Good evening. If you would, open
your Bibles back to Psalm 86. Psalm 86. A couple of months ago, one of
the men read this chapter in this study. And it touched me,
and our pastor, I looked, and he had preached a message on
the first verse of this chapter a couple months before that.
And it stuck with me, and it felt like the right time to preach
that, to preach this psalm. Tonight, I just want to take
a few minutes, go through this chapter, and hopefully I can
continue from Sunday as another message to us sinners. It started
with our pastor in the Bible study telling a story of a pastor
going to see an old gentleman on his deathbed and ask him if
he believed he was saved. And the man said, I believe I'm
a sinner and I believe that the Lord Jesus Christ died for sinners. And then our brother Angus preached
a message looking at that horrible, awful publican, that horrible
sinner, who at the end, the Lord said, he went down to his house
justified. And then lastly, we heard a message
on that woman who came to the Pharisee's house, and she was
such a sinner that the men thought in their head, if this man were
a prophet, he would know how bad she truly was. And at the
end of that, our Lord said, your sins, though there are many,
be forgiven. I want to look at this chapter
This chapter here says it's a prayer of David. This is a prayer we
can all say. And let's look and start in verse
one where it starts off, bow down thine ear, O Lord. Bow down. Why do we ask our Lord
to bow down to us? It's because we can't come up.
The gulf between man and God is as wide as you can imagine,
and even more so. We can't be any lower. He can't
be any higher. And because we're as a newborn
child, or we're as a dead man, we can't do anything. We can't
lift up a finger. We're dependent upon Him to come
down to us. We need Him that in all ways.
We need that in the way that our Lord became a man. He descended
to be a man. came down to meet us. For our
salvation, we needed him to come to us. And it says, bow down
thine ear. We need you to hear us, oh Lord. He comes to us, he humbles himself. Hear me. We can talk all we want,
but we depend upon him to hear us. We need him to hear us. We are poor and needy. We're
literally poor and needy. We're spiritually poor and needy. We need him. Our pastor said
in his message this verse that that word needy is just the lowest
of all beggars. One who's dependent upon someone
else for everything. That's us. We're completely dependent
upon Him. I am poor and needy. Verse two says, preserve my soul. Preserve me, keep me. Without
Him, we will not be preserved. We will die an eternal death.
Our soul is totally dependent upon our Lord Jesus Christ to
preserve us. Now this next phrase, for I am
holy. I'm not sure in any prayer I've
ever felt confident enough to say the phrase, I am holy. But in the Lord Jesus Christ,
we're holy. In him we are. He took our sin,
he bore it, he died for it and gave us his holy, his perfect
righteousness. It says there in the margin,
mine says, for I am holy and it says there, for I am one whom
thou favorest. Can you imagine being someone
that God favors? I don't know about you, but I
have heard this with my children. I remember as a kid doing this.
Someone using a word such as, you know, I'm good at this. And
someone else saying, well, I'm better at this. And then you
would say, well, I'm the best at this. And then someone else
would just go further and make up a word and say, well, I'm
the bestest. We just always keep going. This phrase here says,
one whom thou favorest. You know that when we're using
an extreme word, okay, favorist, that E-S-T, the most favored,
do you know that that's not comparing a child of God to each other?
Our God does not have to do anything better than the other. If our
Lord has done it, it is the est. It is the best. He is perfect. All the children of our Lord
are in the Lord Jesus Christ. And he's perfect. He's the favored
one. You know, so often in the scriptures,
it describes all the children of Israel as the bride. So many terms are singular. And
that's because all of us have the best standing. All of us
have the perfect seat. All of us are perfect in the
Lord Jesus Christ. It says in verse two, O thou
my God, save thy servant that trusteth in thee. Save me, save
me. It says, save me that trusteth
in thee. We are nothing more than a servant,
but undeserving of even that. And this is not us asking to
be saved because we trust in Him, but this is saying we trust
in Him because He saved us. No one asks the Lord to be saved
apart from the Lord saving them. We can't trust in Him apart from
being in the Lord Jesus Christ. We're dependent upon Him. Look
at verse 3. It says, Lord, be merciful unto
me. Be merciful unto me. Lord, look
at me. I'm distressed. I'm miserable. I'm shameful. I'm pathetic. I'm
guilty. I've got nothing. I am in desperate
need for mercy. You know, I remember being told
as a young man, being told, don't be desperate. Being desperate
is very unattractive. Nobody likes somebody who's desperate.
