Would you like to turn with me
to Psalm 25? I'm going to send our thoughts
on this lovely psalm. I was talking to the pastor recently
about the Book of Psalms and we were reflecting that the Book
of Psalms in a way reflects very much the subject of prayer. Many
of the psalms are, as it were, prayers and it's a good exercise. I tried it myself once or twice
to as I read through the Psalms, to make it a matter of prayer,
to actually try and use what is said in the Psalms and own
them as your own prayers and this is really at the centre
of my thinking this evening. Shall we read this Psalm together?
We shall sing it again shortly. Unto thee, O Lord, do I lift
up my soul. O my God, I trust in thee. Let me not be ashamed. Let not
mine enemies triumph over me. yea, let none that wait on thee
be ashamed let them be ashamed which transgress without cause
show me thy ways O Lord teach me thy paths lead me in thy truth
and teach me for thou art the God of my salvation on thee do
I wait all the day remember O Lord thy tender mercies and thy loving
kindnesses for they have been of old remember not the sins
of my youth nor my transgressions according to thy mercy remember
thou me for thy goodness sake O Lord good and upright is the
Lord therefore will he teach sinners in the way the meek will
he guide in judgment and the meek he will teach his ways.
All the piles of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as
keep his covenant and his testimonies. For thy name's sake, O Lord,
pardon my iniquity, for it is great. What man is he that feareth
the Lord? Him shall he teach in the way
that he shall choose. His soul shall dwell at ease,
and his seed shall inherit the earth. the secret of the Lord
is with them that fear him and he will show them his covenant
mine eyes are ever toward the Lord for he shall pluck my feet
out of the net turn thee unto me and have mercy upon me for
I am desolate and afflicted the troubles of my heart are enlarged
O bring thou me out of my distresses look upon mine affliction and
my pain and forgive all my sins consider mine enemies for they
are many and they hate me with cruel hatred O keep my soul and
deliver me let me not be ashamed for I put my trust in thee let
integrity and uprightness preserve me for I wait on thee redeem
O God Israel O God out of all his troubles. I'm sure you know
this psalm well. There are some lovely expressions
in it we shall have a chance to look at. The secret of the
Lord is with them that fear him. These lovely words and particularly
when I was reading through today I was thinking of these words
at the end of verse 21. For I wait on thee. I think when
we come to the subject of psalm of prayer, there is that aspect
that we are waiting on God, we're before God. I have to confess
in my younger days when I was busy and having to get out in
the morning, I'm sure some of you know that, you've got the
clock racing against you, that I really wait on the Lord. Often
I probably rushed through my reading and my prayers and went
for the door. But we take prayer seriously,
we need to wait on God, we need to take the time And of course
it's, as I should have read at the beginning, it's a psalm of
David. The commentators feel perhaps it was written when he
was under great stress, perhaps the rebellion of Absalom or some
occasion like that. And he says, doesn't he, consider
mine enemies, they are many. We know David had many enemies.
Sadly, even his own children became his great enemies. But in the psalms, all the psalms,
what we see here is the character of the psalmist. We see his walk
with God, his experience of God. He couldn't write the psalm unless
there's that walk with God, there's that knowledge of God. And it
comes out, doesn't it, so strongly. And in this psalm particularly,
we understand David was a man after God's own heart. We understand
He was that sweet singer of Israel. We understand that he was a man
who had a close walk to God, a deep knowledge of God. And thus we come to the psalm
and we see that. As it were, we see through David
though and we see here, as it were, the cry of every true born-again
person, every Christian, whether in the Old Testament or New Testament,
I'm sure, can echo these words. We can all own these words as
our own words, surely, when we come to pray. And we love the
words, we have to say constantly, we have a well-written Bible
in front of us, but we have to say, it's not poetry, Some people
love reading and quoting parts of this creature, but it's not
literature in that sense. It's not poetry, but it is the
Word of God. The preciousness is not in the
cadences of the words, but it's in the truths that are revealed
in the Word of God to us. and I was reading through today
just thinking of some of the things that are contained in
the Psalms and there are so many different kinds of expressions
and emotions and if you look through yourself you see not
only this prayer, this meditation, there's a reflection on truth
in there, there's a confession as we see in this psalm, there
are warnings And, of course, in some there are imprecations.
