If you would turn with me back to our last scripture reading, Psalm 35. The Psalm really raises, I think, a question at the onset for us. And that is, how do you and I think about the mercy of God? I mean, do we think about it as something that is very personal to us? Or do we think about it as, is really an abstract thing. Something far removed from ourselves. Do we hear about the record of God's mercy? Do we hear about his saving love? Like we hear about the prosperity of a foreign nation? Or is it something that is intimate to us? Something at the very mention of it touches ourselves at the most existential level. How personal to you is the mercy of God? How personal to you is it as you seek it in the throne of grace? That really is a question that underlies this text. And it does so even from the very first line. I want you to notice that the psalmist begins, not as a pedagogue, not as a teacher, not as one who's instructing us, but really he comes to us as a suppliant of the throne of grace. And you and I, we are, as it were, in the background. Unlike Psalm 34, we're not addressed at all. This is really a petition, a long petition to the Lord God. And you and I, as members of the congregation, we simply get to hear. We're not addressed. We get to hear his suit at the throne of grace. And so he begins with a petition. Plead my cause, O Lord. With them, strive with them, he says, that fight against him. The word there, to please, is the same word elsewhere rendered strive or even contend. What David is saying here is he's saying, fight for me. In fact, it carries with it the idea of one who is a surety for someone else. David is saying, fight on my behalf, undertake for me. And then as you work throughout the rest of the psalm, you recognize that David is quite specific in his petition. First of all, in verses one to 10, he sets out the manner. That is how he wants the Lord God to intervene. He shows us in those first 10 verses, the way in which he hopes that God should appear for him. And then verses 11 down to verse 18, he explains to us the matter. Why is he afflicted? Oh, what are the principal causes that has brought him to this misery? And then of course, what does he want the Lord God to do, especially to those who are the agents of his misery? And then it closes in verses 19 to 28, where there the psalmist talks to us about the method that he pleads for God to take as he delivers him. That is what form or what will the redemption of God look like as David prays for it. And so the psalm really does quite neatly divide into three sections. But even just with that as a very cursory overview of the whole psalm, I want you to notice friend, first of all, that here you have a king, a man, a victorious soldier who turns to God And he says, I don't want to fight my own battles. To put it in other words, you have a king who is not self-reliant, but who leaves his cause with the word God. It is God who will plead his cause. He doesn't rest upon his own arm or his own strength. Whatever strength, whatever ability the man may have in the eyes of the world, David cast himself upon the Lord. But secondly, friend, I want you to notice that in this Psalm, you have a man who is also thoroughly persuaded that he has an interest in God's covenant mercy. That he has a stake, he has a share in God's saving love. And all of that grounds these 28 verses. For him, the mercy of God is the most personal of things. It's something that is most intimate, a theme most existential to himself. He knows that he has an interest in God's saving help, that he himself is assured of mercy. My friend, as you keep those two ideas in front of us, that here you have a man who casts his whole cause upon the Lord, and he does so in confidence that he has an interest in God's saving love. My friend, what do we learn? I said to you already that he doesn't come to us as a teacher. He doesn't come to us as he did in Psalm 34 saying, come children and I will instruct you. No, here we see one who's making petition to God, but still he is our exemplar. Still what you and I have in this Psalm is normative. It's the pattern you and I are to follow. With that in mind, friend, our theme this evening is this, that the godly plead for the personal intervention of God, the godly plead for the personal intervention of God. I want us to consider that under three headings, just following the three basic sections of the psalm. I want us to begin by first of all, looking at the intervention that the psalmist prays for. And again, the first verse, you have the cry, fight, he says, against them that fight against me. But then in subsequent lines, you have something that's given to us that's quite graphic. It's imagery that you and I, we shouldn't miss. Imagery not terribly unlike what you and I found in our scripture reading from Isaiah 59. God taking upon himself the form of a soldier and doing battle. You'll notice that line after line from verse two, you have the language of war, God himself taking shield and buckler, God taking the spear, God going out and fighting David's battle. That's the image and it's quite graphic. But then as you go to verses five and six, you add as it were another layer to it. We don't leave the battlefield but But he invokes something that's quite distinct and actually quite particular. He invokes again the image, the theme of the angel of the Lord. He says the angel of the Lord in verse five, chase them. And then in verse six, he says, persecute them. We've already encountered in Psalm 34, the idea that the angel of the Lord is the one who encamps around the godly. But it's important for us, again, just to remind ourselves why this reference is so significant. First of all, I want you to notice the definite article. He's not praying for an angel to be about him. He's not making an indiscriminate prayer just that one of the hosts of the Lord would be at his ready, at his