Psalm 5:5-7
For not a god desiring wickedness are You,
No evil will sojourn by You.
The debauched take no stand in Your eyes,
You hate all the wrongdoers.
You destroy the pronouncer of lies,
A man of blood and deceit the LORD loathes.

God has opinions, strong opinions. That needs to be said vigorously into our neighborhoods and parking lots and jobsites. And God is (to use the completely inadequate and sterile word) MORAL. Which is to say, that God is (now this is better) RIGHTEOUS. His opinions are the right ones; those contrary to His are wrong.

Yesterday we said that there was a great simplicity to David’s method of prayer, and thus a great simplicity to his life: Petition and Wait. Petition early and wait for resolution.

But don’t hear that David’s prayer was necessarily simplistic and terse. He prayed out of an understanding of God’s opinions, and bolstered his petition with that knowledge. “God, You are like this…Therefore…” Or, “You’re not this god….Therefore…”

I said that God has opinions, strong opinions. I don’t need to direct your attention to “hate” and “loathe.”* But more: God acts and decrees according to His opinions. In other words, God’s opinions mean something. They aren’t just religious data points.

Behind David’s petition is the stern belief that God acts according to His character. And, that God’s character must have repercussions in the lives of all people. For instance, people are not just liars. They are liars in a universe created and judged by a God of truth.

In this prayer, maybe in all good petitioning, David is reminding God (there’s a poor phrase!) that he understands Him and that his petition is in line with God’s righteous judgments. In other words, in our prayers we’re not normally guessing that our petition is one that might interest God.

Bible Reading: Acts 17: 16-34

This was the text for my main message as we went around the country raising money to come to Boston! I still say that Paul’s big point, to 1st century Athenians and 21st century Bostonians is that God is not far from each one of us. This truth can be comforting, it can be intimidating, but it is always true!!

__________

*Of course, we should mention the idea, without really understanding it, that God is able to simultaneously hate and love the same person.   (Don’t try this at home)

Psalm 5:4
LORD, in the morning You hear my voice,
In the morning I lay it before You and wait.

David comes before his king with his petition.  He comes first thing with his petition.  He lays the petition before his king.  And then he waits.

There is great simplicity here that should arrest us: In the morning laying our petitions before the king and waiting for Him to answer.  “To You I pray.”  This is what I do in my life.  I am a suppliant and one who waits.

Herein is faith.  The God-attentive has a time when he is praying.  Of course, it is true that we can pray as we go along throughout the day, and that’s a good thing.  But the God-attentive is sometimes only praying; if you would see him then you could only think that he is praying, and nothing else.

The God-attentive lays “it” before You.  Prayer is not a string of spiritual words – bless, grace, sweet by and by.  It is bringing your situation with all its trickiness into the Majesty and explaining it to God.  Are your prayers intelligible or are they rendered foolish with spiritual clichés?  I mean, do they make any sense?

And the God-attentive waits.  Now don’t let “wait” bring scenes with deserts or monasteries into your mind.  “Wait” does not imply inactivity: I can’t imagine David as sedentary or even contemplative, as that word is understood today.

But David is able to remember what he has prayed for and continue scanning that situation for signs of resolution, for the decree of the king.  Even as he works and eats and talks, he waits.

Beloved, I wish we would pray.

Bible Reading: Acts 17: 10-15

I’ve heard of churches called “Berean Bible” or “Berean Baptist.”  Somehow this city was more alive spiritually than Thessalonica.  They will always be known as “noble.”  We understand person to person the reception of the Message is different, but city to city?   How do you explain that?

By the way, you will always have trouble, until the Day.

Psalm 5:1-3
To the lead player, on the nehilot, a David psalm.
Hearken to my speech, O LORD,
Attend to my utterance.
Listen well to my voice crying out, my king and my God,
For to You I pray.

“Hearken,” “Attend,” “Listen well” – isn’t David overdoing it a little?  And why close off these redundancies with the obvious “to You I pray”?

Well, suppose you make your living in a business where on-the-spot communication is an absolute necessity.  You wouldn’t pay attention to just the communiqués you receive, but also concern yourself with how efficiently you are receiving them.  You would probably read up on the latest in mobile e-mailing, discover how to best deal with spam and viruses, etc.

My trade is dependent on communication, you say.  I must have open channels.

I’ve staked my existence on prayer, David says.  This is how I get along.  No one understands me without knowing this key fact: “To You I pray.”  So if I pile up the redundancies in asking God to hear me, it’s simply because prayer is what I do, how I live.  I fail at prayer, I fail at life.

