Our scripture reading this morning is Psalm 25, Psalm 25, a remarkable psalm in many ways. I was drawn to it particularly in thinking about the beginning of verse 14, the friendship of the Lord is for those who fear Him, the friendship of the Lord, a remarkable theme. So let us give attention to the reading of this psalm together. Psalm 25. Let us hear God's own word. To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in you I trust. Let me not be put to shame. Let not my enemies exult over me. Indeed, none who wait for you shall be put to shame. They shall be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous. Make me know your ways, O Lord. Teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation. For you I wait all the day long. Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions. According to your steadfast love, remember me for the sake of your goodness, O Lord. Good and upright is the Lord. Therefore, he instructs sinners in the way. He leads the humble in what is right and teaches the humble his way. All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness for those who keep his covenant and his testimony. For your name's sake, O Lord, pardon my guilt. for it is great. Who is the man who fears the Lord? Him will he instruct in the way that he should choose. His soul shall abide in well-being, and his offspring shall inherit the land. The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him. And he makes known to them his covenant. His eyes are ever toward the Lord, for he will pluck my feet out of the net. Turn to me, and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. The troubles of my heart are enlarged. Bring me out of my distresses. Consider my affliction and my trouble, and forgive all my sins. Consider how many are my foes, with what violent hatred they hate me. O guard my soul and deliver me. Let me not be put to shame, for I take refuge in you. May integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait for you. Redeem Israel, O God, out of all his trouble. So far the reading of God's Word. As we heard on Christmas Day when the angel appeared to the shepherds, he said a number of things about who Jesus was and what he would do. He shall be called the Savior, the Christ, the Lord. And these are themes that we often think about relative to Jesus. Important themes, the central themes we might well say. But Jesus, as he was facing the cross, said something else about his work. He said in John chapter 15, I've come to make you my friends. John 15, 15, he said to his disciples, no longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends. For all that I have heard from my father, I have made known to you. That's a really remarkable statement, isn't it? We're not just the servants of God. Jesus says he came to make us friends of God. Do you think about your relationship with God that way? It's a remarkable blessing, isn't it? It should be a remarkable encouragement to us. That we are a people so privileged that we are not in the position of honoring or knowing God from a great distance. awed and overwhelmed. But we are precisely a people who because of what Jesus Christ did are invited to come. To come close. To be in fellowship. To be friends with God. And I was drawn to this psalm precisely because we find that remarkable phrase in this psalm. Verse 14. The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear Him. What a wonderful verse. What a wonderful promise. But then, of course, as sometimes happens when we read our Bibles, we discover that by that little word friendship, there's a footnote. That's why you need professors in your lives to direct your attention to footnotes. And why we particularly need professors of Hebrew, that difficult, tricky language. You notice what that footnote says? After offering us this wonderful promise that we can be friends with God, we look at that footnote and it says, or instead of friendship, we might translate it, the secret counsel of God. Now wait a minute. What's going on here? friendship, or secret counsel. We can understand both of those ideas, but they hardly seem interchangeable, do they? In fact, they almost seem worlds apart. How do we understand that? Well, what this Hebrew word means is the confiding communication, The sweet counsel, it's translated in another psalm, of God with his people. It's the notion of an intimate communication where God confides in us as his close counselors, as it were. And the translators therefore say there's such an intimacy in this notion of counsel here that we can translate. friendship. Who does the sovereign bring close to him for counsel? With whom does he have sweet communion and confident communication? With whom does he share, if we use a more modern way of putting it? It's with friends. It's with intimates. It's with those who are close to him. And that's what this psalm is celebrating and encouraging us to think about. That God wants us to be his friends. That God wants us to be in that sweet harmony with him, that sweet counsel with him. And this psalm in a sense is all about opening up what it would mean for people to be friends with God and the first point that this psalm in remarkable ways over and over again says is that friendship with God is knowing God knowing who he is, knowing what he does friends know friends, that's part of what this psalm is saying and that we need to know God to be his friend, and that he has revealed himself and made himself known to us so that we might understand him and his ways. And so this psalm, in remarkable ways, talks about what it would mean for us to know God and what it is that we need to know about God. It might be interesting to sit and make a list. If somebody came to you and said, what do I need to know about God? What would you put on that list? It's interesting to see what the psalmist puts on that list. I'm not suggesting this is a complete list. I'm not suggesting that having listened to this sermon, you'll never need to learn anything more about God. But it's interesting to see what the psalmist puts on his list as he's thinking about what we need to know as friends with God. And one of the things that he puts there most remarkably is God is good. God is good. God is upright. You see that in verse 8? Good and upright is the Lord. He's straight. There's no crookedness in him. He's good to his people. He's good in himself. There is