The chorus which we sing so brightly, Spirit
of the Living God, fall afresh on me,
the first prayer in it is break me.
Brokenness is part of God's purpose for all
of us and it's costly.
It is given unto us, said Paul in
Philippians, not only to believe on him but
to suffer.
And even Jesus himself was made perfect through
suffering.
I've never dared preach on that text.
But unquestionably, suffering, brokenness, has a tremendous part
to play in Christian ministry.
That's why I'm sure that miracles of healing
need to be kept in that context.
I believe in a God who is able
to heal, of course.
Of course I do.
In those many cases of people who have
been, but he doesn't always do that.
That healing anyway lasts only 50 years.
The most, whereas brokenness leads to likeness to
Jesus forever.
And that is often, very often accomplished through
physical suffering.
And it's an attitude when the crisis is
on and when we're facing brokenness that matters
most.
And it's with that in mind that the
Lord laid on my heart, as I was
thinking of today, this 86th Psalm.
Because you see, we think of the cross
of Calvary as something we come to to
get through.
We visit it for forgiveness and then we
go on.
But we don't really.
We come to Calvary to stay there, to
live there all the rest of our lives.
Because it's only when we die out to
ourselves that then the Holy Spirit does miracles
and gets through.
And so I want to speak to you
on really a life of prayer.
I think within this Psalm there are some
tremendous lessons that I'm just beginning to learn
on this great theme of prayer, which everyone
always needs.
I don't quite know when David uttered it.
I don't know when he gave utterance to
what's in it.
It was possibly when he was being hunted
by Saul.
Could have been that.
It might have been when he was being
betrayed by Absalom.
I'm not sure.
But I do know there was a time
of desperate trouble in his life.
Great perplexity, great affliction.
He just didn't know which way to overcome.
And he was being sorely tested and tried
at a time when it seemed that only
a miracle could get him through.
Now how do I react in times like
that?
Because we all have them in all sorts
of different ways.
It's our reaction in that time that matters.
And at such a time as that he
turned to the Lord in prayer.
He's a man of great convictions and these
convictions are clearly stated in this prayer.
He didn't press the panic button.
It wasn't that sense of crisis.
But he came to God with his convictions.
Convictions about God, convictions about himself, convictions about
his actions that he must take at that
moment.
And it's not a prayer of intercession for
other people.
It's a prayer of desperate petition for himself.
No less than 35 times in these 17
verses here you have the little phrase, I,
me, my, thy servant.
There's a place for prayer like that.
Of course we mustn't be selfish in our
praying.
But when I get to the place of
recognizing what a desperate plight I'm in, and
the need is tremendous, this is the kind
of prayer to which a man can give
reference.
I don't know whether any of you are
going through some crisis at this time.
I've had in the Christian life, you're either
going into one or in the middle of
one, or coming out of one.
The job is to keep it down to
one.
And you're constantly, constantly amid all these pressures.
And you can't escape them.
And the Lord allows them to happen.
How do we react to them?
Let me learn.
I want you to learn and myself from
David tonight.
Notice his convictions about who God was, the
person of God.
Now I'm going to suggest to you that
you do a little work this evening.
If you have a pencil, and you don't
mind messing up your Bible, you should wreck
a Bible about once in 10 years really.
And so I'll help you to wreck it
tonight, if you come with me.
Because in this psalm, David uses three titles
for God, which express his convictions about him.
Just look at them with me.
Are you ready?
Notice in verse two, David says, Thou art
my God.
Put a circle around that word, God.
In verse 10, he says, Thou alone art
God.
Another circle there.
In verse 14, O God, insolent men have
risen up against me.
Another circle there.
In verse 15, But Thou, O Lord, art
a God full of compassion.
Circle around that word, God.
And in each case where we have that
word, God, it's the word Elohim, the Almighty
One, the Great One, the Powerful One.
It was by that name which God introduced
himself to mankind.
In the beginning, God, Elohim.
And in the hour of David's crisis and
deep need, he could turn to a God
he knew who was absolutely omnipotent, who never
lost a battle, all-powerful.
How wonderful to be able to turn to
a God like that, when we're at the
end of a self.
Now look again with me at the first
verse.
David says, O Lord, answer me.
Put a triangle around that word, Lord.
