Prayer Night Sermon (The Power Of Future Hope)

Thank you for listening to the Shepherd's Church podcast. This is our Wednesday night service that is focused on prayer and walking through the

Psalms together. We hope that you are blessed and we hope that you will join us as we pray for revival.

Hello everyone and welcome back to another prayer night together. This is our seventh prayer night and so far we've been able to go through one

Psalm every single week. Well, it's only six weeks so far. This is our seventh, but this week we're going to do something a little bit different.

There's 17 verses in today's Psalm and they break up naturally into two parts.

So what we're going to do is we're going to examine part one together this week and then we will examine part two together next week.

Now the point of this Psalm is like most Psalms or like a lot of Psalms in the

Psalter, it comes at the very end. The Psalmist is sort of telling you what's going on in verses one through 16 and then at the end he gives you the theological answer.

He gives you the reason why he can have hope. He tells you, this is verse 17, I will give thanks to the

Lord according to his righteousness and we'll sing praises to the name of the

Lord most high. David is going through a situation in his life where he is being falsely accused by someone and they're coming after him and as we'll see in verses one through five, he is appealing to his righteousness temporarily in this situation, but ultimately he's appealing to God's righteousness because it's

God who's going to save David. David says, I will give thanks, future oriented hope, thanks to the

Lord. That's the object of his hope. According to God's righteousness,

David is not saying I will thank God on the basis of my righteousness. He's not saying

I'm going to get out of this situation that I'm in right now because I can figure it out and I'm so smart and I'm this and I'm that.

He's saying, no, God is going to extend righteousness to me. He's going to extend grace to me.

He's going to extend love and care for me and he's going to vindicate me in this situation, which we know happens ultimately in Jesus Christ.

And that's what I think I want us to get as the heart of not only Psalm seven, but all of the

Psalms that every single one of them connect us to Jesus Christ because there is no ultimate vindication apart from Jesus.

And that's what I hope that we see today. So if you will turn with me to verses one through five, and that's what we're going to cover tonight.

The Psalmist says, Oh Lord, my God, in you, I have taken refuge.

Save me from all of those who pursue me and deliver me, or they will tear my soul like a lion dragging me away while there is none to deliver.

Oh Lord, my God, if I've done this, and that's what they've accused him of doing. If there is injustice in my hands, if I have rewarded evil to a friend, or if I've plundered him without cause, and that's my adversary, let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it and let him trample my life down to the ground and lay my glory in the dust.

Say law, David is saying that whatever it was that he's been accused of, if he's actually done it, if he's committed this sin, if he has broken faith, broken, trust it, whatever it is, and we don't know because David didn't give us the context and the

Psalms often don't give us the context, but whatever this battle, this rivalry, this argument, this broken relationship, whatever it is,

David's saying, if I'm guilty in this situation, then let my enemy, let the one who's opposed to me, let the one who thinks that I've done something wrong to them, let them murder me and bring me down into the grave.

That is what David is saying. So David is appealing to a temporary righteousness.

And what I mean by that is not an ultimate righteousness. He's not appealing to the fact that he's ultimately righteous because we know

David's not. David's a murderer. He's a liar. He's an adulterer. David is not saying, hey,

I'm squeaky clean from the start of my life to the finish. David is like all of us in that he's not righteous and that the wages of his sin really is death and David is not claiming sinless perfectionism here.

David is saying in this situation and the thing that I'm going through right now,

I'm innocent. So he's praying to God. He's saying, I will give thanks to the

Lord according to his righteousness. That's verse 17. And I will sing praises to the name of the

Lord most high because God is good. God's going to rescue me in this situation. He's going to vindicate me in this situation.

And that's David's confidence and it's infused throughout this Psalm. Verse one even begins that way.

Now, as we sort of unpack verse one through five, it's going to, we're going to see five different ways that this

Psalm can help you and I to pray. And we're just going to right off the top, say that we're going to track right along with David.

But you and I are going to have a view to the fact that this ultimately applies to us in Jesus.

David's talking about a temporary situation between him and a former colleague or former friend, or maybe it's an enemy on the other side of the battle.