When we sing the Psalms, we tend to leave those out, don't we?
The hatred of enemies. But we find that they're there
because they are manifesting that God's face is against those
who oppose him. They're godly thoughts and we
love to reflect on those and be caught up with them. There
is patience. And, of course, things like grace
and hope, the blessings of God, seeking God. And there's joy,
lots of joy. But there's also tears. that
come through in the Psalms. A lot of emotion. And there's
worship. And as we've seen tonight, there's
thoughts of the covenant. There's thoughts of the judgment
of the wicked. Some of the Psalms reflect on
what happens to those who oppose God and show hatred to God and
his people. And there's salvation. And I
love that. We need to know about salvation.
We need to proclaim it. And the other thought that came
to me quite strongly was that when we come to prayer, we need
doctrine. Now you might think, oh well
we need lots of doctrine in the Bible study and we need to hear
doctrine when we hear the sermons but do we need doctrine when
we come to pray? Well we do because we need to
know God and we need to know what God has said about himself,
what he has taught us and we need to know how to approach
him and it's my experience I'm sure others that as we've gone
on in our knowledge of the doctrine of God so we find that our ability
to pray and the times we have of prayer are enhanced because
we reflect on those truths that God has revealed to us. The doctrine
of salvation is such a strength to us. The doctrines that we
love in a chapel like this of free and sovereign grace, they
are great encouragements to pray. They ought to be. when we understand
how God's love is toward us, towards his children, that it's
been towards us, you know, before the creation, that God has had
that love, that everlasting love, and that his plan was to set
forth that love in Christ. This was agreed in eternity in
the Trinity, that Christ should come forth and that he should
save a people. And these are things that underpin
what we believe about God. These are things that give us
strength We can come to God, can't we, through that new and
living way because we have confidence of all that Christ has done in
his precious blood and his righteousness for us. We can come knowing that
we are received. To be topical, we don't need
to come through priests or popes and so on. We know there's a
man in Rome and people look to him and they're all very concerned
about that office at the moment and whether there will be two
of them because they look into priests. We don't need a priest. We look to Jesus. We have that
eternal high priest who is now in the heavens and a remarkable
priest who presented himself as the offering and therefore
we have confidence to come to God. So our doctrine is very
relevant. Yes, we need feelings. Some people would say, oh, prayer
is an emotional thing. But I will contend that yes,
there's emotion, of course there is. But essentially the strength
when we come to God and we seek Him and we pray to Him, just
as we see in this psalm. You see, David knew his doctrine.
God had taught him. And this psalm is chock-a-block
with truth. And that was David's strength.
He understood when he came to God the grounds, the basis on
which he came. Of course, at the centre there
is the whole idea of covenant. And we know that that covenant
is from God and it's made over to us in Christ. So these things are very important
to us when we come to pray. True religion, of course, is
that revelation of Christ. We see men who have a knowledge
of that. and see it by faith in the Old Testament and of course
in the reality of Christ in the New Testament. We need real Christian
experience and we see that, we see real experience in such a
psalm. David writes because God has
taken him through and proved that faith when we study the
life of David. You see it's a life of faith.
