day no. 17,310: a man with God is always in the majority (sermon outline)

Christ Church Leavenworth

Psalm 9

March 15, 2026

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OT READING: 2 Kings 6:8-19

NT READING: 1 John 4:1-6

A Man with God is Always in the Majority

Our text this morning is Psalm 9, these are the words of God: To the choirmaster: according to Muth-labben. A Psalm of David. I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds. I will be glad and exult in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High. When my enemies turn back, they stumble and perish before your presence. For you have maintained my just cause; you have sat on the throne, giving righteous judgment. You have rebuked the nations; you have made the wicked perish; you have blotted out their name forever and ever. The enemy came to an end in everlasting ruins; their cities you rooted out; the very memory of them has perished. But the Lord sits enthroned forever; he has established his throne for justice, and he judges the world with righteousness; he judges the peoples with uprightness. The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. And those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you. Sing praises to the Lord, who sits enthroned in Zion! Tell among the peoples his deeds! For he who avenges blood is mindful of them; he does not forget the cry of the afflicted. Be gracious to me, O Lord! See my affliction from those who hate me, O you who lift me up from the gates of death, that I may recount all your praises, that in the gates of the daughter of Zion I may rejoice in your salvation. The nations have sunk in the pit that they made; in the net that they hid, their own foot has been caught. The Lord has made himself known; he has executed judgment; the wicked are snared in the work of their own hands. Higgaion. Selah The wicked shall return to Sheol, all the nations that forget God. For the needy shall not always be forgotten, and the hope of the poor shall not perish forever. Arise, O Lord! Let not man prevail; let the nations be judged before you! Put them in fear, O Lord! Let the nations know that they are but men! Selah

The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the Word of our God stands forever.

PRAYER

Our Father and our God, we come before You this morning through Jesus Christ, our Lord, and in the Holy Spirit. Give us eyes to see and ears to hear Your Word this morning and let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in Your sight through Jesus Christ, in whose Name we pray, Amen.

INTRODUCTION

Our study of the first decade of psalms has brought us to track #9. And here David does something a little different. There are two ways to approach a subject. The typical way is to build your case by slowly working your way up to a conclusion. People can disagree with where you end up, but they at least can see how you go there. The risk you run in this approach, however, is fatigue. Your audience might give up on you before you get to where you’re wanting to take them. Think of all those “tl;dr” posts you’ve had shared with you. As Spurgeon once said, “If a man cannot say what he has to say in 45 minutes, when will he say it?” 

This is where the other approach can be helpful. In this approach, the conclusion is stated right up front before circling back to show your work. The benefit of this approach is that everyone knows exactly where you’re headed before you get going. The risk you run with this approach, however, is that you lose some people right out of the gate. If they disagree too strongly with your opening statement, they might skip the rest of your lecture. 

In today’s text, David employs this second, less conventional method: he begins with the application. He wants everyone to know, up front, where this is headed. Too many get bogged down in the details and never get around to applying what they know. Not David. He does not want to delay his resolve, so he leads with it and then he encourages us to do the same by making his case. One of the additional points made by presenting it in this manner, is that doing God’s Word must not be put off or made to be optional. It is essential and time sensitive. In other words, we must obey today. Right now. We must know Who we are dealing with, for sure, but then we must surely go on to deal with Him.

It is one thing to know that God is merciful and another thing to ask God for mercy. It is one thing to believe that He can forgive sin and another thing to kneel before Him and ask Him to forgive yours. It is one thing to know that He is in control and another thing to hand over control of your life to Him. Do not miss the forest for the trees. Which is more important? Knowing the standard or keeping it? But keeping it is so much harder… and that is why David asks God for more grace. More grace? Don’t be greedy; be content with the grace you got, right? Wrong! We need to be greedy for grace. It is not a lack of faith to ask for more grace. It is, however, if you stop asking for it. We never outgrow our need for grace. We cannot mature beyond our need for more. So, with that said, let’s turn to our text:

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

:1-2 “I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds. I will be glad and exult in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.” Four times in two verses David declares, “I will.” He will give thanks to God, he will remember His grace, he will be glad, and he will worship God. He is committed to these things and he is saying it out loud for all to hear. “I will do these things.” He is inviting accountability. When you stand before others and say that you are going to do something, you are asking them to follow up with you if you don’t. If you say, “I do” in front of all your friends and family, you are inviting them to hunt you down and demand an explanation if you suddenly start saying, “I don’t,” or “I’m not so sure anymore.” And that is because “I will” is a promise.