Well, do you know who likes someone who's desperate or gives attention
to someone who's desperate, shows favor to one who's desperate?
A father who loves his child. Desperation, us understanding
that we are desperate for our Lord is attractive to him. We must be desperate, we really
are. If we understand our standing,
where we are, our need of him, we are desperate for his mercy.
We need it so bad. And we don't just need mercy,
it's only the Lord's mercy that we'll do. You guys ever heard
that phrase, and I hate to even say it, but a common phrase of
Lord have mercy. People say that all the time.
The problem is everybody's so focused on mercy. We need to
be focused on the Lord Jesus Christ. If we're in the Lord,
we have His mercy. Our mercy comes from being in
Him. We need His mercy. Be merciful unto me, O Lord,
for I cry unto Thee daily. I'm guilty. I don't cry unto the Lord daily.
There are days that go by that I do not cry to Him. And if my
margin here actually says the word daily means all the day. It says, for I cry unto Thee
all the day. You know, if the Lord truly showed
us how sinful we are, we wouldn't be able to do anything but cry
unto him for mercy constantly. And I know that's true because
the moments where I feel the worst, the moments where the
Lord gives me a glimpse of who I am, maybe he lets me actually
show myself and say something just awful to someone or do something
so despicable that people look at you and think, I can't believe
you did that. In those moments, those are the ones that I have
to cry to Him. Lord, please forgive me for saying
that. Forgive me for doing that. That's
who we are. We must cry unto Him. We must
beg Him every moment. Lord, please, please be merciful
unto me. Look at verse 4. Rejoice the
soul of thy servant. This says the servant, your servant,
us, we rejoice. And why do we rejoice? because
of all these things. For unto thee, O Lord, do I lift
up my soul. We rejoice unto our Lord because
of his love. We rejoice unto him because of
his pardoning grace. We rejoice because of his mercy
to this sinner. In the scriptures, we are constantly
reminded, we are told over and over again that we're sinners.
There's so many things in the scriptures that show us that
we're sinners. And there's so many things in the scriptures
that show us that we can't save ourselves. We need someone to
save us. Unfortunately, most of the world
and most of religion hear those two things. That I'm a sinner
and I can't save myself. And they do two things. They
either try to portray or convince themselves of the world that
they're not a sinner, or they try to save themselves. That's
the natural human reaction to that. If someone tells me I'm
a sinner, maybe I can not be a sinner. Maybe I can not show
my sin. And if someone tells me I can't
save myself, as the Word tells us, well, maybe I can do something
to save myself. Maybe I can. Maybe I can have
enough works. Thankfully, the scripture never does those things,
it never reveals that, never tells us that, without then showing
us one who is perfect, one who didn't sin. And it never tells
us that we cannot save ourselves without then immediately showing
us there is one who can save us. That's why we rejoice. We rejoice because the Lord has
shown us that it's okay that we're, it's not okay that we're
a sinner, but despite us being a sinner, the Lord Jesus Christ
died for our sins. And despite us not being able
to save ourselves, it shows us there is one who saves sinners.
That's why we rejoice. We rejoice. And that's why we
want to lift up our soul to thee. That's why we want to do that.
Lift our souls, Lord. We lift it to the Lord in devotion. We lift it with fervency. We
lift it from the heart in sincerity. We lift our eyes to the Lord
in the way that those that were bitten by the snakes looked at
the brazen serpent. You'd been bitten. You had to
look. I mean, can you imagine how those
people, if you believe that that brazen serpent was the way to
make you whole, of course you were going to look. Well, once
the Lord shows us that our soul, that our bitten, sinful soul
looks to the Lord Jesus Christ because he's the one who saves.
