Hear My Cry, Oh God!

And Lord, we pray for them. We pray for your grace to be upon us. Give us, I pray, the blessing and the grace that we need to be in prayer for one another. And to pray faithfully and to pray in faith and diligently. And Lord, we pray that you would allow us, as we sing, to see your winning spiritual victories among us. And so Lord, we just look to you now, especially as we look at this psalm, encourage us and teach us, help us to see the truths of these things plainly and to be strengthened by them.

In Jesus’ name, amen. All right, Psalm 61. Notice what I want to, I want to draw your attention to something a little bit different, not directly related to what it says in verse one, but I do want to spend just a minute thinking about verse number one. You know, when you read the Psalms, as you’ve seen, we’re in Psalm 61 of the study, so we’re a little past a third of the way through the Psalms.

And so if you’ve seen things repeat, you know, in various Psalms, and we’ve talked about that to some degree or another, why those things repeat. But verse one is an example of a oft repeated feature in the Psalms that you see. When David says, hear my cry, O God, attend unto my prayer. So what David is doing is, of course, many of the Psalms are prayers of David.

But what you often see in these prayers of David is David takes a moment and asks God to hear him. He takes a moment and asks God to bow his ear and to attend unto his prayer. So obviously, you know, we think, well, he’s obviously praying. So kind of implied in that is this idea that God’s going to hear us. But what he’s doing is he’s taking, he’s going that extra step and asking God to hear.

And he does this a lot of times. It’s actually very, very common in the Psalms, many, probably several dozen times in the Psalms that David specifically asks God before he gets into what he’s praying, he asks God to hear him. And that’s probably something you’ve done as well. Not only you’ve prayed about things, of course, you’ve talked to God about different things, and you’ve had requests that you’ve given him.

But has there been a time in your life when you’ve asked God to hear you? Why? Why would you ask God to hear you? Well, obviously, because you’re not just praying to pray. You’re praying because you want God to hear you. And so you feel maybe at those times when you feel especially intent, especially needy, or you have an especially heavy burden, you might go that extra step and say, Lord, please hear me.

Please hear me. And this is just a few examples of this. Psalm 18 verse 6 says this, In my distress I called upon God and cried unto my God. He heard my voice out of his temple and my cry came before him even into his ears. Again, that focus being on not that he prayed, but that he was heard. Psalm 34 verse 17 says this, The righteous cry and the Lord heareth and delivereth them out of all their troubles.

The righteous cry and the Lord heareth and delivereth them. So you have kind of the three parts. You have the prayer, the righteous cry. You have God hearing, number two, and then God doing, number three, which is what it’s all about, which I’ll get to that in a minute. Psalm 86 verse 1 says this, Bow down thine ear, O Lord, and hear me. Hear me, for I am poor and needy.

And then Psalm 130 verse number two, Lord, hear my voice. Let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. Now when we read verses like this in the Psalms, it reminds, at least it reminded me of this question.

Does it actually matter that God hears us when we pray? Because David’s asking not just his request, whatever it might be, David’s asking additionally for God to hear him. So the question I thought is, does it matter that God actually hears us? When we read these verses, let me ask you this further. Do you think David would have been content to pray and not have God hear him?

Do you think that would have satisfied him? No, it wouldn’t have because he specifically asked God to hear him. In other words, it’s not enough that David is praying. He really does want God to do the thing that he’s asking to hear him and to do it. For God to hear is one thing. So in the process of our prayer, you have the actual prayer, but that must come out of a heart that is right with God and righteous before God.

That’s what we read here, the righteous cry and the Lord hear it. So you have the heart and the life of the prayer. That’s part one. You have God hearing, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to get the thing you ask in every case because that depends on several reasons. The will of God, time, and various other factors that we know scripturally affect answers to prayer.

And then you have the third thing, which is God actually doing the thing that we ask. Or maybe we should say a version of the thing that we ask because often the Lord gives us a version of what we ask, although not exactly what we ask, which I think that says something about our prayers, right? That is, they aren’t always on target.

But the important thing I want you to see about verse number one, about the fact that David is asking God to hear him specifically, is it’s the reminder that prayer is not just for prayer’s sake. When we pray, we do not, we should not just pray for the sake of prayer. Now, what do I mean by that? That sounds a little odd to say, and it sounds a little odd for my own ears to hear.

