So this morning, we find ourselves continuing in our series of messages from the Psalms. And if you would follow along with me, you can turn to your pew Bibles to page 584. We'll be looking at Psalm 86 and using all 17 verses of that Psalm for our text for this morning. If you're able, would you, out of reverence and respect for the reading of God's inerrant, infallible, and inspired word, please stand with me. A prayer of David. Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy. Preserve my life, for I am godly. Save your servant who trusts in you. You are my God. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for to you do I cry all the day. Gladden the soul of your servant, for to you, O Lord, do I lift up my soul. For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you. Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer. Listen to my plea for grace. In the day of my trouble I call upon you, for you answer me. There is none like you among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like yours. All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord, and shall glorify your name. For you are great and do wondrous things. You alone are God. Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth. Unite my heart to fear your name. I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart, and I will glorify your name forever, for great is your steadfast love toward me. You have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol. O God, insolent men have risen up against me. A band of ruthless men seeks my life, and they do not set you before them. But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Turn to me and be gracious to me. Give your strength to your servant and save the son of your maidservant. Show me a sign of your favor that those who hate me may see and be put to shame, because you, Lord, have helped me comforted me." This is the Word of God. May He bless it to our hearts. Please be seated. So Psalm 86 that's before us this morning is unique among the Psalms in this third book of the Psalter because it is the only book in Book 3 that is attributed to David. Otherwise, the Psalms are essentially primarily Psalms of Asaph or Psalms from the sons of Korah with one addition from a single author at the end in Psalm 89. The Psalter does not seem to be just a haphazard collection of random Psalms just picked casually and just kind of tossed into the mix. It seems that there is evidence of very careful and intentional editing and arranging of the Psalms in order to place particular Psalms in particular places, settings. Some have wondered why and how we find a Psalm of David placed here. in this third book of the Psalter, which is looking at a time many, many years, hundreds of years after David has passed, when the kingdom is now divided and in fact has been in such continuous sin against God that he is bringing close to final judgment upon them through the violence and oppression, even desolation at the hands of foreign enemies. This is one of the Psalms by David where he doesn't identify a particular reason why he's written this psalm. This isn't one that's listed as when Absalom, his son, was pursuing him, or when he was in the caves, or when he was being faced by the Philistines. We just don't know what the circumstances were. But you see, that lack of specificity about why he wrote it actually, in a sense, allows it to be very readily used by almost anyone. by anyone who has a godly heart in order to guide the prayerful heart cry of anyone who is facing some terrible distress and in need of God's mercy and help, his steadfast love and grace. Now its location here in this setting may be to express the fear that as the northern and southern kingdoms are being so terribly oppressed and even destroyed by these foreign enemies, that the line of David through whom the Messiah would come, the promise was made through David, that that line may be utterly wiped out in all of this violence and that the promise may then not come true. And so it may be seen as, even though written by David for a different time, it may be seen as taking David's prayer on their own lips in order to pray that God would not allow that to happen. Now, to examine this psalm today, I'm going to borrow, essentially, another commentator, Derek Kidner's simple three-point outline for it. I'm changing the verses he uses for it a little bit, but the first section he calls the suppliant, the one who's making supplication, and that we'll find in verses 1 through 4. The second section he calls the sovereign. And we'll be looking at that in verses 5 through 13. And finally, in the closing verses, 14 to 17, we'll be looking at the scornful who are opposing David in this psalm. So first the suppliant. Notice that in the first verses, David is focused on certainly God, and yet he is talking to a great degree about himself. In the opening line of the introduction to his famous and major work, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin said this, nearly all wisdom we possess, that is to say true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts, the knowledge of God and of ourselves. Now, Calvin's point in saying that to have true wisdom, we needed to have knowledge of ourselves, wasn't that Calvin was suggesting that what we needed was what so many people say today, that we need to get in touch with our inner selves. And that we need to figure out what we feel, and what we need, and how we're going to do all of that. Now Calvin's point is much different from that when he talks about knowledge of ourselves. His point was that true wisdom comes by recognizing who and what God truly is, and then in the light of who and what God truly is, looking at ourselves and realizing who we truly are and what we're truly like, that we're not God, that we are far below and far less glorious and even sinful and corrupt