Psalm 144. Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle. He is my steadfast love and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield and he in whom I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me. O Lord, what is man that you regard him or the Son of man that you think of him? Man is like a breath, his days are like a passing shadow. Bound your heavens, O Lord, and come down. Touch the mountains so that they smoke. Flash forth the lightning and scatter them. Send out your arrows and route them. Stretch out your hand from on high. Rescue me and deliver me from the many waters. From the hand of foreigners whose mouths speak lies and whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood. I will sing a new song to you, O God. Upon a ten-stringed harp, I will pray to you who gives victory to kings who rescues David, his servant from the cruel sword. Rescue me and deliver me from the hand of foreigners whose mouths speak lies and whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood. May our sons and their youth be like plants full grown. Our daughters like corner pillars cut for the structure of a palace. May our granaries be full, providing all kinds of produce. May our sheep bring forth thousands and 10,000s in our fields. May our cattle be heavy with young, suffering no mishap or failure in barren. May there be no cry of distress in our streets. Blessed are the people to whom such blessings fall. Blessed are the people whose God is the Lord. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God, you may be seated. Father, if it be praiseworthy or excellent or admirable or holy, let that be impressed deeply upon our hearts that we, as our elder John Hawkins prayed, would leave here as changed people. In Jesus' name, amen. I think the first noticeable thing about this psalm is that it begins and ends with praise. In verse one, he says, blessed be the rock. And in verse 15, he closes with blessed are the people whose God is the Lord. And there's no surprise to that. We're accustomed to hearing praise on the lips of the psalmists. As early as Psalm seven, you hear, I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the most high. And even in the last psalm, Psalm 150, you hear. But everything that has breath, praise the Lord. Sometimes the praise is of the exuberant kind. And Psalm 27, he says, I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy. I will sing and make melody to the Lord. But at other times though, the praise is more reserved. It's tempered in the midst of circumstances, but it's no less authentic. And that's why you'll hear in a psalm like Psalm 71, oh God, be not far from me. May cased to help me. May my accusers be put to shame and consumed with scorn and disgrace. May they be covered who seek my hurt. But I will hope continually and will praise you yet more and more, whether it is exuberant or reserved. It would appear that praise is part and parcel of what it means to be in communion with God. And what we find in this psalm is that our psalmist, David, has been praying until he prayed. He's prayed until he prays with an unabashed praise. The question I ask you is, is that the case with you? Is praise a prominent feature in your communion with God? Is it a regular occurrence in your prayers before him? Does it emerge in private and in public settings? I know you can praise in a number of ways that have nothing to do with words, but is praise ever on your lips. Now, I will grant that some people's praise is more ostentatious than real. They just like drawing attention to themselves in the way they praise God. And there are others whose praise is more forced and obligatory than authentic. So it is possible to utter words of praise that indicate no authenticity in them. But if God is really God, if you're really alive because He allows you to be alive and that all that is He is responsible for, and that every good thing that's come to you is because of Him, then wouldn't it be reasonable that praise would flow effortlessly from us? Does it flow effortlessly from you? Does it from me? If it doesn't, why not? What impedes your praise? What would create dissonance in your heart? What questions or confusions or bitterness would make it difficult for you to echo the first few lines of this song? Maybe that's something you and I should pray about. Isn't the kind of communion that we're meant to have with God one that's unabashed in its praise of Him? Now, it's not that the Lord is asking us to pray as if it were some sort of formula or to use words like some sort of mantra to whip ourselves up into some sort of emotional moment. But it is a call to labor with God in prayer until your praise of Him moves from something stilted to something spontaneous. That's my first point that I think that this text reveals. We pray until we pray with unabashed praise. That's the first, here's the second. In this song, the praise is not generic. It has a reason. You might even say two related reasons. Listen again in verses one and two. Blessed be the Lord my rock who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle. He is my steadfast love and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield and he and whom I take refuge, who subdues people under me. His praise is based on a confidence. A confidence for one thing in having the Lord having prepared Him for the moment that is before Him. And in this case, it's opposition. If you know anything about David, you know that David faced opposition often. He knew