E06: Psalm 5 - Longing for audience with God
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0:00 Praise God.
0:01 Today is a beautiful day.
0:07 We thank God for his love, his protection, his favor upon our lives.
0:16 And I keep saying praise God because he alone deserves praise.
0:20 He alone deserves honor.
0:22 He alone deserves worship.
0:26 And so today we'll be looking at the Book of Psalms.
0:33 We'll be looking at Psalms chapter 5.
0:37 I'm so glad that you are part of this podcast.
0:40 You are welcome.
0:42 And I thank God that you are willing to give God time to speak to both of us.
0:50 I thank God for each one of you.
0:53 May the Lord bless you for making time to have to spend time in his presence.
1:00 So let us pray.
1:02 Father, we thank you so much for an opportunity to be in your presence.
1:06 An opportunity to sit at your table and to feed from you.
1:12 The psalmist in Psalm 23 talks about how you lead him to green pastures, how and how you make sure that he's drinking from still, quiet waters.
1:25 You care about us and so we are grateful to you for it.
1:29 We pray that even as we study your word today, it will really be for us.
1:34 Green pastures and quiet waters.
1:38 And that, Lord, our needs will be met spiritually and our needs will be met physically.
1:45 Because you care about the whole man, soul, body and spirit.
1:50 Lord, we thank you.
1:52 We pray that, Lord, if there is anyone who is not feeling well in their body, you touch them, Master, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
2:00 And that, Lord, you cause healing to begin to work within their bodies even as they hear your word.
2:07 The Book of Proverbs, chapter 4.
2:08 Talk about how your word is life to all of us who have found it and health to all our flesh.
2:17 As we listen to your word, may life begin to spring up in the cells of our bodies and may our bones be made whole and strong.
2:26 Lord, we pray even for our souls that you quieten our souls as we listen to you.
2:32 Remove every destruction, O God, deal with every pain, remove every heartache, oh God, as we hear your word, as we incline our ear to you, touch us and heal us.
2:43 Because your word says that the word of God is sharper than a two edged sword.
2:49 It goes deep down dividing asunder soul and spirit.
2:54 That means you deal with the soul issues, you deal with the spiritual issues.
2:58 We pray that, Lord, as we come into your presence, even as we sit at your table, our hearts will be made warm and our soul, our spirits will become alert and aware of your presence.
3:13 That we may be changed by this, your word.
3:16 Lord, we give you praise and glory.
3:18 We humble ourselves before you and we pray that, Lord, you speak to us in Jesus name.
3:23 We prayed amen Today we are going to look at Psalms Chapter five that I'll be reading through.
3:32 Psalms Chapter five.
3:34 And then we shall discuss.
3:36 We shall discuss the Psalm.
3:39 So Psalms chapter 5.
3:42 And this is what it says.
3:45 It says, give ear.
3:47 This is David praying.
3:49 He says, give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my meditation.
3:58 Hearken unto the voice of my cry, My King and my God, for unto thee will I pray.
4:09 My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord, in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee.
4:20 And will look up verse four.
4:24 For thou art not a God that has pleasure in wickedness.
4:29 Neither shall evil dwell with thee.
4:35 The foolish shall not stand in thy sight.
4:39 Thou hatest all workers of iniquity.
4:42 Verse 6.
4:44 Thou shalt destroy them that speak, that is, that speak lies.
4:52 The Lord will abhor the bloody and the deceitful man.
4:58 But as for me, I will come into thy house in the multitude of thy mercies, and in thy fear will I worship Toward thy holy temple.
5:11 Lead me, O Lord, in thy righteousness.
5:15 Because of mine enemies, make thy way straight before my face.
5:20 For there is no faithfulness.
5:23 There is no faithfulness in their mouth.
5:27 Their inward part is very wickedness.
5:32 Their throat is an open sepulchre.
5:36 They flutter with their tongue.
5:40 Destroy thou them, O God.
5:43 Let them fall by their own counsels.
5:46 Cast them out into the multitude of their transgressions, for they have rebelled against Thee.
5:54 But let all those who put their trust in Thee rejoice.
5:58 Let them ever shout for joy because thou defendest them.
6:05 Let them also love.
6:07 Let them also that love thy name.
6:09 Be joyful in thee.
6:11 For thou, Lord, wilt bless the righteous with favor.
6:17 Wilt thou compass him as with a shield?
6:21 Praise God.
6:22 This is Psalms chapter 5.
6:28 So let us go through the different verses and let the Holy Spirit help us to be able to pick up key lessons this morning.
6:38 First of all, we look at Psalm this.