He was anointed to be king but it was many years before he became
king and there were many dangers and trials for David to prove
David such that when he actually came to be king firstly in Hebron
for seven years and then over all of Israel later for another
33 years he had been proven he'd been tested he didn't rush to
do he would not rush God's will he would not rush to put Saul
aside he was very careful in all these things he proved God
and God proved him and he trusted in God in all those matters of
life and that's what we must do. Prayer is surely bringing
all the matters of life before God, coming before Him and seeking
that we come to God. And we say in verse 2, Oh my
God, I trust in Thee, let me not be ashamed, let not my enemies
triumph over me. We come in our dependence upon
God. And of course, properly exercised
prayer I'm saying is a major confession of the doctrine of
God. In a sense when we pray, do we not come before God and
we come in the strength and in the light of the doctrines and
it's good to do that and to come through them, rehearse them as
it were in our mind and to bring them before God and seek that
we might be strengthened in the truth. And we recognize who God
is. Our people today, you know, they
address God, and our pastors mention this in the most dreadful
terms, very casual terms, almost day-to-day familiar terms. I've
heard of people who come to God and they say, Daddy, and things
like this, and this is the day we're in. I trust that we do
not do that here. We come to God surely. with a
sense of awe, a sense of who God is, as David does here. He
says, unto thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul. When he says, Lord,
there you see capital letters, the covenant God. David knew,
surely, who that Lord was, the I Am, the Eternal, the Sovereign
God. That's who we come to. One who
is omniscient. One who knows all things. One
who is omnipresent. God who is everywhere. We don't
come to saints. The foolishness of people who
feel they've got to pray to Mary and saints and all that that
the Church of Rome stands for. They make out they're gods. How
can saints hear you? They're dead. We can find their
graves. Where are they? Are they those
who know all things? Is Mary everywhere? Of course
she's not. She was a dear saint. A wonderful saint. A godly woman. And if she was alive, she'd be
horrified at what has taken place since her death. But no, we dismiss
those things. This is only God. And we need
to have a good knowledge of the doctrine of God, for so many
people are in trouble today and fail, because they don't understand
the most fundamental things about retruth. But David knew them. How did David know them? Well,
he knew, he had the word as it was then, of course, he had that
which was revealed so far by the grace of God, but God taught
him, I'm sure, God revealed things to him and through David they
come to us and we love that we read in these great Psalms Now,
when we come to pray to God, we come to see that yes, He cares
for the large things in life, of course, but God is interested
in the small things. I can remember in my university
days we had a very fine group of theologians there and there
was a lecturer in theology, he was quite a well-known man, he
was an authority in Luther, would come and lecture to the Christian
Union on Martin Luther, a very fine book which I've got on it.
His daughter was in the Faculty of Theology and I can remember
talking to her one day about her father and so on and about
her life and she said Oh, I don't think God's interested in all
the everyday things I'm doing. I don't think God's worried about
what I'm doing. He's only interested in the big
things. I was quite surprised, I suppose. I thought, well, a
father is so well informed on theology. You expect the daughter
who's studying it to know those things. I thought, well, that's
not true. God is God. God knows all things. the large things and the small
things. You can't hide anything from God. And those small things
that might seem to be irritants in our lives that worry us, God
knows about them. He's not God. Today the world
talks about what God and dismisses God because they don't understand.
They know nothing at all about God, the doctrine of God. Their
vision of God is not the God that we read in the Bible. and
therefore when you speak to people about God you find you're talking
a different language because they're talking sort of a whole
lot of nonsense over here where we have a completely different
view which is the biblical view we live in a day where people
you know do not know religious truth and this is a challenge
for us isn't it when we want to spread the gospel and it's
not always been like that not so bad but it's such a dark day
he knows the big things he knows the small things But let me say,
in all things, when we come to the word of God in a psalm like
this, it's the will of God. It says, David, show me thy ways,
O Lord. Teach me thy paths. Now, it's
not us going to God and saying, I want this, Lord. Open that
door for me, Lord. You make the way for me because
I want to do this particular thing. That wasn't the spirit
of David, was it? It wasn't in this psalm and we
study his life. It wasn't the spirit of David
at all. You study David's life as a young man. Tremendous patience
the man had. It's one of the things that comes
through so strongly. Weighted upon God. we know that he send
and fell but in his life it was a patient show me thy ways O
Lord teach me thy paths lead me in thy truth so many people
today they want to have their ideas and push things and perhaps
they want to write their books and their new gimmick but that
wasn't David lead me in thy truth I'm sure that that's what we
all understand when we come to a chapel like Salem we want to
know what is God's truth we want to be led in his way And we're
prepared to subordinate our views to that. We might find that difficult
at times. We all have our own particular
views and things, but they need to be brought, as we often say,
to the anvil of scripture, to be hammered out, that we know
the truth. The lovely thing when you read
David is he was there. He had a godly spirit. He was
a teachable man. He waited on God. He allowed
God to mold him. He allowed God to lead him. And
that comes across this psalm. We're just going to look at some
of the things in it. I'm conscious that we want to have plenty of
time for prayer this evening. Of all things, it's the will
of God. It devalues faith. when you come
to pray. That's the challenge, have we
faith? Are we trusting in Christ? We set forth here the gospel. That's the challenge of the gospel. Do we respond? We are not robots
and automatons. There is that mystery. But when
Christ reveals himself to us, there are those things that must
happen. There is the response of the human heart. And when
God is working in us, then he brings us to repent. And we know
that we're in circles where people have grave doubts and very concerned
about this whole area. But when God makes himself known
to you, reveals sin in your heart, you must come to repentance.
