Psalm 86
Let’s give our attention to God’s
word. This is Psalm 86, and it says a prayer of David. And just
a little interesting tidbit, this is the only Psalm of David
in book three of the Psalms. And King David says this, incline
your ear, O Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy. Preserve my life, for I am godly. Save your servant who trusts
in you. You are my God. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for
to you do I cry all the day. Gladden the soul of your servant,
for to you, O Lord, do I lift up my soul. For you, O Lord,
are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who
call upon you. Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer.
Listen to my plea for grace. In the day of my trouble, I call
upon you, for you answer me. There is none like you among
the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like yours. All the
nations you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord,
and shall glorify your name, for you are great and do wondrous
things. You alone are God. Teach me your way, O Lord, that
I may walk in your truth. Unite my heart to fear your name.
I give thanks to you, O Lord, my God, with my whole heart,
and I will glorify your name forever. For great is your steadfast
love toward me. You have delivered my soul from
the depths of Sheol. O God, insolent men have risen
against me. Risen up against me, a band of
ruthless men seek my life, and they do not set you before them.
But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and
abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Turn to me and
be gracious to me. Give your strength to your servant,
and save the son of your maidservant. Show me a sign of your favor
that those who hate me may see and be put to shame, because
you, O Lord, have helped me. and have comforted me. Amen. This is God’s word for us. And may he add his blessing to
our minds and our hearts. There’s a famous theologian,
I can’t think of his name right off, but he says that every preacher
has a special hammer and he takes every passage of scripture and
he can tap that hammer just perfectly. and it breaks apart into three
easy parts. How many of y’all have heard a three-point sermon
before? Everybody, right? Every sermon is about a three-pointer.
If it’s a Calvinistic sermon, it’s probably a five-pointer.
And if it’s a twice as good sermon, it’s a six-point sermon, right?
Because three times two, twice as better as six. Well, Psalm
86 is really hard to break apart. And so it’s good, I think, to
understand the main theme of it, first and foremost. And the
main theme of this psalm is the mercy of God. David here is in
some sort of situation where he desperately wants God’s help,
and so he appeals to God to be merciful. And if we were to stop
and pause there for a moment and think about how much we need
God’s mercy, Every Sunday, what we say before the beginning of
the service is this, our help is in the name of the Lord. It
is he who made the heavens and the earth. And we’re making a
statement there that without God, we can’t do anything. Without
God, we can’t worship. Without God, we can’t approach
his holy throne. Without God, there is not a thing
that we can do. And so every moment of every
day, we need to acknowledge that it is by the mercy of almighty
God that we live, move, and have our being. Remember the apostle
Paul said in the book of Acts, it is in him that we live and
move and have our being. And so here you have King David
begging for the mercy of God, possibly the most powerful man
on the face of the earth at his time in history, the richest,
the wealthiest, one of the greatest. Israel was a great nation and
this man comes to God for help and he speaks of needing the
mercy of almighty God. This is quite a humbling approach
or humble approach that King David gives here. And there’s
a passage in here where David quotes from Exodus 34. Remember when Moses was with
Israel in the wilderness and the people had strayed, they
had worshiped a golden bale. They were in need of manna. They
were in need of food. They were in need of drink. Moses
was in need of all kinds of things. And he asked God for a couple
of things. One was he wanted, He wanted God to pass him by. He wanted to see his glory. And
so God says to him, I can’t show you my face. No man can see my
face and live. So he tucks him in a rock. He
covers Moses with his hand and he passes by Moses. There’s a,
you know, a light, a glimpse. And he says to Moses, King David,
or he says to Moses, and King David here quotes it, find it
in verse 15. You, O Lord, are a God merciful
and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and
faithfulness. And it’s that incident in the
life of Moses, that recollection in the law that David remembers
when he comes to God and asks him to be merciful to him. He appeals to a major point in
Israel’s history, where God says, I am a merciful God. So with
that theme in mind, with that main heading in mind, the mercy
of God, I want us to kind of walk our way through this in
a couple different thoughts. First of all, David is essentially
saying this, your servant has needs. Now, David has some needs,
but he approaches it not from, hey, I’m King David, and you
said you’d send help. He approaches it in this way,
I am your servant and I have needs. It’s a reminder of the
Beatitudes, isn’t it? Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed is the one who is impoverished
in spirit. Blessed is the one who knows
they are nothing apart from Christ. Blessed is the one who knows
they have nothing but only deserve God’s wrath and curse and not
for sure his mercy. And so it’s a good reminder that
we need to come to God empty. We do not plead on our own merits,
for we have none. We have nothing to offer God,
right? Except our sin. And so we approach God like David.
