Book of Psalms - Psa. 17, Vs. 1-3

All right, let's get started.

So good morning.

We're going to backtrack in the Psalms just a little bit.

We've been going through each and every Psalm.

Steely, welcome.

He hadn't been here for a lot of the Sunday schools, but now I'm going to show you where we are.

We've been going through each Psalm, Psalm 1, 2, 3, 4.

We got all the way up to 18, and somehow we completely skipped 17, so that was my fault.

I had studied it, and I think what it was was Ben,

he and I, we kind of swapped back and forth and do Sunday school, and so once in a while, Ben will be doing

something, and I think during the time Ben was teaching, I just assumed I had taught my lesson on

Psalm 17.

So we are going to backtrack to Psalm 17.

What we just finished up in Psalm 18 was by far the longest Psalm we've done.

It was like 50 verses, so it took us a few weeks to get through it, but it was all about

David praising the Lord for the deliverance from his enemies.

Psalm 18 was written when David finally had rest from all his enemies, and

as we go into Psalm 17, I want you to think about

what must precede deliverance from your enemies.

In other words, when you are not yet delivered,

what are your feelings?

What are you going to do?

How are you going to act?

So let's say you are experiencing enemies of some sort.

Well, you know we have three main enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil, right?

The world is going to make it accessible and acceptable to sin.

The flesh has just evil desires in it, and Satan's job is to appeal to those desires and

present opportunity to act on those desires.

So the three work together, right?

The flesh, evil desires, ooh, I want to do something bad, Satan gives you opportunity to do something bad,

and the world says it's okay to do something bad.

And we're going to make it super easy.

So they all work together to just kind of make it very easy and feel natural to sin.

But once we've been saved from those three enemies, positionally, God has

completely sacrificed our old man, and we are a new creature.

We are no longer under their authority or under their rule.

We are under God's authority and His rule, and we can appeal to the law of grace.

And so, what would we do, having received that salvation,

knowing that we're one of God's people, what would we do in the times when we feel oppressed

by the world, the flesh, and the devil?

Because those enemies are still going to work on us a little bit.

What would you do during those times?

Okay, well, there's no temptation given to man except which is common to man, right?

And God always provides a way of escape, so look for an opportunity to escape temptation.

What else might you do?

During times when you feel oppressed, when something or someone or a situation

is just kind of gnawing at you, kind of nicking away at your

armor, what should you do?

We should turn to God.

And how would you do that?

Through prayer, okay?

And what do we do?

Let's let you answer that side too.

Okay, we often will try to rely on ourselves, but it's God who provides the way of escape, right?

Which is why it's so important for us to turn to him so that we can

see the way of escape.

If we try to look for the way of escape under our own authority and on our own power, we're going to fail just about every

time.

What David does in this Psalm, this is prior to him being delivered from all of

his enemies.

In fact, most scholars believe that this Psalm was probably written around the time he was running from Saul.

Now, if you think about it, David had done a great thing for Saul.

He eliminated the Philistines time and time again.

He destroyed Goliath, right?

When Saul's entire army was cowering to this giant, he charged in and defeated the

giant.

He's Saul's son -in -law because if you'll remember, when he defeated Goliath, he was promised

quite a few things, one of which was one of the king's daughters.

And so now he's married to Saul's daughter, so he's a son -in -law,

and he sounds like a pretty good one.

He's fixing a lot of problems for the father -in -law, but the father -in -law is jealous of

the son.

And so he becomes a usurper king.

God removes his hand from Saul, and he anoints David.

He has Samuel anoint David as the next king.

So now Saul is jealous of David, and he wants to destroy David.

He wants to slander David.

He wants to do whatever he can to eliminate David from his life.

That's kind of a bad family situation, isn't it?

David is plagued by family situations his entire life.

But what we're going to see in Psalm 17 is David

is praying.

He's a master at prayer.

And we're going to see that while he is being oppressed, while he's being in some ways hunted

even, he turns to the Lord.

And what do you think he's going to ask God for?

Deliverance.

Like, save me, right?

So this is a good study on the proper way to ask God to

deliver you from an oppressive human being, an oppressive organization,

an oppressive situation, like anything or anyone that tries

to oppress you, tries to make your life worse or end your

life.

This is a good study on how to ask God to eliminate that, right?

So Psalm 17, I don't know how far we're going to get through it,

but it's written as a direct prayer to God.

Like I said before, this is thought to have been written during David's flight from Saul.

The enemy that he describes in this prayer wants to kill him.

He even describes him later on in the Psalm about like a lion lurking about to kill his prey,

which very much sounds like Saul, because he was almost just bloodthirsty against

David, right?

He just wanted David dead.

And it didn't seem to make any sense.

