It is good to reflect on the kinds of things that shape the psalmist's prayers. because we should want our prayers to be shaped by the same kinds of things that those who loved God, sang to God, and wrote for the people of God were shaped by. And these psalm writers were influenced by various things. Here's what I think we could say is the chief influence on why they pray the way they do. The chief influence is what they know about the character of God. At the core, that's the heartbeat. what they know about the character of God. Everything else that rightly influences them are things connected to that. Certainly the psalmists are influenced by the sovereignty of God, but the reason God's authority and sovereignty are good news is because God is good. His great power and his promises are a source of comfort and assurance because God himself is steadfast and faithful and full of mercy. So the psalmists pray how they do because they know what God is like. They cry out to God because they know that God's glorious nature is unchanging. He will not be one way to others in the covenant community and in some way different toward them. He will be God and all that he is in glory and goodness toward his people. The psalmists believe this. They know that God cannot be improved upon. God cannot be greater than He is. He cannot be more sovereign. He cannot be more wise, good, or holy, or worthy than He is. He is these things in the most maximal and glorious way, and the psalmists believe that in light of these things, they can come with urgency, and boldness, and desperation, and confidence. Now, which psalmist does that in this case? In book three, we've seen psalms from Asaph, We've seen some Psalms from the sons of Korah in the last couple of weeks. But in book three, we read for the first time in this book, David's name. That's not what we're expecting. We noticed in book one and book two of the Psalms, which were dominated by David, that these in book three have not been dominated by David at all. This is the only occurrence of a Psalm from David in book three of the Psalms. And it appears in an interesting section of Psalms that have been lamenting about the suffering of the people of God, the rising up of adversaries, and the ruin of the Jerusalem temple. There have been various Psalms which seem to have in mind the destruction and exile the people of God faced under the Babylonian captivity. Now, David was long dead before the Babylonian captivity took place. But the placement of this psalm here in Book 3 is interesting given that this is now a word from the Davidic king. One of the things that they will need facing the ruin and the destruction and the exile and the distresses of their context is a word of God's faithfulness to his king. because this king received a covenant from the Lord in 2 Samuel 7 that God would raise up an offspring from his house who would reign forever. And if there's anything that seemed to make them wonder whether God was gonna keep his precious promises, it was the arrival of those Babylonians, the ruin of their temple, and the exile of their people. And so in this Psalm, David has a word. He has something to say, placed here in the providence of God in the right place for the people to hear his words. He begins with praying for God's deliverance and grace, and he will end praying for God's deliverance and grace. Praying for God's deliverance and grace, verses one to seven, this opening plea, he wants the attending ear of God. Incline your ear is, Lord, will you pay attention? And this is not to say that the Lord might otherwise have things missing his vision. This is the poetic way of saying, Father, I need your help. Oh God, I'm calling upon you and that in my urgent need, oh Father, would you incline toward it with delivering mercy. For God to incline his ear and answer, it is for David to be delivered from whatever context this is. We're not tipped off from the very beginning about David's context. Later on in verse 14, he's going to say, Insolent men have risen up against me. So as much as we know about the circumstances is that there are some ruthless adversaries coming up against David outwardly. But he identifies himself in verse one as a person in desperate need. I am poor and needy. Which is kind of an odd thing for a king to claim. A king in an ancient world would have all of his needs met and would have abundant possessions and wealth. So this is not an economic claim. This is a king who recognizes my situation with regard to the enemies of Yahweh who've come against me, no matter how much in a worldly sense I might be wealthy and powerful. Without the help of the Lord, without the delivering grace of the Lord, I am poor and needy. David here is giving us great self-reflection and clarity about where he truly stands. He is a king. And he says, well, what am I unto the Lord? I am a desperate, dependent servant. He says that in verse two, preserve my life for I am godly, save your servant who trusts in you, you are my God. The parallel verbs there in verse two, preserve and save, get at the essence of David's petition. What's he wanting God to do? Well, he's got these ruthless enemies opposing him and he needs his life to be sustained. It's like, Lord, I need you to deliver