The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): Psalm 28 teaches us how to wait on the Lord and what we should be doing as we wait. Today on The Bible Study Hour with Dr. James Boice, David waits on God to rescue him and pleads with God not to count him among the wicked. All the while, David continues to praise and trust God, asking God to save his people, be their shepherd, and carry them forever.

Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. Today we continue our study of the Psalms. God has become silent in David's perspective, but David knows that God is still there and that he will faithfully keep his promises. If you have your Bible, turn to Psalm 28.

Dr. James Boice: Last Sunday we were studying Psalm 27, a psalm that's very well known. And we come to Psalm 28, which is not so well known. And yet there's a connection, and the connection is this: at the very end of Psalm 27, we saw David stressing because he repeats it twice over, that we're to wait for the Lord. Verse 14 is the verse: "Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord." That's good advice. We don't want to wait forever, of course. We expect God to answer. But the question is, while we're waiting for God to answer, what do we do?

Do we simply back off and say, "Well, God is not answering my prayer. Let's forget about it, maybe I'll come back to it a year from now or two years from now"? Do we let it go like that? Do we say God is sovereign, God will do what God will do? Or do we keep on praying? What we're supposed to do is keep on praying, and that brings us to this psalm because David obviously is doing that here. I'm sure whoever joined these psalms together to put them into the Psalter must have seen that connection, because you can't very well read verse 14 of Psalm 27—"Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord"—and then come to Psalm 28 and find him saying, "To you I call, O Lord my rock, do not turn a deaf ear to me" without recognizing that the two naturally go together.

Now, Jesus taught us much. You recall that in Luke 18, he told the story of a woman who had a cause, and a just one, but she lived in a town where justice was distributed by an unjust judge. Jesus said he didn't care for God or man, and certainly not for the laws of God or man. He didn't want to give the woman justice because she wasn't important, and I suppose she didn't have anything to bribe him with. Justice was often handled that way in antiquity; it's handled that way much today, still, unfortunately, even in our country. But he didn't care for her, and so he wasn't doing anything. Now, Jesus said she kept after him, and finally, this unjust judge said, "Even though I don't care for the laws of God or man, I'll hear this woman and see that she gets justice lest she bother me forever with her petitions."

Now, Jesus wasn't teaching that God's an unjust judge, of course. As a matter of fact, what he was teaching was the exact opposite. He was saying, "Look, if in a situation like this, a woman who has no other help anywhere keeps going to the judge, unjust as he is, because eventually she hopes that he'll hear her and give her justice, how much more is your Father in heaven, who is absolutely just, going to hear and answer the prayers of those who cry out to him?" He said God will see that his people get justice, and that quickly. And if you ask what that story is about, well, the answer is given at the very beginning because it said Jesus told them a parable to indicate that men ought always to pray and not to give up.

Now you see, that's what this psalm is indicating. I say not to give up because as you read it, particularly verse 1, it becomes evident that David's been praying for these things for some time. He says, "To you I call, O Lord my rock, do not turn a deaf ear to me; for if you remain silent, I will be like those who have gone down to the pit." When he says "remain silent," that implies that God has been silent for some time. Now think what's involved here. This is David, a man after God's own heart, the King of Israel, the one who's writing the psalms, inspired of God. And yet here's a man who confesses in his prayer that he has prayed for some time and God has not answered.

So, instead of saying, "Well, I'm just going to sit back and do nothing," he keeps praying. And that is the first lesson for us. Now, he has a good argument as he prays, and I hope you've noticed it. It's there in that verse that I've just read. "If you remain silent, I will be like those who have gone down to the pit." Now, the pit is Sheol, and it's one of the terms in the Old Testament that stands for hell. They didn't have a very fixed idea of what hell was. There were a number of terms. They all have different connotations, but nevertheless, that's what it's talking about: the afterlife. And when you read that, your first instinct is to say, "Well, what he's saying is, God, if you don't help me, I'm going to die."

Now, there are psalms that that would be an appropriate interpretation. There are psalms in which David is surrounded by enemies. He says, "They're pressing in on me by every hand, unless you come to my aid, I'm going to perish." That certainly means I'm going to die. And if this particular phrase was in that psalm or one of those psalms, you'd say that's what it means. But that's not what he's praying about here. He's not in danger of death. What he's praying about is that he won't be dragged away with the wicked and their evil schemes and that rather, on the contrary, God will judge the wicked.

