Please turn with me in the Word of God to Psalm 70, to Psalm 70. This is the kind of psalm my daughter used to like to have us read at table devotions because it's short. It's a little psalm, I think a neglected psalm, so I'm hoping to convince you today it's worthy of attention. So let us listen carefully to the reading of Psalm 70. To the choir master of David for the memorial offering. Make haste, O God, to deliver me. O Lord, make haste to help me. Let them be put to shame and confusion, who seek my life. Let them be turned back and brought to dishonor, who delight in my hurt. Let them turn back because of their shame, who say, Aha! Aha! May all who seek You rejoice and be glad in You. May those who love Your salvation say evermore, God is great. But I am poor and needy. Hasten to me, O God, you are my help and my deliverer, O Lord, do not delay. So far the reading of God's Word. So it's a little psalm. Is it an insignificant psalm? Is it a psalm that is sort of redundant? After all, it really almost entirely repeats what we have already found in Psalm 40. I'm sure you noticed that. It's the same as Psalm 40, verses 13 through 17. There's an awful lot about enemies in this very short psalm. How much does that relate to us? It's telling God to hurry. Is that a Calvinistic thing to do? Is that the kind of advice we ought to be giving God? Doesn't it just summarize themes that are developed at greater length in Psalm 69 and Psalm 71? All three of these psalms are very much about waiting and praying and in need for God to act. It's almost like this psalm is a little valley between two larger hills expressing the same sort of message. But as I've studied this psalm, I'd originally thought I'd preach on Psalm 69, and I got distracted. That happens to preachers. The more time I spent with this psalm, the more intriguing, the more helpful I thought it was. It was a little like Jacob wrestling with God. You have to wrestle with this psalm a little bit to get the blessing. So that's what we're going to try to do today. Think about Psalm 70, because one of the things we see as we look more carefully at Psalm 70 is how very carefully it's been put together. How very carefully it's been put together, not only in its placement between these two other psalms that talk about the struggle of the Christian life. But it's also placed, those three psalms are placed between two of the great psalms about success of God's work in this world. Psalm 68, God's success in bringing His people to the Holy Land, and Psalm 72, His success in appointing His anointed king to rule over His people. And so, these five psalms form a sort of unit that make us think about both the success of God in history, redeeming a people, and the ongoing struggle of God's people to live for Him, to know Him, to be with Him. This psalm is very carefully constructed internally. You'll be pleased to know it's a chiasm. We won't linger over that, but some of you have been so attracted to chiasms I have to mention that. It's just very carefully constructed, and the style points us to the care of that construction. Words are repeated. You notice at the beginning of Psalm 72, the prayer is, deliver me, help me. And what do we find at the end of Psalm 70? You are my help and my deliverer. That repetition draws us into the psalm and helps us to see how carefully this is constructed. There's a contrast drawn between the wicked who seek my life and say, aha, aha, and the righteous who seek the Lord to rejoice in Him and who say forevermore, God is great. I was really struck by that. You're all looking a little indifferent. This is important. This is significant. God has taken great care with His Word. God has inspired His Word to be written carefully, and that has a profound message for us. If God takes such care of His Word in its inspiration, in its meaning, that testifies powerfully to how God cares for us. As God cares for His Word, He cares for His people. He's caring for our lives and structuring our lives and accomplishing His purpose in our lives. And so I want us to look at this psalm as a psalm of God's care for His people, a psalm in which God is helping us to learn how to pray. This is a prayer. It's an urgent prayer. It's not a psalm that teaches us everything about prayer. There are a lot of important elements about prayer that are not in this psalm. There's not really any adoration of God, praise of God in this psalm. There's not really any thanksgiving in this psalm. There's not any confession of sin in this psalm. This is an urgent psalm coming to God in need and asking for help. This is not the only way we should pray, but it's interesting how it legitimizes coming to God and immediately asking for help. I've done that, but sometimes I've felt guilty doing that. I shouldn't rush into God's presence. I should praise Him before I ask things from Him. And this psalm tells us it's sometimes fine just to begin by asking God for help when the need is great, when the concern is profound, when we're really struggling and wrestling. And so, this is a psalm that helps us to see how to pray in a specific situation. And the first lesson about prayer that we derive from this, I think, is that prayer can be planned. I think sometimes we have the idea that prayer to be sincere has