were,
that burden in his heart. and that is a key thing we look
at, our heart's burden, what's our attitude to that and God
knows and he sees beyond us, beyond the whole person, he knows
many things about us, beyond our words God can read your emotions,
can read your feelings, we express things with our words Words often
aren't adequate, are they? They don't sometimes fully give
over the sense, the emotion, the feeling that we might have.
And we thank God, and in Romans 8 we read of the ministry of
the Spirit who helps us with those groanings, those sighs
and groanings that cannot be understood. We have one who's
alongside us, the Paraclete, the Comforter, who helps us in
our prayers. We have one on earth to pray
with us, even as we have one in heaven who ever lives to intercede
for us. God helps us. We thank God that
we know this through the gospel. Now, David, you might think he's
bold here. He says to God, consider my meditation. He's coming to God and he's asking
God. And you might think, is that right? Can we do that? Consider.
those things that I'm bringing to you, consider the burden of
my heart, consider my meditation, let me say we can only come in
such a spirit if our hearts are right before God, if we've prepared
ourselves, if we've been very careful with our thoughts and
that we've thought holy thoughts, we've thought of the right things,
we've thought about those things that are needful, not just the
things we would like, but those things that are needful, those
things are spiritual, and we come, as it were, carefully into
his presence, then perhaps we can say, consider. But I put
all those requirements in front, and you'll understand why. God
is holy. That's part of what we're saying,
isn't it? We live in a day when people
have no idea what that means. No idea what holy means. It's
just a vague, it means sort of religious. I trust that in a
church like this where we talk about God being holy, we have
an understanding of God, who he is. He's separate from us
and he is beyond our description and it's such a God that we are
coming to And we, as always in prayer, we have that mystery.
However hard we prepare, however right might be the matter we
bring before him, it doesn't mean that that prayer will be
answered in the way that we perhaps are hoping. of thinking, something
that I've exercised a lot recently. I was thinking of, I have a little
prayer book at home with things that I pray for, and it is encouraging,
sometimes I can go through and rub out or cross out things and
say yeah, the Lord has dealt with them, but there are things
that are staying there, there are things one prays for and
you think, well this is a good thing, Why hasn't God answered
it? What I mean, of course, is why
hasn't God answered what I think is the answer? But I'm sure that's
your experience, isn't it? We can think of things that we
would all feel. Why have we got empty pews tonight? I've been
praying here 35 years that this place would be filled. Why is
that? Isn't that a good thing? It's a mystery, isn't it? Why
aren't more people converted. Why aren't more people professing
salvation? Why isn't the baptistry open
every week? I get missionary letters and they're baptising
people all the time in other places. And we wonder, don't
we? And yet, sometimes there are
things that might seem relatively trivial, and God answers. And
I can't explain that. But He is God. And that's what
you have to accept when you pray. You hand a matter, you don't
keep it as it were, you hand it over to God. that he will
resolve that matter for you and so but note this consider my
meditation very very important as we come to prayer Now in verse
2, he repeats himself somewhat, he says, give ear to my words
in verse 1, and you know something about the Hebrew poetic style
of writing, so in verse 2 he says, hearken unto the voice
of my cry, we know that they wrote a particular style and
the double expression of course is for emphasis and I like it,
I think it's very good, it comes at the truth twice. He says,
My King and My God, for unto thee will I pray. And again,
hearken unto me. A great confession of faith here. He says, My King and My God.
Notice he says, My King and My God. And I was thinking on this
particular point, why is he saying both of those things? He didn't
just say My King. He didn't just say My God. He said, My King
and My God. And I thought, well, David was
a king. And was that part of his fault? Well, we'll never
know, will we? But I think it possibly was. Let me talk about kings. Now, we have a queen today, but
if I asked you what power has the queen, not very much. She does have some powers, And
there are some things that she could do and she does have some
area of influence and there are some circumstances constitutionally
where her role could be quite important. But she doesn't have
a lot of power. And if we had a king, if Charles
becomes George VII or something, we would say the same, he's a
king but doesn't have much power. David isn't thinking of that.