my life. It's under the threat of these people who've come against me and I'm suffering and I need you to preserve me. Now, I wonder if that first line in verse two, Sounds a little strange because he says, preserve my life for I am godly. It almost sounds like he's saying, preserve me Lord because I deserve it. Now I don't think that's quite the way the line is to be understood. But it could at first glance sound like a self-righteous boast. I don't think that's what's happening. David is drawing attention to his covenant life with God and this word godly means someone who follows God with devotion. David is saying, Lord, preserve my life, I belong to you. Preserve my life, I'm devoted to you. I don't think David is trying to say, you know, when I search the morality of my heart and the righteousness in my soul, I feel pretty good about myself. I don't think that's what David is saying. I don't think he's making a puffed up statement. Instead, he is pleading with the Lord, being a poor and needy one himself, calling upon the Lord who is great and mighty and who is not poor and needy, that he would deliver David because David says, Lord, I am godly, I am yours, I follow you, I seek you, I belong to you. Savior, servant. So this is a position of servitude, of dependence. One of the reasons we know David is not feeling quite self-exalting here is because he rightly identifies himself as the servant of the Lord. It's like what Moses was. It's like what Joshua was. Moses is identified as a servant of Yahweh, and at the end of Joshua, the end of Joshua's book, in chapter 24, Joshua dies at 110 years old, a servant of the Lord. David here is like those two great men. David is a covenant member. He trusts in you. What identifies David as someone who seeks the Lord or is a servant of God? His trust is in God. The Lord holds him up. Not just anything would hold him up. You ever been in a situation where you were gonna sit somewhere and the chair wasn't nearly as stable as you thought? Maybe one of the legs was funky or you know, some of the cloth of the chair had torn and it was kind of collapsing to it. Maybe you saw that happen to someone else and you thought, I'm glad I didn't pick that one. And so when you look at something that might want to hold you and you're looking at the stability of some structure outwardly and saying, all right, I'm gonna take a seat. I'm gonna put my weight on this thing. I'm gonna trust it. I'm gonna put myself in that care. Well, not everything is equally stable. Not everything is equally strong. And David wants to be preserved and delivered because he has cast himself upon the Lord who alone can hold him up. Nothing else is gonna hold him up. The idols of the nations are all broken leg chairs and torn cloth seating. You're not gonna last. You're gonna collapse under that. There's no support for you. David knows this. He's calling out to the living God, the only God. He's gonna make that clear too. He says, you are my God. There's something so refreshingly personal there. It is true that David could say, you are our God. You are the God of creation. You are the God who has made all things. You are my God. That is also true. And David needs to say that because from his heart, he is expressing and confessing his love for and dependence on God. You're my God, I trust in you. So he says in verse three, be gracious to me, O Lord, for to you do I cry all the day. Now what's his devotion to the Lord look like? David's devotion to the Lord looks like persevering hope. He can't control all the circumstances. None of the other idols are no support for him spiritually. There's only God. the living God. And he says, Lord, to you, I have fixed my eyes. I cry to you all the day. It's this picture of an unceasing posture to God that no matter what else is going on, David says, I'm not going to turn from you. I'm fixed upon you. I'm crying to you. And it's all day long. Lord, be gracious to me. That language of being gracious, we've seen it in Psalm 85 last week. We've seen it in other psalms before that. It's the allusion to God's words to Moses in Exodus 34. Language we recalled last week explicitly in Exodus 34, beginning in verse 6, the Lord says to Moses who he is. The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious. Slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, sin. Moses is hearing from God what God is like. God is not whoever you want him to be. God is not like whatever you would prefer. God is like who he is and who he has revealed himself to be. And that cannot change. And God is greater than we can fathom. God's goodness and his character are better than anything we might think we should substitute as a preference. Everything we might imagine that ought to be true of God would actually make no improvement on God. God could not be greater than he is. And so he says to God, be gracious to me. Something very personal there. You're my God, I want you to be gracious to me because I'm crying to you all the day. David identifies what he wants for his soul in verse four. He wants to be glad in God. Gladden the soul of your servant. We wish that we would just have the affections of our souls locked into place and we would always feel and desire and long and yearn in the ways