in comparison to this great God. In this psalm, David helpfully demonstrates I would say for all who would take this prayer of his sincerely upon their own lips and hearts, he demonstrates, I think, a very wise approach in how to come to God in order to seek his mercy and his grace, his steadfast love that we've been singing about and reading about this morning. From the very first line, this prayer is approaching God, and you hear this from me a lot, but it's because it is so basic to it. David in this first line even is approaching God on the basis of the gracious covenant that God made with not only the people of Israel as a whole, but made specifically through David that a seed of his, one of his descendants would sit upon his throne and be established on that throne forever and would bring a reign of righteousness and blessing. We see that because David, in that first line, calls upon Lord. Notice all capital letters, the covenant name of God, Yahweh. You're gonna see a different Lord in a number of places, 12, I think, scattered throughout this psalm. But here he is calling on his covenant God to turn his ear toward him. And he wants him to do that so that he can hear his prayer. But notice that David just doesn't want God to just hear and listen to his prayer. We find that often, don't we? We go to somebody to sort of unburden our hearts to them, and we want them to do something about what we're feeling, and we tell them all about it, and they sort of listen to us, but when it's all over, they turn around and say, yeah, you know what's going on with me lately, and they just run right by us, and they go right on to the next thing, and we find no help in that at all. That isn't what David wants. What David wants here is for God not just to listen, but to answer him. Why should God hear and answer his prayer? Well notice he gives a number of for statements all throughout this song. For is because, this is why I'm asking you to do it God. It is for, it's because I am, notice he doesn't say I'm the mighty king anointed by you reigning over all these people of yours and I'm the one you promised to fulfill all the, David says I am needing you to hear and answer me because I'm poor and I'm needy. He's humble, in other words. Remember the beatitude Jesus gave in Matthew 5. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Doesn't mean people who don't have money. He means people who are humble, people who don't exalt themselves, people who understand their place, their status in God's presence. For theirs is the kingdom of God. Well, David is coming to God as one of those poor in spirit. He is humble. He's in great need. He is oppressed. The words that he uses here indicate that he is oppressed and even overwhelmed by his great need. And so he calls on God to preserve his life, to protect his life. You see the word soul here in some of your translations. Some of you may see light. The word is the same. It is, you can translate it as either soul or life or even your being, the essence of who you are. God preserve me. Now you might think that David is giving a hint of being proud and presumptuous here when he says you should do this because I am godly. But the truth is that that word godly really refers to one who is loyal to, faithful to God. In other words, he's again speaking about the covenant. You're my covenant God and I am one of those people who is devoted to you, loyal to you, faithful follower of you. That's one reason why you should hear and answer my prayer. It's a covenant kind of word. And notice how David defines it when he says that, that I am godly. I am one loyal to you. He says, I am one of your servants. Not I'm the great king. I'm one of your servants, one who trusts in you, he says. And then notice how he finishes it. You are my God. Covenant. What was God's promise in the covenant? I will be your God and you will be my people. That's what David is saying here. I'm your people and you are my God. Remember the terms of the covenant, God. Also, when you hear David approaching God in this way, remember that all throughout scripture, God describes himself as both the protector and the provider of and for the poor and the needy, the helpless and the oppressed. David is putting himself before God as the very person that God should be most inclined to hear and answer. But notice he doesn't call on God to do all of this because he deserves it. He doesn't come to God and say, I'm one of your people, you made a covenant, you owe me this, come and do what you said you would do. That is, after all, much of what we hear in a lot of the preaching and sort of church culture in our world today is this idea of sort of name it and claim it. God has made promises to you. They're yours. And by golly, when you want them, you need to go to him and say, God, you promised, give it to me. Name it and claim it. Does David seem to know anything about a name it and claim it approach to God and his promises? Just look at and listen to how he approaches God. He doesn't demand anything from God. He asked God to be gracious, to be merciful to him. Grace is something that's undeserved, that's given despite the fact that you don't deserve it. He can't demand it. Even though it's in the covenant, he can only ask and hope for the mercy and grace God has promised to give. What reason or encouragement does he offer to God to be gracious and merciful to him? He reminds God, I'm not a person that you are simply an afterthought for. My heart and my mind are constantly focused on you. You're not the last resort I turn to when everything else I can do fails, O God. I don't just throw up a brief whispered prayer to you when I'm in distress and then run on to do more important things. Notice what he says. Please do this for me because I cry to you all day long, he says. That word can also mean not just all day long, but all the days. I'm