Prayer Night Sermon (Psalm 4 - "What We Cannot Do Without Jesus")

Prayer as the Church’s Wednesday Night Focus

Thank you for listening to the Shepherds 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 everybody and welcome back to our Wednesday night prayer service where we are walking through the Psalms today. We're gonna be in Psalm 4. Which is an incredible Psalm to say the least and I want to dive right in to the topic.

The Law, Love, and Human Inability

Now the Bible often gives us works that we cannot accomplish. You think about the law of God where it lays out in Maximum specificity all of the different things that we cannot actually do namely we cannot please God.

You think about the New Testament where Jesus says if you love me You will obey my commandments and then the chief commandment among all of the different Laws the one that summarizes the entire enterprise is love the Lord your God with all of your heart soul mind and strength.

And love your neighbor as yourself meaning Consistently every single day of your life love other people as much as you love yourself with as much self Less tenacity as you love your self. That's every single day of your life and on top of that love God with the entirety of your heart and the entirety of your soul and All of your mind and your spirit.

Do you see the point? When you boil down just a single commandment that God has given in his word we cannot do it and one of the themes and one of the patterns of the Psalms is how David will inventory from start to finish how the the kind of life that he is supposed to be living and Then at the end he will rest and trust in the Lord because he realizes that he can't actually do it.

That is sort of what Psalm 4 is going to lay out for us. It's gonna lay out a beautiful vision of what it looks like to honor God to have confidence in him to to stop sinning in the ways that we sin and to and to Direct our hearts and our minds towards him so that our hearts and our minds will be pure and so that we our prayers will Be powerful and in all of this but yet in the end of Psalm 4 we realize that actually we can't do this at all.

We need a Savior. We need Jesus Christ who then Will help us do all of the things that David lists. So what I want us to do in our time is I want us to read Psalm 4. Then I want us to work our way through Psalm 4 and in the end.

I want us to see how only Christ Can help us actually live out the truths that are found in Psalm 4 so if you will turn with me and Let's read the psalm together. Answer me when I call Oh God of my righteousness.

You have relieved me in my distress be gracious to me and hear my prayer. Oh Sons of men how long will my honor become a reproach and how long will you love what is worthless and aim at deception? But know that the Lord has set apart the godly man for himself the Lord.

Here's when I call to him tremble and do not sin. Meditate in your heart upon your bed and be still say la Offer the sacrifices of righteousness and trust in the Lord. Because many are saying who will show us any good lift up your the light of your countenance upon us.

You have put gladness in my heart more than when their grain and their new wine abound in peace. I will both lie down and I will sleep for you alone. Oh Lord make me to dwell in safety. The first work that David tells us that we cannot do is Put our entire Confidence in God to put our sure confidence in God.

He says in the beginning answer me when I call which is which is a wonderful thing He's saying God. I have confidence that whenever I call on you You are gonna answer me but yet from reading the Psalms and we will see this time and time again David actually doesn't have that confidence often.

There's times when he doubts whether God is gonna answer him when he calls. There's times that he is not sure whether his prayers are making it up to the throne room of heaven. So what we see even in David in his Recommendation for himself that he would answer or that he would speak to the Lord with confidence and say Lord answer me when I call.

Even David saying that we realize that David doesn't fully live that way and neither do we. There are moments when we have bold beautiful prayers where we say God I know because of because of who you are and because of who you've made me to be that you were gonna answer me when I pray to you and that you're gonna answer this prayer and there's moments where we where we pray with such courage and with such conviction and with such Passion and with such hope and yet there's other moments where we're like God.

Are you even there? Do you even see me? Do you even do you even notice me God? There's times where we can Do this work barely and then there's times where we cannot do this work at all. And that is sort of David's point.

The work that God calls us to do we cannot do we cannot have a sure confidence in God. Even though it seems like here that David does the second work that we cannot do is is Understanding any sense of righteousness apart from Christ.

David says Oh God of my righteousness. Do you see what he's saying? He's saying that the work of being Righteous the work of living a righteous life is external to himself. It's God's righteousness. It's not our Righteousness so that if we're trying to be righteous apart from God, it cannot work.

Because we're not righteous our righteousness is that is as filthy rags in accordance to God. So there's therefore another work that we cannot do we cannot be righteous apart from God. David says that we gain relief in our distress.

He says you have relieved me in my distress. That's not true. If you're an unbeliever. You have no relief in your distress. You have no hope that you're going to avoid the hell on earth and the hell that is to come you have nothing at all.

To give you any confidence whatsoever that this life is not all you have which is why people live the way that they live. Because they believe that this life is all that they have apart from a relationship with God you can have no relief you can Have no confidence.

You can have no righteousness and Where David says be gracious to me and hear my prayer. You can have no hope that God will actually extend you grace and will ever hear your prayers unless you are his.