the Bible would have us to for all that God is worthy of. And then nothing would ever affect that. But then there's real life. Then there's like getting ready for church on Sunday mornings kind of thing, right? And then there's traffic and there's all sorts of other things in life with trials and sufferings and the unexpected nature of our weeks. There's the physical frailties and the emotional ups and downs and all the things that we recognize. I am a fallen human being in a fallen world and my soul, I can look at it and I can think, Lord, I want to be glad in you. And I don't feel that way. I want to rest in you. I want you to gladden the heart, the soul of your servant. For to you, O Lord, do I lift up my soul. That picture of lifting something up is to entrust. David says, I'm not looking at anybody else. I'm not taking my soul and saying this God or this God or this pleasure or this worldly pursuit. I'm taking my soul and I'm lifting it up to you, O Lord. And I'm saying, gladden my soul. Fill my soul with your joy and strength. Satisfy me in you, O Lord. Gladden the soul of your servant, because it's to you I lift it up. One way we can describe prayer, I like this image. One of the ways we can describe prayer is we are lifting up our souls to God. That's what we're doing when we're praying. We're saying, I'm not going to entrust me, my life to anything else. I'm lifting my soul to you, oh God. That's what I'm doing when I'm coming to you and you're my refuge, my strength. I'm calling upon you in prayer. I'm lifting my soul to you, glad in the heart of your servant. David knows he can pray this because he knows what God is like. You know, back at the beginning of the sermon, we were thinking about what shapes the psalmist's prayers, the character of God. at the heart of it all. Look in verse five. For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you. David does not fear that he's gonna slip through the cracks. He doesn't fear that God would welcome all these people to come and find refuge in him and that David's gonna show up and the Lord say, anybody but you, go away, David. You are this way, Lord, for all who call upon you. David says, I know that's true. So you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna call upon you. I know what you're like. I know what you revealed yourself to be. I'm gonna lift my soul to you, gladden the soul of your servant, sustain and preserve my life, because you're good and forgiving and abounding in steadfast love. That's all language from Exodus 34. We heard it a moment ago. Same thing within verse three, be gracious. Here in verse five, good, forgiving, abounding in steadfast love. All of that is true. The God of Moses is the God of David and the God of David is the God of the new covenant saints. But we have to remind ourselves of this. We might have the thought come through our brain, God doesn't care. We might think to ourselves, God doesn't love me. God isn't good. Well, where are those thoughts coming from? Not the Bible. Not the Bible. If we think to ourselves, I don't know if God is good and forgiving and I don't know if his character is this or that. Those thoughts aren't coming from the word of God in which God has made himself known for his people. And if we don't believe that God is good and forgiving and abounding in steadfast love, a help and a strength to all who seek him, we're gonna pursue something we think at least tries to measure up to those things. Some failing alternative. Some bankrupt mirage in the desert. But we're gonna find something to call our refuge and it's not gonna hold. It's not gonna be able to bear us up. Our idols collapse under us. They don't have the weight and structure and support and refuge for us. No other God but God does. And so David says, gladden the soul of your servant, verse four, because in verse five, you're good. I know I can count on you, God. I know you're faithful. You're steadfast, I know your love and your kindness and your mercy toward me, I've tasted that. And so I've got a thought coming through my mind, I don't know if God is good, or I don't know if he loves me, or I don't know, that I gotta say to myself, I need to take those thoughts, and I need to take those thoughts to the Bible, and I need to let the Bible correct my thinking. And I need to say, Lord, through your word, help me to rightly think about who you are. He says in verse 6, give ear, O Lord, to my prayer. Listen to my plea for grace. We don't only need grace in being brought into the covenant of the Lord in Christ. We have the daily need of the grace and mercies of the Lord. David knows God and he says, Lord, what do I need? I need grace. I need strength. I need your graciousness. So in the day, in verse seven, of my trouble, I call upon you for you answer me. Verses one to seven are David's petitions for God's grace and deliverance. Now what he does next further unpacks, I think, character truths about God, but especially the distinctiveness of God. In verses eight to 13, David is responding to God's greatness. He's praying, petitioning for grace and compassion, for strength and rescue. He's petitioning for that, but he's responding to the greatness of God that he knows is unchanging in verses eight to 13. David's confession is