You must do business with God. You must come before God and
seek Him. And those who have repented,
they need to go on. And there is a path. There is a path of
baptism, isn't there? And identifying with the people
of God. These are very important things
that we might pray. We need to be sure where we are.
Then if we have that confidence that God is with us and dealing
with us, then we come in prayer knowing that we are accepted
in the Beloved. And it's not just fine words. Prayer isn't all about fine words
and so on and Christ dealt with this you know in Luke 18 verse
10 two men went up into the temple to pray the one a pharisee and
the other a publican the pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself
God I thank thee for I am not as other men are extortioners
unjust adulterers or even us as publican I fast twice in the
week I give tithes of all that I possess and the publicans standing
afar off would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven
but smote upon his breast saying God be merciful to me a sinner
I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather
than the other for everyone that exhorteth himself shall be abased
and he that humbleth himself shall be exhorted Those words,
you see, isn't this what David says in this psalm, when we read
it? God, be merciful to me a sinner. That must be our desire. We don't want to be like the
Pharisee, all puffed up. You know, we're not accepted
in Christ, as some in some circles would think, because of our education,
or our office, or our title, or our family association, or
the works we do, or we're a member of something, or even because
of what we wear. We're accepted in Christ because
God has loved us since the foundation of the world, whatever we are,
whatever we've done. There's a mystery there, isn't
there? It's free and sovereign grace. Why should God love the
ones he does? We don't know. But what we do
know is that he comes and he reveals himself to us. There's
that light of the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ
that comes to us. And we should respond to that. And in his sense, David knew
those things. He saw by faith, as we know,
he saw what was to come. It was the Messiah yet to come. God does not act against his
word. He acts within his word. And that's wonderful. So we see
in David's psalms, this psalm, a man dependent upon God. That's what we should be. And
I think we are. When we come as a group on Thursday
night, we surely feel our dependence upon him. We should feel our
weakness. But we see the greatness of God.
We see that this is what God loves. and he wants to hear our
prayers and he longs to have them. We perhaps find it difficult
at times to set time for prayer but in the heart of God he wants
to hear our prayers. He's loved us in Christ and that's
a never-lasting love and therefore these times are to be precious
times. Now we see David, of course,
when he became king, he'd been dependent upon God before, and
we know some of the Psalms were written from before he was king,
when he was in trouble, when he was in the cave and so on.
But when he became king, surely that sense of dependency became
greater because of that tremendous responsibility that was placed
upon him, the care of the people, and of course of the holy place,
care of the place where God was to be worshipped. and these were
important things. So we're just going to look at
just a few things as we study the psalm and trust that God
will encourage us in prayer in looking at it. We see, of course,
that I've said already, he addresses God. Unto thee, O Lord, do I
lift up my soul. That's where we start. We start with God. We come to
God acknowledging who he is. It's very easy for us. I can
remember years ago as a young man being told, well, the time
we find easy to pray, is when we're in trouble. There's a difficulty. Then we pray, don't we? When
things are easy, you're all going well, no problems, and you don't
pray as much. As soon as trouble comes, you
feel the need to pray. We have to be the people who
are constant in prayer. And there's something of that
in this particular psalm. We come to God and we lift up
our souls to Him. You see, it's a spiritual exercise.