The difficulty, however, is that in the moment, you really do feel like you will, but later on there comes a point where you really don’t. The question at that moment is whether your previous “I will” will determine what comes next or whether your current “I want” will. How much sway do yesterday’s “I will’s” have on today?  A good reputation is the reward for those who convert their “I will’s” into “I did’s.” Anyone can say that they’re going to do something, but only those with integrity actually do it. Consider Proverbs 20:6-7, “Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find?” More men sign up for the test than pass it. Steadfastness is easier to promise than it is to deliver. A faithful man does not just do the easy work of making the promise, he does the hard work of keeping it. He takes responsibility for his words and looks not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of those who are depending on him to keep his word.

Chesterton said it this way, “The man who makes a vow makes an appointment with himself at some distant time or place. The danger of it is that himself should not keep the appointment.” Nothing is easier to make than a promise and few things are harder to keep. Consider Ecclesiastes 5:5 “It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay.” A vow sounds good in anyone’s mouth. But it is better not to cut a covenant than it is to be cut up for breaking one. So, why not avoid them altogether? Promises are like keys, they unlock doors. We take vows in marriage and gain access to a spouse. We sign contracts and gain more business. We take an oath of office and gain its responsibilities. Liars want the perks of a promise without the work of keeping it. As a Christian, you must resist this temptation. Making vows may make others think better of you at first, but breaking them will make them think less of you in the end.

Psalm 15:4 reminds us that the one who walks with God, “swears to his own hurt and does not change.” So, does your “I will” have the power to hold you in place when your “I feel” is trying to pull you away? In order to be a faithful man, you have to be able to obey even when you don’t feel like it. Listen to this insight from Oswald Chambers, "If we only did what we felt inclined to do, some of us would do nothing for ever and ever. The proof that we are rightly related to God is that we do our best whether we feel inspired or not.” Anyone can obey when they feel like it. But what about when you don’t? Can you make yourself do things when you don’t feel like because you said that you would? We must “be ready in season and out of season.” (2 Tim 4:2) – that is, when we feel like it… and when we don’t.

And that is why David brings up the idea of a whole-hearted effort. You cannot follow God with half of your heart. It is not a duplex. It cannot serve two masters. It will either love the one and hate the other, or it will hate the one and love the other. Your heart doesn’t do fractions. Hear this admonition from Jeremiah 48:10 “Cursed is he who does the work of the LORD with slackness.” Note that the curse is on the slackness. You would think that doing the work of the Lord would be blessed, but not necessarily so. A lame effort in the right direction is still a sin. Colossians 3:23, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord.” God commands us to do things with all of our heart, all of our soul, and all of our might. He has to tell us to do this because we were going to try to do them with as little of our heart, soul, and might as we could get away with. As C.S. Lewis once observed, “We are half-hearted creatures.”

:3-4 “When my enemies turn back, they stumble and perish before your presence. For you have maintained my just cause; you have sat on the throne, giving righteous judgment.” Our enemies do not run away because they’re scared of us, they run away because they see our Father looming behind us. Consider James 4:7 “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” When you resist the devil, he doesn’t flee because you stood your ground, he flees because we called for our Dad. Calling upon the Father is how you resist the devil. Submitting to Him is how you conquer the world, the flesh, and the devil. When you call upon the Lord, the demons do not stick around for Him to show up. Sin cannot stand in the presence of God. It struts around and talks a big game, but the second you call upon Christ, it falls on its face before it cowers away.

Listen to the word of the Lord from Leviticus 26 “If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them, then you shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall chase ten thousand, and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword…But if you will not listen to me, I will send faintness into your hearts. The sound of a driven leaf shall put you to flight, and you shall flee as one flees from the sword, and you shall fall when none pursues. You shall stumble over one another, and you shall have no power to stand before your enemies.”

Our enemies are not scared of us, but they are scared of what’s behind us. If we get arrogant and imagine ourselves as vigilante enforcers of the good, the true, and the beautiful, we will be beaten back by the bad, the false, and the ugly. We are not Batman. We are just kids in Batman costumes. The reason our enemies flee before us is because when we put on Christ, they see the signal in the air and they know who’s coming to help. As John Knox once observed, “A man with God is always in the majority.” The only reason any one of us can take out twenty of them is because of the One who has our back.

In our OT reading, Elisha’s servant, Gehazi, was scared. He looked up and saw an army, and then he looked around and saw only Elisha. But when he saw Elisha, he could see that he was not scared. Elisha looked back at him and said, “‘Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” Whoever has God on their side has their enemy surrounded. The number of boots on the ground does not always win wars, but God always does.

Our NT reading from 1 John 4 reinforces this point: “Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” When the world surrounds you, look to Christ within. The One who lives within you holds the entire world in His hands. Even if He is all you have, you still have superior firepower. One of His Words outguns all the chatter in the world. As Luther once noted, “Though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us, we will not fear, for God has willed His truth to triumph through us. The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him; his rage we can endure, for lo! his doom is sure; one little word shall fell him.” The armor of God is bulletproof, but the gates of Hell cannot even stop a rock tossed by a kid. Just ask David.

