Seeing Jesus in Psalm 25 - Trusting in the Chaos Psalm 25:1-2 - “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.” The scene is the Garden of Gethsemane. Most of the time when we think about a Garden, we think about a place of serenity and peace, a place of rest. On this night however nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus is not in a place of serenity or peace, He is struggling because of what lies around the corner. He knows that the cross is coming and coming quickly. In His struggle He agonizingly cries out to God, His Father. He cries out that the cross might be taken away from Him, and yet even then in His agony, He trusts. He trusts as He says, “nevertheless not my will but Yours be done.” He says God, I am hurting, I am struggling, that which lays before Me is harrowing. It will be tortuous and excruciating, yet if You say go, God I am going to go and trust you. What an amazing level of trust. God I am going to trust You, even if that trust leads me to the cross and to death. His words in the Garden were in many ways similar to David’s words in Psalm 25. Jesus is “lifting up His soul,” and He is putting His trust in God, His Father. He is crying out for God’s intervention. David did the exact same thing. David’s cry went beyond just saying, “I’m going to trust in you, O God,” he also said “don’t let my enemies exult over me, don’t let me be put to shame.” Jesus could have certainly said the same thing couldn’t He? Don’t let the enemy win, neither my earthly enemies nor the enemies of death, hell, and Satan. Don’t let them win, don’t let me be put to shame. The cross was certainly a place of shame. The shame of being spat upon, the shame of being beaten, the shame of being laughed at and ridiculed, and the shame of hanging on a tree exposed before everyone. Jesus was shamed, at least for the time that He hung on the cross, and it certainly appeared during that time that His enemies would win the victory. It appeared that the grave would have the final say. Yet it did not, God in His power stepped in and answered Jesus’ prayer for deliverance, as He resurrected His Son from the grave. God took something horrific and made good come out of it. Yes, His son was shamed and put to death because of our sins, but He was also resurrected and victorious through the power and the grace of God and now through that power and that grace the way of salvation and redemption is available to us. The Bible tells us that now Jesus is “seated at the right hand of God making intercession for us.” So now when we cry out to God in prayer, God hears our prayers, not because of our own merits but because of what Jesus did. What He did in His life, in the garden and in His death. What He did as He burst forth from the grave, because of those things when we pray we can be assured that if we are “in Christ” that God, the Father truly does hear our prayers. David’s prayer in Psalm 25 is very focused. Jesus’ was as well. John Calvin says of this passage of Scripture, “the psalmist is not driven hither and thither, after the manner of the ungodly, but that his prayers are directed to God and to God alone. Nothing is more inconsistent with true and sincere prayer to God, than to waver and gaze about.” In other words when we pray we need to follow David’s example and pray with our focus on God and on God alone. When we pray, we need to pray very direct, very passionate prayers. David certainly did, as did Jesus in the Garden. Yet with all of the distractions of this world, if we are honest we don’t always do that. Sometimes when we pray we get easily distracted, and our focus isn’t where it needs to be. Here’s the good news, even then the grace of God makes our prayers acceptable to God. Jesus is at the right hand of the Father interceding for us. He is praying for us right now and I am fully convinced that part of that praying for us means that He takes our prayers, our feeble attempts at communicating with the Almighty, and makes them acceptable to God. We get distracted, we pray the wrong things, sometimes we even pray with sinful motives, and yet Jesus takes our prayers and in His grace makes them acceptable to God the Father. Robert Murray M’Cheyne once said, “if I knew Jesus was in the next room praying for me I would fear nothing, yet that is exactly what He is doing, so why should I fear anything.” Jesus has ascended to God the Father because He submitted to God the Father in the Garden. Jesus is interceding for us right now because God the Father raised Him from the dead. Jesus is making our prayers acceptable to God the Father, because He was the Son of God and Son of Man, the one who was the mediator between God and man. The one who is the bridge between us and God. Because He is praying for us we have nothing to fear. Because He makes our prayers acceptable we must continue to pray even in the distractions. Jesus said, “ask and it will be given to you,” and as we ask and as we pray we are declaring our humility and our dependence on God. And as we pray He is teaching us to trust, to trust Him even in the midst of the chaos and distractions that this world throws at us. To pray and to trust even in our own sins.” His grace makes our prayers acceptable, so let us pray with passion and let us pray trusting in a God who went to the cross to reconcile us to Him. Let us pray trusting Him with the whole of our lives and living life for His glory!
Posted on: Wed, 16 Oct 2013 02:52:57 +0000
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