How many of you have ever prayed to feel better? Right? You felt down, and maybe you did not even really have a specific request. Maybe you didn’t have a clearly articulated request. Maybe you didn’t even know exactly what you wanted. Maybe you didn’t know the right answer, but you felt down. Maybe when a loved one died. I know I can remember an example in my life when a loved one passed away. There’s nothing that could be done about that.

And you know, I just wanted to talk to God to feel better about it, right? And you know, that’s valid. That’s valid. That’s okay to talk to God to make yourself feel better. In other words, what I’m trying to say is there is an aspect of prayer that is itself helpful and therapeutic to the person who’s praying, right? I mean, consider Philippians 4 verses 6 and 7.

You’re familiar with these verses, so I’ll just read them to you. Philippians 4, 6 through 7. Actually, I’ll turn there. I thought I had written them down, but if you want to turn there, you can. I’ll just take a minute to turn there and read them. Philippians chapter 4 verse 6 says this, Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.

And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. So you bring your requests to God when you’re anxious, when you’re worried. That’s what verse 6 says. And it says the peace of God that passes understanding will keep your hearts and minds. Do you know what you do not see in verse 6 and 7? You do not see God hearing or answering you.

It does not say in either verse 6 or 7 that the peace comes by means of the answer that you have requested. In other words, what I’m saying is that the prayer itself, through praying, God can give you peace by praying. God gives you peace attached to your prayer. So this idea that in Philippians 4, it describes the effect of prayer upon the prayer. God promises his peace upon us when we pray the prayer of anxiety and the prayer of carefulness.

Do you see that? In other words, all I’m trying to say is there’s no answer in verses 6 and 7. So you pray because you’re worried in hopes that God will give you peace through that, even though the issue is not resolved, even though things aren’t better necessarily.

Although I’m about to say something that might contradict this, I don’t want to diminish the fact that to a believer, to a child of God, prayer itself is helpful. Right? Before you can get to the answer, prayer itself has power to help. And I think that’s something that believers, Christians have used too little of. It is a benefit, a blessing, a feature of our Christian life, an opportunity we have that we too little make use of is talking to God and pouring out our heart to God for the effect of that pouring out.

It could be that before you even get to the answer, which is often all we’re concerned about, we want God to fix the thing, right? But it could be that God wants to heal and help us before the answer ever comes, before we even get to that part by means of our pouring our heart out to God and the help that that brings us. See what I’m saying? He wants to help us then before we even get to the answer. But there is one thing I want to kind of, I want to point out with this in verse number one, is that it does matter that God hears us. Prayer is not, even though there is help in the act of prayer itself, that is not the sum total of it. Prayer, we don’t pray simply because it makes us feel better. That’s not like the sum total of why we pray. We don’t pray simply for the benefit of the religious exercise of prayer or simply the benefit of how it makes us feel better, although it might at times in certain cases, right? That was as we just read.

Prayer is about God hearing us. Prayer is more than just our feeling better, but prayer is about God bowing his ear, hearing our requests, and granting the thing by his goodness that we have asked him. That’s what it is about. And there’s other effects as well, but that’s the core, that’s the essence. But think about how prayer is described by the world. Prayer is often described by the world in terms of its self-help benefit, right? Because this idea that the world looks at the idea that you literally bow your head or kneel down and close your eyes and speak words into the air, and you know, the man upstairs or however the world might describe God, the unseen, almighty God, that the man upstairs somehow is paying attention to little old you and is hearing you and is going to actually do something in response to you, to your specific and individual prayer request. Honestly, I think most of the world, they might give lip service to that idea that, oh yeah, yeah, I think I believe God answers prayer. But I think most people don’t believe that.

But I think most people don’t believe that. I think most people think that you pray for you, to put it plainly. You pray as a salve you put on your heart because it makes you feel better. So sometimes they’ll say, even in psychological circles, they’ll say, you do what helps you. If doing yoga helps you, then do yoga. If running a marathon helps you or going to the gym helps you, then you do you. Or in your case, if praying helps you, then pray. You know, because after all, prayer does help some people. But what is the focus all on in that? It’s not on verse one of this psalm. It’s not even in consideration whether God is hearing or doing. It’s for me.

The concentration is upon the act of prayer, not upon the prayer answering and grace giving God who hears. Now I hope that that’s bringing into more clarity why it matters that David said, hear me, attend to my prayer. David was not praying just to feel better. David wanted God to act.