about battle from his various earliest moments and withstanding the attacks of a lion and a bear to besting Goliath on an open field with nothing more than a slingshot and faith through a looting saw when that maniacal king sought to take his life in an envious rage. And even when he was vanquishing all manner of opposition to Israel, in each case, David makes a point to attribute to God his capacity to face his moment. He's been made aware of what he's up against and he's prepared to face it and brothers and sisters we call that vigilance. You hear words like that about battle and fighting and you're in a fight with the Lord and fight in the midst of the Lord and you know all that kind of sounds a little quaint, a little bit eccentric, maybe even a little bit cute like when my son will strap on his plastic armor and head out of the backyard on a quest to impale the cat. I was like, that's sweet. But what does it have to do with me? Am I really in a battle? Tim kind of touched on this last week in his sermon. We do not battle against flesh and blood. We battle against the spiritual forces of darkness. If we think the concept of our lives being in the midst of a conflict, if we think that's a bygone concept, that's part of the problem. That's part of our problem. What do I mean by being aware of and prepared for our moment? Let me put it starkly. You and I are not immune to grievous sin. The Apostle Paul said it pretty candidly that the law of Moses was unable to really keep us from sin but one thing it did really well, it spoke against all the ways in which we find it so easy to sin. Consequently, how you operate, how you live as a spouse or a parent or an employee or a neighbor, none of that is impervious to this sort of insidious creeping up of foolish choices that can create untold devastation. Did the governor of South Carolina ever dream of what kind of devastation he could reek in his life and in his family before he did so? If any of us who have ever been sorrowful for a choice that we have made or have had to receive forgiveness for sin, did we ever imagine beforehand that we were capable of something so regrettable? Our susceptibility to sin requires vigilance, not only to the opposition that comes from without but mostly to the opposition that comes from within. And so I ask you, when you pray, are you similarly vigilant to the way in which your heart is working? Sensitive to where your heart can lead you into pride or to greed or into self-deception or perhaps what is more prevalent, a heart that leads you to do absolutely nothing. Our Arrino wrote an article several years ago that was contrasting how in the age of modernity after the industrial revolution and the renaissance that man's greatest temptation was to pride, that we were so inebriated on our own newfound intellectual and scientific and technological prowess that we grew increasingly susceptible to thinking much too highly of our own reach. That hubris and pride seemed to infect more people than it ever had in the age of modernity. But now Arrino says it's a little bit different. Oh yes, pride still infects us all and wonderfully and effectively, but even more prevalent and more threatening today is something that the desert fathers of the fourth century called Acedia to Greek word and it means a spiritual indifference or malaise, a chronic lack of concern for the glory of God or the working of God's life into us. That is our moment. That is our opposition. CJ Mahani made a little bit more clarified comment of that when he said in his book Worldliness that the greatest threat facing the church in America today is not persecution from the world but seduction by the world. Brothers and sisters and honored guests, that's our moment, that's our opposition and it's imprained that we become sensitive to them. But the reason for the Psalmist to praise isn't just that he's ready for the moment. It's also because he believes that the Lord is enough for him. David calls the Lord a fortress, a stronghold, a deliverer, a shield and a refuge, but in front of all those metaphors, he calls the Lord his steadfast love. Even when his own acumen or aptitude or vigilance reach their limit, he's confident in God being enough for him. Are you confident of that? It's John Parade in his prayer. Some of you have half the financial resources that you had last year. And while having your expectations reset, that dramatically is an enormous challenge. Can you sleep at night knowing that the Lord is enough for you? Some of you have lost something or someone dear to you. And others of you long for something and have longed for something for a long time that is both desirous and good. And whatever your longings for what might have been or for what might be, even if they are legitimate. Can you face your days and your nights resting in the fact that the Lord is your steadfast love? Can you rest in that? Can that peacefulness rise up in you that you might continue to live and love in obedience? That's peacefulness. And that's what David has found. And that's what is evidenced by his prayer. And therefore, I would say to you that if indeed prayer will change us, then pray until you pray with this kind of vigilant peacefulness. There's a third dimension of his communion with God that's in his prayer. And that we find in verse three and four. Listen again. Oh Lord, what is man that you regard him or the son of man that you think of him? Man is like a breath. His days are like a passing shadow. The most obvious feature