It was almost like Saul was completely out of his right mind.

And every once in a while he'd come to and he would be like, oh, I can't believe I've done this.

I'm oppressing David.

And it wouldn't take long before he'd turn right back to the bloodthirsty Saul that wants to kill David again.

Because David had never done anything to disappoint Saul.

He'd never done anything wrong to Saul.

But Saul just had almost this primal, like predatory instinct against

David.

Wait, Saul had that against David.

And so this is a prayer for, in a sense, protection against the oppressors.

And perhaps it is one specific oppressor on David's mind, like Saul.

But this can definitely be applied to more than a single person.

It could be applied to an organization, it could be applied to a situation.

So anything that is kind of, in a sense, bloodthirsty to eliminate us or to harm us,

either physically or emotionally or mentally,

that's what we're going to be studying, is how can we protect or ask for protection from that.

So let's start with verse 1.

And keep in mind, this is kind of like when Esther went to the king

and she had an oppressor.

The oppressor was Haman, and Haman wanted to kill all of her people.

Instead of calling the oppressor out and confronting the oppressor

herself, as a queen you'd think she'd have the power to do that.

But instead, even the queen, as powerful as she is, she goes to the

king and asks the king to deal with the situation.

She points to the problem and appeals to the king and

just basically watches his anger kindle against her enemy.

So this is David.

Psalm 17, verse 1, a prayer of David.

Does anything just jump out at you in that first verse?

Anything peculiar?

Okay, he's coming to God feeling fairly righteous.

All right, that's a good thing to point out.

What else?

What else jumps out at you?

He's not speaking from a place of

deceit.

Okay.

Okay, so, hey, I'm righteous, and what I'm talking about and what I'm going to say is

complete truth.

Right?

So I'm going to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

So help me God, right?

You're going to actually see that exact thought kind of play out in the psalm.

Okay, another good thought.

Does anybody find it peculiar that he kind of says something?

It almost seems repetitive.

Hear the right, O Lord.

What's he asking for?

Hear the right.

Hear the right, O Lord.

Listen, right?

Okay, so he's asking for listen there, but then he says, attend unto my cry.

What does that mean?

Listen.

Well, attend.

Attend unto my cry.

Like, take action.

But it's going to require also that you're paying attention.

Right?

Attend.

So it kind of sounds like listening, too.

Give ear unto my prayer.

What does that sound like?

Almost like listening.

It's weird because it seems like he's being repetitive, but there are subtle differences in the way he says each thing.

First, hear the right.

Right?

So listen.

Pop picked up on one of the subtle differences.

Attend unto my cry.

Right?

Which is, like, take action.

But then he actually names the action he wants.

Give ear unto my prayer.

And what that is, is, like, I want you, I want you to literally, like, give me your attention.

Right?

And then he says that this goes out of, not out of feigned lips.

There's also a very subtle be, do, have in there, which we find all throughout Scripture.

It's funny how it starts jumping out at you everywhere you look.

What is David implying with that first part where he says, hear the right?

I already said it.

What's he implying?

Pop said it first.

He is righteous.

Okay, so he's not coming out of a place of covetousness.

He's not coming out of a place of deceit or vainglory.

He's coming out of a place of righteousness.

If you want God to hear your prayers, don't you think that's a great place to start?

Like, start by being righteous.

David believes himself to be exactly that.

So there's your be.

Right?

Be righteous.

If you have a situation where you feel oppressed, you feel downtrodden, and feel like somebody's

just taking advantage of you or whatever, start there.

Like, work on becoming a more righteous person.

Now, what is that?

What's it look like to become more righteous?

Start with repentance.

I like that.

Or even before repentance, sometimes you've got to have correction from the Word.

Right?

So understand the Word.

Read the Word.

Recognize where you don't line up with the Word, and repent from that misalignment, and

try to align with the Word.

Right?

David is saying, I've done that.

I be righteous.

Alright, so he is righteous.

So there's your be.

In the progression of be, do, have, do is next, and he is

doing something.

What is David doing?

Alright, so be a righteous person who cries unto the Lord.

So there's a do.

Now, what does this sound like to you?

What do you think of when you hear someone say, attend unto my cry?

Do you think happy thoughts?

Do you think sad thoughts?

Do you think...

Where does your mind go when you hear that?

Desperation.

Okay.

What else?

That's the first thing my mind went to, is babies.

We just went camping with a bunch of babies.

We did a one -night camping trip.

And, I mean, there's babies everywhere, right?

A lot of them are Mitchell babies.

One of them was a Calvert baby.

We got three older Huber babies there.

And, um...

Throughout the night, you know, as the sun starts going down, and kids are running around, and there's

fire, and there's...

