Psalm 86 is the psalm of David. It's a title in our Bibles. It's a psalm of praise, also of penitential pleadings. And David is able, very confident of making his petitions because he tells us in verse 2 that he is holy. Preserve my soul for I am holy. What a staggering assertion. What arrogance you might think. Is this not some kind of a boastful, egoistic statement that David there describes himself as being holy? No. Rather it's an admission that David is the son of the covenant. That he belongs wholly to God, to the family of God. Word holy is a translation of the Hebrew word chesed and it's equivalent to the New Testament word saints. You and I might recoil and must recoil in some self-righteous indignation if we describe ourselves thus as being holy. This would be entirely true if that is a description that we give ourselves. But it is God Himself who declares, who pronounces us as being holy, as being saints. 1 Peter 2.9 But you are a chosen generation, royal priesthood, holy nation, or people, a peculiar people. Romans 1, 7. To all that be in Rome beloved of God, call to be saints. If you are not holy, as he who has called you is holy, you are none of his. And if you are not saints, you are none of His either. If Almighty God in His mercy and grace should call you and I saints, called believer saints, who are we to protest? It is nothing but a manifestation of pride. The pride of false humility. to protest that God should describe us as being holy. But you and I can protest that we are not as holy as we ought. That is true. Remedy for that is not to deny the truth. The remedy is to deny ourselves of all the sinful pleasures that are detrimental to holiness, to sanctification. To deny ourselves and take up the cross. And so David begins his prayer by pleading for help on the basis of that special revelation, special covenant relationship that he sustained with the Lord. This is also the basis, the only basis that we as believers pray because we pray in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ on the basis of the covenant of grace that we have been recipients of His grace. Well, what reasons did David give that God should hear him? The answers can be found in the word for. Verse 1, for I am poor and needy. Verse 2, for I am holy. Verse 3, for I cry unto Thee daily. 4, for unto Thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul. 5, for Thou O Lord, art good and ready to forgive. Seven, for thou wilt answer me. Ten, for thou art great and doest wondrous things. Thou art God alone. He tells us that he's poor and needy, he's in desperate need of help and of grace from God. How desperate are you this morning? How conscious are you of your need? Do you feel yourself poor and needy? There are 14 petitions at least in this psalm which tells us to be specific, to be effective, prayer has to be specific. Quite often our prayers are quite nebulous and general because we have no knowledge of a particular situation. Because we are ignorant of the troubles and the problems that our brothers and sisters in the Lord's face. Our prayers are ineffective because we do not know how to pray for them. If we are strangers to each other's pains and sufferings and needs, we are strangers to specific prayer. The question is, this is quite a small congregation. How much do you and I know each other? How much do we concern ourselves and are aware of each other's burden and so able to bear each other's burden? As the Lord enables, we shall concentrate our minds on one of the petitions in this psalm, in verse 11. Teach me thy way, O Lord, I will walk in Thy truth, unite my heart to fear Thy name. Firstly then, let us consider the needy man's prayer, the one who is poor and needy, and his prayer and petition. The self-sufficient Almighty God had revealed Himself to the psalmists. And that is the only way that man can know God in a saving manner. That is by revelation that is supernatural. God discloses Himself in salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ. The natural man knows something about God through creation because the heavens declare the glory of God. But to know God as our Heavenly Father, as our Saviour God, God Himself must reveal Him to us. Man knows something of the power of God but not the peace of God, the reconciliation in Christ Jesus. Man in nature feels God's manifestation but not His mercy. He can experience God's glory in creation, but not His grace in salvation. But for the believer, he knows God in a saving manner. His knowledge is, to be sure, incomplete and imperfect, but nevertheless real. He knows that he needs the condescension of God, that God must come down to his level. before there can be any possibility of grace. That unless God bows his ear, he will not hear our cries. Verse one, bow down thine ear and hear me. The believer experiences all the blessings of God in Christ Jesus, the protection and salvation of God. So he prays, He has been a recipient in the past of the preservation and protection of God, and now daily and continuously for mercy, he implores, Be merciful to me, verse 3. as a result of which he exclaims joyfully and cries, Rejoice the soul of thy servant. He confesses the goodness and forgiveness of a