You know, you go to the Church of England, I used to be a choir
boy in the Church of England, and they used to read all of
Cranmer's, this was the Cranmer prayer book, they used to read
all Cranmer's lovely prayers, but it was just read every Sunday,
wonderful. It was just as well, because if the priests or the
ministers had been reading or been saying prayers, it would
be awful. because they were godless. So it was probably better to
hear Kramer's prayers. You could say amen to that. I
think they had a big influence on me. And we sing the Psalms.
But we come to God. We lift up our souls. It's a
spiritual experience. It's not just a reciting of lists. It's very easy, isn't it, if
you've got a lot of things going on, to come, as it were, with
the shopping list and just go through and think, oh, I must
mention this and mention that. We have to see it as a spiritual
exercise. God knows all we need. However,
before ever we come to Him, that we might address God carefully,
dressing Him. Oh my God, I trust in Thee. Let
me not be ashamed. He's very careful, David. When
it comes to God, so must we be. I said people in RDA are very
light and casual about God and he wants to be led of God. In verse 4 he says, show me thy
ways O Lord, teach me thy paths. It's not give me this, give me
that, open this door, open that door. This is where David starts. Show me, teach me. lead me. These are great themes
in the psalm and surely that's what we should have in our lives. to come before God, telling him
things, God knows everything, demanding things. I can remember
years ago people writing books all about prayer and I think
Jill and I used to call one of these books, it was called Twisting
God's Arm by Prayer and Fasting. The title wasn't that but it
was, I can't remember, Cliff might remember this book, there
was a book, it was all, basically it was you can manipulate God,
that was the prayer. Well that's a wicked lie, isn't
it? That's not the spirit that we want to come to God in, but
in some places, no doubt they're still told, I can remember going
to a meeting where they were told, let's all pile into prayer
and if we all pray the same thing, God will hear us and whatever.
Well, that's not the spirit of David. No, it's show me thy ways,
lead me in the truth, teach me, for thou art the God of my salvation.
We come carefully, humbly, that God leads us. And he says, and
I love this, and he says, On thee do I wait all the day. Now does that mean David spent
all day in prayer? Was he praying all the time?
Well, no. But the implication here is that
God is never far from his thoughts. and that during the day, we all
know the famous sort of arrow prayer of Nehemiah don't we when
he was in and it's a lovely prayer and I've used, I've preached
on that but David had as it were a spirit of prayer about him
is that what we have that during the day perhaps there are things
that come to us and we can say thank you to God perhaps there
is a situation suddenly emerging and we can as it were pray to
God and seek his help God is never far from him. David had
a godly mind. He's very much a pattern, isn't
he, for the believer. And he says, on thee do I wait
all the day. It's not on thee do I give my
demands and my requests all the day. I'm waiting. I'm thy servant,
says David. And I like that. I think there's
so much in just that particular thought that is such an encouragement
to us. And he confesses. And we need
to do that. Remember, not the sins of my
youth, he says in verse 7. And he says in verse 11, For
thy name's sake, O Lord, pardon mine iniquity. For it is great. We should ever come in a repentant
spirit. We are sinners every day. Alas,
we sin. There are those I've met, you
may have met them, who have believed in holiness. I can remember one
dear old saint, and he was a dear old saint, and I had a lot of
respect for him, and I'm sure we're very close with what we've
got, and he said, I do believe there have been times in my life
when I've been up without sin, and I didn't, he was a man of
90, I didn't want to attack him, but you see, if we were without
sin, we wouldn't need Christ. We wouldn't need saving, would
we? But there are people, there are holiness, it's a holiness
church in Goshen. It's sad, isn't it? But we will
always be sinners. I understand what he means. What
he meant was he has felt so caught up with God. His thoughts of
Christ were so deep that sin, as it were, was cast from his
mind. I don't think we can say amen to that. But we would never
say we're without sin. Mr. Macinola had very good teaching
on this and I can always remember, and I've mentioned it before,
he said, and it's my experience, as he went on in the Christian
life, he did not feel less a sinner, he didn't feel he was getting
better and so on, he became more and more aware of his sin because
he was beginning to see more and more of God and the glory
of God and that revealed and manifested the sin in his own
heart. I'm sure that's a real Christian experience that we
can all understand. Not only is there repentance,
we mentioned it already, but we've got to be teachable. We see that God is good and upright
and he will teach sinners in the way. He teaches sinners. It's not teaching just righteous
people. He teaches sinners in the way. We've got to be teachable.
