with me to Psalm 119. This morning we will be looking at verses 145 through 152. Once again, I am glad to remind you that that which I am about to read is the Word of God and not the Word of men, so let us give attention to it. Beginning at 145. With my whole heart I cry, answer me, O Lord. I will keep your statutes. I call to you, save me, that I may observe your testimonies. I rise before dawn and cry for help. I hope in your words. My eyes are awake before the watches of the night that I may meditate on your promise. Hear my voice according to your steadfast love, O Lord. According to your justice, give me life. They draw near who persecute me with evil purposes. They are far from your law. But you are near, O Lord, and all your commandments are true. Long have I known from your testimonies that you have founded them forever. Let's pray. Our God and Father, we come once again to your word, and once again we cry out, we are a needy people. We need to understand what you are saying, but we, much more than just understanding the words and the nouns and the verbs and the parts of speech, Father, we pray that you would cause us to embrace your truth, that it would change us, that it would make us more like Christ, that it would teach us the way to go. We ask for mercy and help to that end, we pray in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. As we look at this particular part of the psalm, Psalm 119, beginning at 145, reminding ourselves that this is a song, and it is a song, the primary focus of these 22 stanzas has been to look at the Word of God, to look at the promises of God, to look at that which God has said over and over and over and over again. And so we pick up from the repetition a number of things. One indeed is that this is important, that as the people of God, we are to be attentive to what God has said and we are to live as God has ordered. Now that is a strange thing when you begin examining the culture around you, the world in which we live, for their idea of religion is something polite and comfortable that doesn't get in the way of what I'm planning to do anyway. We as the people of God know that we are to be attentive to what God says and to do what God says. Now this particular stanza of the song we are singing, continues that picture of the importance of the Word of God, but also steps to the side a bit and says, and here are some things to be attentive to. And the topic which he takes up in this little stanza is the topic of prayer. We see from the psalmist's words a call to pray earnestly. We see a call to pray always. We see a pray to call biblically. and one a call to pray in faith. It is that we might by his words understand better the salvation which he has provided and that we might be a prayerful people. This is not a topic which is new to us. It is admittedly one of those words which gets our attention and for some reason invokes a feeling of guilt too often than it should if you want to generate a little guilt, just go around Christian folk and talk about evangelism, talk about prayer. Those are good starter conversations for people who desire and enjoy the problem with guilt. But that's not where the text goes. The text calls us to look at that which David has said and to pray in a manner which is not that difficult. It is surprising that we so often hear people say things like, well, I just, I just don't know what to say. I don't know what to pray. Martin Luther had one of these little experiences with his barber and his barber asked him a similar question. Teach me to pray Lutheran. Luther went home and did the reform thing. He wrote a book. It was a small book, a booklet, and he presented it and dedicated it to his barber, and it is available still if you have internet. Chase one down. But he does some very basic things, things that we'll mention here, one of which he does in that little booklet is encourages him to pray the Lord's Prayer. that pray those petitions, to pray the Ten Commandments. How do I pray? And we'll talk about that at the end of the sermon. But just as we enter into this discussion of the various expectations of our prayer life, We begin with verse 145 where we are to pray earnestly. And the psalmist speaks of that as he says, with my whole heart I cry, answer me, oh Lord, I will keep your statutes. I call to you, save me. Now as we scan back through the pages of this particular chapter of the book of Psalms, we see over and over and over again that the psalmist calls out in prayer to the Creator. But in most cases, it is done with a great deal more eloquence, a great deal more content, just as you would pick up your psalter hymnal and sing a song, and you would go through stanza after stanza after stanza and see development of thought, the action that is to be taken, and that which God requires of us. But here in this one, There is no sense of the composer was sitting around for four or five days trying to figure out which line might be next, which phrase might fit better, but rather he says, answer me! Save me! Help me! He expresses in his calling out to God the great need that he has that God should intervene. I'm in a mess. Help me, save me, provide for me, take care of