merciful God. Verse 5, For thou, Lord, art good and ready to forgive plenteous in mercy. This is the incomparable, one and true Creator God. Among the gods, there is none like unto Thee, all the nations whom Thou hast made. Another of His confession is in verse 10, for Thou art great. Nay, a great and compassionate and patient God. Verse 5, God full of compassion and gracious, longsuffering and plenteous in mercy and truth. How can the man in the world know anything about the attributes of God that we have mentioned unless it is through Christ Jesus, unless God Himself reveals Himself to us? But as soon as man knows something about God, he knows something about himself as well. Because the knowledge of God leads somewhat to a knowledge of himself. If God is merciful it means that he is in need of mercy. Why is this? Because he's a sinner and he has transgressed all the laws and commandments of God. Deserves the least of God's mercy. He deserves God's wrath. He knows he's spiritually poor and needy. Because of the slow progress that he has made, realizes that he needs the long suffering of God or else he'll be cast away. How much of this truth has impacted upon us that we may today, this morning, rise up in joy, rejoicing in the salvation of our God and in gratitude of Him, not to take all these things for granted, the salvation that He gives in Christ Jesus. Well, now that God has revealed Himself as the only one true God, God must teach him the only one true way. Teach me thy way. Verse 11, O Lord, there are man's ways and there are God's ways. There are man's thoughts and there are God's thoughts. Man cannot know the way of the Lord unless he is taught of God. Then he is able to say, I will praise Thee, O Lord my God. with all my heart that is with an undivided heart and I will glorify Thy name." Verse 9. Forevermore He will glorify God. This is a hint of immortality. He believes in immortality for His determination is to glorify God forevermore. Is this a description of you and I this morning? The desire to glorify God, not now and then, intermittently, but forevermore. And this is a picture of you, to desire to be taught. But how many of us are really teachable, honestly? We say we want to know God's ways, but the golden words of desire glitters with a fake shine. What efforts have we made to be taught? We go to school and spend time in the classrooms but do we spend time with God's word? And part of teaching is correction. How much are we willing to be corrected in our stubborn and sad ways? It's rebuke, not a Christian thing to do. But try telling someone today that he's wrong, that you have scriptural support to prove that, and the relationship is strained. The quickest way to empty your church today is to rebuke the people in love, to admonish them in truth. Well, we have just sung Psalm 86 verse 11. Do you really mean that? Were you conscious of that petition? And if God were to teach you, as you have just sung, not from His Word directly, which is the principle way, But if it were to teach you through preaching or from the rebuke of another believer, will you find fault with the method that God chooses? Are we able to come down on a high horse and be taught even through the mouth of a mule, of a donkey? If it takes the foolish things of the world and the base things to teach us a lesson, will you and I protest because of the methods that God uses? Do we pick and choose the choices Bible passages neglect and downplay those that speak of warnings and admonition and rebukes? Oh, for a teachable heart that God might teach us His way. Of the 15 clauses that has the words, teach me, 14 interestingly are found in the Psalms. Teach me thy statutes, teach me thy way, teach me thy will, teach me thy paths, teach me the way of thy statutes, teach me thy statutes, teach me good judgment and knowledge. The Psalmist wants to be taught by the living God. What a desire that is. But having a desire to be taught is one thing. Having the right disposition is quite the other. It's the other side of the coin so to speak. Having the disposition of heart to be taught is another. What hinders you and I to be taught even if we have the desire to have a teachable spirit? Is it not the heart? Is not the heart always a problem? Secondly, the needy man's problem. David, the psalmist here, was the man after God's own heart. And yet to his dismay, the heart that was a heart after God's own heart was a divided heart. And if that's true of David, how much truer is it of us today We have two problems. We are not really a people after God's own heart. Far from it. And our heart is divided as well. We need a heart that is focused, that is fixed. We need a heart that has one chief and to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. Well, for the past 12 months, or perhaps even the 12 years or 20 years, for many of us, perhaps for most of us, our hearts have been divided. We have been distracted by so many things. Not all are unlawful in themselves, but still wrong if lawful things distracted from the one thing needful. Will the new year be any different? Do you think? Will there be a desire for change? Will we petition the Most High that He might grant us a focused, a fixed