The Bible Study Hour

Dr. James Boice: Sadly, many elements of worship are disappearing from churches today. The singing of hymns, confession of sin, the reading of God's Word, and even prayer. Psalm 141 is a psalm about prayer, and in fact, it is a prayer.

Dr. James Boice: Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. Of all the elements of worship, perhaps none is as integral as prayer, and yet prayer is the one aspect of worship with which we often have the most difficulty.

Dr. James Boice: Join Dr. Boice as he studies David's evening petition and details the elements of prayer that challenge the believer.

Dr. James Boice: when we were beginning our study of these final worship Psalms of the Psalter, Psalms 135 to 150. I listed some of the elements that belong in worship services.

Singing, prayer, confession of sin, reading the Bible, and the exposition of God's Word. Those are all practices that have biblical warrant.

And I pointed out then and say again that they need to be recovered in our day because many, if not all of them, are sadly disappearing from many evangelical churches.

The Psalms that end the Psalter help us make this recovery because they're instructing us in worship, what we should pray for, how we should worship God, what we should acknowledge God to be, and how we should go about doing that.

Now, these Psalms have different emphases. Psalm 135 is about praise. Psalm 136 shows how we may reflect on God's past acts and creation and salvation as the basis for our worship. Psalm 139 explored one of God's great attributes, his omniscience, and shows what bearing that has upon the worshiper and how he should approach God.

And then there are later Psalms that will deal with such matters as singing and even with the use of instruments in worship.

Now, Psalm 141 also has a unique emphasis, and its emphasis is on prayer. In fact, it is a prayer, and it's a prayer where virtually every sentence and every word is a prayer. It's been called an evening Psalm, and I think not badly, because of verse 2.

David says, "May my prayer be set before you like incense, may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice." I've called it a prayer to God before retiring. There are other prayers like that, Psalms like that in the Psalter, especially at the beginning.

Psalm 4 and Psalm 63 have been called evening Psalms. Psalm 5 is a morning Psalm. In the liturgical tradition of the church, this Psalm, Psalm 141, has been used for vespers, that is, a service held later in the day.

Now, it's common in reading scholarly writing about this Psalm to have the expositors tell us that it's difficult, and it is in some ways. Not because of the words themselves, the difficulty is to tie the verses together to understand some kind of meaningful flow. It's particularly true in the middle portion of the Psalm.

We're going to come to that later, verses 5, 6, and 7 are the difficult ones. But in my judgment, although those verses are somewhat difficult, the greatest difficulty in understanding and benefiting from this Psalm is not that, but rather that it's about prayer, and we have problems with prayer.

For most of us, prayer is difficult, and sometimes we even make efforts to avoid it. The proof of it is the difficulty we have in our own individual prayer lives. It's hard to sustain prayer. And in the fact, as I alluded to a moment ago, that prayer is disappearing from many evangelical worship services.

I won't repeat at length what I've said before, but I find as I travel around the country that in many services, there's hardly any prayer at all. And if you ask the reason for that, why are there no pastoral prayers anymore or even liturgical response prayers, the answer is, people today find prayer boring.

Well, that's a puzzle, isn't it? I'm sure that's right. People do find prayer boring, but why is that? People in earlier ages didn't find it to be so. Let me suggest some reasons.

First reason is that God's thoughts are not our thoughts. One problem we have in talking to God is that God is not like us. Isaiah acknowledges that in the 55th chapter, verse 8, where he says, quoting God, "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways." In the very next verse, "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."

Because we're not like God and don't know God well, we're uncertain what we should pray for. And when we do pray, we wonder whether we're really praying all right. Are we praying according to the will of God or not? That sort of undercuts our enthusiasm for the discipline.

Now, there's a second reason, and that is that we don't know our Bible. If we say, "Well, we are ignorant of what God is like," certainly the chief reason for that is that we don't know the Bible, which is where God has revealed himself. There are always aspects of God that we are never going to understand, chiefly because God is not like us, and his ways are not our ways, nor are his thoughts our thoughts, but many of his ways, and certainly a large enough collection of his thoughts to fill up a lifetime of study on our part, are in the Bible.