The thing that we cannot do apart from God is Have any relationship with God. We can't have confidence in him. We don't know that he answers us when we call out we can have no hope that of any sort of righteousness and ourself.

We don't have any relief. We don't have any grace. We don't have any assurance. We don't have any pardon apart from a relationship with God. These things do not exist that David is talking about in verse 1 the second Thing the thing that we actually do possess as sinners is a sinful tendency to brood over our circumstances.

Look at what David says right after he says these wonderful Confident statements answer me when I call you are my righteousness. You've relieved me. You've been gracious to me. You've heard my prayer after he says those things.

He says Oh sons of men. How long will my honor? Become a reproach. How long will your love. What is worthless and aim at deception. David is already so quickly got his eyes off of the confident hope that he has in God and now he's focused on himself.

He's focused on his appearance. He's focused on his reputation. Notice how he calls out so quickly to the crowd. He's worried about what the crowd thinks of him. He's worried about his reputation. He's worried about his righteousness.

He's worried about even the nation and why does the nation continue to love the things that are broken and the things that are Unlovable and the things that are deceiving them. He's his hope so quickly has turned from God and His hope has now very quickly pointed on the things of this world, which is exactly what you and I do apart from Christ.

It's exactly what Christians do when we're not focused on Christ. We worry about what the crowd thinks about us. We worry about our name our honor our reputation our appearance the way people think about us.

We worry about the things that are going on in the world and the deception that is happening currently and we worry about The worthless idolatry that the world is fawning after and we forget that we are also idolaters, too.

That we Perpetually take our focus off of God. So if you're taking an inventory of this passage so far in in our sinfulness. We cannot have confidence in God and we cannot have a relationship with God and in our sinfulness.

We usually will revert to patterns of sinful brooding over things that are not healthy for us. We will overthink what the crowd thinks. We will overthink our appearance. We will overthink the world. We will spend time brooding and mulling and regurgitating over and over and over in our minds until we're in a place of despair and frustration all the things that we shouldn't be thinking about.

We think about the things that we should not be thinking about and we don't. Think about the things that we should that is our flesh in a nutshell now David goes on and he says that there's a sort of sanctified Meditation that that a person who believes in God must do but again, we have no confidence that we can do this apart from Jesus Christ.

Listen to the things it says. Remember who we are. He says the Lord has set apart the godly for himself. We know that Paul says there's no one righteous. So, how can we have any confidence in our own righteousness that God has set us apart for himself that we have a relationship with him.

It says the Lord hears when I call how can we have any confidence that the Lord is going to hear us When we call out to him in our flesh. It says that we're supposed to tremble and do not sin. How often do we not tremble but run boldly into our sin?

How often do we run headlong into our sin joyfully and gleefully in our sin longing for our sin? How often do we prioritize the things of the flesh over the things of God and I would say more often than we realize and even more often Than our hearts could bear to even see if we could see the things that God sees.

It would break our heart. He says remember who you are. You're set apart to God. That's not true. If you're not in Christ Remember that he hears our prayers. That's not true. If you're not in Jesus Christ remember to tremble in your temptations, that's not true if you're not in Jesus Christ remember and be refreshed by who God is he says meditate in your heart upon your bed and think and dwell and focus and Ponder on the the holiness of God.

You won't do that. If you're not in Christ Be still and rest from your anxieties and trust in God. That's how he ends verse 3. You're not gonna do that if you're not in Christ. Do you see the long list of things that David is piling up here that if you if I were to just tell you.

Okay, here's what you need to do. You need to call on the Lord. You need to rest in his righteousness. You need to you need to you need to you need to you need to then I'm giving you a list of things that you Actually cannot do.

I'm trying to tell you to go earn Something from God that you cannot actually earn. I'm telling you to obey in order to be accepted and You cannot do it you can't. You can't remember who God is because you often forget who God is.

You can't remember who you are because you often forget what Christ has done for you. You can't have no confidence in your flesh that God is gonna hear your prayers because it says in the it says in the Bible.

That when when you have something against your brother your prayers your prayers bounce against the ceiling. And how often is that true for us? Every facet of this psalm if We're just focused on our flesh.

We're disqualified from if we're just focused on what we can do in our power and our strength. These things do not apply to us. He goes on in verse 4 to talk about our sanctified behavior. That's gonna happen where we obey God where he offers sacrifices to him.

You can't do that. Not at least that please the Lord we'd offer the same kind of sacrifices that Israel offered here in the New Testament. We would offer lame and blind Sacrifices we would offer idolatrous worship.

We don't trust in the Lord. We don't rest in him. Do you see what we're getting at here? These things are impossible in our own strength. David ends the psalm by talking about sort of how do we pray? Sanctified prayers by saying that we pray for those who are despairing we we pray for the nation with with confidence.

