Well, let us turn together in the Word of God to Psalm number sixty-five tonight. We want to focus our hearts on the God who hears our prayers as we come before him, especially to pray tonight. So, Psalm sixty-five. There's no volume, George, so I'm just going to have to speak loud. So psalm number sixty five. Let us hear together God's holy. And inspired words, a psalm of David. In which he says, praise is due to you, O God, and Zion and to you shall vows be performed. Oh, you who hear prayer to you shall all flesh come when iniquities prevail against me, you atone for our transgressions. Blessed is the one you choose and bring near to dwell in your courts. We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, the holiness of your temple. By awesome deeds, you answer us with righteousness, O God of our salvation, the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas. The one who, by his strength, established the mountains, being girded with might, who stills the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, the tumult of the peoples, so that those who dwell at the end of the earth are in awe at your signs. You make the going out the morning and the evening to shout for joy. You visit the earth and water it. You greatly enrich it. The river of God is full of water. You provide their grain. So you have prepared it. You water its furrows abundantly, settling its ridges, softening it with showers and blessing its growth. You crown the year with your your bounty. Your wagon tracks overflow with abundance. The pastures of the wilderness overflow. The hills gird themselves with joy. The meadows clothe themselves with flocks. The valleys deck themselves with grain. They shout and sing together for joy. Beloved, this is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. We've come together tonight, especially to pray. And I want to remind you that the early church, when they gathered together to pray in the book of Acts, as I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago in one of our sermons that we read after the church gathers to pray Acts chapter two, for example, we read this. The Lord added to the church daily those who are being saved. That was the result of the church's devotion to praying together. And again, in Acts chapter four, we read that after the church assembled to pray, quote, they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. And so I trust and pray that God will cause us to be a church like that as we leave tonight, having prayed in his presence. And meeting together for prayer, prayer meetings are joyful occasions. They are joyful exercises as the people of God. And, you know, here in Psalm 65, at the very beginning, you see there, it's called a Psalm of David, a song. And this song is described here in the very essence of it is Thanksgiving and praise. Praise is due to you, O God. In Zion, the very word praise that is used there, the same route to the word song. It is to give praise. It is to give thanks. It is to sing. It is to pray. Praise is due to you, O God, in Zion and to you shall vows be performed because praise is due to him because he's worthy of our praise. We are to offer him prayer and thanksgiving that is our vows, our promises, our devotion or dedication to him because he is worthy of our worship and notice in the rest of the song. He sees all one is a declaration of praise. This is a song of thanksgiving, but then you see in more detail in verses two, three and four that we praise God praises duty him for his great. Praises duty in verse five, the beginning of verse eight for his power. By awesome deeds, you answer us. with righteousness, the one who, by his strength, established the mountains and so forth. The latter half of verse eight at the end of the psalm, verse 13. It's a song of praise for his providence over all things in the world. He sends water, he sends rain, he causes rivers to flow, he causes grain to be abundant. Praise is due to our God because he is a God of redemption. He is a God of creation. He is a God of providence. He's a God over all things. He's a savior. He's a liberator. He's a redeemer, but he's also a powerful God. He's also a God who's in control of the God who oversees everything, even the very intricate details of life. He is in charge of our Lord himself, says that God himself even knows the members of the hair upon our heads. Praise is due to him. And this song sets forth his praise. Notice, focusing especially on verses two, three and four, the first part praising God for his grace. Here are three expressions of God's grace. We praise God for the blessing of hearing our prayers. Verse two, we praise him for forgiving our sins in verse three. We praise him that he fellowships with us in verse four. He draws us near. Blessed is the one you choose and bring near. to dwell in your courts, we shall be satisfied. And this song, just that little section versus two through four, it's like a rich feast for us, more than we can handle, one that we can eat in one sitting. So I want us just to sample, as it