always crying out to you. And notice, understandable, In his great distress, David is feeling anything but glad and joyful. Right? Obviously. How many of us feel glad and joyful when we're under great distress? Notice the request he makes of God. Gladden my soul. Gladden my life. Do you ever feel like you need someone, God, to come along and just put some joy and gladness into your life? That everything just seems dark and despairing? David doesn't mind turning to God and saying, Lord, gladden my soul. Why should you do that again? Notice what he says. Because I lift up my soul, all of me, to you. I belong to you, and I'm lifting it all up before you and trusting you with me. Again, this isn't just a historical song. Is that us? Do we approach God this way in prayer? Do we approach him in terms of the covenant that he's established with us, reminding him of what he's promised and reminding ourselves of what we are to give to him in terms of obedience and love and adoration? Do we see him as the one who provides everything for us? Do we see ourselves as undeserving and needing his mercy and grace? And most of all, do we really, really ever lift up our entire selves to him? Even infrequently, let alone all the day and all the days. We should keep this approach of David's in mind as we are approaching God for our own periods and times of distress. So we finish with those first four verses, we move on to the Sovereign in verses 5 through 13. Why should someone like David cry out to God all day, every day, lift up his entire being to him, and why should God listen and respond to those supplications in this prayer of his? In the first four verses, David described himself We should understand it this way. He described himself in terms of his relationship to God. Compared to you, I'm poor and needy, but I'm your servant and you're my God. Now in verses 5 to 13, he turns his focus and he's not so much talking about his need, although you still see that in the first couple of verses in this section. They're transitional. But what he really is speaking about in these verses now is his own personal knowledge of who and what God is. And as he examines what he knows about God, it answers those questions of why God should hear and answer and why David should be crying out to him. See, again, we can go back to that phrase where he said that he was godly and that that's one reason why God should hear him and answer him. In calling himself godly, is David trying to imply that he's morally perfect and therefore deserving of God's help? Well, if you really read the psalm, that's manifestly not the case. See how he begins his description of God and his character in these verses. He first declares that God is good. That can be just understood as good, but it also sort of means kind, pleasant, friendly. You know what other meaning that word carries, though? It can also mean joyous. Is that perhaps a reason why David is asking God to gladden my soul as I lift my whole self to you? Why? Because I lift myself to you because you're joyous and I'm not. Give your joy. Gladden my heart. He also, though, says to God that God is forgiving. Why does David bring that up here in the middle of all these pleas when he's in such a desperate situation and needs God's help? Why does he mention that God is forgiving? Well, it's obviously because David understands that he needs forgiveness. Even as he comes to God, he doesn't come morally pure and able to make any claim on God. He comes as a sinner in need of grace. Again, look back to Psalm 51 that we read as our response of reading. David understood his sinfulness. Against you and you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight. See, also notice that in contrast to his own admission that he is in great want and very needy, notice how he describes the Lord. The Lord isn't in want or needy of anything. The Lord is abundant. and he's abundant in exactly what David needs, steadfast love. Steadfast love for all those who call upon him, David says. People like David and people like us who are in need, and we know that God is abundant in steadfast love for those who call upon him. He's urging God to listen to my prayer, listen to my plea for grace, for mercy. See, this is why a man like David calls upon God in the day of his trouble. He already said, it's because God answers me. Why does God answer me? Because that's who God is. He's the God who is in covenant relationship with his people, and particularly in this situation with David. He has promised to do this. It's his character. David talks about all the other gods here. He seems to be considering all the other so-called gods that the people of the nations around Israel are worshiping. And sadly, in fact, many of the people within Israel are also worshiping these so-called gods. Maybe, in fact, David is even considering some things that aren't necessarily idols or actual, quote, gods, but things that people care about so much that they worship them rather than worshiping God. They mean more to them in their hearts than God does. What David says is that among the gods, there is none who can compare to you. You are at the very top. He talks about the works that God has, that there are none like them, and in this situation works here probably means the things that God has made. Well what has God made? Everything. Remember Jonah when he's out in the boat in the middle of the storm about to perish and the sailors want to know, what is this God? Who is this God that you serve? And Jonah says, well, you can't get away from him because he doesn't get confined to one area. He's the God who made heaven and earth. There's nowhere to run. And that's when the sailors got really distressed because they realized that this God made all of heaven and all of earth. He is God. And that's what David is saying here. These other gods haven't made anything. They're