You know, you're throwing the football around, and you're playing in the tent and stuff.

Someone's bound to get hurt.

It's going to happen with babies.

Someone's going to get hurt.

And every once in a while, it's a little aid of trips and maybe get some stickers in her hands or something.

Fern came over with a sticker in her hand.

Abby came over with a sticker in her hand.

A lot of stickers, right?

Little Parker pushed his face into the tent and got punched in the eye.

He was trying to scare some of the other kids, and they were getting a little too rowdy, and he got bonked right in the eye.

And every time one of them gets hurt, they immediately...

Right?

And it's like you have to get them to the point where they're willing to try and even use

their words.

So, like, the very first act of desperation is a cry.

Which is...

It's kind of normal if you think about it.

Like, when something bad happens to us, when someone does something that just kind of surprises

us, takes us off guard, shocks us maybe, it's like you don't even know what to think.

You don't know what to say.

You're just kind of like, ah, you know, I can't believe that happened.

And sometimes all you can do is cry at first before you can even talk about it.

You've got this visceral reaction that happens.

That can certainly read this way.

But what's interesting is if you look up the word cry.

So, we're going to do that.

And if someone will just click on that word and share it with me.

It's in verse 1.

If you've got a blue -letter Bible open.

A ringing cry.

All right?

Entreaty or supplication.

There's another definition to it.

And what is that?

Proclamation, joy, and praise.

That's an interesting twist.

That doesn't sound very sad at all.

I mean, joy is not often associated with sad.

Would you agree?

Now, could you have feelings of sadness and still, in a sense,

experience some joy?

Yeah.

In the book of James, it tells us we should.

So, very obviously, David, feeling wronged by his enemies, he may have that

kind of visceral reaction of crying.

But the word that's used here also has an element of praise

to it.

So, if you want your prayers to be heard, especially prayers of deliverance, start with

being as righteous as you can.

Turn away from evil.

Repent.

Align yourself with God's Word.

And then begin praising God.

Why?

Why would that help?

I think because you go, in that praise, in that moment, if

you can approach God in righteousness, that right there is something to be joyful and praise about.

And that is a deliverance in itself.

So you've already experienced the deliverance of the Lord to apply to your prayer.

Okay, so I really like the way Mimi said that.

If you can approach the Lord in righteousness, that's something already that you can be kind of joyous about.

Maybe my situation's not great.

Maybe a relationship is really weighing on me and I'm having a hard time.

But if I can go to the Lord and say, hey, I've been doing pretty good in that sin that so easily besets me,

right?

And I've turned away from that and I'm really trying hard to walk in alignment with

God's Word, at least that part of the relationship is in good standing.

So when you come to Him, there is a little sense of joy there.

At least there's peace in that situation.

So when you're dealing with the other situation, it's not compounded by, oh, is God really even going

to hear me right now?

I have not been the best Christian.

Is He really going to listen to my prayer?

Because I know they've wronged me and I am completely innocent in this situation, but

I know I'm not innocent as a whole, at least experientially.

Positionally, once you have been saved, you're always saved, and the Father looks at you and says, I see my son, you're innocent.

But then there's experiential righteousness.

If you're not walking in experiential righteousness, it might be hard even to come to the Father.

Think of when something happens and you feel like you need to talk with your parents

or something, and maybe your last talk with your parents

didn't go so great.

I've had times like this with Mom and Dad.

Not in greatest standing with Mom and Dad right now, and I really need some guidance in this other situation.

I don't think I'm going to go to them.

You know what will happen?

You'll go to another source, and the other source may not be as trustworthy as Mom and Dad.

You may end up going to a friend group.

You go, but that's what friends are for.

Not necessarily.

Friends often deal with the same problems that you deal with, and sometimes they haven't figured those problems out yet.

So it's important to draw on the wisdom of your elders, and it's hard to

do if the relationship isn't right there.

Well, same thing for everyone, not just people who still have their parents.

We have a Heavenly Father, and maybe we want to go and figure out how

to fix a situation, but our relationship with Dad ain't so great right now,

and so I'm not really sure how to come to Him.

So I'm going to go to a fellow Christian.

I'm going to go to someone else who I know has dealt with this situation before, and we'll tell

ourselves that's wisdom, and to some degree you might be right, but it's not the best source.

It's not the source of truth.

God's the source of truth, and so it's very important to have that experiential righteousness

so that you can come to the Father with confidence and experience at least

some joy and peace there, because what do you really want?

You want to have that in the situation, and if you can't get it from the situation and you go to someone

else, guess what happens?

That discord can be spread to the other people.

It's not a salve that fixes it.

We go to other people and we go, well, they're making me feel better because they agree with me.