And because we don't know the Bible, we don't even know that which is to be known about God, and that also makes it difficult. Isn't that true? Isn't that one of our problems? I find that people who know the Bible well don't have nearly so much difficulty praying.

People who know the Bible pray and pray well. And if we don't pray, likely the cause chiefly will be that we don't really know or understand God's revelation.

Well, I have a third reason why I think we have difficulty with prayer, and it's that we don't feel in need of God's help. I think the other two reasons are valid ones. God is not like us, and we don't know the Bible.

But probably the chief reason is that somehow we think we can get along without God, and so we don't pray because we don't believe we need him. If we want proof for that, the proof is found in the fact that when we get into trouble, we do pray.

In other words, when we find ourselves in a situation where life is collapsing around us, relationships have gone sour, we don't know what direction to turn, or we're afraid of something, then we find ourselves thrown back on God. And the fact that we don't pray at other times is really proof that we feel self-sufficient.

We're going to get by all right, thank you all by ourselves, thank you, God, we'll get to you whenever we need you, but in the meantime, we don't bother to pray.

Now, in spite of all the power that he had and the authority that he possessed as king, David did not feel self-sufficient. All you have to do is read his Psalms to understand that. He knew he was in peril every single day, and so he prayed every single day, and he prayed powerfully.

And what his prayer in this Psalm, Psalm 141, does is teach us to pray powerfully and regularly as well.

Now, the first two verses are what I would call an invocation. That is a call to God to hear what the Psalmist is about to pray for. And since we're talking about worship and the place of prayer in worship, they are the starting place for true worship.

By definition, worship is praising God for who he is, and so in order to praise God, we have to address him. And that's what these verses do.

Now, what I want to suggest here is that the most important moments in our prayer life, and in our worship service, are the moments before we actually start. And that's because those moments are moments of preparation, when we settle our thoughts and remind ourselves that we're coming here to meet with God, or if we're praying in a quiet time of our own, that we're there to meet with God.

Our times with God, our worship and prayer times, are not like other times. They're not like the times we spend with our family or our friends or our coworkers. Those times are valuable. They have importance in and of themselves, but our worship and prayer times are not like that.

In the times of worship, we are here to meet with God, and so in order to worship, we have to be conscious that we're actually meeting with him. We have to focus our thoughts. We have to ask God to hear our prayers and be sure that we're actually praying to him and not merely going through some religious exercise.

That is exactly what David is pointing out in verse 2 of this Psalm. He refers to the various forms of worship that were practiced in the temple service of his day, the use of incense on the one hand, and the offering up of sacrifices, but he is relating each of those practices to genuine prayer and the devotion of the worshiper.

Now, incense is an image often used in the Bible for prayer. It rose up and filled the temple in great fragrant clouds, and then it became a symbol of prayer. In the book of Revelation, the saints are described as holding bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints, Revelation 5:8.

And so incense refers to prayer, and then as far as the sacrifices are concerned, in addition to pointing forward to the atoning death of Jesus Christ on the cross, which was yet to come, the sacrifices also were a means by which the worshiper was able to take a humble and contrite position before God. He didn't come with any righteousness of his own, but he came as a needy one, depending on the sacrifice.

The prophet Samuel told Saul on one occasion to obey is better than sacrifice and to heed is better than the fat of rams. Now, that was the insight of the Old Testament saints, and it's certainly what David is talking about here.

They realized that the essence of worship, regardless of the form it takes, is actually the devout and seeking spirit of the worshiper.

Now, we come to verses 3 through 7, which contains the substance of David's prayer. The things about which he was concerned and for which he's praying. Of these five verses, verses 3 and 4 are the clearest. I already said verses 5 through 7 are the difficult ones. So, I suppose the best place to start is with verses 3 and 4.

What David is asking God to do here is to set a guard over first his mouth, secondly his heart, and third his actions. Now, when he asked God to set a guard over him in these areas, what he's doing is asking God to keep him from transgressions or sin. He wants to live with a pure heart and a pure life before God.