In verse 3, Be gracious to me, O
Lord.
Another one there.
Verse 5, But Thou, O Lord, art good.
Another one there.
Verse 6, Give ear, O Lord.
Another one there.
Verse 9, All nations shall come and bow
down before Thee, O Lord.
Another triangle there.
In verse 12, I give thanks to Thee,
O Lord.
Another one there.
And in verse 15, But Thou, O Lord.
Another one there.
And in each case, he's using the word
Jehovah.
A covenant-keeping God who's never broken a
promise.
Jehovah.
He's absolutely dependable.
I suppose you've found, uh, so have I,
that some people build up a reputation for
being a bit unreliable.
For some people say to me, I'll give
you a helping hand with that job tomorrow.
I don't get excited until I see them.
And somebody else will say, goodbye, see you
again next week.
I don't get thrilled about it.
I wait till I come, and then I
believe them.
You see, there are some people whose word
you have to take with a bit of
reservation.
But God has never broken one word of
any of his promises to any of his
people.
He's absolutely dependable.
How wonderful, therefore, in prayer, to come to
a covenant-keeping God like that, upon whom
you can rely.
Then again, this will be your third and
last little bit, which you have to do.
David says in verse 8, There is none
like unto Thee among the gods, O Lord.
Put a square around that word, Lord.
It's the word Adonai.
A-d-o-n-a-i.
Adonai.
Sovereign.
In verse 11, Teach me thy way, O
Lord.
Another square there.
In verse 12, My God with my whole
heart.
Another square there.
Verse 17, Because thou, Lord, has helped me.
Square there.
Adonai.
I shall hope to say just a word
about that at the conclusion of my message
tonight, and his claim on that title.
But just notice, in this hour of tremendous
crisis, he uses these three titles about God.
You've never lost a battle, you've never broken
a promise, and you're sovereign, Lord.
And notice the language of 8, verse 8,
when David says, There is none like unto
Thee, O Lord.
None like unto Thee.
Lord, you're absolutely unrivaled in your deity.
None like you.
In verse 9, All the nations thou hast
made shall come and bow down before thee,
O Lord, and shall glorify thy name, Lord.
You're unmatched in your sovereignty.
Now just get the picture and see this
man at the end of his rope, absolutely
in despair, doesn't know what to do.
In a terrific crisis, and he comes to
a God, who is almighty, never broken a
promise, who's sovereign, Lord, unmatched in his sovereignty
and deity.
His convictions concerning God.
Look at his convictions concerning the mercy of
God.
Verse 5, For thou, Lord, I'm finished with
asking you to write squares and so on.
Let's follow this.
Verse 5, For thou, Lord, art good, forgiving,
abounding in steadfast love to all that call
upon thee.
Verse 13, For great is thy mercy, O
steadfast love toward me, and thou hast delivered
my soul from the depths of Sheol.
Verse 15, For thou, Lord, art a God,
merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in
steadfast love and faithfulness.
You see, that tells me that as David
went to God in this terrific crisis he
was facing, he knew he hadn't a single
argument to bring to God from himself.
He'd nothing, absolutely at the end.
No claim upon God at all.
He needed, if he needed anything in his
life, he needed at that time desperately a
God who was full of mercy and whose
patience was absolutely unlimited.
Just recently I heard about a young convert
who, the Christian faith, who at one moment
was failing and the next moment confessing his
sin, and one moment on the mountaintop and
the next moment down in the valley and
going on falling and confessing and sinning and
getting back and so on, and went on
for years until one day his pastor met
him in the street and said to him,
My dear brother, God gave me a bucket
full of patience for you, but believe me
it's almost empty.
But I know a God whose patience is
limited, limitless.
That's the kind of God I need.
A God who is full of mercy and
there's no end to his patience.
I'm going to say something that you might
disagree with.
I'll risk it.
I'm going home tomorrow, so are you.
But I somehow feel, though I haven't any
authority in the Word of God to say
this, that God's love and mercy to the
sinner out of Christ who doesn't know the
Lord is only matched and even outmatched by
his patience with the children who want to
know better.
You can think that through.
I'm sure it won't keep you awake.
His convictions about God's mercy and then look
at his convictions concerning God's power.
Verse 10.