aid. That's not what he says. The angel of the Lord. is the focus of the psalmist's mind. Now, as such friend, that definite article speaks to us volumes, because it takes us back to a very particular series of events in the history of the church. Again, we said this last time we were together, but remember that we find the angel of the Lord, first of all, at Mount Moriah. And there the angel of the Lord in Genesis 22, he is the agent. the agent that rescues Isaac from under the sacrificial blade. Then we see him again at the river Jabbok, where there he stands reminding Jacob of his covenant protection and even renaming Jacob Israel. Not only protecting him, of course, from the imagined fears of Esau's attack, but reminding him of that everlasting covenant. And then we encounter him elsewhere, no less than in Exodus three, where you have there God through the angel of the Lord, visiting Moses at the burning bush, commissioning he who would be the instrument of Israel's redemption from the house of bondage. And we could go on because the angel of the Lord we see all throughout the history of Israel. At those great apocalypse, those great watershed moments, the angel of the Lord is there. And friend note that the Psalmist says at this moment, at this moment, he would have that self same figure who is ever the figure to represent and even to affect the redemption of his people. He would have that self-same one at his aid now. But there's something else significant about this, because I want you to notice, friend, that while he refers to him as the angel of the Lord, you note that even in this Psalm, he identifies the Lord with the angel of the Lord. In verse three, he prays that the Lord himself would persecute his enemies. But then note again, verse six, He prays, in fact, that it would be the angel of the Lord who would persecute them. Friend, with that in mind, what do you and I have? You and I, we have a picture very similar to Isaiah 59, but in fact, we have something even more, more directly tied to Israel's history. Remember the end of Joshua 5. Remember as the people of Israel, they are going in to Jericho. Just before that conquest, You remember Joshua there meets a man. He asks him, are you for us or are you against us? Because he sees there the man has his sword unsheathed. The man announces that he is the captain of the Lord's host. And that one commands Joshua to take off the sandals from his feet, because the ground upon which he stood was holy ground. the captain of the Lord's host, the angel of the Lord's host, friend, that they are truly interchangeable terms in the history of redemption. And so what is the psalmist praying in this case? He's praying that just as God appeared for his people, just as the angel of the Lord manifested himself to deliver his people at the great moments of redemptive history, He's saying now intervene for me in the self same way. It's so very personal for the psalmist. He pleads that God would undertake for him now, as God had once undertaken for the church corporately in the past. What do we learn from this? Well, the intervention that the psalmist has in view friend is a very personal one. Again, go back to the graphic imagery of those first several lines of the psalm. It's the imagery of a battlefield, isn't it? You have the psalmist there, David. He is there, you can imagine, laying on the field of battle, wasted, his strength banished, wounded, and he is facing all manner of adversaries. The fierceness of the battle has overcome him. And then, Well, friend, can't you see it? A soldier runs before him, as poised and as armed for the battle as was necessary. With sword and with spear, with shield in hand, he goes out and while David there lays languishing, this one fights David's battles. And then friend, it's so wonderful, isn't it? I mean, it's one of the most intimate aspects of the psalm. In verse three, you have the psalmist praying, go out and fight like this soldier on my behalf, but then turn to me in the heat of the battle, turn to me and say unto my soul, I am my salvation. Oh, don't miss the pronouns Christian. Say unto my soul. I, the Lord God, am thy salvation. Singular pronoun. Oh, how personal, friend, is it to David? This is a personal intervention, but it becomes even more poignant in a sense, friend, when you remember that these are the words that the children of Israel sang in Exodus 15. The first time, in fact, in all of the scriptures that you find the words that God has become his people's salvation. It's poignant, friend, because what the Psalm is saying here is just as Israel of old, corporately, knew that you were their salvation. Say unto my soul, singularly, that you are my salvation. Friend, redemptive history to the psalmist is not an impersonal, not an abstract thing. When the psalmist, when he reflects on the redemption of God's people in the past, well, friend, he sees that he has an interest in that self-same saving help. Allow me just to press that a bit further with you this evening. Friend, the Psalter throughout, teaches us to read redemptive history that way. Not only in this psalm, but you remember Psalm 77. You remember there you have the psalmist in all kinds of anguish, even to the point where he says, has God forgotten to be merciful? Has he exchanged his grace for wrath? The psalmist describes himself as being one who had his eyes kept waking by the Lord, so troubled that he could not speak. But how does the psalmist recover? He does recover because he says, at the end of this, this is my infirmity. But friend, I want you to notice this, and this is so very important. He recovers, as you notice in the next several lines, because he says, I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High. And he concludes that psalm by saying this, thou lettest thy people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron. And you and I were left with the