So in that situation we might go, ah, okay, agreement.

They think I'm right, and so ah, that feels good, but what actually is happening is in their mind they're getting frustrated with these

people over here, and now all of a sudden you have spread the discord that you had between just two people to three people,

and it's gotten worse.

It's not gotten better.

That's the trap that Satan sets.

You're going to feel good because you're going to get some agreement.

People are going to know you're right and they're wrong, and so just go to other people instead

of going to the Father and aligning with His Word.

And so if you instead go to the Father, you can get a deeper peace, not just a,

oh, you're right.

Like if you can go to His Word and go, hey, I am right in this situation.

God Himself says I'm right, and appeal to

Him.

He will help provide some of that joy and some of that peace that you didn't do anything wrong,

and at the same time it won't spread to other imperfect people who will just get mad at that group.

You see the importance of that?

And so it's very, very important that you go to the Word instead of just other people.

And so hear the right.

I am righteous, I know I am.

Now David knows I am.

He says I know I am because he's already aligned with God's Word.

So he has confidence.

Attendant to my cry, I'm going to praise you for your righteousness because that's where my righteousness comes

from.

And I'm really dealing with this situation, so there is this kind of sense of, ah, but also praise

you for giving me a right mind in this situation.

Praise you for giving me the knowledge of what I'm supposed to do.

I'm supposed to come to you.

I'm not supposed to go to other people.

I'm supposed to come to you and see if we can figure out this situation.

That's why when we are told conflict resolution in Scripture, we're told first

just go to the person.

And if you've connected with God, you'll have the ability to go to the person and try to fix it.

If they will not hear you and you can't show them in Scripture how they've messed up

lovingly, meekly in a way that opens their ears and opens their minds.

And they go, OK, maybe I did mess up a little bit.

If you can't do that after aligning with God, then we are told, OK,

now it's time to bring in a third party.

But we're going to do that first by bringing in the third party, align with God and them, right?

And say, all right, here's what I found in Scripture about this unnamed person.

You don't need to know who it is right now.

It's just like, what's your thought on the situation?

You better be completely like truthful.

Like Matt said, he's coming from unfeigned lips, truthful in the whole situation.

Am I right in this situation?

Do you see that I'm right aligned with Scripture?

Yeah, I think I do see that.

OK, well, the person won't hear me.

Do you have any advice for how I can go to them?

OK, try this.

They still won't hear me.

Could you come with me?

I'll tell you who it is then.

Notice how in the entire scenario is designed to bring

all parties back to the truth and back to God.

It's not to go, oh, I'm right.

It's not to make you look at me and compare me to them.

It's compare me to this, compare them to this.

And can we get everybody more aligned with the word?

Everybody following so far?

Thoughts on that?

In approaching God, we're comparing ourselves to Christ.

I think one thing that really stands out is when David says, hear the right,

recognizing that he is forgiven, he's victorious, and has been

victorious over other things, over other sins.

And God, he has spent time already communing with God.

And that's one of the things that we fail to do.

We are secure in our salvation, so we may be living a

righteous life, and we may not be at that time when we need to approach God

plagued with anything that we have done wrong recently, but have we been

communing with God?

And I think that is part of the key that David has that relationship with God.

So Mom brings out that, just the idea that you can be

positionally righteous, and you can be right with God, knowing that, hey, I'm good,

I'm righteous, but there's this drawing near to him, especially when you feel distant from

other people, that that is so important to do.

It's like get close to him, commune with him, cast all your cares upon him and say,

hey, what do I do?

I need wisdom.

Can you show me who I should bring in if I can't get this figured out?

Can you give me some wisdom in even knowing what the third party, who the third party

should be when I bring them in and try to get some help with the situation?

It brings everyone back to God.

It brings everyone back to the word, and that may or may not work.

We don't know, right?

But we do know, I will say it this way, it always works.

God's methodology always works, but it may work to ostracize

a party that does not want to be close to God.

It may work to get them out of the situation.

We want to see them brought back into the fold.

We want there to be peace among everybody.

We don't like it when there's a split in a relationship.

But God's methodology always works, and it works for the good of those who

love the Lord, right?

Everything, he can put it all together and make it work best for us.

We just don't know what is best.

We

don't know if he will.

Right, so that's Pop.

For those of you listening online, Pop just reminded us of the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

King's going to throw them in the fire and asks, can your king deliver you from that?

And their response is, yes, he can, but if he doesn't, okay.

And that's how we have to approach these situations is we always go first to the Lord, and we ask,

can we get this outcome?

We really want this outcome.

We want to be delivered from the oppressor, but maybe we want the deliverance to be in the form of, can you get them out of my life?

Maybe that's not God's plan.

