25th song to Psalm 25, page 492, in the P-bottle. G. Campbell Morgan said about the 25th song, the sob of great sorrow, sounds throughout this song. It is true. So you need to know at the beginning, at the outset, that is what you will hear in this song. You will hear the sob of sorrow, the sorrow in loneliness. There is a sorrow in the song, a sorrow of affliction. There is the sorrow of sin as well. And there is sorrow in distress. But I want to encourage you to, and challenge you too, I suppose, but encourage you that if you are willing to look close enough, and that takes courage, really, to look closely at a passage of Scripture. But if you're willing to really look close enough, then you will find in this song, help in time of trouble. If you're willing to listen, if you're willing to listen close enough, you will hear the voice of hope. You will hear a voice of confidence. Structurally, this song is beautiful, God's goodness, and God's patience are, it's varied heart. And Stanley even began to serve, you have a word for you tonight, that is, I believe that about this song, this song has a word for you. And the word never returns void, but this is for some of you, I know some of your favorite, one of your favorite songs. So let's stand together for the reading of Psalm 25, beginning with the title, a Psalm of David, verse 1. To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul, oh my God, I trust in you, let me not be ashamed, let not my enemies triumph over me. Indeed, let no one who waits on you be ashamed, let those be ashamed who deal treacherously without cause. Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths, lead me in your truth, and teach me for you are the God of my salvation, on you I wait all the day. O Lord, your tender mercies and your loving kindnesses, for they have been from of old, do not remember the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions, according to your mercy, remember me, for your goodness sake, O Lord. Good and upright is the Lord, therefore he teaches sinners in the way. The humbly guides in justice and the humble he teaches his way. All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth, to such as keep his covenant and his testimony. For your name, say, O Lord, pardon myiquity, for it is great. Who is the man that fears the Lord? Him shall he teach in the way he chooses. He himself shall dwell in prosperity, and his descendants shall inherit the earth. The secret of the Lord is with those who fear him, and he will show them his covenant. My eyes are ever toward the Lord, for he shall pluck my feet out of the net. Turn yourself to me and have mercy on me, for I am deathful and afflicted. The troubles of my heart have been lords, O bring me out of my distresses, look on my affliction and in my pain, forgive all my sins, consider my enemies for they are many, and they hate me with cruel hatred. O keep my soul and deliver me, let me not be ashamed where I put my trust in you, but integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait for you. Being Israel, O God, out of all their troubles, and you know that we believe that we are Israel, we are present day Israel, we are God's people, but isn't that an interesting verse in light of this last week, verse 22, being Israel, O God, out of all their troubles, all the interlite graphs, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. Amen. At this time, our children, you might be saying, at this time, our children are dismissed for catechism class. I want you to imagine the Christian life as a walk down a road, a journey, if you will, like a path. The road itself, the path, is God's will, you are the traveler. And there are enemies that line the road, that line the path, an enemy that would light nothing more than to steer you off the path, get you out of God's will, an enemy that would light nothing more than to put you to shame, and the enemy has a number of weapons in his arsenal. To name a few fear, loneliness, bitterness, selfishness, pride, frustration, guilt, anything, basically, anything at all that he can do to cause you shame, or to cause you embarrassment, or to cause you defeat. And that is precisely where we find a psalmist in Psalm 25. He's on the path. He's just not moving. He's there, but he's at a standstill. He's stopped, he's played within himself, he's troubled, he's like within and without, he's troubled. He knows that he can't turn back, he knows that's not an option to turn back on the path, but he's carefully knows how he's going to continue, how he's going to start moving again in God's will, in God's grace, or in his graceness, he might say. Specifically, the psalmist knows three attacks. He knows the pressure, he knows some kind of pressure from the enemy. He also is desperate for guidance, so I'm going to be picked up on that as I read, but he is desperate for guidance. He just knows he's not worthy of it. He knows he doesn't deserve guidance, and then to top it off, he's guilty, and he feels guilt percent. He knows that he's wandered off the path, so again, he feels guilty. Now, it may be that you identify with any number of these, maybe one of them, maybe two, maybe three, I was going to tell someone today that I was going to prepare a difficult passage and at the end, there's something about it. There's so much application, and you could find yourself in any one of these. You may find yourself in 90 and all three, so it's difficult as the pastor to preach or to present it, but I'll do the best I can. You understand it. It's possible that it's possibly you have to come to the enemy. That may be your struggle and your identification with this all, that you have to come to the enemy, the wilds of the enemy, perhaps even in the last day or two or within the last week or in your past. You know you've done that. On the other hand, it may be that you feel the weight of the guilt of a sin. You see, my dilemma, it could be both, but it could be that this is your application, or maybe this is your