:5-6 “You have rebuked the nations; you have made the wicked perish; you have blotted out their name forever and ever. The enemy came to an end in everlasting ruins; their cities you rooted out; the very memory of them has perished.” God is greater than the evil in this world. He will rebuke the nations and make the wicked perish. He will blot out their names forever and ever. Their greatness will fare no better than the legacy of Ozymandias. Who’s Ozymandias you might ask? Exactly. That’s the point. And if you do know who Ozymandias is, my point still stands, for what is Ozymandies famous for? Being forgotten. 

Note that our text says that God is going to root them out of their cities. Evil can find some pretty dark corners to hide, but God is going to dig them out. He isn’t going to overlook anything. Heaven will not have a little corner of Hell in it. The gates of Hell will not hold out against the advance of the Kingdom of Christ and all Hell will be tossed out. The darkness will be flooded with light and the world will be flooded with the knowledge of the holiness of God. (Habakkuk 2:14)

Fear not, little flock, it is God’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom and a time is coming when we will all be so caught up in the glory and goodness of God that we won’t even remember the wicked anymore. To that party we will wear our battle scars like medals of honor. The pains of the past won’t be able to reach us there and our old hurts will be healed and hard to remember. Sin does not win. “Ye fearful saints fresh courage take, the clouds ye so much dread, are big with mercy and shall break in blessings on your head.” Once God is done using the wicked to bless us, He will dispose of them forever.

At this point someone might feel tempted to feel sorry for the wicked. Admittedly, that hypothetical someone probably isn’t here, but they do exist and they are out there. So, just in case they are listening, keep this in mind. This rough treatment of the wicked is not the result of God going too far or losing His temper. He is not like you. He doesn’t sometimes explode with rage and then have to walk it back later with an apology. His justice is measured and precise. It is administered with proportion. He is not overdoing it or getting carried away. He has not been patient all these years only to lose His patience in the end. Again, He is not like you. He doesn’t hold it down until it erupts. He is under control the entire time. So, if you want to feel bad for the wicked, do it now, while you still can, because you won’t later. The justice of God will be accompanied by the cheers of the righteous and the increase of His kingdom will have no end.

:7-8 “But the Lord sits enthroned forever; he has established his throne for justice, and he judges the world with righteousness; he judges the peoples with uprightness.” Where is Jesus right now? He is not in a grave rotting away somewhere. He is sitting at the right hand of the Father… on a throne. That is where He is. And what is He doing there? Destroying all His enemies. Many of them He is destroying by making them His friends and the rest He is destroying by exposing them for the frauds that they are. They looked powerful, but they were weaklings. They appeared to be fixed and certain, but they were flashes in the pan. And the worst of it is, they should have known better. 

Hear the Word of the Lord from Acts 17:30-31 “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, (who’s call to repent? ALL people, EVERY where) because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” All people. Everywhere. We live in a world where a man has risen from the dead. Everyone who denies this fact is at war with reality and that is a battle they will certainly lose. These verses from the book of Acts reinforce what Psalm 9 says: Jesus is the Judge. And who is He going to judge? The whole world. And how is He going to judge it? With righteousness. Our text then doubles back and repeats this fact for all those people in the back. Who is He going to judge? The peoples. And how is He going to judge them? With uprightness. Make no mistake about it, judgment day will contain no mistakes. No one will be misjudged. No one will be misjudged. None of the guilty will go free and none of the forgiven will be condemned. That is the end of the world. The rule of Christ established and enforced everywhere without exception: all people, everywhere.

:9-12 “The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. And those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you. Sing praises to the Lord, who sits enthroned in Zion! Tell among the peoples his deeds! For he who avenges blood is mindful of them; he does not forget the cry of the afflicted.” The Lord is the immovable object and the unstoppable force. No one can move Him and He can move anyone He wants. All who trust in Him will be saved. All who don’t will be destroyed. Hear this Word of God from 1 Corinthians 15:24-26 “Then comes the end, when he (that is Jesus) delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” So, for the time being, Christ sits enthroned ruling and reigning and winning. He will not stand again until the only enemy left to defeat is death. And then death itself will die at the hands of Jesus.

:13-14 “Be gracious to me, O Lord! See my affliction from those who hate me, O you who lift me up from the gates of death, that I may recount all your praises, that in the gates of the daughter of Zion I may rejoice in your salvation.” Note the juxtaposition: the gates of death and the gates of Zion. These two gates are opposed to each other. There are those who hate God and love sin and there are those who love God and hate sin. Hear the Word of the Lord from Proverbs 8:36

“All who hate me love death.” And then consider this Word from Psalm 97:10,” O you who love the LORD, hate evil!” The gates of Hell are defended by those who defend their sins. But the gates of Zion are defended by those who are defended by God. Hear the Words of Jesus Christ Himself from Matthew 16:18, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” That is why David put his confidence in Christ. And that is why you should too. 