there, of course, is his humility. He reflects upon his God and on himself and he sees no place for vanity. Now, there are a number of reasons why you might be a humble person. Your temperament might be one of being soft-spoken. That flamboyance to you or attracting attention to yourself, it is like beyond the pale. It is totally averse to you. Others of you, though, have may have learned humility for an experience in your life where you have been brought deathly low, either through a painful choice or a painful loss. Surely those are expressions of humility. But what we have here in this Psalm is something different. It's what we might call a considered humility. It's a humility grounded in something very specific but which is true for all men and it has two parts to it. There's a sobriety in this humility and there's an amazement in the humility. The Psalmist is speaking honestly about the brevity of his own life, how it's going to be over before he knows it, how its significance against the backdrop of all other things seems so trifly and that's sobriety and it should and it's a good thing but there's more to his humility than just sobriety. He's also amazed, amazed at the one who is responsible for all that is has taken upon himself to engage us. Us, we who are so insignificant, who are so infinitesimal, who are so frail. Both of my children are in that phase of their childhood right now where they are fascinated with really pulleys. They go out in the backyard and for hours at a time, they will collect them, they will study them, they will look at them, they will let them crawl on their hands, they will bring them in a bowl and the dinner table and make my wife and me nauseated. They love studying this infinitesimal thing to them. They simply appreciate them despite how easily it would be for them to engage other things that are so much larger. Despite how easily it would be for them either to take no notice of those things or to squish them between their fingers, they are moved by something so small and real.
The Psalmist is moved, that the Lord is moved, that the Lord has chosen to reveal himself, not as some impersonal deity, he's revealed his name, Lord Yahweh, I am, the one who has attribute and identity and interest. But he's amazed also not just that the Lord has revealed himself, but that he has regard for us. Those words there that the Lord regards us and thinks of us, those are words that communicate an intimate and thoroughgoing knowledge of his subject. Now, we would expect that kind of considered humility in one who's in communion with God. I mean, how many times do we read in scripture that the Lord says, I humble the proud and I will exalt the humble. But even there, you have to see that this kind of humility is more sophisticated than just feeling small. You don't hear in verses three through five, a groveling or sniveling soul, because the Lord isn't out to make a groveling and sniveling people. Now, on our prayerless and haughty and self-reliant and prideful days, the Lord comes to us in this verse and says in effect, who do you think you are? Any good, any privilege you've got derives, not mostly from your work, but from more antecedent causes than you could ever account for. And I, the Lord, am the ultimate antecedent cause. But on our despondent and self-loathing days, he comes to us in the same verse and he says in effect to us, who do you think you are? I made you. I revealed myself to you. I know you better than you know yourself. What are you sitting there being so morbidly introspective for? If you're proud, you need this considered humility. Because the adage didn't become an adage for a reason, but said, self-made men tend to worship their creator. The proud need, this humility, but so do the excessively demure and the excessively self-deprecating. You are tiny. Your life is but an instant. But the Lord has invited you into his story, into his program and in his plan. And so sitting on the sidelines, because you think you're unqualified to be about his business, is to disregard his regard for you. Sir Alec Guinness, you know him as the celebrated actor. I know him as Obi-Wan Kenobi, primarily. He converted to Christ as an adult. And in writing to his wife one time about the grace of God, he said this, God gives each man and woman according to their capacity, a glimpse of his promise to them. An impression of what eternity could mean, a glimpse of their adoption as sons of God, and by its withdrawal, a realization of what the fall of man means. It's a golden carrot held up to donkeys who could be gods. We are donkeys, but by the grace of God, we will know him and we will reflect him. And then we will be, as Jesus says, as gods. We see us Lewis and the Puritans are right. Then that kind of humility is not only evidenced by our prayers, it's cultivated through our praying. And so we pray until we pray with that kind of considered humility, which leads me to my last point. The praise, the peacefulness, the humility, they all culminate in something, something that we find in the last part of this song that we're gonna look at today. Look in verse five again. Value heavens or Lord and come down. Touch the mountains so that they smoke, flash forth the lightning and scatter them. Send out your arrows and route them. Stretch out your hand from on high, rescue me, and deliver me from the many waters, from the hand of foreigners whose mouths speak lies and whose right hand is the right hand of falsehood. Here you find dramatic and vivid language illustrating one more dimension of this communion with God. And it's this. He prays until he prays with a righteous boldness.