Maybe it's to fix their mindset and bring them closer into your life.

And now there's joy and peace with them there, or the opposite could be true.

It could be, I really want this to be fixed so we can be friends again, or I really want this to be fixed so that we can get closer

and know each other better and love each other.

But God's plan may be, no, actually, I want them gone for a time.

So regardless of what the outcome is, you don't worry about the outcome.

You worry about what is your part in the outcome.

And your part is go to the Lord, make sure you're righteous and aligned with his word first,

praise him for his righteousness, let him know what's bothering you,.

And then make your request.

It's shown at the beginning of the New Testament, the

deliverance of Saul to the church, the last thing they wanted to see

was Saul.

You go get him, he's one of mine.

Oh, yeah.

So Saul, meaning Saul of Tarsus, right?

Not the Saul that's chasing David, but Saul of Tarsus in the New Testament.

The church certainly didn't want a guy like that becoming part of the club, but he became

a Christian.

God saved him.

He was on his way to kill the church.

God saved him, radically changed his life.

He became one of the greatest Christians that we've ever known.

So we don't know what the outcome is.

We don't know what God's plan is.

But we just trust that the outcome, whatever it be, is the perfect outcome.

And we just follow God's methodology.

So that's why you have a cry of praise, because he is definitely worthy of praise.

Because he already knows the outcome.

He knows what's going to happen.

So just praise him for it.

And then ask him, how can I remain righteous in this situation?

Which is where this is going.

So we have, be righteous.

Do cry out to the Lord, but cry out with a joyous praise.

Even if you're feeling kind of sad, you can show him that.

You can tell him, I'm sad about this situation, but I am very thankful and happy about our situation, God.

Very thankful that we're good.

And that's kind of what David does.

So you have the be.

Be righteous.

You have the do.

Cry out to him.

What's the have?

Give ear unto my prayer.

He's actually asking God to give him something, which means he'll have something.

I'll have God's attention in this manner.

Now that I have made sure that I'm aligned with your word, now that I have made sure that

you know, even though I already know you know, but now I know you know you know, right?

I've made sure that I have praised you for what you are worthy to be praised of.

So I'm righteous.

I'm aligned.

I'm trusting.

Now, can you give me your attention in this situation?

That's the proper way to go about asking for help.

That's the proper way to pray when you feel oppressed.

Now, how many of us actually think of it that way?

Or do we just start going, dear Jesus, here's my problem.

That's what I do a lot of time.

Oh, dear Jesus, here's my problem.

They're not right.

Reach out and be effective.

But you know, that's not true.

There's that side as well where you don't, you have that

confidence,

you always have that position.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And he's faithful and just to forgive us of our sins, right?

He'll forgive us time and time and time again.

So if we don't feel like we are right, if you have something you know is hindering you,

that needs to be taken care of.

So that leads me to my next question.

Yeah, right.

Well, that's true.

So and that's, hold on to that thought, because we're going to need that thought again here in a minute.

So just take note that the request is just that.

David is requesting God's attention.

I don't want us to get into the habit of thinking everything in the Bible can just be systematized,

right?

Like if I do this, if I be this and do that, and then God has to answer my prayer

and do that, he has to fix it because I'm righteous and I praised him.

That's not how God works.

He's not like a machine.

We can push the buttons.

I'm pushing God's buttons.

Boom.

Now it's fixed.

So we have to be careful when we see methodology.

We have to be careful in thinking that, oh, if I just follow the methodology, then all of a sudden I'm in

control.

I get to decide what God has to do.

This is just a request.

We can't control God just as a peasant can't control his king.

But that peasant may be able to gain favor by being the easy case to

hear, right?

Like speaking as a man, just from a human

perspective, let's take the concept of king and peasant, right?

You got an earthly mannish king sitting on a throne and the peasants

come and they plead their case before the king.

And you get that one peasant who's just known as the troublemaker.

He's always out there making trouble in the kingdom.

And so many people are just upset with this guy all the time.

And when the king tries to deal with him, the peasant kind of bucks against the king sometimes.

Like he's just not that great of a peasant at all.

And he comes to the king and says, king, so -and -so really messed me up this week.

And I didn't do anything wrong.

Well, the king might be like, well, yeah, you're also the troublemaker.

Maybe you had it coming, that kind of thing, right?

A mannish human king might be that way.

But if the king goes, hey, here comes that peasant that's just always so pleasant.

I just love hearing from this guy.

He's great.

Comes in, praises me, tells me how awesome I am.

And he never gets in trouble.

All I ever hear about this guy is that he's constantly helping people.

He makes my job a lot easier.

Wouldn't that be the easier case to hear for a mannish king?

He'd be like, ah, let's listen to that guy.