Look and live. Look to the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved. Look at verse five. For thou,
Lord, art good and ready to forgive. Our Lord is the only one who's
good. The scripture says there's none good, no, not one. We need
our Lord. And it says he is ready to forgive. Our Lord is one who died on the
cross to pay for our sins. Our forgiveness can only be in
one place. It must be in him. And it says, and plenteous in
mercy, thou art good, ready to forgive, plenteous in mercy unto
all them that call upon thee. To all them that call. We must
call in truth. We must call in sincerity right
away through Christ and in faith. We must call upon him. We must
call upon Him. I use that word desperation.
We must call upon Him as one who brings their dying child
before the Savior. There are so many illustrations
in the scripture when the Lord was walking this earth of people
going to desperate measures to get to Him. What about that woman
with the issue of blood? It talks about how the crowd
was so thick and everybody was moving together and no one could
even get through anyone. And that woman thought, I'm going
to get on my hands and knees and do whatever I can to get
to Him. How about those that took the one that was sick with
a palsy and they went to see the Lord, but you couldn't get
in. You couldn't see him. He was in this house. You couldn't
find him. And they thought to themselves, how can we get to him? They tore
part of the roof off and lifted him up. You talk about desperate
to see him. Think about that. All these things
that we see in the scriptures, when someone had a reason, when
someone found out, He is my only hope, we'd go to no end to get
to Him. That's the way we are. That's
the situation that we're in with our souls. We're desperate for
Him. We've got no hope. We honestly should do everything
we can, and we should beg the Lord to give us more that we
might come to Him. Come to Him. Seek Him out. Verse
6 says, Give ear, O Lord, unto my prayer. This prayer that we're
reading right now, at the beginning, David said to bow down thine
ear, O Lord, hear me. And he repeats that in verse
6. Lord, give ear unto my prayer. Hear me, Lord. I don't want to
just say this. It doesn't do me any good to
just talk. We need the Lord to hear us. Our prayer is to Him. And it says, And attend to the
voice of my supplications. Lord, I don't want you to hear
anything other than my prayer to you. I want you to listen
to it. I want you to give me what I
need. I need you to help me, Lord. Give me what to pray. Tell
me what to say. Lord, I want you to hear my supplications.
I want you to make me humble. I want you to ask of you. Lord,
we're desperate for you, please. Verse seven says, in the day
of my trouble, I will call upon thee. In the day of my trouble,
There was a time when I was a child that my day of trouble lasted
years. I feel like I was in, I don't
know if there was a day that went by from a certain age that
I had that I wasn't in trouble. And if I wasn't in trouble, it
was probably because my parents were so tired of putting me in
trouble or punishing me that they just thought, I just have
to ignore it every once in a while, we're not gonna do anything but
punish him. My day of trouble is every single
day. The day of my sin, it's anytime
and anywhere I go, anything I do. My day of trouble is ever before
me, and that's because I am my own trouble. It says, for thou
will answer me. When it says, bow down thine
ear, it says, give ear, O Lord, listen to my prayer. We ask all
these things because the Lord has told us he will answer us.
Do you know that if the Lord didn't tell us, he would answer
us in the scripture, that we'd have no reason to pray? I mean,
think about it. If our Lord did not tell us that
he would hear us, I mean, think about what I've said about how
awful we are, how sinful we are. Why would a person hear us? If
I use an earthly illustration of that, if someone who was the
worst went to someone who was the best, they couldn't even
get to him. You have no right. They're not going to listen to
you. Nobody cares. But our Lord says he will listen to us. He
will hear us and he will give supplication to our prayers.
Think about that. He said he will listen. He will
answer us. He will give us what we need.
Verse 8 says, among the gods, there is none like unto thee,
O Lord. There's none like thee. And that's
because the god here is little g. There's so many little g's.
I mean, what makes something a god? It's someone worships
it. Well, we worship everything in
the world that isn't the true and living God. We worship everything. There is only one true and living
God. There is none like thee, O Lord.