to be entirely spontaneous. Don't think about it, just plunge into it. And this prayer says, this psalm as a prayer says to us, prayer can really be planned for, thought through, prepared for, and that we should do that sometimes. We're really helped in that direction by the title of this psalm, which is translated in the ESV for the memorial offering, and one of the commentators at least suggests it really should be translated to bring to remembrance. I sometimes wonder why Hebrew has to be quite so tricky. It seems like it can mean a lot of different things, but I think that's right. What is really in mind here is this is a psalm to bring to remembrance in times of stress and distress. God wanted to give us a prayer so that when we're really in distress, we'll have words we can bring to Him. Sometimes when you're greatly stressed, it's very hard to think what to say. And God says, remember the words I've given you. Remember the planning I've done for you. Remember to remember, to bring it to mind. And in that remembering, we'll remember that thinking back is always a great encouragement when we're in distress in the present. One of the most important spiritual disciplines, I think, is that when we're facing great trouble, it's so important to think back to how faithful God has been to us, how much God has always provided for us, how God has not forgotten us in the past and He will not forget us now. That's what this psalm is saying to us. You can remember, you can look back, you can rest in the present in a conviction of God's care for you because He has cared for you in the past. And He's even prepared for you a prayer to pray in times of distress. In this sense, this prayer, this psalm is a lot like the songs we sing. We never sing a song that we really, really love and say, you know, this doesn't really count as a sincere song because it was already planned. It was already prepared. No, it's very preparedness is a way for us to enter in sincerely to the emotion, care, and concern of the song so that we are helped, we are directed, we are strengthened. And careful planning doesn't undermine the sincerity of emotion at all. When I called Candy with the songs for the service, She said, well, I know what you're going to have us sing as preparatory. We'll sing Psalm 70. I said, wrong. I am not predictable. I am full of surprises. Actually, she was exactly right. I would have, except I don't think the tune to Psalm 70 is great. But entering in, remembering what God has done for us, what God has prepared for us, how God strengthens us through His Word is a great blessing. One of the interesting things about this psalm is that there are echoes of Deuteronomy over and over again in it. That's another sign of how carefully prepared it is. But it leads us back to Deuteronomy 7 and 8, where we read, you shall not be afraid of them, God says to His people, but you shall remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt. You're in distress, you're facing difficulty. Remember God's great saving work in the past, how He led Israel out of Egypt, how He brought Jesus out of the grave. And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord, your God has led you these 40 years in the wilderness that He might humble you, testing you to know what is in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. Remember that the struggles of life are a test in which the Lord is revealing to you and to the world who you are, what your commitments are, where you look for strength, what you remember, and what an encouragement this carefully prepared psalm is for us in days of distress. It's not a psalm for every day. We don't have this urgency every day, but the next time you have a great sudden need and you need an urgent prayer, maybe you'll remember little Psalm 70 because it'll be a help. It'll be a way of talking to God. This prayer is also particular. It focuses on very specific needs. We have to look closely to see them, but when we do look closely, it's very clear what the needs of David were. This is David's prayer in the first place. Only later does it become our prayer. In the first place, it's David's prayer, and what is his need? His need is for God to help him in his weakness. For God to help him in his weakness. You notice that down at verse 5, but I am poor and needy. Now, initially, that confession on David's part, that statement on David's part, may not grab us as hugely significant, but this is why the placement of the psalm is so important. This psalm comes just two psalms before Psalm 72, the great psalm we sang and celebrated about how God has His anointed King, our Christ, how God saves His people through that King, And what is that king supposed to do? Psalm 72 makes very clear the king is to help the poor and needy. That's his function. The rich and the powerful don't need help. The poor and needy need help. And therefore, God has established a king to help those in need. And you see the struggle of David's life. He's saying to the Lord, in effect, how am I as king to help the needy if I'm needy? How am I as king to help the poor if I'm poor? Oh, Lord, it seems as if my calling to serve you has been overthrown. Where will my strength come from to fulfill my calling as king? David needs help in his weakness. and as