Back to our text, :15-16 The nations have sunk in the pit that they made; in the net that they hid, their own foot has been caught. The Lord has made himself known; he has executed judgment; the wicked are snared in the work of their own hands. Higgaion. Selah Stop and dwell on that: God has caught the crafty in their own craftiness. He has outmaneuvered the cunning. He has seen through all their secret cabals. If it had not been for Him, we would have gotten got, but because of Him, we have not. Their trip wires haven’t worked and when they went to double check their traps, they blew up in their faces. If God is for us, who can be against us? Their hidden nets are not hidden from Him. He is the one playing 4D chess, not them. Thanks be to God. God sees what they plot in secret and puts a plot twist in their narrative. The very things in which they trust will turn out to be the things that trip them up. Consider this from Isaiah 36:6 “Behold, you are trusting in a broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it.” It is bad enough that the wicked put their hope in a broken reed, but then they go and lean on it with all their might. If they had not leaned on it, it would not have stabbed them. It did not hurt them until they leaned on it. In other words, trusting in evil will get you killed. So, hear this truth: wickedness cannot pierce your soul if you do not put your trust in it. But all those who do will be impaled by it band the worst part of it will be realizing that they did it to themselves. 

:17-18 “The wicked shall return to Sheol, all the nations that forget God. For the needy shall not always be forgotten, and the hope of the poor shall not perish forever.” Note the contrast. The wicked, as we observed previously, are going to perish forever. They are going to be forgotten. But not the needy and poor in spirit. Recall the words of Jesus who said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt 5:3) The poor in spirit will not perish forever, even if they do for the moment. The martyrs did not lose their lives, they gained them. 

And remember, the advancement of Christ’s Kingdom is not like a rocket launch. It is not a straight line up with no interruption. No, the kingdom is more like a mountain climb. Sometimes you are sliding down steep cliffs and sometimes you are ascending long slopes, but you are always going up the mountain. The summit is always before you and each step brings you closer to it and further from where you began. Christendom is always going, always growing, always destroying its enemies, and always prevailing over and against the gates of Hell. The hope of the saints will not perish. The goodness of God does not grow mold. The Gospel will not go stale and God will not disappoint. Nations may forget God and suffer for it, but God will not forget them and He will redeem out of them those who have put their hope in Him.

:19-20 “Arise, O Lord! Let not man prevail; let the nations be judged before you! Put them in fear, O Lord! Let the nations know that they are but men! Selah” Men will not somehow prevail against God. The wicked will not grow so strong and so secure that even God Himself cannot overcome them. Mankind will not make such a mess of things that even He cannot clean it up. We cannot put ourselves beyond the reach of grace. David prayed that God might put the fear of Him into the nations. He prayed that the nations would be reminded of their mortality and be humbled. The only hope for us as individuals or for our nation, is remembering that we will die. As long as individuals or nations believe that they are special in themselves, they are at odds with God and in danger of losing everything they hold dear. But any man or nation that thanks God for what they have and humbly seeks to serve Him with it, will retain their distinct flavor and offer it as a living sacrifice to their God and King. All the best things of all the nations will be refined by fire and retained in the kingdom of God. Hear this Word from Haggai 2:7 “‘I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory,’ says the Lord of hosts.” Some nations may force God to hold them upside down by their ankles to shake them until all their pockets are empty, but rest assured, all the good stuff will be kept for the saints and will dwell with us forever in the house of God.

In the end, all men, including us, need to be reminded that they are but men. It is easy to imagine that you are omniscient if you have the internet, or omnipotent if you have a weapon, or omnipresent if you have a camera at every intersection or a drone in the air, but even then, you are still just a man. And as Psalm 82:6-7 reminds us, “You are sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, like men you shall die.” And so, the nations need to know that they are but men. That is an extraordinarily simple, yet a profoundly supernatural prayer. People coming to their senses and returning to common sense seems easy enough… until you look around. Common sense is not as common as it used to be and it cannot simply be assumed as a given. In order for men to admit that they have been wrong, they need the grace of God to see that being wrong is even an option. The pride of man boasts in its armor, but the weapons of Heaven have soul-piercing bullets. The prayer of David is that God would do whatever it takes to bring all people everywhere to repentance. Let us be an answer to that prayer by reminding the world that they are but men, and living like we are men of God.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

PRAYER

Heavenly Father, we confess that we are but men. Without You, we would be so tangled up in our own sins that we would not be able to walk with You. But because of Your great mercy in sending Your Son to save us, we are set free from the cords that bound us. Give us grace today to walk in the works You have prepared beforehand for us to do and by so doing, may the world see our good works and give glory to You, Our Father who art in heaven. We ask these things in Jesus’ name and we offer up the words of the prayer He taught us to pray singing...