me. With all of our hearts, with fervent and focused cries to God. Most of the prayers of the book of Psalms are well composed. These are urgent. someone is in need or is in great trouble. Seen elsewhere in the life of Peter, you remember his little episode of walking on the water, sort of, as he sees Christ coming, he says, well, if it's you, let me walk on the water. And so he jumps. Things are going well until he began to struggle with his faith in that which God has said he would do. And all of a sudden he begins to slowly, I assume slowly, he had time to cry out and to plead for mercy, but as he began to sink down into the water, he cries out, help, which is adequate for the moment. He might have gone into a brief dissertation of the depth of the water and the temperature of the water and the difficulty he might have breathing underwater, but no, it was not time for that. And this crying out of help, even as Elijah prayed for rain, called upon God for it, and God sent it, so also this expectation of the psalmist is I will cry with urgencies. My prayers shall be prayers of faith. My prayers are serious and they are sure in the world that is buying and selling life. Here the psalmist says, I beg of you to be my help. taking note of his prayers, where his prayers, they were prayers of his heart. His prayer is only as good as when the heart is going along with it. Lip labor, as one author wrote, is a lost labor. It's not just words. I remember 30, 35 years ago, I went to India with some other pastors on a trip that we were providing a conference up in a part of northern India. And as we walked through the marketplace, we would hear people with record players or tape players, and they were playing this loud stuff. Of course, we couldn't understand the language, so we didn't know what was going on, but they were actually prayers that had been recorded. And because they believed that God needed to hear these prayers and that they needed to be loud so that God could hear them, and so they put them on recordings and they played them over and over and over again. This was not the case in such a prayer as this. It was a prayer from the heart, not just making the noise, not just saying the words, not trying to get God's attention by some special action, even as the priest of Baal did on the mount as they sought to bring down their God to action, but he was not to be found. His prayers were prayers of the heart. He persisted even as the widow persisted with the wicked judge. So David persisted to the point of annoyance, calling out, help me, help me, help me, even as the child might ask again and again and again, not that any of you have experienced that, but even as one might in some situations cry out repeatedly, give me this, I need that, please help do this, go here, go there. David cries out very simply, with great vigor, God, be my help, provide for me. His desire and object of his prayers was his salvation, a salvation that must be one that makes one whole so that he is not distracted from the basic and the foundational. So we pray with that kind of comprehensive request, God, save me. fix what is broken, make whole what is incomplete, cause me to be preserved and kept. His prayers led him to pray with hope. He is asking big, though he is asking with few words. God, be my protector, my provider, my savior. Do all that I have need of, fix me. And there's much to be fixed in all of us. His prayers led him to pray in such a way that he was neither presumptuous nor faithless and timid. He prayed, praying that God would indeed provide for him. Prayer is seen as a duty, but also as a duty that carried the expectation of God's answers. In Psalm 28, 9, O Savior people, and bless your heritage, be their shepherd and carry them forward. Even as we pray for this little child this morning, as we remembered in our own minds and in the declarations made before us that God is a covenant God, keeping His covenant to a thousand generations. He is a saving God who saves not only from those that are outside, but He saves His own people. He keeps them and preserves them. 146, going back a little bit, I cry, help me, and I can give evidence of my faith as I keep your word as an act of faith. Matthew Henry writes, we must cry for salvation, not that we may have the ease and the comfort of it, but that we may have an opportunity of serving God the more cheerfully. That we cry out for help. Not that we can relax. Oh God, help me to live in such a way as that there are no troubles and difficulties and hardships and problems in my life. Let me live with all that I desire so that I might not be distracted by discomfort. That is not at all how we pray. That is not at all what David was praying for. But he was praying that God would intervene, that God would keep him, that God would preserve him. He was praying about that which was most precious, that which is most necessary. That is his walk with God, his fulfillment of God's commandments upon his life, his life that he lived in faithfulness unto God. In 145, along with 146, we will keep the law to demonstrate his thankfulness. If you look back at those two verses, it can be wrongly read, if we are not careful, where he