Verse 12, What man is he that feareth the Lord? Him shall he
teach in the way that he shall choose. Again, we see the sovereignty
of God. It's not teaching us in all things
we think we want to know, so that we're jolly clever at doctrinal
things. That's not the spirit of David.
We've got to learn the things that God chooses to reveal to
us. When we come to the Word of God,
that's got to be our spirit. God will teach us His Word and
His way that we might walk in it. And there are people I've
heard say, oh, well, you can get what you want out of the
Bible. People read the Bible and come to different ideas.
And I'm sure they do. But we want to come and we want
to hear the voice of God. This is how God speaks. You know,
people say, oh, I'm waiting for a word from the Lord. And we've
said many times, well, they might wait in vain because they've
got the word they need to listen to what God has actually said
in his written word and we are wrong to turn aside from this
elsewhere if we're not properly looking at the word of God and
we also trust that God will guide us verses 9 and 10 You see, it's
the meek he will guide, not the proud, the arrogant, those who
know everything and so on. No, but when the meek come to
him, he will guide in judgment. And the meek he will teach his
ways. We see all the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth
unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies. So we are
encouraged to be meek there. And then there's these lovely
words in verse 14. this great secret. The secret of the Lord
is with them that fear Him. If I could just also say this
is the secret of prayer. as well. Secret of the Lord,
secret of prayer and it starts here with them that fear him. What do we mean by fear? Does
that mean we're in complete terror and at the thought of God we
want to run and hide somewhere? No, it means we understand who
God is and we understand he's a God of wrath and we know that
wrath only is averted in Christ. Without Christ there is no hope
for us whatsoever. and that he's against all sin
and all unrighteousness and that men should be in awe of him and
I think there was a time when life was a lot harder and perhaps
more people went to church when in our nation people had more
of a sense of this more of a sense of fear of God but now through
all the cynicism of our day and all the atheism people mock you
know they'll draw cartoons about God they'll mock the thoughts
of God the ways of God There is no fear. They don't even understand
what it is. This is the nature of the world
we're in. They don't understand why it
is that we should fear God. We should, if we read the scriptures,
we should understand who God is. It may not make us tremble,
perhaps it does at times, but we must fear Him because that's
the secret of the Lord. You've got to fear God. You've
got to reverence Him. You've got to know who He is.
You've got to see Him as God. and then we see things come to
us, then we see, and we humble ourselves in that way, we come
carefully to him, then he will show them his covenant, he will
reveal all that he's made over to them, in Christ in particular,
in the gospel. then our eyes are open, then
God comes and brings all that enlightenment, the spiritual
truth that is ours in Christ as we come to his word. It's
such a fantastic stream of truth to us. We've got to fear the
Lord and we keep our eyes towards him. I like this in verse 15,
keep our eyes ever towards the Lord. Very In our day, there
are so many things that can attract us, aren't there? It's a seducing
day. There's so much, and we see people
around us, so you don't need to be told, I don't need to go
through a list of the things that people are after, that they
want, that they're seduced by in our society today. Whether
it's wealth or fame, you know, and so on, careers, or the particular
people, or whatever it is they want, you see, but no, we've
got our eyes, as we're believers, number one priority arises towards
God. We look to Him, we wait upon
Him, for He shall pluck my feet out of the net, and there is
a net that will catch us if we're not careful, only God can take
us from that net, and we confess our dependence upon him he says
in verse 16 turn thee unto me Lord have mercy upon me he says
because I'm desolate and afflicted and I'm sure that we can understand
that there are times I'm sure all of us feel desolate we feel
afflicted we feel low we feel challenged we wonder just how
we're going to resolve a particular problem sometimes things press
in on us don't they and we think I'm never going to get out of
this how can I resolve this Well, God knows. We come to Him. And David says, Turn thee unto
me. Have mercy upon me. And I'm sure
that's something we can all cry to God. We see it in verse 18
as well. Look upon mine affliction and
my pain and forgive all my sins. It's all of that. At times we
do feel affliction and pain. But we can come and bring these
things to God And in Christ, we can seek forgiveness for sin.
