We live in a world where things are not right. Violence, hatred, racism, class-ism, poverty, hunger, children orphaned, sin, death, and on and on we could list the wrongs of this world. Basic personal strategy for living is to avoid all the things aforementioned, live as good people, and make our way unscathed by the wrongs around us. Yet, we all know that something is not right, and sooner or later, we will be in the direct path of what’s wrong in the world.
This reality should cue us to the truth that God has no intention that we live safe lives. In fact, emphatically, Jesus said, Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it (Mk. 9.35). If God’s intention is that we live safe lives, He has us on the wrong planet.
I have called this sermon Praying from the Pit. We arrive in the pit to pray in two ways with two different motives. First we arrive in the pit because we have taken up the cross and we are following Jesus. The motive of such pit praying is the sake of the Name of Christ. Second we arrive in the pit because our days are short and full of trouble. The motive of such prayer is our comfort. There is God-centered pit praying and self-centered pit praying.
In his book Let the Nations be Glad, John Piper uses the analogy of a wartime walkie-talkie or a domestic intercom to distinguish between God-centered, gospel-advancing prayer and self-centered, self-serving prayer. Wartime praying is out-reaching, kingdom advancing, corporate in scope. Domestic praying is focused on self and personal interests and selfish ambition.
I could have called this sermon The Missiological Context of Christian Prayer. All Christian prayer takes place in a missiological context. We must be cognizant of that context. The early church seems to have understood her place in the storyline of the Bible. I think this is especially evident in the use of the OT in the NT. Repeatedly, the words occur, This happened that the Scripture might be fulfilled.
We live in the in between tension of the Kingdom is here, and it is not yet fully here. At the same time, we see evidence of it, and we see evidence that it is not here. In this tension of the last days of redemption unfolding, we have the Spirit (the gifts) and the gospel and the commission. That is our context. With the Spirit, the gospel, and the commission of Jesus, we engage the violent, God-hating, unbelieving, lying, truth-surpressing, immorally moralistic, pluralistic world. We are to engage it at every level, avenue, and arena. No place is off limits to the claim of Jesus of possessing all power and all authority.
We don’t know the background of the psalm other than it is listed as Psalm of David. It is an acrostic psalm almost. There are 14 such psalms in the Psalter. The themes of the psalm fit well with Psalms 22, 23, and 24. Not knowing the background of a psalm helps us get to the purpose of that psalm. The psalm speaks clearly to every generation. As we read it, we find the psalm resonating with our minds and emotions and directing our wills.
Verse 22, the last verse of the psalm, goes corporate. The psalmist intends that this psalm be a prayer on the lips of God’s people. The psalm is not a personal whining session of a king who had a bad day. Rather, it reflects the common experience of God’s people in a world that is wrong. Further, when the king is praying under the threat of enemies, his prayer that seems merely personal has far reaching corporate and missiological implications. If the king is defeated, the nation is defeated. If the king falls, the covenant fails. Such realities help us see that this prayer is pit praying that was born in the context of faith in God’s covenant promises in the full engagement of a world bent on overthrowing God’s promise. The psalmist is in the vice, squeezed between what he knows to be true of God, and the seeming contradiction of his present experience.
On a personal note, Psalm 25 has a history with David Matlock and me. We were on a mission trip to Kenya. On the way back from preaching in the bush in the Magorie District, we stopped in Masai Mara Game Park for a bit of a Safari. In the Park, we went to a hotel that was fenced and had tents with permanent porches facing a deep river gulley, where hippos float by in the rainy season, and permanent bathrooms on the back. The hotel had an incredible buffet. We stuffed ourselves, took a much needed shower, and had to immediately leave the hotel because of a reservation mix up.