the kind of thing we see in multiple prophets, multiple Psalms, early in the Torah. There is none like you. God is not like us. We don't learn about God from his word and we think to ourselves, oh yeah, just like other people I know, God is not like us. God is in an entirely different category than us. He's the creator and we're a creature. He's the unmade maker and we're the things made. And the chasm separating what it is for God to dwell in the fullness of deity and unchanging eternality puts him in a category that in our feeble, human, limited thinking, we're just reaching with words to try to describe the indescribable. So he says quite clearly, simply, and profoundly, there is none like you among the gods, oh Lord. Oh, the gods were so many. So many gods and idols. An idol and a god for everything. Idols for various parts of the land and parts of the sky, for various trials and various desires. Idols and gods galore. And he says, you can take all those gods and you're not gonna find among all the many dozens and dozens of deities, one that you say, oh, that's like Yahweh, the God of Israel. There is none like you among the gods, oh Lord. Nor are there any works like yours. I love that the psalmist said that line too, because God is not only distinct in who he is, but also in everything that he does. God has made all things using no things. He has called creation into existence and sustains it by his mighty power, his great work of creation, followed then by the work of redemption, not only from Egypt when the Israelites are brought out in the Exodus, but also his redeeming work through the Lord Jesus Christ, the son of David, who had come from the line of this very psalmist. There are no works like yours. It sounds like Exodus 15, right after they crossed the Red Sea, they sang together, who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who's like you? Majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders. You can search all creation and overturn every stone and you will find nothing like God. His distinctiveness further motivates us to exalt him because he is worthy of worship, being like nothing else we know. So no one else can be like you are, God. No one else can do what you can do, God. David believes this, and so he says in verse nine, people are gonna come to see this. There's a lot of gods of the nations, but you're a work among the nations. I think verse nine is the confident expectation driven by something like Genesis 12, where God said to Abraham, through you, I'm gonna bless all the families of the earth. You wait to see as my glory and redeeming grace is displayed throughout the world. Behold what I will do. David says, all the nations you've made shall come and worship before you, O Lord, and shall glorify your name. Man, what a claim, isn't it? What a picture. It's the same verse influencing John in Revelation 15. This verse we see here in Psalm 86, 9, it's echoed in Revelation 15. Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name, for you alone are holy? All nations will come and worship you. The idea of glorifying God's name and all the nations coming and worshiping, that's in Revelation 15, 4. And the reason that's in the last book of the Bible is because it's a longstanding Old Testament promise that will be fulfilled. The nation shall come to him and they shall come to him in Christ. They shall believe in the blessed redeemer. Jesus will be their hope. Doesn't it sound like the New Testament equivalent in Philippians 2, that at the name of Jesus, every knee would bow and every tongue confess in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that he is Lord to the glory of God the Father. The psalmist is saying that long before Paul wrote it. The psalmist David says, all the nations you've made shall come and worship before you, O Lord. They shall glorify your name. David wrote about this in Psalm 22 in book one. Psalm 22, 27, all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord. All the families of the nation shall worship you. Now, why will they do this? Verse nine is explained by verse 10. The reason the nations are gonna come and worship and glorify is because in verse 10, for you are great and do wondrous things and you alone are God. That's why they're gonna do that. The reason that there will be from the tribes and the nations and the peoples of the earth, people streaming to the Son of Man to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ is because they will know what David knows. They will see what David knew to be true. For you are great and you do wondrous things. The wondrous things of God are expressing his greatness. God is great. And by the way, he would be great no matter what he may do or not do for David here. But his greatness is also manifested by deeds. Consider for a moment, though, that even the deeds of God cannot fully capture the greatness true of his nature. We can recount the blessings of the Lord, we can see the greatness of God demonstrated in various things, but even a manifestation of God's greatness in our lives is still not as great as God Himself, whose greatness and splendor and majesty are beyond our full comprehension. We marvel at his works, they are wondrous. The manifestations of his greatness should