We're not sure. But David is talking about a relationship where the enemy wants to come after him.

And God is saying, if I'm guilty in this situation or David, David is saying, God, if I'm guilty in this situation, then strike me dead.

We don't often have situations like that, but I want us to, as we track with David, I want us to understand that we do have situations where we're accosted by an enemy.

And if it were not for the grace and the mercy and the compassion of God, just like David understands in his time, then we also would go down to the grave.

But praise be to the Lord that Christ has gone down to the grave for us. And that's what I want us to see. Again, this passage breaks up into five sections or five ways that you and I can pray.

The first is hopeful adoration. That means we're going to praise God with a future oriented hope.

We don't know how the situation is going to reconcile itself right now. Whatever situation you're going through right now,

I can't give you a play by play. This is how this is going to work itself out. But this knowing that God will rescue you, he will deliver you.

He will deliver you. In fact, throughout every trial of your life, all the way until he presents you blameless and perfect spotless before the father.

So you have an assurance as a Christian that God is going to deliver you every moment of your life until he hand, until he personally hand you over to the father.

So this is a future oriented praise, praising God for an uncertain future because we know a certain

God. That's the first thing. The second thing is that we're going to have an honest assessment of who our enemies are.

So when we come to the Lord in prayer, we have a hopeful adoration, a hopeful future oriented praise because we know who

God is. But we're also going to acknowledge to the Lord that these enemies scare us. They're terrifying to us.

So we're going to have an honest assessment of who our enemies are. And we're going to acknowledge those things to the father.

The third aspect of prayer, which comes in verse two, is a humble acknowledgement of what we deserve.

We know that even in every battle, in every fight, in every broken relationship, in every argument, in every time that we are in a conflict, that there is no such thing as perfect righteousness unless you're

Jesus. So when someone slanders us at work, we know that there's probably something in what they said that's true.

And if there's nothing in what they said that's true about us, there's something that they should have said about us that they didn't say about us that actually is true.

So we're going to have a humble acknowledgement of what we actually deserve.

Then we're going to have a heedful appraisal, which is a heedful is not a common word, but we're going to very cautiously apprise the situation.

We're going to look at the temporal situation that David was focused on. And then we're going to look at our situation and how we, if we don't have a mediator like Christ, and we will be just like David asking

God to send us down into the grave. And ultimately that is what we deserve. But as we end, we're going to end with a hearty awe.

We're going to pray with shouts of declaration. We're going to pray with prayers that are focused on the magnitude of who

Christ is. We want to be enamored by his beauty. We want to go down into the depths of our own heart and have them enamored with Christ because of what he has done in salvation.

So all of this will make sense, but there's five areas that we're going to be praying through tonight. And I hope that even if you're at home and you're not able to join us and you're listening to this at a later date,

I hope that you will find these categories helpful. And I hope that you will allow these categories to help you pray through Psalm 7.

So let's begin. Verse one says, Oh Lord, my God, in you

I have taken refuge. Save me from all of those who pursue me and deliver me. David has a future oriented adoration.

He says, I know that I've not done anything in this situation. So Lord, I need you to save me because I'm not powerful enough or strong enough or whatever else.

You and I are going to face all different kinds of enemies that look different than the enemies that David faced.

David faced Philistine warriors. David faced Kings from other regions.

David faced a lot of things that you and I, unless we're in the military special forces are not going to face.

But that doesn't mean that we don't face enemies. And that doesn't mean that when we face enemies and trials and tribulations and burdens and different things that we cannot also adopt a hopeful posture like David had.

David, before anyone ever approaches him, before anyone ever lifts a sword against him,

David has a hopeful posture that God is going to deliver him. And what a wonderful testimony to us today on how we face our fears.

If you go to the doctor and you get a diagnosis that you don't like, what is your response? Is your response immediately to let that diagnosis defeat you?

Is your response immediately to give over into depression and defeatism, loneliness, brokenness, or is your response like God?

It's you, God, that I've taken refuge. You are going to save me from all those who pursue me and deliver me.

