Psalm 141
And let’s give our attention
to this Psalm of David, the word of the living God, Psalm 141.
The title you probably have is give ear to my voice. It is a
Psalm of David and verse one begins this way. Oh Lord, I call
upon you, hasten to me. Give ear to my voice when I call
you. Let my prayer be counted as incense
before you and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice. Set a guard, O Lord, over my
mouth. Keep watch over the door of my lips. Do not let my heart
incline to any evil, to busy myself with wicked deeds and
company with men who work iniquity. And let me not eat of their delicacies.
Let a righteous man strike me, it is a kindness. Let him rebuke
me, it is oil for my head. Let my head not refuse it. Yet
my prayer is continually against their evil deeds. When their
judges are thrown over the cliff, when they shall hear my words,
for they are pleasant. As when one plows and breaks
up the earth, so shall our bones be scattered at the mouth of
shale. but my eyes are toward you, O
God, my Lord. In you I seek refuge, leave me
not defenseless. Keep me from the trap that they
have laid for me and from the snares of evildoers. Let the
wicked fall into their own nets while I pass by safely. Amen. The word of the living
God. Well, this is a Psalm about prayer. This psalm is a prayer,
and in particular, this psalm is an evening prayer. You caught
the evening incense, the evening sacrifice. This is a psalm where,
in the last one, 140, David says, restrain other people. And now
in this one, he’s gonna say, restrain me, my heart and my
lips. So you see a little progression
as we look through this last bunch of David’s ending psalms. I wanna think about this psalm
in three basic ways. David’s concerns, David’s request,
and then David’s faith. So his concerns, his request,
his faith. First, his concerns. Look at
verse one and then at verse eight. Verse one, O Lord, I call upon
you, hasten to me. Give ear to my voice when I call,
then down at eight my eyes are towards you, oh God, my Lord.
In you I seek refuge, leave me not defenseless. So something’s
up. David’s prayer is make haste. How many times are the first
words of your prayer, God, hurry up? You’re not listening, you’re
not here. God, where are you? Listen, I’m in trouble. I’m in
troubles, maybe the case. There’s an interesting way to
look at this. David’s concern, whatever it
may be, probably the beginning of his monarchy before he’s really
king, because Saul isn’t dead yet. And Saul’s hunting him with
his spear. David’s on the run, hiding with
the Philistines, other things like that. So David’s concern,
he needs God for refuge and help. He’s defenseless. Whatever the
troubles are, this we do know. He knows where to go for help. He knows to come to the God of
the Bible. who can help. So just a bit there
about David’s concerns, but let’s look a little more in depth at
David’s request. These are the bulk of the psalm
verses one through seven. We’ll pick through these. But
you know how it goes with prayer requests. The joke is prayer
requests are the organ recital. Aunt Susie’s heart, Uncle Billy’s
spleen, my friend’s cousin who I once knew and worked with,
a co-worker who knew somebody. Y’all been to prayer meetings
enough and they hurt their big toe or was it their little toe?
And then was it on the right foot and the left foot? Y’all
been to prayer meetings before, you know how this goes. I see
some affirmation, but prayer requests are sometimes the organ
recital, but not here with David. I mean, he’s gonna get to his
issues, but notice how he begins his prayer and there are multiple
requests. That’s why I said this little
section will be a little longer. There’s first an invocation.
Verse one, oh Lord, I call upon you. O Lord, hasten to me. O Lord, give ear to my voice
when I call to you. And then he speaks in this invocation,
let my prayer rise up, as it were, like the incense of the
evening sacrifice. Remember, there was always a
fire going in the temple, always a fire going in the tabernacle,
always incense rising up to God. And prayers are seen as incense,
the prayers of the people rising up to God. He smells them, he
senses them, And if acceptable, he receives them. And so in David’s
prayer here, there’s invocation. Oh Lord, what right have I to
come to you? Oh Lord, why should you hear
me? Oh Lord, why me, a sinner, can I come to you? And you know,
David doesn’t explain a whole lot of that here. He just does
it. But I think you can read much into his address. Oh Lord,
you got the all caps there, right? Oh Yahweh. O covenant-keeping
God, the divine personal name of God himself. And isn’t that
wonderful? In our prayers, our invocation,
we can go straight to the throne of grace. We don’t do it through
a priest. Well, we do. Jesus is the great
high priest, but we don’t go to the priest and sit in the
confessional. We don’t go to church and make
our prayers through the priest. We are the priesthood of believers
and we can go directly to the throne of grace and we can say,
Oh Yahweh, Oh Lord. And we can invoke his name. What
a privilege that is. So his first request is an invocation. And what is he doing here? He’s
praying for his praying. You ever do that? You say, Lord,
my praying stinks. It’s full of sin. It’s full of
selfish desires. It’s full of self-centeredness.