He's asking for God to move in a way that only God can to do so in a definitive way that glorifies God, to rescue him from the opposition of those who have no regard for the Lord and all to see God's promises go forward through him. That's righteous boldness. I wish it were more complicated than that, but it's not. His praise, his peacefulness, his humility, it all leads him to offer bold requests that further God's righteous plans, nothing more, nothing less. To ask the Lord to restore someone to health like we find in James 516, it's a righteous boldness. To ask the Lord to fill someone with the knowledge of his will as Paul does in Colossians 1, that's a righteous boldness. To ask the Lord to be made worthy of his calling, as it says in First Thessalonians 1, that's a righteous boldness. To ask the Lord that the sharing of our faith would be effective as it does in Philemon 6, it's a righteous boldness. To pray for sharing, or for Margaret, or for the choir, or for the trip to Cusco, or for your own heart, or for the neighbors that you see as you walk along your street, or for the colleagues in your office, that's a righteous boldness. When you begin to pray such, you may very feel, you may very well feel all manner of hesitation. I know that because I have, and I do, questions enter your head like, am I doing it right? Does this matter at all? Does God really even hear my prayers, and let everybody knows about me? Brothers and sisters, when you see that David is praying on the basis of God's promises, then you can see that we pray out of simple obedience because he's called us to it. If prayer changes us, we pray until we pray with a righteous boldness. Those are his prayers. And those prayers reflect the kind and quality of communion that he had with the Lord. And it's that kind of communion experienced in prayer and cultivated in prayer that leads us to listen to the Puritan instruction of pray until you pray. But as soon as you put yourself to that, your soul inevitably is gonna bump in to the kind of opposition that was best expressed by an Anglican bishop of the 17th century named Jeremy Taylor. Of prayer, he said this. So weary are we of the duty. So glad are we to have it over. And so weary are we to find an excuse to evade it. Jeremy Taylor was there quoted by a 19th century Scottish pastor named Alexander White in a sermon that he wrote that was entitled audaciously. It is sometimes so with me that I will rather die than pray. And that is why you dare not enter into the fray of praying until you pray, unless you go in the shadow of the cross of Jesus. If I am led to praise the Lord because he revealed himself to David, how much more will I be inclined to do so if I see that the Lord died for me and his son? If I am to find peace in the fact that the Lord delivers us from opposition, how much more can I rest in that peace if I know he delivers me from the weight of my own sin? And if I can discover boldness in the fact that the Lord delivered David from Saul, how much more reason do I have to be bold in prayer? If the Lord delivered Jesus from death, I want no one to teach me about prayer other than the Lord Jesus. Because even when he is harshest in his teaching about prayer, when he is in the garden and he comes to his disciples and he says, could you not even stay awake for one hour? Watch and pray that you don't follow the temptation. I know in that moment I can hear in his voice, I can hear in those words what he means. He knows how much we need prayer and he knows how much difficulty we have in it. And so he speaks like a chastising father who loves his child. Watch and pray that you would not follow the temptation and what are your temptations to have no praise in your life, to have no humility in your life, to walk around with all anxiety and to be about as bold as really poorly. I want no one else to teach me about prayer than the Lord Jesus, not only in what he teaches me about prayer, but in the fact that he prays for me. He does not ask me to do anything that he has not done himself. So by way of application, can I ask you to do something this week? We're gonna be coming back to Psalm 144 again next week. I'd like you to pray this Psalm in quiet moments. I want you to sit with it. I want you to read with it often. I want you to follow its lead and I want you to pray it into your own circumstances. Now, for some of you, that's gonna be really easy because you're at a really tender moment right now. And so you're gonna feel connections between your experience and what's going on in this Psalm most readily. But others of you might find it more challenging, because it may have been a while since you have considered why praise, or peacefulness, or humility, or boldness ought to be prominent features of your existence. But as you pray through this Psalm and you discover a variance between what is represented in it and what is represented by your own heart. Stop there and ask, why can't I praise? Where do I need humility? And it's in that stopping and asking that we can move from a stilted communion to a more authentic communion with our Lord. And then by the grace of God, you and I will move past measuring our prayer lives in terms of duration and frequency, infurvency and eloquence. And instead, we will seek to pray for what prayer seeks to produce in us. Brothers and sisters, let's pray until we pray.