So what does he really say? What he's saying is this: "God, if you don't speak to me, I'm going to be like those who are in Sheol." In other words, "If you don't speak to me, I'm going to be as if I were spiritually dead." Now, I wonder if you think about prayer that way. David is going to make his petition. This first section is an appeal to God to be heard, and it's urgent for that reason. And I wonder if one of the reasons why we're not more urgent in prayer and we don't take prayer seriously is we don't understand what David says there in that verse. At least we don't believe that it is true.

See, what David is saying is that if you don't speak to me, I'll be as good as dead. And if we really thought that, if we really believed that unless we hear the voice of God through Bible study, God speaking to us personally through Bible study as his Holy Spirit applies it to our heart, that we might as well be spiritually dead, why, if we really believed that, wouldn't we pray? Wouldn't we study the Bible? Wouldn't we be more godly men and women than we are? Let me put it in other terms using David's own image. He's talking about a pit. Let's think of it as a literal pit because that's what the word implies: Sheol is a pit. Suppose you're standing on the edge of a pit. You're about to fall in. You haven't fallen in yet, but you're about to fall in, and somebody is there next to you that's able to help you. Wouldn't you cry out for help?

And if the person didn't respond quickly, wouldn't you cry out again? And if they didn't answer immediately, wouldn't you cry out again? Of course you would. You would say, "I'm about to perish. Help me, help me, help me, help me." You'd keep it up until you got the help you needed. Well, if you don't keep praying, if you're not importuning God in prayer, persevering in prayer, either you don't know how desperate your situation is apart from his intervention and his speaking, or you have an exalted sense of your own ability to care for yourself. Isn't that true? What other possible explanation could there be? Now, that reminds us of something that Jesus said.

Jesus, after his baptism by John the Baptist, was driven out into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And the devil came to him. He had been fasting for 40 days; we're told he was hungry. And the first temptation of the devil was on that physical level. Jesus quoted from Deuteronomy chapter 8 verse 3. The devil said to him first, "If you're hungry, why don't you turn these stones to bread? You've just heard a voice from heaven saying you're the Son of God, so if you're the Son of God, you have the power; go ahead and do it." And Jesus quoted from Deuteronomy 8:3 to say, "It's written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God."

Now you see, that's exactly the point we have here. Jesus was teaching by his own response to Satan and by the way he acted under the temptation that he understood the principle that spiritual life is far more essential than physical life and that spiritual life comes from feeding upon the word of God. So what David is saying is that that is true, and I know it, and therefore I come to you as one who is as good as dead unless you hear me and respond to my prayer. Now there are a couple other things that ought to be seen about this. First of all, the attitude with which he comes. He doesn't come arrogantly.

He doesn't say, "Well, I'm the king, you have to hear me." He doesn't say, "I'm a righteous man, you have to hear me." He doesn't say, "I pray louder and longer than anybody else, you have to hear me." He doesn't say, "I give to the community chest" or whatever, "you have to hear me." But he says in verse 2, "Hear my cry for mercy as I call to you for help." That's his attitude. He comes for mercy. Now again and again in the Psalms we find phrases or stanzas that don't sound like that attitude to us. And we're going to find that next. The next stanza doesn't sound that way to us. But you have to bear in mind before you get to that that David has first of all come as one who needs mercy.

In other words, he's saying he's a sinner, and he has no standing before God, and the only thing he can possibly appeal to is the mercy of God. And you see, we have to come that way. This is instruction in prayer, and it's telling us how to get the things that we're going to pray for. And it says that's the way you have to come. So you and I have to come to God as sinners. That's why when we pray, one of the first things we ought to do, and when we talk about prayer and teach the nature of prayer, one of the first things we teach is that you have to confess your sin. And then after that, you can move on to thanksgiving and to supplication. So, remember that.

And then there's something else too, not only the attitude with which he comes, but the place to which he comes. Because the latter half of that second verse says, "I lift up my hands toward your most holy place." Now what is that? Well, the most holy place was the Holy of Holies, the innermost portion of the tabernacle. In this day, it was in the form of a tent, and that's where the Ark of the Covenant was. Now, the Ark of the Covenant was the place where the High Priest of Israel once a year, on the Day of Atonement, took the blood of an animal that had been sacrificed for the sin of the people and sprinkled it upon the mercy seat.