Thou art great and those wondrous things thou
alone art God.
And he came out of the depths of
his need to a God whom he knew
could work a miracle.
It needed a miracle to save him.
It needed a miracle to deliver him.
And I honestly believe that there is nothing
that the Church of Jesus Christ needs more
today, and we Christians need personally, than a
new conception of his ability to work miracles.
We need desperately these days a miracle-working
God.
Nothing less than a miracle can deliver us.
We're far too prone to tie him up
to our little programs and ask him to
bless them, forget that he works miracles.
I need a God who can work a
miracle.
It's wonderful to be shut up to a
miracle.
Many methods have failed, hundreds of them, but
God never fails.
Therefore you have David's convictions concerning God in
this crisis, in his desperate need.
He turns to a God who's omnipotent, who's
dependable, who's sovereign, whose mercy is endless, a
miracle-working God.
But listen, do you notice David's conviction about
himself?
Verse 1.
I am poor and needy.
I like the Living Bible paraphrase there.
It says, Lord, I'm deep in trouble.
I can identify with that.
I'm deep in trouble.
There's a hackneyed phrase that goes around which
says, God helps those who help themselves.
I want to tell you that God helps
those who are absolutely helpless and desperate, destitute.
Psalm 102, verse 17.
He will regard the prayer of the destitute
and not despise their prayer.
What an awful thing it must be to
be destitute.
Well, homeless, friendless, penniless, absolutely at the end.
May I honestly say to you that one
of the curses of 20th century fundamental evangelical
Christianity is that we're not destitute.
We have become desperately self-sufficient.
And indeed, so great is the craze, if
I may use such a word, for higher
education, that we train young people to be
self-sufficient.
Of course, I'm not saying a thing about
education.
Get the best you can.
But I remind you, I remind you, that
Paul's a great man of outstanding education.
And he said, our sufficiency is of God.
And 2,000 years have gone by since
then, and the situation is no different.
Our sufficiency, our help, our hope is not
in a church program.
It's not in a theological degree.
It's in God, a living God.
I happened to pick up recently a copy
of Reader's Digest, and I noticed an article,
the leading article for the month was headed,
Ten Ways to Get Rid of Fear.
I happened to be sitting in a dentist's
waiting room at the time, so I thought
that that was an appropriate moment to see
what he had to say.
And I guessed pretty well what he would
say.
Better to have a look.
And it was the usual sort of thing
written by a psychiatrist, and the last reason
of the ten he had was, have faith.
For a moment, I pricked up my mental
ears and turned over the page, and he
said, I read, have faith in yourself.
You've got through before.
You've struggled through in the past.
You'll get through again.
My brother and sister, that's the tragedy of
modern philosophy.
The fact is that we are desperately poor
and desperately needy, and there's a sense in
which I want to ask the Lord never
to take me from the place where he
can work a miracle.
Because if he does, I'm destitute.
I said to you, dear folks, this morning,
something that I'll just repeat.
You think by now I ought to have
learned some of these lessons, but I'm beginning
to learn, but I'm in kindergarten.
That means in practice that I never allow
myself to do more work for him than
I can cover in believing prayer.
No, I can't apply that to you.
Can't play it God for you, but I'm
beginning to learn to apply it myself.
And that means before I accept anything on
the last minute or any time, I'm very
careful to say, can I cover that in
believing prayer?
If not, the answer is no.
People may say I'm getting lazy.
Well, David's conviction about himself was, I'm poor
and needy, and therefore, Lord, I'm not risking
anything on my own.
But something clear here, isn't it?
Verse two, I am godly.
David, now take it easy.
How on earth can you be poor and
needy and the next breath godly?
Holy.
Surely he's not being spiritually arrogant.
He's not guilty of spiritual conceit.
But he knows with absolute conviction that he
has obeyed God's way of approach to the
throne, and he's come to God by way
of a blood sacrifice and the offering of
a lamb.
And therefore, I'm holy.
And I've come to him on the ground
of shed blood of an animal.
And therefore, because I've come God's appointed way,
I am his purchased possession.
I belong to him and I'm holy.
And it's such a comfort to me to
know that if I come to my God
in Jesus, poor and desperate, helpless and needy,
I come to him on the only basis
upon which a sinner can come, the ground
of the blood and faith in the blood.