We think of monarchies, don't we, in more modern terms. We
have not lived under an absolute monarch or ruler. We know there
are some in the world and we know there are people who are
tyrants. But this is, I think, what he is saying to God, you
are my king and my God. And I think because it's David
saying this, he sees the king not as something that's weak,
he sees it as something powerful, in the absolute terms. Now kings
in England, if we go back far enough, Henry VIII and and before
they were absolute monarchs. They didn't have to do what Parliament
said. They were above the law. The
law can't touch the Queen. You know that. All the law is
done in the name of the Queen. So you can't make any charge
to her. This was Charles I's defence, of course, really, wasn't
it? By what law was he held accountable? And the answer was that Parliament
couldn't find one. So they just had him on an act
of treason against the people of England. It's a remarkable
thing. And David himself was an absolute
monarch. And we know he sinned. He did
things. He took things, didn't he? He took Bathsheba, which
he had no right to do. Because he could do it. But he
was accountable to God. God is, as you well know, accountable
to no one. He is, as far as you can go,
the ultimate reality. is our God and our God is righteous
altogether and so David sees this and he understands that
when he comes to pray to God it's not just God but he's king
in the most absolute sense of that so when we come to God we
come to one who is that heavenly king we use that expression And
we use it, of course, rightly of Christ. He is not revealed
as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the one to whom every
knee shall bow, every tongue confess. This is the God we come
to make our prayers to. The God who has all power. The
God who can rule over all things. And He has to be God, of course,
in a sense, to be God as we would understand God. Finally, He has
to be King. as it were, go together. To be God is to rule. And we
sing about the ruler of the skies, don't we? It's in our hymn book
in various forms. The authority of our great God. He says, My King, for unto Thee
will I pray. So, He's understanding. David is understanding. We must
understand who it is to whom we come and we come to pray. And we see an exercise of faith
here. And in a sense what David is
expressing is he understands that God should be ruling over
his life. That rule of life by God over
us is part of our faith. That's what faith equals. If
you're not acknowledging the rule of God over your life, then
that's not proper faith. These things go together. And we see that that is not a
notional thing. There are people who say they've
got faith in God, but they live as though God doesn't exist.
As though things don't matter. The laws don't matter. How we
conduct ourselves doesn't matter. So it's a sham, isn't it? This
is the heart of James' epistle, isn't it, really? You've got
to have faith. There's got to be some evidence of it. And that's
true. If you say, I've got faith, and
there's no evidence, then you haven't got faith. And David
here, his evidence is his faith. Because of the way he lived,
the way he talked, because of what he believed, because of
what he saw in God. And this is the God to whom he
came. And it's a matter of obedience.
When we pray, it's not a take it or leave it thing, is it?
This is what we do as believers. We feel the need, of course we
do. But isn't it not a matter of obedience? Isn't it not part
of our bowing the knee to God? It's a whole other topic, isn't
it? What is the structure of our prayer? When we come to God,
do we not first bow the knee? Acknowledge whose presence we
come into. This is not how David has commenced
this psalm, which I'm taking as a psalm to do with prayer. So it's not vague feelings. It's
not notions. And as we sing in the Heart's
Hymn, we often quote it, there is something felt, but it's not
vague feelings, that feeling must be bound up with an understanding,
the mind as well, an understanding of the truths of scripture and
the application of those to us, to our spirits, that we are alive
in Christ, we do feel something. If you're not sure, if you're
in faith, then what you find is that God reveals it to you
in a remarkable way. You find you do believe. I'm
sure we can all, who are members of the church at that time when
we realised we did believe. in Christ, that God had worked
that sovereign work, that faith had come to us and although we
weren't certain and we had many questions and many doubts and
fears, we felt that God had revealed himself, we had a confidence,
we found we believed in the scriptures that we wanted to know these
things. That's what I found. I found that rather than running
away from the things of God, I wanted to run to them. I wanted
to be with the people of God. I wanted to know about Christ.
I wanted to know about the Scriptures because I'd passed from death
to life. God had done something. And that's David's life and experience
as we read through the scriptures about David. You have to see
the faith of the man. That's the thing that comes across.
Tremendous faith, tremendous patience in the life of David.
And does it not come out in these Psalms? Well, do we see this
today generally around us? I know we can see around us,
we see people on the media, we hear them, so-called Christian
people talking and sometimes I feel they haven't got the first
understanding of any of this. They belong to an institution.
