Evening Prayer

Morning, Church.

Today's reading is from Psalm 4.

Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness.

You have given me relief when I was in distress.

Be gracious to me and hear my prayer.

O men, how long shall my honor be turned into shame?

How long will you love vain words and seek after lies?

Selah.

But know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself.

The Lord hears when I call to him.

Be angry and do not sin.

Ponder in your own hearts on your beds and be silent.

Selah.

Offer right sacrifices, and put your trust in the Lord.

There are many who say, Who will show us some good?

Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord.

You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.

In peace I will both lie down and sleep.

For you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

We're gonna want this.

Good morning.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman, I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

We are in the midst of a series that we're calling formation, and it's just for the month of January before we get back into Genesis.

The plan is to actually finish Genesis this year, which would be pretty wild.

Uh we'll be done with the beginning.

And uh this morning, we're uh moving into the last two weeks of this formation series.

Now, the purpose of this series is to recognize that over the past several years, the world has really changed.

We want to acknowledge the change that has taken place and recognize that we're living in a different cultural moment than we were in the first several months of 2020.

And this requires the Christian's heart to be formed particularly around the Word of God.

Because the way that the boundary lines have been drawn within our culture, if we were to adjust ourselves based on those, we'll discover that they have been radically gerrymandered, and that we live in a world which is almost designed to make our hearts disinterested in the things of the Lord.

And so we want as a church to take formation together so that we were able to move forward, being formed both in our hearts and as a body around the things that the scriptures describe for us.

We've done this by looking at first Joshua Joshua 1.

And in Joshua 1, we saw this call for courage.

And this moment requires a lot of courage, where things that had perhaps been ordinarily assumed in our culture are now received very negatively.

Just ordinary assumptions of Christianity.

Next, we saw in Psalm 2 that our hearts are to be oriented towards Christ as the king.

Our world tries to get us to understand the world, tries to get us to understand ourselves and the world that we interact in through a primarily political lens.

And that means that the pressure is to interpret your theology through the lens of your politics.

And we want to invert that.

We want to be the type of people who see Christ as the king of all things, of all categories of human life.

And in that we see that we interpret our politics through the lens of our theology.

That is the formative part of us, that it is our Christ-centeredness which shapes our hearts.

And now you might think, okay, we're moving into Psalm 3, but we're skipping Psalm 3.

It's not that good.

I read it.

Just kidding.

It's it's very good.

It's very good.

It's a hit.

We're instead going into Psalm 4 and 5.

The reason that we're looking at Psalm 4 and 5 is because these together form a practice which will shape our hearts.

My hope is it will really shape our hearts as a church to make us sturdy people, that our hearts actually be become more and more formed into the image of Jesus Christ, so that we are actually participating in the callings of Scripture.

Now, the practices are very simple.

Psalm 4 is an evening prayer.

And Psalm 5 is a morning prayer.

So these are this is the practice that I want to encourage our church towards.

Pray in the morning and pray in the evening.

This is very simple.

But as we see this laid out early in the Psalms, it's like the psalmists are teaching us.

In Psalm 1, it's like, look, you must be oriented around the word if you're going to be wise.

So call this call to be meditating on the word.

Psalm two is to get your hierarchies right.

Psalm three is kind of another encouragement to push through the resistance that you'll be facing.

We skipped that one to get to the practices.

And the the the Psalm four is an evening prayer.

Now the great news about starting with the evening prayer is you haven't missed it yet.

So you'll be able to start, you know, this evening.

So mark your calendars.

You're you're ahead of schedule.

So we'll look at Psalm 4 this morning and the practice of an evening prayer.

This is very simple, very simple, but oh so foundational for our hearts.

Pray in the morning and pray in the evening.

Christian, pray in the morning and pray in the evening.

These are very simple.

Let's pray and we'll move into our text for the day.

Father, we ask that you would attend to us as we gather for this weekly moment here on the Lord's day to consider you and your word.