David wanted God to act. After all, a person could pray to an idol or some false God and have the same effect. Now think about it. There are many people who do not know God, who call upon God and God or some false God and feel better. Probably for the same reason. This kind of catharsis, right? This kind of letting it all out, which is kind of what they do in therapy, right? It’s kind of you know, let it all out. You know, we’re all human beings and we all deal with the same emotions and stuff, but God has provided a way for us to do that. But that’s not all it’s about.

Prayer is not just a form of self-help or therapy to the Christian. It matters that God hears us. It matters. If you’re praying into the air, you might feel better. I might feel better about it, but in the end, it’s vain. If God doesn’t hear us, it’s vain because that’s what it’s all about. So the question is, does it trouble us? Think about it. Really think about this. Think about this.

Does it trouble us as a believer, as a saint of God, if God never does actually give us the things that we call upon him for? Think about it. When’s the last time you had a specific prayer request answered in undeniable terms? That matters. That matters. And maybe if we haven’t seen that in a while, maybe what we need to do is we need to borrow the language of David and say, Lord, hear my cry. Attend unto my prayer. Show yourself able to hear an answer in undeniable ways.

Does it trouble us at all if God does not show us that he has heard us? I mean, maybe I’m the only one in the room, but I want to know God hears me. I believe God created the world in six days. I agree. I believe that God, as we saw as we as we studied in Sunday school, God is as immense as the 93 billion light years that supposedly comprise the observable universe, that God is great. He is massive and God is powerful. And certainly if he is powerful, he can do the little old thing I ask him if I ask him in the right way. Right? We should want to see God answer our prayers. It should be more than just self-help. Amen? It should be. It should be. Now let’s go to verse number two and verse number three. I’ll read them kind of together. From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee. When my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

For thou has been a shelter for me and a strong tower from the enemy. David in verses two and three, he uses several kind of analogies. Boom, boom, boom. He does this a lot. He uses several analogies and they’re not perfectly spelled out, but here’s the analogies. If you notice in verse number two, he says, from the end of the earth will I cry unto thee when my heart is overwhelmed. So the idea of being overwhelmed, he says, lead me to the rock that is higher than I. You know, in Cambodia we have pictures. I wish I had some way to show you these pictures just to give you some visual interest so you don’t have to stare at me. But in Cambodia in a place called Gia Lia, which was a village that was on one of the main roads, one of the national roads, there was a rock. And when I say rock, I mean rock. Some of our kids, we hiked Table Rock the other day.

Now it wasn’t quite as big as Table Rock, but Table Rock’s not just one rock, okay, just to be honest with you. It’s not just one rock. It looks like it’s more than one. Well, we hiked Table Rock and as you go up the trail that goes up to the summit of Table Rock, there are a number of places where there are large rocks to the tune of 20 feet high, 20 feet, maybe 40 feet in diameter, if you were to kind of lay it out. You probably have been up there and seen them. I mean they’re big. I mean they’re as big as the inside of this building kind of thing. They’re big. And this building is only about 18 feet tall to the ceiling. And so there’s some massive rocks, but the one I’m referring to in Cambodia, Gia Lea, was big, like big, big, way bigger than that. And it was just all alone by itself in the middle of rice fields, like along the road. They put the road right beside it. But this rock was huge, probably 50, 60 feet tall and just one large rock. And when I think of the rock, when I read about the rock, I think of that rock because we passed it so often. I climbed it one time. I got some pictures on top of it. And notice though, he says, when my heart is overwhelmed.

So the idea is this, that David describes in these analogies, David describes God as his rock when the floods of trouble have engulfed him. This idea of overwhelmed. You know, in other words, the flood has washed over you. Man, how many of you have felt like that before in your life? You felt like you were just completely overwhelmed with whatever was happening. Remember, listen, this is the heart of the Bible where David’s talking about how he feels in his heart. I know, and I know that you know what it means to be overwhelmed by something. But when the floods, listen, when there’s a flood, you think of Helene, you think of, we mentioned the tsunami on Sunday, when there’s a flood, what do you look for? You look for high ground, right? But not only high ground, you look for high ground that is stable. And that is exactly what the rock is describing.

