Psalm 5
Notes
Transcript
How confident are you when you pray that God will hear you and then lead you into perfect plans for your life? We want to learn to listen to God in prayer. Let’s take a lesson from a prayer from the Bible that ties together what we’ve learned the last two weeks. Our prayer comes from King David in Psalm 5. It is a good example of what prayer can be. We will see elements of the Lord’s prayer in the outline of this prayer. We will also see the kind of prayer that truly seeks God. But ultimately, we will see that we can be confident that God hears us and will lead us into fruitfulness and joy when we seek Him.
Cry Out to God
Cry Out to God
This is the kind of prayer most of us pray. We don’t plan it out, we don’t follow a method. Most of us aren’t praying liturgical prayers like the Jews of Jesus’ day. Most of us cry out to God when we feel like we need Him. And that’s not a bad place to start. Prayer doesn’t have to be complicated or planned out. You can just cry out to God any time.
Prayer is seeking God. There are lots of reasons we seek God. All of us seeking God for what we need from Him. But it can go to the next level. We can seek God for His own sake. To seek God to know Him. Jesus, when He taught His disciples to pray, taught them to seek God as He is, not as we wish Him to be. We pray to our Father who is in heaven. He is holy. So, we should begin our prayer with thoughtfulness about God.
Be Thoughtful of God
Be Thoughtful of God
Who is this person we’re talking to? Is He some force that controls the universe like the laws of physics as deists would say? Is He an all-powerful but unknowable transcendent entity that demands obedience to a strict code but never assures us of our standing with him, like Allah? Is he the impersonal life force of all living things that the pantheists claim? If we seek God for God’s sake, who is this God we seek?
Some people, following Jesus’ lead, begin every prayer with calling to mind who God is. In the 4 R’s from last week, it is starting our prayer with Reverence. We revere God in some way. Or from the 5 P’s, we begin with praise. Or for people who use the method named from the acronym ACTS, this would begin with Adoration of God. We can call to mind some attribute of God.
To name a few, God is holy, just, loving, sovereign, perfect, has limitless knowledge, almighty, pure, unchanging, incorruptible, gracious and merciful, true, good, self-existing, sovereign.
Jesus, in the Lord’s prayer, focused on the Fatherhood of God, His transcendent nature and power, and His holiness. David cries out to God as LORD,
Give ear to my words, O Lord;
consider my groaning.
the personal name of God meaning “The Everliving One”, and he addresses Him as his King and His God.
Give attention to the sound of my cry,
my King and my God,
for to you do I pray.
We cry out to God because He is what we need. Let’s be thoughtful about Him. What is it about Him that has drawn us to Him in this moment? When we begin with thoughtful reverence or praise, it centers our focus on God and takes it off our self focus. We came to seek God, after all.
Seek His Kingdom
Seek His Kingdom
If you really think about who God is, you should have some kind of response. For example, if God is a good King, I want His kingdom to come and His will to be done. When I pray, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done,” I am seeking His rule and reign in my life and in my world. It’s no good to sing God’s praises as the Everliving King if we aren’t going to live that truth.
David seeks God in the morning. Before the distractions of the day, before he enters whatever battle he is facing, he seeks God. Look at his confidence in God in verse 3.
O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice;
in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.
David comes offering his sacrifice, but also anticipating that God will offer something in return. What will God say? How will God direct Him? What will God do in David’s life? David will keep watch.
Do we pray with anticipation? Do we come seeking God’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven, and trusting that He hears us?
Examine Yourself
Examine Yourself
When we pray, “forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors,” this is an opportunity to examine ourselves. Verses 4-7 reflect on the holiness of God as it relates to our own attitudes, words, and actions. Someone last week said our temptation when we pray for forgiveness is to compare ourselves to others. Then we don’t come off that bad. But who does David compare himself to?
For you are not a God who delights in wickedness;
evil may not dwell with you.
The boastful shall not stand before your eyes;
you hate all evildoers.
You destroy those who speak lies;
the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
When we examine our lives in the light of God’s holiness, His perfections, then we can see clearly to take out the corruption that keeps us from experiencing the fullness of God in our lives.
But after we confess our sin and seek forgiveness, we have this other assurance,
But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love,
will enter your house.