humble us and leave us in awe, for indeed, great is God. And in verse two, here's this, verse 10, the claim is, you alone are God. The claim of exclusivity there, we can't miss it. The psalmist isn't confused. He is proclaiming a monotheistic truth, you alone. There are not other gods like you and you among them that you're all just sort of sharing responsibility and creation. You alone are God. David says the same thing. Hezekiah would later pray. In Isaiah 37, Hezekiah says, O Lord of hosts, enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God, you alone, of all kingdoms of the earth. In Nehemiah's day, some Israelites were confessing this in Nehemiah nine, verse six. You are the Lord, you alone. You've made heaven, the heaven of heavens with all their host. And the earth and all that's in it and the seas and all that's in them. These people praying and confessing and singing this truth, they are proclaiming the exclusivity of God and it helps to offset the other worship of the nations into the category of idolatry. Because if you alone are God, he says to Yahweh, if you alone are God, then all other worship is not worship of God, but false worship and idolatry through and through. You alone are God, and knowing this, he says in verse 11, teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth. Unite my heart to fear your name. What a petition there. Teach me your way. The way of the Lord would be what God is like and his commandments and will made known in his word for his people, his way. Why was he saying teach me? Because David knows what we need to learn as early as possible. I don't know everything I need to know in following the Lord. And so I want to have as a part of my prayer unto God, Lord, I need to be taught, I need to learn. David is a servant of the Lord and he's a student of the Lord. He's a disciple, he's a learner. He doesn't know everything he needs to know, but as a servant of Yahweh who wants his soul to be gladdened in God, he wants the way he walks to be shaped by the ways of God. So he says, teach me that I might walk in your truth. Why does he want to learn so that he can live well? Why does he want to understand and increase in knowledge of the words and ways of God? Because it will impact his life, that's why. He sees the connection between theology and discipleship. What we learn and the doctrines we cherish and the depths of the word of God. Teach me, Lord, I want to learn so that I can walk well. so that I can walk in your truth. David needs that kind of effect on his heart because if he knows something about his heart that we might detect about ours, it's that our hearts can be pulled in all kinds of directions. It doesn't feel united in our heart. It doesn't feel like it's all whole all the time. But it can feel disintegrated and pulled and even shattered. And Lord, I want a sincerity before you. I want a loyalty and a single-mindedness before you. And our lives and living before the Lord might not feel that way. David recognizes this. Here's how he prays. We should pray this. He says in verse 11, unite my heart to fear your name. Unite my heart. Now in one sense, we might think that means to yourself, Lord, join me to you. That would be also a great and wonderful prayer. That's not exactly the takeaway of this verse. Very carefully thinking about it, it means, Lord, my heart is facing its disloyalties. It's facing this way and that way, and I want you to pull my heart together. It's like when you pour a puzzle out of a puzzle box, and you need to unite those pieces. You need to unite those pieces and put them together so that they're a whole. Because prior to that, it's just kind of disintegrated, right, and scattered. David says, all right, my heart, what do I need you to do with my heart that is tempted with disloyalty, that's tempted to go this way and that way? What do I need? I need you to take my heart and I need you to unite it. Unite my heart. It's a prayer for allegiance. because the uniting of David's heart is to fear your name. In other words, if I'm going to walk in reverence before you, if I'm going to live for the honor and glory of Yahweh, I have to recognize the temptation of competing allegiances. This thing is going to want my devotion. This thing is going to want my priority. This thing wants me to build my life around it. And he says, Lord, I want to have a united heart. I want to be whole. I want to have an integral life to fear you. to love you, to walk before you. And the idea of the wholeness of heart is picked up in verse 12. I give thanks to you, oh Lord, my God, with my whole heart. David wants all that he is to be living for the glory of God. And he knows that if that's to happen, it will be the wonderfully merciful work of God answering David's prayer. All glory being to God then for his own strength. And minister to David. Unite my heart to fear your name and I give thanks to you, oh Lord my God, with my whole heart and I will glorify your name forever. David wants to live with integrity. He doesn't want to be one person over here and a different person over there. He doesn't want his demeanor and his priorities and his heart to look one way when he's with these people and a different way when he's anywhere else. He wants to live as one