Lead me to the rock. That means it’s stable. It’s not going to be washed away by the flood that is overwhelming me. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I. And if I climb up onto that rock, I’ll be firm and I’ll be safe and I’ll be out of the flood. And so you can see this idea, this answer to trouble. Notice God is the rock and God is the answer to the trouble. Everybody get that?

That’s the key. Look at the second analogies in verse three, for thou hast been a shelter for me. What is a shelter for? What does that keep you out of? The elements, the storm, right? And many times in the Psalms, David calls God his shelter from the storm. We sing songs about that. The idea is you’re in the rain like we’re about to have tonight. You’re in the rain, you’re in the storms. You don’t want to be out in that. You want to find a place of refuge where you’ll be dry and you’ll be out of the elements. God is that, right? The storm, like trouble, like the flood I mentioned a minute ago.

And then the third one is verse three as well. It says, and a strong tower from the enemy. So David describes God as his strong tower while the enemy is assaulting him. So you have, these are all analogies that are describing basically the same thing, which David is troubled. He’s overwhelmed by a flood. He’s in a storm of difficulty and hardship. His enemies surround him and he’s in every case, whether it’s the rock you climb up onto, whether it’s the shelter you go up to, whether it’s the shelter you go up under, whether it is a tower where you go for defense.

In every case, the thing I want you to see, and this is the key, the thing I want you to see is that God is the answer. God himself. You see that?

Now, I was having a conversation with, I had lunch with Sam. Of course Sam’s my son-in-law, but I had lunch with Sam and Devin after evangelism last Saturday. And during our conversation, some of these things came up that I’m about to mention to you. When you study missions, like missiology, they call it, the study of the philosophy of missions, what you learn often is when you study religion as it relates to missions, you learn about something called high religion and low religion. And that’s just not something we, it’s kind of a philosophical thing dealing with missions. And when we say high religion, what we’re referring to is what we all think of as religion. Church buildings, festivals, holidays. We think of priests and monks and things like that. We think of all the outward things that you would see and relate to religion. Does everybody understand what I mean by high religion? So high religion is usually going to be Christianity, Catholicism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, or Hinduism. Those are the majors, but there are some others. But that’s the face. That’s the main thing. In other words, every year at certain times of the year, there’s going to be certain things you do, whether you’re a Muslim like Ramadan, or whether you’re a Buddhist, or whether you’re a Catholic, or whatever.

There’s certain times of the year you’re going to do certain things because that’s the ritual of that religion. And really, biblical Christianity has some elements of that. In other words, we have we have the Lord’s Supper that we do from time to time. That is a visual part of our faith. We have baptism. Those are the ordinances of the church. We have a church building where we meet. We meet every week. Those are part of high religion. What is categorized as high religion. Okay, everybody on the same page. Now low religion. Low religion deals with daily life. Like, low religion tries to answer the question of what do you do when someone is sick? What do you do when there’s a tragedy? How do you act? Where do you turn? What do you do when you have daily needs or you have financial needs? In other words, low religion deals with kind of the nitty gritty daily grind of what it means to be a person and all the things that all of us deal with. And everybody all over the world deals with the same thing. And what you might not know though is in countries that have high religion, they also have low religion and oftentimes they’re not the same.

You say what? What? Yeah. Did you know you’ve heard of Islam, of course. Islam is the high religion. Have you heard of folk Islam? In fact, in Cambodia they practice Islam. You’ll see mosques with the crescent and all of that. But they also have folk Islam and the practitioners of folk Islam are the ones who are known as the best or worst witch doctors. They’re Muslim. Muslim witch doctors. You know why? You know why you go to a witch doctor? Because your kid is sick.

You know why you go to a witch doctor? Because you need him to tell you what to do and when your child should get married. You know why you go to a witch doctor? Because you’re having financial trouble and you really want to know why this is happening to you and maybe you can get that you can do something about it. You see that kind of daily grind and that they’re separated even though that’s not really a part of Islam. And that’s true in Catholic countries, especially Mexico. They have, if you’ve been to Mexico, you can see shrines, the things that are not related at all to Catholicism, but yet they’re there and people give homage to it.