day no. 17,282: hear my cry, my God and King (sermon outline)

Christ Church Leavenworth

Psalm 5

February 15, 2026

…

OT READING: Esther 4:10-5:3

NT READING: Hebrews 4:14-16

Hear My Cry, My God and King

READING OF THE TEXT

Our text this morning is Psalm 5, these are the words of God:

To the choirmaster: for the flutes. A Psalm of David. Give ear to my words, O Lord; consider my groaning. Give attention to the sound of my cry, my King and my God, for to you do I pray. O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch. For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers. You destroy those who speak lies; the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man. But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house. I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you. Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies; make your way straight before me. For there is no truth in their mouth; their inmost self is destruction; their throat is an open grave; they flatter with their tongue. Make them bear their guilt, O God; let them fall by their own counsels; because of the abundance of their transgressions cast them out, for they have rebelled against you. But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy, and spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may exult in you. For you bless the righteous, O Lord; you cover him with favor as with a shield.

The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the Word of our God stands forever.

PRAYER

Our Father and our God, we come before You this morning through Jesus Christ, our Lord, and in the Holy Spirit. Help us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray for as we ought. But You intercede on our behalf with groanings too deep for words. Search our hearts and intercede for us according to Your will. In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.

INTRODUCTION

Good morning! We are continuing our study of the first decade of Psalms today by turning our attention to the fifth Psalm. One thing we all must learn how to do is to talk to ourselves. Especially when we are tempted to listen to ourselves. The psalms provide us with many great examples of what this looks like. Many of the psalms can serve as spiritual how-to videos. As many of us who frequent YouTube for projects know, It is sometimes helpful to watch someone else do it before you try it yourself. Reading the psalms is like watching someone else do soul work. So, take notes because you are going to have to try this at home. Listening to yourself comes naturally, but talking to yourself takes work. So, are you able to reason with yourself? When you feel something strongly, are you able to cast your vote against it? Or are you ruled by a tiny, internal tyrant with a bad case of the feels?

Talking to yourself is essential if you are going to live the Christian life. Consider Galatians 5:17, “The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” So, at any given moment, you can have two opposing voices in your head and you need to be able to reason with them to figure out which one is telling the truth and which one is lying to you. Each of them is trying to prevent you from doing the other. So, like Solomon, you’re going to have to be clever. The Spirit wants to spare you, but sin wants to cut you in half.

So, we must learn how to talk to ourselves. Despite decades of Disney’s best efforts to convince us otherwise, we must NOT follow our hearts. Our stories do not end with everyone finally seeing that we were right all along and apologizing to us for not believing us sooner. That is how God’s story ends, not ours. Don’t take the bait; and if you’re tempted to, tell yourself to pound sand. 

With all that being said, let’s walk through Psalm 5 beginning with verse 1.

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

When we pray, we make ourselves vulnerable. There are billions of people asking God for things at any given moment. What if He doesn’t hear me? And so, David asks God to lend him His ear. :1 “Give ear to my words, O Lord;” In other words, bend your ear to my request. Like a little child in a large family, David looks up and hopes that his Father will notice him and hear him and take a knee in order to better hear his request. He knows that his voice cannot carry all the way up to His Father’s ears, but he also knows that His Father can bend His ear down to hear his requests. Just because we cannot reach Him does not mean that He cannot reach us. And so, David does the spiritual equivalent of tugging on his Father’s pant leg in order to gain His attention. He needs the kind of help only his dad can give.

:1 continues, “Consider my groaning.” There are some aches and pains that are too deep for words. There are thoughts that are too heavy to lift up to God. So, David asks God to dig deep to listen to his groans. He asks the Lord to consider the things that cannot be put into words. Those groans only ever surface in the form of tears. When they cannot find a way out of our mouths, they find a way through our eyes. They overflow because we are too small to contain them. They are too big for us.

:2 “Give attention to the sound of my cry,” Many of us, if we feel a cry coming on, try to prevent it. We don’t want an audience. We might cry when we’re alone, but we try to avoid it in public if possible. But when we get to a place where we let ourselves go, we also don’t want to feel alone. And so, David begs God to hear the sound of his weeping. He is out of words. His prayers have been reduced to sounds. But weeping is a language of its own, and praise be to God, He speaks weeping. He does not need an interpreter. He understands.