before God. He wants to have a heart united and pieced together by the power of God and a heart that in wholeness is being lived for the fear and reverence of Yahweh's name forever. David is not looking for an experiment. He wants a lifelong, eternal pursuit of God. That's what he wants. I wanna glorify your name forever. Friends, if you claim to be a believer in Jesus Christ, and you've been baptized here or other places, you should look at David's language here, and you should ask yourself, do I want this too? Because he says in verse 12, I'm gonna give thanks to you with my whole heart and I will glorify your name forever. When you read that, what we would want believers in Jesus to see and to sense within them is yes, Lord, and not only for David, but for me too. Lord, may it be, may it be in my heart, unite my heart to fear your name. That I might give thanks with my whole heart. I need a whole heart. Boy, sin has done a number on our hearts. In Jeremiah 17, nine, we're told that the heart is sick, desperately wicked, beyond repair from a human sense. What's wrong with our hearts isn't something we can fix. David knows this, that's why he prays the way he does. Lord, I'm lifting up my soul to you. I lift up my soul, glad in the heart of your servant. Unite my heart. Put me together, God. I need you to put me together so I could fear your name. And the reason is in verse 13, for great is your steadfast love toward me. You have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol. A wondrous remembrance there, isn't it? Great is your steadfast love toward me. David knows God loves his people. David can also say he loves me and not like barely. He says, great is your steadfast love toward me. How wonderfully assuring of that we can in Christ Jesus. delight in all of these things as true for our souls. Great, not meager, not reluctant, great is his steadfast love toward me and toward you. And David says, great is your steadfast love toward me. You've delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol. David's felt the pull and entanglements of death over and over again. And here he's facing it again. And he says, one thing I know, Lord, your character and your unchanging ways and your greatness, I can count on you. I can call upon you. I have memory, Lord, of your great work. I know what you've done. I know what you can do. At the end of the psalm, in verses 14 to 17, he returns to praying for deliverance and grace. He moves from verses 8 to 13, which were confessing and reflecting on the greatness and distinctiveness of God, and he returns to praying for deliverance and grace. He's coming full circle. That's the way Psalm 86 will feel. Coming back, it's like we're back now at where we started. Except here, he identifies a little more of the circumstances. Oh God, insolent men have risen up against me. A band of ruthless men seek my life. They don't set you before them. We're not given any other identification of these people. We just know what their demeanor is like. It's oppositional, adversarial. He calls them insolent, which means arrogant in a hostile way. They're not just like inwardly self-exalting, it leads to outward hostility and enmity. They're insolent toward him. There's a rudeness, a disrespect, a hatefulness that they're acting according to. He says, so these are the kinds of people that have risen up against me. Now, who's David? Well, David is king. He's the anointed one. We should hear Psalm 2 echoes. The nations have raged against the anointed one. David is not the Messiah, but he's the forerunner. Forerunner, not like John the Baptist, of course. I simply mean one who preceded as king and the one to whom God made the covenant promise in 2 Samuel 7, that I'll raise up one after you. And David says, well, what's happening with these insolent, arrogant men is they're, Lord, they're rising against your anointed one. They're coming against your king. and they're a band of ruthless men, they seek my life. They don't set you before them. That seems to echo Psalm 16, where David says, I have set the Lord always before me. It's an image of priority, of being preoccupied with something. It's not the periphery of one's life, it's not on the edges. You can't miss it. I've set it right in front of me. Put it right in front of me. You might have to operate like this from day to day sometimes. I'm gonna forget this if I don't put it right in front of me. Maybe sometimes we still don't see what's right in front of us. Lord help us. But nevertheless, David knows in Psalm 16, I've set you before me. I'm preoccupying my mind and my life with you. What about these wicked people? Well, one of the reasons they do what they do is because of a disjointedness in their hearts. They do not set you before them. They don't love you. They don't seek you. They're not preoccupied with praising you, serving you, trusting you. They have not set you before them. So they're doing all this foolish stuff and all these rebellious acts, and it's coming out of a heart de-centered from knowing God. They don't set you before them. David describes these circumstances, and what does he go right back to? It's so instructive. He goes right back to the character of God again in verse 15. But you, O Lord, what are you