question, what does the psalmist's anguish in Psalm 77, the first several verses, have anything to do with God dealing with his people in the wilderness through Moses and Aaron? It seems disjointed in modern liberals. They turn around and say, obviously there are two different Psalms there and they were joined together. No. The Psalmist is just reading the Scriptures as we ought to read the Scriptures. As the Psalmist in our text reads the Scriptures. The Psalmist in the first part of 77 describes himself as being in a waste place. At the end of it, when he goes through Israel's history, he sees that God leads his people faithfully. through a waste place. Our psalmist says, fight for me. Say unto my soul, just as you said to the children of Israel corporately, I am thy salvation. Friend here, he is praying that God would personally intervene with that self-same covenant mercy and love of the church of God of old and new corporately. Well, friend, that is the intervention that the psalmist prays for. One that is personal, one that is, of course, not just general, but is the special mercy of God. But I want you to notice that the psalmist in the next several verses, following from the 11th verse, he turns our focus to another theme. No longer so much petition. We never really leave petition. His focus shifts now to his principal cause. the ground of his affliction. And we're told here what that is in verse 11. False witnesses, he says, they have laid charges against him. Now here, you and I, we recognize we're in a legal context. The false witness here is not somebody who is, of course, somebody who's seen something wrongly. We're talking about somebody who has appeared in the court of law to lodge a false testimony. That's what he's talking about. He's talking about somebody who is making a formal and a legal Slander. Now, that's verses 11 and 12, but then in verses 13 and 14, the psalmist presents to us the truth. That's the false, that's the false charge. Here is the truth, David is innocent. David is innocent. And we see this in two different ways, and it's so important we keep both aspects in front of us this evening. The one way we read this text is we recognize that David is showing us in verses 13 and 14 that they were his enemies without a cause. He had not offended them. They were in suit against him wrongly. Verses 13 and 14 make that abundantly clear. And so we see their sin. But on the second aspect that we can't miss, we see here also, of course, not just the sinfulness of his accusers, but we see something of David's integrity, don't we? We see something of the righteousness of the psalmist. And that we can't miss either. We see the sinfulness of his persecutors, the righteousness of his cause. But I said to you at the beginning, friend, that you and I, we are not addressed in the psalm. Again, unlike previous psalms, unlike Psalm 34, for instance, the psalmist doesn't turn to us, as it were. He doesn't turn to the congregation and address us. He, as it were, is only focused in dealing with the Lord. And we, as it were, get to eavesdrop. We see and we hear as David is at the throne of grace. And in that sense, friend, verses 13 and 14 mean more to us than just showing us the wrongness, if you will, David's enemies. Here, David is setting before us the grounds. Why he can plead that the God who is the thrice holy God, why he can plead that the God who is a pure eyes than to behold iniquity should undertake for him. and to fight for his cause. David's integrity in this case is setting before us the idea that David's cause is a right one. But even more than that, you have here that the psalmist is showing us that he personally has evidence of his interest in covenant mercy. In other words, friend, when you see him saying, undertake for me, yes, in this particular instance, he's praying for mercy, but by saying, plead my cause and be surety for me, it is broader than just this instance, isn't it? It's something that pertains not just to an instance, but it pertains to a person, himself. So what do these verses 13 and 14 show us? They show us a man who has evidence that he has an interest in God's saving help. And I want you to notice just very, very briefly how the psalmist sets this before us. I want you to notice friend that in those two verses, you find that they could not charge David with wounding them. These false witnesses, they had no grounds to complain that David had wronged them, either in their persons or in their estates. In other words, he committed no sins of commission against them. He did and kept himself toward them in a way that was good, a way that was right. Oh, but it goes so much more beyond that, doesn't it? In verse 14, when there you have the Psalmist saying that not only did he not wound them, but whenever they were afflicted, When they were afflicted, he did not fail to use all of the means available to him to relieve them. That certainly, friend, is how you and I are to read that verse. Note he goes to the throne of grace on their behalf. And not placidly, not in a lukewarm spirit, but with the deepest affection and movement of soul. It's shocking, isn't it? The man here, he could not be charged with sinning against them by wronging them, but even more than that, his inward disposition was one of the deepest love. Deepest love. When you and I reread that friend, I think we shouldn't forget that this is a description of a man who has evidence that he has an interest in the mercy of God. You and I are not to marvel at David's piety for his own sake. And you and I are to remember that this is normative. You want to know those who do really have, friend, this kind of boldness and rightfully so. Well, this is the character of their life. There are people who endeavor to keep a clear conscience before God and men and see how deep, friend, that is. Here you write, David is no antinomian. David is no antinomian. He knows that