(0:00 – 1:52)
Our passage of scripture this morning is Psalm 5, Psalm 5, and I’ll read the entire Psalm, Psalm 5. To the chief musician with flutes, a Psalm of David. Give ear to my words, O Lord. Consider my meditation.
Give heed to the voice of my cry, my King and my God. For to you I will pray. My voice you shall hear in the morning, O Lord, in the morning I will direct it to you, and I will look up.
For you are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness, nor shall evil dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand in your sight. You hate all workers of inequity.
You shall destroy those who speak falsehood. The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man. But as for me, I will come into your house in the multitude of your mercy.
In fear of you I will worship toward your holy temple. Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies. Make your way straight before my face, for there is no faithfulness in their mouth.
Their inward part is destruction. Their throat is an open tomb. They flatter with their tongue.
Pronounce them guilty, O God. Let them fall by their own counsels. Cast them out in the multitude of their transgressions, for they have rebelled against you.
But let all those rejoice who put their trust in you. Let them ever shout for joy because you defend them. Let those also who love your name be joyful in you, for you, O Lord, will bless the righteous.
(1:53 – 3:37)
With favor you will surround him as with a shield. One of the first and most important things that I realized that Pastor Bruce and I had in common was prayer. Before the hurricane, before Hurricane Ian hit us, Pastor Bruce, myself, and Pastor Archie, and now Pastor Joe, we would meet here, what was it, 5 in the morning or 6 in the morning, and we would pray at 5 in the morning.
And that didn’t last after the hurricane, just because everything got so crazy. But we were doing that, and I realized I had some brothers in your church that were men of prayer. And I believe whether we meet with anyone else or not, we, all of us, should be praying every morning.
That should be the first thing we do is read God’s Word and pray as soon as we wake up, even if we’re not coming to a meeting to do that. And this psalm is a psalm that is all about prayer. And the first thing I want you to notice about it is it talks about making first things first.
And the first thing that we should have first every day is prayer. Unless you want to put your Bible reading before that, because Bible reading is listening to God talk to you, and prayer is you speaking to Him. And so, Bible reading can come first.
(3:37 – 5:57)
But every morning, that should be the case for each one of us. And here, David is writing. He’s a king, and he’s writing to his God, and he’s telling us these things.
Now, David was God’s king. He was a man after God’s own heart. His psalms were psalms.
Most of them were written for worship, and this was the case with this psalm. And this psalm is about just what I’ve mentioned, early morning prayer. He says, Give ear to my words, O Lord.
Consider my meditation. Give heed to the voice of my cry, my King and my God, for unto you I will pray. My voice shall you hear in the morning, O Lord, in the morning.
I will direct it to you, and I will look up. A, this prayer is a pleading for God’s hearing. I noticed if you look through the psalms, David often does this.
He pleads for God to hear him. He says, Give ear to my words, O Lord. And so, he’s praying that God will hear his prayer, and then he says, Consider my meditation.
And meditation is when we think about God’s word, and we think about God, and we think about the things of God. And I believe David was always, 24-7, thinking about God. Maybe not when he’s sleeping, but maybe he’s dreaming about God while he’s sleeping.
And he’s always had that, and he says to the Lord, as he’s praying, when he wants God to hear him, he says, Consider that my mind is always on you. I always want to praise you. Then he asks God to hear the voice of his cry.
And we should all be like that in prayer. If we’re praying for something we really want, there’s emotion in that prayer. There’s a cry.
There’s a desperate, I need you to hear me, Lord. And there’s a cry to God there. David was a king himself, and yet he knew God was his real king.
He says, My king and my God. You know, when Saul was made king, the one that was king before David, he was the people’s king. They wanted a king, and they weren’t recognizing that God was their king.
(5:58 – 7:17)
But David, the second king, realized that God was king. He was just, you know, in that place, but God was the real king. And then, lastly, in verse three, he says, My voice shall thou hear in the morning.
O Lord, in the morning I will direct it to you, and I will look, I will look up. Here David is making a vow. The vows of God were on David, and he’s promising, every morning I’m going to direct my prayer to you.