were, just verse two tonight and to reflect upon the praise that is due to the Lord himself, because he hears prayer. You see that verse two again. Oh, you who hear prayer. To you shall all flesh come. Now, no doubt you know that the Psalms are poems, poetry, and when you realize and understand something about poetry works, and especially here in the Old Testament, how Hebrew poetry works, oftentimes a line or a truth is Express, and then there's a line that comes after that, that gives more color to that, that adds to it, that defines it more specifically. And you see how the wonderful praise of God is set forth because he's called God in verse one. Praise is due to you, O God, in Zion. But then notice how verse two expresses who this God is. It defines for us what it is about him. That makes him so praiseworthy. He is the one who hears prayer. The one who hears prayer, this is the God that is being praised and the fact that he hears prayer is an attribute of him. It's a characteristic of who he is as God. And that's especially what I want us to focus on. That this is the very title for God himself. He is not only God and only Lord, but he is you who hear prayer. Notice, this is a glorious attribute of God. This is an attractive attribute of God. This is an encouraging attribute of God to us who assemble tonight to pray. May the Holy Spirit stir us up to pray to this God. Notice first that this is a glorious attributes of God himself to speak of God. Verse one is to speak of you who hear prayer. Matthew Henry, a great Puritan writer who wrote a great commentary in the whole Bible, said this about this title for God, he says it is much for the glory of God's goodness. And the encouragement of hours. that he is a God hearing prayer. It is for the glory of God's goodness that he is called you who hear prayer. It demonstrates his glory and it demonstrates his might and it demonstrates his power over all things, especially for us who believe. When we pray, brothers and sisters, we pray to a living God. This is what makes him glorious. over all the so-called gods of the nations of the world around us, all the so-called religions. Our God is alive and we know this because Jesus Christ is alive. And our God is a hearing God, his ears are ever open to the crying of his children, the Psalms say. And when we pray to him, it's as if we have face to face communion with him. He draws us near. We are satisfied with his goodness. We know that he answers us. And when the psalmist describes him as you who hear prayer, it's as if he's saying to us that when we pray, all we are asking for is that God would hear us. And that's all that matters to the psalmist David. We know he answers, we know that he desires, he delights, he commands our prayers, but all David says matters is that God hears. Whether he answers and how he answers and when he answers, those things are left to God. All that matters to the child of God is that God is alive and he hears. And so David himself is saying, all that we want is to know that the God who answers is our God. He's the living God of those who have a living faith. And all we want is for him to listen to us. And we know he'll sort it all out in the end. We don't know how he will answer and the ways and means the time, the reasons for answers, but we know he will eventually. All we care about, David says, is the fact that he hears us. And so Spurgeon once wrote of this song. If you delight more in God's gifts, he's speaking of prayer here is Spurgeon. If you delight more in God's gifts than in God himself, you are practically setting up another God above him. You care more about being heard by God or all the gifts that you want Do you care more about the actual act of prayer to a God, to adore him and to confess before him, to ask him all the needs that you have? Or is it the outcome that you want so bad? We must delight ourselves as we pray in God. Let us tonight focus on talking to him. Knowing he hears us. and just enjoying the fact that we know this. Enjoying his wonderful fellowship, he draws us near. He brings us to dwell in his courts. We shall be satisfied, he says, with the goodness of your house, the holiness of your temple. And so this is a glorious attribute of God that the God that we serve and love and know hears. He's alive. It's also an attractive attribute of God. It's because he is the God who hears prayer. We are told in second part of verse two to you shall all flesh come all the world. All other so-called gods are dead, are not alive, do not hear. So the psalmist says they have ears. Speaking of the idols, they have ears, but they do not hear. We have a God who is glorious in hearing. And his glory and hearing is beautiful to us. It is attractive to us. In our terms, in our modern terms, in terms of how we understand church, this means that we don't have to make God attractive. We don't need to make this image more palatable to people around us. We don't need to accommodate God to every particular whim and wish and need and desire of everyone around us. The fact that