6:42 Psalms, chapter 5, verse 1, says, Give ear to my words, O Lord.
6:48 Consider my meditation.
6:50 In fact, I would look at that word meditation as my thoughts or my groanings.
6:58 You look at verse one and you see David longing for an audience with God.
7:08 I think if you have your Bible with you, underline the words, words, meditations or groanings and cries.
7:17 He's crying out to God and saying, you consider my words.
7:21 Give ear to my words.
7:23 Consider my meditations.
7:25 Consider my thoughts.
7:26 Consider the trend of my thoughts.
7:30 Consider my groanings.
7:32 He's crying out to God.
7:34 He's longing for an audience with God.
7:37 He says, hearken unto the voice in verse 2.
7:40 Hearken unto the voice of my cry.
7:43 My king and my God.
7:46 For unto thee will I pray.
7:49 You know, sometimes, many of the times when we are talking to God, we don't pay attention to whom we are talking to.
7:58 And I see David being very attentive.
8:02 Like when he's praying, he's thinking, it is to God that I am talking.
8:06 He says, you are my God.
8:08 He says, you are my king.
8:10 And he says unto you, will I pray.
8:14 I'm not just babbling out words.
8:16 I'm not just saying prayers because I have written them down on a piece of paper.
8:21 I'm not just talking, talking to God, because it is the time for me to talk to God.
8:28 And I'm not maybe paying attention to what I am saying.
8:31 But no, David says, hearken unto the voice of my cry.
8:35 He says, you give ear to my words.
8:37 He says, you consider my meditations.
8:40 He says, that you are my king, you are my God.
8:44 It reminds me of Jesus when he was teaching his disciples to pray.
8:49 And he says, whenever you pray, you say, our Father who art in heaven.
8:55 It's like he's trying to say, first of all, before you start praying, you need to recognize to whom you are talking to.
9:03 David here says, my king and my God.
9:08 My king and my God.
9:09 And he in fact, is recognizing that God is the king, above him and above any other king.
9:16 And he's recognizing that it is God that he's talking to.
9:20 He's not talking to any other gods.
9:22 He's not talking to any other authorities.
9:24 He's not talking to.
9:25 He's not crying out for help to human entities.
9:27 He's saying, me, I'm crying out to you.
9:29 Oh, God, you listen to me.
9:31 See, you're my king, you are my God.
9:34 It reminds of that part of the Lord's Prayer that talks about, well, Jesus is saying, you say, allowed be thy name.
9:41 Oh, holy is your name.
9:42 Like, give all to God for who he is.
9:45 He says, God, see, you are my king and my God.
9:48 And in verse three, says, my voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord.
9:55 He says, my voice shalt thou hear in the morning.
9:58 In the morning I will direct my prayer to you.
10:02 And I will look up, he says, and I will look up.
10:06 And I just wanted us to think about coming to God in the morning, starting that day with God.
10:17 I think it is Mark, chapter one, verse 35, where they talk about how Jesus would go to the place of prayer a long way before day.
10:28 Like many hours before the day starts, he would come to God and he would talk to God in the wee hours of the morning.
10:36 He says, I will direct.
10:39 I like that part where he says, I will direct my prayer unto thee.
10:43 That is verse, verse 3.
10:46 He says when he talks about direct.
10:48 Actually, when I was reading this, I think about arranging the way your prayers are going.
10:54 Order, having some order in your prayers where you say, I'll bring a song of thanksgiving and praise, or I will sing a psalm to the Lord.
11:04 Then maybe I will kneel down and I will ask him to have mercy upon me and to forgive me where I have failed him.
11:12 If there is any blockade between me and him in terms of relationship.
11:16 You see what happens when we sin against God.
11:20 It's not that we will not go to heaven.
11:22 It's not that Jesus did not deal with the sin issue on the cross.
11:26 But like, even, like when you have misunderstandings in relationships, many times it is hard to just approach the person and talk to them.
11:36 Like, for instance, I'm married, and every time I offend my husband, I don't find it very easy to just go to him and talk to him about anything because there's an offense standing between me and him.
11:48 So it is easier when I go to him and say, you see, honey, I'm sorry about what went wrong.
11:55 Please, if there is anything that you want me to do to make it up to you, or if you would just overlook it, maybe I said those words unintentionally.
12:09 I did not intend to hurt you, or, you know, just deal with the offense and get it out of the way.
12:15 Then communication becomes very easy.
12:17 And so it is the same.
12:19 It doesn't mean that when, when there is an offense between me and my husband, it means that the marriage does not exist anymore.