Lord, that our voices might be lifted up in song, that we might remember this is the this is the intended function of the human heart, that we would draw close to you in worship, and that you would draw close to us, and we would recognize that you were not so very far from us.

Lord, we pray that we would have a sense, as David does throughout this psalm, of your closeness, of your willingness to hear us, your willingness to answer us, and the joy and satisfaction that you bestow upon us immediately as we are here.

Let us have a taste of that, that we might be encouraged to participate in this practice that David adopted of a morning prayer and an evening prayer.

Lord, lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So let's talk a bit about these first couple of Psalms.

Psalm 3 and 4 are sort of wed together.

They likely take place at the same time in David's life.

And this is during Absalom's rebellion.

Absalom is one of David's sons, and when David was an older king, Absalom decided that he would go ahead and overthrow his father's regime, overthrow David's regime seems to have a negative connotation, but I can't think of another word.

Overthrow David's regime and then uh take it for himself so that he would be king of Israel and Judah.

Now this means that it, so he's he's actually pretty successful.

He stands outside the court, and when people come in to have their cases heard, uh Absalom would stand out there, he's very attractive, and had a lot had wonderful hair, which is important in politics.

And he would say things like, Oh, there's nobody here to hear your case today, you know, the old man, how he runs things.

But I could, I could handle it.

I would be a wonderful person to hear your case, and then he would do that, and so he gains this sort of grassroots following, and they become sort of disenchanted with David, the chosen one of God, and they have a sack of Jerusalem.

David gets pushed out, and now David is on the run from his own son.

Now here's the dynamic.

David is in a battle against his son.

If he wins, his son dies.

David does not want to kill his son, but loves Absalom.

If he loses, the kingdom vanishes.

And the chosen one of God is dethroned.

The promise to David from God is that there will be someone to sit on his throne, and it will be an everlasting throne.

So this is the the it's like the most emotionally frustrating dynamic you could possibly imagine.

It's so ambiguous in David's heart.

What would you, what do you want the outcome to be, David?

Do you want to win and then mourn the loss of your son?

Do you want to lose and then witness the loss of your kingdom and be thrown into the questioning of the faithfulness of God?

Now, David's life, he'd been familiar with a situation like this before, almost like a perfect inverse of the situation, in which David was anointed, when he was a young man, he was anointed to be king of Israel.

And after he was anointed, he starts working in the current king, Saul, working in his court, and then Saul sees the acclaim that David is gaining, and then commits himself to killing David.

And so David finds himself in this situation where he's on the run from Saul, the anointed king of Israel, and he's faced with this extremely emotionally ambiguous situation where they would ask David, well, what's your ideal outcome here?

If you win, you kill the anointed one of God.

That's not something you want to do.

You're faithful to this kingdom.

And if you lose, then what does that mean of the anointing of God that's on your life?

These just brutal, brutal, emotionally ambiguous situations that David is in.

And when we look at a man like that, and we look at his life, when I consider the life of a man like that, I have two questions.

How did you sleep?

And how did you wake up?

I think those would be probably the two most challenging parts of David's life, other than being trying to be killed by the king and trying to be killed by your son.

Those were the top.

Right beneath that.

How do you sleep at night?

And then how do you get yourself out of bed in the morning?

Now I know you can relate to those dynamics, perhaps not the extremeness of them, but praise the Lord that this is shown to us in the life of David.

And in these most at every level you can imagine, relationally, theologically, violently, you know, there's that there's danger involved.

At every level you can imagine, these are these are ambiguous and terrible situations to be in.

So that you can look and say, he slept and he woke up.

If he can sleep and wake up, if the Lord was able to meet him in those situations, then the Lord can meet me.

It's a maximal example, which means it's inclusive of you.

That's what we're meant to see here.

So let's look at how David went to sleep.

Oh, what an important spiritual discipline this is.

Do you know how mean you are to your family when you don't get enough sleep?

Probably very mean.

Nobody even nobody even chuckled.

That's the type of thing that usually if you usually think, uh, we are.

But that was just like, hmm.

You're probably tired now.

Probably happened on the drive in.

