Sermon Central
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A Morning Prayer Series
Contributed by Bobby Oliver on Jun 2, 2018 (message contributor)
Summary: David looks up to God in the morning, David chooses God in the morning, and David is victorious in God in the morning (and all day!).
A Morning Prayer
- We’re continuing our study through the book of Psalms, and this week, we’re up to Chapter 5.
- In this chapter, we read a morning prayer by David to God Almighty, full of wonderful truths.
- As I was thinking about morning prayer, my thoughts went back to Iraq.
- While there, the Iraqi’s had a call to prayer five times a day.
- Early in the morning, I could hear their first call to prayer over the loudspeaker in the prison, and it annoyed me so much.
- At the time, it annoyed me because those were my enemies being allowed to pray in captivity, even though if they captured any Americans, they wouldn’t give us that privilege.
- It also annoyed me because it was a horrible sound, almost like someone was just chanting with annoying noises instead of actually praying.
- Today, I look back, and what angers me about it is that Satan had those Muslim’s deceived.
- They genuinely believed they were doing the work of God when they fought against us, and now, as they prayed five times a day, they genuinely believed that they were being good, devout followers of God by praying.
- Yet they weren’t.
- They were wicked men and women who did horrible things to their countrymen and women, and to our troops.
- They were deceived.
- Here in this Psalm, as David prays, he gives us a picture of what the deceived men and women of the world look like.
- They might be fooling men, but they can’t fool God.
- He also gives us a picture of what a righteous man looks like.
- So let’s dig right in and look at three parts of this morning prayer.
I.) David looks up to God- Vs 1-3
- Back in High School, I liked to run, so I joined the Cross-Country team.
- I enjoyed the smell of the outdoors and the beautiful scenery I’d see along the way.
- One of the things I remember is that the longer I ran, the more out of breath I became, and the harder it was to continue running.
- But all along the way, there were people cheering us on to keep going.
- It wasn’t until the last leg of the run, when I could see the finish line, that the real motivation kicked in.
- As long as I looked to that line, and kept telling myself I was almost there, then I wouldn’t have any problem finishing strong.
- So, I kept looking to that line, looking to my coach standing at the end, cheering me on…
- It motivated me to keep running and finish.
- Here in Psalm 5, we find David doing something similar…
- But instead of looking at a physical person or a physical spot like the finish line, he is instead looking up to God first thing in the morning when he wakes up.
- Remember, in the last verse of Chapter 4, he said, “I will lie down in peace and sleep…”
- Now, in chapter 5, David is saying, “You will hear me in the morning, Lord!”
- Chapter 5 might not chronologically be the day after chapter 4, but the Holy Spirit has placed it there for a reason.
- When we belong to Christ and are looking to Him in all areas of our life, we’ll go to sleep in peace with our mind on Him, and we’ll wake up in the morning in peace with our mind and eyes on Him.
- In vs 1 and 2, when David addresses God, notice that he says the same thing 3 different ways…
- Give ear to my words, consider my meditation, give heed to the voice of my cry…
- This is called Hebrew parallelism, repeating the same thing three times…
- So, David is crying out to God, “Please, listen to me!”
- Why repeat it?
- It’s not like God was having trouble hearing, and David needed to get His attention…
- No, it was because David was stressing the importance that our prayers be heard by God.
- He understood that if his prayers were not heard by God, then there was no point to praying, because it would equate to meaningless babble.
- He also is encouraging us to go before God, continually…
- In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus told the story of the importunate friend, who went to his neighbor late at night and kept knocking until his friend answered the door and gave him his request…
- So, both King David, and our Lord Jesus Christ, showed us that it’s okay to be persistent when we’re praying to God.
- He’s not going to zap us with lightning for repeating ourselves and asking Him multiple times for something.
