about the middle and Psalm 86, please. Psalm 86 and the time that remains. It remains to be seen how much time that is. I generally try to knock off at noon, but hey, there are 17 verses of pure gold. We need to peruse a little bit in Psalm 86. Psalm 86 is a prayer of David, and it's a great example of what we've been talking about in Wednesday night study on prayer in the New Testament. It's also a great example of a Psalm that you can pray because if you read it, it's in the second person, you O God. And before I get started, I wanna actually show you a method for doing what I'm gonna do, what I'm gonna show you today. The kind of work that you have to do with the Psalms or any Hebrew poetry. No. Yep. Okay. Yeah, you can see that. Here's what I put it on. At first I translated it, and that's challenging. And then I put it into a Word document. And it's 17 verses, which is a good chunk of Hebrew poetry. 17 verses in English is, you know, 34 half verses or hemi sticks or whatever. And so I color code the pieces so I can start observing patterns. And I could not figure out the structure of this song until I did this. And when I read it in English and I read in English, I'll never get the structure because it was not written in English. And it's a song that would be sung. It's a prayer, but it's a prayer that would be sung as a song. And that is very intriguing to me. That's why such an emphasis here on music, on real music. because so much of the Bible is about music, even though we don't have the composition. But here's what I want to show you. Everything in red in the first five verses, I'll read it. Incline, Lord, your ear. Answer me, for poor and needy am I. Guard my soul, for faithful am I. Save your servant, you my God, the one who trusts in you. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for to you I will cry out all the day. Make glad the soul of your servant, for to you, Lord, my soul I lift up. For you, Lord, are good and ready to forgive, having great love and kindness for all who cry out to you. I contend that this is your first, the first five verses are their own stanza. And I know that because of the way the structure works out from looking at the rest of it, but here's the way I have to go. First of all, What is in red are all the commands, all the things that I'm making my petitions to God, the things I want God to do. I want him to incline his ear. I want him to answer. I want him to guard or keep my soul. I want him to save me. I want to be gracious to me, to be glad, to make me glad. These are all the things that he's asking for. And I, after looking at this, believe there is a close connection between Psalm 86 and the first few verses of Matthew chapter five, we call the Beatitudes. because he's painting the picture of himself. Then we have a portrait of the happy man or the blessed man in Matthew chapter five, then the Beatitudes, the poor in spirit and so forth. The other thing that jumps out at me as I study this is the evocative case or the evocative of address. And you say, I don't want to hear all these technical grammatical terms. Well, I do. I don't either, but it's in the text. So I have to say it. When I speak to you and I talk to you in general, I speak to you, but when I speak to you, Seth, I'm now talking to you like in a personal way that's a little bit different, right? I've called you out. I've named you. David does this all through this Psalm more than anything I've ever seen. where he is addressing God and says, you oh Lord, is how the new American standard will say it. He'll name him and he calls him Yahweh. He calls him Yahweh in the first verse, incline your ear. He calls him my God Elohi in verse two. He calls him Adonai in verse three. and Adonai most of the time through here. And very often you'll have the pronoun that is not necessary, but it's a standalone pronoun, you, Lord. And so it's very personal. Psalm 86 is a very personal way and a very engaging way of calling on the Lord. He literally is calling on him by name in a way, it happens all through the Bible, but in a very explicit way, many times, repetitively through the text. One of the Bible study method, little things you'll learn is, When there's repetition in a passage, something important is being emphasized. Now what's in green? While we're trying to, on the screen behind me, what's in green? It's kind of small up there, let me make it bigger. Poor and needy am I, faithful am I, one who trusts, I'll cry it all day, my soul I lift up. What is that? That's David's self-description. It's who he is and what he's doing. It's the way he reflects on himself. So I want you to notice the interchange that's all through here. What I want you to do, what I am. What I want you to do, who I am. Save your servant, in verse 2b, I'm the one that trusts in you. Be gracious to me, for I'll cry out to you all day. It's like, I want you to do this in the relationship, and this is who I'm being in the relationship. You see the comparison? There's no better way, I think, in the