no darkness in him. There is no shadow of turning. It's not the same to say, may the force be with you, as to say, God bless you. I don't know how much time you spend thinking about the force. I don't know if you are amongst those who have been conned into standing in long lines to see a movie about the force. But the force is a profoundly non-Christian notion. Now, I'm not here to be a cranky minister today. I'm not opposed to movies about forces in principle. But I think we have to be very self-conscious about this. The force is just a force. And it can be turned to good or to evil. The Lord our God is not that kind of force. Because there's nothing evil in him. He's good all the way through, all the time, always for his people. That's what this psalm is celebrating. And people don't automatically know that. People don't automatically recognize that the Lord is good. And sometimes we may be called to wonder about the goodness of the Lord when life doesn't go just the way we'd like it. Why is God doing that? lots of things that God does that are mysteries to us, that are troubling to us, that are unfathomable to us. And this psalm says to us as God's people, in light of all of the struggles of life, it's crucial that as friends of God, you know this fundamental truth that he's good. He's good to you. And then that goodness is opened up in this psalm in all sorts of words that are piled up. God is good in that He is merciful. God is good in that He is faithful. God is good in that His steadfast love abounds forever. God is good in that He is a covenant maker with His people. He comes to His people to redeem them, to rescue them from slavery, and to bring them into the glorious freedom of the friends of God. And God wants you to know that so that you will be his friends, so that you'll have that confidence in him at every moment, in every situation of your lives. Think of that. He's merciful. He's forgiving. He's faithful. He never changes his mind. He's full of steadfast love that surrounds and envelops and saves and preserves his people. And he is a God who is revealing himself to his people. This psalm returns again and again and again to knowing the ways of God. And surely in the context of God's covenant, knowing the ways of God very much has to do with the paths of holiness in which we need to walk. But it's interesting that this psalm celebrates particularly the mercy of God, the forgiveness of God, the patience of God. This psalm is a beautiful, poetic construction. And if I had a, I was almost going to say blackboard, but I suppose that really dates me. If I had an overhead projector, which I wouldn't know how to use, we could look at the structure of this psalm, which is amazing, intricate. David, in writing this psalm, took a long time to write it. Every successive verse begins with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet. That's one of the ways he organized this psalm. But he also divided it into various sections, so begins with a section of prayer, then has a section of meditation, then has a verse of prayer, then another section of meditation, and concludes with a section of prayer. This is an intricately constructed psalm. There are even many chiasms in this psalm. If you don't know what that is, Professor Vinny will be at the door to instruct you after the service. My point is just as this is very carefully, thoughtfully put together so that the longer we study it, the more we're drawn into it to learn more and more about our God. Themes are woven through this psalm. Words are repeated all with the intention that we should know more about the goodness of our God. the faithfulness of our God, the mercy of our God, the steadfast love of our God for us. It's remarkable. And one of the things that is done in this psalm in a fascinating way is the alternation between praying to God and meditating on the truth of God. And this is something we find frequently in the psalm, something that we probably should learn more as Christians. To not just always go to God with our requests, but also to spend time thinking about who is this God to whom we will be speaking? What's he like? It's interesting. Verses 6 and 7 of Psalm 25, the psalmist is praying, Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions. According to your steadfast love, remember me. And then what does he go on to do as he meditates, beginning in verse 8 through verse 10? He's remembering God. The theme of remembering and appealing to God, asking God to remember certain things and not to remember other things, then leads him to remember who God is. What he's done for him. How he causes him to grow. In this psalm, the psalmist is praying to know, and then he's knowing to pray. Those things are mutually reinforcing. As we know more about God, we'll be able to pray better. And as we pray, we need to pray that we know God better. That's what's happening in this psalm. It's such an encouragement. It's such a building up of his people in faith. It's such a way of showing that friends tell friends the truth. And that's what's going on in this psalm. That's why Jesus said about friendship when he talked in John 15 about us being his friends. He said, you are my friends because I've told you all that the Father's told me. I've helped you to know who you are. I've helped you to know who I am, Jesus said. Knowing the truth will set you free. And that's what Jesus came to do. To set us free to be his friends. to set us free from the burden of guilt and sin and shame so that we might be able to draw near to God with confidence and faith and hope because of what Jesus did on the cross to make us his friends. That's what we need to know. That's what we need to be built up with. That's what we need to have confidence in. And that knowing, then, will make us a praying people. Friends not only know friends, but friends talk to friends. It would be a sort of strange friendship if we never talked to our friend, wouldn't it? But this psalm is full of David pouring out his heart to God as his friend. Sometimes we make prayer sound so complicated it becomes intimidating. But prayer in the Bible is always the honest, straightforward, heartfelt communication of friend to friend. That's what we see here. That's what we're encouraged to recognize here. And this psalm helps us to see that prayer isn't automatic. We need to be learning as we pray. We need to learn