Enjoy the Lord in Prayer ~ 20240107 ~ Pastor Rodney Zedicher ~ Ephraim Church of the Bible ~ www.ephraimbible.org
24/01/07 Enjoy the Lord in Prayer (Psalm 32); Audio available at: http://www.ephraimbible.org/Sermons/20240107_prayer.mp3
Feed on the Word
Last time we looked at making it our aim to satisfy our souls in God, and George Mueller’s advice to make it ‘the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day, to have MY SOUL HAPPY IN THE LORD,’ ‘being nourished and strengthened in my inner man day by day,’ by ‘giv[ing] myself to the reading of the Word of God and to meditation on it’. He says; ‘The first thing I did, after having asked in a few words the Lord’s blessing upon His precious Word, was to begin to meditate on the Word of God; searching, as it were, into every verse, to get blessings out of it; ...for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul.’
Psalm 90:14 Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
We looked at Psalm 19, which begins with all creation proclaiming the glory of God, and continues with God’s self-revealing in his word as
Psalm 19:7 ...perfect, reviving the soul ...sure, making wise the simple ...8 ...right, rejoicing the heart ...pure, enlightening the eyes ...9 ...clean, enduring forever ...true, and righteous altogether. 10 More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.
Charles Spurgeon said:
“...I have laughed to myself again and again for very joy of heart over some precious passage out of which fresh light has broken to cheer my spirit, and make me glad in the Lord. Oh, keep to the Word, my brothers! Keep to it as God’s Word, and as coming out of his mouth. Suck it down into your soul; you cannot have too much of it. Feed on it day and night, for thus will God make you to live the life that is life indeed.” [Spurgeon, https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/living-on-the-word/#flipbook/]
God’s word is the most sure way to hear God’s voice. “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (Jn.10:27). Seek to satisfy your soul in God by digging deep in God’s word, mining its gospel treasures. “Man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD” Deut.8:3, cf. Matt.4:4).
The Word and Prayer
Mueller said that when he gave himself to meditation on the word to find food for his soul, prayer naturally flowed out of it. Interacting with God through his word is likely the best way to stimulate your prayer life.
Spiritual Disciplines as Means not End
Today, this first Lord’s day of the new year, I want to look at enjoying the Lord in prayer. I could simply say ‘let’s resolve together to pray more this year’, but that’s not the ultimate goal. What I desire for us is to enjoy God more through Bible meditation and prayer. I don’t want to weight anyone down with burden or guilt, stacking on something else we feel obligated to do. I don’t want the focus to be on our performance of some duty, as if the goal was to be able to say ‘I read the Bible through this many times, and spent this many minutes or hours each day in prayer. Rather, I want to keep the focus where it ought to be; did I deepen in my relationship with God through the means of grace that he gives to me?
Bible reading and prayer are spiritual disciplines, like an athlete takes up physical and mental disciplines in training, disiplining herself to think and live a certain way, to eat and exercize and focus and practice, not so she can say ‘look how much I trained’, but so she can realize her potential and perform well in competition. We don’t practice spiritual disciplines to brag about how much time we put in, but because our ‘souls thirst for God, for the living God’ (Ps.42:2)
Spiritual disciplines are means to an end, means of grace; they are God given means of obtaining the riches of his undeserved grace that he purchased for us at the cross, and freely offers to us for our benefit and enjoyment.
The Happy Life
We are going to look at Psalm 32 today. This Psalm of David invites us to the blessed life; the happy life. Our world pursues happiness in all the wrong places. This Psalm centers us, gives us that without which no one can be truly happy. This is the essential starting point of true joy.
Psalm 32:1 Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. 2 Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
Psalm 32 begins with a theological statement; true joy, lasting delight, is found by the one of whom this is found to be true. This also raises to our attention four problems we need to have resolved if we are to experience the blessed life.
Transgression, sin, iniquity, and deceit. Transgression; we have turned our back on, walked away from, rebelled against our Creator.
Sin; we miss the mark, we fall short of fulfilling the purpose for which we were created.
Iniquity; we have corrupted ourselves, twisted and warped ourselves into something grotesque, an aberration of what we were meant to be.
We have transgressed against God, sinned against his holy and good standard, brought iniquity on our own being. And we are treacherous; we seek to deceive others and are ourselves deceived. The one who is blessed sees himself in light of God’s word, acknowledges his guilt before God, and has his guilt resolved.
But how? How can our sin against God be resolved? Each synonym for our sin has its answer in God. Forgiven, covered, not counted against, a spiritual transformation. Our transgression is forgiven; lifted as a burden from off our shoulders, no longer something we need to carry. Jesus invites all who are weary and burdened to come to him, and he will give us rest (Mt.11:28).
Our sin is covered; this can mean to conceal or hide, but it has special meaning in the Old Testament sacrificial system. Moses was instructed to build the ark, a box that would contain the covenant document that God had given and that the people had agreed to, and a lid for the box, the mercy seat or atonement cover. Once a year on the day of covering (or day of atonement), (Lev.16) the high priest was to sacrifice a bull to cover his own sins and the sins of his house, He was to bring incense into the holy place and burn it in a censer so that the cloud would cover the cover so that he would not die. He was to splatter the blood of that bull on the cover. Then he was to sacrifice a goat for the sins of the people, and splatter that blood on the cover that covered the covenant documents, so that when God looked down from above the mercy seat to the covenant document that his people had agreed to but fell short of living up to, that document was covered by the cover, by the blood, and by the incense cloud. In the New Testament, because of the once-for-all sacrifice of the blood of Jesus on the cross, our sins are finally and forever covered, God’s wrath propitiated, satisfied, and the veil is torn so we can enter in.