It’s full of my wants, my wishes, my ways. And it’s even accusatory. God, you haven’t been there for
me. You haven’t done what I wished. I think tonight it was appropriate
to pray specifically for some of you who sit here tonight,
some of you with family members and long suffering, because these
thoughts probably come into your minds. Why has it been so many
months, so many weeks, such a long time? And so we need to pray
for our praying. I think last week we heard in
our prayer time the mention of thank the Lord for hardships. Thank the Lord for suffering.
Thank the Lord for these things because we know when we know
the God of the Bible and we know the truth of the Bible, he uses
these things for our good and his everlasting glory. So David,
praise an invocation, he prays for his praying, but notice else
what he does, he prays for wisdom. Verse three, set a guard, put
a watchman, oh Lord, over my mouth. Probably ought to be our
first prayer of the day. Lord, help me to keep my big
mouth shut and only to open my mouth when it is wisdom, when
it is a kindness. Keep a watch over the door. of
my lips. It’s a preservation order. It’s a restraining order. Lord,
I need a man and I need a legal document so that I will keep
my mouth from foolishness. He wants to be wise. He’s in
a hard situation, whatever it may be. In his anger, he does
not want to sin. I think of one of the kids songs
that we used to here around the house when the kids were a little
younger, a little mousy kid’s voice, said, I guard, oh Lord,
over my mouth. And that’s a refrain that we
need to keep with us over and over. So he invokes God’s name.
He prays for his praying. He asked for wisdom that God
would guard his speech in hard times. But notice also he asked
God in verse four, to protect his heart. Do not let my heart
incline to any evil. Do not let my heart busy itself
with wicked deeds. Don’t let my heart go after the
company of men who work iniquity and let me not eat of their delicacies. Maybe this is like the Lord’s
prayer, lead us not into temptation, deliver us from the evil one. This is a man who knows Psalm
1. Blessed are those who do not
sit, who do not walk, who do not stand in the way of sinners.
Their delight is in the law of God. They’re like a tree planted
by streams of water. In their season they prosper,
but the wicked are not so. They’re like the chaff blown
away by the wind. The Lord sees and he judges. He wants to be separate. And
you can imagine David, you know, during these times, um, you read
about his running from Saul, he was living in caves. Uh, he
was nearly insane with fear and trepidation and, and, and trying
to keep his life free from the spear. And you can imagine he
wasn’t eating a cracker barrel every night. He didn’t go to
the one at exit 73 by the Philistines. He didn’t go to the one at exit
92 by the Canaanites. And he didn’t go to the one at
that exit. There weren’t those, but he was
on the run. He was hiding. You can imagine
when he was hiding, if he didn’t have it in his sack, he didn’t
get it in his belly. And so there’s a wonderful picture
here. Sometimes we get desperate. And
we go to Egypt for help. We go to wicked men for help.
And their plates full of delicacies seem good to our eyes that cannot
see clearly because we are weary. And so he says, do not let my
heart incline to evil and let me keep away, stay separate from
these wicked ones. And then he speaks in his request
here, for wisdom from friends. Verse five, let a righteous man
strike me. It is a kindness. Let him rebuke
me. It is oil or literally refreshment,
like a bath. It is oil for my head. Let not
my head refuse it. Proverbs 27.6 speaks about the
wounds of a faithful friend. We do not like rebukes. We do
not like exhortations. We do not like to be told we’re
doing it wrong or we need to get our act together. But that’s
what David wants here. I want a friend who will strike
me, a righteous man who will be kind to him. whose rebuke
will be a refreshment. So these are David’s requests
for himself, but he’s got to get one in here for the problem
causers. And if you look at verse seven,
Really, verse six and seven, you get a strange, well, the
end of five. End of five, all of six, and
all of seven, you have a strange set of passages here. You’ll
get the point. David wants vindication. David
wants God’s vengeance. And he says at the beginning,
or at the very end of verse five, my prayer is continually against
their evil deeds. Probably deeds against not only
his person, but his country. and against the name of Yahweh,
for his fame is in Israel and his people that he loves. He
prays that their judges, their aristocracy, that they’ll be
thrown over the cliff, that they will hear David’s words, which
are pleasant, so when he’s victorious, They’ll hear his victory. They’ll
hear his words. They’ll be thrown over the cliff
and that they won’t get a proper burial. The plow will come over
their shallow grave and their bones will be scattered, dishonored
in the plains at the mouth of the grave. That is not a kind
prayer. That’s worse than wishing hemorrhoids
on your enemies. It’s wishing their burial would
be dishonored. There would not be a permanent
place for their bones. That was a big thing in their
day. And so David prays for these
requests. Let’s look last at his faith.
Actually, there’s one last thing he makes requests. Look at verses
nine and 10. keep me from their trap, keep
me from the trap they’ve laid, keep me from the snares of evildoers,
and let the wicked fall in their own nets while I pass by safely. It’s kind of the old phrase,
you give your enemies enough rope, they’ll hang themselves.