And in Cambodia where they practice Buddhism, you have all the Buddhist monks and you have the temples and all that, the holidays and all of those things, but you on a daily basis, the Cambodian people are people who worship their ancestors. They give little offerings of fruit and they burn incense to their ancestors. Why do they do that? They don’t do it because it’s prescribed by Buddhism. In fact, Buddhism doesn’t even acknowledge that. They do it because that’s what gives them good luck day after day, day by day. It keeps them from evil and gives them good sales at their restaurant or at their shop and those kinds of daily grinds. It helps their child when they’re sick. That’s what they think. So high religion and low religion.

Now there’s somewhere I’m going with this, so hang tight. I promise because I’m about done. When you think of low religion, the things that people do, I’m talking Americans, but not just Americans, people all over the world, but this includes us. We do this too.

Things that you do when you’re faced with trouble or you want to be well or successful. Think about this. People go somewhere and light candles. Sometimes it’ll be in a church. Sometimes people pray to saints because you want, there’s patron saints for certain things that you want. They’re attached to those things that you want. You can do chants or repeat prayers in some religions. In some religions such as Islam, you can wear amulets. In Cambodia, they would wear, especially soldiers would wear more tusks that were supposed to ward off the bullets when they were in combat.

You could recite verses of the Koran or the Mormons believe in holy underwear and I’m not making this up. They believe it keeps temptation away from them. That is the real thing. Look it up. Some people burn incense to their ancestors as I mentioned or give offerings of food or go to a fortune teller to ask for guidance. People do that here. They just call the number. It used to be 1-900 or whatever, but now it’s on the internet. I guess I don’t know. That’s not something I’m real familiar with. Some people put icons or statues or little bottles of holy water in and around their house. Have you ever seen that? Some people take crosses and put it above their door or in the hospital room. Some people of the more Protestant flavor will open Bibles and lay them around the house like it does something or they’ll use holy water or do the sign of the cross or maybe when they’re looking for direction, they’ll take a Bible and they’ll just fling it open and stick their finger on it and hope for direction. Sometimes people will, when bad things happen, even though they’re just natural things that happen, there’s a flat tire or my car is putting out white smoke or my transmission won’t shift out of third gear or whatever, the devil’s doing it.

You miss the devil. You know what that is? It deals with the daily grind. It’s the daily grind. It really has nothing to do with the Bible, nothing to do with God. It’s the way we deal with things, humanity. People have developed ways to deal with the daily problems of life.

Here’s what I want you to see though, and we’re done. If you just check out the video, you’ll see that I’ve got a lot of stuff to talk about. If you just put your eyes on that Psalm again, if you will, Psalm 61, you thought I was done, didn’t you? I tricked you. So we have, we try to follow the scripture. This is why we do the Lord’s Supper and baptism and we have weekly church meetings, right? We preach, we sing. These are biblical things. We do it because the Bible says to do it. But how do we do it? We do it because but how do we deal with trouble, illness, financial loss? How do we deal with the grind of the daily things? Of course, we know we go to church, we baptize, we give our offering.

We do all that stuff, but how do you deal with the daily grind? What is our low religion that deals with those things? And the answer is in Psalm 61, and it’s always been this answer.

It’s this, from the end of the earth will I cry unto thee when my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the rock that is higher than I, for thou has been a shelter for me and a strong tower from the enemy. You know what David is describing? The troubles of the daily grind, the troubles of daily life. He’s not talking about temple worship and sacrifices and the priesthood and all the things that were the high religion of his day. He’s talking about the daily stuff.

What is the answer to the Christian? What is the answer to that stuff? We don’t have a different answer. It’s the same answer. The God who is sufficient for the big stuff is the one who is sufficient for the daily stuff. He’s sufficient when you have trouble in your home, you have financial trouble. He is sufficient when you have health trouble. He is sufficient when you need direction. He is sufficient when people are against you. He’s sufficient in everything, no matter big thing, little thing, life-changing thing or daily thing. That’s why I want you to see God is the answer. He is the shelter. He is the rock. He is the high tower. He is all we need. We don’t have to look to saints. He is all we need. We don’t need holy water or Bibles laying open. Listen, if you put Bibles laying open, you don’t need to look to saints.

Listen, if you put Bibles and crossings, that does nothing. That does nothing. What you need is God. You need the Lord in your life. All those other things are kind of the superstitions, what they really are. But see, God himself is the answer to all of those things. Flee to him. Run to him. That’s what I think part of what the Scripture means when it says God is all in all.

He is everything to us. Whatever we need, He is that. Let’s pray.