Darkness had fallen, and we were on our way to a nearby camp. The animals were all on the prowl. Some were chasing the lights of the van. Soon we arrived at a camp that had no artificial outside light, no fence, and a tall Masai tribesman standing there in red clothing, dangling ear lobes, holding a spear. He led us to stilted tents with porches on the front and out houses on the back. We were told to keep the tent door shut to keep the baboons out. They liked to climb down into the outhouse on the back and unroll the toilet paper. If the tent door were open, they would come in. You don’t want to be in a tent with a baboon. In the darkness, the sky of east Africa was ablaze with a sheet of starry light. We asked why the tents were stilted. The answer: So the snakes and animals can pass under in the night. Comforting? As we lay in our cots in pitch darkness, we began to talk of the goodness of God. David quoted Psalm 25 before we fell asleep. The words of the psalm filled the darkness with glory of God. I was blessed by what I heard.
For our purposes, we will divide the psalm into four sections. Vv 1-3 and 16-22 are prayers for God’s deliverance; vv 4-5 is a prayer for God’s guidance; vv 8-15 are a meditation on the perfections of God; and vv6-7, and 11 are a prayer for forgiveness.
Psalm 25 teaches us how to pray from the pit.
David opens his prayer by affirming his trust in the God of the covenant who also is the all-powerful, all-wise, sovereign God of everything, even our troubles and our enemies (v 1-2a). Then he goes right to the pressing issue (v 2b-3), and he returns to the same issue at the end of his prayer (v. 20).
If we were grading David’s prayer, we would give him an “F.” Perhaps we would instruct David to use the acronym ACTS to improve his praying. If David would formula-ize his prayer, he may fare better with the Almighty. Also, he shouldn’t seek deliverance, but buckup, be a man, and calmly accept his dire circumstances.
What we see here is pit praying. Prayer that knows God, understands the implications of covenant relationship, and has no pride and no attempt to manipulate God. This is prayer that knows you will not be heard for your much speaking. This is prayer that cares nothing for eloquence. This is prayer that is not interested in impressing the listener or informing people of things. This is prayer in the pursuit of knowing God that meets with faith-shaking trouble and cries out, I have no where else to go, no tricks up my sleeve, no pretence. If you don’t save me I am done, and so are your people.
Don’t bring legalism into prayer. You will never pray good enough or perfect enough to move God. C.S. Lewis in Pilgrim’s Regress said, We all blaspheme when we pray. That is not a license to be careless in prayer but rather the understanding of who we are and who God is, and the realization that prayer is owing only to the grace of God. The amazing thing is that God lets us think about Him at all or talk about Him at all or talk to him at all. To the Father, through the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit is the Christian reality of conversing with God, not a manipulative formula.
Pit praying runs to the Father and gives the cry of distress pouring out fear, feelings, concern, and trouble, realizing that God must answer or we are done in.
In this section, the psalmist lays out his lament. He affirms his trust in God (v 1-2). He is particularly concerned about being put to shame (v 2, 20). He is lonely (v16), afflicted (v16), distressed (17), hated (19), and waiting for God with integrity and uprightness to preserve him (v 21). He also prays for Israel to be delivered from his troubles as well (v22).
VV1-3
We can read these words and feel the weight that the psalmist is experiencing. He is in trouble. If God does not intervene, he will be put to shame.
The concept of shame is foreign to our culture. We know about guilt, but we know little about shame. The Bible knows both shame and guilt. The world of the Bible was a shame culture. One could experience shame from the community and guilt before God.
In shame cultures, shame is experienced when one does not meet the expectations of the community. Shame is not necessarily based on moral behavior, but on family and community expectations. If one does not comply with what is expected, the community heaps shame on the person. The only way to rectify the situation is to conform to community expectations. Shame cultures often understand some of the nuances of the OT that we miss because of our guilt culture.
Biblical shame is huge in relation to God, His people, and their enemies. If David’s enemies defeat him, he will experience ultimate humiliation. The implications of which will mean that God has abandoned him. His enemies will feel that they not only conquered David but David’s God as well. David and the people of God will assume that God rejected David like He rejected Saul. Shame has huge theological implications. To experience such shame would be but the appetizer to an eternal banquet of shame in the life to come from which there would be no redemption.