I can say to him, Lord, Lord, I'm
in desperate need.
I'm poor and needy, but I'm positionally holy.
I'm your purchased possession.
I belong to you.
And it's your responsibility to see me through.
That rolls off the burden.
Again, in the same verse, David says, save
thy servant who trusts in thee.
Lord, I'm trusting in you.
That's the whole ground, of course, and foundation
principle of our relationship to the Lord.
For without faith, it's impossible to please him.
And depending upon you, David says, and only
you can deliver me.
Nobody else.
I've got to live.
You've got to live by faith.
But if you're as moldy as I am,
it's terribly easy to remove yourself from the
only trustworthy object, and to realize as you
live your Christian life every day, you're not
really depending on him.
Now look, my friend, I don't know you,
bless you, I wish I did.
I'd love to, you would hate it, but
I would love just to sit and chat
to you one by one.
That helpful talk that we had this afternoon
was the basis of that thought, that we
should just talk like that to each other,
personally, individually.
I'd like to be able to do that,
because in this smallish group, there might be
someone who's in a crisis, broken-hearted, panics,
troubles, loneliness, fears, and burdens, and so on.
Listen, here's a man who comes out of
the very depth to a living God, the
same God to whom you and I can
come, and he has these deep convictions about
his power, his faithfulness, his master, and his
owner, and David himself is absolutely destitute.
May I say, honestly and frankly, if anybody's
coming to God just at the end of
your rope, and you're not prepared to take
that position, you never touch the throne.
Never.
I don't care who you are.
If you're trying to get through to the
Lord, and you're still not destitute, and you're
imagining that your education and your ability and
talent will see you through, God has to
bring you to the place and me to
the place where I cry with David, Lord,
I'm poor and needy.
How I wish that the Church would catch
that note of destitution.
You know, to which our risen Lord spoke
to the Church at Laodicea.
You think you're rich, increased with goods that
are meaner than nothing?
I say to you, you're poor and needy.
Desperate.
David had that conviction, and yet he says,
I'm holy, and by faith in Jesus Christ
and his righteousness imputed to me, I can
say the same.
Lord, don't depend on you.
That's the only approach for a saint, and
it's the only approach for an unbeliever.
God save you and save me from imagining
that we're too big to come that way.
After 50 years of Christian service, when I
was in Chicago, I remember once I had
a phone call from somebody in New Jersey,
about 900 miles away, and this man who
was the senior elder, I think, or trustee
of his church, and he said, Pastor Redbrook,
do you happen to know anybody in Chicago
area who would consider a move?
Might be thinking of leaving and would come
to our church.
So a conversation began, which lasted well over
three-quarters of an hour.
I gave him the names of two or
three people who I thought might, and then
he asked me the most amazing questions.
Now he told me, he said, what school
did they attend?
And following school, what university did they go
to?
What theological degrees have they got?
And I had to tell him all this
information.
And after I'd finished, after he had finished
asking me questions, he said, well, thank you
so much, but he said, honestly, none of
these men are big enough for our pulpit.
I said, hi!
Just before you go off the phone, are
you sure you mean, you don't mean, they're
not small enough for your pulpit?
Lord, break me.
For just a moment, because of these convictions
about God and about himself, David came to
certain convictions that he had to take action
right now.
And of course, we're very guilty of this.
There's no use praying unless it leads to
action, doing something about it.
And convictions in prayer are no use unless
I carry them into life.
How many people there are who are blessed
in service and even make a response, but
they don't do a thing about it.
Get outside the building, and we've forgotten it
all in five minutes, in conversation about the
dinner and children and everything else.
And they don't somehow make, take action.
Notice, will you, what action David took.
First to preserve my life, for I am
godly, save thy servant who trusts in thee.
Thou art my God, be merciful to me,
O Lord, for I cry unto thee all
the day.
In other words, to put it simply, obviously,
he's just throwing himself on the mercy of
God, completely, absolutely.
I wonder if I could just bring to
you an Old Testament character, an illustration of
one who did exactly that thing.
Do you remember the story of Hannah in
1 Samuel, in the first chapter?
How she longed for a child.
How she was taunted and rebuked by others
for her barrenness.
