My Pulpit Message - notes Honest Prayer My Pulpit Message Notes are extracted from the sermon preached at the Nairobi Baptist Church (NBC) Ngong Road on Sunday 8th May 2022. Preacher: Mrs. / Elder Caroline Krhoda. Topic: Honest Prayer (David) Scripture: Psalm 51 Many of us have difficulty in prayer. A large percentage of professing Christians spend little time in sustained prayer, especially private prayer. Why? Maybe due to doubt that anything will happen at all if we prayed. Maybe we have prayed about something for so long and have not seen any results. Or we have prayed something important and the opposite has happened e.g. a loved one who was ill, you prayed and they passed on, or a job that seemed perfect, you prayed and failed to secure it. Maybe you have had experience with prayer that led us to the conclusion that it is pointless. Very often when we settle into private prayer we lack that sense of nearness or realness with God. It seems unnatural to talk to a God that you can neither hear, nor see. There are circumstances in life that can drive us to prayer, but there are times when life just seems manageable and can lull us into some kind of sufficiency, adequacy, or it is a sin that we are entertaining that keeps us too guilty to pray. Psalm 51 titled; A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba. This very well known Psalm, that is now public was once a cry of a man in private to his God. The events leading to this Psalm recorded in 2 Samuel 11 and 12. Summary David had stayed home when kings went to war. One random evening he spotted Bathsheba bathing as he walked on the roof of his palace. The Bible describes her as very beautiful. And that is why David inquired about her and was informed who she was including her parents and whose wife she was.
where I proceeded to lay on the carpet and prayed cried some more. And I told God, “This is not my portion. I have served You all my life. Look what I have to show for it.” And I cannot remember how long I had gone on and on when as clear as day I had an impression in my spirit about my prayerlessness in the days before. God saying to me, ‘Do you know, but for my mercy, It would have been worse.” “You are the man.” And instantly my prayer changed and I prayed to God, “Have mercy on me. and thank You that it wasn’t worse.” You see there are things about myself that I would never know, except God reveals them to me. Stains in my life that I would never see except, I held them up against God’s light. David understood and accepted his condition. Could part of the dishonesty in our lives be an impression like that of the church in Laodicea?Thinking they were rich and prospering and in need of nothing when in actual fact they were wrecked, pitiable, poor, blind and naked. One writer says, the result of being known by God and listening to God is that we are woken to the truth that we are in fact very low. For God speaks to us about our sin, our guilt, our weakness, our blindness, our folly and He compels us to judge ourselves hopeless and helpless and then to cry out, ‘Have mercy on me’. An accurate view of ourselves leads us to honest prayer. Jesus told the story of a Pharisee and a tax collector in Luke 18 to demonstrate the folly of those who are confident in their own righteousness. The Pharisee pontificating how he was not like other people, “I fast twice a week, I give a tenth of all I have.” The tax collector meanwhile stowed at a distance and would not even look up to heaven, but he beat his breast and said, ‘God have mercy on me a sinner’. And Jesus said, “I tell you that this man rather than the other went home justified before God.”
But you know, we would never ask for mercy from God if our God was merciless. It is the very fact of His mercy and grace that allows us to come. So Psalm 51:1b “According to your One would think that David, a man after God’s own heart would shut the matter down, unfailing love have mercy on me. According to your great compassion, blot out my transgresbut no, he arranged to sleep with her and resions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse turn her to her husband where things might me from my sin.” Other translations say, “achave stopped, except that she conceived. Dacording to your lovingkindness”, and “accordvid is now in a bit of a quandary, he is the We cannot remain the same when we pray an honest ing to the multitudes of your tender mercies.” king after all and now there is proof of what has happened. He tries every way to get Uri- prayer. A prayer that comes from a clear understanding of Because as great as the multitudes of our sin is, ah to come home to his wife, even getting even great is the multitudes of God’s grace and him drunk, but he fails. So in the end he has mercy. It is because he knew God to be mercihim killed and after the mourning period he our state, that, only God can show us. That taps into God’s ful that he dared to come. brings Bathsheba to his palace and she has the baby. Nine months at least between the inexhaustible resources as our Saviour, that prayer will David was arguably at his worst at this moevent and Nathan’s visit to him was no less ment, but he still appealed to God for mercy than nine months. The time from conception because he know God to be merciful. He knew lead to our sanctification, into our growth to to the birth of a child. God’s love to be unfailing. He knew God’s compassion to be great. He knew also that only Was David praying? Was the greatest wor- Christ-likeness. God could blot out his transgressions. Cancel shipper of all time worshipping? We read in it, deregister it. Only He could wash away all Psalm 38 what he would have been like if he the iniquity and cleanse him from sin. God was was. Guilty, angry, troubled, overwhelmed, the solution to his deficit. pierced, mourning, pained, his strength failing, light before his eyes, abandoned by friends, routed, even physically ill, like one cannot hear God, forsaken like God is far away. That