Old Testament to demonstrate a personal relationship with God, where he's talking to God and he's interacting with God and it's back and forth between who he is and who God is. Now, verses 6 through 17 don't do this. The topics change. So you don't have the same structure, but it's just very tight in the first five verses. And then notice that we have, look, we have these commands or these urgent requests. Incline your ear, keep my soul, save your servant, be gracious to me, make glad the soul of your servant. Then look here. For you, Lord, are good and ready to forgive, having great love and kindness for all who cry out to you. Now, the second one, for all who cry out to you is something David is doing. So you could say, well, that should be green, but it's not because he didn't say, I'm doing this. This is a summary of David extolling the essence, the attributes of God. And he calls out God in terms of his goodness, his desire standing by to forgive. Remember who's speaking here. This man had a lot that God had to forgive at times. And so it puts the lie, for example, just watch in the time we have today, I'm only going to emphasize probably the essence of God sections. The character of God is being brought out. It puts the lie to Satan's original slander of God that he's holding back from us in Genesis 3, 5. It tells you this idea we get in our hearts. We go passive about our lives and our spiritual life. We stop thinking about the things above. We stop filling our hearts with God's word, letting the spirit of God mediate that word to us. We stop being filled by the spirit, in other words, because we're neglecting God's word. And then what happens? We start getting these crazy ideas about God, these false notions of him. One false notion is that God is the benevolent grandpa who just wants you to do whatever you feel like. He's very permissive and he knows that it doesn't really matter. And that's satanic. The other side is the legalistic God who is waiting to smack you down with his holy flyswatter. smite me almighty smiter. He's the one that's going to get you. You're going to be gotten as soon as he gets you that, that, that idea of God. And that's not a biblical notion of your creator. He's not waiting to smack you down. He's waiting to forgive you. And this word ready to forgive turns out it's one word. And that's the best translation for it. Ready to forgive desirous of forgiving. But I want you to notice that now there's a change. Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer. Well, that sounds like incline your ear, answer me. It sounds like verse one, incline your ear, give ear, Lord, to my prayer. That tells me as I'm studying the structure, trying to understand how David developed this, since it's not really put into stanzas for me in the Hebrew manuscripts either, give ear, Lord, to my prayer is the start over of the petitions, of the requests. Listen intently to the voice of my pleading. And then in verses seven through 10, there is no repeat of the structure. Do this for me, this is who I am. Do this for me, this is who I am. He doesn't do it again. He only does it the one time he makes the requests. And then he reiterates in verse seven, in the day of my trouble, I will call out to you for you will answer me. and the day of my trouble, I will call it to you. And then it's a long discussion, verses eight, really through 10, about the essence of God, about who we're talking about. So if verses one through five are about who God is, and who, I'm sorry, who David is, reflecting what he wants from God, then verses six through 10 are about who God is. And this is the kind of stuff you have to do if you want to study it and understand its structure. And I believe that when you have structure, you can start to understand Meaning, because structure is part of how God is using the author to construe meaning. So we've had verses one through five, and I'll pick it up. We've seen this. I'll pick it up in verse six. Give ear, Lord, to my prayer, and listen intently to the voice of my pleading. You can see a Hebrew parallelism in this. Give ear and listen. Those are the same thought stated in different terms. My prayer, the voice of my pleading. These are the same things. And this is how Hebrew poetry works. It echoes, it rhymes. And so you could see the interesting structure of the poet and prophet David here. In the day of my trouble, I will call out to you for you'll answer me. Now this is what we call a synthetic parallel because it is matched. The first line is matched. I will call out to you. With the second line, consequence, you will answer me. It's not the same thought, it's the first thought and it's consequence. I will call to you and you'll answer me. Does anyone know why God will answer him when he calls out to him? Because that's who God is, that's what he's like. This whole Psalm is about who God is, what he's like, and therefore how we relate to him. In verse eight, now we're going to talk about God in comparison to the world around us. What the