They have some kind of notion or commitment to what they perceive
to be Christianity. But where is the faith and love? I was listening to somebody on
Thought for the Day this morning, a very reverent somebody or other,
they don't mention God, they don't mention Christ, the Bible,
you know, there's nothing Christian in it, really. And yet people
listening to that think, well that's what Christianity is all
about. They don't see it. But do they see it in us? That's
the test, isn't it? What do people see in you and
me? They may not like what they see.
I have people who don't like who I am and how I speak as a
Christian. They get very cross because they're consumed with
the agenda, the social agenda of the day, you know, the political
correctness. And if we're Christians, we don't
go along with that. What do they see in us? What do they see in
our church here? We should be praying people,
let God move us, let God lead us on, let God do his work in
us. So, in this context, and to such
a God, David brings his prayers and his thoughts. That must be
behind everything we read of David. It's his understanding,
isn't it, of God and his standing before God and therefore he can
come to God. And we see this in verse 3 somewhat. He says, My voice shall I hear
in the morning, O Lord. And I was going to ask, well,
do you have a time of prayer? It doesn't have to be the morning.
It would appear that David's main time of personal prayer
was the morning. Of course, he would have been
going to ceremonial occasions. It's a good time to pray. Sometimes
it's difficult if you have to be up early and out and so on. But it's good to pray in the
morning. He says, O Lord, in the morning
will I direct my prayer and you see my prayer is unto Thee. I
will direct, but obviously it's implied, my prayer unto Thee
and I will look up. That's part of what prayer is
about. I've addressed this in the past too. Prayer is looking
up. Very easy to look down. I think down in this context
is me and I, my problems and things I'm thinking about, the
things I'm doing. The thing down is the things
of this world, the things that are pressing in on me, the things
maybe I've got to do today and things that are worrying me,
things that are hurting me. But no, in the morning, says
David, I will direct my prayer unto thee and will look up and
we did explore a while ago what looking up was, where is God?
is he up? well of course ultimately we
mean he's in heaven we also looked at the words from Psalm 121 I
will look unto the hills from whence my help comes and it could
be argued looking to the hills might be looking to Mount Moriah
and Mount Zion but I think in all it is our looking up to God
and acknowledging that he's in the heavens and ultimately he's
in eternity we can't as you were look up you can't see God have
whatever fantastic new telescope they now can see the Big Bang
apparently well how far they can see They can't see God. The
Soviets used to say, we can't, you know, we've sent men up into
space and we can't see God or the angels. God dwells in eternity. You see, they're ignorant of
these things. And it's good to have a set time
of prayer and to be regular in our prayers. and to be disciplined
in our prayers. And God honours that, God blesses
that, believe me, He does. It's good for us. One of the
few good things about getting older is you have a bit more
time in the morning because you haven't got to rush out to work.
And it's lovely to be able to have the time to pray. I must
say to me it's been that I can get up and I can take my time
to read and pray and I will have to confess in former times I
didn't have the time. Morning was sometimes a rush
and I look back and regret it now. And therefore it's here
isn't it to us we can't walk away from what the scripture
says in the morning. will I direct my prayer unto thee and will
look up. It's a good word isn't it for us if we can we can actually
Take that time off. Give up that little bit earlier.
Commit the day to the Lord. It makes a difference. You'll
find it. It makes a big difference to us. And God is watching. He's not looking, as it were,
from the hills. Because God is in all things. He fills all in
all. As Paul said, even the Greek
poets knew that. He fills all and everything. Isn't that wonderful? And no
one else can do that. And just one or two more things
from this psalm. In verse 7, he says, he's been
thinking about the bloody and deceitful man in verse 6, but
he says, As for me, I will come into thy house in the multitude
of thy mercy, and in thy fear will I worship toward thy holy
temple. Well, this is, as it were, like
the house of God, but it's not a temple. And we should never
fall into the trap that some do, that we make out our chapels,
our holy places. We like our chapels. We thank
God He's given us a place to meet Him. But we keep it as plain
as possible. We don't want any symbols or
crosses. We had a young man here many
years ago, and his life was a mess, I won't even begin to talk about
it, but his name was Tony and eventually he came to talk to
me and he came to me one weeknight and said, she won't be coming
anymore and I said, well why is that Tony? He said, I'm going
to go to St Mary's, I've been going there I said, why would
you want to go to St Mary's here? You'll hear the truth. This was
in the days of Mr Matronola. I said, you'll hear a wonderful
exposition of the truth here. And he said, but the place doesn't
feel right. He says, in St Mary's it looks
like a proper church. He said, they've got the right
shaped windows. I always remember that. We had
somebody not come here because we'd got them. Isn't it sad?