V3
We need to understand that it is still theologically impossible for God’s people to experience shame. If we are shamed and if our enemies exalt over us ultimately, then not only we but God is defeated, and His redemptive purpose fails. If you are an enemy of God’s people, don’t celebrate too soon. God’s enemies never learn. They always throw a victory party before the game is over. God will right every wrong.
Vv 16-21
In taking up this prayer at the end of the psalm, the psalmist seems to intensify his petitions. If vv1-3 are concerned about shame, vv16-21 are more passionate in their concern. From the structure of the Psalm, it appears that after stating his concern (vv1-3), seeking guidance and forgiveness (vv4-7), and meditating on the perfections of God (vv8-15), the psalmist is all the more encouraged to bring his petition to God. Listen to the imperatives: turn to me, be gracious, consider my affliction, bring me out, consider my foes, guard my soul, deliver me, let me not be put to shame.
The point, I think, is that the character and perfections of God, His absolute sovereignty over all things, and His mercy, love, and kindness are all encouragements to pour our hearts out to Him all the more earnestly.
V22
David’s prays with the community in mind (v22). We are not islands of trouble or vacuums of prayer. Prayer without consideration of the community of God’s people in the context of God’s redemptive purpose is domestic intercom praying.
David’s trouble is their trouble, and their trouble is David’s trouble. When Jesus prayed, He said, “My Father.” He taught us to say, “Our Father.” In other words, Jesus is saying your prayer, your life, your whatever is not ultimately about you. This does not mean that we can’t pray about personal issues, but it does mean that personal issues must be considered in light of the community of faith and God’s purpose in the world.
David understands that God ordains all things whatsoever comes to pass, even bad things. Yet, He is without sin. Like Luther told Erasmus, Our thoughts of God are too human. David prays not to a god who can do nothing about his trouble, not to a god who is evil and delights in causing us grief, but to the Sovereign God who has purposed all things. David knows that God is also merciful and that He has purposed good for His people. God will work evil for the salvation of His people. Though God’s ways are beyond comprehension, we flee to Him for mercy and help because we know His character. We know that God’s purpose in history is to bring glory to Himself through the gospel and gather a people to Himself. In all that befalls us, God’s purpose is no different than that.
This life of Adoniram Judson, the first missionary from America, well illustrates this truth. Adoniram would not return home for 33 years and then only briefly. He would lose 2 wives and 7 of 13 children to exotic diseases in Burma. In 1824, all westerners were viewed as spies. Judson was dragged from his home and caged. His feet were fettered. At night a bamboo pole was passed between the prisoners’ legs and hoisted up until only their shoulders and heads were on the ground. The prisoners’ heads had to be shaved because of vermin in their hair. The mosquitoes caked to their bloody feet almost drove them mad.
Ann tried to care for Adoniram as much as possible. She gave birth to Maria. Her milk dried up and village women had to be begged to nurse the baby.
After 17 months Adoniram was suddenly released, but Ann’s health was broken. She soon died (1826) and little Maria died 6 months later.
Adoniram was devastated by the losses. Darkness settled over his soul. He withdrew and began to live an ascetic life and practiced various forms of self-mortification. He stopped translating the OT. He gave all his worldly possessions away. On the second anniversary of Ann’s death, he left the mission compound and built a hut in the jungle. He dug a grave beside the hut and sat beside it contemplating the stages of the body’s decay.
In 1830, he began to climb out of his darkness. The next year, 1831, is when the spirit of inquiry spread mightily across the land. People would travel for two or three months, from the borders of Siam and China inquiring, Sir, we hear that there is an eternal hell. We are afraid of it. Give us a writing that will tell us how to escape it. Others would say, Sir, we have seen a writing that tells about an eternal God. Are you the man that gives away such writings? If so, give us one, for we want to know the truth before we die.
Eight years after Ann’s death, he married a missionary widow, Sarah Boardman. They had 8 children, five of which survived childhood. Sarah died 11 years later. Adoniram did not descend into darkness as before.