is So have you ever wondered how David knew all these things about God so as to appeal to how David would have felt if he was maybe aware of that sin. Him? How can we really know that God is compassionate and kind and holy and sovereign and eternal, unchanging, merciful? Where did David get his theology from? While the sin was still fresh, maybe that is how he felt. However as you know you and I with time, when not dealt with, a conscience can be numbed, a sin can be suppressed, the voice of God, the Almighty Creator, the Lord of Hosts, the great God before Who the nations are but God silenced and we can get used to the distance. However, the thing that David had done a drop in the bucket, Who in fact holds that king’s heart in his heart in his hands and wields it displeased the LORD. this way and that, comes to man and talks to man, He opens His heart to him and He makes friends with Him, He enlists him onto His staff, makes him a partner, a fellow worker. God in And He sends Nathan with a story. There were two men, a rich one with many sheep and sending Nathan to David was speaking to him as He speaks to us in His word. cattle and a poor one with one little ewe lamb that he loved. The rich man to feed a traveller who came to visit him and instead of taking one of his own, took the poor man’s lamb, had Jeremiah says, ‘Let not the wise boast in their wisdom, or the strong boast in their strength, it prepared for his guest. And David’s anger was stirred, his spirit’s response was immediate. or the rich boast in their riches, but let the one who boasts, boast about this, that they have an “As surely as the LORD lives, the man who has done this deserves to die and he shall restore understanding to know Me, that I am the LORD who exercises kindness, justice, righteousthe lamb fourfold because he did this thing and he had no pity.” To which Nathan declared, ness on earth, for in these things I delight. And David lived by this mantra. David knew God. “You are the man”. You are the man who deserves to die. You are the man who shall restore the See him tap into God’s ability to rescue him from the jaw of the lion and the paw of the bear lamb fourfold. You are the man that had done this thing. You are the man that has had no pity. and kill them both. See him tap into the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel whom Goliath the Philistine had defied and gain victory over him with a sling and It is difficult to see a stain when there is no light. The closer we get to the light, the clearer we a stone. See him tap into God’s counsel and save Keilah. See him realise that Saul was God’s see the stains. It took the light of God for David to see himself. He had sinned in murder, in anointed and spare his life when he had a chance to kill him. David knew his God. adultery, in covering his sin and in hardness against repentance. And now shaken from this, he came in great honesty and brokenness before God. “Have mercy on me O God. God please In numerous Psalms we hear him cry out to God to teach him his statutes, to open his eyes do not treat me as this sin deserves. Do not punish me for the guilty verdict. Instead, please so that he would behold wondrous things out of God’s law. David’s supreme desire was to pardon me for it.” The prayer of a man who knew he had sinned and stopped all self justifica- know and enjoy God himself. To understand God’s truth so as to be transformed by it and tion. David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the LORD”. No excuses. conformed to it. His cry that his ways would be directed to keep God’s Word. David sought to keep company with God and God who from the beginning has always wanted to keep Verse 3, “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me, 4 Against you, you company with man obliged him. only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge. 5 Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother con- To know God is to tap into His inexhaustible resources for our fallen state. We are so much ceived me.” the poorer for not searching, seeking, following hard after God, for not calling out like Paul, “Lord I want to know you.” God’s stands ready to reveal Himself to us. I have sinned. I deserve the judgment of death. The grace of God’s light pointing out to him that he was the man, brought him to the place of honest prayer. In the same way as God revealed Himself to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob and to Joseph because they heard Him speak, they saw Him, they related with Him as He orchestrated I remember a point in my life when all was not going well at all. A loved had been unwell for events, as He weaved in and out of their lives, we too can form impressions of God from His a while despite constant and earnest prayer, our house had no tenant, I had no job and I was Son Jesus Christ. We can have an accurate view of God through His words and by His actions. generally, completely directionless and I was on Mombasa Road on my way to a shop to buy a toilet for my tenantless house and as I was thinking about my directionless life I got a phone If we open our eyes to see Him, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Lord help me to see You with call from my friend who embarked on telling me just how well things were going on in her the first breath I take each morning. Help me to see You in the trees and the flowers and the life. God had done things for her. beauty that is around me. Help me to see You in the family and friendships that I have, in the events of my life, but most of all in the passages of Scripture. Lord help me to see You. An And I rejoiced with her ‘praise the Lord, hallelujah, great’. As soon as I placed the phone accurate view of God leads to honest prayer. down, the taps were open, tears. I cried all the way to the shop, pressed pause when I reached, got the toilet and went back into the car and pressed play. Cried all the way to the house
TT 151 | May 10th - May 16th| 2022