world thinks about God, what the world thinks about life, what the world thinks in general. There is none like you among the gods, that's the Elohim. And then he says, Adonai, Lord, master, boss, there's nobody like you. The gods of this world are not like you. What do we have in comparative religion and ancient Near Eastern studies and archeology? They'll say that there are all these different creation myths. And one of them is the Hebrew myth we get in Genesis, but it's really told twice in Genesis chapter one. And then it's told again with a little different nuance in Genesis chapter two. So you can see even the Hebrews had two creation myths. And they try to ram, jam and cram Enuma Elish and the Gilgamesh epic and whatever the Navajos said about the piece of corn that was the beginning of the universe or whoever did all the different creation myths. They'll try to lump it all together. And the problem is, if you look closely at especially ancient Near East, there's a vast difference between what the Bible says and what every other tradition says about the creation of the universe. And the difference is that God is not part of his creation. God is there before he makes anything. In the old Babylonian stuff, the gods are the deep, and the gods are the earth, and they're fighting each other, and they're tearing each other apart and building things out of each other. And the universe is made of the bodies of the dead gods. I mean, I like science fiction. But Our God is not part of nature. You know, most people, I heard David Noble say this once, I'll go with it. Most people in world history have probably been sun worshipers, one form or another. Zeus, Apollo. Everybody's had a sun god. The Baalism is a worship of the sun. The religions that David is surrounded by as the worshiper of the one God, he's surrounded by the pagans and they worship the sun. Because the biggest thing you can see, and there it is right up there. And it turns out, we studied this out a little bit, everything's solar powered, right? Everything's solar powered. If you ate a steak, it's solar powered because that steak was made from a cow or cut from a cow and that cow ate grass and that grass was solar powered, right? I mean, just think about the simple physics of it, not the emotional ethics of it, but just the physics of it. It's all solar. So if all there was was the sun, we could with Solomon say, well, we just need to focus on what's under the sun. as Kohelet tells us, that that's the way to ruin, because you have to get beyond the Son to the God who made it. So we don't worship the creation, we worship the creator. There is none like you among the gods, Lord. There are no works like yours. And so much of the Old Testament is demonstrating God is different. And you can see that because his works are different. And so this is a summary of the way the Bible is situated in its original historical context and how it continues today. And today people aren't worshiping Baal, I understand, generally. There is a resurgence of what they call neo-paganism. And the Norse gods, they're getting a second run in our culture. And in the fringe, there's a lot of neo-paganism. And so this will become more Directly relevant, but I think that people are still pagan in their thinking. I think we still worship the creation instead of the Creator We're very subtle about it and we're dazzled by electronic screens. But nevertheless, it's Here with us and there's no work like what God has done All the nation this is very controversial while we're being controversial all the nations which you've made Will come and worship before you Lord and they will glorify your name now. I want you to notice They will come worship before you, Lord, rhymes with, they will glorify your name. Those are the same thought. They'll worship before you, they'll glorify your name. Different ways of saying people are going to worship you. But this completes the thought of, let me put in front of you all the nations which you've made. All the nations which universally reject you, including the one that you made for yourself to bring forth the Messiah through, they reject you too. but they're all going to worship before you, Lord. This isn't a statement of eschatology. This is a long-term prophecy, just like everything we have in prophecy. The first promise that God gave Israel, he gave to Abraham, and it was an eschatological promise. God said the word forever to Abraham. Abraham has to be resurrected. The resurrection is assumed in Genesis 12 when God says forever, because Abraham has to enjoy the land forever. It calls for resurrection. And so we see that not just Israel, but all the nations which you've made will come and worship before you, Lord. They will glorify your name. That's not happening today. And that will not happen without a rod of iron subduing the nations like earthenware, but it will happen. And verse 10, for greater you and one who works wonders. Did you catch this? Verse 10 is a little different. Starts with four, this little