Good Friday Service | Psalm 17 | The Innocent Cry and the Cross of Christ

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

At this time, one thousand nine hundred and ninety-three years ago, a tomb was sealed.

Approximately one thousand years before that, another person had anticipated the events of this day.

If you have a Bible, I encourage you to open it to Psalm 17.

If you don't, you can use the Pew Bible in front of you or just open your bulletin.

Psalm 17 is one of the few psalms that is identified as a prayer rather than a song.

It's a prayer of David.

I'll read it if you'd like to follow along.

Hear a just cause, O Yahweh.

Attend to my cry.

Give ear to my prayer from lips free of deceit.

So you can see why this is the cry of an innocent person.

From your presence, let my vindication come.

Let your eyes behold the right.

You have tried my heart.

You visited me by night, you've tested me, and you will find nothing.

I have purposed that my mouth will not transgress.

With regard to the works of man, by the word of your lips I have avoided the ways of the violent.

My steps have held fast to your paths, my feet have not slipped.

I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God.

Incline your ear to me, hear my words.

Wondrously show your steadfast love, O Savior of those who seek refuge from their adversaries at your right hand.

Keep me as the apple of your eye.

Hide me in the shadow of your wings, from the wicked who do me violence, my deadly enemies who surround me.

They close their hearts to pity.

With their mouths they speak arrogantly.

They have now surrounded our steps.

They set their eyes to cast us to the ground.

He's like a lion, eager to tear, as a young lion lurking in ambush.

Arise, O Yahweh, confront him, subdue him, deliver my soul from the wicked by your sword, from men by your hand, O Yahweh, from men of the world whose portion is in this life.

You fill their womb with treasure.

They're satisfied with children, and they leave their abundance to their infants.

As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness.

When I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.

Amen.

This is the prayer of someone who is falsely accused.

He's done nothing wrong, yet he finds himself surrounded by people determined to destroy him.

It's the prayer of someone who has nowhere to turn except to God.

He's David, the king of Israel.

He probably prayed many similar prayers throughout his life because he spent years being unfairly treated by his own father-in-law, not to mention being hunted by other enemies.

Still, he was someone who knew what it was like to be surrounded by those who wanted him dead.

So Psalm 17 is a prayer of the hunted, of the surrounded.

This is prayed under pressure from the mouth of someone who believes that he is innocent of the charges against him and who is now asking God to serve as his judge and jury and to see and to act accordingly.

But if you read Psalm 17 carefully and you put it within the context of the rest of the Psalter and even the rest of Scripture, you'll get this sense that something's missing.

Because David was far, far from perfect.

He was an adulterer and a murderer.

Yet this prayer depicts him as perfectly innocent.

The person behind Psalm 17 appears to be far more perfect than David was.

I want to walk through those movements with you this evening.

First, considering them in David's life, and then looking through them toward Calvary, Golgotha, the hill of the skull.

Prayer begins with a righteous man before a righteous judge.

Then it pictures that righteous man surrounded by his enemies before finally imagining him yearning for the morning.

So consider with me first that that first unit of a righteous man bringing his case before a perfect and righteous judge.

It starts in verse 1 with a three-part plea.

Hear a just, a right cause, O Yahweh.

Attend to my cry.

Give ear to my prayer from lips free of deceit.

David isn't just asking God to listen.

He's asking God to judge, to decide, to act.

He presents his case before the divine court and appeals to the justice of the judge of all the earth to do what is right.

And the basis of that appeal is stated immediately in the next verse.

From your presence, let my vindication come.

He's not looking to the court of public opinion.

He's not seeking the popular vote.

He's not presenting his appeal based on his reputation or his record.

He's looking to God's perfect knowledge alone.

He knows that God knows the truth, and he wants that truth brought to light in his life.

He doesn't care what the world thinks.

He only cares what the judge of all the earth knows to be true.

So what follows in verses 3, 4, and 5 display David's open heart and conscience to God, the one who knows the secrets of his heart.

He says, You've even visited me in the middle of the night when there's no one else around, so that you can know the deepest parts of who I am.

He looks to God alone.

He says, You've tried my heart, you've tested it.

You've tested me.

You're not going to find anything.

I've purpose that my mouth isn't going to say anything wrong, anything unrighteous.

Understand, this is not arrogance.

David knows he's a sinner.

The rest of the Psalter makes that perfectly clear.

Just flip over to Psalm 51 if you have any questions about that.

But in this specific situation, in this particular conflict, he contends that his hands are clean.

And he can stand before God and say so because he knows that God knows the truth of his heart.

Verses 4 and 5 shift from his motives to his conduct.

And if you look carefully, you'll see that he presents himself as having fulfilled Psalm 1.

He says, My hands are clean because of my integrity.

But he says, I've kept myself from the paths of the violent.

I haven't spent time with unrighteous, sinful people.

My steps have held fast to God's ways, he says.

His feet haven't slipped because of that.

He is kept on the straight and narrow, even under pressure.

Then after presenting his case before his judge, David in verse 7 asks God to act.

He says, wondrously show your steadfast love, O Savior of those who seek refuge from their adversaries, at your right hand.

Look at that first part.

Wondrously show your steadfast love.

Steadfast love is the covenant faithfulness of God.

It's a love that doesn't let go, no matter what.

So David is saying, This is who you are, God.

You're not going to find anything sinful or impure in my actions or my attitudes or my motives here?

He's saying to God, be who you are.