I am your servant, and I have needs. Notice how he says it
in the first couple verses. Incline your ear, O Lord, and
answer me, for I am poor and needy. This is King David, king
over Israel. Preserve my life, for I am godly,
Savior, servant, who trusts. you he comes not in a spirit
of arrogance or high and exalted but he comes poor and needy so
that’s one way we can look through this psalm and see that David
the servant has needs a second way to look at it is to see what
David God’s servants needs are so if it began with your servant
has needs the second thing we might can look at is your servants
needs what are they and if you Flip your way through the 17
verses of Psalm 86. Guess how many requests you’ll
find? No less than 15. All right, this is a psalm of
lots of prayer requests. And the basic gist of David’s
request are that God would be compassionate. Look at the list
of requests. You can follow right through.
Verses one through six, they’re right in order. He says, incline
your ear, O Lord, answer me. I am poor and needy. The second
prayer, preserve my life for I am godly. Save your servant
who trusts in you. Be gracious to me. Gladden the
soul of your servant. Lord, you’re good and forgiving,
you’re abounding in steadfast love, give ear, listen to my
plea. And then he skips down to verse
11, teach me your ways that I may walk in your truth. He skips
down to verse 16, turn to me and be gracious. And then verse
17, show me a sign of your favor. that those who hate me may see
and be put to shame. Over and over he’s asking God,
and he’s saying it a bunch of different ways, have mercy on
me, be a God of compassion to me. We don’t know what David’s
situation is. Verse 14 gives us a little hint.
Insolent men have risen up against him, a band of ruthless men seek
my life. We don’t know if this is the
same situation as maybe the Psalms in the 40s and the 50s where
Saul and his group are looking for David. It could be that.
He’s in a bad situation. But I want you to notice in verses
11 through 13, David, in spite of all that he needs, the trouble
he’s in, look at what he still asked for. Teach me your way,
O Lord, that I may walk in your truth. When’s the last time you
had a friend or so-and-so who was sick, and in the midst of
their trouble, they said, all I want, I just want to be healed.
When’s the last time you bumped into somebody that being healed
was a good thing, but their real prayer was that God would sanctify
them. Have you heard that one? I mean, I want to be cancer-free
or, you know, the illness to go away, but Lord, make me more
holy. Make me to know your ways. Teach
me, David says in verse 11 here, teach me your way, O Lord, that
I may walk in your truth. I mean, yes, he cares about the
insolent men of verse 14, I hope. but he wants to grow. He wants
to grow in grace, walk in truth. He wants his heart to fear the
name of God, and he wants his whole heart to glorify God’s
name forever. That’s a pretty radical insertion
there, isn’t it? We want the cancer cells gone.