Haman, remember Haman, he wanted to take out the Jewish prince,
and he ended up being hung from his own gallows. David’s saying,
here, let me escape. Let me escape from the snares
which they have laid for me. You sow to the flesh and you
will reap destruction. God always has a way of doing
that. All right, now to David’s faith,
verses eight to 10. My eyes are towards you, O God,
my Lord. in You I Seek Refuge, that he’s
gonna speak of the protection that is needed from the wicked
and the traps they have set. Several years ago, I think it
was in 2016, y’all remember the debut of the Babylon Bee, one
of the greatest satire websites on the planet. It’s so wonderful,
humorous to read. But in 2016, one of their very
first articles was Landscaper accidentally cuts down a local
church’s hedge of protection. All right. Y’all know the, y’all
know the prayer. You’re sitting in prayer meeting
and you know, we’re praying for so-and-so and oh dear God, let’s,
let’s, we want a hedge of protection around them. And I grew up at
least thinking that was kind of funny. What’s a hedge of protection?
It even received the Babylon bees mocking. But Hedge of Protection
is actually a very biblical image. In the book of Hosea, Hosea chapter
two, I think it is, the writer speaks of this interesting little
phrase. Let me find my way here. Hosea
chapter two. Therefore, I will hedge her way
with thorns. Speaking of unfaithful Israel.
I will hedge up her way with thorns. I will build a wall against
her so that she cannot find her paths. So Israel is being unfaithful. Israel is pursuing harlots and
being unfaithful to God, their spouse, Yahweh, their husband. And so he says he will put up
a hedge of protection around them. And so what is David doing
here? He’s seeking in verse eight,
Verse 9, keep me from the trap, from the hedge of thorns they
have laid. His faith is in God. His faith
is in God, my Lord, the sovereign one. It’s you I seek for refuge. Leave me not defenseless. Keep
me from the trap. This keep word is a little bit
different word. You know, the Lord bless you
and keep you. It’s a little bit different than
that word. And it’s this keep word, like set a guard, put a
surrounding hedge or a border, a fence around the people. And so he seeks refuge and defense
from the God of the Bible. There’s an old book that we read
to our kids when they were younger by John Carroll. It’s an old
Puritan story from the 1600s called a hedge of thorns. And in this
story, an old man tells a younger boy about how when he was a child,
he used to take his little sister along the path. He was an older
boy. A little sister was born when
he was a little bit bigger kid. And so he took great delight
in having this little toddler sister follow him everywhere.
They would walk on the paths around their farm and they would
encounter this hedge of thorns. And he wanted to go on the other
side. He wanted to see what was on
the other side of this hedge, and he couldn’t go over it, and
he was too big to go under it. And so he got so full of lust
and desire in his heart and in his eyes, he says, I’ll send
my little sister. And he finds a little hole, little
rabbit hole under this hedge. he’s gonna send her through.
Well, these thorns are not the little sticker bush, you know,
the ones we can get over a prick from. These were thorns, right? The big ones. And he’s sending
her under there and she hesitates. it gives her a shove because
he wants to know and she gets hung up in these thorns and she’s
hollering and crying and the father comes and rescues and
the father is angry with his boy for not living within the
boundaries that God has given him and that these thorns protect
and so he takes his young son on this walk And he puts him
on his shoulders. And as he’s riding on his father’s
shoulders up high, he sees what’s over the hedge of thorns. And
it’s a giant cliff with a never-ending ravine. And so I think we need
to add to our prayers not only the invocation, not only God
would give us wisdom and people in our lives to help us, that
we’d stay away from evil. We want God to be our God and
whom we trust, that he’ll take care of the wicked and unrighteous
around us. But we want. We want that hedge of protection.
We want him to keep us from evil, our lips, our lives, our actions,
and we ought to seek his face for these things. This is a well-rounded
biblical prayer, not only for wisdom and protection, but it’s
also a reminder that our prayers do rise up to the heavens like
the incense of the evening offering and that they are received by
Jesus. And Jesus, our greater brother, stands in the congregation
of heaven and he lifts up not only our praises, but also our
prayers to God. The catechism definition of prayer,
what is prayer? Prayer is the offering up unto
God the desires of our heart for things agreeable to his will
with praise, but also with confession of sin. And so we ought to pray
for our praying, but pray for these good things. So let’s do
pray now. Lord, we ask that you would help
us in our prayers to put our faith, our hope, our trust in
the covenant-making God, the covenant-keeping God, whose promises
are all yes and amen in Christ. And we do pray that you would
guard our lives, our steps, our living, that we might hate what
is evil and hold fast to what is good and take delight in what
you have provided, not seeking to go beyond the boundaries and
live with the delicacies of evil. We ask this in Christ’s name,
amen.