Now if you would take a copy of God’s Word in your hands and turn in it with me to Psalm 119, verses 145 through 152; page 515 in the church Bibles. We have only three more stanzas after this left in the psalm to go, as we work our way through Psalm 119 on Sunday mornings, and then we’ll be moving on, God willing, to Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians which will take us through the summer. I would ask you please to pray for me and Jamie Peipon and David Elkin as next Lord’s Day we’ll be in Ukraine to meet with and encourage pastors in the suffering church there. And then after a short vacation at the end of that trip, I plan to be back in the pulpit on May 5, but we would all covet your prayers very much for that trip.
Now we’ve seen, I hope, that the major focus of Psalm 119 as a whole falls on the centrality of Scripture in the life of the believer. But in this stanza it is the interplay of prayer and Scripture that comes especially to the fore. This is a stanza about how to use God’s Word in prayer, how to pray the Bible. At least it models that for us beautifully. If you’ll look at it with me you will see the emphasis on prayer immediately. Verse 145, “With my whole heart I cry; answer me, O Lord!” One hundred forty six, “I call to you.” One hundred forty seven, “I rise before dawn and cry for help.” One hundred forty nine, “Hear my voice.” The psalmist is engaged in urgent, pleading, persistent prayer guided by the promises of God’s Word.
Like many others, this stanza falls neatly into two divisions. In verses 145 through 148, we are given a method of prayer. The psalmist models for us how to pray. One of the speakers at the Twin Lakes Fellowship last week was being interviewed, actually two weeks ago, was being interviewed and was asked about his prayer life. Now this man is among the saintliest men I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing, but when he was asked about his prayer habits he hung his head and he replied, “Oh, if you want to know how to humble a preacher, ask him about his prayer life.” We all want to know how to pray, don’t we, how to grow in the discipline and delight of prayer. The baby Christian wants to learn how to pray. The most mature disciple who lives as near to Christ as any disciple can this side of heaven, even she will pray, “Oh how I wish I prayed better!” We’re all crying, aren’t we, with the disciples, “Lord, teach me to pray.” Here’s how to do it. The psalmist models it for us. He gives us a method of prayer first of all.
But more important than the question of how to pray is the matter of why pray. Why pray? And in the second half of the stanza, 149 through 152, the psalmist gives us motives, motives for prayer. My problem in prayer, if I were a betting man I would guess it would be your problem too, isn’t that I don’t know how to pray. My real problem is I have other priorities and then when I do sit down to pray, I run out of steam. I get distracted. I zone out. But verses 149 through 152 can help us with that. They give us reasons to pray that will enable us, if we really get ahold of them, they will help us to stick with it and to learn to love it. And so that’s where we’re going. Have you got it? Do you see the two divisions? The method of prayer – 145 through 148. And motives for prayer – 149 through 152.
Now don’t be deceived by a two points sermon. There are nine points in this sermon! Actually, I think there are only eight, so you should feel relief! Only eight points in this sermon, but two big headings – the method and the motive. Before we dare engage in the study of the subject of prayer, we need to practice prayer first and ask for the Lord to help us and then we’ll read the passage together. Let’s pray.
With our whole hearts we cry to You, O Lord. Would You answer us please, and save us, and we will keep Your statues. O Lord, open Your Word to our understanding. Open our hearts to Your truth that all glory might be Yours as ours lives are realigned in submission and in obedience to Your commands. For Jesus’ sake, amen.
Psalm 119 at verse 145. This is the Word of almighty God:
“With my whole heart I cry; answer me, O Lord! I will keep your statutes. I call to you; save me, that I may observe your testimonies. I rise before dawn and cry for help; I hope in your words. My eyes are awake before the watches of the night, that I may meditate on your promise. Hear my voice according to your steadfast love; O Lord, according to your justice give me life. They draw near who persecute me with evil purpose; they are far from your law. But you are near, O Lord, and all your commandments are true. Long have I known from your testimonies that you have founded them forever.”