We need to repent. And when we have sinned again,
we need to come and repent from those sins also. We don't divide
up sin like the Church of Rome does. You know, there's original
sin. You get rid of that in your baptism. We don't do this. It's
all in Christ. But we need to come carefully
to our Lord and to our God. And we need to be kept. And that's
an important part of prayer. He says, consider mine enemies,
in verse 19, they are many. They hate me with cruel hatred. And there are in our land today
people who hate what we believe and indirectly they hate us with
a cruel hatred. The agenda in our land today,
we say things about it, is a hatred of the things of God and the
people of God there are people who are determined to put down
true religion, put down the gospel, they want to close places like
this and they have an agenda and as the years go by we shall
see it, we see part of that agenda being worked out in our very
parliament today, who would have thought the mother of parliaments
is going to abolish the marriage as it stood throughout history
in nearly every civilization and was set forth by God at the
beginning of time these are trouble times that we are in we must
be so careful keep us from from enemies and there are enemies
and you may find there are people who who are after you and are
against you when you find that it's a very very unpleasant thing
a difficult thing when we look to God we don't ourselves take
action do we? we are not those who have got
our own plans and schemes and so on our trust like David was
in God keep us from our enemies we we see in verse 20 there keep
my soul and deliver me. So not just our enemies, we want
God to keep our souls, keep us spiritually and deliver us. That
we be not ashamed. We don't want to be ashamed.
We don't want to fail God. We don't want to be led into
wrong paths. He says, for I put my trust in thee. And then we
desire, lastly in our consideration, we desire to walk in integrity
and uprightness. Surely that should be a goal,
all of us, the younger ones, when you're setting forth in
life. What goals are you setting yourself? Is it this? Are you setting yourself a goal
that whatever you do, you're going to walk in integrity, in
uprightness? Are you going to walk the right
way? Because around you, you're only going to look around you.
We all know the way people are living, young people are living.
what they do, the way they abuse themselves, this way, that way,
and every other possible way, and you know some of these things.
What are we going to do? For the older ones we can't be
complacent. We can't say, oh, now I'm going to sit back. I
was reading, I think it was the Evangelical Times, there was
an account there of a man who had taken early retirement from
his work. He was a deacon in the chapel,
possibly a Baptist chapel, and he said, oh, I've retired now.
He said, oh well, I'll retire from being a deacon then. I'll just go back to sitting
in my garden and reading the paper. You know, I finished. Question, you never retire. I
haven't retired. I don't intend to retire. I intend
to continue serving the Lord as I'm able to. We've just heard
sadly today of a dear saint, passed to be with the Lord, John
Brew. It was expected. From what I
know about John Broome, he never retired. An elderly man. He was always a man. To his dying
days, almost, ministering the word of God, he never retired.
What are we going to be like? What about David? The life of
David? Did he ever say, oh, that's it, I'm old now, I can sit back,
I don't have to be spiritual? Not at all. This was David's
heart. Let integrity and uprightness
preserve me. That's what preserved that's
how we've got to live and that's got to influence our prayers
and we come back to this thought that I started with we've read
I put my trust in thee but in the end of verse 21 for I wait
on thee let me come just now to to have that time of prayer
before the Lord is this not what we we're doing together we're
waiting on God and I trust that some of those things that we've
looked at tonight will help us, by the grace of God. Amen.