false. They're delusions. If anything, they're demonic. They've made nothing, but God has made everything. There are no works like yours. In making the covenant with Abraham back in Genesis, God had promised him that in him, through him, and through his seed, this promised seed of the woman that had come, that promise through Adam and so on, he had promised him that through him all the nations of the earth would be blessed. Much of Israel seems to have forgotten that promise, but David doesn't forget that promise. You notice that here in this psalm? As he talks about all of your works, that there are none like them, he says, all the nations, notice, that you have made, your works, all the nations that you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord, and shall glorify your name. Though these nations are at present attacking David, And in this later generation, as another generation takes David's prayer on the lips, those nations are attacking Israel, northern and southern kingdom, and trying to destroy them. Yet God's promise still comes forward. Those nations one day are going to turn from attacking God's people and instead are going to become God's people. They're going to come and worship before him and glorify his name. Why would they do that? How would they be brought to a point where instead of attacking and hating they would worship God? Notice what David says, for you are great and you do wondrous things. This is no longer talking about God's works that he makes. Doing wondrous things is talking about what God does, the actions he takes, and most particularly his acts of salvation to and for his people. God is going to do wondrous things that will cause the nations to turn to Him and to worship and glorify Him. Now when we come to verse 11 in this psalm, we find a couple of connections with the previous psalm we just looked at, Psalm 85. And that could be part of the reason why whoever it was that edited the order of the Psalms placed this one where they did. That 85th Psalm ended with the assurance that when God showed his steadfast love to his people by saving them, by reviving them, by bringing them back to life again, that he would give them what is good. and that his righteousness would go before him, and that righteousness would make his footsteps a path for them to follow and walk in. Well, look at what David prays for in verse 11. He prays again to his covenant Lord, Yahweh, Lord, teach me your way. Why? So that I may walk in your truth. You see, David is asking for the very thing that God had promised in Psalm 85 that he was going to do for his people when he saved and revived them. Teach me your way that I may walk in your truth and not go astray like we always do, right? That's our tendency. That's the tendency of a heart that is still pressured by that sinful nature is always to turn away from God and go astray instead of walking in his way and in his truth. David wants to be taught and led. We all need to be taught God's way, and we all need him to help us walk in that way of his truth. Also in Psalm 85 verse 9, the psalmist there was confident of something. Remember he said, God's salvation is surely near to those who fear him. Notice now in verse 11 of this 86 Psalm, David prays that God would do something interesting. Unite my heart to fear your name. Unite my heart? Why would a heart need united? It's all one piece in there, isn't it? Obviously Dave is not talking about the organ that pumps blood. Dave is talking about his inner self, his soul, his life, his being. United to fear your name. Why is it you need united? Because in our fallen state with the old nature still remaining in us, we are never fully focused on God and his glory and his honor and what we should do for him and how glorious he is. Our hearts and minds are led to all kinds of other things. We are easily distracted and drawn away, even to these other gods that David has mentioned earlier. David wants God to work in him so that his heart becomes fully focused upon God. It reminds us when Jesus is asked, what is the first and greatest commandment? You shall do what? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. That's what David is asking for. I can't do it. Lord, unite my heart. to fear your name. We also see evidence of this in other places in scripture. You go into the book of Romans, Paul's great epistle there in Romans, and you go to the seventh chapter, and there's this part in verses 15 to 25 where Paul starts talking about, I don't know what's going on here. The things I want to do, obey God and obey the law, I can't do, but the things I don't want to do, sin, I keep doing them. I find, he says, there's actually a law inside of me that when I try to do what's right, I end up doing what's sinful instead. There is this law, he says, in my flesh, in my sinful part of me, that is warring against my spirit, trying to lead me into sin against God constantly. He even says at the end, wretched man that I am, who is going to deliver me from this body of death? I thank God through Christ Jesus, our Lord, that I find that deliverance. He ends up concluding, but Paul even in the New Testament recognized this divided heart. Unite my heart. that I would fear your name." We talked earlier about wisdom and what true wisdom is. Remember again, I said this last week, Proverbs 9.10 says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Unite my heart to fear your name. It's also interesting that the prophet Jeremiah, God speaks through him in chapter 32 verses 39 and 40 of that prophet, and he talks about a time when he will fully and finally restore his people, revive, restore. Listen to what he says to them. I put this in your bulletin in the inside cover, both Paul's passage and this one. I will give them, God says, one heart and one way. Why? That they may fear me forever. And verse 40, I will put the fear of