One day, you remember, she came to the
only place where she thought her prayer might
be answered, to Shiloh, and there she poured
out her soul to the Lord.
In fact, so desperately, that wretched old backslidden
Eli thought she was drunk.
How extraordinary.
That's exactly how people reacted at Pentecost.
When the Holy Spirit fell on the church,
they thought they were drunk.
As I say, it was only nine o
'clock in the morning.
David cried, and Hannah cried, and
she was so desperate in prayer, and so
unusual to see somebody like that.
They thought she was drunk.
Ten times in this psalm, David says, O
Lord, O Lord, ten times.
Isaiah cried, O that thou wouldst rend the
heavens and come down.
Hannah, in bitterness of the soul, prayed to
the Lord and wept sore, O Lord.
Am I being hypercritical?
I hope not.
I direct it to my own heart.
The O has gone out of our praying.
The desperation has left us.
The cry from the depths of our heart,
O Lord, has gone.
The average church prayer meeting is a deadly
thing.
A few prayer requests, and then Mr. So
-and-so will lead us in prayer, and
brother, does he?
He'll pray for about twenty minutes, kills the
whole thing.
Has the Lord ever taunted you for your
barrenness in spiritual living?
Has he?
Has he ever spoken to you about it?
The fruitlessness of your testimony?
The barrenness of your ministry?
The trouble is that we lie down to
it.
Hannah refused to do that and pleaded, O
Lord.
If you had a church, say, well, I
think of St. John's Harbour, the church that
I attend.
I say to myself sometimes well, say, there
are four hundred members, probably more.
Supposing every one of those four hundred members,
one person a year to Christ, one a
year.
And supposing the people who are added, having
been one, themselves added one a year.
How many members do you think they'd have
in ten years' time?
Eight hundred and nineteen thousand two hundred.
Please don't start working on your computer.
Take my word for it.
Why doesn't that happen?
I've no answer to that.
One person a year to Jesus?
Is that too much to ask?
Well, if revival hits the country, that would
happen.
Here's what David Watson says.
What do you do when what you have
been taught to believe no longer rings a
bell in your experience?
You either change your theology to fit your
experience and say God is dead because your
experience of him is dead, or you keep
your Bible theology first for the living God.
Psalm 42.
O thou who camest from above the pure
celestial fire to impart kindle a flame of
sacred love on the main altar of my
heart.
The language of Wesley.
Wesley had, says David Watson, a strange combination
of a warm heart and a cool head.
A cool head alone will mean I always
play everything safe, never run risks.
I arrange for all sorts of open-ended
discussions and dialogues and fill up my time
with things that are secondary.
Anything, in fact, I'm ready to do anything
except getting drunk with the Spirit and going
out where the action is.
I think we need really, in these days,
to think about and pray about it.
I have so many, you know, so many
churches.
I didn't wish to be unkind or speak
of any.
Well, some are wonderful, but no prayer meeting
on a Lord's Day.
Too busy.
I've had nearly 50 years in the ministry
now, in fact, actually 50.
And I think back into days when I
was an apostate in Edinburgh and in Chicago
and London.
And all the ministry I had in those
days, the tremendous sense of grip and spiritual
authority that came through it was entirely due
to people who never came to the service
at all, but went away to a room
and prayed for me.
Prayed right through from beginning to end.
They did that for C.
H.
Spurgeon.
I've done that for many in other picture.
If I really have a burden that the
Lord will come down and break the windows
of heaven, that would happen.
The only thing near a revival or that
was revival that I know in this country
was in the Hebrides, some, I suppose, about
20 years ago, Duncan Campbell's ministry.
When fishermen went out in boats and suddenly
felt the tremendous authority of the presence of
God, the public houses were closed and just
God swept down in that place.
It all ended because some folk came over
from the United States to write it up.
It was written up and man began to
take a bit of credit for himself.
I don't know that I know the answer,
but I do know that the answer lies
in a disciplined walk with God in a
prayer life.
David cast himself on the mercy of God.
And then we notice in the next place,
then in the third verse, he called upon
the Lord in the day of trouble, be
merciful, gracious to me, Lord, for to thee
do I cry all the day.
Now, now, just notice David wasn't content to
seek the help of other people.
He called personally on the Lord.
Alone with God, he called on him.