Yeah, take this time to apologize.

First thing that we see in this prayer, we're just gonna walk through this prayer this morning.

We're gonna learn the tactic.

First thing that we see in this prayer is David demanding that God listen to him.

Okay, so Psalm 4, verse 1.

Psalms 4:1

Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness.

You have given me relief when I was in distress.

Be gracious to me and hear my prayer.

Couple of things to notice.

This is a prayer.

This is not a meditation.

Now, we talked about meditation in Psalm 1, how important it is to have the Word of God stored in your heart.

But this is a prayer, which means that he's not just enjoying the Word of God in his own mind, but he is speaking to God.

That means that he is speaking to someone who is there.

He is not just talking himself through a helpful psychological exercise.

David wants to know that when he's speaking, he will be heard by someone who is there.

This can be transformative for your prayer life, but causes you to enter into this radically vulnerable place where when you're praying, you're not just saying, Yeah, I've I've read that positive self-talk can be great to wind down your day.

I listened to a Huberman lab about it.

And this that is true, you know, I'm sure there's I'm sure that's true, but look, this Christian thing means we think God is there.

And I think when I talk to him, he listens to me.

And David puts himself in this vulnerable position where he says, Lord, answer me when I call.

So take a moment before you pray and consider, Lord, you are there.

Hear me, answer me.

I'm not just talking to myself, I'm not just talking to the sky.

So he begins with this demand to answer.

Now, why would David believe that God would answer him?

Well, we can see that in his language he has meditated on the promises of God because he's able to draw these in to his prayer.

O God of my righteousness, he calls the Lord.

This means that he has an understanding that God sought him, God gave his promises to David, and God is the one that ensures David's righteousness.

Now we know this all the more in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

As Zach read this morning, that Jesus came, God had looked over our former sins, but in the sacrifice of Christ, by our faith alone, God is both just and the justifier of all who would believe.

It is because of Christ's work on the cross that we stand justified before the Lord.

We are ensured that we stand perfectly righteous before the Lord.

He is the God of our righteousness.

So that means when your conscience plagues you, and you consider, I am in such a state that I know that God will not listen to me now.

David might have found himself in that very place, but he begins with, God, answer me, because you are the God of my righteousness.

You give to me my righteous standing before you.

So answer me.

So God trusts in the covenantal love of the Lord towards him.

Trusts that God is the one that gives him his righteousness.

So there's a theological reason.

Answer me when I call.

Why will you answer me?

Lord, you already haven't withheld your own son to make me righteous.

Surely you will give me your ear this evening.

Second, we see David reminds himself and even argues to God, you have given me relief when I was in distress.

Look, God, you've done it before.

So you could even remember what are other times where I've been in distress.

You know, I used to be really stressed about this situation at work.

I don't even think about it anymore.

It was resolved.

The Lord brought me through.

He's done this countless times for me when I think about the presence of the Lord in my life.

I just think of resolution after resolution after resolution.

So many things that the Lord has brought me through.

He's still faithful, isn't he?

This is what God is like.

So he considers there's a theological standing before the Lord, the reality of what Christ has accomplished, and he considers his own personal history.

Oh, the Lord has been so faithful to me.

And then he returns be gracious to me, God, and hear my prayer.

See how David has taken whatever doubt might have been in his heart that the Lord would have heard him and that he would be able to commune with the Lord, and he has tended to that.

And he has reminded himself, and by pleading with the Lord, that the Lord will hear him, the Lord will answer him, the Lord is gracious towards him.

This is where David's prayer begins.

Next, David starts to talk about his problems.

In Psalm 4, verses 2 through 3.

Psalms 4:2–3

He says, O men, how long shall my honor be turned into shame?

How long will you love vain words and seek after lies?

Say law.

But know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself.

The Lord hears when I call to him.

David is in relational turmoil.

We don't know the particulars of it, but we get to kind of insert our own.

That's kind of the uh generosity of David's vagueness.

How long shall my honor be turned into shame?

You know, David finds himself in something like a catch 22.