‘Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity’. This is something God does not do. He does not count our iniquity against us. This is a bookkeeping or accounting term. Balance the books, look at who has debt outstanding, and settle accounts. If you have a record of debt that stands in the books against you, you are called to settle up, to pay up. Paul quotes this Psalm in Romans 4:6-8, defending justification by faith alone, not by works.
Romans 4:4 Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. 5 And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness,
The one who works earns wages that are owed to him. The one who does not work but depends on another, God reckons, counts, credits him with a righteousness not his own, that he does not deserve, that he did not earn.
Romans 4:6 just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works:
Then he goes on to quote this Psalm. How? How can God be righteous and credit sinners with being right before him? Paul answered that question in Romans 3 when he pointed to the redemption price paid by Jesus, the propitiation by his blood.
Or as he says in Colossians 2;
Colossians 2:13 ...having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
‘Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.’ In Psalm 51, David prays:
Psalm 51:10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
To have a spirit without deceit requires spiritual transformation. This is why Jesus told Nicodemus ‘you must be born again, born of the Spirit’ (Jn.3:3-8).
Believe the Gospel!
This is the good news. You have heard the good news. Do you believe it? Do you receive it? Will you take it? Make it your own? I urge you, right here, right now, to believe. Believe in Jesus.
This is the gospel, and it is the foundation of our relationship with God. It is the only basis on which we can stand in the presence of God accepted, to speak to him in prayer.
Psalm 32:1 Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. 2 Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
This is an outworking of God’s own character.
Exodus 34:6 ...“The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, ...
This is the theological statement that he connects to his own experience in verse 3.
Psalm 32:3 For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. 4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. — Selah
The grief of unconfessed sin is malignant, toxic. And this is God’s heavy hand on the sinner. But this too is grace. The weight of God’s presence makes continuing in sin intolerable. God’s hand is heavy, not to crush us, but to bring us to confession, so that we run to him for rescue. Is his hand heavy on you? Selah - pause, reflect, worship.
Psalm 32:5 I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. — Selah
Acknowledge, do not attempt to conceal, do not attempt to hide. The irony of this is that no matter how hard we try, we can’t cover our sins (Heb.4:13). Fig leaves won’t do. Only God can. Only the blood of the Lamb. Be vulnerable, be transparent, come clean, and he will forgive and cleanse you. Selah - pause, reflect, worship.
Psalm 32:6 Therefore let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found; surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach him. 7 You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance. — Selah
The godly, we learn from this Psalm, is not one who is in and of himself morally pure, better than other people. No, it is one who has acknowledged his sins and received the promised forgiveness. The one who is credited with the very righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ. Run to Jesus, hide yourself in Jesus, enjoy his presence. Speak with him. He opened the way. Selah - pause, reflect, worship.
Psalm 32:8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you. 9 Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle, or it will not stay near you.
Be teachable; heed God’s instruction, his teaching, his counsel. We all need counseling. And we all give counsel. Much counsel is from those who have failed at life and think this earns them the right to give good advice to others. Seek God’s counsel; he is the Wonderful Counselor. Listen. Do not by your own stubbornness force his heavy hand upon you.
Psalm 32:10 Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the LORD. 11 Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!
The wicked are not those who are worse than others; they are those who refuse God’s grace, those who refuse to believe, to trust, to depend on the once-for-all finished work of Jesus. Don’t be wicked; trust in YHWH. And be glad in YHWH. Rejoice, shout for joy, because he has made you upright in heart!
Enjoy God in Prayer
I started today by saying that we were going to look at enjoying the Lord in prayer.
Forgiveness is the foundation of our relationship with God. Because we trust in the LORD, we are surrounded by his steadfast love. In response we are to rejoice in YHWH.
A few weeks ago we looked at God who is love, God, eternally in loving relationship, God who is Father, Son and Spirit, enjoying relationship with one another, speaking with one another, seeking to glorify one another. We saw Jesus, eager to find time by himself to converse with his Father in prayer. Adopted in to his family, Jesus invites us to join him in enjoying relationship with ‘our Father’
Matthew 6:9 Pray then like this:
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread,
12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
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2024.01.07 Sermon Notes
Enjoy the Lord in Prayer (Psalm 32)
Spiritual disciplines are a means of grace, not an end in themselves
John 10:27; Deuteronomy 8:3; Matthew 4:4; Psalm 42:1-2
Transgression – rebellion against our Creator
Sin – missing the mark
Iniquity – twisting or perverting ourselves
Deceit – treacherous lying
-forgiven; lifted as a burden off our shoulders
Matthew 11:28
-covered; as the mercy seat on the day of atonement
Leviticus 16:11-17
-not counted against; as an accountant reconciling the books
Romans 4:4-8; Colossians 2:13-14
-a spirit set free; by the new birth
Psalm 51:10; John 3:3-8
Psalm 32: The Happy Life
1-2; forgiveness rooted in the character of God
Exodus 34:6-7
3-4; the toxicity of unconfessed sin
5; the transparency of confession
Hebrews 4:13; Genesis 3:7, 21
6-7; prayer as hiding in Jesus
8-9; be teachable not stubborn
10-11; trust in the LORD; be glad in the LORD;
shout for joy!
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Pastor Rodney Zedicher ~ Ephraim Church of the Bible ~ www.ephraimbible.org