application. It is a sin in your life that you've said, God, I'll never commit that sin again. And lo and behold, you've done it. You've committed it again, and that's why I say perhaps even this weekend, maybe very recently, or whatever the reason is for you, for some of you possibly, your journey on that path has come to a halt, maybe even in a blocked halt. And tonight you've yearned for that companionship with God again, you hunger for that relationship, that friendship with God to be restored, if you're like me, that you identify with the sin part of it. You know what it is to quench the spirit. You know what it is to be distant, to push the spirit away. You wander off the path. And then if you are like me, to hate, more stand on sin, you, to insult the mystery, you might say, you then lash out at the very ones you love, the very ones that are trying to comfort you in your sin, maybe someone's trying to put you back on the path and in your pride, you defend yourself, you know, and you lash out at them. I mean, you may identify more in line with Betsy when I shared with her, I said, well, please install them 25, you know, this study nicely, where you know that's one of my favorites. And it is. And she read this song every day, the last at least two months, maybe three months of the pregnancy with the girls, where she finds herself, you see, still in the path in God's will, but just fresh weight, you know, tired, tired of waiting, scared, maybe. So what is it for you to know, is it an attack of the enemy, you're under a cat, you feel the pressure of the devil in your life, or maybe it's the burden of guilt, the burden for some sin in your life, it may be that you just won't guide us, you just want to know what God's will is, and you know, you don't deserve it, but you're desperate, you want to know. And you find yourself in any one of the three, and David is waiting for you in this song to tell you how to pray, you know, the song is a, again, like so many of the songs we study, it's a pattern for prayer, how you might pray, if you find yourself stopped on the path, you're given the insert, again, a trick to you, again, I put in only half the, in half the outline, now you come to nine, you go, no way, we probably won't make it honestly tonight all the way through, we'll make it through, I mean, it's really because I'll feel the importance of emphasizing, certainly Roman numerals one and two, and then somewhat of three, and we'll skim four and five, so we can bring it to a proper conclusion. But the first thing I want you to notice is that when you're at a standstill in the journey, the pilgrim sings, the one who's really depression is someone who will seek help from God, and you see this in the first verse, you see letter A there, that his trust is placed in God. You remember verse four from Psalm 24, you can look at it, I'm sure it's probably on the same page, your Psalm 25 there, and Psalm 24, verse four, the qualifications, it answers the question, who may it's him, the hill of the Lord, verse four says, he has clean hands and a pure heart who has not lifted up his soul to an idol, and you remember that man, he's not lifted up his soul to anything vain, to anything that's empty, a vain idol. Well, in Psalm 25, you have the man practicing what he reaches, you could say Psalm 24 is the sermon, Psalm 25 is a window into the man's diary. This is him living out what he said in Psalm 24, to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul, not to some vain idol, not to something that's empty, not to a person or place or anything, to you alone, O Lord. I lift up my soul, and when you find yourself at a standstill, when you find yourself distant from God, whether it's an attack of the enemy or whether it's your own sin, I urge you that be the first word out of your mouth, even if it's just a whisper, it's just, you haven't prayed in weeks or months because you felt that there was this wall between you and God, say it, say those words to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. That's your starting point, that's your starting place to get back into God's grace, and notice he asks for protection from his enemies, and verse 3, let me not be ashamed, let not my enemies triumph over me. The first part of verse 3, indeed, let no one who waits on you to be ashamed. Verse 3 is not so much a prayer because it is a repetition. A repetition is not the word, a repetition of, he's reciting his mind when he knows it's true. He's reminding himself of the promises of God. He knows what God has said, it's like he just needs to tell himself that again. No one who's open to you will ever be put to shame, it's like in that true God, even though he knows it's true. It's vintage man kneeling, because that's man kneeling, or she's constantly, I know you know I know you're going to, I know you're going to put me in the bed, I know if I get scared and the knife you're going to be there for me, and she knows it's true, but she can do that 15 or 20 times a day, and that's the way she converses, optimism I guess, but that's really the optimism in our own horrors, but that's the desire in each of our hearts whether we're sorry for some sin we committed, or whether we're scared of the enemy, that's really what we desire, is that God you're not going to let me put the shame where you don't let them go out over me. I know I deserve for them too, but please don't let me be put to shame, and again I'm not trying to air out all my dirty laundry in the pulpit, but David, David is not as innocent as some of the commentators I think make him out to be, I think he's in sin, the confesses is sin, the psalm over and over and over again, and I say air out dirty laundry, I feel it, I just identify with him, and I may not have a better reason to say that, I think that's why he's in it, I think I know what he's talking about, and you feel shame for it, it's not so much that you feel like you're going to be ashamed by your enemies because of your sin, it's more importantly, a