like? You are merciful. You are, God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Well, that's just coming right out of Exodus 34. You can't miss it. He's remembering. He doesn't know how all this is gonna resolve. These insolent men have risen against the anointed one. It's a scary situation. You'd understand the human dilemma of panic and fear and the sense of not knowing where this is gonna lead. So what he does is he begins to remember because he can't see everything clearly in front of him. But you see, remembrance is a kind of seeing. It's a kind of, remembrance is a kind of spiritual seeing. So David is seeing by faith here, trusting what he's remembering that's true of God. God, you are merciful and gracious. The circumstances being what they are, David is gonna rehearse and remember by faith to ground himself. You're slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Turn to me, be gracious to me, verse 16. So Lord, you're this God, in verse 15, be this God toward me, your people, your servant, your student. Teach me, preserve me, gladden me, unite my heart. Powerful petitions. Give your strength to your servant. It's important here in verse 16 that David doesn't believe that he has enough strength and willpower within himself He's not trying to motivate himself to get stronger and to be stronger and to perk up and chin up, David. He says, Lord, I need your strength. That's what I need. In my situation, Father, my strength will not suffice. Give your strength to your servant and save the son of your maidservant. A son of a maidservant would further reinforce the image of servitude or one who is devoted to an authority over them. And David here is poetically describing, again in verse 16, the truthfulness that though he is a king, he is a servant of Yahweh, who is Lord and God over all. He ends by saying, show me a sign of your favor, that those who hate me may see and be put to shame because of you, because you, Lord, have helped me and comforted me. This last verse is David looking for a sign that would be shaped like deliverance. A sign of your favor would look like those insolent men falling before the snares they thought they'd set for David. It would look like those ruthless people gathering against the anointed one, having all their plans brought to nothing. It's so that those who hate me, those ruthless, insolent men, that they would be put to shame. You see, they think they're so invincible. The wicked are so arrogant and they're so foolish and they're so fixated on the worldly powers that they wield. They think nothing will bring them down. And he says, Lord, would you teach them to? Would you bring them down, put them to shame? That their plans against me would fail. That they who hate me would be put to shame because you helped me and comforted me. David is looking for help and comfort ultimately from the Lord. His example is so instructive for us and a foreshadowing of the Lord Jesus. For the joy set before him, the Lord Jesus endured the cross as people sought his life. As Judas betrayed him, as people arrested him and ushered him away. Oh, truly there were insolent men who rose up against him, a band of ruthless men who sought his life. And some of them were religious leaders and Pharisees in Jerusalem. but the Lord delivers from the grave. David not only poetically hoped that, Jesus most ultimately and deeply fulfilled that. He is the one who in our place suffered, and in the day of his trouble took our sin upon himself, and yet was the servant of the Lord. A servant greater than Moses, greater than Joshua, greater than David, Jesus is the servant of Isaiah. He's the suffering servant, the one who would be crushed for our iniquities. The chastisement that would bring us peace was placed upon him. And the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all. We all like sheep had gone astray. Everyone to his own way. We were among the insolent and the ruthless. We were among those who would easily have risen against and called out, crucify that man. And we behold the wondrous compassion of the Lord in the gospel news, where the enemies of God are reconciled by grace. That he turns to us as sinners with graciousness and mercy, being slow to anger and abounding in love. The character of God has never been more fully and amazingly demonstrated than it has been in Jesus. And we can look at this and we can say, oh Lord, then gladden my soul, the soul of your servant. Unite my heart. Put it together, Lord. Give me a single-mindedness for You, a devotion to You. There is none like Christ. There is none like our Savior among all the pseudo-Saviors of the world that can do nothing and are nothing. There is Jesus. It is God alone. It is Christ alone. By His mercy and grace alone. When we read this psalm, One of the things we should pray is that the Lord would remind us of his great character, that would drive us to him with boldness and humility and eagerness, knowing that great is his steadfast love toward us. Great is his steadfast love toward you and toward me, because we have the message of a cross. And never has there been such a greatness of steadfast love demonstrated. Then when the Lord Jesus, between heaven and earth, bore our iniquities and said, it is finished. Let's pray.