How often we go to others for counsel
and others for help, but how seldom in
our real desperate need do we go to
the Lord himself.
But notice this too.
In this situation of desperate need, as he
prayed and made known his decisions and actions,
etc., he saw his own heart need.
Verse 11.
Teach me thy way, O Lord, I will
walk in thy truth, unite my heart to
fear thy name.
If any of you got the living Bible,
it puts it this way.
May every fiber of my being unite in
reverence to thy name.
Oh, I find that very wonderful.
See, in verses 1 through 10, David has
been asking God to do something for him.
But now, he asked God to do something
in him.
First it was for him, desperate need.
And as he prayed, then, he says, unite
my heart to fear thy name.
See what's happened.
It always does happen when you pray like
David did.
As he sought the Lord and cried to
him, God began to speak to him and
say, well, David, wait a minute.
I want to talk to you about this
in your life and about that.
I want to talk to you about the
place where you haven't been wholehearted in your
surrender.
The place where you felt the pull of
other things.
David, if you want my help, my power,
if you want heaven to open upon you
and answer, I have to do something in
you.
First, Lord, unite my heart to fear thy
name.
And when I come to the throne in
a sense of desperate need, and I turn
to the Lord, that covenant-keeping God, and
recognize my own position before him, he begins
to talk to me.
And he begins to say, my child, what
about this?
What about that?
Do you want a miracle?
Right.
But I only work through clean channels.
Are you prepared for that?
Do you want deliverance in your own life?
I only meet in power those who have
been dealt with by my loving, chastening hand.
Years ago now, a very well-known preacher,
you'll know his name, I'm sure, Dr. F
.P. Meyer, he was a great pastor and
minister down in London.
And one year, he was invited to speak
at Keswick.
And he gave his testimony that year at
Keswick.
He said, when I received the invitation, there
was something in my life that I knew
was utterly wrong.
Actually, it had to do with his jealousy
of C.
H.
Spurgeon, who was getting most of his congregation.
But there were other things too.
And he said, I couldn't accept the invitation.
So I decided I'd go up to Keswick
in March or April.
And I went up there.
And I climbed up one of the mountains,
right to the very top.
And amazing to say, the night was a
full moon, beautiful night, but once a year
it would come like that.
And he was there.
And he fell down on his face before
the Lord, and he prayed all night.
And in giving his testimony, he said, you
know, I asked the Lord, I said to
the Lord, Lord, you've had every key to
my heart, except one.
Lord, take the last key.
And with a face, I'm told, by Keswick
people there, that beamed, absolutely shone the glory.
And I said, the Lord never took that
key.
Do you know what he did?
He took the door out.
And instead of the door, ever since there's
been a window.
And through that window, there shone into my
heart the light of the knowledge of the
glorious God in the face of Jesus Christ.
That's it.
Lord, take the key.
But more than that, takes the door out.
And sends the glory.
The glory that I had with my Father,
I have given them.
And the Spirit of God is real.
You've got the glory.
Yes, David was asking now that something should
be done in him.
Then you notice, may I just say, don't
be afraid of prayer.
But remember when you begin to get desperate,
that's the kind of thing God does, to
bring you into identification with his will.
And then David started praying.
Verse 12.
I give thanks to thee, O Lord my
God, with all my heart.
I will glorify thy name forever.
That's tremendous.
Up to that point in the prayer, he'd
been in agony of need.
Now, with the same predicament, and yet with
that wonderful relationship in his heart, that God
would hear him, and the assurance that God
would hear him.
He uses this word now with an ecstasy
of praise.
Before there's been the least sign of an
answer, he began to praise the Lord for
victory.
Stopped calling and began praising.
Rejoicing in the assurance that the Lord never
breaks a promise.
Before he calls, we call, he will answer.
And David began to praise the Lord before
the answer comes.
You see that?
I used to be known, I think, as
someone who went around saying hallelujah anyway.
I thought it was so spiritual.
You know, sort of in any situation, well,
hallelujah anyway.
You know.
And my son-in-law, who perhaps some
of you know, has been killed recently, and
was a missionary.
One day I remember he came up to
me and he said to me, Dad, you
oughtn't to say that.
I said, why not?
I've been saying it for 40 years.
