Let me begin this evening by reading from Psalm number 80, after which I'll give a brief exhortation about prayer tonight, and then we'll join our hearts together in singing prayers from the Psalms as well as speaking prayers to the Lord. So to begin with, Psalm number 80, a wonderful song that expresses the desire of God's people for the Lord himself. and the things that we need to lift up before Him tonight. Psalm 80. Give ear, O shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock, you who are enthroned upon the chair of him. Shine forth before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh. Stir up your might and come to save us. Historis, O God, let your face shine that we be saved. O Lord God of hosts, how long will you be angry with the prayers of your people? You have fed them with the bread of tears and given them tears to drink in full measure. You make us an object of contention for our neighbors and our enemies laugh among themselves. Restore us, O God of hosts. Let your face shine that we may be saved. You brought a vine out of Egypt. You drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it. It took deep root and filled the land. The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches. It sent out its branches to the sea, and its shoots to the river. Why then have you broken down its walls, so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit? The boar from the forest ravages it, and all that move in the field feed on it. Turn again, O God of hosts. Look down from heaven and see. Have regard for this vine, the stalk that your right hand planted. And for the son whom you made strong for yourself, they have burned it with fire, they have cut it down. May they perish at the rebuke of your face. But let your hand be on the man of your right hand, the son of man whom you have made strong for yourself. Then we shall not turn back from you. Give us life and we will call upon your name. Restore us, O God of hosts. Let your face shine that we may be saved. Well, not especially here this evening, just verse number 14, which is really the heart and the crux of the whole song, which says, again, turn again, O God of hosts, look down from heaven and see have regard for this vine. And notice very briefly three things about that little prayer, the heart of the prayer in Psalm number 80. First of all, notice Israel's sin. They have to cry out to the Lord to turn back towards them and for him to look upon them, to have regard, to visit them literally, as the psalmist says, because of their sin. And the question is, which sin or what sin? The answer is you see in Psalm number 79, as well as Psalm number 80, where the psalmist of these two psalms are lamenting the fact that the Israelites have broken the covenant with God. And because of that, they are now in exile. They're outside the land of promise. The Assyrians had devastated the land, the promised land, especially the northern kingdom of the Israelites. And so their sins led to their being punished and their being disciplined. And while we don't find ourselves in the same situation as the Israelites, the same idea applies in terms of this. that we have no one to blame but ourselves for our experiencing of a sense of distance from God, a sense of laziness that we feel at times as Christians, our sense of weak spiritual growth and our lack of zeal for the Lord himself. There's no one to blame, of course, for our sins, but us. Secondly, notice Israel's solution. So they were in a situation in which they acknowledge their sins. And then they also acknowledge that only solution for their sins is the Lord himself, the shepherd of Israel, invoking the language of Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd, the one who's enthroned between the cherubim on the ark of the covenants, invoking the presence of God in the holy place where God met with his people. He's the God of hosts. He's the God of all the armies of heaven that alone could destroy the Assyrian. And it's true that as we see here, we learn the lesson from this, that they are in their prayer. They're seeking God himself. There are many today and maybe we might feel the same way that we might seek for God to restore or to revive or to renew, to reform his church or us as families or as individuals. But all too often, we don't seek the Lord. We seek the experience. We seek the results. not the Lord himself. And so they weren't looking for the subjective. They were looking for God himself. Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, as the psalmist begins. And what were they looking for the Lord to do? Notice they want him, especially verses 3, 7 and 19, to turn the Lord, to turn himself to them. They want the face of God to shine upon them in grace and in favor. Restore us, O God. Restore us, O God of hosts. Again, verse 19. Restore us, O Lord, God of hosts. We see in their prayer here that they acknowledge in their sins that the only way that they can turn back to God is if God Himself turns them. But our verse in verse 14, notice, says something a little bit different than that. Again, verse 3, 7 and 19. Pray, restore us, O God. So asking God to turn the hearts of us as a sinful people that we would turn back to him in true repentance. But in verse 14, it's turn again, O God of hosts. God is the one who is to turn the Israelites are praying for God, especially and primarily that he would no longer have his back to them. and his face against them, but his face towards them in mercy and in love and in grace. Restore to us the very faith and presence of God. The solution for our sins and our lack of growth and our weaknesses as Christians, the solution, the answer is the Lord himself, that he would turn himself to us and bless us. And finally, notice Israel's supplication. What was the means that God used to turn His people's hearts back to God? The means that God used for God to turn His face back to them? The answer is prayer. If we want God to make His face to shine upon us, to turn His face to us, to have regard, to visit us with His blessing, then we need to pray. We have not because we ask not, as Jesus said. Prayer doesn't change God, it changes us. Prayer doesn't bend God's will, it bends our wills towards his. And in God's mysterious counsel and providence and purpose, he has purposed to use our prayers that he would then turn his face to us and to bless us. And so as we gather this evening, let us stand before the face of the Lord, humbly confessing our sins, seeking our only help and solution, the Lord himself, and offering before Him ourselves and our supplications. As one commentator said in one wonderful line about this psalm, he said this, God, it seems, prefers an excess of boldness in prayer to an excess of caution. He wants us to pray that He would turn to us and bless us. And so let us come with boldness before the throne of grace this evening and pray, turn again, O God of hosts. Look down from heaven and see. Have regard for this vine. Amen.