PLEADING PRAYER
PSA. 70:5
There was once a missionary went to Venezuela for the first time, struggling with the language. He visited one of the local churches and took a seat in the front row.
So as not to make a fool of himself, he decides to pick someone out of the crowd to imitate. He decides to follow the man sitting next to him in the front pew. As they sing, the man claps his hands, so the missionary recruit claps, too. When the man stands up to pray, the
missionary stands up, too. When the man sits down, the
missionary sits down. Everything seem to be going well.
Later in the service the pastor says some words and the man next to him stands up, so the missionary stands up, too.
Suddenly a hush falls over the entire congregation. A few people gasp. The missionary looks around and sees that no one else is standing. So he meekly sits down.
After the service ends, the missionary greets the preacher. "I take it you don’t speak Spanish," the preacher says.
The missionary replies, "No, I don’t. It’s that obvious?"
"Well yes," the preacher says. "I announced that the Acosta family had a new-born baby boy, and I asked the proud father to please stand up.”
It just goes to show that you need to be careful who you follow. Many many years ago, it was not uncommon for artists to have apprentices. Most of the great masters had apprentices. Young painters were very anxious to study under these great artists. They realized that they would more easily attain excellence by looking to one who had already attained it.
I believe that if we are to attain excellence in our prayers, we would do well to study the masters. One of the great masters of prayer that we see in the Bible is David, the author of many of the psalms. So well did David understand how to pray to and praise God that those prays and praises have been looked to for thousands of years by folks who desire to know God better. Of course David had a some help in writing the psalms as He was filled with the Holy Spirit, and these are not so much David’s words but God’s. But apart from the Lord Jesus there is perhaps no man whose writings have shown us how to pray, David indeed is a great master of prayer.
I would like you to turn with me to our passage this morning which is Psa 70:5. That is page 503 in your Pew Bibles. Psa. 70:5. There we have a prayer of David. “But I am poor and needy; Make haste to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer; O LORD, do not delay.”
Here we have in this passage a prayer of pleading. There are four aspects of this prayer that I want us to take a look at this morning. First we have plead of confession, second a soul pleading, thirdly a plea of urgency, and finally a pleading soul grasping God.
Let us first look the plea of confession. Notice the first part of this verse, “I am poor and needy.” When we go to God in prayer we must strip away any thought of self sufficiency, and stand naked as it were before God. We must confess our need before God, for that is what prayer essentially is.
I like that way A.W. Pink puts it, “Prayer is not designed for the furnishing of God with the knowledge of what we need, but it is designed as a confession to Him of our sense of need” Let me repeat that.
That is what David does here. He confesses His need of God. David certainly knows that God knows all things,
Listen to what David states in Psa. 139 “O LORD, You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, And are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word on my tongue, But behold, O LORD, You know it altogether.”
David knew that God knows all things, including David’s needs, yet me confesses his sense of need to the Lord. Like wise so such we.
First and foremost confession is necessary for the sinner when he first comes to Christ. It is not possible for us to be saved until we recognize the think which we need to be saved from, and that is our own sin. Salvation is bearing our hearts to God, confessing our sins and acknowledging our need of Saviour, who is Jesus Christ. If you have never confessed your sinfulness to God, you are not saved! If you have never confessed your sin and claimed the blood of Christ to cleanse you, you do not have eternal life.
As Rom. 10:10 states, “For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”
I think of the blind man Bartimaeus, in Mark 10. That blind man knew he was blind, we felt his blindness, he knew that effects of his blindness, the Bible states he sat begging. If Bartimaeus had any doubts about his blindness the Lord would have passed him by.
In that story the Lord Jesus asks him, “What do want me to do for you.” Seem kind of dumb question, that man was blind obviously he wanted his sight. But that point is that the man needed to confesses need to the Lord Jesus. Not because Jesus did not know His need, but he needed to confess his sense of need to the one who had the power to meet it.
We must recognize our sin, if we do not we are like a blind person who refuses to confess that we are blind. As Jesus states in John 9:41; "If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, ’We see.’ Therefore your sin remains.”
To those of you who have never trusted in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, I pray you will confess your need of the Saviour, bear your soul, there is nothing that you can hide from Him. Jesus knows your guilt already, but He would have you to know it, therefore He calls on you to confess it.
We must offer our confessions up to God, not only confession of sin, but of all our needs. We must humble ourselves before God confessing our that we are indeed, “poor and needy” just as David did. David was not “poor and needy” in the physical sense, but was poor and needy in the sense that he was in a situation that only God could get him through.