Is that your response with David? Now, we know that we can't be saved from every single disease on planet

Earth, because then we would never die. And it's appointed for all men to die once and for all.

But we do know as Christians, we have the greatest news of all, because we know that our death is not the end.

God will actually raise us up. God will deliver us. And in the end, when Jesus comes back and resurrects our old dead body and breathes new life into our old dead body, that old corpse is going to be reanimated.

And our body is going to be joined together with that. And we will live forever totally free from every sin and every stain and every disease and every brokenness.

So if when you go to the doctor and the first thing you feel is defeat, I want you to repent from that.

And I want you to say, you know what? This disease might kill me, but God's going to resurrect me. This disease might hurt me, but God is going to heal me.

And if he doesn't heal me in this life, he's going to heal me in the next. I want you to be a victorious kind of people because you have a future oriented hope.

If someone talks about you and says all manner of evil against you and then lie about you, maybe that's what's going on here with David.

If somebody does that, say with Charles Spurgeon that they don't know the half of it.

There's so much more they could criticize me for, but praise be to almighty God that he saved me.

That my sins no longer count against me. You can look at the person who is slandering you and you can look at the person who's lying about you or the person who's doing all manner of evil against you.

And you can say, get behind me, Satan, which means slanderer because I am a child of God.

Yes, I sin. Yes, I'm broken, but I'm not my sin. And I'm no longer broken because I belong to my

Lord and savior, Jesus Christ. So I'm not going to live like I'm defeated. I'm going to live like I'm a victor because I've been given the victory of Christ.

You see, David understood that. David didn't let the enemy bog him down in the mires of self -pity.

David stood up and said, I will take refuge in you. I will give thanks to you.

I will praise you because I know who my God is. I'm challenging you, dear brother and sister, to instead of focusing on the negative and instead of facing your problems with pessimism,

I am challenging you to stand up and say, I know who my

God is and I will be delivered. Yes, I have sinned. Yes, I'm broken. Yes, I'm a failure.

You want to say all these things? I will agree with you. I am probably the worst employee here. I don't know anything.

I've so fallen short of God's glory that I'm surprised you even have me on staff. Like you can say those things, but then you can come back and say, but I know who

God is and I will keep trying and I will keep working hard and I will keep doing everything that I can do to bless this company even if you don't like it.

You can look at anyone, anyone who says anything to you and you can respond with victory.

And it's not because of you. David says, I will give thanks to the Lord according to his righteousness.

This is not a shallow self -talk, you know, sort of self -help mumbo jumbo that you hear coming out of different pastor's pulpits all across this country where, you know,

I am so beautiful and I am so successful and I am and I am. No, you're not. It's okay to acknowledge that you're not.

God is the great I am and you and I are the great I am not. We rejoice in the righteousness of God.

We rejoice in the grace of God. We rejoice in the knowledge of God, in the love of God, in the mercy of God, in the wrath of God, in the justice of God, in the omniscience and omnipotence and omnipresence of God.

We have an external hope that is rooted in his character and not ours.

So we can face any situation that we ever have to face knowing that because he loves us, that person, that situation, that problem, that circumstance cannot defeat you.

It can't. And I want you to live that way. That's the first thing. We're gonna pray in just a moment with a sort of hopeful adoration that God, because he has claimed us as his own, has given us the victory even before the battle has even started.

That's what I want us to pray. The second section of the Psalm is an honest assessment of our enemy.

And it's a fascinating point. David says, my enemies will tear my soul like a lion and he's not lying.

Sorry, that was a little lame. In the Bible, we have three enemies. I've said this many times before, the world, the flesh and the devil.

And every single one of those enemies are compared to a roaring, crouching, invading lion.

For instance, 1 Peter 5, 8 says that the enemy is a roaring lion. Genesis 4, 6 through 7, when

Cain is being questioned by God, God says your sin is crouching at the door like a lion ready to devour you.

So his flesh is a lion. The enemy is a lion. It says in Joel 1, 5 through 6,

God is talking to the people of Israel who are lazy and drunk and they're getting ready to be invaded by another country.