When I've talked about the meaning of propitiation, I've gone into the symbolism at length because the picture of the Ark, which symbolized the presence of God, over the Ark, which contained the laws, a picture of judgment, God looking down on the law which we have broken. And when the High Priest came once a year and sprinkled the shed blood upon the mercy seat, which was the covering of the Ark, that is between the symbolic presence of God and the law which we have broken, it was an indication that atonement had taken place. An innocent victim had died on the part of the one who was actually guilty. And so the love of God could go out to embrace and save the sinner.

Now that's what the Ark of the Covenant and the most holy place symbolized. So you see, when David prays for mercy and lifts up his hands toward the most holy place, what he's really saying is, "I come on the basis of the sacrifice." I don't come on the basis of any righteousness in myself; I have none. I'm pleading mercy, and the mercy is found there where the blood is shed. Now, I'm referring to a lot of stories that Jesus told or things Jesus said having to do with prayer because they illustrate or express in explicit language exactly what we have in the psalm. I've done it twice already. Here's another example. Jesus told the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector. The Pharisee who prayed thinking about himself, the exact opposite of what David is doing in this first stanza. And then the tax collector who was off at a distance and who prayed in quite a different vein.

He prayed, "God, have mercy on me a sinner." Now when I talked about that before, I pointed out that when the tax collector says "have mercy upon," the Greek verb there is actually the verb which in its noun form refers to the mercy seat. So what he was saying was "have mercy upon me on the basis of the shed blood." That's the way I come. And Jesus' judgment on that was that it was that man, that is the tax collector that everybody would look down on, who went home justified before God rather than the Pharisee that everyone looked up to and said, "There's a righteous man." Why? Because he came in that way.

We look at David and put him in one of the two categories. The Pharisee with all his righteousness, the tax collector who was despicable. We would say, "Well, David obviously fits the category of the righteous man." He was a man after God's own heart, a man of integrity. And yet that man, a man we would look up to, says, "I come to you, God, on the basis of your mercy, and I plead for you to hear me on the basis of the shed blood." And let me say that that's the only way anybody comes. If you're a tax collector, you have to come that way. Great sinner, you have to come that way. If you think upon yourself as a righteous person, a model member of your community, you have to come that way. Because you see, no matter how righteous you may consider yourself to be, you only consider yourself that because you're measuring yourself with other human beings.

But if you could only see something of the holiness and the grandeur and the righteousness of Almighty God, then you understand you have to come on the basis of the shed blood because it's as a sinner that you come. Well, there's a lot in those two verses, aren't there? This psalm is divided into four stanzas and there's a technical term for the way it's written; it's called dipodia. It really means stanzas of two verses each. And that's what we have here except for the second stanza to which we come now. The first stanza consist of verses 1 and 2, and then the second are verses 3 through 5. And there's a third stanza, 6 and 7, and a fourth stanza, 8 and 9. The third stanza, which has an extra verse, is the most important; it's the heart of the psalm because it contains the petition.

Now you see what's happened: first of all we have an appeal to God to hear the psalmist, and that's teaching us how we should come to God. Now we have the appeal itself, the petition. Our petition might be quite different. Those verses are something that we would substitute; we put something else in that concerns our own situation. But still we have to come the way David has explained we need to come in verses 1 and 2. But let's see what he says. What he's talking about here is the wicked, and I mentioned it earlier, and there are two things that he's saying. He doesn't want to be carried away with them to do evil; he knows a judgment is coming. And then secondly, he's praying for God to judge them. That's the first two of the three verses. And the third verse says he knows that God's going to do it.

Now, things like this in the Psalms create a problem for many people. This isn't the only place we have seen it, nor is it the only place we're going to see it. We already were looking at it in two psalms earlier, 6 and 7. And statements like this are going to occur in psalms later where David is praying for God's judgment upon wicked men and women. We're bothered by that because we say in our very laid-back culture, "Everybody ought to be free to do their own thing. You don't invoke the Almighty to judge people you don't like." And then secondly, and this is more to the point, as Christians we remember that Jesus set an example of forgiveness. Even when they were crucifying him, he said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." And when we hear him saying that, we recognize that's the pattern he sets for us. When people do wrong against us, we're not supposed to call down fire from heaven to destroy them; on the contrary, we're to pray for their forgiveness, we seek their salvation. That's what we are here in the world to do and to intercede for as Christians.