That the Lord would lift the countenance of the people. We pray for joy. That we would have the joy of God in our hearts. We pray for people who are lost who don't know him and who would also experience that joy.

We pray for peace and we pray for rest and none of these things are true unless you have verse 8. Verse 8 is The key to Psalm 4. If you don't have verse 8 you have nothing that Psalm 4 is talking about.

But praise the Lord Jesus Christ. That he is the hope of Psalm 4 verse 8 for all who are in him. This verse is true. This is what it says in Peace, I will both lie down and I will sleep for you Jesus alone.

Oh Lord make me to dwell in safety. Out of everything that David has just said for us to do in Psalm 4 He comes to the conclusion rightly that it's the Lord alone who can help us have these things. It is the Lord alone who can give us these things and make us do these things.

The word actually is make me to dwell in safety. We know that if we're in the same position as David and there is no Jesus. We can't have confidence in God. We can't have. We can't overcome our sinful tendency to brood we can't have a sanctified meditation upon God or we can't have Faithful behavior that God is pleased with we don't do those things as sinners.

But because of Jesus Christ we can now have confidence in God that when we call out upon him and we say answer me Oh God, we know that God will hear us because we've been made children of the living God.

Because of Jesus verse 8 tells us the point because of him and him alone. We know that God will answer us when we call out. We know that God has given us his own righteousness like David says in verse 1 because of Jesus.

That's it. We know that God relieves us in our distress and will rescue us out of this world and take us safe to heaven. Not because of us but because of Jesus. When David says you have relieved me in my distress.

We know that that's true only in Christ. When David says be gracious to me that is only true in Jesus we have received the grace of God that surpasses Understanding we have received his unmerited undeserved favor because of Jesus.

And we know that the only reason he hears our prayers because he's given us the holy spirit who's now Praying through us and he's sitting at the right hand of the father taking our prayers and giving them over to the father.

We know that these things are true because of him we can have confidence because of him. Our sinful tendencies to brood can be forgiven because of him. When David looks at the crowds and wonders what they're thinking about him when he worries about his own reputation those Sins of David are forgiven in Christ our sins all of our sins.

Every one of our sins are forgiven in Jesus Christ. It leads us to understand that we can have a sanctified meditation. That we can remember because of the holy spirit that we have been set apart for God by the death Burial and resurrection of Jesus.

We don't remember that apart from Jesus. We don't meditate on that apart from Jesus. We don't think about that apart from Jesus. It is only because of the gospel of the lord Jesus Christ that you remember whose you are.

That you remember that that he hears our prayers because of Christ that you actually tremble in the midst of temptations. Lost people don't tremble when they're tempted. They run into their temptations only the work of the holy spirit in our life causes us to tremble and causes us to to have hesitancy when it comes to our sin and ultimately to fight our sin to kill our sin to To rebel against our sin and to kill our sin.

We remember like David. That we can be refreshed by who God is when we lie down at night in our bed because of Christ and Christ alone. We remember that these thoughts will kill our anxiety. That they will kill our depression.

That they will that they will actually bring peace that is Incapable of being understood by the carnal man because of Jesus Christ. That is it the whole psalm depends on verse 8. Our whole life depends on Jesus Christ.

When it says that We're supposed to offer sacrifices and obey God we didn't do that Christ did. He's the one who offered the true and better Sacrifice in obedience to God. He is the one who trusted in the lord as David says all the way to the cross.

If you measure your life In relationship to psalm 4 you lose. You have not been faithful. I have not been faithful. But if you measure Psalm 4 against the life of Jesus Christ. And if you read verse 8 That it's only The lord who's going to make us dwell in safety.

It's only the lord who's going to allow us to know God. It's only Jesus Christ who opens up these things to us. Then you realize the truth. That David is speaking prophetically a thousand years before Jesus.

Wrestling with truths that will be true for him and will be true for us in a relationship with Christ. You and I Can have sure confidence in God because of Jesus. We can have forgiveness for our sins because of Jesus.

We can meditate upon how good he is because of Jesus. We can start learning how to behave in a way that pleases the lord not To be accepted by God, but because we've been accepted by God we can begin to obey him live sacrificial lives and trust him.

And finally As David figures out in the very end of the passage That he can pray Because of the work of the lord alone. That he can pray for those In his nation who don't know him. He can pray that they would receive the gladness of God On the basis of the finished work of his savior.

He can pray that he himself would have joy in knowing God as a sinner on the basis of the savior. He can pray for peace and rest. He can pray for the lost he can pray for his nation. He can pray against the chaos.

He can pray these kinds of prayers because of Christ in Christ alone. The psalm Is telling us what we cannot do without Christ and it is telling us If we have Jesus what we will grow to do as well. Let us pray.