he is alive and that he hears prayer is attraction enough. And what we as those who know this to be true, how we should respond to this reality that he's the God who hears that all flesh shall come to him. He attracts the nations. What we need to concern ourselves with is this. That we need to pray that God would cause us by his grace and Holy Spirit. To live in such a way that reflects this attractiveness. That our consistent life before the world, our words that are seasoned with grace would make this God known. To the world. People can tell they can they can see it in us, they can hear it in our voice, whether or not our religion is just a formal exercise in the thing that we must do. Or, as I mentioned this morning, just a part of our life, just a little salt shaker that we can grab hold of whenever we want. People can see that in us. If religion and if Christ is merely just an add-on to our life, they can see that. We must pray that we would express in our lives the livingness of God. And that more and more our lives and our lips would reflect this glory of God. And that even through us, even through our weaknesses, the fact that we are still sinners through us, God's glory would reflect and attract the nations around us, the world, our neighbors, And so we must pray that this beauty of God, his attractiveness, his glory radiates from us more and more every day. Paul describes it by saying that the believer in Christ is being transformed from one degree of glory to another. And in Second Corinthians three, he describes that in terms of a metamorphosis that we are being changed and transformed from one form to another. From sinners who are saints, but yet sinners on earth to one day being saints only. We pray that God would make that known through us. to all around us and that they would know that we have a living relationship with the living God and a living Savior who hears our prayer. And that should encourage us, loved ones. This glorious God described here in terms of his power, that he by his strength establishes mountains, he stills the tumult of all the peoples. He himself visits the earth and waters it. Verse nine. All the nations shout and sing together for joy at his name, that glorious God is our God. That God has attracted us to himself by his grace is our God. We know he commands prayer. We know he desires our prayers. We know he delights in our prayers. But what we learn in this psalm is that because he's a God who hears, just hears, he encourages us in prayer. When we sin, verse three, When we sin, we are encouraged by this God who hears prayer to go to him in prayers of confession. When iniquities prevail against me, you atone for our transgressions. When we feel distant because of our sins and we desire to be closer to God, despite not feeling it, we are encouraged by this God who hears prayer to go to him in prayers of adoration. To fellowship with him. Blessed is the one you choose to bring near. When we are in need for tangible, emotional, spiritual needs. This God hears prayer, encourages us to lay it all out before his feet because he cares for us. He hears prayer. And even as Jesus teaches us, as we've seen recently in Matthew chapter six, even when it doesn't feel like he's hearing us, Jesus tells us to ask. We don't sense an answer to seek when it feels like our voice is echoing back to us as if God is not hearing. He says to knock, ask, seek, knock. He hears. He delights. He desires your prayers. And that's why we come together. To pray to God who hears us. To lay out all of our burdens before him, our desires, our aspirations of the church before his feet. Knowing he will hear, letting him figure it all out, solve the problems, give us the answers. We'll let him deal with that. But we just need to pray. We know that when we ask things of him that are according to his will in Jesus name, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we know that God is pleased to answer us. But we'll let him deal with the timing of that. We'll just ask. Let me conclude with another little citation from C.H. Spurgeon, great prince of preachers in the 19th century, he says this about And one of his addresses on prayer meetings, and I hope it encourages you and me as we go together to prayer. He says this. Let the minister himself set a very high value upon this means of grace, prayer, praying. Let him frequently speak of it as being dear to his own heart and let him prove his words by throwing all his vigor into it. Being absent as seldom as possible and doing all in his power to give an interest to the meeting. If our pastors of the ill example of coming in late, of frequently staying away or conducting the engagements in a drowsy, formal way, we shall soon hear people despising the exercise and forsaking the assembling of themselves together. God, brothers and sisters alive. He's in our midst. He's waiting with an open ear to hear our crimes. They pray that you would sense that life of God himself, that you were encouraged by the liveliness of our praying to pray even more. Amen.