Amen, and we praise God that He has spoken in His holy, inerrant Word.
Let’s look at verses 145 through 148 first of all and notice a method for prayer. Five things. A method for prayer. Five things. Number one, notice that authentic prayer is wholehearted. Authentic prayer is whole-hearted. You see that in verse 145? “With my whole heart I cry; answer me, O Lord!” The phrase translated “whole heart” indicates the entire commitment of the inner self to the cause. It’s used five times over in Psalm 119. The whole hearted seeker after the Lord is blessed – verse 2. He seeks after the Lord with his whole heart and asks him to keep him from wandering away – verse 10. He asks for understanding in order to be able to keep God’s Law with his whole heart – verse 34. The insolent smear him with lies, but he keeps God’s precepts with his whole heart – verse 69. And here, it is with his whole heart that he gives himself to crying to God in prayer. It means he is all-in. He is undivided in his commitment. He stirs himself up to pray. He rouses himself. He’s not sleeping; his eyes are not drooping. He’s not ticking a box on a list of formal duties. He isn’t distracted, disinterested, dispassionate. He is engaged. “With my whole heart I cry.”
The puritans used to talk about “praying until you prayed.” They talked about praying in your prayers. They understand the difference, you see, between going through the motions and whole hearted cries to God. We are naturally whole hearted about the things we most love. Aren’t we? We are naturally whole hearted about them. When next year in Oxford or Starkville, or wherever your college team plays, take a moment and look at the whole heartedness of the fans. They’ve carved out time in their schedules, they have decked themselves in their teams colors, their faces are painted, they have remembered to bring their big sponge finger and their silly hat, and when they sit down in the stadium to watch their teams they are riveted. They call and cheer and sing at every success. They mourn and weep over every loss. They are outraged over bad calls by the referee. They are thrilled whenever the star player gets the ball. And for however long that game lasts, they are completely present.
Now how do you pray? Is there anything of that wholeheartedness about your pursuit of God and His glory and His grace and His guidance? That ought to be far more riveting to us as Christian people, surely, far more engaging than anything that could happen in a sporting arena or on your television screens. You’ve come to the presence of the King of the universe. And yet sadly, don’t you hear, I hear, the rebuke of the Lord Jesus for Simon in Gethsemane. Do you remember what He said? Don’t you hear it addressing you whenever you come to pray? “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour?” Are you wholehearted? Listen, half hearted prayers aren’t really prayers at all. They are insincere prayers. They are lukewarm prayers. They are casual, routine, formal prayers. You are wasting your time with prayers like that. They are not real prayers that do not arise from a whole heart and you are not really praying if you are not wholehearted about it. Pray until you pray. Learn to really pray in your praying. Authentic prayer is wholehearted.
Secondly, authentic prayer seeks for salvation above all. It seeks for salvation above all. Look at verse 146. “I call to you; save me, that I may observe your testimonies.” In context, likely the salvation the psalmist is asking for is deliverance from his oppressors, his persecutors. But let me say that unless you have come to know, unless you have come to God and prayed this prayer to be saved by His grace from His wrath and curse first, you cannot come praying to be saved from anything else – circumstances or sorrows or suffering with any real hope of success. If you hope for God to save you from sin’s miseries, its various consequences in this life, you must start by asking to be saved from sin’s guilt festering in your own heart. All our prayer, all our piety, all our religion must only ever be an empty thing if you don’t have this – He must save us.
“Oh,” but you say, “God’s not interested in the prayers of somebody like me. You don’t know what I’ve done. You don’t know all the people I have let down. You don’t know all the lies that I have told. Even if I prayed this prayer, He’s not going to listen to me. Why would He be interested in me?” No, listen, the wonderful thing about this prayer is that it is asking for the very thing God is already eager to give you. He’s already eager to save you. He’s given His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, before you even knew you needed to be saved. “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” He sent Him to the cross to bear the sin of the world, dying under the divine curse, my sin, your sin deserves, and He has secured salvation for anyone, anyone, anyone that comes to Him for mercy. Anyone. Even you. You don’t need to clean up your act first before you can pray this prayer. You don’t need to turn over a new leaf, start going to church, put on a coat and tie, shine your shoes, brush your hair, play the part of a respectable person. That’s what we think we have to do before God will ever listen to our prayers, before we will allow ourselves to imagine we might have an audience with Him. It’s just not true. It’s not true.