He says that they are being invaded by lions. So the world is a lion. We're being attacked on all sides by a world that acts like a roaring lion, by our flesh that acts like a roaring lion, by the devil who acts like a roaring lion.

And you and I cannot be afraid in those moments when the pack of lions or the tribe of lions comes after us, the world, the flesh, and the devil.

What do you think we stand in? Do we stand in the hope that we can fight a tribe of deadly lions?

No, we stand behind the shadow of the lion of Judah. Isn't that interesting? That the world is a lion, so therefore

Jesus is the lion of Judah. That the enemy is a roaring lion, therefore the great lion will defeat him.

That our flesh is crouching at the door, ready to devour us. So Jesus came and he crucified our flesh.

He came to defend us and to protect us so that we could stand in his shadow.

He's fought the war, but we have to be honest about what our enemy is.

Our enemy hates us. The world hates you. The world wants to pollute you.

To indoctrinate your children. The world wants to lie about you.

The world wants to call you all kinds of names like Nazi for believing in the right to life and for hating things like abortion.

They want to call you wicked, slanderous titles because you don't support two men getting married or a woman identifying as a tree fairy because you actually believe in reality.

God spoken, God wrought reality. You're going to be called a hateful bigot. You're going to be lumped in a basket of deplorables.

Those are evil things. Those are mean things. So you have to be honest about the world.

The world is a ravenous lion that wants to see Christians and Christianity destroyed.

The enemy is a roaring lion. He hates you. He hates your soul. He hates your relationship with God and he wants nothing more for you to tank your life.

So tell me, what do you think is going to happen? Not just the enemy, but demons and everything else.

What do you think is going to happen with your temptations? The closer you grow to Jesus Christ, the closer you grow in holiness, the more ardent your attacks are going to be.

You're going to be tempted with small things. You're going to be tempted with great things. You're going to be tempted with lust, with pride, with cheating, with stealing.

You're going to be tempted to raise your voice at the ones that you love. You're going to be tempted to neglect the word of God.

You're going to be tempted to sleep in on Sundays instead of going to church. Every aspect of your life is going to be under attack by a roaring lion and his cohort of lionesses.

And you have to be prepared for that. You have to take an honest assessment of who your enemy actually is.

And he's beguiling and crafty. The third is the flesh that's crouching ever at the door.

You don't hear many people talk about it like that, but our flesh, that part of us that's not yet dead is at war with God.

Your flesh hates righteousness. It hates holiness. It hates obedience.

It hates submission. Your flesh wants nothing more than for you to be the most important person in every conversation, for your opinion always to be the one that's taken, for you to be the one who always gets the promotion, for you to be the one who is at the center of everyone else's life, but no one else is at the center of yours.

Your flesh is a narcissistic animal that is leading you unless you visibly and forcibly break the power of the flesh by killing the flesh, putting to death the flesh, not running after the flesh.

These three enemies are dangerous, they're treacherous, and they must be fought, but they must not be fought in our power and our strength.

Remember, David says, I will give thanks to the Lord according to his righteousness. The battle will be fought by me hiding in the shadow of Christ.

The battle is not for me to exert all of my effort to go one -on -three against the world, the flesh, and the devil.

The battle will be won when I'm worshiping Christ, when I'm resting in his strength and his power and his sufficiency, when

I'm praying to him, when I'm reading the word that he gave us, when I'm resting in him, when

I'm trusting him, when I'm praising him, the battle will be won on a spiritual playing field.

My only resolve is to trust in him, to worship him, but I must give an honest assessment of my enemies.

That's the second category of prayer. And for us tonight, we must be honest about the areas of affliction that we're currently facing.

What relationships are broken in your life? What problems are you carrying that no one else knows about?

Maybe it's finances. Maybe it's your house is leaking. The roof is leaking.

You can't afford to fix it. Maybe it's a friend or a colleague, or maybe it's someone even like your sister who you've been estranged from for years.

And that relationship needs healing. Maybe it's fear in the way that the world is currently heading and you wonder, is this it?

Is Jesus about to return? And you're tempted to bury your head in the sand and just wait for that glorious moment to happen.