God is capable of hearing us and He has the capacity to understand us. Some people can hear us, but they don’t get it. Others think they get it, but don’t care enough to hear any more of it. But God is competent and He is compassionate. 1 Peter 5:7 “Cast all your anxieties on Him, because He cares for you.” He has the ability to hear our concerns, He cares about them, and He has the ability to do something about them. If He did not care about us, it would not matter that He was all powerful. Sure, He could move that mountain, by why would He? What are you to Him? If He could hear us, but He could not do anything about it, it would not matter that He cared. He would be just another friend weeping with us wishing He could do something about it. So, we pray to Him because He can hear us, because He wants to hear from us, because He can do something about it, and because He wants to help us. As an aside, this is the way everyone actually prays. No one prays like God can’t hear or doesn’t care. No one prays like an Arminian. We don’t pray, “Lord, I know that we both want me to be more like Christ, but I also know that neither of us can do anything about it. Amen.” No, we pray like God can change hearts, minds, and behaviors. Everyone prays like a Calvinist. 

And that is why in :2 David addresses his prayer to, “my King and my God.” Christ is King and He is kind. (repeat) That is why we pray in His Name. Note the singular, first-person possessive pronoun “my.” David does not just acknowledge that the Lord is the King or the God, he says that God is his King and his God. The demons know that Christ is the King, and yet He is not their king. They know that Christ is the Lord, and yet He is not their God. They do not submit to Him and they do not worship Him. So, do not make the mistake of counting yourself blessed because you have something in common with demons. As the prophet Elijah once said, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” (1 K 18:21) Own your faith. When you say, “Christ is King,” follow it up with a life that says, “Christ is MY King.” Do not pray to Him like you’re on the phone with customer service. God is not a hard-to-reach CEO of a company and you are not just another customer. He is our God and we are His people. So, call upon Him.

:3 “O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice;” Do not let prayer be the last thing you do. Too many wait to pray until right before bed. It is literally the last thing they want to do, so they do it last. They put it off as long as they can and then they throw a few words at the ceiling before falling to sleep. Instead of being the first thing we do, prayer is often one of the last things we do. We will worry about something, text a friend about it, post it online, ask a group chat for advice, watch a YouTube tutorial, read a book, or listen to a podcast, but we will not pray about it. We treat going to God like a Hail Mary at the end of a game. It’s not the play we wanted to run, and it hardly ever works, but it’s worth a shot because it’s the only play we have left. Let us, in this regard, be more like David who was determined to bring his praises and his prayers to God first thing in the morning.

:3 goes on to say “in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.” Because of Christ, we no longer have to sacrifice the blood of animals, but through Christ, we must give the praise of gratitude. Consider Hebrews 13:15 “Through Christ let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.” Our prayers are part of that sacrifice. Because it is a sacrifice, it will cost you something. It also must be carefully picked out and prepared. God has never been a fan of lame sacrifices. That said, it is not all cost, there is a benefit. But sometimes those take a while to show up. And that is why David watches. The sacrifice of prayer is similar. It ought to include an element of expectation. It is not a question of if God will hear us, but of what He will say or do after He does. David is committed both to the work of preparing the sacrifice and to the waiting for the reply, which is its own kind of work. 

As we already mentioned, some do not take the time to pray, but others do not take the time to watch after they have. For that reason, some prayers are answered without anyone ever noticing. They took the time to ask, but they didn’t take the time to listen. If you ask the question, wait for the answer. If you respect someone enough to ask them, respect them enough to wait for their response before you walk away. Some of us are so busy, we ask others for a bit of their time and then walk away once we get as much of their answer as we wanted. If we are going to take the time to ask, we must budget for the time it takes to listen.

In :4 we begin to see some of the particular reasons for this prayer of David. Up until now we have been talking about prayer in general, but most sincere prayers, including Psalm 5, are not usually general and vague, but specific. In most cases, there is a particular situation or need that prompted the prayer. So, :4 “For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you.” Like many of us, David was tired of all the evil he was seeing, and he knows that God agrees. He is not at cross purposes with his Lord. He is praying with the grain, not against it. He is not just praying against his private, personal enemies, he is praying against the enemies of God’s. His confidence comes from knowing that those who oppose him also oppose God. And that is why the psalter has some heaters in it. We sing a few of those here and they always go hard. So, if you’re asking God to settle your private beefs, maybe back off a bit; but if you’re calling on Him to defend His cause and His people against His enemies, then go hard. But still, be careful. There is a fine line between boldness and boasting.

:5 “The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers.” All of those who strut around are in danger of being knocked down. Our boasting is an abomination. So, what should we do? Listen to Galatians 6:14, “Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” Paul does not want to be guilty of boasting. So, what does he do? He boasts in the cross of Christ. Boasting is inescapable. You cannot avoid the sin of being conceited by not boasting at all, you can only avoid it by boasting about Christ. You will boast about something. If you are not making much of God, you will make much of yourself. And that is just embarrassing. The kings of old may have kept fools in their courts, but the King of Heaven does not. He does not find foolishness entertaining.