12:25. No, the marriage continues to exist, but because of the offense, the relationship is like.
12:32 It is not easy to have communication in the relationship.
12:36 And so it is the same with God.
12:37 It's not that we cease to become children of God or we cease to be children of God because we offended or because we, we did something contrary to his word.
12:47 Or we, we, we hurt someone or, you know, those things that the Holy Spirit convicts us about.
12:55 No, it's not that the Holy Spirit is not convicting us so that we, we, we.
13:02 We recognize maybe we've been cut away from God.
13:05 And you know, it is so different whenever we are coming to God as we, our prayer time, as we are arranging how we are coming before God, it is good to just come before him and make things right so that the communication is good.
13:24 So that the worship is received, so that there is this fellowship between you and God.
13:29 So that the fellowship is not broken between us and God.
13:33 And I'm not talking about the fact that we cannot have spontaneous prayer.
13:37 Like when you are in a crisis or maybe just one of those days you're in your car and you just feel like, let me just sing to God.
13:45 No, I'm not talking about that.
13:47 I'm talking about you are getting up in the morning and you arrange, organize yourself and say, let me bring praise and worship.
13:56 Let me now come before God and seek audience with him.
14:02 He says, I will direct my prayer unto you.
14:06 He says, I will cry out to you.
14:09 And then he says, and I will look up.
14:13 You know that part of verse three, when he says, I will look up, it's like looking up in expectation of a response from God.
14:25 You know, it has whenever.
14:27 When I read it, I thought about times when I would put applications to companies to hire me.
14:34 And when I put in my application, most of the time when I would be at home, I would be looking at my phone, hoping that the phone rings because I've put in something.
14:45 And I have an expectation in my heart that maybe today would be the day that response would come.
14:54 Maybe this is the day that they call me and say, come for that interview.
14:58 Or maybe we did the interview and this is the day that they call and say, come and pick up your appointment later.
15:04 You're going to work.
15:05 And so it when he says that I'll direct my prayer unto you and I will look up.
15:11 It's like looking up in expectation.
15:15 Looking up in expectation and saying, God, I know I'm talking to you.
15:20 I know I am praying, but I'm looking up in expectation to you that you will hear me and you will come to my rescue.
15:28 Then let me just read through verse.
15:36 Let me look through verse four to six.
15:40 Before we do that, I just wanted to say that you see this looking up to God in expectation is a sign of faith.
15:46 Like, it makes God.
15:50 You know, can you imagine you go to someone and then you ask for help and then you walk away before they can respond to you?
15:57 It makes it look like you don't care.
16:00 Or you don't trust them or something like that.
16:03 But whenever I look up to God in expectation, God is pleased by it.
16:07 He moves to meet your expectation.
16:11 And I just want to encourage us that every time we go to God in prayer, many times we don't receive answers to their prayers because they pray without expectation.
16:19 They just bubble out words and just hope that maybe, just maybe, God will come through.
16:25 But God, God hears prayer and God answers prayer.
16:29 And if you want to prove that God hears and answers prayer, I, I believe that each and every one of us here has a point in their lives when they cried out God.
16:37 And some an answer came.
16:40 And so you can look at the past to see that, hey, God answered this, God answered that.
16:44 And that will grow your expectation when you come to God in prayer.
16:48 And prayer is more exciting when you begin to see answers, when you begin to look back and see answers, then you be excited to go into that place of pray.
16:58 You go with an expectation.
16:59 You know that you're not just bubbling outward.
17:01 You know that you, whenever you go to God in prayer, God answers.
17:06 And when you come with that kind of attitude, surely God will come through for you.
17:10 And then you have joy, the joy of answered prayer.
17:16 And so let me just read like I'd said.
17:18 I want to read through verse 4, 4 to 6.
17:21 It says, for thou art not a God that has pleasure in wickedness, neither shall evil dwell in thee.
17:31 You know, Contrasting this verse 4 to 6, contrast between the righteous and the wicked.
17:39 You are not a God who takes pleasure in the wicked.
17:43 This is God's character.
17:46 God is a holy God.
17:47 You know, when you're approaching God, you need to know who God is.
17:50 God is a holy God.
17:52 David appreciates God's attributes.
17:54 He knows that God cannot tolerate sin in any form.
18:03 And when he's coming to God, he has made things right with God.
18:06 And so he understands that attribute about God.
18:11 Yet in verse seven he says, but as for me, I will come into your house in the multitude of thy mercy.
18:21 That in spite of the fact that in spite of the fact that God is a holy God, that is one attribute about him.
18:29 Yet God is a God of multitude of mercies.