particle. laser beam, this little particle key kicks off our little summary verse, little summary verse of God's character. You are you for greater you and one who works wonders. You are God, you alone. So just like if we slip our finger back up to verse five, you Lord are good and ready to forgive, abundant and loving kindness, also a loving kindness to all who call upon you. Now in verse 10, you're great and do wondrous deeds, you alone are God. You made all that was made, you made all the nations and everything is for you. And so the summary of God's attribute portion here is God's greatness and God alone is God. So the polemic against the nations, The polemic where we're just saying God is the only God and all the other systems, all the alternatives are lies. Deceiver, the deceiver has deceived the nations with these lies. This is summarized. You are the one who works wonders. You alone are God. So based on his creation, based on his personal being, based on his works through history and for eternity, we have verses six through 10. a picture looking at the big picture. So verses one through five is me and you, God. Verses six through 10 is God and all your works and all the nations. So what we do, we started with a problem. David's having a problem. We haven't named it yet, but it's a problem. Help me, I'm meek, I'm needy, I need you. Verses six through 10, we're learning how to pray here. Verse six through 10, we zoom out and say, who is God and what does it mean that he's God? He's the God over all the nations, including those of my enemies. He's the God that is going to rule over everything. And he's the God who's going to have his way. And I am in good company because I'm with him. So verses six through 10 will strengthen you like nothing else. If you haven't thought about it in a while, zoom out, zoom out. What is, how do we zoom out on our devices? We do that, right? You need to zoom out. What does that, what I mean? You know, on your map with a capacitive screen, a touchscreen, if you do like that, then whatever you're looking at gets smaller, which means the map got bigger. Are you with me? Maybe your map does the other way. Maybe you zoom out that way. But when I do that zooms in, that zooms out. Anyway, zoom out, people. You're in this problem. You're focused on this thing. But God is going to rule over all the nations. He's going to have his way. And that's the way history is unfolding. That's the way the story works. And God knows that it's going to take a while. He knows we're going to struggle with this. He knows that as we kind of walk through this, it seems like it's taken forever. He's told us how it's gonna fall out. He's given us revelation. He's given us his prophecy. So we can rest in it and conclude for greater you and one who works wonders, you are God, Elohim, you alone. Now, stanza three, verse 11. Teach me, Lord, your way. I will walk in your truth. Hear the rhyme? Teach me, cause. I'll walk in your truth effect. In fact, your way and the truth are the same rhyme. Teach me your way. That's what you do, God. I'll walk in your truth. That's what I'll do. Isn't that great? It's so simple. It's so simple. I mean, my life is complicated. My life is difficult. We have all the questions and confusions of this life, but wait a second, you've got God and he's not confused. I'm confused. He's not confused. So God just teach me your way. I'll walk in your truth. Isn't that phenomenal? That's the promise. Notice that the promise in verse 11 is David's promise to God. He's making a commitment to him and that's thematic for this little section. Bind my heart to fear your name is the end of verse 11. Your Bible, if you're looking at a new American standard says, unite my heart. Like it's fragmented, but I think it's better translated, bind my heart, meaning, or concentrate my heart. Like it's a focus, connect me to fear your name, bind me to fear your name. In other words, prone to wonder, Lord, I fear it, prone to leave the God I love. That's what we're saying. So David needs a little help fearing God, and he asks for it. And this is the worst verse break in all the Bible. Well, they're all bad, but this is the worst one today. The worst break on Sunday, Sunday, August 1st of 2021, the worst verse break is verse 11 to verse 12, because verse 12 completes the rhyme, continues the rhyme. I will praise you, Lord, my God, with all my heart, and I will glorify your name forever. What am I saying? Isn't this awesome? Look at that structure. Teach me, Lord, your way, and I will walk in your truth. Verse 11. Now take 11b and 12 together. Bind my heart to fear your name. I will praise you, Lord, my God, with all my heart, and I will glorify your name forever. 