That particularly fits the image of incense, which was mentioned in the previous verse, because everybody in Judaism understood that the incense that was used in the temple had to be prepared meticulously and to be absolutely pure. So David is saying, "I want my prayers to be like that, and if my prayers are going to be like that, then I'm asking you to set a guard over me that I might not sin in thought, word, or deed."

Now, he begins with his mouth. He asks God to guard his mouth so he won't speak sinfully or in a way that would harm other people.

Now, secondly, David is concerned about his heart. We say, "Where do harmful words come from?" Well, the answer is, they come from the heart. That's what Jesus said of the evil man, "Out of the overflow of his heart, his mouth speaks." So if our heart is corrupt, our speech is going to be corrupt too. But if our heart is pure, then our words will also be pure.

And we ask the question, "How can that be? How can we ever find a pure heart, because our hearts are not pure?" Jeremiah said, "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure." How do we find a pure heart? Well, the answer is, we can't find it from ourselves, but we find it from God, who alone is able to do heart transplants.

God is the great physician, isn't he? And not only is he able to do it, he has promised to do it for those who are his people. Ezekiel quoted God as saying, "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."

And then those well-known words of Jeremiah, talking about the new covenant. The very man who described our hearts as being deceitful above all things. Jeremiah wrote, "This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time," declares the Lord. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts, for I will forgive their wickedness and I will remember their sins no more."

The one who has received a new heart, which is a product of regeneration or the new birth, will begin to speak wholesome words and begin to act in a wholesome manner too.

And that's the third thing that David talks about. Talks about his mouth and his heart, and then thirdly, he talks about his actions. Now, he does it on the negative side, asking God to keep him from being drawn to what is evil or taking part in wicked deeds. It's what we pray for in the Lord's Prayer, isn't it, when we say, "Lead us not into temptation."

Now, David's prayer here is not merely that he might be kept from evil, it's also that he might be kept from the company of evildoers. So, he won't be tempted to sit down with them and to use his own language, "eat of their delicacies," verse 4.

This is like the two preceding Psalms. We've seen this now for several weeks in a row. David is concerned about the company he keeps, and he wants God to keep him from the company of those who are evil. I pointed out earlier, it's not because he thinks he's too good for them, but rather that he recognizes all those evil propensities in himself.

It's just not safe for him to be in such company, because he understands how easy it is to be led along in that kind of evil company. Now, David was concerned about that. That's surprising, isn't it? Because we think of David as being an exceedingly upright man.

But if David was concerned about it, the corruption of those who are evil in his own character, how much more should you and I be concerned about it? Shouldn't we also be praying, "Let not my heart be drawn to what is evil," or with real meaning, "Lead me not into temptation."

Derek Kidner, whom I've quoted often as one of the good commentators on the Psalms, says about this Psalm, "There is a puritan vigor and single-mindedness about this Psalm to put one in mind of Christian and Faithful at Vanity Fair from John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, whose prayer was, 'Turn my eyes away from beholding vanity,' and whose reply to the challenge, 'What will you buy?' was, 'We will buy the truth.'"

Now, we come to these problem verses, that is, 5 through 7. But I want to treat them briefly because in my judgment, the New International Version probably does as good a job as any in showing their connection with the rest of the Psalm and with each other. The NIV has done that by adding words a little bit along the way to kind of show the connection that they understand to be there.

The link between verse 5 and verse 4 seems to be that in verse 5, the Psalmist, having asked God to keep him from the allure of evil and evil persons, professes his preference for the friendship of the righteous, even if they reprove him.

Proverbs 27:6 says, "Wounds from a friend can be trusted." And so that's what he seems to be saying there. How about these next verses that begin to talk about people being thrown down from the cliffs and plowing up the ground and bones scattered at the mouth of the grave and so forth?

Franz Delitzsch, a conservative and very good commentator, tries to explain those by creating a situation or a context for the Psalm. He gets a meaning from the time when David was driven from Jerusalem because of Absalom's rebellion. In those days, David was cut off from the temple.