Do I (Colin now) have to be redundant in reminding us that for David this setting up his life around prayer wasn’t a religious impulse.  He wasn’t developing his spiritual side.  He thought, simply thought, that a life without God listening well to his prayers was no life at all.

Ask God to make the missionaries that we have met and remember, men and women who pray to God.

Bible Reading: Acts 17:1-8

The apostles, and we, are commissioned with proclaiming Jesus.  The word that is given to us in this passage to describe this proclamation is “reasoned.”  Paul took the time to explain from the Old Testament why the career of Jesus of Nazareth matched the prophecies of the promised Messiah.

It was the suffering Messiah that tripped them up, of course.  Why did the opposition act so aggressively?  Listen to the accusation that was brought against the apostles: they were “saying there is another king, Jesus.”  So what does this message have to do with the Gospel and why does it rile people up so?

Bible Reading to prepare us for coming together: Romans 12:9-21

Psalm 4: 6-9
Offer righteous sacrifices
And trust in the LORD.
Many say, “Who will show us good things?”
Lift up the light of Your face to us, LORD.
You put joy in my heart,
From the time their grain and their drink did abound.
In peace, all whole, let me lie down and sleep.
For You, LORD, alone, do set me down safely.

Go into a mattress store and you’ll probably find a sign that asks: “What’s a good night’s sleep worth?”  Then they’ll break it down for you: a good mattress costs this much over five years, over ten years, over fifteen years.  As your pastor – someone who has been to seminary and done a lot of communing and stuff – I recommend changing out your mattress every eight years.

But even with the best of mattresses, we can have trouble sleeping.  Hold on, we just talked of sleeping – a few days and one psalm ago.  Here, at the beginning of the psalter, we hear songs celebrating the deep sleep of the righteous!

Now, I don’t want to simplify things too much.  But let me offer the possibility in a society of sleeping aids: Perhaps some of our trouble relaxing in the wee hours stems from a stunted relationship with God.  Come on Colin: Just say it.  Maybe we don’t sleep well because we don’t understand God.

If two out of the first four psalms refer to sleep, shouldn’t the life before God enter into the insomnia conversation?

Well, regardless of how you answer that question, we can all agree that this psalm is celebrating the really implausible joy and settledness of the person who has seen the light of God’s face.

The question the God-attentive are met with is “Who will show us good things?”  Where are the sources that will validate or prosper or secure this person’s life?

And the reply of this psalm is simply: “You, LORD, alone.”  ZZZZZ

Bible Reading: Acts 16:35-40 – Why does Paul hold these magistrates accountable?  Is there something Christian driving this, or just the irritation of a bruised back?

Psalm 4: 3-5
Sons of man, how long will My glory He shamed?
You love vain things and seek out lies
But know that the LORD set apart His faithful.
The LORD will hear when I call to Him.
Quake, and do not offend.
Speak in your hearts on your beds, and be still.

One’s standing before people is not necessarily a reflection of his standing before God.  And, it is difficult to evaluate the success of one’s life without drawing back the curtain of the invisible world and hearing God’s judgment.  A person who has been ostracized by society MIGHT be one of the faithful whom God has set apart and given His attention to.

This is where the God-attentive draw their courage: “the LORD set apart His faithful.”  The signals and trappings of success, the approbation of people, the good standing with the “inner ring” – these give way in a second, or at best prove to be flimsy rods to lean against.

Friday’s million dollar question: Do you have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ that is not affected by your standing with people?

As we pray for the leaders of our church today: Do the leaders of the church have something more than a position and a task: a God-attentiveness, a hearing before God?

I mean, are we accustomed to forming our self-identity and drawing our confidence from our standing with God?

Such confidence this singer draws that he turns on those who seek out lies, who have exploited him:  Why don’t you live in awe?  Why do you take so much for granted?  Why do you assume on the goodness of God?  Rather, QUAKE.  Take advantage of the moments when you are alone (like, “on your beds”) and speak the invisible world into your thoughts.  Remember God is not like you.

Acts 16:25-34
An encouraging account!  A terse Gospel that matches the explosive moment (31).  But here is what I draw your attention to: Paul’s assumption that when the head of the household believes that salvation will spread throughout the house: “and your household”.  Of course this doesn’t exclude each member making a personal decision.  And it doesn’t always happen this way.  But Paul assumed it would.