You're tempted to stop working. You're tempted to stop doing the things that God has called you to do.

I'm not talking about your secular vocation. I'm talking about the things that God has called you to do. Maybe you're discouraged.

Maybe you're embittered. Maybe your marriage is not thriving and you're frustrated by it and it doesn't seem like your spouse even cares.

There is so much dear beloved that we are all carrying, that we are all carrying and we have to be honest about it.

We have to be honest that those things are like roaring lions in our life that are ready to pounce on us at a moment's notice.

And if we don't get out of the battle and rest in the one who is

Christ, if we don't rest in Christ in our marriage, if we don't rest in Christ in our finances, if we don't rest in Christ in our choice of entertainment, if we don't rest in Christ in that coworker that we can't stand, if we don't rest in Christ for our patience and for our mercy and for our kindness and for our gentleness, if we don't rest in Christ for our parenting, if we don't rest in Christ for our provision, if we don't rest in Christ dearly beloved, then we will be vulnerable to attack.

David can speak with utter confidence in God because he's not resting in the power of his enemy and he's not resting in the power of himself, he's resting in the power of almighty

God. Worship, worship is what breaks the power of the enemy in our life.

Not our might, not our intelligence or whatever else, it's worship.

The third category of prayer is a humble acknowledgement of who we are.

This is sort of like when we confess our sins because David says in verse two, that he would tear my soul like a lion, dragging me away where there is none to deliver me.

The honest and humble acknowledgement that you and I have to make in this passage is that we deserve this.

David is talking about a very particular situation, but ultimately we can see underneath this passage that we've sinned, that we've given into the devil's temptation.

That roaring lion has come time after time after time after time.

And if it wasn't him, it was his minions tempting us, perverting us, holding out that golden lure, hoping that we would take the bait.

And so many times we have. So many times we've sat in front of that computer knowing what we were doing is wrong and we've done it anyway.

So many times we've allowed ourself to say whatever we wanted to say in a situation where we knew we should have offered grace, where we knew we should have spoken a tender word, but we spoke a very harsh word.

How many times have we let the enemy win? Whether it's the devil, whether it's the world or whether it's the flesh, how many times have we let the enemy win?

And how many times have we deserved to be dragged away with the world?

When the lion comes to get you, the lion's main goal is to drag you away, to latch onto you and to pull you and to drag you back to the tribe so that they can feast on your carcass.

How often, dearly beloved, have you and I deserve to be dragged away by our sin?

That moment when you're on the computer and you've given in for the millionth time and you know that you're wrong and you know that you shouldn't have done it.

And yet, you know more than anything that you deserve to die.

You deserve to be carried away. The hounds of hell have come for you and you deserve to be carried off to hell because of your sin.

The same thing is true for a mother who's exasperated with her children and she looks at some of her children and she thinks,

God, why did you give me these children? The hounds of hell have surround you in your depression.

The hounds of hell have surround you in your bitterness. The hounds of hell have surround you in your negativity and you deserve to be carried away too.

All of us, I don't care what situation that you can point to, when we sin and we give into those things, we deserve to be carried off to hell.

And the only thing that holds us, the only thing that holds all of us is the tender mercy and affection of a good and holy

God. That's it. So we can be humble and we can acknowledge that I deserve to be dragged away.

David says that they will tear my soul like a lion, dragging me away. We deserve that.

We deserve that. So we can humbly acknowledge it. So when you're praying and when you're seeking

God, humbly admit to him and say, God, for this specific thing,

I deserve to die. For this sin, I deserve to be dragged away. For this sin, I deserve to be mangled and devoured in the fires of hell for all of eternity.

You can acknowledge those things to God because he already knows and he's already provided you grace, but you can acknowledge those things because it's good for you.

It's good for you to acknowledge those things. It's good for you to approach the Lord in humility. It's good for you to say that,

God, I don't know why you've been so gracious to me and so loving to me and so kind to me. I don't deserve this.

When you approach God in that way, then you're already primed for worships. That's the third area.

The fourth is a heedful appraisal. And what I mean by that is a very careful and deliberate assessment of our own life.