Oh, he said, no, you shouldn't say that.
What should I say?
Oh, you should say, hallelujah, because.
I've got it.
Hallelujah.
Not in spite of it.
Not to sort of grit your teeth, and
sway your shoulders, and put on a brave
show.
And all the time there's a panic going
on inside.
Not that.
But Lord, thank you for this that I
can't understand, and can't do a thing about.
Hallelujah, because.
That's a lesson to learn.
To stop crawling, and begin praising.
And if you'll allow me just one more
moment.
Maybe two.
I promise not to be too long.
But I must leave you with this, to
notice at the finish.
Do you notice how he claims his sort
of throne rights here?
Notice the last verse.
Verse 16.
Turn to me, and take pity upon me.
Give thy strength to thy servant, and save
the son of thy handmaid.
Why did David say that?
I puzzled over that quite a while, as
I thought about this psalm.
Then I turned back in my mind, into
Exodus 21, and verse 4.
And I read, concerning the slave, this law,
if his master has given him a wife,
and she has borne him sons or daughters,
the wife and the children shall be her
masters.
And he shall go out by himself.
The wife and the children of the slave
shall belong, not to the slave, but to
the master.
So David says here, Lord, save the son
of thy handmaid.
I'm only the child of a slave.
Therefore I belong to you.
I'm yours.
You're my master.
You're my sovereign.
You're my Lord.
And therefore, humbly, I can boldly claim throne
rights.
And I say, Lord, it's your responsibility to
protect me, and to get me through, and
to deliver me.
I don't know how.
But I believe in coming to the throne
humbly, poor, needy, desperate.
But in claiming boldly, for I belong to
Jesus, and he belongs to me.
It's his responsibility in any crisis, in any
situation, to take me right through and deliver
me.
It's up to him.
And have I got a God like that,
that I can turn to with confidence in
any situation?
And I can say, Lord, you're mine.
I'm yours.
You're my owner.
You're my master.
Then I can come to him daily as
someone who's absolutely helpless and destitute.
In fact, as someone whose heart has been
broken.
If you come to Jesus like that, I
wonder, with that conviction that makes you holy,
with simple dependence upon the Lord to see
you through, and to pray you through, to
bring you through, his responsibility.
When I was in Chicago, I had this.
I want to read it to you.
It was given to me by someone, I
think, well, no, you're not quite old enough,
Gerald Gregson, who used to be a vicar
in this country, but who became the leader
of Scripture Union in Canada.
And we had arranged at Moody Church, the
Mid-America Keswick Convention, for a week, and
he was one of the speakers.
And I knew him well, so we had
a good time together, and we talked a
lot.
He had a shining face, a wonderful face
that just shone with the presence of Christ.
But at the end of the week, having
been there, he was about to leave and
go back to Canada, and he gave me
this bit of paper.
He said, take this out, and it might
help you.
So I read it.
I didn't think, I thought it was all
right, but I didn't see anything special in
it.
And then I lost it.
Lost it for years, and suddenly it turned
up among piles of sermon notes and so
on.
And I read it.
And I thought, my, I wonder if he
meant that for me.
This is what it says.
It's words by Amy Carmichael to my dear
friend, Ellen.
Hast thou no scar?
No hidden scar on foot or side or
hand?
I hear thee sung as mighty in the
land.
I hear them hail thee, bright ascendant star.
Hast thou no scar?
No wound?
No scar?
Yet, as the master is, shall the servant
be.
And pierced are the feet that follow thee.
But thane aho, can he have followed far,
who has no wound, no scar?
God forbid that I should glory, save in
the cross of Jesus Christ, by whom I
am crucified to the world and the world
unto me.
Henceforth, let no man trouble me.
I bear in my body the marks of
the Lord Jesus.
I ask you lovingly, you got any marks?
I'm not here to speak personally on such
a subject.
All I know is that for the last
year or two, the Lord has put his
marks on our family.
That has been the biggest test of our
lives ever.
Sometimes you're almost apt to say, Lord, that's
enough.
When we lived at Capenry Hall, we lived
in a little wooden cottage, and very nice
right now.
Ian Thomas, the founder, built it for us,
and we lived.
And it hadn't been landscaped.
It had to be landscaped.