His sufferings had weaned him from hoping too much in this world. He was learning to hate his life in this world without bitterness or depression. He had one passion: the glory of Christ in the gospel among the Burmese.
He would marry at third time. Emily Chubbuck. They were married 4 years. Adoniram became ill and boarded a ship in an attempt to get well. That was a common cure, but he would not survive. He died at sea and was buried without a prayer at latitude 13 degrees North, longitude 93 degrees East.
Today in Myanmar there are 3,700 congregations of Baptists and 2 million believers who trace their faith back to this man.
It was Adoniram’s deep sense of God’s providence that sustained him to the end. He said, If I had not felt certain that every additional trial was ordered by infinite love and mercy, I could not have survived my accumulated sufferings. (These notes on Judson were taken from John Piper.)
In the pit, we pray for guidance. The psalmist teaches us what it means to pray for guidance without sin. He piles up synonyms for guidance—ways, paths, truth (v4-5). Then he reveals His motive for seeking guidance—for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long (v.5).
Unfortunately, knowing and doing God’s will is often tainted by sin. First we are made the center of God’s design. God’s will is about me. One witnessing tract begins, God loves you, and has a wonderful plan for your life. The problem is that this is true in a sense, in a way that the unregenerate can’t possibly understand. It is true that God loves us. It is true that God has a wonderful plan. It is not true that we are the center of it. God is. We along with God’s people are swept up in God’s plan. What is most emphasized in Scripture is not that God loves me, but that He loves us.
Second, it makes much of me. I have often heard in evangelistic meetings that God wants to do big, mighty, great things through us. This also is true in a sense. God does big, mighty, and great things, but not in making much of us. In fact, the more He increases His fame, the less noticeable we become.
Third, such thinking leads to a take it or wait for something better attitude to God’s will. The idea is that we seek to know God’s will intellectually. Then we examine it. When we find that we are not the center of it, we ask for plan B. The basic Biblical assumption about God’s guidance is first simply that God guides. His guidance is a given. He will not have a people that He cannot guide. This assumption is the perspective of the psalmist. He is praying what He knows to be true of God. He makes His people to know His ways, paths, and truth. These are all connected with His purpose of redemption—for you are the God of my salvation.
The more we understand the ways, the paths, and the truth of God, and the better we see their connection to His redemptive purpose, the more readily we discern God’s guidance. The plurals (ways and paths) suggest a general understanding of God’s will. God has one purpose. He guides us in it. What are the ways he guides? He guides through the means of grace—church, Scripture, prayers, godly counsel. He guides through life experience. He guides through a growing knowledge of His character. Occasionally, we have the sudden realization of the guiding hand of God on our lives.
Second, if God guides history, I must conclude that He is guiding me. His purpose of glory in the gospel and His purpose for His church are one and no different than His purpose for me. The general understanding of God’s redemptive purpose must guide me in every endeavor—work, education, family, entertainment, etc.
If vv1-3 and 16-18 deal with shame, vv 6-7 and 11 deal with guilt.
Two things always bring to mind our sin—trouble and the character of God. Our first question when trouble comes is: What have I done to deserve this? Such thinking leads us to question God’s love and care for us. It is a position of pride. Avi, a middle school novel writer, in his book Crispin, set in the middle ages, wrote of a conversation between the lad Crispin and a man named Bear. Crispin felt that he himself was being punished by God in the murder of his priest. Bear replied to such thinking: It’s a thing I’ve noticed that the greater a man’s ignorance of the world, the more certain he is that he sits in the center of that world (p. 96).
The psalmist is not thinking that God is giving him what he deserves. He knows that God is not giving Him what he deserves. That is why he prays for forgiveness. Does God punish people for their sin? Yes. Was the psalmist’s trouble because of his sin? Perhaps. But that is not the point of his praying. In trouble or out of trouble, we are never free from sin in this world. There is no legalism in his praying. The psalmist is not praying from a position of pride, but humility. He knows he is a sinner. He is praying from the position that God is merciful, and His love and goodness are most clearly seen in His delight in forgiving sinners.
