Psalm 5 - What it Means to Have a Relationship with God
Summer in the Psalms • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 33:32
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· 7,104 views1 Samuel and the book of Acts describe David as a man after God's heart. He had a genuine relationship with God. If you've been around a Gospel-preaching church for long, you may have heard the phrase, "it's not about religion, it's about having a relationship with God." Psalm 5 gives us a glimpse into the reality of that phrase through the prayer of David. This Sunday we'll explore what it means to have that kind of relationship with the Lord.
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Throughout the first, second, third, and fourth Psalms, you will have noticed that the subject is a contrast between the position, the character, and the prospects of the righteous and of the wicked. In this Psalm you will note the same thing.
But as I was studying and praying about how to approach this psalm, a persistent aspect of the contrast between the righteous and the wicked stands out - relationship with God.
I believe that as we read and study this psalm and see David’s prayer to God, we’ll come to better understand what it means to be in a right relationship with him. Remember Psalm 1:6?
6 for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
We said in Psalm 1’s sermon that this knowledge of God was more than an objective knowing - it was a subjective, loving covenantal relationship being pictured.
So my goal today is to help us learn more about our relationship with God through David’s prayerful psalm.
So let’s stand in honor of the reading of God’s Word.
To the choirmaster: for the flutes. A Psalm of David.
1 Give ear to my words, O Lord; consider my groaning.
2 Give attention to the sound of my cry, my King and my God, for to you do I pray.
3 O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.
4 For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you.
5 The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers.
6 You destroy those who speak lies; the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
7 But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house. I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you.
8 Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies; make your way straight before me.
9 For there is no truth in their mouth; their inmost self is destruction; their throat is an open grave; they flatter with their tongue.
10 Make them bear their guilt, O God; let them fall by their own counsels; because of the abundance of their transgressions cast them out, for they have rebelled against you.
11 But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy, and spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may exult in you.
12 For you bless the righteous, O Lord; you cover him with favor as with a shield.
Psalm 5 teaches us that a relationship with God exists because God knows and loves us and in response we know God truly and love God duly.
So let’s look at each of those four aspects of that statement closely. First I said that God knows us.
1) God knows us.
1) God knows us.
How is it that he demonstrates his intimate knowledge of us in this Psalm? Well first, he
a) He hears our words.
a) He hears our words.
1 Give ear to my words, O Lord; consider my groaning.
Hebrew - MY WORDS, give them hearing = awkward. Importance of USING YOUR WORDS
How often do we go and tell everyone else about our problems and never share them with God?!
doesn’t suffice in any relationship to be cagey about what’s going on - people who know and love you want to hear from you.
b) He understands our groans and cries.
b) He understands our groans and cries.
v1 - consider my groaning
When things are really bad - we groan
Several people with back problems
But he also knows the sound of our cry
2 Give attention to the sound of my cry, my King and my God, for to you do I pray.
Mother knows her child’s cry!
God knows us so well. Scripture tells us that the Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. I find that so extraordinarily comforting that God knows me so well that - even when I can’t express it just right - the Spirit himself is pleading on my behalf with groans.
God knows us intimately.
But notice also that David knows God intimately! So the second aspect of having a relationship with God is that we KNOW God.
2) We know God.
2) We know God.
in verse 2, David calls him “My King and My God.”
a) He is our king and our God.
a) He is our king and our God.
Personal pronouns of the psalms - think Psalm 23!! Do you know God this way? This is what we mean when we say “have a relationship with God.” Is he YOUR God? Are you His child?
12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,
Spurgeon calls it the pith and marrow of his plea in prayer.
We are not aliens to God, we belong to his rule and reign - he is our king, and the king will hear the pleas of his people.
But secondly, because David knows God so well, he also knows that when he lays his requests before God, he can depend on a response!
b) He is dependable.
b) He is dependable.
3 O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.
Notice that David doesn’t just pray this prayer in the morning and then go away and forget he even had the conversation. He knows God is a God of power and able to fully and faithfully respond to his requests, and so he waits with EXPECTANCY for his dependable God to respond!