You've got my favor.

Now, God is no man.

The son knows what it is to be a man.

He has mannish feelings, right?

He has lived

the mannish life, but he lived it very differently than we did.

So he also lives it and thinks from a different perspective, on a different plane than

we do.

But I think he can empathize with that concept, with that idea of,

all right, now here's one of my peasants that comes to me and this one's great.

And what's greater still is that he doesn't look at us as peasants.

He goes, that's my child.

That's my kid.

And this one hasn't given me any problems.

This one hasn't disobeyed.

This one's been great.

I love being around this kid.

I don't banish this one to his room and want to spank this guy too much because he's always good.

You know what I mean?

So like, if we, humanly speaking, want to

say, hey, I want to give God the easiest case to hear, be righteous, praise him.

And then ask for his ear.

Okay.

Let my sentence come forth from thy presence.

Let thine eyes behold the things which are equal.

Can you imagine asking God to judge you?

Because that's essentially what David just did.

Let my sentence come forth from your presence.

How many of y 'all would just love to have the king and creator of the universe sitting

on his throne and you go, hey, hey, God, look at me, judge me.

I'm ready.

How many of us would be like that?

I mean, I'm going to wait.

I'm going to try and get a lot better before I go inviting that kind of attention.

But what David's really doing in this situation is he's saying, here's the case I'm

bringing.

And in every case, there is a defendant, right?

And there's a plaintiff.

The plaintiff is the person who's saying, I'm being wronged.

The defendant is the person that's saying, no, I didn't do it.

I didn't wrong them, right?

David, in this case, is the plaintiff.

He's saying, Lord, you know I'm good.

You know I'm righteous.

You know that I'm aligned with you and I praise you for the alignment that you've given me and I praise you

for the goodness that you've put in my heart.

So now I'm going to complain a little bit about this situation.

Can you give me attention?

I'm the plaintiff and I'm ready for you to judge because I know for a fact I am right in this situation.

So can you please just bring it?

Declare judgment.

That's what David's asking for.

He's like, now in order for that to be the case, though, in order for him to be so confident,

what any good judge will do is like, hey, let's hear the evidence.

Let's hear the evidence in the situation.

And God is no different in that respect.

He is completely just.

He's not going to say, oh yeah, I remember you.

You're my favorite.

Guilty.

That guy's guilty because you're my favorite.

That's not how God's justice is administered.

He looks at all the evidence, okay?

They are very obviously upset.

Did you do anything that could have upset them?

How are you in this situation?

You claim righteousness.

Are you righteous?

Have you examined yourself in the situation that you are dealing with?

And can you in this situation say, no, I know for a fact, I know in my heart of hearts I've done

nothing.

I even abstained from the appearance of evil.

So I didn't do anything wrong because that's how God's justice works.

It is completely just.

It will look at the entire situation and it will overlook nothing.

So David coming to the father has done a lot of self -examination.

Wouldn't you agree?

If he's willing to say, hey, bring the judgment.

I have examined the situation and he's got to be pretty confident too because I

mean, he is just a man.

Isn't it possible he could have missed something?

So it really takes a lot of self -examination in whatever situation that you're dealing with, whatever relationship,

you want to really examine yourself.

Was I completely right in this situation?

David does.

And he says, let thine eyes behold the things that are equal.

So in order to pronounce judgment in this situation, in order for you to

give a sentence, I know you're going to examine every piece of information, every fact.

You're going to look at me.

You're going to look at him.

I am confident you're going to find this guy guilty and you're going to see that I'm righteous.

But there's still a problem with that concept.

The problem with that concept is that our righteousness is his filthy rags.

Whoa, okay.

So we're right back to, do I really want God looking under a microscope?

Like, do I want him looking through a microscope at me to fix this situation?

David very obviously does.

Why?

That's my question.

He is definitely a man after God's own heart.

He has done a lot of self -examination.

He's put himself under the microscope.

And best as he can tell, he's right.

Now, he also knows that God loves him.

So if anything is found in him, God will fix it.

He'll address it.

He'll correct it.

He'll do so out of love.

So he's not going to be destroyed.

Later in David's life, he's presented with a choice when he did mess up.

And the choice was, like, you can experience famine or you can experience attacking from your enemies or

you can experience God himself whooping on you.

And he chooses God.

Can't imagine.

But he does because he knows at least God loves him.

So even in this situation, David is showing a level of

trust in that if you do find anything wrong with me, you're going to fix it.

And he's open to that.

Now, we, from the perspective of the Father, are completely righteous.

We have the blood of Christ covering us.

If you have trusted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, then when the Father

looks at you, you are completely clean.

You are righteous.

You are holy.