So we come to something like this in the Old Testament and we say, "Well, we don't understand it." Is that just something that we ought to throw out because it is, well, part of the Old Covenant? It's not a very safe way to treat the Bible. You know, if you do that, well, then you'll do it with other things. "I don't think this fits today, so out it goes." By the time you do that, you don't have much left. You don't want to treat it that way, but rather what you have to do is understand it. And I want to suggest some principles that we have to think of whenever we come to these passages. Let me say before I give them to you that it wouldn't have been necessary to do that in David's day. And the reason for that, quite obviously, is they just didn't think the way we think.

You see, we have a different perspective and the things are problematic for us, they obviously were not problematic for the psalmist. Otherwise, he would have explained them or would have said, "I hate to put it this way, but this is the reason I'm doing it," something like that. But he doesn't do it; it's just natural. So they didn't think the way we do, and we have to kind of fit into their thinking in order to understand that. Now here's the principles I'd suggest to guide us in the matter. First of all, when David prays the way he does here, he is not self-righteous. That's what bothers us the most. We say here's a man who says judge those evil people, and that's because he doesn't think he's evil himself. "They're bad, God, take care of them, but of course me and all like me, not very many of course, this little crowd of the righteous, but you spare us." That's the way it sounds to us, but that's not what David is saying and it's not what the psalm means.

Now why? Well, first of all, we have already seen him cry for mercy and come to God on the basis of the sacrifice; it's not a self-righteous man who does that. The Pharisee was self-righteous; he didn't come that way. Tax collector wasn't. David's coming like the tax collector; he's not doing that. But you see, even apart from what he's done in verse 2, you get that same picture in verses 3 through 5 because the very first thing he says in verse 3 is this: "Do not drag me away with the wicked, with those who do evil, who speak cordially with their neighbors but harbor malice in their hearts." Why would God possibly drag him away with the wicked if he was a self-righteous man? He's not like them, God would judge them, why would he possibly judge David? The only reason David is afraid of that and praying that God won't do that to him is that he recognizes the potential for sin in his heart.

You see, I was talking earlier when we were looking at one of these psalms and pointing out how David is very careful to say keep me separate from sinners. I don't want to associate with them. That doesn't mean, of course, that you have to dissociate yourself from anybody who's a sinner because everybody is, but it means particularly evil people. You ought not to be hanging around in that company, and it will be harmful. And what David recognizes is that if he does that—maybe his position as king would force him to do it. You see, you're in a position like that, you can't always choose who you have to associate with. And he's saying, "I recognize the potential for sin in my own heart, and if I am around these people—I don't want to be around them by choice, but maybe I have to be around them just by virtue of circumstances, the work I have to do—I recognize that I'm capable of the same thing. And if I do the same thing they do, I'm going to suffer the same consequences as they will."

And so his first petition, you see, is "God, don't let that happen to me," but save me from that. Not because he's self-righteous but because he recognizes how sinful he is. Remember when I was talking about that, we were looking at Psalm 26 and I referred to C.S. Lewis and the way he handled it. C.S. Lewis said the reason we don't want to associate with sinful people is not because we're better but because we're not good enough. Lord Jesus Christ didn't have any trouble associating with anybody because he wasn't tempted to do the things they were doing. He was always an influence for righteousness. But you and I generally are not that strong. And if God puts you in a position like that, he'd give you the strength to do it, but don't seek it out.

You see, and here's David saying he doesn't have the strength to seek it out. So, first of all, David is not self-righteous. Now, a second thing we have to realize when David says the things he does in these psalms and some other people say them too: that David particularly is not speaking as a private citizen, but rather he's the king of Israel and he's responsible for justice. He's a judge. You see, it's quite one thing for you and I to be offended by somebody and to say, "It's all right, I forgive you." Christians should forgive. I will not bring it up again. That is right. But if you're a judge, a Christian judge, you can't do that with other people. You have a case before you and an injustice has been done, you can't say to the offender, "Well, you know, I'm a Christian and a judge, and so, Christians is supposed to forgive, I forgive you." That's not your role; your role is to dispense justice.