me in their heart that they may not turn away from me. You hear the promise God is going to bring to pass in the new covenant when he fully restores his people? You're not going to have to, well we are now, we won't when it's finally consummated, ask for a united heart because God is going to give us finally a united heart. He's going to put his spirit within us. He's going to put his fear in us because we can't generate that on our own as sinful people. It needs to be God who does it with us and for us. Only then will we, with his fear in our hearts, be able to not turn away from him. And notice after all of these pleas, David now becomes absolutely confident in his covenant God and in his promises so that right now, not in the future when God answers him, but right now he says, I give thanks to you, not a little bit until I see if you do what I'm asking you to do, I give thanks to you with my whole heart right now. And I will glorify you, not just now, but forever. Forever. Why is he going to do this? Because he knows and he has experienced God's steadfast love toward him. And as he's reviewed all this, it has renewed his confidence and assurance in his God and his purposes toward him. He even says that he either has been or will be literally delivered from death, from the grave, from Sheol. That's the sovereign that David serves and the sovereign that he comes to to find his soul gladdened and to find mercy and grace. But now we come to the final passage in verses 14 to 17, what I've called the scornful, and notice that it is now at this point After David has made his humble supplications out of his very poor and needy condition and made those to his good and gracious covenant Lord, it is only now at the end of this prayer that he finally turns to inform God of what the real problem is for him, what the real threat is. Notice he doesn't start out in verse 1 saying, God, I got a bunch of men who want to kill me. I need your help. He first talks about who he is and his relationship to God and who God is and God's relationship to him. And now he comes to God and tells him about those who are so seriously afflicting him. This is an evidence of that self-discipline David has to hold back this great need until he has first addressed those more essential things. And notice as he talks about these men who are coming against him, afflicting him, notice he doesn't describe them as, he described himself, as humble servants of the Lord. They are instead, the word you have there might be different depending on translations, that you're insolent men, arrogant men. They're people who are proud and stand in their own strength and their own might. And we know that that's what he has in mind here, because though David is God's chosen one and his anointed one, they have chosen to rise up against David. They're not content with just displacing him, with just hurting him, pushing him aside. They want to kill him. David has described himself as one of God's loyal servants who trusts in God, who cries out to him all the day, who lifts up his entire being to him, who desires God to unite his heart to fear God's name, but that's not what these insolent, scornful, arrogant men who are against him are doing. Notice how David describes them. They do not set God before their eyes. They don't have any consideration for you, God. You heard who I am. These men are not doing anything righteous here. They aren't doing anything for your glory or for your name. They are attacking me as the wicked. This idea that they don't set God before their eyes, let alone in their hearts, means that they're among those that are identified in Psalm 36, in verse 1 of Psalm 36. Transgression speaks to the wicked deep in his heart. It's embedded, sinfulness and wickedness is embedded in the wicked deep in his heart. And that verse ends by saying, there is no fear of God before their eyes. That's what David's saying. I'm asking you to unite my heart to fear your name. These people don't have any fear of you in their hearts before their eyes anywhere at all. These are the wicked, Lord. And so now in this deadly conflict that he is having with these wicked men who want to kill him, destroy him, David turns with absolute confidence to the God who has entered into this gracious covenant with him. And again, we know he's thinking about the covenant because of the way he addresses God now in verse 15 of this psalm. You may not have remembered this from the previous psalm, but we looked at this then. In verse 15, David literally quotes essentially word for word what God said to Moses on Mount Sinai as he was preparing to make that important covenant with the people of Israel to be their God and for them to be his people. And he turns to Moses and he says exactly what David has here in verse 15. I am the Lord, a God who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. That's me, is what God says. That's who I am. That's what I'm like. And in fact, it's what I do. David is again reminding God, you are the faithful covenant God. You declared this when you established your covenant, and I'm calling on you to be that for me now in my time of need as one of your covenant people. In fact, you're anointed one within the covenant. This is the threat I face, oh God, but you, oh Lord, are all of this. This threat is nothing to you. And notice David doesn't ask God for vindication because he's perfectly morally holy and doesn't have any sin before God. Again here, he asked God for mercy, for grace, the very thing that we all need. It has been well said that you never go to God and ask him for what you deserve. Because if you ask him for what you deserve and he gives it, you'll spend eternity in hell. We go to God and we ask him for mercy and grace. Also notice that David doesn't come to God and ask him that he will make David's strength what he needs to win the day. Instead he