says, oh, Lord, I keep your statutes. And then in the next verse, he says that I may observe your testimonies. Is he saying to God, as he speaks of his prayer, God, answer my prayer, and I'll cut this deal with you? I will provide that which you require of me, I'll obey the law, okay. Do this, God, I'll keep the law. Do this, God, I'll observe your testimonies. God doesn't cut deals, and David was not trying to do such as that, but rather he is simply saying that Do these things, O God, so that I can, so that I can keep your statutes. I need to be alive if I am going to profess your name. I need to be able if I am going to do your work." And so he speaks as the singer of the song and as the leader of the people of God, saying that this is how we express our gratitude. do what is needed, save me, keep me, preserve me, and then I will be able to do that which you have called upon me. Provide me the strength and the ability to do that which is right. And that not only shows up in this verse, but in all those verses that we have gone through to get here, as we're reminded over and over and over, it is a good thing to keep the law. And it is the thing we do, not because we're trying to buy God, but rather because we love him. This is the love of God that we keep as commandments. His prayers. are to be prayed with great zeal, for it is a good thing that we ask for. Nearly all men will speak, even if it is only a slip of the tongue, but they'll speak of God's goodness. You can't hardly check out of Walmart without someone blessing you or telling you to love God or to do this or that. And I would be much pleased to find on the last day that all those cashiers know the Lord Jesus Christ and meant really what they were saying when they asked for God's blessing upon me. But I can't know that. But we do know that it is, particularly in the Southern culture, something that we just kind of do. We speak about, ain't God good? We talk about how God will bless us and provide for us, and we may or may not believe such as that at all. Well, for the psalmist, as he continues, he says to us that reminds us that nearly all men will speak in such a way, but those who have found grace always respond not with just words. What is it that is the avenue of expressing thankfulness to God? It is our obedience to his law. He saves us. He provides for us. He keeps us. we respond to that great blessed intervention on his part. Thank you, God. And how do we offer up thanks? Again, our catechism reminds us that it is by nature that we express our gratitude by obedience. How could it be that we would say, I am so thankful to God for all that he has done in my life and for me and for my family. And yeah, now I've got things to do and places to go. not having time for God, not desiring to serve or please him. It's foolishness, but not so for the psalmist and not so for us. We pray fervently. Why so? Not just to find the end of our answered prayer, but to have our prayers answered so we can do that for which we were created, to love God, to be faithful unto him. to fulfill our chief demand, that we are to love God and keep His commandments. In the next section of our passage, this part of the song that is sung, verse 147 and 148, I rise before the dawn and I cry for help. I hope in your words, my eyes are awake before the watches of the night, that I may meditate on your promises. He is essentially saying in different words but with the same passion and direction as we find the Apostle Paul speaking to the Thessalonians in chapter 5 to pray without ceasing. Now, it ought to seem reasonable that he is not saying always be praying. Always pray at all times forever and ever. That's all you can do. Just sit there and pray. Clearly that is not what is up and about and his topic for discussion. He does lay before us these different opportunities that he discusses. Before the dawn he says, I get up before the morning has found me. I pray and the night watches as I am awakened in the middle of the night. I pray The praying that is called for, though not constantly, not always, not every moment of the day, is a prayer that is throughout our lives to be found entering into our lives often. It is not the same as always praying and doing nothing else. We understand well enough that what is being said, when we talk about someone, well, he's always thinking about something, or this gal, she's always singing. We understand the meaning of phrases used in such a fashion. We understand that what is being spoken of is a declaration that much praying is going on and that that person is praying a lot and is fulfilling his call to be a man or a woman of prayer. Prayer is the natural and constant part of our lives. It is something which we do throughout the day, not only in time set aside when we pray privately and not only when we pray for others and gather together as a people of God and now would be a good opportunity just to slip a little reminder we do have a prayer meeting at 12 o'clock noon on Wednesdays that seems to be an odd time but it is a good time for many that cannot, we have a church that scatters out in distance, but we have more people in town in the middle of the day than we do on