I believe this principle certainly holds true where it applies to the church of God. I pray that each of you who is a part of this church would be praying for the Holy Spirit to display His power here. As a church we should make that confession that is found in our passage, “Lord we are poor and needy”.
We are in the business of seeing souls won to Jesus Christ, but folks we are powerless to make that happen. Salvation is of the Lord and we are powerless to save a single soul, therefore we must confess that we are “poor and needy”. Before God bless His church He wants us to know that the blessing are altogether from Him. What does Zech 4:6 state; “Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ Says the LORD of hosts.”
Let us confess that it is not by the might of the church that we accomplish His will, it is not by our power, but it is by the Holy Spirit of God. Let us confess that we are indeed “poor and needy”.
This principal is found throughout the Scripture. Before the Lord feeds that four thousand what does He do? He asks them, “How many loaves do you have?” He has them sum up their provisions. Therefore when He feeds them they cannot say it was because we had all those baskets of bread and fish, but it was the provision of the Lord.
As Spurgeon states, “God will make us feel how little are our barely loaves, and how small our fishes, and compel us to enquire, “What are they among so many?””
I think of the story of when Jesus tell the disciples to cast the fishing net on the right side of the boat, and how they were not able to pull the net out of the water because of the amount of fish.
Jesus does not work that miracle until they confess their need, that they had no fish after fishing all night.
They are taught as well are we that their success was dependent upon the Lord, it was not their nets, not their method of dragging the nets, or their skill as fishermen, their success was altogether and entirely of the Lord.
We do must learn the same thing, both as church and also as individual children of God.
Let us now look to the second aspect of our passage, a soul pleading. We are needful of our prayers to be prayers of pleading. Pleading in faith. Listen again to our passage. “But I am poor and needy; Make haste to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer; O LORD, do not delay.”
There is a sense of pleading in our passage. Pleading to God, calling to God. We need to plead the very Word of God back to God.
Before I became a pastor I was involved in a ministry that dealt with different cults. In the course of that ministry I spoke with numerous JW’s. When debated with JW’s there would be times when I would show them different things using different Greek scholars, or other experts. Reasons why you cannot translate John 1:1 the way their Bible does and so forth. But the problem I ran into often was the fact that they did not accept those people as valid authorities. I did not matter what they said.
I found that the most effect way to get them to think, (remembering that the Holy Spirit needed to be at work as well), was to use their own material. When I did that they could not deny the authority of their own words.
If they admitted that it was wrong they would have to admit that their authority was either unreliable or changeable, or both. Now God is neither. He had proven Himself to be reliable and He does not change.
We need to learn to plead the word of God to God. We need to plead the precepts of God, the promises of God. We must always of something to plead to God.
I think about what David stated last week about that hymn “There is Power in the Blood”. About how we need to pray in the power of the blood of Jesus, how we need to live in the power, walk in that power, for there is power in the Blood of the Lamb.
Let us plead in and through the power of the Blood of Jesus Christ. When we plead to God we know that we will prevail if we plead the blood of our Saviour.
When we plead to God let us plead our relationships. Those relationship which come through grace.
Those who plead will say to Him, “Are you not my creator? Will you forsake the work of you own hand?”
Those who plead will say to Him, “Are you not my Father? Will forsake the pleading of you child?”
Those who plead will say to Him, “Are you not my redemption? Will you forsake the one whom you have cleansed with your Blood?”
Those who plead will say to Him, “Are you not my friend? Will you forsake the pleading of the one for whom you laid down your life.”
Let us learn to plead to God as David did.
We too must plead the promises of God. If you were to go to Wilber bank down and walk up to the counter and lay a piece of paper before the teller, and take it up again and do nothing else, if you did that several times in a row it would not be long before they would be calling someone to escort you out of the bank, because you are doing nothing more then wasting the tellers time.
Then there are those who come to the bank and present their checks, and wait until they have them cashed, and then they go, but they have transacted real business. They do not lay their checks down and talk about how nice the signature is, or how pretty the check is, they want their money, and would not content until they got it. These are the people the bank wants, not those who come in and lay paper on the counter and waste their time.
But there are many people who do the same thing at prayer, they play are prayer. They do not expect God to give and answer, and thus they are mere triflers who mock God. It is he who prays in pleading manner, who means real business, who means what he says, he is the one who honors God. You see the Lord does not play at promising. Jesus was not playing when He confirmed the Word of God through the shedding of His blood.
We must not make a joke of prayer by going about it in a listless unexpecting manner. Let us plead with God, plead His promises.