heavier burden that you'll shame does that love you so much, so that's why you pray for them, because again, that's the greater shame, you pray for the other Christians, whether it's your wife or your husband or a child or maybe it's just someone in the church that you're close to, that's what he does in verse 3, where you pray for the other Christians, indeed let no one who waits on you be ashamed, the true saints. Even when they're in the midst of their own pain, the midst of their own struggle, they pray for others who are struggling and who are in pain because they know that they need God's grace and they need God's strength to live in this fallen world. So even when you're at a standstill, you see the progression they trust in God first, protect me from my enemies, but I'm going to pray for others as well. And then secondly, when you're at a standstill, the real Christian, the genuine believer is going to seek God for God, as notice A, he begs God to remind him of his duty in verse 4, show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths. Paths is a biblical medical for just the way we live our lives, it's our behavior. And he's saying, I want your path to be my behavior. Teach me your path, that's his desire. And he prays that God would lead him in his truth. In verse 5, lead me in your truth, teach me. As Donald Ray Barnhouse once said, 99% of knowing the will of God is being prepared to do it once we know it. 99% of the simply knowing God's will is being prepared to do his will once he tells you, once he reveals it to you. God, once you've shown me your will, give me the zeal, give me the strength to carry your will out. Might say something about biblical goddess here that often, often biblical goddess is not a matter of learning something new. But sometimes that's what we think we need to be searching for, some kind of new revelations, some kind of new information, I think in some ways the carry-over from the charismatic movement. But you've got to have something that you're missing the point, you're missing out. When actually God's will is in his word. And finding out God's will is simply having the spirit reminds you of what you know is true. It may be that you just forgot it in the heat of battle, but there's no new information. It's just being told, this is what God's will works at and then being willing to carry it out. And if you don't, no wonder you don't find yourself on the road, on the path in God's will. Why do we ask for his truth? The two reasons given in verse 5 and the second part of verse 5 says, for you are the God of my salvation. He's saying because of who you are, because you've redeemed me out of the pit, out of darkness, because you have had compassion on me, I know who you are. And I know that you're a God of great compassion. Therefore answer my prayer. Hear my prayer. Give me guidance. And then the second reason is because I've been waiting on you all the day. That's what he says at the end of verse 5. I own you, I wait all the day. Like a persistent widow. Knocks on the door. Knocks and knocks and knocks until finally the unjust judge gets out of bed and comes the door and gives her justice. And that's us. And that's what we need to be. It reverently, learning how to reverently praise the God. I've trusted in you. I have been waiting. I have knocked on the door of heaven now for five years, ten years. Answer me. Please. Or these reasons. Answer me according to your compassion, according to your loving kindness. That's what he says in verse 6. Remember, O Lord, your tender mercies and your loving kindnesses. But they have been from of old. You ever thought about gaining comfort from God's decrees? I mean, that's really what we said this morning before the reading of the Word. That we take great comfort in knowing that God actually has a plan. And he uses the crisis in our lives to change us because he's sovereign and he's in control. Some people say it's too theological. That's too doctrinal. But that's what David is doing. And he finds his comfort in realizing and reminding himself that God has loved him since before the foundation of the world. He's reminding himself that God's love for him did not have its origin in time because God's loved him since before there was time. He finds peace in God's predestinating law and the secret counsels of God's mind is will. In that what Paul is doing in Ephesians 1, he shows us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless. Before him in love having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself. He's reciting what he knows to be true because of the glory of his grace by which he's made us acceptable in the beloved. That's Paul. So whether you're in sin or you're longing for that relationship to be restored at sin or maybe it's again a track of the enemy. You're in battle against the world or the flesh or the devil. We need to learn to pray words like this. Lord, remember your eternal compassion. Remember that you set your love on me before I set my love on you. When was the last time you prayed to God like that? Because that's true, save me, help me. And then for the first of many times in the song, this is when David confesses his sanity, begs for mercy in verse 7. In essence, he says, Father, if you deal with me according to what I deserve, I'm in trouble. If you deal with me according to what I deserve and I am without hope, just like you saying my sinful past holds me, please don't remember me according to my past. How many of you can identify with that? Don't raise your hands. But how many of you can make that your prayer? Please don't regard me according to my past. But what? According to your mercy, according to your love, your compassion. You see, that's David's example to us. That's where he gains his comfort in God's loving kindness and his love in his character. And that's what leads into the third portion of the song where he meditates on God's character and his acts. So if you find yourself at a standstill, you find yourself