And David had that role. You see, so when David is praying along these lines, you have to understand it in that context. He's saying, "I have a responsibility here and, God, I appeal to you to work in my life in the exercise of this responsibility so that evil will be judged and those who are doing the right might be vindicated." We know that he's talked about that in other psalms. Here's the third thing you have to remember: regardless of how we may feel about evildoers, and we should certainly pray for them and seek their salvation, evil itself should not prosper. We have a great tendency in our culture today to assume that evil does and has the right to. Our courts don't help us in this area. I think our courts often, frequently, break down in the administration of justice. And we sort of take that and say, "Well, maybe that's all right and does it really matter in the long run anyhow?"

Yes, it does. Evil ought not to prosper, and no Christian should be on the side of evil prospering. Now, that doesn't mean that you and I have the authority to take vengeance into our own hands. "Vengeance is mine, I will repay," sayeth the Lord. And he imparts a certain measure of that responsibility to civic figures who have that power. The state is explicitly given what Paul calls the power of the sword; it means the power of dispensing justice. The state is to be judged when it doesn't do that, and it's a sad thing in a society when the state is not maintaining justice. But we don't have the responsibility to do that. Nevertheless, you see, we mustn't favor the prospering of the evil. And that's why, among other things, when we pray as we do for our country and our city, we pray for those in those positions of authority. You see that evil not prosper and rather that the good be vindicated.

That leads me to the last thing to remember, and it is this: namely, that it is important for all, especially those who are looking on, that the right be vindicated. You see, if you have a society in which evil prospers, then people looking on, without any kind of Christian training or mooring or spiritual life within, will say, "Well, look, obviously the evil way to go is the way to go because crime pays, doesn't it?" And what David is saying is, if for no other reason than for the sake of those who are looking on, if for no other people than for the children, right should be vindicated and evil should be put down. Because you mustn't have a situation in society in which people say, "Well, it pays to be bad." Now, I am afraid that that's what's happening in our society.

We have got a culture which has been unable to maintain righteousness or to dispense justice, and as a result, a generation of young people are saying, "Look, it pays to do wrong." Our young people don't have the morality of the young people of a previous generation. I'm not glorifying a previous generation; they were sinners too. But our young people today, even from Christian homes, think nothing of lying, to give just a simple example. They don't mind lying; children of our church don't mind lying. They lie to you; we hear things that are said that we know aren't true. And in areas that are even worse than that, they think, "Well, for example, why not sell drugs? If you can get away with it, it's a way to make money. It's a whole lot easier than working." And so they see, as they think, that crime pays, and anybody who tries to live righteously is a fool and doesn't prosper.

Now, you see, when we read a psalm like this, we start off by saying, "Oh, that's quite a different day, and we live in a Christian age, and we're supposed to forgive our enemies." But when you begin to analyze the passage and see what David is praying for, you find that that has a lot of bearing on exactly where we are today. And one of the problems of where we are today is that we have forgotten some of the teaching of the Old Testament. Well, we may be able to pray: repay them for their deeds and for their evil work, repay them for what their hands have done and bring back upon them what they deserve. But before we do that, let's be sure we pray: do not drag me away with the wicked, with those who do evil. Don't let me fall into the same trap.

This is actually positive because David is so encouraged as he comes to God in prayer, knowing that God will do what he asks, even though in the first stanza, God has apparently been remaining silent. But he says in verse 5, "Since they show no regard for the works of the Lord and what his hands have done, he will tear them down and he'll never build them up again." It may not have come already, but it will come, says David. The day's coming. I think he expected to see it in his lifetime; he expected to see it work out in history, but even if it didn't happen then, it was going to happen at the final judgment, you see. Because regardless of appearances, regardless of what our culture tells us, regardless of what the evil people put forward by mass means of communication, it is nevertheless a moral universe, and in the final judgment, evil will be judged and right will be vindicated because a judge of all the earth does right.

Now we turn to stanza 3, and what we have there is thanksgiving, and great thanksgiving. It's really a joy to come to this portion of the psalm and see how David is crying and say, "Oh my, what a difference there is here between verses 6 and 7 and verses 1 and 2." You see, verses 1 and 2 say, "Hear me, Lord, why are you silent? I need an answer." Now he says God has answered. Look, verse 6: "Praise be to the Lord, for he has heard my cry for mercy." It's what he mentioned in verse 2. Verse 7: "The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him and I am helped. My heart leaps for joy and I will give thanks to him in song." I think he literally was leaping when he said it.