But if you will take Psalm 119:146 on your lips and go to Him today, go to Him right now, as you sit here listening to me if you go to Him and pray this prayer, “Father, save me. Lord Jesus, save me. I cry to You, O God, save me!” If you would do that, you will find His ears are already open to you; they always have been. His heart beats with readiness, with eagerness to give you the very thing you are asking for. He wants to save you, and so ask Him. Have you asked Him? You covenant children, if you were raised in this church, baptized here, taught from your earliest days the truths of the Christian Gospel, you know the words of the creed and the Lord’s Prayer, you know whole hymns and chunks of Scripture off by heart – and all of that is good and we praise God for it. But have you prayed this prayer? “O God, save me!” Your baptism won’t do it. Your catechism can’t do it. You can recite the creed and the Lord’s Prayer until you are blue in the face, but until you have cried from your heart to Jesus Christ, “Lord, save me!” you’re still in your sin, still under the judgment of God.
Maybe you are at home and your conscience accuses you and you think, “I know what will make me feel better. I can’t quite bring myself to go to church but I’ll watch First Pres online or on television and I’ll feel like I have done my religious duty for the day and maybe last night’s wickedness, last night’s shame won’t sting my conscience quite so badly anymore.” But that’s not what you need. A dose of religion can never wash away your guilt. You need to humble yourself, right now, as you watch this. Humble yourself before the Lord Jesus and cry to Him, “Save me! Nothing in my hand I bring. Simply to Thy cross I cling. Naked come to Thee for dress. Helpless cling to Thee for grace. Foul I to the fountain fly. Wash me, Savior, or I die!” Nothing else can benefit you before God. Nothing can make you clean. Nothing can put you right in His sight. Nothing, until you make the words of verse 146 your own – “I call to You, save me! Save me!”
Number three, authentic prayer puts dependence before obedience. It puts dependence before obedience. It’s clear right throughout this stanza, really throughout the whole psalm, that the psalmist badly wants to obey God. He wants to shape his life in careful conformity to the Word of God. He wants to please God in everything that he does. But notice carefully the order of things here. Look how he prays. “With my whole heart I cry; answer me, O Lord! I will keep your statutes. I call to you; save me, so that I may observe your testimonies.” Do you see the order? He knows the only way to live in growing obedience to God’s law is deepening dependence on God’s grace. And we can never afford to get that order confused. We mustn’t make grace a mere reward for obedience. We mustn’t make obedience the condition of grace. Obedience is always the fruit of grace.
The psalmist’s example here teaches us if we want to grow in our faithfulness to God, obedience to His law, to walk in His ways, we can never afford to be a stranger at His throne. We need to go to Him in a posture of dependence and cry to Him for more grace. If you want to be more like Jesus in your daily life, start every day, would you punctuate your day, would you end your day seeking Him? Prayer is faith acting to take hold of the grace Jesus died to give you so that you can learn to live for Him. That’s what it is. Prayerless obedience is a brittle shell, empty and shattered. Prayerful obedience is the only kind worthy of the name because prayer is faith that takes hold of the grace of Jesus Christ. It says, “I am bankrupt, weak, prone to wander. My heart is fickle and cold and dull, but O Jesus, You have all the grace I need, strengthen me and help me. And trusting You, I resolve now, by Your grace, to obey.”