He's like, like the things that I'm that I'm trying to do to be good are only being received in shame.

And I'm not able to explain myself to the people who who I desire to be known well by and who I want a real relationship with.

And I find myself in this turmoil where I can't even be understood.

And so he makes this sort of rational appeal.

Oh man, how long shall my honor be turned into shame?

How long will you love vain words and seek after lies?

It's like this rational appeal to those who are slandering him and speaking ill of him and and that are causing this turmoil within him of I can't be understood.

I can't make myself known here.

I can't, uh this this dynamic is too frustrating.

It's it can't be reconciled.

It's uh we we're talking past each other all the time.

I can't see any way forward in this situation.

How long will you love vain words and seek after lies?

And then he pauses.

That say law we just read is like a pause.

So it could be a musical term.

Um worship pastors tend to name their daughters this.

Uh ours didn't.

Um two opportunities, and he still didn't, so shows a lot of restraint.

He pauses after naming the frustration, the emotional, relational frustration that David is experiencing, and then he he turns.

But know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself.

The Lord hears when I call to him.

I can't make myself understood.

The Lord hears me, the Lord understands me.

Even the things I don't understand about myself in what I'm facing here, I know are heard and understood by the Lord.

This is why it is so important for your prayers to not just be a self talk, but to be engaging with the God who is there because you need for the reality of the situation to be held in someone's mind in order for your Heart to be settled.

And the mind of the Lord is sufficient.

He understands.

And you can know this.

David, in David, he prays this, but know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself.

I feel tangled up.

Like I'll never be able to rescue myself from this sort of situation.

But the Lord has set apart the godly for himself.

They will be his, they will be able to commune with him.

How many nights have you spent in just verse two?

Oh man, how long shall my honor be turned into shame?

How long will you love vain words and seek after lies?

And then you just relitigate conversations.

Here's a lie that they believe.

Here's some vain words that they've said.

And you know, they probably think those vain words because of this of what they saw on Twitter.

And I'm gonna go check, actually, just to verify that that's where they got it.

Yep, that's where they got it.

That is where they got it, by the way.

Spiritual tip.

And all of a sudden, you're you're totally not uh you've did you're distant from the Lord, his presence matters not at all.

This has just become a problem that you can get to the bottom of in your own mind, and you're you're you've joined into this turmoil, and it has this terrible outcome.

You don't sleep.

The climax of this psalm is gonna blow your mind because David sleeps.

He sleeps.

He lays down and goes to sleep.

All that he has going on, he sleeps.

That's because he makes this move.

He's not pretending that nothing wrong is happening.

Oh yeah, they're chasing after vain, they're believing vain words, they're believing all these lies, they're slandering me.

There's all this miscommunication and misunderstanding and and you know and malintent taking place within the situation.

The Lord understands me.

I'm not totally misunderstood.

The Lord understands.

Does anybody see what's happening in this situation?

The Lord understands what's happening in this situation, even the layers to which I am mixed up in it.

The Lord understands that too.

He will not abandon me to it.

But I know that the Lord He sets apart the godly.

Is anybody listening?

Can I convey the truth of this to anyone?

The Lord hears when I call to him.

There's someone who's listening and understands even better than you right now.

That's what David knows.

So he works past that.

And then next, in verses four through five, David works through, honestly, this is this is the most pep talky part of the prayer.

Where you can see as David is naming his frustrations, he's got to cut himself off.

He's playing with fire there because you can easily just get on the off ramp, be like, okay, my frustrations are gonna be the whole reality.

And then he gives himself this kind of pep talk, but it's not just to himself.

It's like this, it has this double dynamic to it, because it's all plural.

It's these commands to a kind of general you.

And it's it's as though this is what this is the instruction he wishes he could give to the people that are frustrating him, but it's also instruction that he knows he needs to receive himself.

And so he prays for the reality of it to take place.

It's like he's saying, This is the shape of the world that I want there to be.

And if I'm gonna make it through this, I'm gonna have to hold fast to this shape of interaction.

So he says in verses four through five, be angry, do not sin.