The wrong shape windows. But believe me, we can be like
that. We can be sanctimonious about buildings. This is a meeting
house. But therefore the church is us,
not the building. That's the chapel. Be very careful,
isn't it? But when we assemble together,
remember the temple essentially was the place of assembly. And
when the disciples were saying, oh look at the second temple,
wasn't it wonderful, wasn't it great? Well the Lord wasn't impressed
by that because it's all going to be knocked down, wasn't it?
But there is the place where we gather together and that's
important. And then he said, I will worship
to all the holy temple, whether he's referring to the most holy
place, I don't know. But it's good that we come together. And that's what we do on Thursday
night. We assemble together into the place appointed for worship
and prayer. And our sacrifices now are spiritual
sacrifices. That's the worship that we bring
to God in our prayers and God is pleased with that. We know
from the Word of God. He doesn't want all our man-invented
rituals. Isaiah chapter 1 is the sword
of death. to all that trampling in my courts,
says Isaiah. It's wonderful, isn't it? Who
requires this of thee, all your sacrifices? I won't have any
of them, says God. Why? Because He wants us. He
wants our hearts, He wants our faith, God wants our prayers.
He doesn't need these things. People think, you see, if you're
religious, you and I, you've got relatives probably, and they
think we love all that. Oh, we love the hymns, and we
love the building, we love all the ceremonies, and we'd all
love to be in the High Church of England with the incense,
and they think that's important to us, and they're quite shocked
when they find that it's not important to us. We're not actually
interested in that. So let's have to explain that
to people. The Christian faith at its heart is essentially spiritual. The rest of it is of no great
significance. Yes, there is the church and
the organisation of the church, how we relate to each other,
terribly important. But we have a spiritual faith.
We must be so careful. You talk to some people and they
kind of start to move into this other realm of the tangible things
around them, start becoming important. But we must be very careful.
God doesn't want that. Yes, we come into, as it were,
into God's house, but we come because we're going to gather
together to worship God, even as we do tonight. And there's
a warning here in verse 5. The foolish shall not stand in
thy sight. They are haters to all workers
of iniquity. Now the word foolish, there can
be vain persons and other such descriptions. They shall not
stand in their sight. All the workers of iniquity,
always in the Scriptures there is a warning against ignoring
God, a warning against vanity. We should bow the knee to God
and own Him as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And the psalm
also deals, which I'm not going to this evening, and we often
don't deal, do we, with the implicatory parts of psalms. We find them
hard to read and to say some of the things that David says.
Remember, he's writing as though he's writing for God. from God's
perspective against those who are the enemies of the truth.
Of course, David had many enemies, sadly, even his own sons, three
eldest sons, all sought to rebel against him. It was a terrible
tragedy in the life of David, and he was one who wanted to
be led, in verse 8, in a life of righteousness. He says, but
they are the wicked ones, in verses 9 and 10. Their inward
path is very wickedness, their throat an open sepulchre. He
says, verse 10, destroy them. But, we go to the last two verses,
we move on from that, you see. The Christian's position is all
put into context. There are people, and you'll
find them, who will oppose you, will hate you, and will not like
you because of your faith. But David says, but let all those
that have put their trust in thee rejoice. I was referring
to this earlier. Let them ever shout for joy. And we need to sometimes, don't
we? We need to shout for joy in our
own hearts or maybe in our own homes. And this is our comfort
because thou defendest them. That was what David had proved,
hadn't he? He proved all through the wilderness years when Saul
was after him that God would keep him. God would defend him. and let them also that love thy
name be joyful in thee and then we end with this wonderful wonderful
assurance for thou Lord wilt bless the righteous with favor
wilt thou compass him as with a shield and we could look to
that particular verse many things that that implies that there's
a blessing of God towards his people his face is ever toward
us he will always hear our prayers whenever we pray God can hear
how can we understand that but that is the great truth that
we believe in the great doctrine of God so I trust that we will
be Encouraged to pray this night, remembering that God is our shield,
isn't he? He's our tower. He's our hiding
place. He's our rock. He's our strength.
And he hears all our prayers, however weak they might be. Praise
his name.