Our souls pleading must be done with humility as we see in our passage. David has no problem confessing his humility he knows that he is “Poor and needy”. I think of another prayer of David’s in Psa. 25:11; “For Your name’s sake, O LORD, Pardon my iniquity, for it is great.”
No beating around the bush, David humbly admits that his iniquity is great and that he is need to the Lord to pardon that sin.
Let us humbly go to the Lord, admitting that our need is great, and that we are helpless. Knowing that while our needs may be great, our iniquity may be great, we have a great God who will pour out His great mercy and grace to us.
I pray that each one of us would be pleading soul, and that God would teach each one blessedness of pleading with and eternal God, pleading through the merits of His Son our Saviour Jesus Christ.
The third aspect of our passage this morning is a plea of urgency. Notice the last part of our verse, “...Make haste to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer; O LORD, do not delay.”
Those of you who have never trusted in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, your need my friend is urgent. You are a mere millisecond from spending an eternity separated from God. The only thing that keeps you from falling into the fiery pit is the hand of God himself.
The book of James tells us; “whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.” Do not let the moment pass.
There is an urgency to salvation, you know not what will happen tomorrow, you do not even know what will happen as you walk out that door today. Call upon the name of the Lord for salvation, I plead with you to hear and heed the words of 2 Cor. 6:2; “For He says: "In an acceptable time I have heard you, And in the day of salvation I have helped you." Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.
Call upon the Lord for salvation with the urgency that David speaks of in our passage, “But I am poor and needy; Make haste to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer; O LORD, do not delay.”
Apply that to your Spiritual need, the need to be saved, the need to trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.
To those of you who know the Lord, the same holds true, there is an urgency in what we must pray for. There are many needs that we have that are urgent needs. So let us pray as David. “Make haste to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer; O LORD, do not delay.”
The is an urgency for God to pore out His grace upon us as a church. There is work to be done, urgent work, work that cannot wait, work that can only be done through the power of the Holy Spirit of God.
The Lord states in Matt. 9;"The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”
The harvest is ready, there are many who need to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but the laborers are few. There is an urgency to bring the harvest in before the master returns. Let us pray with urgency that the Lord of the harvest would rise up His laborers and sent them out into the harvest.
Let us learn to plead with urgency, when we plead with urgency our pleads tend to be focused and sincere.
The final aspect of our verse is a pleading soul grasping God. I do not have time to get too deep into this aspect. Notice David’s words again, “But I am poor and needy; Make haste to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer; O LORD, do not delay.”
One of the beauties of the Word of God is the possessive pronouns. The “my’s” of the Psalms are to be claimed for our own. Let us use them as David uses them. God you are “MY” help, you are “MY” deliverer. You are “MY” strength, “MY” shepherd, “MY” righteousness, “MY” rock, “MY” fortress, “MY” salvation, you are “MY” God.
My dear brother and sisters in Christ, let us lay hold of our God. I pray that each one of you would pray as David, would plead as David, claiming God to be your very own.
He is your help, He is your deliverer. There is no other hope, there is no other deliverer. May we speak the word of Peter in John 6:68; “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Let us lay hold of God, let us grab onto Him never letting go, realizing that He MY God, my personal God, not some far off, distant being, but a personal God, a God who desires a personal relationship with us.
If you are saved and therefore Love Christ I pray that you would practice this last aspect of this prayer. Lay hold of God in prayer. Let us throw ourselves on the strength of God knowing that we can do nothing without Him. But if we lay hold of Him in prayer we can do all things. Because He is our help, He is our deliver.
There is a story of boy who used to boast that he ruled all of ancient Rome. When asked how he states, “I rule my mother, my mother rules my father, and my father rules Rome.”
When we pray in the will of God we rule the heart of Christ, and Christ can do all things. We can be omnipotent if we learn to pray, omnipotent in all things that glorify God. You see “Prayer moves the arm that moves the world.”
Let us hold fast to the Lord in prayer. Let us be like Jacob when he wrestled with the angle of the Lord. He would not be put off, he stated, "I will not let You go unless You bless me!"
Let us clink to God, let grasp Him, plead with Him, Let us say to God, “I will not let You go unless You bless me!” And even after the blessings come, let us continue to hold on.
In closing let our learn how to pray, let us learn how to pray a pleading prayer. Whether it is a plead to have your sin forgiven and trust in the Lord Jesus as Lord and Saviour, or if it is a pray to confess your many needs to the Lord. May all our prayers be prayers that glorify our God.
LET US PRAY