The psalmist knows God. He knows God is loyal to His covenant, even when we are not. God has always been this way (v6). The psalmist is pleading God’s mercifulness and covenant faithfulness as God deals with him (emphatic remember you me v7). The ground of forgiveness is God’s love and goodness (V7).
People who feel that God won’t forgive them or have trouble accepting God’s forgiveness are approaching God from a point of pride, showing that their deficiency is not in understanding sin, but in their understanding of the character of God. More time needs to be spent in the study of God and less time thinking about self.
V11
In the middle of his meditation on the perfections of God, the palmist again pleads not his goodness or dessert but the character of God as the basis for the forgiveness of sin. His guilt is great. When we contemplate the perfection of God, our imperfections are seen. Meditation on the goodness and rightness of God does not lead us to despair over our sin, but to glory in God’s mercy.
When we see our sin before God, if we have rightly understood the character of God, we will glory in His mercy. If we have mistaken ideas about ourselves and God, we will despair, become self-destructive, and become angry and prideful.
The tone changes. The psalmist interrupts his praying with a mediation of the perfections of God that will lead to more heartfelt prayer. In the pit, surrounded by trouble, seeking guidance and forgiveness, meditating on the perfections of God and speaking to ourselves of his perfections bring perspective to our souls.
On our worst day, in the most dire circumstance, God is good and upright.
His goodness and righteousness are the ground for his guiding sinners. People who know they are sinners are humble. They are those who follow hard after the gospel. People who claim to know their sin but are proud and unrepentant do not know their sin and are not interested in grace. God guides those who fear Him. It is the humble who fear God, those who know their sin and know God. Knowing God does not lead to covenant breaking but covenant keeping.
The NIV translates v12b as: He will instruct him in the way chosen for Him. God guides those who fear him, those who with a willing responsive heart hear Him. Learn this about God’s guidance: He chose our way for us and guides us in it.
V13
The peace of God is upon their lives and the blessings of the covenant. For the Israelite, this meant a godly posterity and living on the land. In simpler terms, this was the Kingdom of God. As a Christian, we understand the fulfillment of these covenant blessings are in Christ and the gospel. The land is the world and the godly heritage is the church bought by the blood of Jesus. Our mandate to be fruitful and multiply, in the storyline of the Bible, is to take the gospel to nations and hope in the coming Kingdom of God.
Those sinners who walk in humble fear of the Lord are God’s friends with whom He shares the secrets of His covenant. The NIV has this: The Lord confides in those who fear him; He makes the covenant known to them. The NLT has it: Friendship with the Lord is reserved for those who fear Him. With them He shares the secrets of his covenant.
Abraham was the friend of God and God said, Shall I hide this thing that I am going to do from Abraham? (Gen. 18:17). The idea of friendship (sod) is both council and counsel, the circle of one’s close associates and the matters discussed with them (Kider, TOTC, 134).
This text does not advocate for an elitist group in the church. The text pictures a circle of friends with the Lord among them, talking of the love and kindness of God in saving sinners. This puts me in mind of us sitting here with Lee preaching through Galatians.
Do you hear God speaking to us of His loving kindness extended to us in the gospel? Or are you thinking that you can make amends for your wrong? You have not heard counsel of God. Are you thinking that your good will outweigh the bad? You have not heard the secret of His loving kindness. Are you thinking that your sin is not that serious and you can approach God? You are not his friend.
Listen to a friend of God: My eyes are ever toward the Lord, for he will pluck my feet out of the net. (v15).
God’s friends understand that they are sinners, no better than a terrorist. They also know that God delights in forgiving sinners. He does not visit us according to our sin. He will have no whining in self-pity and no boasting in self-righteousness. He will have only rejoicing in His goodness and grace in forgiving sinners.
When we come to the table, we are reminded of this communion (friendship) with God through the gospel. We come here weekly to share the secrets of His loving-kindness.