Pastor Fredo Ramos: For whatever reason, I have always struggled to pray. And so, as this new year begins and as many of you think about new routines that you wanna give yourself to, especially for those of you who follow Jesus, I wanna invite you to learn to pray the Psalms with us. It's a practice I picked up years ago that really saved, my ability to learn to pray, to speak to God honestly about how I was feeling and what I was thinking. And so every single day on sandalschurch.tv on YouTube, we're gonna be releasing, praying the Psalms, a psalm a day. We started in January 1st and every day you're gonna get a new psalm, but the opportunity to read the psalm with us, to reflect on a phrase, and then to respond to God in prayer, how to pray through the psalms.
This has been a gift to me in my own journey with Jesus. I pray that it's a gift to you and so would you join us. Grace and peace. So we continue praying the Psalms. We come now to Psalm 28.
David writes this in verse 1. I pray to you, oh lord, my rock. Do not turn a deaf ear to me. For if you are silent, I might as well give up and die. Listen to my prayer for mercy as I cry out to you for help, as I lift my hands toward your holy sanctuary.
Do not drag me away with the wicked, with those who do evil, those who speak friendly words to their neighbors while planting evil in their hearts. Give them their punishment they so richly deserve. Measure it out in proportion to their wickedness. Pay them back for all their evil deeds. Give them a taste of what they have done to others.
They care nothing for what the Lord has done or for what his hands have made, so He will tear them down and they will never be rebuilt. Praise the Lord for He has heard my cry. It's a bit of a shift from verse 5 to 6. Praise the Lord for He has heard my cry for mercy. The Lord is my strength and shield.
I trust Him with all my heart. He helps me and my heart is filled with joy. I burst out in songs of thanksgiving. The Lord gives his people strength. He is a safe fortress for his anointed king.
Save your people. Bless Israel, your special possession. Lead them like a shepherd and carry them in your arms forever. By way of reflection, I love the the the, kind of, just direct turn David makes from verses 35 where he's really just calling on God to act with justice towards evil, and then he shifts in verse 6 to this praise. Like, he goes from saying, repay them for what they've done, to verse 6, praise the Lord.
Right? It it almost feels like out of place. And, again, these Psalms are preserved in scripture for us to accurately preserve the vast array of human experience when it comes to life with people and life with God, and the kind of permission we're given as people who follow Jesus as to how to pray what we're actually feeling. And sometimes we just feel like that. Like, God, give them what they deserve, praise you, and you have delivered me.
I love this movement of he's asking for mercy in verses 1 and 2, and then he shifts now in verse 6 that he has. He's confident that God has heard his cry for mercy. And I love the invitation there to, have God hear the cry for mercy, and then he says this at the end of verse 2, as I lift up my hands. And I love that image of lifting our hands, and so today, what a what a invitation we have to also lift our hands, To lift them and surrender to God, to open our hands to see that they are empty, and that as we ask for mercy, we we do so not because we are in a deserving place, or not because we're coming to have some kind of transaction with God, like, God, give me your mercy and I'll do this for you, but we come with just neediness. And guess what?
God loves neediness, and he loves to respond to our cries for mercy. And so we come with open hands today, and notice, if we're coming with open hands today, we're also returning to God the right to be just. And rather than us trying to repay evil with more evil, or to do to others what we think we should do to them based on how wrong they've been to us, we simply say, God, would you be God in that situation? And I trust that you will return to them what's due. So show mercy.
My hands are open to you. I surrender to you for mercy, and I surrender to you the right back to be the God that I know you to be. That you will be just. That you will be righteous. And so, Jesus, we pray that now today, that as we might be feeling a certain kind of way, as we look out into the world and see what's wrong, as we look out in our lives and see what wrong people have done to us, we still, before you now, open our hands, we lift our hands to say God, show us mercy.
We trust that you are just and that you are right and that you will act accordingly today. We entrust ourselves to you now in Jesus' name. Amen.