18:33 He says, and in thy fear will I worship towards thy holy temple.
18:38 As in, I reverence you, I honor you, I know that you are a God who is holy.
18:44 But for me I will come to you because you are a merciful God.
18:49 In fear of you, I will worship you.
18:51 David had an awe and a reverence for God.
18:55 He respected God and he honored God.
18:58 And he told it to him.
19:00 Like when talk about, for instance, let me talk about marriage, because it's something that I have been in and like I have understood certain things.
19:10 For instance, whenever you show respect to your husband or whenever you honor him, or whenever you recognize that he's the person who has been given authority as head of the home.
19:26 When you recognize the things about him, it becomes very easy for a husband to reach out to you, to bless you, to love you, to speak highly of you, because you give him honor and you give him reverence.
19:37 And David understood the things about God.
19:39 He said, God, God, it's good to recognize that he's holy.
19:43 It's good to recognize him.
19:44 It's good to honor him.
19:45 It's good to worship him.
19:47 And if you come into the place of prayer and you come with that kind of attitude of reverence and of the fear of God, it is so easy for God to come towards you, to reach out you, to see how much you honor and reverence him.
20:01 You know, many times in this generation there has been this way of simplifying God to the point that people look at him as an equal and they begin to run him like an errand boy.
20:16 God, do this for me.
20:18 God, why don't you do this for me?
20:20 Why haven't you done this for me?
20:22 And this is not who God is.
20:24 This is the maker of the heavens and the earth.
20:27 This is God who is the giver of breath and life.
20:31 This is God.
20:31 I usually tell my children, this is the God who can switch you on and switch you off.
20:35 Like he can turn on the breath of life or he can remove the breath of life.
20:41 Because, for instance, like, as a person, I had.
20:45 I had a child who was born and then died a few hours after, after birth.
20:50 And I saw that, you know, no matter how much money we had as a family, yet at this point we could do nothing.
20:58 As in that when it was time for the child to go, it, no matter what we did, there is nothing we could do to keep the oxygen in the child's lungs.
21:08 The child had gone.
21:10 So this is God who is high above all things.
21:15 And this God, Jesus says, is not the one who only is in charge of our bodies, is in charge of our souls.
21:21 He said, I will show you who to fear.
21:24 He said, don't fear him who can kill the body, but fear him who can kill the body and separate you and kill the soul.
21:35 Like, remove you, separate him, separate you from himself, separate you from life.
21:41 Like you are not existent both in body and in soul.
21:44 He said, that is whom you should fear.
21:47 So whenever we are coming to God, we need to recognize God and give him the reference that is due to his name.
21:55 Okay, let us go through verse eight.
22:00 It says, lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness.
22:05 Make your way straight before my face.
22:08 Like, let me just Read.
22:09 It says, lead me, O Lord, in thy righteousness because of my enemies.
22:15 Make your way straight before my face, like in the morning, very early.
22:23 Let us be able to say, lord, let me see clearly your plan for me for this day.
22:29 Let me walk.
22:30 Give me the strength to walk in that plan in the morning.
22:35 Asking God that, you know, God, I might think that this is the right thing I'm supposed to do.
22:41 I may have even made my plans the night before.
22:43 But God, if you see that there is something that I do not need to do or a place that I do not need to go to, or a meeting that I do not need to be a part of, you show these things to me or you orchestrate my way or my path so that I do not find myself in the wrong office.
23:00 I may not find myself wasting time at a wrong meeting, a meeting that I'm not supposed to be a part of.
23:05 Lord, you help me.
23:07 And we are going to.
23:10 Verse 9 says, for there is no faithfulness in their mouth.
23:16 So let's look at verse nine.
23:19 It says, there is.
23:21 There is no faithfulness in their hearts.
23:23 He's talking about.
23:24 Now his enemies.
23:25 You know, we've seen.
23:26 He's saying, lead me, lead me, O Lord, in thy righteousness because of my enemies.
23:32 That is in verse eight, I think when we look at the life of David, David had so many enemies that were around him, and he did not want to be at the mercy of his enemies.
23:47 So he was asking God, God, I have so many things to do.
23:51 Maybe I have so many errands to run, or maybe I need to go to a certain particular place.
23:58 I don't want to find myself at the mercy of my enemies.
24:01 So he says, you lead me.
24:03 He says, and then he talks about his enemies and says, lead me, O Lord.
24:09 He says, I want to be straight, like, make thy way straight before me.
24:16 He's not talking about his own way.
24:17 He's like, I want to find myself in your way.
24:21 I want my feet to be ordered by you.
24:23 I want to find my life in your path.