heart? Unite my heart to fear Thy name. Why do we need a fixed, focused, united heart? Isn't desire to worship God sufficient? Isn't zeal and sincerity in approaching Him sufficient to please and appease God? Because there are people who say it doesn't really matter how we approach Him as long as there's zeal and sincerity and desire. Well, no, because there is, to use borrowed words, nothing more perilous to our salvation than a preposterous and perverse worship of God. Perverse worship of God is one that lacks the fear of God. And that is what a heart that is not united lacks. On the other hand, a united heart fears God. And so the psalmist prays, United my heart to fear thy name. Fear of God. If there's one chief characteristic of the modern world, it is that mankind do not fear God. That's why there are so many laws that are enacted, that are destructive to truth and to the Christian church. Dare I say that this is true even in the professing church. The things that are going on in some churches just makes you squirm. Things that the worship that they offer that are alien and are not warranted by scripture. So how many gospel ministers and how many church goers and members have the fear of God in their daily lives, most especially during the public worship of God? We can take a page from our directory of public worship of God for guidance. After entering the church, not irreverently, but in a grave and simly manner, we are to take our seats The minister, after a call to worship, begins with prayer. In all reference and humility, acknowledging the incomprehensible greatness and majesty of the Lord, in whose presence they do then in a special manner appear, and their own vileness and unworthiness to approach so near Him, with the utter inability of themselves to so great a work, and humbly beseeching Him for pardon, assistance, and acceptance in the whole service then to be performed. The reverence and the fear that is so lacking in much of our worship and we can't open our lips and move our lips but our hearts can be so cold and sluggish. The Lord complains, therefore, as it were, Malachi, a son honoreth his father and a servant his master. If then I be a father, where is my honor? And if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the Lord of hosts unto you, O priest that despise my name. And you say, wherein have we despised thy name? A united heart then fears God. A united heart serves God. A divided heart, on the other hand, serves two masters. And no man can serve two masters, for either he will hate one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. We cannot serve God and the world, serve God and material things. A divided heart serves two masters. A divided heart has a divided service to man. He will serve when it is conducive to him and to his advantage, and to God when it's convenient, when it becomes convenient to him. A united heart has its face toward God and the things of God. A divided heart is two-faced. We have two faces both. One true self before God. The other is merely cooked to obtain our neighbour's naught. Two faces. United heart lives for God's glory. United heart has a single thought and one chief end to glorify God. A divided heart holds between two opinions. To serve God or not. There is the tension and there is the indecision. A united heart minds the things of God, whereas a divided heart is double-minded. He becomes unsteady and unstable, and unworthy and unreliable. A double-minded heart is unstable in all his ways. A divided heart leads a double life. We say often, rather glibly, that we are thankful that we are not what we were before, But we know that we shall be what we should be one day by the grace of God through sanctification. And we stop at that. But where's the shame? Where's the agitation and turmoil within our hearts that we are not who we say we are? We have a life of as church goers and then a life as people of the world. We can be pious one day and pompous the next day. There's piety and then there's piosity, false piety, a double life from a divided heart. A divided heart has a double vision. It sees the attractions of the world, sees the beauty of holiness at the same time. The light of the body is the eye. If therefore thine eye be single, the whole body shall be full of light. A single eye is necessary and you can have this with an undivided, united heart. A united heart is faithful to God. God is ever faithful to His people and to His promises, to His covenants. what he says he will do. He does not speak like us hypothetically what he says he will do. Faithfulness is one of the virtues that we admire in man as well. We react with some righteous indignation when there is unfaithfulness in a relationship within a couple. But where is that righteous indignation? Where is that shame when we have been unfaithful to God, to Almighty God? Because we have other loves that often take the place of God. Divided heart is the very opposite of a united heart. A heart that pleases God Divided heart is unfaithful, succumbing to every distraction of unfaithfulness. It's unstable when there is a need for us to be steadfast and unmovable in the things that we hold on to and believe. Divided heart is unafraid