Every morning you’re going to hear my voice. I’m planning on being here with you every single day, and that’s the commit we all should make. You know, make your morning a time with God before you do anything else, and then you gain God’s blessing for the rest of that day.
Martin Luther, the great reformer, says, I had a lot to do today. I need to spend three hours in prayer. He knew that God would enable him through the day.
God would strengthen him through the day. Point number two, the reason for coming to God early, we don’t have much going for us without him. Meaning, without him, we can do nothing.
(7:18 – 7:43)
Look at these next verses, four through six. It says, For you are a God who takes, you’re not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness, nor shall evil dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand in your sight.
You hate all workers of inequity. You shall destroy those who speak falsehood. The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
(7:45 – 12:31)
Scripture tells us that every one of us, except for our Lord Jesus Christ, is a sinner. By nature, we are born sinners. It says in Romans 3, 10 through 12, There is none righteous, no, not one.
There is none who understands. There’s none who seeks after God, and that’s who we are in our nature. And here, I believe in verses four through six, David is expressing God’s attitude towards wickedness.
Evil, boastful people, workers of inequity, those who lie, those who murder, he abhors them and he will destroy them. These are people that will not live before God. And so we see here, David puts the for, and for at the beginning of verse four, means this is the reason David is praying.
He’s saying, because God, you hate sinners, and I know you ultimately destroyed them. I am coming to you early in the morning, because I don’t want to be like them. I don’t want to be wicked.
I don’t want to fall astray. And I know if you don’t strengthen me, if you don’t enable me to walk with you, I’m going to slip, I’m going to fall. And we see that that definitely happened with David.
I believe the reason he fell into sin with Bathsheba was he was not in the word and prayer at that time. And I don’t know if Psalm five comes before that or after that. Maybe he learned his lesson and that’s why he’s coming to God early every morning and devoting himself, because he knows that he has a tendency to fall.
And we all have that. If we don’t go to God early, we will fall. When you need help, when you need mercy for God, call on him early.
Second Corinthians 6.2 says, for he says, in an acceptable time I have heard you, and in the day of salvation I have helped you. Behold, now is the acceptable time. Behold, now is the day of salvation.
I’m speaking especially, I don’t know you as well as my own congregation, but if you are not sure you know the Lord, get right with him today. Don’t wait for another day. Repent and come to him now.
Pray early and often because we can do nothing without Jesus Christ and nothing without God. Even if you are a believer and you’re walking with God, you don’t want to leave off that walk. You want to keep up that walk.
Jesus says, I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.
None of us can do anything unless God enables us, unless God strengthens and helps us. Point number three, what should we expect if we come to God early? Well first, Psalm 5 verse 7a, mercy from God. It says, but as for me I will come into your house in the multitude of your mercy.
He’s coming, he’s coming as a sinner, but he expects a multitude of God’s mercy. When we sin, however much we sin, God has more mercy than our sins. If we come to him saying, I’m a sinner, I need your grace, Christ’s blood covers that and we are, we come to the multitude of his mercies which are greater than our sins.
Secondly, we should expect our own reverence, our own fear from God. He says, in fear of you I will worship toward your holy temple. He knows if he comes early, if he comes regularly, he really knows God and he’s going to come in reverence for God.
He’s going to come to God serious in his prayer and he’s going to know who he’s talking to. And then thirdly, we should expect if we come to God early, God’s guidance. Verse eight, it says, lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies make straight, make your way straight before my face.
Very interesting, he comes because he’s king and he’s ruling a nation and he knows he needs God’s guidance. This isn’t a preacher coming to God in David, this is a king. And whatever we do in life, if we want to do it to God’s glory and praise and in a way that is right and good, we should come to God for guidance.
(12:31 – 13:01)
He will guide and lead, will lead and guide us. Number four, what should we expect from an ungodly world? You know, if we don’t come to God and we’re expecting benefits from an ungodly world, what do we get? Well, one, lies. Verse nine, for there is no faithfulness in their mouth.
Psalm 5 9a. Secondly, corrupt hearts, their inward part is destruction, 5 9b. Third, bad breath.