Ponder in your own hearts on your beds, and be silent.

Say law.

Offer right sacrifices, and put your trust in the Lord.

Okay, what it how am I gonna get through this?

What am I gonna need the Lord to provide for me to get through this?

So the first thing he addresses is a boundary.

Be angry, do not sin.

Says, look, it could also be translated, if you are angry, to all who are angry, you angry ones, don't sin.

Just put that boundary there.

That is not the way through this.

It is not to abandon the way of the Lord.

Now, the word angry is this interesting word because it it's it's uh it's more physical than our word angry.

Our word angry is like just like a mental emotional state.

Like you can be angry and just look like this.

I don't know.

Look at your neighbor.

They could be angry.

Not gonna look at your neighbor stuff.

This word is like it's physical, trembling, you know, shaking, on the edge of an outburst.

It's describing like a like a an experience in your body.

And it could be anger, it could be fear, it could be aggression, like uh on the cusp of a violent outburst.

So the point is it's it's this negative sensation that you don't want to be feeling and you want release from it.

Don't sin.

That is not the way to get released from that feeling.

Don't take it out on your spouse because you're under so much pressure from the situation that you get to have a release valve.

Don't go look at pornography because you're so trapped in the reality of your present life that you want just some fantastic escape from this immediate experience.

Don't ignore your kids because there's so much taking place and that you're surrounded by in your life that you can just go up into that feeling.

Say, no, like the reality of the world is I need to process this feeling.

No, this is this is not an opportunity for sin that will not get you through.

So you need to you need to put that boundary in your life.

This is no way through that feeling.

If you're angry, don't sin.

So David just tells himself that.

Like we want, you know, it doesn't like it would be we want to fluff that up more.

Like, don't sin.

Look, just tell yourself, don't sin.

It will not help.

David just needs to be clear with himself.

That won't help.

That won't help.

If I'm angry, don't sin.

Okay, so what do I do?

Ponder in your own hearts.

But come on, that's I'm still gonna kind of feel like this.

Yeah, you probably will.

There's not a lever you can reach up and switch that feeling off with.

So you're gonna have to kind of settle into it.

This is the way I feel right now.

Ponder in my own hearts.

Well, what is there to consider?

You're on your bed.

David says this on he's on his bed.

What is there to consider?

What has he told us already?

God is my righteousness.

He answers me.

He's gracious to me.

He's delivered me out of all kinds of trouble.

He's delivered me out of trouble like this.

He sees what's happening.

He sees all sides of this dynamic, and he's delivered me from situations that are like this dynamic.

Okay.

Now let's let's just be silent.

Silence.

Silence.

That's an interesting one.

Silence is a participation in the reality that as you lie in your bed about to go to sleep at night, you can't fix this.

I'm just gonna have to trust that the Lord will.

Once a day.

For many of us more than once a day, but at least once a day, if you sleep once a day, which most of you do, you become utterly useless.

Incapable of advocating for yourself, defending yourself, incapable of writing anything down or coming up with the right thing to say or the way the way out of whatever situation you're in.

You're just asleep.

That means this is a participation in the reality that there's your particular situation, which you may not be able to think your way out of.

And then there's the macro situation of the world and your whole life, and you can't rescue yourself from that.

You are utterly dependent upon the Lord to save you.

That is the reality.

So you stand silent before your problems.

So I was praying through this psalm throughout this week.

I would I got to the word silent and I said, Don't listen, iPad.

Hey Siri.

Set a timer for five minutes.

I just sat in silence for five minutes.

Five minutes starting now.

We've been practicing.

Wow.

We also dressed the same today, wasn't it?

Um and she did that, and we uh we uh we ugh no.

No.

I sat in silence before the Lord.

And there's this.

I started to consider, you know, if I'm gonna go forward, I have to go forward just within the love of God.

That is my hope.

To move forward within the love of God.

This is a way of bringing your heart into contact with reality.

There's no self-deception available in silence before the Lord.

You are facing in a plain way, I cannot save myself.