– Spurgeon said, “How can we expect the Lord to open the windows of his grace, and pour us out a blessing, if we will not open the windows of expectation and look up for the promised favour? Let holy preparation link hands with patient expectation, and we shall have far larger answers to our prayers.”
Do you know God this way? Are you the kind of person who is always on the lookout for how God will respond to your prayers? We can all learn here.
The third thing David’s prayer teaches us about our relationship to God, is that we must must know God’s holiness and his justice if we are to know him in all of his glory. He says in verse 4-6
c) He is holy.
c) He is holy.
4 For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you.
5 The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers.
6 You destroy those who speak lies; the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
climactic parallelism (like stairsteps)...
David very clearly understands that not only does God hate evil, he cannot even have evil in his presence.
Have you ever been in a so-called relationship where the person is only interested in what they can get from you? It’s a tragic thing when people only want to relate to God when it is to their benefit, but that is not a real relationship is it?
To know God is to know all of God, and you cannot be in a relationship with God if you don’t understand his complete hatred of sin. But even more than that, David also knows that God must punish sin. He is a just God as well. Look at v9-10.
d) He is just.
d) He is just.
9 For there is no truth in their mouth; their inmost self is destruction; their throat is an open grave; they flatter with their tongue.
10 Make them bear their guilt, O God; let them fall by their own counsels; because of the abundance of their transgressions cast them out, for they have rebelled against you.
Notice that David pinpoints the reality of all sin - a rebellion against God himself. David’s enemies were not in fact railing against him, they were rebelling against God himself!
Do you hear the incredibly vivid depiction of the way they sin with their lips?
Aside for 2020: Words matter.
Brain exercise -> warning I’m tricking you. Think of the individual in your mind right now that is the most destructive person with their words - either on social media or in person. Got it? Now don’t say it, just think it. Ok, hold that thought.
In this context, David is recognizing and praising God’s justice against those who sin against God with their murderous lips. I bet you found it quite easy to think about someone you know that the description fits. But have you ever read Psalm 5:9 anywhere else in your Bibles?
How about in Romans 3, when Paul is laying out the case that nobody is indeed righteous before God. He says
9 What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin,
10 as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one;
11 no one understands; no one seeks for God.
12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”
13 “Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.” “The venom of asps is under their lips.”
14 “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”
Ah, so now we come to what I warned you about. As a fellow pastor once said, “We are so much better at seeing our sin when someone else is wearing it!” We can so EASILY smell the stank and deadly rot of sin in others, when Paul says we are ALL like this!
NATHAN / rich steals poor man’s lamb / David - you are the man!
In light of v6 and v9-10 - how in the WORLD can David, who KNOWS his OWN sinful rebellion against God (think Psalm 51) dare to call for God’s judgment on sinners and get away with it?
He knows even more about God... that God is loving and kind...
3) God loves us.
3) God loves us.
a) He is merciful.
a) He is merciful.
7 But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house. I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you.
David does NOT say… you abhor bloodthirsty and deceitful men, but I am not like that! I’m a better guy and therefore I can enter your house and dwell in your presence. To the contrary, David exclaims - I enter through your mercy. Your Hesed - your steadfast covenant love. As a wretched and ruined sinner, David’s only hope in relating to God is that God is merciful toward sinners and loves and protects those who take refuge in him. Look at v 11.
b) He is protector.
b) He is protector.
11 But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy, and spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may exult in you.
David says that those who are in God’s shelter will be protected from his wrath toward sin - v12 he calls God a shield.
While it is true that God has just wrath toward sin, it is equally true that God in his love and mercy has provided a shelter for us from his wrath in him. From the New Testament perspective, this concept is crystal clear in the way Paul expounds on what it means to be IN CHRIST. We talked a lot about that when we were studying Colossians and we did a three part series on union with Christ and the benefit of being found IN HIM.
David says here - there is a refuge to be found in God - and we know the only refuge for ruined sinners is Christ Jesus.