any other time, and so you're welcome to join us, bring a bagged lunch if you will, this is a commercial, and I hope you'll stay attentive to it. But bring a bagged lunch, join us for prayer in the fellowship hall or somewhere as the building continues to be put back together. Praying is a natural part of our lives. Pray has its helpers, things that we ought to embrace and be encouraged to pray by. We have hope, hope in God and his word. We are encouraged by what he has said he will do and what he has promised us. And so we speak to a God who created the universe with a word. He spoke and everything came into existence. I mean, you might ask your parents or your friends or your relatives or your neighbors for a little help here and there, and they may or may not want to help you. They may or may not be able to help you. But if you ask of God, if you come before God with petitions, you know you are before God who can do all that He is pleased to do. And so we have reason to be hopeful as we cry out unto the Lord. We continue to stay in God's word. You cannot stay in prayer if you are not staying in the word of God. Here we have the mind of God laid out before us, the plan of God laid out before us, that which God is going to do in our lives and the lives of others. Not in the specifics, we don't know that we'll be somewhere in Texas doing something on this day and that hour, but we know that God has called us to a particular calling as His children. We will be faithful to do that. And so we know that His Word is the means by which we begin to understand what we are about in this world. So know the Bible. Get to know the Bible. Read the Bible. You want to be better at the work of prayer? Be better at the work of the Bible. I heard, I remember years ago someone indicating that this particular person who was involved in a ministry, a parachurch ministry, was held up as a great prayer warrior. And then they went on to say about, you know, she, it was not a... pejorative comment, but it was a comment made that she was not much about reading the Bible, but she was a prayer warrior. And my head is kind of wanting to bust because of things I want to say, but I held my tongue on that occasion and just pondered, what kind of nonsense is that? You don't know what to pray for. You don't know who to pray to if you are not a person of the Bible. And so be such. Even as you meditate upon God's Word throughout the day, make that a time of prayer as well. Prayers, answers often come just before our strength seems to be gone. When almost hopeless, we must look to the Word of God. Why do you suppose God does that anyway? Okay, we call out for God and ask for him to help us here, to save us there, to provide for us in this way or that way. And you know, you get down, you pray, 45 seconds to a minute and a half, you're up, you're ready to go, and you're thinking, now where is it? Where is that answer? No, he just lets it drag on at times, and on, and not all the time, but enough that it gets our attention. Why would God not answer the moment I cry out? For he would rather teach me what it is to trust in him in hard times, in difficult times. And when it seems, when it seems he is slow to act, we will find out on the other side that he acted at just the right time, just the right way to make us more like Christ and to advance the kingdom of Christ. And so praying always, calling out to God always. Prayer is helped by our taking advantage of those things which He has provided for us, our times of prayer, our praying for the day and for the end of the day, and even as we think about growing older. Not that anybody in our congregation is. But there are other churches out there that have people that are growing older and you might need to minister to them and encourage them. So as you grow older and you figure out, you know, I don't bounce out of bed in the morning anymore. I don't, you know, have this kind of quickness to my step. I can't do the things I used to do. And as you think about that, the next thing that comes to mind is, well, I guess I can't do anything at the church anymore. I can't do anything for the kingdom of God anymore because I get tired. But as we talk about prayer, that is one of the blessings of growing old is that you have, if you take advantage of it, you have more time to pray. You have occasions to pray for those who are your children and your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren. You are urged to pray for the life of the church and the work of the kingdom. And so pray, pray always, pray about all things. And if God makes it so that your body can't run here and go there and do this and go to that, he has not taken your voice. He has given you an opportunity to worship Him and to know Him and to pray for His work in ways that you have not before. We're told to pray biblically. We've touched on that a bit already. We hear my voice, according to your steadfast love, O Lord, according to your justice, give me life. They draw near who persecute me with evil purpose. They are far from your law. Prayer must be accompanied by and flowing from a serious use of the Bible. If the Bible does not stir us up to pray and to speak of