He was aware of his failures as a king. He welcomed reproof from friendly sources, and he prayed for the overthrow of those who had wrongly usurped his power. All of that might very well be reflected in these verses.

Now, the New International Version takes verse 7 as being spoken of the wicked who are destroyed or who will be destroyed. Their bones will be scattered. Delitzsch thinks that the words are actually spoken by David and his followers, with this kind of a meaning.

I quote him, "Assuming the very extreme, it is a look of hope into the future. Should his bones and the bones of his followers be even scattered about the mouth of Sheol, it would nevertheless be only as one is plowing furrows in the earth. They don't lie there in order that they may continue lying, but that they may rise up anew, as the seed that is sown sprouts up out of the unturned earth. We discern here," he says, "a hope of the resurrection."

Well, it's tempting to take that as the setting for the Psalm and go along with Delitzsch's proposed setting, but this extreme of Absalom's revolt isn't necessary to explain what David is saying here.

Certainly, he's talking about welcoming reproof from the righteous. That's what we should do at any time. We don't have to be driven from the kingdom in order to be sensitive to our need for good counsel. And it's also probably best to take David's words about people being thrown from the cliffs and bones being scattered as referring to the just end of people who were trying to do that to other people themselves.

In other words, it's saying here, in my judgment, exactly what David has been saying about those who practice evil in the preceding Psalms. You have it in Psalm 138, 139, and Psalm 140.

Now, in the very last stanza, verses 8 through 10, we are at the point where this prayer is finished. Or since we've been making the link between prayer and worship, this is the time when the worship ends. In other words, the service is over now.

We hear the benediction, we're about ready to go back into the world, and so we say to ourselves, "What should have happened to us as the result of the time we spend together worshipping God?"

What David suggests here is that having been with God and having prayed to God, we should leave with our eyes fixed upon God. In the world there are dangers. Snares have been set for the righteous by the wicked, traps by evildoers, but if our eyes are fixed on God, we'll be able to walk safely through these dangers and temptations. And furthermore, we might even be able to be some good in the world out there that certainly needs the gospel.

I've been reading in recent weeks a book by a woman named Marva Dawn on worship. It's called Reaching Out Without Dummying Down. That was the title of the book that attracted me to it. And there are several places in the book where she speaks, I think, rightly of worship being a subversive activity.

So the people of God come together, have a divine and renewed vision about what life is all about. And because they have their focus now rearranged, so they're not thinking the way the world thinks anymore, but have their eyes fixed on God, they're able to go out and actually be some good in the world that definitely needs them, whether it knows that or not.

Now, I referred to Pilgrim's Progress a moment ago, quoting one of the commentators. There's a scene from that same allegory by John Bunyan that has always struck me very forcibly. Pilgrim is making his way up a steep path by night toward the porter's lodge.

He comes to a place where two lions are chained by the path, one on each side. He doesn't know they're chained, and so he's afraid, and he's about to turn back when the porter calls out to him saying, "Fear not the lions, for they are chained and are placed there for the trial of faith, where it is, and for discovery of those that have none. Keep in the midst of the path, and no harm shall come to you."

So, hearing that encouragement, Pilgrim presses forward, keeping on the straight path by fixing his eyes on the porter and refusing to look at the lions that were lunging at him from the sides.

Now, that's the image David is painting. He's fixing his eyes on God as he makes his way through the dangers of this life.

The day is coming when Jesus will have destroyed those dangers. The author of Hebrews talks about it when he applies the words of Psalm 8 to Jesus. "You made him a little lower than the angels, you crowned him with glory and honor and put everything under his feet."

And yet he acknowledges in that passage, "As yet, we see not all things put under him, but," he says emphatically, "what we do see is Jesus."

And a little later on in the book, in the 12th chapter, he makes this application, "Let us then fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame and sat down on the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart."

That's where all true worship should end. Have you grown weary? Have you lost heart? Are you afraid of the dangers that are there in the world? Worship is meant to counter that, because as we come together and fix our eyes upon God, we're able to go out from the worship times renewed and different men and women. For the praise of his grace.

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