:6 “You destroy those who speak lies; the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.” The Lord is at war with lies. The Word became flesh in order to destroy the works of the devil. And most of those are built on deceit. Lying is the native language of Hell. Listen to the words of Jesus from John 8:44, “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” Everyone takes after their dad and telling lies is the ultimate 23 & Me. If you are a liar, there is no need to take a paternity test. It is obvious who your daddy is. You even have the same accent. And the Lord abhors bloodthirsty and deceitful men. That word, “abhor” is a strong word. It is like the word “hate” only hotter. This sheds some light on what David said earlier in :4 when he said, “God does not delight in wickedness.” That was a deliberate understatement like saying, “God was not a little peeved.” That is just another way of saying, “he was VERY peeved.” So, not only does God have no positive feelings towards wickedness, He has very strong, very negative feelings against it. He abhors it. 

But that leaves us in a rather precarious position, does it not? God hates evildoers. Ok, but how much evil do you have to do to be an evildoer? How much evil would any evildoer do if an evildoer did much doing? So, children, what do you call someone who murders someone? A murderer. Even if it’s just the once. What do you call someone who steals something? A thief. Even if it was just something small. So, what do you call someone who has done something evil? An evildoer. Even if it was just the once and even if it wasn’t super evil. So, have you ever done something evil? Remember, God hates liars. Uh oh! If that is the case, we are in trouble, right? So, what do we do? Listen to 1 John 1:8-10, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Confess your sins and believe that He forgives sinners. That is the only solution. As Jesus Himself taught us in Luke 6:35, “God is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.” So, be grateful for that and be forgiven.

:7 “But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house. I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you.” How does David, a sinner, expect to enter the presence of God? Not by might nor by merit, but by the abundance of God’s steadfast love. Note the word “abundance.” God has more love than you have sin. But also note that David expects God to have to use all of it in order to cover his tab. Love can cover a multitude of sins, but the more sins there are, the bigger that love needs to be. And that is why an abundance of steadfast love is needed if anyone is going to survive the presence of God. David knew that he had a lot of sin, but he believed that God had more than enough love to cover it. And that is why he is planning to bow down before the throne of God. Keep in mind that David is the King. He is not in the habit of bowing down to anyone. People bow to him. But not in God’s throne room. So, if David, the King, must bow before God, how much more must we? Put another way, if the people bowed before David, how much more do they need to bow before the king’s King? 

That brings us to our OT reading from Esther 4-5. If Esther trembled as she entered the throneroom of Ahasuerus, how much more should we tremble at the thought of entering the throneroom of God? Esther took her life into her hands when she entered that throneroom. It required faith. She had reason to believe that the King would spare her life because she was his wife, but it was not a guarantee. He did not have to say, “Yes.” Esther knew that if she had to ask, the answer could be, “No!” So, Esther leaned into her relational bank with her husband, the King, and hoped that it would be enough to spare her life. And it did. So, what is our hope? That is where our NT reading from Hebrews 4 comes in, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” If Esther had reason to hope, we have more. If the favor of Ahasuerus was enough for her to risk her life, the favor of Christ should be more than enough for us to risk ours. We are commanded to draw near to the throne of grace with confidence in Christ. That is not arrogance, that is faith. That is boasting in Him, not in ourselves. If you believe that Jesus is who He says He is and has done what He says He did, then you MUST draw near to God expecting to receive mercy and grace. To shy away from Him at that point is not a sign of humility, it is a sign of rebellion. Come to the Father through the Son by the Spirit. You have been summoned. To refuse to show up is to be in contempt of court.

:8 “Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies; make your way straight before me.” The straight and narrow is simple, but it is not often easy. It is simple in that there is only one of them and it doesn’t zig zag around. But walking on that path makes you an easy target for your enemies because they always know exactly where to find you. There are times when it seems like jumping off the road to hide in the bushes may be the best move. But leaving the road is leaving your advantage. A train does not get anywhere faster by leaving the rails. There are no shortcuts. If a train leaves the rails, it abandons its only advantage. The rails of God are fixed and narrow, but they are the only way to get to the final station. The junkyards are full of trains that thought they had found a better way, but that doesn’t stop the world from assuring you that it will end differently if you try it.

:9 For there is no truth in their mouth; their inmost self is destruction; their throat is an open grave; they flatter with their tongue.” If you are going to walk with God you are going to have to be flatter proof. This will require you to have an honest estimation of your own abilities and a humble acceptance of your own limitations. If you take yourself too seriously, you will be vulnerable to flattery. When you overestimate yourself, you welcome overstatements about yourself. The enemy will not serve you the cold, hard truth. He baits his hook with soft, sweet nothings. Spurgeon said it this way, "Satan never brushes the feathers of his birds the wrong way; he generally deals with us according to our tastes and likings. He flavours his bait to his fish." So, what kind of bait does Satan use to lure you? Where are you vulnerable? Are you feeling underappreciated? Are you harboring unforgiveness? Are you hungry? angry? lonely? bored? or tired? If so, you might be giving the devil a handle. He can see it there in the vending machine window of your soul:  A3 = wounded pride; B2 = father hunger; C5 = bitterness, D1 = rivalry. If he puts his two cents worth of flattery in the slot and pushes your buttons, he has you. So, don’t give the devil a button. But this will require you to listen to others because you have buttons on the back of our head that we can all see.