And we have that to rest in.

But then there's this experiential righteousness, which God still deals with us in time.

And that's the part we need to trust and be willing to change in if the

Lord reveals anything to us.

Well, you did kind of mess up.

You could have said this a little different to that person.

Could have said that a little differently to that person.

You know, you could have done this, handled the situation a little better.

And we have to be willing to change in that respect.

But notice that he says, let thine eyes behold the things that are equal.

The only thing that can balance the scales of payment

for sin, and we have all experienced sin, and we're at one point

subject to having to pay the penalty of sin, which is the wages of sin, is death.

The only thing that can balance those scales and make them equal is the blood of Christ.

And so there has to be a real trusting of Jesus

in this particular situation.

If you're going to ask for the Lord to be just, if you're going to invoke justice from

God in your situations, just be prepared that justice doesn't just go

one way.

Right?

So align yourself with the Lord.

Yes, the father sees you as righteous, but how does the son look at you right now?

The son knows where you've messed up.

He knows what your experience is.

Yes.

This is the importance of having the mind of Christ.

Yeah.

To order

your steps.

Because it's one thing to come to this, that

your righteousness is covered by the blood of Christ, and that's where your righteousness is.

But to come with the confidence that you have been obedient to that comes through

being one with Christ in mind.

Right.

The only way you're going to experientially be able to come to the

judge and say, I am righteous, is if you have been truly connected in spirit

with Jesus.

Moment by moment, you're holding on to his hand, and you're really aligning yourself with scripture.

Yeah, you better well be right, don't you think?

If you're going to ask the Lord to deal with a situation, when you agree, you better well be right in the situation, because he

might deal with it by going, it's you.

It's not them.

It feels like it's them to you, but that's because you're not looking at it properly.

So we have to be aware of that.

The word for presence, let my sentence come forth from thy presence.

The word for presence means in front of, before, to the front of, in the presence of, in the face of,

at the face or front of.

So in other words, it's like, I want you looking at me.

I'm asking for you to help in this situation, but I want, in order for that

sentence to come, that they need help, and they messed up, and that they are

wrong, and I am right, it's got to come from the Lord looking first at me.

From his presence comes that sentence.

And that's why David invites, like, look at me.

There's an intimacy there that David is talking about.

Try as we might to be in the right, at the risk of sounding like Dr. Seuss,

our righteousness is as filthy rags in the presence of a perfect God.

So the way that we can be bold like David, to call

ourselves right, is to depend on the righteousness of Christ.

It's not our righteousness that we can depend on.

If we try to say, all right, well, look, I did this, and I did that, and I am good, and I am right,

it better be that you were connected to the righteousness of Christ in the situation.

If I said, well, I did this, well, let's look at what you did.

Did your actions align with what the Word says to do?

Maybe if the whole world looks at your situation, the world might go, yeah, you're in

the right and they're in the wrong, but what's my word say?

It doesn't matter if society says you're right.

Society might go, yeah, you are definitely in the right, they're in the wrong.

So regardless of what society does, or regardless of what society says, the only thing

that matters is what does God say?

What does God's Word say?

Are you righteous in alignment with God's Word?

All right, we're almost out of time here.

Let's see if we can get just one more

verse down.

Thou hast proved mine heart, thou hast visited me in the night.

The English word visit, like the Hebrew, is often used to

denote a visitation for the purpose of inspection and

examination.

So there's the part where God, he's looking at his servant.

David is saying, you have examined me.

You know that I am right.

And the idea is that God has come to David for the very purpose of

examination of David's character.

So he's saying, you know me.

And he's saying, you know me inside and out.

Now, I think it's interesting that it says, thou hast visited me in the night.

Why would it say that?

Why would it say in the night?

Okay, so the night hides things.

Has anyone ever spent the night at a friend's house?

All right, so you spend the night at a friend's house.

Don't you kind of get to know that friend and their family quite a bit better?

Why is that?

Spending time.

But there's something specific about spending the night at a friend's house that really gives you a whole new perspective on the

family rather than just spending a whole lot of time with them outside of spending the

night.

Maybe a whole lot of time with them at school, a whole lot of time with them in public.

The reason is, at night, people let their guard down.

At night, the facades tend to go away.

They are in their natural habitat at home.

They tend to be a little bit more like themselves.

Now, they could still put on a show to some degree.

There's only so much you can hide when all the people around you are more

prone to just be in their natural habitat at night as well.

So, like, when you go to spend the night at a friend's house, you tend to get a better understanding of what is

their life truly like.

David here is saying, it's like you spent the night at my house, God.

You know what I'm really like.

You know beyond the facades, beyond the times in which I put on a show, beyond the

times I put on my best garments and show everybody that I'm really

trying.

