1 Wangaratta Wesleyan Methodist Church Sunday 28 th September 2014 Please Help Me Lord! Bible Passages: Psalm 5; Proverbs 4:18-19, 14-15; Mark 1:35-37 Intro: It is good to call upon the Lord Have you ever prayed a please help me Lord prayer? I m sure you have many times. There are no shortage of times when we need to shoot an arrow prayer to God pleading for his help. I will never forget shooting a desperate plea to God as I hopped on the bull at my first rodeo. It was in Myrtleford on Boxing Day. The bull was called Whisky and he was so broad it was like sitting on a table. I wasn t sure what I was doing and I was shaking like a leaf. Now I was good at riding horses, I d grown up riding them and I had good balance but this bull was something else. I sat there thinking how on earth am I going to ride this thing? I was praying hard, Lord please protect me from this bull. Well I didn t expect the Lord to answer my prayer so quickly. He only took a second and a half to free me from Whisky. I never thought dirt tasted so good. Now the Psalmist, King David, knew how to cry out to God for help. He most likely didn t ride bulls but he faced many dangers far worse: fought off lions and bears, challenged a giant in battle, faced armies, jealous kings and those threatening his life. David was used to calling upon the lord in times of trouble. But it wasn t just in trouble that David called out to the Lord; it seems that he made a regular practice of seeking the Lord because it was a good thing to do. In Psalm 5 we see David coming to God in the morning asking for strength and joy to face his day, a day that could be just like your day or my day, a day that may bring joy and blessing as well as trials and temptations. May this prayer be an encouragement to all of us. First we are encouraged to 1) Seek Him in the morning As David approaches God in the morning we notice three things that would be good for us to put into practice: Firstly a. Don t be afraid to ask for help David longs for time alone with God, in fact he pleads three times for this: Listen to my words, hear my lament and hear my cry for help. The bible often uses this sort of parallelism for emphasis. David had confidence approaching God because he knew that God would not reject him, he knew God was more than willing to listen to him and help him. Do we share this confidence in approaching God or are we afraid of asking for help? If we thought that God was not interested in our petty situations or if we thought he was too busy we may think it is not worth asking. How wrong we would be. Jesus made it very clear
2 that if our heavenly Father is concerned about the smallest of birds how much more is he concerned about us who have far greater value than any animal. I suspect that God is far more interested in hearing from us than is our desire to speak to him. Like a loving parent God delights when his children come and seek him out. Secondly why not b. Make it the first thing you do When is the best time to seek the Lord? I ve heard people question why it should matter as long as you spend some time somewhere in the day. Well David considered the morning the best time as we note in verse 3. And it seemed that Jesus made a practice of getting up very early while it was still dark to find a solitary place to pray. Why could the morning be the best time to commune with our God? Before we start our busy day we stop, listen, read and recharge for the day ahead. Personally if I begin my day without spending intentional time with the Lord I feel like I m going about my day in my own strength, running on empty. Recently I heard Bill Hybels speak on the topic of time. He challenged people to schedule 15 minutes a day and spend it with God. He suggested finding a chair that would become your God-space for 15 minutes where you could read and meditate on the Lord before your day began. Only 15 minutes? Yes because many of us are so inconsistent with our intentional time with God that 15 min a day would be totally life-changing. A smaller consistent time is better than a longer haphazard time. Hybels quoted many stories of people being totally transformed by committing to 15 minutes a day with God. Maybe you should try it. May I challenge you, particularly if your quiet time with God is all over the place, to commit for a week to spend 15 min each day in a chair where you are not interrupted. If it works keep doing it. So, don t be afraid to ask, make it the first thing you do and thirdly c. Expect an answer from God David says, In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly. This prayer could have been used by the priest as he prepared the morning sacrifice. So let s imagine that we are carefully arranging the wood on the alter and then placing the sacrifice on the wood ready to be burnt before the Lord. It is not something that you would simply throw on the alter with no planning or forethought. Do we sometimes pray like we are throwing our requests down before God in a random careless way? To be honest I do at times, so do I really expect God to answer these ramblings?