Christ, then we must consider how we are making use of the Bible. It is effectual not because we have prayed and our words were eloquent. God doesn't hear and think of our prayers in this way, whereas He would say, well, that guy over there, he sure does talk fancy. We're going to give our attention to him. But this guy, he just stumbles around. He's clumsy with his words. His sentence has potholes in it, all kinds of confusing comments. Not at all. It is effectual. Your prayers are made effectual because the Spirit of God takes them up. And they are heard through the blood of Christ. And God answers as it pleases Him. God hears in accordance to His own love. The wicked are far off, we are told. So our prayers are for help from the wicked. And then we're reminded, but God is not far off. He is close at hand. Our answer depends on God's loving kindness. So praying with this mindset, I pray, I call out to God. Why then do I have hope? because my God is a covenant God. My God loves his people. My God loves to answer the prayers of his people. God's loving kindness, he is good and so he answers us. God's judgment, that is his wisdom, he knows what I need and what is good for me. We get frustrated with our, well, people at other churches get frustrated sometimes with their little children because for some reason they act like little sinners and have little pouts and little difficulties and they don't really cherish and love their collard greens as they all do, which as we all know are good for us. So as we look at such as that, we understand that Our own nature is not far from it. We would pray for that for which would not be a blessing to us, but we think it would. And the psalmist was reminding us that we are to pray according to his will. How do we know his will? We don't sit back and imagine that it's this or that. We plow into the word of God. We pursue an understanding of that which he has said. And so we pray. As the Word of God instructs us, and we pray in faith, the last two verses in 151 and 152. But you are near, O Lord, and all your commandments are true. Everything you have said is true. All of your law is true. How it plays out in the world around us is true. But what if we doubt? Where does faith come from? in the book of James in chapter 1. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. He is a double-minded man. He is unstable in all of his ways." Or in Mark 9, immediately the father, you know the story, immediately the father of the child cried out, I believe, help my unbelief. And so if we are to take up the practice of David and the practice of the saints that have gone before us, if we are to pray with any hope, we are to be men and women, boys and girls who pray, trusting God to do what is right, to hear our prayers and to respond to us. And we get to that point, again, the same way we get to many other points in our Christian life, by the pursuing and the plowing through and the pushing forward upon the means of grace. by consuming the scriptures, by hearing it preached, by taking of the table, by watching the baptism to the sake and the good not only of the child or the adult being baptized, but by watching the baptism with a reminder that, yes, this is how I make myself strong in the faith, by remembering these things that my baptism still speaks of. It ought to be as though you're sitting there imagining in your mind the baptism that you experienced perhaps as a baby or a child or even as an adult, some of you that came to faith later. The psalmist is simply saying, pray. believing, and we believe because the Word of God has, by the Spirit of God, made us to be such as do believe. You are near me, he cries out, so save me. Your law is true, so I pray, for I am instructed in how to pray and what to pray for. Deuteronomy 4, for what a great nation is there that has a God so near to it. as the Lord our God is to us whenever we call upon him. God is listening to our prayers. The great temptation that all of us at times will struggle with, sometimes more so in one period of your life than in the other period of your life, is that he tells us to pray. And he says he answered prayer. Now, is He wrong in telling us this? Is He wrong in telling us and reminding us that He answers prayer? Is it wrong for us to hope that He will hear us and that He will answer these prayers? Not at all. It is right. It is good. And it is exactly what is called for. Pray in this way. Pray what the Bible tells you all to pray for. Pray with faith that God will hear and that God will answer. His law can be trusted. These have not been weeks of empty thoughts as we've made our way through Psalm 119. The psalmist brings us to these closing stanzas after having given us 17 or 18 stanzas that speak over and over and over again of the law of God and its place in our life. So embrace that. Take the Word of God. Embrace it. Let your prayers be structured by the content, but let your prayers also be structured and be pressed forward by a faith that comes to us because we have grown in it. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Now, I want to close with a couple of what I hope will be helpful reminders. It's no complicated issue as to how to pray. Sometimes we imagine it to be so, but we're wrong. Prayer is simple. It takes discipline, but it is simple. And so as we think about it, what would you pray for? Pastor, I've run out of things to ask for. And I'm thinking, really? Really, for several reasons. One, our own lives are just a big bucket full of needs that we would call out to God and ask His help for, that He would save us and make us whole. But we are to pray earnestly, always and biblically, with faith. Praying through the Lord's Prayer seems to be a pretty good place to start. The disciples say, teach us to pray. That's what Jesus says. And so as you pray through it, not just reciting it, though reciting it is good, there are those who say, well, that's just repetition. Well, it is repetition, but it's not just repetition because Jesus says, y'all pray this, pray this way. It is not bad, but it is good. But I think the intent was that we should not only pray the Lord's prayer, but that we should unpack it again. Our catechisms do a fine job of discussing that as it talks about the various petitions. So as we pray for our daily bread, we're not praying for a loaf of bread to come tomorrow. Well, we. would include that, but we're praying for all that we have need of, our bread and our drink, our clothing, our housing, our provision, all of these things. Are there not enough in that category to keep us busy quite a while? And as we pray for our daily bread, how about our neighbor's daily bread and the daily bread of the church family and the people of God that surround us? We're to pray for the things we have need of. We're to pray through the Ten Commandments. How do you do that? Well, there's 10 of them and you take them up one at a time and you pray. We might ask, well, how would I pray for this God, this one God? What am I to say? I pray for my neighbors. that they would turn away from the false gods, that they would make this one God their God. I pray myself that He would be always before me, that God would be always in my presence so that I might be reminded to follow Him and to keep His commandments and do His pleasures. Praying through the Beatitudes, Lord, help me to be like this. Praying through the fruit of grace, O God, my fruit is not quite as clear and quite as fresh and quite as good as it seems at all to be. Help me to learn how to love. Help me to learn how to be kind. Help me to be good. And we pray that for others. And by the way, there's a long list of people who would benefit from your prayers provided on the website of Fifth Street Presbyterian Church. We call that section the church directory. That is a good place to enlarge your prayer. Pick up five or ten a week or five or ten a day and just kind of go through them. When you have casual conversations with them, ask them. You know, how can I be praying for you through the week? What can I ask of God on your behalf? Even the Apostles' Creed, as you look through the church and you look at the text of it and you think, this is what my brothers believed 500 years ago, 700 years ago, what they believe in Africa, what they believe in Europe, as they confess these same things. God, help me to believe that better. Help them to believe that better. We are to pray. making use of these guys, these help, these lists, if you will. And there's no ill or wrongness to making a list. Things sort of disappear when you put them in that part of the brain that says, now you need to remember this. And they just kind of wait for you to leave the room, then they're out of there. But making a list Cutting up in different sections where you're praying for missionaries on Tuesday, you're praying for church staff, that makes it sound like we have a big staff here, but praying for me and Drew on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday would be a good deal. Taking up these things, family members that have walked away from the Lord, acquaintances that are troubled over this or that, think through it, but begin with the Lord's Prayer, begin with the Ten Commandments, praying that God would guard me from being an adulterer, and guard the people of God for the same, that I would not steal in any manner, and that the people of God would not likewise do so. But those are just a few things to stir the pot, to get the mind thinking. There is no shortage. But what we are called to, if we are called to anything by this text, it is to pray with great fervency. It is to pray with the zeal, with the passion to see God answer. It is to pray always, which is to pray a lot. It is to pray the way the Bible says to pray, to pray asking what the Bible talks about and approaching God the way God says you ought to approach him and believing that he who has called us to prayer has promised to be him who answers our prayer. May it please God to help us to pray. Let's pray. Our God and Father, we thank you. We thank you for the reminder that the psalmist brings to our door this morning that we are to be a people of much prayer, of prayer with great zeal and delight, with prayer about what the Bible teaches us. Father, teach us how to pray in faith. We ask this in the good and the lovely name of our Savior and our mediator, Christ Jesus.