Number four, authentic prayer requires discipline. Look at verses 147 and 148. “I rise before dawn and cry for help; I hope in your words. My eyes are awake before the watches of the night, that I may meditate on your promise.” He’s up before dawn; he is awake in the middle of the night. It’s not that he can’t sleep, you understand, and so he may as well pray. That’s a good thing to do, but that’s not what he is talking about here. This is his ordinary habit. This is his rhythm, his customary pattern. He cries for help to God. He is up, He rises to pray before the sun rises in the sky, and in the middle of the night he steals quiet time to meditate on the Word of God. He is bracketing his day with Jesus.
There is intentionality and design and system here, isn’t there? There’s no tension between being wholehearted about prayer and being purposeful and disciplined in prayer. Sometimes we can begin to think that a schedule and a routine is the enemy of fervency and zeal. We think we are being inauthentic unless we are being spontaneous. But that’s not at all the psalmist’s perspective. His wholehearted devotion makes him determined to schedule time to make sure prayer doesn’t get squeezed out. If you are really going to pray, you need to plan to pray.
And number five, authentic prayer rests on Scripture. In verse 145 and 146 he is praying for grace in order that he might keep the statutes and testimonies of God. In 147 he rises before dawn to pray because he says “I hope in Your words.” In 148, he stays up late into the night, “that I may meditate on Your promise.” His prayers arise from hope in the Word, they are fueled by his meditation on the Word and they have as their goal the conformity of his whole life under the rule of the Word. You may remember the shorter catechism’s definition of prayer as “an offering up of our desires unto God for things agreeable to his will in the name of Christ with confession of our sins and thankful acknowledgment of His mercies.”
Prayer is an offering up of our desires “for things agreeable to His will.” How do you know you are praying agreeably to His will? You pray the Scriptures. You meditate on the Word and you turn it line by line into requests and praises and supplications. You pray the Word for yourself and your family and your colleagues and your friends. You repent at its rebukes. You rejoice at its promises. You tremble at its threats. You worship at the views that it affords you of the glory of God and the grace of Jesus Christ. Wed your praying to God’s speaking, pray through His Word, and your prayers will become both rich and mighty at the same time.
There is a method for prayer here. It is wholehearted. It seeks salvation above all. It puts dependence ahead of obedience. It requires discipline. And it rests on and pleads the Word of God. A method for prayer.
But then secondly, there are motives for prayer here. Let me highlight three of them and then we’re done. I say that like it’s going to go quickly! Three motives for prayer – verses 149 through 152. Motive number one – the love of God. The love of God. Look at verse 149. “Hear my prayer according to your steadfast love; O Lord, according to your justice give me life.” The steadfast love of God is all the motive you can ever want to move you to go to Him in prayer. He loves you with a loyal, covenant keeping, unchangeable, constant, steadfast love. It’s not fickle. The famous Hebrew word is “hesed.” It means that the love of God is an ocean without tides. That’s what it means. The love of God is an ocean without tides. It does not ebb and flow. It is constant and sure.
The love of God is a solid rock to build all your prayers upon. You are loved with an everlasting love. The cross is the proof of that surely. The cross is the proof – not your circumstances, not your successes, not your defeats and your pain and your problems. The cross preaches the steadfast love of God for sinners like you and like me. He loves you and He gave His Son for you. So the apostle Paul, in Romans 8 says, “How will He not also along with Him graciously give you all things?” Because He loves you and He has give His Son for you – how can He refuse you when you call to Him? The Son of Man loved me and gave Himself for me. And so Jesus says, John 14:14, “If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it. I love you and I want to give you what you need.”
And now Hebrews 7:25, “that Jesus ever lives to make intercession for you.” Isn’t that a wonderful statement? He ever lives. As if this is all He lives for now. We live for all sorts of things, don’t we? We say we live for our family. We live for sport. Maybe we live for God. Jesus lives to pray for you. His heavenly life is consumed with making intercession for you. So animated and consumed is He by the steadfast love of the Lord for you. He loves you. Do you see it? And the more secure you feel in the steadfast love of the Lord, the freer and the bolder you will be in going to His throne to ask Him for all that you need. He loves you.