Look at all those phrases that have to do with thanksgiving. You've got a past, present, and a future there, don't you? He has heard my cry, I am helped and therefore am expressing thanks, and at the very end, I will give thanks to him in song. I'm going to keep on doing it. Isn't that wonderful? I suppose the lesson for us at that point is to be thankful because often we are not. You see, we have lots of lessons to learn about prayer. One of them is perseverance, and what we should pray for and how we should pray, and come, and all of that. But certainly a lesson we need to learn about prayer is being thankful. I'm telling these stories from Christ's ministry. Remember the time, Luke tells about it, when ten lepers were outside of a city and Jesus met them? They cried for mercy, he healed them, he sent them away to the priests to have a formal certification of their cleansing as the Old Testament law required.

And then after a short while, one of them, who was a Samaritan—that is, not even a full-blooded Jew—came back to thank him. And Jesus' words were, "Were not ten cleansed? And where are the nine? Is only this one returned to thank God and him a foreigner?" I'm afraid that if the truth were told in most of our lives, when we receive answers to our prayers, we would fall in the category of the nine and not the one. Now, you see, it's hard for us to persevere in prayer, but sometimes we do it. If something is on our heart that weighs upon us enough for us really to keep praying about it, we sometimes really do persevere in prayer. But then when we get the answer, it's very easy just to say "Fine" and we go on and we don't really thank God.

Well, you come to the last stanza, and this is quite different. There's even a sense in which, if you're looking at it in a purely literary way, you would say it doesn't fit. First part of the psalm is all in the first person; David is praying as an individual. And the three stanzas follow one upon the other. He appeals to God to hear him, he expresses his prayer, and then he thanks God for having heard him. That's where it would normally end. And now in verse 8, you find him suddenly changing the tone and speaking not as an individual now but on behalf of the people. And what he says is, "The Lord is the strength of his people, a fortress of salvation for his anointed ones. Save your people and bless your inheritance; be their shepherd and carry them forever."

As you can imagine, the scholars say, "Well, it just doesn't belong; it's tacked on." But it does belong if you remember that this is David the King praying. And it's quite appropriate for the king, having prayed first of all for himself in terms of his own responsibility, to pray for the people over whom God had made him an undershepherd, you see. And what he's saying is this: he's saying, "I prayed for myself and you have heard me, now I pray for my people in exactly the same way." Some of the terms that occur earlier occur here. You see, he has just said in verse 7, "The Lord is my strength." Now in verse 8, he says, "The Lord is the strength of his people." So what he has prayed for himself and found to be true, he now prays for others.

And aren't we told to do that? Isn't that what the Lord's Prayer is all about? It's not written I, me, my, but it's, "Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses and lead us not into temptation." You see, prayer not just for ourselves but prayer for other people. And if you need a further example of that, you have the Lord's own prayer, prayer down not by teaching but by example, recorded in John 17 that follows exactly the pattern of Psalm 28. The Lord beginning with prayer for himself: he glorified God on earth, now he prays to be glorified with that glory he had with him in heaven before he came to earth. But then having uttered that prayer and having been heard, he begins to pray for his disciples, and after that, as he says explicitly in the prayer, for the many who are going to believe on me through your word. You see, and in saying that, he was praying for us because we're part of the church.

Now if Jesus did that, we're to do it too. First of all, you come to God recognizing you're a sinner, and secondly, you come on the basis of the sacrifice provided, which we know now to be the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the Holy One of God who died for us. And then boldly praying for righteousness, thanking God for what he does, and not forgetting at the same time also to pray for other people. Let's pray.

Our Father, we have all received many answers to prayer, and it is true that we forget about them, and so we go through periods in our lives when we find ourselves feeling and sometimes even saying, "Well, God isn't answering me," when in point of fact you have and you've done it again and again. And it's because we've forgotten to thank you. And then there are times when we pray as David was praying here, where we pray for a certain thing for a long while and you really are not answering. Your times are not our times, and you don't always do things according to our timetable—usually not. And in situations like that, we need to learn to keep on praying. So Father, help us to do that and as we pray, to pray for others so that by our prayers, as we demonstrate in that expression of our thoughts and hearts before you, to demonstrate what is actually the case: that our help is in you alone. And if we don't find help there, we are as those who go down to the pit. And so hear us, Father, and answer and bless us for your own sake and as an expression of your mercy. For Jesus' sake, amen.

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