This is verses three through four. And this is what David says. Oh Lord, my God, if I've done this, if there's injustice in my hands, if I've rewarded evil to my friend or if plundered him who without cause was my adversary, then let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it.

So David is saying that in this situation, I'm innocent. You can examine me. You can look at me.

If you find sin in me, if you find injustice in me, if you find a celebration of evil in me, if you find robbery in me, if you find any stain of any sin in me in this situation, then let them come for me and let them destroy me.

David is very carefully examining his own life right now. And he's saying that this is not true of me.

But again, what I want us to understand is that David also at the end of the

Psalm is acknowledging that Christ or that God will rescue him based on his righteousness.

David is subtly admitting that I am not righteous. So what? So David can appeal to his righteousness in a single situation of his life.

And he can say, I didn't do what they accused me of doing. But yet over the course of David's life and over the course of our life, we're not righteous.

There is sin that can be found in us. There is injustice in our hands. There is a celebration of evil.

How many times have we not only celebrated our own evil, but we've celebrated when others have done evil as well.

I can think about many, many times in my life where I've been the one that has led someone else into sin and I've celebrated that sin with them.

We have robbery in our hands. We have blood on our hands. And our enemies should have pursued us, overtaken us and thrown us into the lake of fire.

There is nothing else we can say, but we don't have to end that way.

I hope that you recognize the two very powerful things that come out of these verses in verse three and four.

The first is that we are not righteous, that we're not.

We have blood on our hands. We have injustice in our heart. And we deserve to be dragged down into the grave.

And we deserve to be dragged down into the grave. But the second thing that I want you to understand is that when

David prays in verse 17, that I will give thanks to the

Lord according to his righteousness. And I will sing praise to the name of the most high that you and I also are in the same boat as David.

And we have been rescued by Christ and Christ alone. All of the sin that was in your heart, all of the injustice that was in your hand, all of the celebration of wickedness and evil that you have buried down inside of your heart should have forced you down into the grave.

But Christ said, I'll go down into the grave for you. I'll go onto the cross and pay for your sins and pay for your injustices and pay for your iniquity.

I'll go joyfully up Mount Calvary and I'll let them beat me and I'll let them scourge me and I'll let them mock me just like they were mocking

David. I'll let them say all manner of evil against me. I'll let them falsely accuse me.

I'll let them say things that I've never done and I won't even proclaim my own innocence because I'm gonna give my innocence to you.

You see, for all of us who are reading this passage, we have sinned. So therefore the accusation that comes from hell is not false.

David is appealing to a false accusation that someone has against him. Our accusation is not false.

Hell is coming for you. And they know that you are sinful and they know that your sin separates you from a holy

God. And they know that when they latch onto you and drag you away to the pit of hell, that they have every right and every recourse except for the fact that Jesus laid down his rights for you.

So that when the hounds of hell come for you, if you're a Christian and that's it, if you're a

Christian, then you stand behind the Lion of Judah who died for you. He took your death.

He took your pain. He took your sin. He took your failure. He took your false accusations.

He took everything and he nailed it to the cross so that your sin would die.

And he carried it down into the grave so that your sin would be forever buried. And he rose up out of the grave, leaving it in the ground so that you and I could resurrect with him so that you and I could have the life that he wanted us to have.

He came out of the grave to give us resurrection life. So when we pray, we end with awe, a hearty, heart -filled adoration and awe.

We don't stay in our sins. We don't stay in our disappointments and brokenness. Before our knees leave the floor, we are in awe of God who's done everything to save us.

My prayer for each and every one of us is that as we go through psalms like this, that we would end our time magnifying the name of Jesus and that we would love

Jesus and that we would be grateful for Jesus more so than anything else, more so than anything else in our life.

That is my prayer. Let's pray. God, thank you so much for your son.

Thank you so much that even though we're broken and that we're sinful, that he came and he saved us.

Thank you, Lord, that all of the false accusations of the enemy are not true. And they're not true because of us.

They are true because of us, but they're not true because of Christ who nailed our pitiful record to the cross.

Lord, we love you and we thank you and we praise you, Jesus, for what you've done.