Motive number two – the nearness of God. So the love of God; now the nearness of God. Look at verses 150 and 151. “They draw near who persecute me with evil purpose; they are far from your law. But you are near, O Lord, and all your commandments are true.” When others wound you and let you down, when they are gossiping about you, when the kids in class have been mocking you and saying spiteful things about you behind your back, here is a verse to preach to your heart. “They draw near who persecute me with evil purpose; but You are near, O Lord, and all Your commandments are true.” The Lord Jesus was cast away. Do you remember? He was abandoned to the hell of Calvary. Evil persecutors surrounded Him and God was far from Him. And He cried, “My God! My God! Why have You forsaken Me?” And He did it so that you can be sure no matter how close evil might press in around you, that God, your God, will always press in nearer still. When evil draws near, God draws nearer still. He says to you, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” You can go to a God like that, can’t you? You can go to Him. You don’t need to run away anymore. Come home. You can go to a God like this. He is near you. He will be with you. He will never leave you. The love of God. The nearness of God.
Motive number three – the reliability of the Word. Verse 152, “Long have I known from your testimonies that you have founded them forever.” I have learned over long years of trusting the Bible that this book is a solid foundation upon which to build my life. That’s what he is saying. And so now as I look to the future, I put all my confidence there – on the solid rock of the Word. Look back and remember how He has kept His every promise and garrison your faith for tomorrow by reminding yourself of the faithfulness of God yesterday. He has kept His Word; He will keep it again. And look again at that expression in 152. It’s so helpful, isn’t it? God has founded His testimonies forever. All other ground is sinking sand. Here is a safe place. Here is a secure anchor. Here is a fixed point. Change and decay and all around I see, but the Word of the God who changest not is steadfast and reliable. How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your souls in His excellent Word. His testimonies are founded forever.
America will change. Presidents will rise and fall. You will die. Nothing stays the same. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the Word of the Lord endures forever. What better motive for fixing all your confidence on the Word than that? Prayer is Peter’s hand reaching out as the waves engulf him to take hold of the Lord Jesus who walks through the storm. And Jesus extends His grip to us to take hold of us as we sink by His Word. Take it, praying. Take His hand, praying. Cling to the more sure Word. Plead His promise. You can rest on His testimonies. They are founded forever.
So there’s a method for prayer here. Do you see it? It is wholehearted. It seeks salvation before all else. “Save me,” is the prayer from which every other prayer must flow. It’s the starting point. It’s the master prayer. Without this, everything else is an empty thing. “O God, for Jesus’ sake, save me.” Have you prayed that prayer? Number three, it puts dependence on God for grace ahead of obedience for God. Prayer comes to God and says, “I need Your help or I can never do what You’ve asked me to do. And so I’m clinging to You.” Number four, it requires discipline. We need to plan to pray. He rises before the dawn. He is awake in the watches of the night. And number five, it rests on and pleads Scripture. It’s praying the Word.
And why should you do it? Three motives. The love of God. The love of God. You have been loved with an everlasting love. He is eager to hear your cries. You can go to a God like that. The nearness of God. He is not far away. You don’t have to climb your way up to Him. He is right here. And when evil presses in, He presses closer still. You can go to a God like that. And the reliability of His Word. It is founded forever, sure, solid. You can trust a God who makes promises like that. So, may the Lord make us a praying people. Let’s pray.
O Lord, some of us have been praying, trusting Jesus, for decades and still feel that our prayers need Your help, need all the instruction we can get. We still cry, “Lord Jesus, teach us to pray.” Thank You for Your Word that shows us the way. So would You wield it in our hearts to make us prayerful people? Some of us have been praying but we’ve never come to trust. We’ve been using prayer as religious leverage to manipulate You to give us what we think we need instead of repenting in our brokenness and sin and bankruptcy and trusting in Christ alone to save us. We’ve never cried to You to save us. And so we pray for them here in our midst that right now, here in this room, maybe watching or listening at home, would You take hold of their hearts and bring them to this point where they cry, “Lord Jesus, save me”? Do it for Your glory. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.