24:26 It's not my path, it is your way.
24:28 And he says, for there is no faithfulness in their mouth.
24:34 You see, he knows that people have been lying to him.
24:38 There have been flattering lips.
24:40 There have been lies that have been told.
24:42 And people can trick you.
24:44 People can say, you come to this place and they trick you and they destroy the purpose of God for your life.
24:51 And so he's saying, these people have no faithfulness in their mouth.
24:57 They are inward parts, their Inward part is very wickedness, like it is ultimate wickedness.
25:07 Their hearts are not good.
25:09 Their throat is an open sepulchre.
25:12 Like the words that come out of their mouth are death, they are trickery, they are flattery, they are lies.
25:20 There is no truth in them.
25:23 He says they flutter with their tongues.
25:26 And so he is explaining to God that the reason why I'm asking you to help me, the reason why I want to find my feet in your way and in your path and to help me to see the way that I should walk in, is because I cannot trust mankind.
25:41 Like people lie to me, people flatter me, people tell me very good things about myself.
25:47 And I'll think that those people are my friends and I'll be tempted to rely on them.
25:51 But no, God, I don't want to rely on these people.
25:54 Because the truth is that in their mouth they are talking very good things, but in their heart they are wicked.
25:59 They are not wishing me well.
26:01 They are looking for ways to trap me.
26:03 They are looking for ways to lie to me.
26:05 And you know, I was saying earlier that in.
26:08 In Matthew, chapter 12, verse 34, they talk about the wicked, the wicked men.
26:14 The wicked man can be known by his words.
26:17 Jesus said it like this, that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
26:21 When you listen to.
26:22 If you want to know the condition of the heart of a person, you just need to keep quiet and listen to them as they talk.
26:29 When people are talking, you'll be able to tell if people are lying.
26:32 You'll be able to tell that this person is lying.
26:34 You listen to several times when the person is talking and you see out of the many things this person has said or out of the many promises this person has made, which ones have come to pass.
26:45 You can even see flattery.
26:47 You can even know lies.
26:48 Someone can say, I had a dream about you.
26:50 This and this happened and they are trying to get you information out of you because the dream never happened.
26:56 It is just lies.
26:58 So people can be.
27:00 You can understand the condition of a person by listening to their words.
27:07 And Jesus gave us this as a trick.
27:08 He said, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
27:12 You're able to know.
27:13 My spouse is a liar.
27:15 He tells a lot of lies.
27:17 My friend is flattering.
27:19 She always flatters me.
27:21 Maybe she says things about you and it bumps you up and then goes on the other side and tells people a lot of nasty things about you.
27:29 Then you know that this is a flattering tongue.
27:32 I cannot take seriously what this person is saying.
27:36 I can even not take advice from this person because I know that they are going to try to give me information based on what they want from me.
27:44 They are looking for where they benefit from.
27:48 They are looking for a way to get stuff out of me, maybe money out of me, maybe position or promotion out of me.
27:56 So they are flattering me.
27:57 They are not speaking their truth, putting.
28:03 You know, when you look at, I think, let me read.
28:07 In contrast to these people who are wicked, David talks about.
28:11 Let me read verse 10, verse 9 and 10 talk about the wicked.
28:17 Then he says, destroy thou them, O God.
28:21 Let them fall by their own counsel.
28:25 Cast them out in the multitude of their transgressions, for they have rebelled against Thee.
28:34 He gives God a reason.
28:36 You know, he's saying, good, deal with these people.
28:41 I want to remind you that David was a warrior.
28:44 David was a king.
28:45 He was a warrior.
28:47 David could have dealt with his enemies.
28:49 He could have said, no, I'm going to deal with these my enemies.
28:52 I'm going to maybe smite them by the sword.
28:55 I'm going to do this or that.
28:56 But David had so much faith in God's justice system that he decided to rely on God to deal with his enemies.
29:05 And when he was talking to God about his enemies, he said, God, he see, the reason why I'm asking you to deal with these people is because these are transgressors.
29:13 You deal with them according to the multitude of their transgressions.
29:17 God, I have seen what these people have done.
29:20 But beyond what I have seen, you, oh God, see deep into the heart why no man can see.
29:25 Deal with them according to their transgressions, according to their lies they've told, according to flattering they have brought, according to their trickery, according to the things that that they are covering up for.
29:37 They have rebelled against you.
29:39. They have not just rebelled against me, they have rebelled against you and you alone.
29:44 Then he says in verse 11, but let all those who put their trust in Thee rejoice.
29:50 Let them ever shout for joy because Thou defendest them.
29:57 Let them also that love.