You know me in my darkest hours.

You know me with my deepest thoughts.

You know me in the shadows, yeah.

Spurgeon has a really good quote here.

You guys know I like to quote Spurgeon.

Here's his quote about this.

Happy man who can thus remember the omniscient eye and the omnipresent visitor

and find comfort in the remembrance.

Just the idea that that's a comforting thought.

God knows me.

See, if you've got secret sin, if you've got hidden agendas, if you've got

another side or secret life, which we've seen in the news recently with some pastors,

it's not a very comforting thought that God is omnipresent or omniscient about your situation.

So Spurgeon says, happy is the man who can have that thought and be happy about it

and be comforted by it.

He also goes on to say, we hope we have had our midnight visits from

our Lord and truly they are sweet, so sweet that the recollection of them sets us longing

for more of such condescending communings.

So in other words, we aren't just comforted by the fact that God really

knows us.

We want Him to know us more.

We want Him to get more involved, get more intimate, get more into our lives.

So the second half of that verse three is, thou hast tried me and shalt find nothing.

How's that for confident?

God, you have looked at me and you're not going to find anything wrong with me.

Now notice that it says shalt find nothing.

Maybe there is an inspection and so far up until this point, I'm good.

But in case the inspection continues, I will continue to be good.

He's already purposed in his heart that he is going to stay aligned with God.

He's going to hold on to his hand and he's going to continue

in his presence.

And when the Lord looks at him, he's going to say there's

only righteousness here.

So he's already purposed in his heart what's going to happen from this point forward.

Well, we're pretty much out of time and we only got through three verses, which is okay.

What we'll start with next week is we will start with what are some of the

hindrances to such a prayer life?

Like what are the things that can keep us from having the confidence that David displays here?

We can see already an easy little progression or a system, if you will,

that we're supposed to be righteous.

We're supposed to cry into the Lord, meaning praise him for his righteousness and the ability he gives us to

be righteous like him.

But also that cry can have a little bit of, but here's where I'm suffering,

Lord.

And then if we've done those two things, we can confidently ask

for his ear.

It doesn't mean he's going to give it to us.

God can't just be put in a box.

He can't be systematized.

But if we have those two things, his word indicates that we're more likely to

gain his ear and maybe have his face towards us, which all throughout scripture,

you want the face of the Lord shining upon you.

It denotes favor.

And so, Psalm 17, verses one through three.

There you go.

We'll go into verse four and see how far we can get next week.

Anybody else have some last thoughts before we wrap it up?

Did I not read that part?

I thought I had.

I accidentally cut it from my notes when I copied something else in.

So that's what happened.

Read that one more time, Pop, out loud for me.

Yes, I am purposed that my mouth shall not transgress.

So there's that future looking forward.

And we're going to dive more into what that, my mouth

transgressing, what that really looks like in a practical sense when we're being oppressed.

We'll look at that more next week as well because it's going to fit right in with what are some of the things that could hinder our prayers.

Yes, sir.

Mr. Brand, good to see you.

Yes.

Oh, that's real good.

That's real.

I love that.

So you're right.

A lot of people go, you need to get to know the Lord, but that's totally backwards from what really you need.

You need the Lord to know you.

Well, think about what that takes to get to let anyone get to know you.

You got to open up.

Otherwise, they don't really know you.

You can put on a facade, which we tend to do with people all the time, but we don't think of ourselves as doing that

to God.

We go, oh yeah, remember, he knows everything, so he has to know me.

But we can put up the facade and the kind of knowing that

is used in that scripture is a intimate knowledge.

We know each other, like family knows each other.

We've spent the night.

Very good.

Yes, absolutely.

Thank you for that.

Any other thoughts?

All right, well, let's pray and we will dismiss.

Heavenly Father, we just thank you that you do truly know us.

And we know that there are times when even after having received your salvation,

there are times when we think we can go and put that facade up and we try to hide behind the facade and

we try to keep a foot in the world and then a foot in your presence and it just doesn't work that way

because the two are so vastly apart.

Lord, we ask that you help us to take our feet out of the world there and to stand

fully in your presence, open up about the things that we first struggle with personally,

and then maybe once we've corrected those things and we've aligned with you, then maybe we have the ability

to truly deal with the situations that seem to oppress us.

We forget sometimes that those oppressions are brought about as a chastisement for our own sin.

We forget sometimes that those are designed to bring us closer to you so that we can correct the problems in our own lives.

So Father, if any of us here are experiencing those things, help us to first self -examine

like David did in this scripture.

Lord, we thank you.

We love you.

We ask that you help us to continue to learn about your word this Sunday

and we praise you.

It's in your name we ask these things.

Amen.