Neither are there any works like unto thy works. No one else can
do what our Lord does because no one is our Lord. He's God. He does what He wants, with whom
He wants, how He wants, in any way. He's God. There's none like
Him. There's none at all. There's
no works like His works. His work of creation, His work
of providence, His work of salvation and redemption in the Lord Jesus
Christ, there's none like Him. Verse 9 says, "...all nations
whom thou hast made, shall come and worship before thee, O Lord."
All of them shall come and worship before thee. All nations are
the blood of one man. All nations are his creation.
All of them are. They shall all come and worship
before thee, O Lord. Why will they worship? Why will
all nations worship him? Look at verse 10. For Thou art
great and doest wondrous things. Thou art God alone. I pray to
the Lord, I pray to God that He would make us worship Him
and He would show us who He is. All nations will bow, all will
worship Him in the day that they see Him." When the Lord reveals
Himself in the last day to someone, there's You know, the only reason
we worship Him now is because He has shown us who He is. He
makes us to worship Him. But those who don't worship Him,
when they see Him, that's the only thing you can do. He is
so great. He is so glorious. His holiness
is so perfect. His light, He is light, that
when someone sees Him, they will just bow down immediately. That's
who He is. All will bow to Him. All nations,
they all shall glorify thy name. For thou art great and doest
wondrous things. Listen to this song, one of my
favorite songs. O Lord my God, when I in awesome
wonder consider all the works thy hands have made, I see the
stars, I hear the rolling thunder, thy power throughout the universe
displayed. And when I think that God his
Son not sparing sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in. I can't
believe it. That on the cross, my burden
gladly bearing, He bled and died to take away my sins. Our Lord
does wondrous things. You know, His name is wonderful. We use that word so often, I'm
guilty of it. I call so many things that are
the furthest thing from wonderful, wonderful, I just use that term.
But the only things that are wonderful are things that He
does. He is wonderful. And they're not just wonderful.
because he does them, but they're wonderful because he chose to
do them. What he does is wonderful. His works, his ways, they're
perfect. They're amazing. And I've said this before, but
there will be a day when we will see the whole tapestry, his whole,
when we're in glory and see everything he's done, and we will just be
in complete awe at how wonderful and perfect his work is. Verse
11 says, teach me thy way, O Lord. Teach me thy way, O Lord. Lord,
teach me your method. Teach me your application. Teach
me everything about you. Lord, I want to know it. Lord,
I want to walk in the truth. Teach me thy way, O Lord. I will
walk in thy truth. Unite my heart to fear thy name.
You know, we don't ask the Lord to teach us so that we can brag
about Him. We don't ask the Lord to teach
us because we want to appear smart. We ask the Lord to teach
us because every single, just every grain that we learn about
Him, every little nugget He gives us, everything we learn about
our Lord makes us to see how much greater He is, to see His
holiness. Tell me that isn't true. When
the Lord reveals something to you, the only thing you can think
is how amazing our God is, how wonderful He is. I want Him to
teach me so that I might have the words, that I might have
the ability to explain who He is to my family and my friends.
I want Him to teach me who He is. Not because I need to have
the ability, all those things, but I want Him to do for others
what He's done for me. That's what we want for our loved
ones. We want to walk in the truth. We want the Lord to teach
us, not for knowledge, but that we may dwell in the truth in
all our ways and all we do. Unite my heart. And our Lord
must do that. It's not natural to be united.
I want a heart united to the Lord, one that cleaves to him
and him only. I want a single and sincere heart
with a single view to his glory, with a sincere affection for
him. I want him to give me a new heart. I want to be like Him. I want to glorify His name in
all that I do, because He's worthy of that glory. He's worthy of
it. This is the heart the Lord has promised to give His people.