out of step with the spirit for whatever reason it is, meditate on who God is on his character, run to him as he is at the God of the Bible. And this is the way you'll find him in verse 8. Good enough, right is the Lord. Therefore, he teaches sinners in the way, the humble he guides in justice and the humble he teaches his way. And verse 10 is very interesting. All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth to such as keep his covenant and his testimonies. To people who keep the covenant of God, to those who believe that God's law is their only rule of faith and practice, the one who claims to the promises of God like they claim to their next threat to those people, people who love God's word, who love his law, to those individuals, all the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth, it doesn't matter what your path is. It may be the path of green pastures, it may be the path of the shadow of death. It doesn't matter to the person who loves God's law, because to that person, all God's paths are mercy, all of his paths are loving kindness. And then after making that kind of pronouncement, he makes a confessional sin again. He says, for your name, say, verse 11, O Lord, pardon myiquity for it is great. Why would he do that? Why confess his sins once and then here he's meditated on the character of God and who God is. And then all of a sudden, he confesses his sin again. Why did he do that? We don't know for certain. We don't know David's mind. A good, biblically educated guest would be that when one meditates on the goodness of God and the purity of God, then one sees himself as he really is, and he realizes it's not a pretty find. Daniel goes back to what I said at the beginning, if you have the courage to look at this passage as closely as you should, it's the same thing. If you dare meditate on the purity of God's character, then look out because inevitably you're going to see your own heart. If you look in the mirror of God's purity, then you will see the reflection of your humble image, the humble image of your heart. And as I said, it can be frightening because it's very simple. You know, that's what we hope happens in worship. They had not talked about that. Stanley and Michael are the same thing. I mean, this is our desire for worship in this church is that we're on this quest for having this true knowledge of who's got it. And we don't want to, we don't want to undermine anything of what God really is as God is really told as he's revealed in the scriptures, but true knowledge of God, at least, is true knowledge of self. And that's what we hope happens in our services as well. True knowledge of self leads to repentance. Some people don't like that. Some people love it. Some people flock to it. They want what we have in our worship services and the hymns that we've seen and exhausting God because they know that they should be humble before this God, this God of the Bible. Some people run from it. They don't want to be made to feel a base before God. So they run the places that will pat them on the back and be made to be made to feel good about themselves. And I think they may have found out. They've fought it. What really, what life is all about. They've fought it. What is real security. What is real joy. I think they're running hugely. It's not found there. We had a man in Clarksdale that at least probably 75 years old. And we got to be very, very good friends. And the first two years, I was there five and a half years and he told me this within the last year that I was there. He said that the first two years you were there, I would leave church and I was shaking my head and saying, I got to teach that boy. I'm going to have to teach him. And then he spent a year absolutely miserable, squarming in his pew, just miserable. And he told me with fear, he cried so much the last year we were together. And our times of fellowship, he was just crying. And he said in that year, God was saving me. And he said, I know he served as a vegan. I think he served as an elder in the church there. And he said, the last two years, I can't get enough. He came to church earlier and he would sit down and he prepared for worship and he'd read the passage. And he would think about the quiet meditation about the inner industry where he had been converted by God's grace. Why is it that you think that sometimes the most, I shouldn't say sometimes, but the most, the men who have the most holiness in this life are men who are made most aware of their sin. So they squarm in the pew and they feel miserable sitting under preaching, God's word. Why is that? The final words of Jay Gresham Mason, great Presbyterian churchman, early part of the twentieth century on his deathbed, he and John Murray were having discussions on a number of theological issues, particularly on the active obedience of Christ. The last words of Mason were a telegram that he sent John Murray. And this is what he said, thank God for the active obedience of Christ, no hope without it. And he died. John Murray died 30, 35 years later. These were John Murray's last words, God have mercy on me, a sinner. So what does that mean? Is that just some kind of self-isolation? If somehow if I can beat myself over the head enough and justify to sin in my life, do they get what those men were saying? No way. It was the heart hunger of men to new God. And they knew who they were in light of their creator as we know God will know our sin. As we know our sin and we know God, then we're going to see the hangness of our sin. As we see the hangness of our sin will fall down and then we'll really start worshiping God, perhaps even for the first time. And then fourthly, when we're at a standstill, you'll notice that he recalled the fear of the Lord and we're just going to make our way quickly through this. That's 12. It began just like chapter 24, verse 3, but who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in your holy place? And what we might expect is another list of qualifications and