we look at this psalm we may well immediately think of the suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ as great David's greater son did Christ ever need to pray O Lord deliver me O Lord come and help me did Christ ever have enemies that opposed him was Christ ever at a point where he prayed I am poor and needy? Of course He did. This is what we see in Gethsemane as He heads towards the cross. He too faced weakness in the fulfilling of His calling to be our Savior. And so, you see, this psalm comes to encourage us in our weakness when we feel we are not able to fulfill the callings to which we're called. We are called to be Christians and not infrequently we feel poor and needy in trying to fulfill that calling. We're called to be part of a family and can often feel poor and needy and weak in fulfilling our callings there. We're called to various kinds of work. We're called to be faithful members of the church and all those things. We can feel poor and needy and call out to the Lord for help. And this psalm gives us words for that appeal. And as we'll see later, gives us encouragement that it will be answered. David is weak because of his enemies. There are those who rise up against him. They seek to hurt him. They mock him. They want to kill him. Those are serious enemies, aren't they? that's a serious problem they want to overturn David's whole reign they want to destroy him and again we could see how appropriately these words can be taken on the mouth of Jesus think of Jesus saying these words let them be put to shame and confusion who seek my life Let them be turned back and brought to dishonor who delight in my hurt. Let them turn back because of their shame who say, aha, aha. It's exactly what they said at the foot of the cross, isn't it, to Jesus? He who saved others, let Him come down and save Himself. And we too have enemies in our lives. So, I said, probably this isn't a psalm for praying every day, but as Christians, we do face enemies, the world, the flesh, the devil, those who would come to destroy us, who would attack us. And here the Lord has given us a very particular, very particular focus to pray, to consider, to ask for help in the face of these serious struggles. Now, one of the questions that comes up with a psalm like this, comes up even more with Psalm 69, is, is it right to pray against your enemies? Pastor Gordon's talked about this in his Sermon on the Mount, so I'm not going to linger there. I may talk about it a little bit in Sunday school if you want more on imprecations and how to pray against your enemies. But the important thing here is that there are enemies and that we can go to the Lord and ask for help, ask for deliverance, ask that the plans and purposes of the enemies might be defeated and overturned. And we can do that with all of the urgency of our lives. But it's also wonderful to be encouraged here in the midst of David's very personal struggle, very individual struggle, that his mind turns also to the needs of others. He not only prays in the face of his present need, but he also prays for the future success of God's cause. Do you see that in verse 4? May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you. May those who love your salvation say evermore, God is great. God is great. I hear David in his very real life and death struggle remembers that God is at work in this world to accomplish His saving purpose, and he prays. He prays for the people of God. He prays for all of the people of God. May all those who seek you rejoice and be glad in you. What an encouragement this should be to us. Those who seek the Lord will find Him. Ours is not a religion who says the Lord turns away those who seek Him out of a sincere heart, but those who seek the Lord will rejoice and be glad. And those who love the saving work of the Lord, what will they say? What a great contrast is drawn here. They won't say, aha, aha, mocking those who are suffering. They will say, great is the Lord. Great is the Lord. That's why when we sing praise, it's so important that we're directing our hearts and our minds to confess what it is we believe about God, that our God is great, which means He is powerful to save. That's the particular focus of His greatness. Our God is powerful to save. What a wonderful promise that is. How we can turn to Him and pray that so energetically. And what this reminds us of then is that God is the God who cares for us in present distress and in future blessing. God is the God who cares for us in present distress and in future blessing. He is with us. He is for us. He hears us. That's what this psalm is reminding us over and over again. And then this psalm, I want you to get these three Ps because I worked hard at it. This psalm is planned, this psalm is particular, and this psalm is passionate. There's passion in this prayer. We see that particularly, I think, in verse 1, which I think is not translated the best. Make haste, O God. Doesn't it sound like something an Englishman would say at T? make haste, you know. And it's not that polite. It's not that refined. It's much more urgent. It seems to me, literally, this should be translated something like, God, to deliver me. Lord, to help me. Hurry! Now, see, we're too pious to say that, maybe. But that's what we really feel