(13:02 – 18:34)
Their throat is an open tomb, Psalm 5 9. Every morning you wake up and you have a bad breath, that’s a reminder from God, you’re still a sinner. Even though we’re saved, we still need his grace. And that’s the way of the world is bad breath and not only bad breath, but it means everything coming out of that mouth is dead and destructive.
Not necessarily for Christians, but definitely from the world. And then a flattering tongue. It says in verse 9d or 5 9d, they flatter with their tongue.
These are salesmen and what they sell is hell. When you turn on the tv first thing in the instead of praying to God, you’re listening to the lies of the world oftentimes. And they’re going to deceive you and and lead you astray and take you in the wrong way.
And so number five, point number five, in precatory prayer against the wicked, he says, pronounce them guilty, O God. Let them fall by their own counsels, cast them out in the multitude of their transgressions, for they have rebelled against you. And you might say, hey pastor, Psalm 510 and there’s other psalms that are like this.
They’re hard to understand. Why is God calling, why is David calling for this calamity on wicked people? You know, we know Jesus in Matthew 5 verses 43 through 48 says, you have heard it said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your father in heaven.
For he makes the sunrise on the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so. Therefore you should be perfect even as your father in heaven is perfect.
Now how do we get these two verses together? I don’t believe that the Bible is contradicting itself. I believe when Jesus says, love your enemies, he’s talking to us in our personal relationships with people. When we have somebody do us wrong, we don’t have to do wrong back to them.
We can be kind to them, we can love them, we can do that. And so Jesus is dealing on a personal level, but remember David is praying as a king. He’s praying as his position in government, one who was charged, because in that you didn’t, in his day there wasn’t judges or other people under him.
He was king and he was charged with keeping the law, and so he prays against evil in his kingdom. And I believe we see an example of this on Memorial Day, in that we’ve had soldiers go out and fight what we’ve called just wars. And they died, and sometimes not only died, but they killed the enemy.
And when we see this, we see the reason for imprecatory prayer, not for our own personal gain, but for the welfare of a nation. Because a nation that serves the Lord and loves the Lord and follows what is right and good is doing what is right. But when we see evil in general in a nation, we can pray against that evil, that they would, their evil ways would destroy them, that they would fall on their own.
We can pray for their conversion, that they’d come to Christ. That’s ultimately what we pray for, but we don’t pray for their success in their evil. We want their evil ways to be stopped, and that’s what I believe David is praying for there.
And then lastly, point number six, we see David’s prayer for God’s people. He says, but let all those rejoice who put their trust in you. Let them ever shout for joy, because you defend them.
Let those also who love your name be joyful in you, for you, O Lord, will bless the righteous. With favor you will surround him as with the shield. I think this is wonderful when you, especially when you compare it, hear David as a king.
Remember, he’s singing a song, and this is a song that’s going to be sung by everyone, because he’s the king, and he’s giving it to others to sing, and he as king is favoring the righteous, and he’s standing against the wicked. And so he’s saying in this official capacity of government, I want the righteous to win. And he says, but let all those who trust in you rejoice, shout for joy, because you defend them.
(18:35 – 19:23)
And in this world, whether we have righteous rulers or wicked rulers, God is always on the side of the righteous. He’s always on the side of his people. He forgives us when we sin, and we can trust him to take care of us, and defend us, and to be our strength.
And yet sometimes, just as people need to die in war for what is right, Christians have died through the centuries, not so much in our country, but all over the world for their faith. And so we as a nation have been blessed as a Christian nation for a lot of our years. If we move away from that, we will lose that protection, and may have to stand for our faith.
(19:23 – 19:59)
Well, let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this prayer of David, and the things that he tells us, the things that he prayed for. And Father, his prayer for the righteous must have put some fear in the ungodly and the wicked.
And so Father, we pray that our nation would be brought back to you as well, and that we might be men and women of prayer, and that power in prayer would be seen, and that would be known. And Father, we pray your grace in that sense. We pray these things in Jesus’ name.
(20:00 – 20:01)
Amen.
