Bible Talks - Family Church (9:45am)
Show me your ways
Sunday, 14 January 2007
Psalm 25 ESV or NIV
Feedback:
Share using:
Facebook · 
Delicious · 
Google · 
Twitter · 
Email
(suggest another share link)
Show us your ways ,O Lord,
Teach us your paths,
Guide us in your truth and teach us,
For you are God our Saviour,
And our hope is in you. AMEN”
If you were really observant you may have noticed that a few moments ago I used a different prayer instead of the one I usually pray before preaching. For many years before I came to Toongabbie I used that prayer which is taken from verses 4 & 5 of Psalm 25 which is our Psalm for this morning, which I’ve titled “SHOW ME YOUR WAYS.”
The Psalm opens with a plea to God, that the psalmist, who according to the title is David, should not be put to shame, nor his enemies be allowed to triumph over him.’
When we pray for God's help in the circumstances of life we call upon God’s name as the justification for our prayers. When we say to God, “For your Name’s sake” , we are justifying our request to God on the basis that what we are asking for has to do with God's credence or reputation in the world. In other words, somehow if God doesn’t grant my request he’ll lose face or credibility. If we stop and think about this, we should make very sure that the things we are asking for are things that meet not our own selfish wants but truly are to do with the will of God.
We see a similar note in the last few verses of the Psalm.
Guard my life and rescue me;
let me not be put to shame,
for I take refuge in you.
May integrity and uprightness protect me,
because my hope is in you.
It is the petitioner’s trust in God that is the justification for God acting on his behalf. This trust in God is the opposite of the impatience that we often feel. Instead of committing our lives and the events in them to God, to be worked out in his time, in his way, we chaff at the bit. “Lord give me patience and give it to me now.” We worry about the outcome, we fret over delays as if we know how and what and when our prayers should be answered. God is there to do our bidding like the genie in the lamp who stays in the lamp until we rub it when we want him to do something for us.
So often we want our way rather than God's. Seeing this is a Psalm of David, consider the contrast betwewn David and Saul. In 1 Samuel 13 Saul couldn’t wait for Samuel to come to offer sacrifices to God at Gilgal before a battle so Saul offered them himself and Samuel told Saul, “Because you disobeyed him, the Lord will find the kind of man he wants and will make him the ruler of his people instead of you.”
In 1 Samuel 26 David had Saul at his mercy and could easily have killed him but said, “I know that the Lord himself will kill Saul, either of old age or in battle. The Lord forbid that I should harm the Lord’s anointed.”
Trust in God is a positive expectation rather than resignation. It is hope rather than impatience. The God in whom we trust will bring about his purposes.
The next major theme in this Psalm is Guidance. In those verses I used to pray:
Show me your ways, O LORD,
teach me your paths;
guide me in your truth and teach me,
for you are God my Savior,
and my hope is in you all day long.
It is a desire to follow God's ways that this is about, rather than a plea to be shown the answer to a particular dilemma. It’s praying “O Lord show me whether I need a new car at all” rather than “O Lord should I buy a Ford Falcon or a Holden Commodore?”
This plea for guidance is characterizede by three things:
1. Persistence:
Verse 5 “my hope is in you all day long.”
And verse 15: “My eyes are ever on the LORD”
Our reliance on God for guidance should not just be at the great cross roads of our lives but also when there is a barely discernible branching, which means all the time. It is easy enough to recognize the need we have for guidance when there are big decisions to be made but it perhaps is even easier to just drift into the wrong way through that lack of direction that comes from not seeking the Lord in everything and all times.
2. Penitence:
Verse 8 “Good and upright is the LORD; therefore he instructs sinners in his ways.”
And verse 18: “Look upon my affliction and my distress and take away all my sins.”
It is our recognition that we ourselves, in ourselves, are apt to stray that is the starting point of our asking for guidance. If we do not humbly acknowledge our guilt, the fact that we are sinners, we will go on rejecting God's way in our lives.
3. Obedience
Verse 10 “All the ways of the LORD are loving and faithful for those who keep the demands of his covenant.”
What’s the use of sign posts on the highway if people just ignore them? When we are trying to find our way to an unfamiliar destination we carefully follow the street signs or if you’re really modern hi-tech you listen to the GPS satellite navigator in your car.
If we love the Lord we follow his way.
This is no pagan search for omens or portents; this is not trusting in the astrology columns in a magazine; this is not reading the tea leaves (which incidently has dropped out of favour now we mostly use tea bags); it’s not studying the entrails of a sacrificial goat like the ancient Romans did. This is tuusting the ways of our loving and faithful God.
Do you remember a couple of weeks ago when I spoke about the righteous man from Psalm 1? “his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.” And “the LORD watches over the way of the righteous”. The righteous man, the man who receives guidance from the Lord is the man who normally walks in the way of the Lord.
The third major theme of Psalm 25 which undergirds the whole Psalm is COVENANT.
In vss 6,7,10 the word translated “love” is actually a Hebrew word which mens “Covenant Love” Sometimes you see it translated “loving kindness” or “steadfast love”
Verse 10 again: “All the ways of the LORD are loving and faithful for those who keep the demands of his covenant.” David claims all the benefits of obedience to the covenant. In verse 7 he reminds God of the relationship he has shared with him in the past and asks that it may continue and and the justification for this is given in verse7& 8 as the goodness of God. David acknowledges that it is because of God’s covenant love, his kindness that he doen’t hold David’s past sins against him. It is not any merit of David’s.
Psalm 51 was written by David after the prophet Nathan came to him after his adultery with Bathsheba and his arrangement of the death of her husband Uriah. Through that Psalm runs the constant note of calling upon God's mercy:
Verses 1 & 2 Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.
Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.
The unfailing love that David is calling upon is again that covenant love. Always, what we need from God is mercy and forgiveness. If we claim our own merit it just doesn’t wash.
In verses 10 & 11 of Psalm 51 :
“Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.”
A clean heart doesn’t come from our own efforts. It is a creation of God, acting in his mercy and forgiving and cleansing us.”
Time and again we are reminded in the scriptures that of ourselves we are sinners and that we overcome this purely by the mercy and loving kindness of God.
So back in Psalm 25. Receiving guidance from God is not a matter of facing a particular situation and praying to God to make the decision obvious to you. It is more a matter of consistently walking in God's ways. Following his paths. Acknowledging our own sins, failings, inadequacies and receiving God's forgiveness because of his mercy and covenant love.
Let us pray.