12 is the same thought stated twice, and it's the follow-on from what he says in 11b. Bind my heart. I will praise you. I will glorify you. Now let's do that together. Teach me, Lord, your way. And so that's the cause, God, you are the cause, and I, the effect, will walk in your truth. But God, you're gonna have to hang on to me, so bind my heart to fear your name. If you don't fear the Lord, and this is not Old Testament, New Testament, this is humans dealing with their creator. Jesus says, fear the one who can cast the body and soul into hell. The fear of the Lord is alive and well if you have wisdom, right? And so bind my heart to fear your name, not to take you for granted, not to deal with you nonchalantly. Still wondering what it means to be chalant. Bind my heart to fear your name. I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart, and I will glorify your name forever. Now, what I wanted also to point out was with all my heart. God, if you do something with my heart, then I will do something with my heart. If you bind my heart to fear you, then I will praise you with my heart. That's what your heart's for. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. What are you supposed to use your heart for? To trust him with. What am I supposed to do with my heart? I'm supposed to fear him. And if I do, if he will bring this about in me, then I'll praise him with all my heart and I will glorify your name forever. And then, for your loving kindness is great upon me. Listen to verse five again. For you, Lord, are good and ready to forgive, abundant and loving kindness to all who call upon you. Verse 10, for you are great and do wondrous deeds, you alone are God. And now verse 13, for your loving kindness toward me is great, and you've delivered my soul from the deepest depths of Sheol, from the lowest of Sheol, the place of the dead. I was going to die, but you saved me from death is what that means. And it could be figurative saying the valley of the shadow of death, not that I was actually going to die, but that I felt like death, like I was dying. It would have been better to die or something. So verses 11 through 13 is the commitments. God, if you'll work in me, then I will work for you. If you'll do this work in me, then I will be about your business. And that's how it's going to work. And I know that. And the reason why is your loving kindness. Your loyal covenant keeping love is upon me. And you've saved my soul from the lowest Sheol. Now we'll close in verses 14 through 17. God, now we introduce the conflict. I mean, we were started with, I'm in a low spot, help me. But now why? Arrogant ones have risen up against me and a throng of violent ones have sought my soul. They have not set you before them. In this first little chunk, can y'all work with me for just a second? It says, arrogant ones have risen up against me. A throng of violent ones have sought my soul. Do you see how that's the same thought? arrogant ones, violent ones risen up against me. They sought my soul. It's, it's the same rhyming structure. They've not set you before them. And this doesn't fit at any rhyming structure. This is who they are. They have not set you before them. And now the contrast in verse 15, you Oh Lord are merciful and gracious. God slow to anger and abundant and loving kindness and truth. Why haven't they set you before them? Why haven't they chosen to be about you? Like I've chosen to be about you. And so that why are they now opposed to me and therefore to you, because I'm about what you're doing. This is how you want to reason with God about your enemies. God, they're opposed to me because I am aligned with you. Greater is he who's in me than he who's in the world. Turn to me and be gracious to me. Give strength to your servant and save the son of your slave girl. Servant, your servant and the son of your slave girl rhyme. They're the same thought. Make for me a sign, or with me a sign for good, and they will see those who hate me and let them be ashamed. For you, O Lord, will have helped me and comforted me." All right, how does this conclude? We conclude by introducing and resolving the conflict. The problem with his enemies that are bringing him down is they're opposed to God, and that's the way David reasons. Now, if it's not true, don't say it's true. Don't say, well, I'm being oppressed because I'm a Christian. If you're not, We all play these games. We're powerful at rationalizing things that aren't so. But he starts off with this vocative. God, I'm addressing you personally. Arrogant ones have risen up against me. A throng of violent ones have sought my soul. And then they have not set you before them. But I have is the implication of verse 15. You Lord, merciful and gracious God. Slow to anger and abundant in loving kindness and truth. A paraphrase of how God describes himself in Exodus 20. And now we close with his appeal. Turn to me, be gracious to me, just like he started. Give your strength to your servant and save the son of your slave girl. Notice your servant, your slave girl, the son of your slave girl, that would be the same. Give strength, save, and then use me. Now this is the hardest thing to translate. from Hebrew and English thought, but just listen to it. What he's saying is, make me something that others can look at, and those that are opposed to