Psalm 4:1-3
For the lead player, with stringed instruments, a David psalm.
When I call out, answer me, my righteous God.
In the straits, You set me free.
Have mercy upon me and hear my prayer.
Sons of man, how long will my glory be shamed?
You love vain things and seek out lies.

In Israelite music, not just lofty expressions or heroic stories were set to music, but also those petitions to God that were weighed down with frustration and impatience.  The people of God have never disguised the fact that the life of faith is not a series of easy victories.

But still, God has rescued us so frequently that we’ve discerned a pattern: “In the straits You set me free.”  Sometimes things are nagging us in the back of our minds, perplexing situations that have hemmed us in.  These are exactly the things that we should bring before God, who delights to set things right.

The particular strait that his singer found himself in was a loss of his honor – his glory was shamed by people who had lied about him.  “In the culture of ancient Israel, honor was of the greatest value; it is in most societies.  Honor is the dignity and respect that belong to a person’s position in relation to family, friends, and the community.  It is an essential part of the identity that others recognize and regard in dealing with a man or a woman.  In Israel its loss had tragic consequences for self-esteem and social competence.  Shaming and humiliating a person was violence against them worse than physical harm.” – Mays 55

But the problem the psalmist is facing can be understood more generally.  He is living before God in the middle of a people who are “seek[ing] out lies.”  His fundamentally different priorities are being called into question by those who don’t share those priorities.

But whether he faces specific attacks on his honor or ongoing scorn because he is living “against the grain,” what we learn is that he is bringing this heaviness to God.  Oh, if we could develop this habit of throwing our concerns at God!  Here is shelter.

See, this habit of prayer is a different shelter than the thin barriers of defensiveness, bitterness, intimidation, people-pleasing, and other fronts we assume to relieve the pressure that people place on us.

Acts 16:6-24

Heeding the Macedonian call brings Paul and Silas to people hungry for the Gospel.  Follow Needs!  Heeding the call from Macedonia lands Paul and Silas in prison!  Obey God!

Psalm 3: 6-9
I lie down and sleep.
I awake, for the LORD has sustained me.
I fear not from myriads of troops
That round about set against me.
Rise, LORD!  Rescue me, my God,
For You strike all my foes on the cheek,
The teeth of the wicked You smash.
Rescue is the LORD’s!
On Your people Your blessing.

The psalmist has learned the lesson that all of life’s problems are really only opportunities.  He’s put on spiritual glasses and seen that all of his foes aren’t really foes at all – everything is as it should be.

NOOOOOO!  Don’t buy into this sort of talk.  There are grim situations.  To some degree it is a scary world.  Scarier yet: we don’t know the half of the threats against us.  By grace, or by foolishness, we retain some measure of calm.

“Myriads of troops.”  There are too many dangers to count.  We’re completely outmatched.

But hark!  Regular breathing; air making its way through the nasal passages; gentle snores!  In the middle of real threats, a deep sleep!  This can’t be the sleep of escapism – we just heard “myriads of troops.”  So deep sleep while being conscious of terrible threats.

I’m offering this possibility: Could it be that our reliance on psychiatric meds and the advice of personality experts is due to a flimsy belief in the interest and safekeeping of God?  Too many words, Colin – just say it!  Are we scared because we don’t know God?

Psalm 3, laying so close to the start of the Psalter, is helping to shape the mindset of faith.  I mean, we’re still working the foundations here.  And at the foundation of the life of faith are issues of danger, worry, the instinct to pray, sleep – all the stuff of BELIEF.

Will I be safe?  Well – what is God like?  I’m scared of just a textbook response to that question, a hollow answer.  This understanding of God should come out of our experience: “Rescue is the LORD’s!”  That’s what He does.  He listens and acts, not approximately (“You strike all my foes on the cheek”), but directly.

Bible Reading: Acts 16:1-5

Paul had Timothy circumcised.  Obviously this was a different time with different concerns.  But for those of us who know the letters of Paul this should give us pause.  Wasn’t Paul’s the most adamant voice in declaring that circumcision, as a badge of God’s people, was an empty ritual?  Didn’t he warn the Galatians of those who want to make a showing in the flesh?

Yes.  Yes.  Paul would fall and die on those theological points.  But, because circumcision wasn’t theologically important he would have Timothy circumcised for the benefit of those who thought circumcision was important.

Paul loved people and he believed the Gospel.  He valued connecting with people and connecting those people with the Gospel.  He skirted misunderstanding, blazed his way through whole forests of nuances, endured inconvenience – all so he could have a hearing for the Gospel.