And I didn't know a thing about gardens,
so we got a man in, a landscaper,
and he came and dug it up, you
know, and all the rest.
And he put in a tremendous rosebed, and
a friend of mine in London, who's got
one of these nursery garden things, sent me
a hundred roses.
So I didn't know what to do with
them, but I gave them to this man.
So he put these roses in a rosebed.
They, you know, put them right in, and
then surprised me rather by covering them all
up with manure.
That was very smelly, and just covered the
roses.
I thought, well, there's not much chance of
them there.
And I didn't like to say anything.
That was about, oh, I suppose about October.
And then the springtime came, and some little
heads of roses suddenly began to appear.
I thought that's very promising.
And I watched them grow, and they got
up about three or four inches.
And then this man came back again, and
I thought, well, now this is good.
And bless me, he cut all those roses
and covered them up again with more manure.
Disappeared again.
Didn't come back at all.
Towards the end of that summer, there were
some quite thick, hefty-looking roses coming up,
but so far no signs of a bird.
And the next winter, nothing happened.
And then the spring came, and up there
came, and back he came.
By this time, they were just getting into
buds, and looking as if they were going
to produce some lovely roses.
And would you believe, he cut them all
off, shut them up again, hid them down,
down they went.
And I was really getting a bit cross
with him.
I thought, well, look here, you know, we
want to have roses here.
But I didn't like to say anything, because,
you know, because I didn't know anything, because
I didn't.
So they just went away.
And then, the autumn of that year, that
was the third year, I remember.
By the autumn of that year, they'd begun
to come up.
And they stayed up in the winter.
And in the springtime, they shot up.
Oh, there must be enough, about six inches.
And they had all buds on the sides.
And they were beginning, really, to look like
roses that would shoot.
And he didn't bother about coming back that
spring, didn't see him.
But in June, one morning, early, when, you
know, in that part of the country, the
sun begins to shine, very early in the
morning, about four or five o'clock.
And I happened to be up early that
morning.
And I smelled a smell.
And I went to the roses, and there
was one magnificent rose, just one.
And there it was.
And it looked as if it had been
crying, because all the dew was on the
petal.
And I watched it absolutely amazed.
I had to go up that morning, early
to breakfast, so I went up to Capenry
Hall and had breakfast.
Then I came back and told my wife
about this.
I said, marvellous what's happening in the garden.
Shouldn't have said anything.
And I went off again, I was lecturing.
And I came back about noon, after my
lectures.
And would you believe it, that rose had
gone.
And I thought, who on earth has done
that?
Has that man been back again?
And I went into the house, ready to
express my mind on that, and I smelt
something.
Well, the smell was the smell of a
lovely rose.
And I went right inside the living room,
and there was a great big vase, or
vase.
And on it, there were all the leaves
of this rose.
Just the leaves, there, on the vase.
And the whole room was filled with the
fragrance of that rose.
My wife had done it.
And I thought to myself, Lord, how often
you've cut, you've gone deep.
And you all say, Lord, stop, I can't
take any more.
And what's the idea behind it all?
He wants us to be fragrant.
Wants something of the savour of Jesus himself
to get through us.
Not cleverness, but godliness.
Something that will speak of Jesus there, and
will demand an explanation.
You see, he does wonderful things with a
broken heart, when all the pieces are in
his hand.
And so, Spirit of the Living God fall
afresh on me, break me.
That's very unworthily put to you, but I
just open my heart and say it to
you.
Trust that it will become true in my
own life, and true in yours.
And now we feel that these two days
have been abundantly worthwhile, in which somebody can
write to me and say, well, thank the
Lord.
It's no more I who live, but Jesus.
And the cross is real in my heart.
And therefore, the Holy Spirit is let loose,
and I'm praising the Lord.
Let's pray together.
I wonder if we might quietly sing the
chorus which I have mentioned, Spirit of the
Living God, fall afresh on me.
Somebody strike that chorus up.
Spirit of the Living God, Spirit
of the Living God, Spirit
of the Living God.
Thank you, Lord.
Before we call, let us answer.
May I trust you, that this time together
may be greatly to the glory of the
Lord Jesus, to the blessing of our own
hearts, and to the panic of the devil,
and to the panic of the devil.
Lord, may each one of us take action.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.