I need to be saved.

And then you sit, and what do we do next?

You offer right sacrifices.

That's belief, that's trust, that's love of Jesus, and put your trust in the Lord.

We can trick ourselves that we're putting our trust into the Lord because we're able to recite the right words about Jesus, but there's something about silence, which is not just getting the answers right about Jesus, it is trusting itself.

It is, that is, it is not about how you ought to trust the Lord.

Sitting in silence is, do you see the distinction that I'm making?

Sitting in silence is not about how you ought to trust the Lord.

Sitting in silence is trusting the Lord.

It is doing that itself, which is why you will find your flesh is so utterly resistant to it.

How else are you gonna practice this?

David knew.

David knew he was humble enough to know I can't just think that I trust the Lord enough to trust the Lord.

I need to just sit and trust the Lord.

And that becomes a training of your heart to trust one who is there, who you trust hears you, and you recognize he's the one who gets the situation, I'm in over my head.

The reality is, even if I'm not totally in over my head in this situation, this situation is nested in a larger situation of a life that I just happen to be thrown into because existence is very strange, and I'm trapped, unable to save myself here.

And I'm coming into contact with that reality.

All right, so let's look at this pep talk.

You feel angry.

Okay, this is I I'm I've got a physical sensation about all this that I don't like.

You don't sin.

That will not help.

It will not help.

Don't avoid it or even try to work it out.

You're silent and you attend to the Lord.

That's the way David hope that's the way David prays that he will respond.

It's the way that he hopes others will respond.

All right, now David has one more obstacle to overcome.

The first is just the frustrations themselves, the relationships that are dissolving themselves, all the difficulties that he's facing there, the slander and the vanity.

And then the next thing to confront in his heart is as he starts to almost teeter towards hope is the simple defeatism that would raise up in his own heart of, yeah, yeah, all this closeness with the Lord stuff is great.

But the reality is this isn't gonna work out.

You know, it's nice to feel close to the Lord, but it's also it's nice, but maybe it's equal part silly.

Because if I'm being honest about the situation, if I'm being real about this this situation, it's just not gonna, it won't work out, it won't resolve, and it'll be a catastrophe that leads to another catastrophe that can't be solved or figured out or whatever it may be.

And so he had he knows he has to work in his heart past this defeat, this defeated attitude.

You can hear it as he quotes the many.

He says, You know, there are many who say, Who will show us some good?

Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord.

Now that that second line, lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord.

I can't tell whether that goes up with who will show us some good or whether it's the beginning of David's, you know, back to the prayer itself.

So I'll let you guys just pick one.

But this phrase, who will show us some good, it's a way of saying.

People are saying, look, if this doesn't resolve in the way that will demonstrate the goodness of God in a way that you can understand, like if you don't get exactly what you're asking for, then how can you trust the goodness of the Lord?

You know, if you don't, if you don't finally get understood by those people, then how can the goodness of the Lord really be present?

If the vain words don't stop being uttered, if the this terrible ambiguity that you're locked in doesn't get resolved, then the Lord is not good.

So who so the many say, who will show us some good?

You know, that's we're we're in this for the end game.

There's a bottom line here, and it either works out or it doesn't.

Let's be honest about that.

But David, you know, his heart has shifted at this point, and he's able to overcome that.

And he says it like this Lord, I think this does belong at the second half, the second line.

Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord.

David is experiencing the face of the Lord, the presence of the Lord as his highest good.

So that even if the situation doesn't resolve in a way that he can explain or understand, he is immediately in that space.

Look, he's on his bed.

He's just on his bed before he's about to go to sleep.

And then he's he says, You've put more joy in my heart.

It means like right now, there's joy in my heart from the Lord that David is experiencing.

He's really experiencing.

There's a true satisfaction from the Lord.

From the God who is there, remember?

This isn't just a meditation, there's someone else there.

And from that someone else who is God, he's receiving his highest joy in his heart.

You know, we we pray and we we say like our highest satisfaction is in the Lord, and we'll catechize our children to say things like that.