3 David is carefully, thoughtfully, specifically laying his requests before God. Paul encourages us in Philippians to present our requests before God. I wonder if this means we should be intentional and specific in our prayer; if so we can expect God to answer us in the same way. I love taking my kids up the bush and making a campfire, boiling the billy and cooking some snags. The fun bit is gathering the sticks and lighting the fire. We wouldn t expect to get a good fire by randomly throwing sticks and paper together in a heap and I dare say we wouldn t boil our billy or cook the food. No, the preparation of the paper and sticks is all important. I screw the paper up in a ball and place the light twigs and leaves on and then carefully place the heaver sticks so that the fire has the best chance of starting. If I prepare well all I need to do is light the paper and wait in expectation. The wait is always worth it. Prayer is sweet and fulfilling when a holy preparation meets a patient expectation. God delights in our preparation and we are blessed with his answers. Verses 4-12 For the rest of the Psalm David contrasts between the wicked man and the godly man and the destiny they receive. David is a realist. He sees no gain in beating around the bush, rather he paints the picture not as mankind would like to see it but as God sees it. David shows us that 2) Some people choose to reject God David, like many others in scripture, discovered that the closer you come to God the more you become aware of God s holiness and man s sinfulness. We don t have to journey with God long or read much in the bible to understand that a. God hates sin God doesn t choose to hate sin as if he is making a choice of who to like and dislike. God hates sin because it is the very antithesis of who he is. The character of a sinful person is the direct opposite to the character of God. No wonder David writes scathingly of the wicked person. Every person even the terrorist and the rapist can repent and be accepted by God but if sin stands in between us and God we are enemies of God and God will reject us. God hates sin but loves the sinner. However God s love alone cannot cause us to be reconciled to God, we must choose to love God and repent from our sin. It is important for us all to have a clear theology of Satan as the enemy of the Godhead. Talk about the Tongans at conference last weekend. There songs are simple but straight to the point. Get behind me Satan, Jesus is stronger, Their culture has an understanding of the spiritual realm so they sing about the battle between Jesus and Satan
4 They continue to remind themselves that Jesus has the victory. I encourage us to be clear who our enemy is and who has and will continue to defeat him. Jesus! If people continue to reject God they must then accept how b. God deals with the wicked It is God s business to deal with the sinner not ours. We are told to love our enemies and it is up to God to deliver punishment for those who reject him. 10 Declare them guilty, O God! Let their intrigues (plotting) be their downfall. Banish them for their many sins, for they have rebelled against you. It doesn t get any worse than to be banished by God from his presence forever. In total contrast to this are those who 3) (Others) choose to love God After David describes how a holy God feels about people who continue to wallow in sinful arrogance and deceit he says in verse 7, But I, by your great love, can come into your house; in reverence I bow down toward your holy temple. Notice that David had a. A healthy view of God s holiness I think the reason David appreciates God s holiness is because he understands how bad a sinner he has been and it is through God s great love that he can come into his temple and worship. A reading of Psalm 51 helps us to appreciate David s remorse for his sin and his dependence on God s mercy and grace. If we describe sinful people as David has I hope that we are also quick to acknowledge God s mercy and grace on our lives. I hope we are quick to bow down in reverence before our holy God. Let s be totally humble when it comes to our part in salvation. Ephesians 2 says, 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. David understood that God s role was an ongoing one in his life. Likewise God needs to b. Lead us on a path prepared for us Being lead by God along the correct pathway is a reoccurring theme in Psalms and Proverbs. Our reading from Proverbs says, The path of the righteous is like the morning sun, shining ever brighter till the full light of day. 19 But the way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know what makes them stumble. For those who follow God s pathway we can expect it will become clearer and clearer the more we walk. God wants us to have confidence in the way he leads us and he wants us to encourage others along this pathway also. Maybe the most well known passage from Proverbs on this theme is Proverbs 3:5-6, Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
5 6 in all your ways acknowledge (submit) to him, and he will make your paths straight. What wonderful advice this is. As we trust him and not ourselves he goes before us preparing the way for us to walk. He knows the best route and clears the obstacles along the way. How sad it would be if we choose not to follow him. There is great blessing awaiting those who walk the path God has prepared. As we do we receive c. Joy and gladness Joy is one of the traits of being a Christian. We should stand out as being people who are happy. Not happy because that is our nature but happy because we have every reason to rejoice. It s not who we are but who we trust in that gives us cause to rejoice. Let me ask, are you joyful? As Christians we have every right to be joyful. Even when things are tough, when sickness or hardship comes our way even in death we can experience a deep joy that only the Holy Spirit can supply us with. If nothing can separate us from the love of Christ then nothing can stop us from having joy within. Last Monday I went with my father in law to play table tennis. I felt a little odd as all were retirees. While have a cuppa one man asked what I did. After telling him he remarked how he thought there was something different about me, he could read it on my face. I hope it was the joy of the Lord he was seeing. It is a good thing to pray Let the joy of the Lord ooze from me today. Lord, let my countenance be an advertisement for you. In speaking of joy in this way I in no way want to minimise sadness and grief which is normal and right for us to experience but even through these times a deep joy from the Holy Spirit can minister to us. The bible says the joy of the Lord is our strength. There is something powerful, something steadying and something healing about the joy of the Lord. Maybe this is why the Psalms, which never hides the raw emotion of life, speaks so often of rejoicing in the Lord. Not only do we have the joy of the Lord as our strength we can also experience d. God s protection The Psalmist says that God s protection is like a shield. Now a shield is the armour surrounding the armour. It protects the soldier before the arrows get to the body armour. Can you imagine something out there protecting us from the enemy before it gets close enough to affect us? A bit like an anti-ballistic missile designed to take out missiles before they get too close. David says that we are surrounded with God s favour like a shield. What a blessing the favour of God is to us. God takes incredible delight and pleasure in us as his children because when he looks at us he sees the work of his Son Jesus superimposed upon us. This is none other than the grace of the Lord Jesus upon our lives.
6 We stand in the grace of Jesus or the favour of God and this is our protection. We can also speak this favour over one another. What a privilege and honour that is. Conclusion: God never changes. The beautiful thing about walking with God is he never changes. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. His blessings are continuous now and into the future. His pathway extends throughout our life and into heaven. We experience God s joy and protection now and we will experience it perfected in heaven. Over the past 6 weeks you may have noticed a family of ducks that live in the swamp on our corner at church. Many times I have seen them crossing the busy road. One duck is in front and another is behind and the 10 or so little ducklings are bunched in the middle. The ducklings seem blissfully unaware of the dangers on the road because they have protection before them and after them. Likewise God goes before us and after us and he never tires. Message by Pastor David Lloyd