it's not that it's actually a list of blessings. Those who fear God, these are their blessings. The first and verse 12 is that their salt, God's will, he'll guide them, he'll direct their path, and verse 13, the man that fears the Lord, he will prosper that soul, spiritually prosper that man. The second part of verse 13 tells us the man that fears the Lord and the man who's saved will dwell in the land. This man descendant, physical and spiritual, will enjoy the covenant promises of God. Look at day and the outline of the Lord will confide in the man who fears him. That is law, verse 14, he says, the secret of the Lord is with those who fear him, he'll show them his covenant. And that's the N.O.V. is the one who uses that word confides, is the Lord confides in those who fear him. Once upon a time you didn't like the truth, you fought, you didn't enjoy expository preaching because you didn't see the value in it, you hated it, you didn't want to hear probing words from the pulpit. And then there's maybe in what the man has been clashed there where you feel beaten down, you feel even discouraged, and then one day you're converted. And then you feel that you can't get enough, you can't get enough of his word, you can't get enough of God. The more he gives of himself to you, the more you won't. And you just say, you say in your Christian life, I just can't get enough, I can't get enough of him. And that's when God begins to tell you some of his secrets you might say, because now you're fearing him and he confides in you. Even that communion with him is really the context where he gives you his presence. And then, faithfully, when you're in a standstill, in a journey to pray, he prays for himself and he prays for his fellow saints. Here are seven petitions. Seven petitions that anybody who's under pressure, who's guilt-ridden, in need of guidance, they're going to want to pray these seven petitions. The first is he asks the Lord to be gracious to him in verse 16, which I might say you need to tell God your fear, admit your fears, express the fact that you feel a love. Tell him what's happening in your life. Tell him that you know you're utterly dependent upon him to have any victory whatsoever over your enemies. Tell him that. Secondly, he asks the Lord to bring him out of his distress in verse 17. He sees that there's really no other way out in verse 18. He's quick to ask for pardon for sin again. Here it is, again and again and again. Do you think that maybe he thinks this is penance? If I just ask God for forgiveness and sin enough, I'll just wear him down and finally you'll forgive me for that sin because I've asked him enough times. Some of us think that when we've committed sin again and again and again. We think we have to keep asking and keep asking him for forgiveness so that we would have asked him just the right number of times. So now I feel good about it. He must have forgiven me now. That's not what's happening here. That's not true. That's not the way we ask for forgiveness. This man knows that sin breaks fellowship with God and he's just hungry for that relationship with God to be restored. He just wants to know the way he's right. He wants to know it's clear. A counselor settled. Verse 19 is asking the Lord to judge his enemies. He brings justice down on my enemies. In verse 20 he asked God to guard his soul because he knows that if he's like this in this hall, his soul is in danger. So he needs God to guard him. In verse 21 he asked God to preserve his integrity and that's admirable. That's like Job. Job would doggedly determine to keep his integrity and that's when David turns to pray for others. In verse 22, Redeem Israel, O God, out of all their troubles. Barbara Bush was interviewed one time and asked about depression. She had depression in her life. And this is what she told the interview. The only thing that ever brought me out of that depression was remembering that other people had trouble too. And throwing myself into helping them in the midst of their own trouble. That's not a great spiritual answer, but there's a lot of practical truth in that. And that's when we find David, it's like David, as much heartache as he feels, he gets out of himself, so to speak, so that he can help others. He puts his mind on others who are hurting brothers and sisters. So let me encourage you, as we close, that if it may be, you need to get back on the path. I don't know where you are tonight, but stand up on the path and dust yourself off and get silent with God. You need to be still. I'll say that to myself. I have a real need. Right now, I need to sit down and be still in a long day. I need to be still before God. No, I've got to do that before tomorrow morning. So I encourage you to close your eyes and somewhere at some point and just lift your palms up to God and just say that first verse to Him over and over and over and over. I say to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. To you, I lift up my soul. That is the way I want us to end our service. I'd like for us to pray. Let me close and prayer and have you already turn the Psalter to this Psalm to Psalm 25. And after I pray, we'll sit quietly for about a minute and just you be still and maybe say that to you, O Lord, I'll lift up my soul to say it. Or maybe you have a favorite verse in that Psalm that you just repeat to him a few times over. And then after some time of silence, we'll come in and we'll stand and we'll sing. You'll notice they will sing only verses one to seven of the Psalm and then we'll close our service singing verses 21 and 22. But that's for you in the book. So let me pray and then we'll remain silent. Our God, our prayer is that these words, the words of your word would not fall on deaf ears or cold hearts tonight. But you would apply these truths to our lives right where we are wherever each individual is on the journey right now. And then we will give you all the praise and all the glory and honor that by your spirit you put us back on the path.