The Lord Jesus Christ came, died on the cross, and gave us His
righteousness. He took our sin. He gave us a
new heart. How wonderful is that? Let me read a verse of Scripture
on Jeremiah 32. Listen to this. And I will give them one heart
and one way that they may fear me forever for the good of them
and of their children after them." We want him to unite us. We want
him to give us a new heart for our good and for the good of
our children after them. That's what we ask of him. We
want that so desperately. Look at verse 12. Verse 12 says, I will praise
Thee, O Lord, my God, with all my heart, and I will glorify
Thy name forevermore. I will praise Thee. Well, don't
you want to praise our God? Don't you feel so often that,
I'm not sure I feel like I've ever actually praised Him. I
feel like I've said things, and the closest I've ever come to
praising Him is reading His Word. I don't have the words to say.
But I pray to him, Lord, I want to praise you. I'm going to try
to praise you. Lord, Will and I will try to
praise you with all of my heart. Here it says, I'll praise you
with all my heart. Lord, I'm so desperate for that. And when
this says, with all my heart, it's important to know that this
isn't to imply that we'll be perfect at it. It doesn't even
say we'll be good at it. But if I said to my wife that
I love her with all my heart, what I'm trying to get across
is that I'm sincere. I truly do love you. When it
says we want to praise Him with all our heart, what we mean is
we desperately want to praise you. We desperately love you
and are worthy of our praise. but we're completely dependent
upon him. And it says forevermore, Lord, we want to praise you for
the rest of this life. But Lord, we want to praise you
forever because of what you have done. Your children will praise
you for eternity. Isn't that a great thought that
one day we'll actually be able to appraise him, appraise him
accordingly to what he deserves? Think about that, being able
to sing a song to Him, sing a song of praise, and have a great voice
lifted up to our God, saying how great Thou art. Verse 13
says, For great is Thy mercy toward me, great is Thy mercy
toward me, and Thou hast delivered my soul from the lowest hell,
from the lowest grave. Great is thy mercy toward me.
It's great because of how great he is. It's great because it's
his mercy. But it's also great because,
boy, do I need great mercy. I need perfect mercy. I need
mercy that comes from the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the only
mercy that will do me any good. Lord, we need it so desperately.
Deliver me from the lowest hell, from the lowest grave. Why does
he deliver us from the lowest hell? Because that's where we
are. That's what we deserve. We deserve
an eternal death. You know, there's this, our pastor
brought it up with that comment that Spurgeon made about, I take
issue with Paul, that he said he was the chief of sinners.
Thankfully, with what our Lord's done, what he's done for us,
his great mercy, We all are just such horrible
sinners. But we don't have to worry about
it because throughout the scriptures we see that His mercy is great.
His mercy is enough to cover His blood, all the blood of the
Lord Jesus Christ that covers all our transgressions. It doesn't
matter how bad of a sinner we are. Isn't that wonderful to
know that the amount of my sins, the horribleness of my sins,
just the consistency of my sin, my inability to stop sinning,
all of that is no match for His unbelievable mercy. It's so perfect. Verse 14, Oh God, the proud are
risen against me. The assemblies of violent men
have sought after my soul and have not set thee before them.
Oh Lord, Lord, these sayings are all against me. When we first
read this, when I see this, I think, boy, there are so many people
against me. Violence is ever before me. There's
so many around me that have not put God before thee. But you
know what this is saying? This says, oh God, the proud
are risen in me. My pride inside me, oh, it's
risen against our God. It says the assemblies of violent
men I am a violent man against our God. In the margin it says,
a terrible man. Boy, how terrible are we? This
is talking about us. We're the ones who are proud.
We're the ones who are violent. We're the ones who have not set
the Lord Jesus Christ in our heart. We haven't done that.
We begged our Lord, in verse 15, we'd said, oh God, all these
things. Verse 15 says, but thou, oh Lord, art a God full of compassion. Lord, we need your compassion.
We need you to look upon us in a way that we don't deserve.
Lord, thou art full of grace. Your grace, oh how we need your
grace. As awful as we are, as proud as we are, Lord, we need
you to be long suffering with us. Lord, we are constantly just
swinging against you. We are constantly fighting, kicking
against the pricks. That's all we do. Our Lord has
told us what he's done for us. Our Lord has told us we see how
holy he is, all that stuff. And what do we do? We just kick
and scream and fight constantly. But because of his compassion,
because of his grace, because he's long suffering, because
he is plenteous in mercy and in truth, because of all those
things, that's why we find hope. Boy, we're the worst. Thankfully,
we have the best. Our Lord Jesus Christ is perfect.