when there's every reason to be afraid of God. A divided heart is double-hearted. To speak vanity everyone with his neighbor with flattering lips and with a double heart today speak. That's the divided heart that we possess this morning. A heart that is double-minded, leads a double life, is too fierce, serves two masters, presents two faces, fluctuating between two opinions. In short, a two-timing religious hypocrite. And anyone who's alive to this discrepancy within us this morning, this inconsistency in our profession of faith and our spiritual life, we plead with the utmost urgency to God. Unite my heart to fear thy name. Anyone alive, I say to the monstrosity that he is, an alloy of purity and impurity, Anyone who is concerned about the discrepancy of his soul and about the hypocrisy of his profession will cry like the Samis. Verse one, bow down thy ear, O Lord. Hear me, for I am poor and needy. So that he might make later on the petition. Unite my heart to fear thy name. so that my united heart might be teachable, pliable, and humble. And when this praise heeded and answered, thirdly then, we have the needy man's promise. Teach me, unite my heart to fear thy name, and I will praise thee. The psalmist here realizes the same old problem that has been evident in all The lives of God's people throughout the history of the church finds himself easily distracted. He's not focused on the things that matter. His heart was divided. There were times then when his heart ached for the right things. But more often than not, his heart ached for the wrong things. Is that you today? Of course it is. Who can say this side of glory that the hearts are not divided but are united? Who can say that the heart is always in tune with the desires of God, with the heart of God? We need to pray for the right frame of mind and heart. We need to pray My heart is fixed, O God. My heart is fixed. Before we can promise, I will sing and give praise. Awake up, my glory. Awake, psaltery and harp. I myself will awake early. I will praise Thee, O Lord, among the people. I will sing unto Thee among the nations. We all need a heart that is fixed and focused. We all need as much as David needed. or how else can we cope with the flux and reflux of life that are still us? There are multitude of remedies offered by a myriad of quakes and charlatans and gurus. Do you know how many religions there are in the world? About 4,000. Should we choose and pick which deity we will call upon today? So all these devotees have sincerity and zeal and desire but that is not enough. The Psalmist recognizes there's only one source of help and so must you and I. For there shall arise false prophets and cries and show you great signs and wonders but we are not to follow them. We need to follow God's way. He recognises that the remedy to a divisive, disgruntled, divided and disjointed heart is to cry to the only one who can unite his heart. The hypocrite's hope is in Christ Jesus. Well, David recognizes that unless God bows down His ear, we lift our prayers in vain. Unless God condescends, our prayers will ascend up to the ceiling of this room. Recognize necessity of the condescension of Almighty God in bowing down His ear. and answering us. Bow down thy ear. Bless thou the empty for we are poor and empty. bequeath thou thy estate. The estate of God is full of the riches of grace, of mercy and help in times of need. Keep us from hypocrisy, from a double tongue and double lives. Save us from the hypocrisy that was condemned severely in the Pharisees. We know that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, but not for the hypocrisy that is still in us. David, the king of Israel, was rich in material goods, yet poor and needy. He was spiritually poor and needy. And how much more should we feel our poverty and our need if the man, after God's very own heart, could confess that poor and needy but God is rich in mercy so bequeath us thy endowments. We all desire to be wholly devoted to God. Do we not have that desire? Do we not have the desire to fear and reverence God's name? While taught that one way, now God must give us that one heart, pure in motive, which exhibits singleness of mind, undivided devotion and spiritual integrity. Which comes first? From the verse, it seems that the heart that is teachable will pray for the heart that is united. But a united heart will be disposed to being teachable Let's suppose both attributes are needed for us today to have a teachable and a united heart. One leads to the other. They form a circle that feeds into one another. What a blessing it is to have a heart that is teachable and united as we approach the new year. But what is our testimony today? Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended. But this one thousand and one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before. This one thing I cannot do. There's only one thing but I cannot do. And the divided heart cannot do that even one thing. What a miserable manifestation of Christianity that is. this one thousand and one thing we must do. But surely God would be most ready and willing to answer our prayers if our motive is right that we might fear Him. Well, may that be answered today for us.