Consider Proverbs 27:5-6, “Open rebuke is better than secret love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend and many are the kisses of an enemy.” I’ve said it before and I will say it again, “it is better to feel stupid for being corrected than it is to feel good about being stupid.” A good friend will have to correct you at some point. Because you are friends, you likely won’t disagree on much, but because you are both sinners, at some point one of you will be wrong and a good friend will see that and say something. Love confronts and sin flatters and you get what you tolerate. If you put up with sin, you will get more of it. If you put up with flattery, you will get more lies. But we do not want to see more sin, we want to see less of it and we do not want more lies, we want the truth. And we do not merely long to see this someday in Heaven, we long to see it now on earth, just as Jesus taught us to pray.

:10 “Make them bear their guilt, O God; let them fall by their own counsels; because of the abundance of their transgressions cast them out, for they have rebelled against you.” There are few things more satisfying than a great comeuppance. Especially when the bad guy does it to himself. In the story of Esther, Haman was hung on the very gallows he built to kill her uncle. That is poetic justice. The fate of the N.I.C.E. in C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength provides another great example. Without giving the game away, listen to this, “Their own strength has betrayed them. They have gone to the gods who would not have come to them. They have pulled down Deep Heaven on their own heads. Therefore, they will die.” In the best stories, the great boasts of evil are not only defeated, they are revealed to be its fatal flaw. And that is exactly why the Cross of Jesus Christ is the comeuppance of all comeuppances. Calvary exposed the devil. Evil thought it would be a flex to murder the Maker of life one Friday afternoon. But Sunday morning put all the power of evil to open shame and exposed it for the weakness that it was. Hear the words of Colossians 2:13-15 “God made us alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This He set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in Him.” Understand then, that on the Cross, God defeated evil in broad daylight. He disarmed the devil and then pointed and laughed at him in front of the whole class.

This is how Jesus foretold that moment in Luke 11:21-22, “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are safe; but when one stronger than he attacks him and overcomes him, he takes away his armor in which he trusted and divides his spoil.” Satan and sin were strong, but Jesus was stronger. On the Cross, Satan bit Jesus’ heel, but only as it smashed his face. Jesus attacked Satan, overcame him, and took away his armor. Evil was forced to face its own futility – sin doesn’t work. And now everyone who saw it knew. And that is why Jesus sent the disciples out to spread the good news. The Great Commission is our opportunity to join Him in dividing the spoils. Matthew Henry said it this way, “Note, that the devil, though he is an enemy to all the saints, is still a conquered enemy. The Captain of our salvation has defeated and disarmed him; we have nothing to do but to pursue the victory.” That is our job and it is our joy.

:11 But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy, and spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may exult in you.” The sting of death has been snuffed out by the Son of God. Let those who take refuge in Him sing for joy. The psalms are full of great theology and when read for personal devotion, they are second to none, but make no mistake about it, they were meant to be sung. That is why we are so psalm-centered here at CCL. Singing God’s Word is good for our souls. Colossians 3:16, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” We form bonds with those we sing with. When you go to a concert, you feel a certain connection with those in attendance. You are all there for the same thing. And then when that band you came to see plays that song came to hear, you rejoice at the opportunity to sing it with them and with everyone else in attendance. Something similar happens here every week on the Lord’s Day. We do not have smoke machines or pyrotechnics like a rock concert (thanks be to God), but we do have a crowd of people gathered to sing the songs we love with the people we love. The psalms are the songs of God. He wrote the lyrics. So, when we sing them, we are singing with Him. And we all come together as we come together to sing.

:12 “For you bless the righteous, O Lord; you cover him with favor as with a shield.” The songs of the Lord are a shield for His people. That is why Jehoshaphat sent the choir out before the army. The psalms fit together like a shield wall. We have been entrusted with a great heritage and we should preserve it by singing them. But make no mistake, it is the psalms that protect us, not the other way around. They are not in danger of being forgotten, we are in danger when we forget them. So, do not go out to battle without your armor. Sing the psalms and suit up; and see the salvation of the Lord.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

PRAYER

Heavenly Father, thank You for your Word. Store it up as a shield wall in our souls that we might snuff out the flaming darts of the evil one. Thank You for disarming him and for giving us the fun of enjoying the spoils. Help us now to spread the leaven through the rest of the lump and let us witness Your victory in our lives, in our church, in our land, and to the ends of the world. We ask these things in Jesus’ name and we offer up the words of the prayer You taught us to pray singing.