sometimes, isn't it? Hurry up! Hurry up! We need help now! We get that at the beginning of Psalm 69. It's kind of an expansion on the theme of hurry up. Psalm 69, save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire where there is no foothold. I have come into deep waters and the flood sweeps over me. I am weary with crying out. My throat is parched. My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God. Have you ever felt that way? Again, we don't feel that way often, probably. But there are moments when we feel that way. Think what a really terrible picture that is. The flood is rising and it's gotten up to my chin. I don't have much longer, Lord. Where are you? I'm in quicksand and sinking and there's no place to stand. Where are you, Lord? I've prayed and prayed and I'm worn out. You see, it's appropriate, the Psalms teach us, to pour out our hearts before the Lord. We don't have to pretend to be stoic before the Lord. We can come with the genuine emotions of our heart, the genuine pleas of our experience. Lord, I'm in a mess and I need help and I need it now. Hurry! Hurry! Let me read again the Godfrey Authorized Translation. God, to deliver me. Lord, to help me. Hurry. There's a passion there. There's an honesty there. There's an urgency there. Which is not doubting God. Which is really not criticizing God, but is honestly laying out how I best see my need and its answer. But also in this psalm is built in a radical dependence on God. A radical recognition that only God can help. Only God can deliver. When I am weak, when I'm attacked, only God can be my Savior. That's what this psalm is saying. And so I come to God believing. I come to God hoping, because I know He's my only hope. He's my only deliverer. And I come ultimately with the confidence that He'll do the right thing. You are my help and my deliverer, David says towards the close of this psalm. You are my help and my deliverer. I can trust you. I can rely upon you. I can rest in you. But by the way, do not delay. Do not delay. The heart is honest and open before the Lord. Now, this is developed, I think, very powerfully in Psalm 69. I said these are kind of paired psalms. Having talked about drowning, having talked about dying, having talked about being at wit's end, verse 13 of Psalm 69, David says to God, But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord, at an acceptable time, O God, in the abundance of your steadfast love, answer me in your saving faithfulness. How wonderful that statement is. O Lord, I'm in great need. I want you to hurry. But I recognize that you are a loving God, you are a faithful God, you are a helping God, and you will answer me in the acceptable time. That is, in the time that's acceptable to you, in the time you have appointed in your wisdom. And we see this truth really illustrated for us, don't we, in the story of Jesus and Lazarus. Mary and Martha send to Jesus the message that Lazarus is desperately ill, and we don't have all the details of the message, but we're pretty sure they said to Him, hurry up and come. We're in great need. And what do we read in John 11. Jesus deliberately waited two days. He could have come two days earlier. He probably could have gotten there to save Lazarus from death. It's certainly what Mary and Martha would have prayed for. But what does Jesus say to His disciples about why He delayed? I'm delaying so the glory of God might be shown. Which was more glorious, to heal Lazarus or to raise him from the dead? Jesus glorified God. Jesus glorified Himself. Jesus glorified His saving purpose. Jesus glorified His timing, His acceptable time in delaying the healing of Lazarus that greater purposes might be achieved. Mary and Martha certainly didn't feel that when their brother died. They didn't understand that at the moment. But it's a lesson to us that we have our purposes that God says, come and tell me about your cares. But part of God's response is, I'm caring for you, and I'll take care of you in my wisdom, and I'll take care of you to my glory, and I'll take care of you in a way that is to your ultimate good, that I might be glorified and that you might be cared for. You see, this is a wonderful psalm that gets us thinking about God's care. Care in the present, care for the future. Care in weakness, care in the face of enemies. Care when we're feeling urgent. And care in the time when we must wait. But the great message is we have a God who loves us in Christ, who cares for us, who provides for us, and will answer our prayers. because He is our help and our deliverer. Amen. Let us pray. O Lord, we are so thankful for Your Word and the care that You have lavished on Your Word to make it so helpful and such a blessing to us. And as we reflect on our own needs and our own struggles, as we reflect on sometimes the struggles we have with Your timing, we pray, O Lord, that we might always look to You with confidence that You do all things well, that You will always glorify Yourself and help us. And so we pray that you would strengthen us in believing. We pray that you would draw us closer to Christ and assure us in every circumstance of your fatherly love and mercy as you are preparing us to be your people forever in glory. Hear us, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.