me can be ashamed of themselves. Use me to glorify yourself. In other words, just like we had in Titus chapter two, verses six through eight last week, with show yourself an example of good works. God is going to use you as a portrait. We've proclaimed the death of Christ until he comes today. We're in a fishbowl, people are watching. And so God, those that are now oriented on me because they hate me and they're opposed to me, make me, literally make with me, the particle eem, with, make with me a sign for good. This doesn't mean show me a sign and then I'll know to turn left or right like we do. Like cast me a fleece and show me a sign. And God, I don't know which way to go. And then all of a sudden the billboard, one of those electronic billboards flashes up. Turn right next to go to Bucky's or whatever. That's not what the sign is he's talking about. He's making me a signal, a symbol, a portrait, a testimony. To what? for good, because all through this, he's been talking about God is the source of good. God is the one who's good. So make me a sign for good so that these will see it, those who hate me, and that they will be ashamed. So he doesn't say in this, he'll say it elsewhere, kill my enemies and fight for me. Here he says, use me as a testimony of who you are. so that those who are opposed to me can be ashamed in their opposition. In a way, there is a note of compassion there on the enemy, because if the enemy sees the sign, if the enemy sees the goodness of God in David, if the enemy sees it and is then ashamed, then he's on the way to not being the enemy of God. For you, Lord, will have helped me. I contend the perfect tense is proleptic. You will have helped me and comforted me because of this sign. So David is assuming the answer to his request. And that is Psalm 86. Now, again, if I read Psalm 86 in my English Bible, if I read through, as we will do, and I don't sink down and think about its structure, then I might miss the way these stanzas relate to one another. Relationship with God, the greatness of God himself. That's the big picture, the greatness of God himself. the cause and effect of my benefiting from God's grace and my commitment to Him because of who He is, really back to relationship, and then the resolution of the conflict, which ultimately, if I'm right about what verse 17 means, then the resolution of your conflict is that you are being used by God in your conflicts to be a picture of God's goodness. Those that see you suffer. In other words, those that are watching you for whatever reason, God can use the fact that they're watching you to glorify himself. My closing example is the Red Sea. Pharaoh was looking at Israel. He was looking at Israel like a dog looks at a prime rib of raw steak. He was looking at Israel ravenous. And his goal was to avenge himself upon these slave people. And I think that when Pharaoh brought out his chariots to attack the children of Israel, when God had put them in a perfect box where they couldn't get away, Exodus chapter 14, when God brought Pharaoh out to attack Israel and just Pharaoh did what he wanted to do, when God set this up, he knew that he was going to glorify himself through the disobedience, the rebellion and the rage of Pharaoh. Israel became a sign that day of goodness, of God's goodness. And they are forevermore. And that's, this is the ultimate deliverance in the Old Testament is the Red Sea deliverance where they, God put them in a perfect position that they could not escape from. And then they had one choice, wait on the Lord. And he opened the water and they walked through on dry land. But he wasn't just delivering them and saying, you can trust me. He was delivering them in the face of the Egyptians and with the rest of the world watching. And he destroyed the greatest army probably in the world at that day, on that day. That's make me a sign for good. And I think you should memorize Psalm 86. The reason we discussed Psalm 86 today, I was requested, I asked, what can I teach? What can I use in a message for John Elston? Well, he and I have been memorizing, says Claire. We have been memorizing Psalm 86 for several weeks before John went home. And there was no way to do this yesterday. So I wanted to do it today and share with you from him, from them. something that you can memorize, you can pray, you can talk to God about and reflect on, I think, for the rest of your life. Father, we thank you for eternal life. We've enjoyed it today by thinking about who you are, the God of loving kindness and compassion, ready to forgive, abundant in grace. Father, in all the ways you've been described, and yet the ruler, the sovereign, the majestic, Lord of all, we praise you for your love for us and revealing these things to us, giving us something to cling to as you've made these promises. And like David, Father, we want to ask for this work in us so that we can make these same commitments. Father, we want to be for your glory and praise with all our hearts. Make it so in us we ask in Jesus name, amen.