And I and but it can all be very theoretical.

Like, look, satisfaction is not the satisfaction is not the answer to a question.

It's it's it's more like the the word anger, in that the this is like the description of a physical experience.

You know, this is something he's really participating in, really experiencing the joy of the Lord.

You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.

This helps us interpret that first thing.

Because the many say, if I get what I'm asking for in the way that I'm asking for it, then I'll be able to know that God is good and have joy in my heart.

But David has centered himself so completely on the presence of the Lord and is is coming so humbly into the presence of his good father that he says, look, even if this works out, I've got more joy now.

There's more joy in my heart than the many have when there the grain and wine abound.

You know, wine makes you feel joyful.

Having stores of grain makes you feel safe and secure.

I I feel better than that now, just in the presence of the Lord, who is real, who's really there.

And then this miracle happens.

In verse eight.

In peace, peace, I will both lie down and sleep.

For you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.

And then, I don't know, I haven't seen the movie in a long time, but David just rolls over and falls asleep.

He's a stomach sleeper.

He understands that the situations in his life are so complicated and that he is such a part of that complexity that he cannot think himself or distract himself away from it.

There is no distraction so good, and he is not so foolish to think that if he just distracted himself until the moment where he had to fall asleep, that he would wake up and his soul would be where he left it the previous night.

It wouldn't be.

It would have been further away, a bit more haggard, a bit more worn out, harder to put on.

He knows that in order for his soul to find any peace in a world of such distraction, such confusion, such disappointment and danger, he must come to The Lord to receive it.

And he must be given peace like a gift from someone who is there.

So he prays at night.

You know, the word safety, it's better than safety.

It's not just that he is protected from the outside.

It would be better translated as unafraid.

Oh Lord, make me dwell unafraid.

Unafraid is great.

Because unafraid you can experience in the midst of danger.

So David is able to sit and he says, My heart is different.

I can sleep now.

So this is what we learn from Psalm 4.

Pray every evening.

Pray before you go to sleep.

Sleep is a spiritual discipline.

God says he gives to his beloved sleep.

Well, how do I participate in being one of his beloved?

This is a way.

So here's a great practice that you can do.

You can do this for a long time.

Do this for like a year.

Pray through Psalm 4 before you go to sleep.

Just pull out your Bible and go to Psalm 4, print out Psalm 4, keep it next to your bed.

And when you look through these verses, just follow what David does.

You know, let him sit down and pray with you and teach you how to get some sleep in a life like this.

How to draw close to the Lord to experience his peace.

He'll come to David and be like, I'm so stressed out.

And David will be like, oh, is your son uh launching a rebellion against you to try and murder you?

Because I know how stressful that can be.

And you'd be like, no.

Couple emails I wasn't thrilled about.

Gonna be some deadlines that probably get shifted.

He's like, I could probably we can probably pray through that.

First do this.

Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness.

You've given me relief when I was in distress.

Be gracious to me and hear my prayer.

Lord, I know you'll hear me.

You're there.

Oh, sometimes it's hard for my heart to connect with that.

But Lord, let me use these words.

Answer me, God.

Be there.

Be there.

Let me experience your presence.

Will you really hear me?

I don't want to just be talking to this guy.

Hear me, Lord.

You've given me Christ.

I've been told since I was a kid that Jesus gave his life for me, that I might come into your presence.

Lord, let me hold that as true.

Hear me, Lord.

Okay, next.

O men, how long shall my honor be turned into shame?

How long will you love vain words and seek after lies?

But know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself.

The Lord hears when I call to him.

I did not expect to get this email from some I thought we were on the same page.

And I worked all this time to communicate, and it seemed completely ineffective.

And of course, I dropped the ball in this area too, and so I'm not removed from it completely, but the whole thing has become so confusing and frustrating, and I don't know how I'm going to be able to convey this or what the outcome will be.

And I'm so frustrated by the anger and the you know futility of these conversations and whatever it may be.

Oh, Lord, you set apart the godly for yourself.

You can hear me.