To drive this point home and to connect this concept to David himself, consider with me one of my favorite passages in all of Scripture, and one of the most important passages in the Bible: Romans 3:21-26
21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—
22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction:
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.
26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Notice the universal sinfulness against a holy God that we’ve already discussed, and notice also the redemption is found IN CHRIST JESUS - our shelter from God’s wrath - see that in verse 25 where Jesus is a wrath satisfier (that’s what propitiation means).
But then lastly, I wanted us to notice verses 25-26 where we see God’s justice explained. Included in that description is God’s justice in passing over what Paul calls former sins. I don’t know why, but David ALWAYS comes to mind when I think of this passage. Probably because David prayed with such crystal clear faith in this reality! David has NO problem separating between the wicked and himself, but he knew it wasn’t on his own merits - no…God had OVERLOOKED - passed OVER his sin. David’s faith in Messiah to come is what saved him. Before the cross, Old Testament Saints were saved on credit, so to speak, where God was in his forbearance storing up the debt of punishment that was owed by sinners like David. And this verse says the cross of calvary shows the JUSTICE of God in forgiving Old Testament believers like David - because Jesus paid for their sins as well.
David did not have the full revelation that we have, but he did understand that the only place where he could find shelter from God’s wrath was in God alone and not in his own good works or merit.
David knew God as merciful and protector from just wrath, but he also knew him as kind. Look at verse 12
c) He is kind.
c) He is kind.
12 For you bless the righteous, O Lord; you cover him with favor as with a shield.
David praises God for his gracious favor and the blessing. So in our relationship with God, we deeply experience his love through his mercy, protection and kindness.
But then finally today, as we consider what it means to have a relationship with God, let’s consider our love for God.
4) We love God.
4) We love God.
Now let me quickly point out what the apostle John wrote in first John:
19 We love because he first loved us.
But because of his initiating love and free grace, we respond with worship to him! Look in verse 11.
a) We worship him.
a) We worship him.
11 But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy, and spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may exult in you.
When we sing and when we exult in him, we demonstrate our love for him. We rejoice in all that he has done with grateful hearts of worship and praise. As Christians, we have so much to show the unbelieving world by our commitment to gathering for worship on the Lord’s Day, but also by our devoted praise of him when we gather, and as we live our lives. Are you quick to glorify God with the fruit of your lips throughout the week? Has God turned your open grave stank mouth into a fountain of joyous praise to him? Let’s glorify God with our lips and love him with all our heart soul and strength.
That leads us to this last consideration of our love for God: obedience to his commands.
b) We obey him.
b) We obey him.
David prays in verse 8
8 Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies; make your way straight before me.
He asks God to help him to live out God’s righteousness. He says - I have an alien righteousness - it is YOUR righteousness, and I am asking you, God to lead me in it - to help me be obedient to your commands. David knows that the obedience to the commands is not what gained him access into God’s presence and God’s house - verse 7 made it clear that it was sheer mercy that had saved him - the steadfast covenant love of the Lord, but BECAUSE of God’s merciful salvation, David desires to walk in obedience to God’s right paths.
21 Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.
Why is it that the commands are not burdensome, because of the gift of the Holy Spirit in the promised New Covenant of Eze. 36.
25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.
26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
Because of God’s incredible grace, he saves us and causes us to know him truly and love him duly.
Do you want to know the solution to all of the problems that we are having as a nation? It is not going to be the election of a president. It won’t be the vaccine of COVID-19, and it won’t be better education or programs for the poor. None of those things are unimportant, they just cannot change the hearts of men. The only thing that will change the heart of sinful mankind is the grace and love of God poured out through his Spirit which is freely offered in the preaching and proclaiming of the gospel.
Brothers and sisters, you and I have the good news of what a relationship with God can truly bring about - not only the forgiveness of our sins, not only the salvation of our souls from the wrath of a holy and just God, but the right living and love of neighbor that God’s commandments require.
So let’s tell the unbelieving world about what it means to have a relationship with God: to understand that He knows and loves us first and for us to know him truly and love him duly. That is the kind of relationship that can change someone’s eternity, and it can also make an impact on this fallen world for the better.