I will bow down toward your holy temple
in the fear of you.
We are confident that
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
When we stack ourselves up against other people, we can deceive ourselves into thinking that we have no sin. But when we examine ourselves in the light of God’s holiness we all have sin. That sin separates us from God. When we live in our sins, we are not able to enter God’s house. It is only the abundance of God’s steadfast love that enables us to enter.
But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love,
will enter your house.
I will bow down toward your holy temple
in the fear of you.
The word translated “steadfast love” is the word for the kind of love that is demonstrated in kindness, grace, and loyalty. David was very aware that it was not his own goodness that gave him entrance to God’s house. It was the abundance of God’s steadfast love that had made a covenant with him to establish him as king. What he did not yet know was that one of his descendants would do something so that all the rest of us would be welcomed into God’s house too. Out of the abundance of His steadfast love, God has established a covenant, ratified in the blood of God the Son, that assures us that when we repent and believe in the sufficiency of Jesus Christ and HIs atonement, we are forgiven and welcomed into God’s house. Not just welcomed, but adopted as children.
When we examine ourselves in the light of God’s holiness, we will see all the sin and corruption that keeps us apart from God. But when we examine ourselves in light of God’s love, we see sinners forgiven because of the blood of Jesus, fully accepted as sons and daughters in God’s house.
David knows he can’t stay in the temple all day. He has to go out into the world filled with hard work, trouble, complex difficulties, and surrounded by enemies that lie or flatter to get what they want, some that are seeking to destroy him.
Prepare for Battle
Prepare for Battle
Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness
because of my enemies;
make your way straight before me.
For there is no truth in their mouth;
their inmost self is destruction;
their throat is an open grave;
they flatter with their tongue.
Make them bear their guilt, O God;
let them fall by their own counsels;
because of the abundance of their transgressions cast them out,
for they have rebelled against you.
David is seeking God’s justice. And as king, he is in this battle every day. So he’s preparing for the battle ahead of him for that day. When Jesus taught us to pray,
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
He wants us to be aware as we close our time of prayer that we will be leaving the security of His presence in our place of solitude to go back into the world, and it is not safe. We aren’t kings like David, surrounded by physical enemies. But we have spiritual enemies, Satan, the world filled with deceptions, and our own temptations within. Are we preparing every day for this battle? Are we ready when we leave our time with God int he morning to say,
Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness
because of my enemies;
make your way straight before me.
Our world is not safe. It is filled with evil. But the same steadfast love that welcomes us into God’s house also goes out with us to lead us into righteousness, doing justice, in the real world. David’s confidence in God is a fitting end to his prayer.
But let all who take refuge in you rejoice;
let them ever sing for joy,
and spread your protection over them,
that those who love your name may exult in you.
For you bless the righteous, O Lord;
you cover him with favor as with a shield.
We won’t overcome the spiritual battles because of our own strength and wisdom. God spreads His protection over us. So even in the reality of a harsh world filled with lies and temptations, we don’t have to be beaten down by it. We can sing for joy. We exult in God. Exult means to jump for joy. Why? This world is a scary place. But when God clothes us and leads us in the righteousness of Christ, His favor covers us with a shield. We can be hurt, but we can’t be destroyed. If God is for us, who can stand against us? We don’t enter the battle afraid and self-protecting. God has shown us His favor in Jesus Christ. If God the Son would die for you, what would He not do for you in His resurrected life?
David’s prayer in Psalm 5 is an example of how we can turn the Lord’s prayer into an outline for prayer. It tracks almost perfectly with the movements of the prayer Jesus taught us. The phrase, “Give us this day our daily bread” doesn’t seem to be there until you realize David’s prayer for provision is the request for the Lord to lead him in righteousness. That is a helpful reality check.
But it is also a great example of the kind of prayer that truly seeks God. Our goal in this series is to learn to listen to God in our times of prayer. When we seek God like David seeks God, we open ourselves to listen. When we begin with thoughtfulness about who God is and call to mind His attributes, it puts our own requests in perspective. It provides light to examine ourselves. And it prepares us for the battle ahead without fear of our enemies. We can listen for where He will lead us in righteousness with joy. The joy comes when we know for sure that God loves us. And He has demonstrated the abundance of His steadfast love for us in Christ.
Communion