Lord, you understand.

You hear when I call to you.

All the confusion in this, you know, you really know and understand it.

I'm in turmoil.

I'm in anger.

Don't sin.

Okay.

Ponder in your own hearts on your bed and be silent.

Hey Siri.

Set a timer for five minutes.

And be silent.

You guys get the idea?

Trust in the Lord.

Okay, Lord, you see this.

Trust in you.

I'll trust in you.

What can I do about this now?

What can I do about all of the real problems that I face?

What can I do about being heard by you or being cared for by you or the need to settle my mind or the need to find rest in you?

Silence.

Trust.

Unless this works out, I'll have no peace.

I cannot trust that God is with me.

But Lord, you put more joy in my heart than even if this problem were answered, or their hearts when grain and wine abound.

The presence of the Lord.

In the presence of the Lord, there is fullness of joy.

In peace I'll both lie down and sleep.

For you alone.

Plus the answers to these problems.

Oh wait, no, I just added that part.

For you alone.

Make me dwell in safety.

You alone make me dwell unafraid.

Once a day.

Once a day, attend to the Lord.

In the evening.

After next week it'll be twice a day.

But in the evening, pray.

Psalm 4.

See what type of person you'll become.

Alright, are there any questions?

Why does the joy, satisfaction, and peace from God seem so fleeting?

How do we keep the endurance or sustain the pace of continually finding our hearts turning away from those things?

I want to be so settled in my heart that I just float through the world like the Dalai Lama pretends to.

And I just am experiencing this just constant joy of the presence of the Lord.

But I don't think I will get something like that until Jesus returns.

But the Lord graciously and gently engages with us at the level of our fallen humanity.

And so he gives us these ordinary rhythms of, look, he gives to his beloved sleep.

Almost everyone sleeps.

And that means that whenever anyone's sleeping, this is just like a care from the Lord.

Now, I don't know how to make this a constant presence.

I desire it.

I think it's a good desire, one that will find its fulfillment one day.

But I can, in a, in a rhythmic pattern, return my heart here when the days have worn on me.

And so this is not, this is something that you can engage with daily to lesser and greater degrees of the experience of the Lord's joy.

But your heart gets formed by these practices.

That's why we're taught them in Scripture.

We're taught what is it like for a human heart to draw close to the Lord?

Well, it's something like this.

And look, it just fits into the ordinary patterns of your day.

You go to sleep and you wake up.

Let's get those things.

If you get those things, that those those parts of your life, sleeping and waking, are more and more attuned to the presence of the Lord, that could be a pretty good life.

Even if all the rest of it is a sort of insanity and chaos, that's still not bad.

You know, in terms of ratios.

It's better than like a great week once a month.

So engage with the Lord where he engages with you, which is in the ordinary rhythms and patterns that he has set for you as boundaries for you to engage with him in.

And hopefully the margins of those grow as you become more and more the type of person who is able to, oh, time's up, who is able to see him in all areas of life.

Okay.

Now let's take communion.

Paul writes, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he is betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, This is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

He has not come yet.

But we can proclaim and in that sense participate in this reality that he will come.

We will be able to rest completely in him one day, and until then, he meets us in the type of life that we are in now, teaches us how to draw close to him.

So let us draw close in this pattern right now, of coming to his table for fellowship.

If you are a Christian, come to the table.

This is for you.

If you are not, we ask that you would not participate as this is a proclamation of our faith that Jesus died for us, he will come again.

Oh, but the table is open, that you might draw close and believe in him and proclaim that.

There is rest for your souls.

Holy Father, we thank you for this meal.

We thank you for your word, which attends to our hearts and teaches us how to live and how to draw close to you.

We are not wandering around with uh no anchor or no consideration for how to know you.

You don't say, get to know God, and then run and hide and say, figure it out yourself.

Do you show us in the most extreme patterns of some of the most long-suffering lives that have ever walked the earth?

How we in our more ordinary lives might draw close to you.

We praise you for your loving kindness towards us.

Let us draw close to you and be formed in your image.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.