comes to God and says, God, give me your strength. Mine isn't good enough. I'm weak. I need your strength. And then he goes on to say, save the son of your maidservant. Now, I understand that in scripture people will often use that kind of phrase, but it's interesting that David brings that up here, because actually we don't know anything about David's mother. We know his father's Jesse, but we don't really know anything about his mother. And yet, save the son of your maidservant. Wonder if it is perhaps an echo of that promised salvation that God said would come through what? The seed of the woman, the son of your maidservant, which David represents, and through him, that son, that promised seed is to come. And you see, in this time, so long after David's death, when conditions in Israel are so much different, these troubled times that these people are facing in Book 3 They are taking David's prayer on their lips and in their hearts, and they're using it to encourage them and also to seek God's mercy on them in their desperate states. And we can do the very same thing. Do you ever pray the Psalms? When you're wanting to pray and you don't know the words to use, do you ever open up the Psalter and turn to some favorite Psalms and actually say, Lord, you said this. Lord, if you want to know how I feel, I can't put it in words, but David did a really good job with it here. This is what I feel like. It's perfectly biblical for you to do that. God calls on you to hide my word in your heart that you might not sin against me, right? We're to use God's word. Use the Psalms to pray in your own distress and ask for God's mercy. Now the honest truth is that David in this psalm doesn't seem to have intended to write a psalm about the Messiah. This isn't like an explicitly messianic psalm. And yet if we look at this psalm with what I would call New Testament eyes, we may actually see that Christ is the fulfillment of David's plea for God's mercy, for God to hear and to save. Think about in light of what we heard in this psalm, what we've been talking about. Hebrews chapter 5 verse 7 says about Jesus, in the days of his flesh, when he lived in this world, Jesus offered up, just like David, his prayers and supplications with loud cries, crying out to God and tears, and he lifted those up to him who was able to save him from death. Exactly what David said God has done for him and would do for him, save him from Sheol. And then that verse finishes with this. He lifted those up to him who was able to save him from death and he was heard. Why? Because of his reverence. Because of the fear he had of God in his heart and before his eyes. His total focus on God and his glory and pleasing him. Now you might say, well save his soul from death, he actually died. Yes, though he had to die for our sins, God did deliver his soul, his life from Sheol, from the grave. He resurrected him, brought him back to life again. And as he hung on that cross, suffering God's wrath for those hours, it was God's strength that sustained him. It wasn't Christ's. He couldn't even carry the cross piece all the way to Golgotha. It was God's strength that sustained him. He was the son of God's maidservant. I believe Mary actually uses that word as she is giving her Magnificat as she responds in glorious praise to God for the privilege that's been granted to her. He was the seed and is the seed of the woman who was promised. And because of all of this, in Hebrews chapter 5 and verse 9, the author of that book goes on to say, not only did God hear him and answer him because of his reverence, but he also became the source of salvation for all who obey him. Save God? Christ is the one who saves. God's people, all of them. Christ is the one who came to teach us God's way as David prays for. Teach me your way. Jesus came to do exactly that and to teach us how to walk in God's truth. We went through Matthew. How did he focus on how to live as a citizen of the kingdom of heaven? But he went beyond that. He gave us his Holy Spirit to indwell us in order to be the beginning of the fulfillment of that promise God made in Jeremiah 32, 39, that I will put the fear of me in them. I will give them one heart and one way so that they will not turn away from me. You see, we don't fail to turn away from God because we're especially holy, good people. We are fully and finally eternally kept from ever fully and finally turning away from God only because of God's grace. Jesus is the sign of God's favor David asked for. He is the one who has put all of our enemies to shame. And finally, he's also one other thing. When you look at verse 15, God's description of who he is Jesus Christ is the ultimate proof of the infinite truthfulness of God's description of himself in that verse. But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, didn't destroy his people, but instead abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness to us in Christ. I don't know if you read or sing the Psalms at all, but one day, When that promise is fulfilled, we're going to sing along with David the praises of him who has allowed us to experience all the mercy and grace and steadfast love and faithfulness of God through all the infinite blessings that are ours in Christ. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your steadfast love and mercy and grace that you've shown to us in your Son. We thank you that it wasn't he who had to persuade you to stop being angry at us and instead to show mercy and grace and your steadfast love, but instead it was out of your steadfast love that you sent your Son, and that you gave us your Spirit. We pray that, like David, you would unite our heart to fear your name, that you would lift us up to you and gladden our souls, that You would save us, and let us know Your mercy, grace, and steadfast love. We pray these things in Christ's name and for His sake, Amen.