the blessings of covenant mercy come to those who have a true and a vital faith, who have an interest that is evidenced in a life of holiness. So we see David's integrity. But finally, and we close with this, what of the great change, that merciful change that David prays for? What shape does it take? And what is he praying for in the end? Well, for that, you and I, we need to go down to verses 18 and 19, and really through the remainder of the psalm. Because what we recognize there is that the psalmist tells us exactly, he tells us precisely what he's looking for. But what he's looking for ultimately revolves around a particular theme. And that theme is given to us, first of all, in verse 19, where he talks about rejoicing. He says that his enemies, he prays that his enemies would not rejoice over him any longer. And then as you come down to verse 21, you see again the same thing. There's this idea of rejoicing. And then verses 24 to 28, again rejoicing returns to the psalmist's focus. So what is this about? Why turn our attention, to a change in terms of who rejoices and who doesn't. But understand that you and I, we need to remember that David has two parties in view. There are those he describes in verse 26, who rejoice at his hurt. In verse 27, there are those who favor or who rejoice in his righteous cause. And what David is praying for in this text is that when God intervenes, When God steps in as David's great warrior, when God steps in and demonstrates that self-same covenant love that the church of God has seen through the running centuries, when God steps in in such a way for David, he prays that one party would rejoice and that another would not. Well, is David simply praying that his enemies, that his enemies would not rejoice and that his friends would? No, no. I want you to look with me again at verse 27. He says here specifically, those who rejoice in his righteous cause or who favor his righteous cause are the party that he longs to see rejoicing. Why is that significant, friend? It's significant, isn't it? Because David is not looking for people who are courtiers, who are flatterers, who will take David's cause, whether David's cause is right or wrong. The people that David longs to see rejoicing, yes, are those who are his friends, but those whose friendship with David is righteous, that is subordinated to the law of God. They love righteousness and therefore they love David's cause. David is not a conceited man. He doesn't want others to rejoice in him if his cause is wrong. So what do we learn? And this friend we leave with. At the moment, as David prays this, there are people who say, aha, aha, our eye hath seen it. Meaning they are rejoicing as David has been laid prostrate. David turns then to the Lord and he says, this thou hast seen. It's a wonderful poetic reversal. They say, aha, aha, our eye has seen it. Now David turns to the Lord and says, this thou hast seen, O Lord. They said, aha, but now he says to the Lord, keep not silence. You take the final word. What does that look like in verse 27 we're told? This, let them say continually. Let the Lord be magnified. So when God comes to David's aid, what is it that David longs to see? And he longs to see the people of God rejoice. And ultimately he longs just to see the people of God rejoice in God and to magnify the Lord. This is a plea for mercy. The whole thing, the whole Psalm is a plea for mercy, but see how selfless it really is, friend. The ultimate end that David prays toward is that the pious would rejoice and would not mourn, and that they would magnify the Lord. He prays for mercy for himself, for the good of God's people, and for the glory of God. Now friend, as you hold all of that together, what do we learn? Well, we see here that the Christian is taught to pray personally for the intervention of covenant blessing. And his integrity will evidence his interest in that covenant mercy. But the inversion that they pray for ultimately is that which benefits God's people and ultimately accrues to God's glory. That friend is what the psalmist sets before us as our pattern. So allow me to close with a question which we began. To you, how personal is the covenant love and mercy of God? Is it a kind of abstract thing or is it something that touches your inmost being? Or allow me to bring that just a bit closer, friend, when you read about God's covenant mercy. When you read redemptive history, can you read that impersonally? Or can you read it as does David? Can you read it praying that God would intervene personally for you? in that same way he intervened for his people corporately in the past. Can you say with David as he does elsewhere, look thou upon me and be merciful unto me as thou usest to do unto those thy name I love. Friend, can you pray even through redemptive history seeing that that same covenant love, that same covenant redemption is yours in Christ Jesus. Friend, if you can, and I want you to notice, first of all, the psalmist sets before us the reality that those who have an interest, they also have evidences of that interest. They endeavor to keep a pure conscience before God and men. And you'll notice that as they do so, friendly, you should see that they are emboldened all the more to go before God and to plead so personally for that mercy. I also want you to notice friends as we leave this text finally, here you and I have a pattern. Pattern for how to think about the mercy of God that we should think about it most personally if we were in Christ Jesus. We should pray for it most personally if we were in him. We should read about it as it speaks to us of that which is most intimate to us. But friend, we should also pray for it in the manner that the psalmist does, not for selfish ends, but for the good of God's people and for the glory of God's great name. There, beloved, is our pattern. May we conform to it for God's glory and by his grace. Amen.