All those things are greater than us, greater than we can
fight. Verse 16 says, Oh, turn unto me and have mercy upon me. One turn of the Lord Jesus Christ's
face will turn all our darkness into day. One look from him will
change everything for us. Isn't it amazing how often and
how Just easy it is for us to just fall into despair and depression
and trouble and heartache just constantly. And you know the
only thing that truly is the remedy? It's just the Lord to
show His face to us. All of it. All of it. You know,
we say how He's light. He's a blinding light. When the
Lord shows Himself to us, it is so bright that everything
else just completely disappears. Have you ever been in a situation
and maybe in a dark room, you're sleeping all night, there's not
a crack of light in the whole room and somebody comes and they
open up the curtains and that light comes in and you can't
even, you can't see anything. And even when you close your
eyes, all that's in your eyes is that light. That's who our
Lord is. When He shows us Himself, when
He turns our face, when He shows us Him, we are blinded by His
holiness. And you know what that does?
That makes a sinner so glad. That makes a sinner so happy.
It makes us to realize that all those things that we've been
staring at, all those things that have been our back, our
burden, all the things that we trip over and we fall on, all
of them don't matter. Just look to Him. Look to Him. It says, oh, turn unto me. This
doesn't say, Lord, You know, I'm going to turn to you. This
says, Lord, I need you to come to me. Have mercy upon me. Give thy strength unto thy servant
and save the son of thine handmaiden. Lord, save me. I'm completely
dependent upon your salvation. I'm completely dependent upon
you. And look at verse 17. Show me a token for good that
they which hate me may see it and be ashamed because thou,
Lord, hast opened me or helped me and comforted me. Lord, I
want you to show me a token for good. This is saying, Lord, I
want you to show me. Now, this is not that the Lord
needs to prove something to us. This is not that the Lord has
not given us, I mean, millions of reasons to understand who
he is and what he's done for us. But we constantly need assurance. Every single hour of every single
day the Lord does amazing things for us Constantly what I just
talked about the Lord shown his face to us Just giving us a moment
of light and what happens the moment that that light dissipates
from our eyes We just go straight back down. We just do it immediately. We need him to give us a token
for our assurance We need to see what he's done for us. I
Our Lord has told us that if we call upon his name, he'll
answer. If we look, we'll live, all those things. But Lord, make
us to believe it, make us to see it. Show me a token for good
that they which hate me may see it and be ashamed, because thou,
Lord, hast helped me and comforted me. Lord, I want everyone around
me to see who you are. I want everyone to see that,
make them to understand that the only reason that I ever have
to glory, the only reason that anything good comes from me is
because of you. Make people see that. At the
same time, give me the actions. Make me to do things to where
people might look positively upon what we believe. If the
Lord doesn't do that, people will see who we are. You know,
in this flesh, they'll see it. But we beg of the Lord, Lord,
would you please give us assurance? Lord, give us assurance of all
these things you've told us. Throughout this word, throughout
this chapter, it says things, Lord, we need you to make us
trust in you. Lord, we need you to show us your mercy. Lord,
we need you to make us to cry unto thee. Lord, we need to see
that your mercy is sufficient. Lord, we need you to listen to
our prayers. Lord, we need you to do all these things, to show
us your wonderful works. Lord, all these things. Make
us to worship you. On and on and on. All these things.
Lord, we must have you make us to see these things. There is
no doubt the scriptures are so clear, and it's wonderful that
they are, that those that the Lord Jesus Christ died for has
all these things. We pray for them because of our
doubts. We pray for them because he tells
us to pray. We pray for him because we just
don't understand anything. But our Lord has done these things
for his sheep. Lord, we beg of you, Lord, please
give us assurance, make us to understand, make us to see that
our salvation is sure in the Lord Jesus Christ. All right.