Sermon preached on Sunday, September 25, 2016 at Visalia Evangelical Free Church during the morning worship service based on Psalm 25:1-7.

Take your Bible if you will and open it to the twenty-fifth chapter of the book of Psalms, Psalm 25.

One of the reasons I love readying and studying the psalms is their brutal honesty. It is part of the candor and honesty of the psalms. It’s rather striking to any reader.

In fact, so raw are they that we are surprised to see them in the pages of Scripture. Yet there is no cover up whatsoever, only what God intended for His people to read in His Most Holy Word.

It is no wonder that these psalms have been recited, sung, memorized, and cherished by God’s people since their inception.

Psalm 25 is no exception – brutally honest is the psalmist in this psalm. Essentially, dearly beloved, we are eavesdropping on a prayer to God during a very troubling, soul wrenching time in the psalmist’s life.

You see, God in His infinite goodness, wisdom, and sovereignty allows, brings about, permits, dare I say causes [depending on your understanding of God’s providence & sovereignty] hardship and trials to befall on His children.

Concerning the wanderings our Lord led His people to go through. Moses records in Deut 8:2 –

2 “You shall remember all the way which the LORD your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.

What of the words from Joseph to his brother in Gen 50:20 –

20 “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.

Peter in the NT writes in 1 Pet 4:12 –

12 Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you;

Or Paul’s most well-known verse in Rom 8:28 –

28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

No one ever said this was ever going to be easy.

You are even bound to have enemies in this life. You are even bound to have internal doubts, “am I going the right way. Am I doing it again, am I wandering off the right course.”

Our Lord Himself said, “In the world you have tribulation” (Jn 16:33). Never did our Lord promise that this way that leads to eternal life would ever be easy.

But He did tell us this: “but take courage, I have overcome the world.”

And that is where the believer walks, he walks in the promises of God, while all along on a journey that takes him in the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.

That is where this particular psalm comes into play. This psalm is all about guidance - the guidance we need along this journey, this way that we as His children are in and walking in for His good purposes, for His ultimate glory.

We are guided by the light of God’s Word, making clear and definite each step we are to take to make it to the end, all the while trusting in Him, never letting go of His promises, never letting go of our God & Savior.

This psalm is a “Psalm of David.” We do not know when in his life or at what specific point in life’s journey did he write this psalm, but we do know what it is that he was pleading for…he was asking for divine guidance to lead him in the midst of opposing darkness.

He was being attacked by enemies (vv. 2-3, 19); he was lonely and afflicted (v. 16); he was in some kind of trial trusting in God to “pluck [his] feet out of the net” (v. 15); surely this was no walk in the park, he was discouraged of heart believing his troubles to be “enlarged” from within (v. 17).

Prayers rendered up to God mixed in with confessions and meditations of the heart is what makes this psalm so gripping.

So genuine is this psalm that it is bound to take hold of your thoughts, affections, and your very life. My prayer is that God would lead and guide us to walk faithfully, with all our trust placed on Him, and to walk humbly, as we consider ourselves before a Holy God, and to walk joyfully, relying upon His promises, trusting in Him to the very end.

I invite you stand in the reading of God’s Word. Read Psalm 25.