Do what only you can do.

We have to ask the question: Who can pray these words without reservation?

Who can stand before God's judgment seat, before God's open examination of every interior part of who you are, the deepest recesses of your being, and evaluate your motives, not just in one situation, but in every situation and say, You've tried my heart.

You're not going to find anything impure.

You find nothing sinful.

David couldn't do that.

You can't do that.

I can't do that.

Because we have all sinned and fallen short.

David wasn't sinless, and neither are we.

But there is one who is.

He was the one who was examined by Pilate who declared, I find no guilt in this man.

When Jesus went to the cross, he went as the only human being who could pray every word of these first seven verses in absolute truthful honesty.

His cause was just.

Children to carry on their name, an abundance of goods, their passions are filled, verse 14.

They've achieved what they long for, all while surrounding David like prey.

And then in verse 15, that final verse is a sudden perspective shift.

That's the way the world is, but as for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness.

When I awake, I will be satisfied.

Not with the things that this world offers, but with your likeness.

The wicked who desire to eliminate God's chosen one have their portion in this life, but David's portion is in the face of God.

The wicked are satisfied now, he says, but David's satisfaction is coming.

It's still in the future.

He says it belongs to the morning, to the waking, to the dawn.

That word awake is the language of waking from sleep.

But it carries more weight in the context of a man whose life is being threatened by those who want him dead.

It's the language of emerging alive from the darkness of hopelessness.

It's the sense of mourning arriving after the longest night after you've spent all night long awake on watch because the lions are about to pounce.

But there's more.

There's causation behind it.

It's not that David wants to naturally awake from a restful sleep.

It's that he anticipates God waking him up.

God causing him to awake.

David's hope and trust are that God will awaken him to a new kind of life after this darkest of nights when his enemy is succeeding.

There's the hope that being surrounded by the lions won't be the end.

Maybe that's why the same word is used elsewhere in Scripture for what we know as resurrection.

Isaiah might be the best example.

Your dead shall live, he says.

Their bodies shall arise.

You who dwell in the dust, wake up and sing for joy.

Because the earth will give birth to the dead.

Hanging on a cross.

Jesus died in the afternoon of April third, thirty-three AD.

Today.

They took his body down from the cross.

They placed it in a borrowed tomb.

And the stone was rolled over the entrance.

The disciples were scattered.

And the enemies of the cross breathed a sigh of relief because they'd gotten their prey.

They had their portion.

The Lord Jesus had entrusted his spirit to the Father, and the darkness came.

Night came.

And silence came.

But dawn on Sunday morning also came.

The women arrived at the tomb while it was still dark, the Gospels tell us, and what they found, or rather what they did not find, changed the world.

The stone was rolled away, the graveclothes were lying there, and the body was gone.

Why?

Because the Father caused his son to awake.

And his son beheld the Father's face in righteousness.

Not the righteousness of a good man, but the righteousness of the one who bore the sin of the world and bore the wrath of God against it, and now stood on the other side of the judge's ruling being vindicated.

The resurrection is the Father's answer to the Son's prayer.

It's the divine court issuing its verdict.

The accusations were false.

Jesus' cause was just, his heart was tried, and nothing false was found.

And as the Lord Himself said in John 14, the devil has no claim on him.

And on the third day, God said, That is right.

Friends, we are here tonight because David's prayer was ultimately intended to be Jesus' prayer.

And Jesus' prayer became our answer.

The righteous one who prayed Psalm 17 without qualification went to the cross carrying the sins of people who could not pray it at all.

We stand guilty in God's courtroom.

Our lips have not always been free from deceit.

Our steps have slipped.

Our loyalties have wandered.

But Jesus, the innocent, took our guilt.

And the sinless one bore our judgment.

He stood in the divine courtroom and received the verdict that should have been ours.

He was given over and surrounded for our sake and on the cross for a terrible and necessary moment.

He was hidden not in the shadow of comforting, protective wings, but in the darkness of the Father's wrath.

His soul was not delivered from the wicked.

The Son of David bore the Father's curse against your sin and against my sin.

He bore the condemnation of the guilty, and he did it so that we could receive what the last verse promises.

He did it so that we whose cause is unjust and whose hands are not clean could one day see the face of God in righteousness when he causes us to awake.

Good Friday is the day we remember the cross and remember the unanswered prayer.

David's ultimate son, God become man, that light of all lights was extinguished, so that we might have the hope of being awakened.

We remember that the apple of the Father's eye was not protected so that we could be eternally.

We remember that the righteous one was surrounded by enemies and handed over so that we, the unrighteous, might be saved from our sins.

We remember that he endured the darkness of that Friday so that we could share in the light of that Sunday morning, satisfied with his likeness.

We come and we bow before you, humbled.

Humbled that you instead of we were surrounded.

That you were not protected by the by the shadow of the Father's wings.

And that you bore our curse so that we could one day awake and be satisfied not with what this world offers, but with the Father's likeness.

So on the one hand, Lord, we grieve that the innocent one hung on that cross and gave his life.

We grieve that the tomb was sealed and that night came.

But we grieve because you did that for us.

For the sinful with unclean hands.

And yet we grieve not as those who are hopeless, but as those who have hope.

For we anticipate the dawn of Sunday.

And awaken, awaking to see your righteousness and to be bathed in the light of your glory.

Vindicated as the only one who could pay for sin.

So we are drawn to your sacrifice, to trust only and forever in what you've done.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

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