We want the bones to mend. We want the aches and the pains
to disappear. And those aren’t ungodly things. It’s not to say
that just because you want those things, you’re ungodly. But isn’t
it interesting, David, in the midst of this prayer, for God
to be compassionate when he has enemies. He says, grow me in
grace. That might be a good perspective
for us to add to our prayers. for our greatest need is to know
God and to walk with him, but that’s what he prays for. And
then in all the verses, nearly, we have a third thing that we
can take a peek at, your servant’s arguments. So we have your servant
has needs, your servant’s needs, and now your servant’s arguments. We don’t often think about praying
as arguments to God, but how many times in Psalm 86 do you
see the word for or because? It’s there quite a bit. Look
at verse one. Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me, for I
am poor and needy. Verse two, preserve my life,
for I am godly. Save your servant who trusts
in you. for you are my God. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for
to you do I cry all the day. And you can make your way all
the way through the Psalm and see in every instance where David
asked God to do something or to provide, he gives an argument. For I am needy, for I am poor,
for I am godly, for you are God, for you are merciful, for you
are the only God, the only living and true God. It’s why in our
practice of prayer, what do we begin with on Sunday nights?
We go through adoration, and then we go through confession,
and then we go through thanksgiving, and it’s at last that we hit
our supplications. And you know, most church prayer
times, we call them the organ recitals. Dear God, please help
not the organ in the sanctuary, but so-and-so’s bowels, or so-and-so’s
heart, or so-and-so’s lungs, or whatever. It’s the organ recital,
right? And those are important things. God cares for them. We
should pray for them. But by the time you get through
adoration, confession, and thanksgiving, there’s a little bit more important
things in life than organs. Yes, God cares for organs. Yes,
God cares for Aunt Susie’s friends, cousins who once knew somebody
who met the president who got a cold and is still sniffling
and they need our prayers, right? Sometimes that’s the way church
prayer lists can go. And yes, God does care for those.
But how about thy kingdom come? How about thy will be done on
earth as it is in heaven? Our priorities, our prayers change
a good bit when we orient ourselves towards God. Yes, the sniffles
do matter, but even greater is the advance of God’s kingdom.
And so when we pray, we argue with God, we strive with God,
and we present our case before him. And so it’s good for us
to get rightly aligned. Something to think about when
we pray, something to think about when we call out for the mercy
of God. And it’s simply this. I hope you’re struck by these
words. As you read through the book of Exodus, Moses is out
in the wilderness. And what is he doing? He’s tending
the flocks in Midian of his father-in-law, who had that wonderful Southern
name, Jethro, remember? Father-in-law Jethro had his
flocks and Moses was out caring for them. Meanwhile, Pharaoh
is an evil taskmaster and the Egyptians are crying out to God
that he might relieve them of their burden. And so when God
comes to Moses and says, you’re gonna deliver my people, you’re
gonna deliver my people from the hand of Pharaoh. He says
to Moses, I have heard their cry. I have heard their pleas. for mercy. And so God raises
up in Moses a deliverer who will go to Pharaoh and who will liberate
the people of God through signs and wonders. And we have to then
think of the greater Moses and the greater Exodus. And we have
to remember that God has heard the cries of his people who are
in bondage to sin and misery. Think of Jesus’ ministry when
He bumped into the beggars or the blind or the lepers or the
woman who came to him and touched the hem of his garment in faith.
What was their cry to God? God be merciful to me, a sinner,
a sinner who is sick and wounded and sore. And we have great comfort
that God in Christ not only hears, but that he saves. Let’s pause
and give thanks together. Our Lord and God, we come before
you this night, grateful and thankful that in Christ Jesus.
You, the God of compassion and mercy, have shown your great
love and steadfast care for your people so greatly, and we can
lay hold of it by faith, by boldly coming to your throne of grace,
by pleading our case and our cause, by begging on your mercy,
on your past action, your past promises, and your great character. We give you thanks for this,
and we know that all the promises of God are yes and amen in Christ.
And so we have great confidence. Here are prayers as we offer
them to you in the name of Christ. Amen. Save me, O God, I trust in you. For you, O Lord, alone are good,
ready and willing to forgive. will abound and mercy give. Listen, O Lord, and heed my prayer. And be a sign of faith, O Lord,
which those who hate Thee now may see. Amen. Go in peace.