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 1, and every day you're gonna get a new Psalm with 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. Psalm 49 starting in verse one. Listen to this, all you people.
Pay attention, everyone in the world, high and low, rich and poor. Listen. For my words are wise and my thoughts are filled with insight. I listen carefully to many proverbs and solve riddles with inspiration from a harp. Why should I fear?
Now he turns into a question. Here's his wisdom through a question. Why should I fear when trouble comes, when enemies surround me? They trust in their wealth and boast of great riches, yet they cannot redeem themselves from death by paying a ransom to God. Redemption does not come so easily, for no one can ever pay enough to live forever and never see the grave.
In other words, death is coming for everyone. The wisdom is this, death comes for all. Rich or poor, strong or weak, death will come for all of us. Those who are wise must finally die, just like the foolish and senseless, leaving all their wealth behind. The grave is their eternal home where they will where they will stay forever.
They may name their estates after themselves, but their fame will be, will not last. They will die just like animals. This is the fate of fools, though they are remembered as being wise. Like sheep, they are led to the grave where death will be their shepherd. Down in verse 15.
But as for me, God will redeem my life. He will snatch me from the power of the grave. So don't be dismayed when the wicked grow rich and their homes become even more splendid. For when they die, they take nothing with them. Their wealth will not follow them into the grave.
In this life, they consider themselves fortunate and are applauded for their success, like, yea, you. Verse 19. But they will die like all before them and never again see the light of day. Verse 20. People who boast of their wealth don't understand they will die just like animals.
What a way to pray. Is this a Psalm 49 is a unique prayer and Psalm in the sense that it actually speaks to us in the way that a proverb would. And the point of this proverb and insight is to say, listen. Death is coming for us all. Whether you are rich or poor, whether you are wise or foolish, we all end up in the same place, the grave.
And the the wisdom is to be found in that no one can pay the ransom to escape death. That's the reality here. And so what is the Psalm inviting us to do in prayer and to reflect on? It's there, I think, found in verse 15. But as for me, God will redeem my life.
He will snatch me from the power of the grave. Though the psalmist doesn't have the clearest vision of who Jesus is, they don't even know who he is yet. They still had a belief and a conviction that God was able to pay the ransom what even the richest person couldn't do to rescue them from death. And this is where we find our hope today. That even in the midst of maybe our life, and our circumstances changing, your wealth not being where you want it to be, there is a hope that God will redeem us.
You know, it's natural for you and I today as we maybe get worried about the future to naturally worship the god of money and to feel like we can control and keep ourselves more safe if we have enough. The wisdom of this prayer is saying, don't think like that. There is but one being who can redeem you and ransom you from death, and we find our hope in him alone today. Jesus, we hear you inviting us to respond now with a prayer of confessing that you alone can give us eternal life. God, we will be tempted today to look at the rich and the poor, the wise and the foolish, and think that we can maybe control the outcomes of our lives, but death waits for all of us.
So would you increase our hope and our faith knowing that we serve Jesus, the one who has conquered death, the one who died for us, the one who went to the cross for us? And so, Jesus, would you open the eyes of our hearts that we might see you, in fact, as the the one who has conquered death, the resurrected king who now invites us to find our hope and our life in you today. We pray these things in his name. Amen.