to pray. And this psalm is such a wonderful model for us of the opening of a heart. The opening of a heart to pray. First of all, he prays to learn. But also he prays repeatedly, passionately, for forgiveness. Not because he doubts that the Lord will forgive, not that he thinks he has to be reminding God all the time about his need for forgiveness, but because he recognizes as he learns more about God, as he knows more about God, he sees more about himself. The very heart of this psalm, the very center of this psalm, is verse 11. Really just a one-verse prayer. There's prayer at the beginning of the psalm, prayer at the end of the psalm, prayer here at the middle of the psalm. And this one verse prayer is, For your name's sake, O Lord, pardon my guilt, for it is great. When we think about the goodness of the Lord, when we think about the covenant of the Lord, when we think about the ways of the Lord, we can't help but recognize that we have not walked in the ways of the Lord as we should. We have not lived lives full of love as they ought to be. And so we come back again and again in our communication with the Lord, asking for his mercy and coming as friends with a confidence that we'll be heard. You know, what fascinates me is that although this psalm is very carefully crafted and worked on, I tried to think of some analogies of that. It's like writing a piece of music. When you write a piece of music, You need inspiration, and you need to work hard at it. I think that's true. You'll have to ask Emily about that, because I've never written a piece of music, and it wouldn't be worth looking at if I did. But I'm sure that's true. A painting a painting is probably the same thing. A really great painting needs inspiration, but it also needs a lot of hard work. Some of the women here are involved in quilting. What makes a quilt? Well, a certain artistic inspiration and then a lot of hard work with all sorts of different stitches. And that's what we find in this psalm. There's a lot of hard work in this psalm, but there's also emotion and passion and energy in this psalm. Look at verse 16. Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I'm lonely and afflicted. Troubles of my heart are enlarged. Bring me out of my distresses. Consider my affliction and my trouble. and forgive all my sins. Here's the passion of his heart. He has trouble. And part of that trouble is sin. And his confidence is that as he comes to his friend, as he comes in Jesus Christ, particularly as his friend, he will know the forgiveness of God. And then he prays also for protection. He lived in struggle. He lived in difficulty. He lived, we're told, specifically with loneliness. Sometimes the Psalms are very general in the laying out of trouble and of distress and of affliction. And the good thing about that is that we can enter into that then, can't we? We don't know exactly how David was troubled in every way in this Psalm, but we know how we're troubled. And we can enter in then to praying with David that God will come to us in our trouble, that God will turn to us and help us in our affliction. The one specific here is that he's lonely. And that's a grief, that's a problem, that's a struggle for many people, isn't it? And it's wonderful to know that when we're lonely, we have a friend. A friend in our Lord Jesus Christ who cares for us. A friend who bears us to his father in his bosom to provide for us. A friend. And that's why the friendship of God is important to us. That though other friends may forsake us, God will not. God cares for us. God watches over us. And we can come to him with our earnest prayers for his mercy, for his deliverance. And so friendship with God is knowing God. Friendship with God is praying to God. And friendship with God is trusting God. Notice how this psalm starts. To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in you I trust. He prays about his trust in the Lord, his confidence in the Lord, his resting in the Lord, and he prays about how his eyes are on the Lord. Did you see that in verse 15? My eyes are ever toward the Lord, for he will pluck my feet out of the net. Nets were put out by hunters to capture game, to kill them. You didn't want to get caught in a net. it wasn't a good thing to be caught in a net. And the psalmist says, I look to the Lord because I know the Lord is the one who can rescue me from danger. The Lord is the one who can redeem my life. The Lord is the one who can bring life to me. And so I look to Him. I trust in Him. And one of the words that is repeated three times in this psalm is the word, I wait for the Lord. Some versions translate that word, I hope in the Lord. Trusting in the Lord means we're willing to wait for the Lord. I don't know about you, I find waiting difficult. I have my own time scheme in my own mind, and that's how things ought to happen. I bet you're not like that. You just wander through life easygoing. I've always noticed Reformed people are just easygoing. It's sort of the dominant characteristic. No, we all have our plans, don't we? We all have our schedules. We all have our notions of how things ought to go. Some of us even make lists. And sometimes the Lord says to us, you need to wait. And I think that may be one of the very most difficult times to trust the Lord, when we have to wait. One of the things the psalm shows us is it's all right to give the Lord advice. Friends give the Lord friends advice. That's okay. But having given advice, sometimes advice about timing. Now, Lord, now is a good time for what I want. After we've given the advice, then we have to say, but I'm your friend. And so I wait. I wait for you. I wait for your wisdom. I wait because you're smarter than I am. You're better than I am. I wait because I believe you do all things well. I wait with hope for the future. Because in your goodness you have said, I will make all things new. I will make all things good. I will wipe away every tear. I'll take away every sin. And I'll bring you into the greatness of glory that awaits. Trust me to do that, the Lord said. Trust me to do that, because I'm your friend, and you can rely on me. May God grant that every one of us here today is a friend of God. We are friends with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, who said, I've come to say to you, You're no longer just servant, but you're my friend. God grant each one of us that grace. Amen.