And you can turn in your copy of the scriptures to Psalm 141, which is our sermon text today. Psalm 141. Let's read the text out loud together. O Lord, I call upon you. Hasten to me. Give ear to my voice when I call to you. Let my prayer be counted as incense before you in the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice. Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth. Keep watch over the door of my lips. Do not let my heart incline to any evil, to busy myself with wicked deeds in the company with men who work iniquity. And let me not eat of their delicacies. Let a righteous man strike me. It is a kindness. Let him rebuke me. It is oil for my head. Let my head not refuse it. Yet my prayer is continually against their evil deeds. When their judges are thrown over the cliff, then they shall hear my words, for they are pleasant. As when one plows and breaks up the earth, so shall our bones be scattered at the mouth of Sheol. But my eyes are toward you, O God, my Lord. In you I seek refuge. Leave me not defenseless. Keep me from the trap that they have laid for me and from the snares of evildoers. let the wicked fall into their own nets while I pass by safely. Coming in here today to a Psalm of Lament, as we considered last Lord's Day. We've become familiar with these Psalms by this point, haven't we? They're so prevalent throughout the Psalter, perhaps even a third of all the Psalms being Psalms of Lament. Yet what we come to today is a Psalm of Lament with a unique twist. As we'll see in just a moment, You might think of this psalm as just an expansion on what Jesus taught us to pray, lead us not into temptation. And so we're going to see from this psalm, and appropriate it to ourselves as we sing this together to the Lord, that evil entices, but we look to the Lord to keep us. Evil entices us. We look to the Lord to keep him. This psalm is a prayer which we take upon our lips as we sing it together. Remember, all the psalms are that way. All the psalms apply to us because they apply to Jesus. They are meant for us to appropriate to ourselves, to sing together to the Lord, to make the prayer of our hearts. And that's what I would encourage you to do today. As you pray this psalm, you will ask the Lord several things. First of all, you'll ask the Lord, meet with me, meet with me, come to be with me. That's what verses one and two express for us here. Oh Lord, I call upon you. Hasten to me. Give ear to my voice when I call to you. Let my prayer be counted as incense before you and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." This is a beautiful expression of a desire to be united with God. You need to think about the imagery the psalmist is using, the expressions he's using, because it brings out so much the heart that is expressed here. A desire to be united with God. You obviously see what he says when he says, I call upon you. Here's the direction of my desire and my cry. But he asks God then to hasten to me. You, come to me. Hear me when I call upon you. And then he says this in verse two, let my prayer be established, let it be set or put before you, upheld before you as incense, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." Why would he express this? And by the way, this is unique in the Psalms, this particular way of expressing it, but it would not have been at all unfamiliar to an Old Testament saint. He talks about incense here. Let my prayer be counted as incense before you. You'll bring to mind the altar of incense in the tabernacle and then later in the temple, where the priests would bring the special incense that God had them formulate to be burning constantly, ascending in smoke before the Lord to be a pleasing aroma to him, the prayers of his own people ascending to him. It was communion with God. That's what the incense represented. It was God's people communing with Him and God enjoying, God being pleased with and delighting in His people and their dependence upon Him. One of the beautiful promises in the Old Testament is in Malachi 1.11, which prophesies that incense would be offered by all the nations to the Lord. And Revelation 5, 8 and 8.3 identify incense with the prayers of the saints. So what we're saying here is an intense desire to commune with the Lord in pleasing Him, to depend upon Him, to have Him welcome us into His presence, be pleased with us, and therefore to act on behalf of His people. And of course, that very picture then is developed here in the next line of the psalm when it says, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice. The institution of the regular morning and evening sacrifices in the tabernacle in the Old Testament is described in Exodus chapter 29. And the Lord says this there, Did you catch that? What's going on here? As the priests offer this morning sacrifice and this evening sacrifice and this morning sacrifice and this evening sacrifice, God is saying, I will meet with you there. I will be there. My presence will be with you as my, if you're seeking me, then I will be found. Come to me. That's exactly what this psalmist is invoking here. What David is invoking is he writes this psalm and gives it to us to sing together. We are invoking God's promise to be with his people on the basis of these sacrifices. And of course, today as believers, that's still true for us. The sacrifice that we invoke when we lift up our hands to God in prayer, is the Lord Jesus Christ himself, the great high priest, who was not only the one who offered sacrifice, but was himself the perfect sacrifice, and therefore cleanses the consciences of the worshipers. We come to him knowing that we will be accepted. That's one of the beautiful expressions that this psalm brings to our mind as it opens up. It is this intense desire to be with God, to know that God is working on my behalf, that he will defend and protect and save his people. And when we invoke the incense, the evening sacrifices, we are folks, we are invoking everything about Jesus Christ and what he's accomplished. That's how God's people approach him. But I would like to ask you today, even as we enter into this prayer, do you ask the Lord to meet with you? Do you ask the Lord to meet with all of his people, with us? The fact is, anybody who has his spiritual eyes open recognizes that we need God to hurry to our defense, to hurry to be with us if we're ever going to come through this evil world. This is that psalm of dependence upon him that is actively seeking his salvation and his deliverance. So it asks the Lord to meet, meet with me. But then it goes on to ask the Lord, and here we really get into the heart of this particular prayer. to set a guard. And so I'd encourage you to ask the Lord to set a guard. Verses three and four. Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth. Keep watch over the door of my lips. Do not let my heart inclined to any evil, to busy myself with wicked deeds, in company with men who work iniquity, and let me not eat of their delicacies. Here's where we come to the particular twist of this psalm. Just to compare with what we learned last Lord's Day in Psalm 140. also a prayer of deliverance, a prayer for God to protect, preserve, deliver his people. Psalm 140 prayed for protection from evil men, particularly, you remember, from their tongues, for how they would use their tongues to attack the righteous. Now Psalm 141 prays for protection, but this time from our own tongues, from our own hearts, from our own directions and desires. You see, folks, not only do we have to ask God to deliver us from the world around us and what the world system wants to do to us, we have to ask God for protection from our own hearts being drawn after the world, wandering away from God, going over to his enemies rather than being faithful to him. We need God to work in that way. You see, folks, a wise man recognizes how easily he can slide into evil. You know the saying, beware lest him who thinks he stands, take heed lest he fall. Someone who's proud in himself, who thinks, I've got this, I'm a mature Christian, I know the Bible, I've studied it for how many years, I've read it through how many times, I know the Bible, I've got this down. I don't have to worry about being tempted by the world system, by Satan, by the flesh. I don't have to worry about getting tripped up or having my heart go the wrong direction. I've got this. No wise man thinks that. Anybody who recognizes what's really going on in this world and the spiritual battle that's involved knows I constantly need God to be protecting me, delivering me, drawing me to himself. It asks here in this Psalm for God to guard, to set a guard, to keep watch. You can picture the armed guard at the entryway, particularly over a mouth here. But he asks God to guard both what goes out and what comes in in the imagery of this. He says, set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth. Keep watch over the door of my lips, what I am saying, what's coming out of me. But he's going to conclude by an imagery of what's going into me. Let me not eat of their delicacies also through the mouth, my tastes, what I love, what appeals to me. In fact, I love this imagery here. Let me not eat of their delicacies. It's not a common image in the scripture, actually. In fact, this word for delicacies isn't found anywhere else in the entire Old Testament. But it has to do with something that is very pleasant, very good, very desirable. And so we call it delicacies. You know the picture. What is it that you really like? That whenever you smell it cooking or baking, you're like, hmm, that's making my mouth water. I want this. The world offers us delicacies. It makes its world system, its attractions look very good. You can't help but think of Pilgrim's Progress and Vanity Fair, right? Doesn't the world make what it does look very attractive? People are having fun here. People are enjoying life. They're living it up. This is the good life. Why do you need all those restrictions that God gives you? Come our way and you'll really have fun in life. The world makes itself look very good. The wise man knows that. So this Psalm teaches us to pray for God to guard us. First of all, it talks about guarding our mouth, our lips, the door of our lips, what we open, what we open our lips and what comes out. How easy is it to be drawn into evil through our mouths? There could be a sense in which this prayer is for God to guard what we say because there are evil men all around who will seize upon it and use it for evil purposes. They will take your words and twist them. They will use them, whatever you say can and will be held against you, so to speak. That was the situation of Micah 7, 5, where we read something similar to this text. It says, put no trust in a neighbor, have no confidence in a friend, guard the doors of your mouth from her who lies in your bosom. That was a very bad situation in those days, right? You can't trust anybody, not even your own wife. Watch what you say, right? It could be that kind of a situation. In legal terms, you might think of it like something like entrapment. You know what entrapment is? Where agents try to trick someone into committing a crime that he would not otherwise knowingly have committed. Does the world do that to God's people? Certainly, all the time. However, in this text here, because verse 4 goes on to speak about my heart inclining to evil, I believe the request of verse 3 is more likely that God would set a guard over our mouths so that we don't slide into speaking evil ourselves. We don't slide into that whole way of communicating, participating in unrighteous communication, which is so easy for us to do. We slide into slander or gossip, to deception and half-truths. We slide into all kinds of unrighteous communication. But as this psalm wisely goes on to point out, where does what the mouth says come from? Why would we be drawn into evil speaking? Well, it's because of our hearts. Do not let my heart incline to any evil, to an evil, any evil thing, evil person. You see, this psalm reaches down into your inclinations, your affections, your desires, the directions of your heart. It's asking you to ask, what are you going after? What do you want? And you know, if we're going to speak rightly, like verse three is talking about, guarding our mouths, that means our hearts have to be purified, our hearts have to be faithful. When In our hearts, even as believers, there lurks doubt, when there lurks fear, when in our hearts there is covetousness or pride. This is very much when we are open to being drawn into the evil way, in our speaking even. Let's go back to doubt, one of our fundamental sins. When in your heart you are not truly resting in the Lord, confident in His steadfast love and faithfulness, supremely delighting in the work of Jesus Christ and who He is, submitting to Him entirely, when in your mind there lurks these doubts about whether God's promises will actually come to pass or He will actually do what He says, you know what that does? That's like an open door for the evil one and all of his stratagems to open your life, to come right in. Is God really good? Did God really say? You know the questions, right? And when our hearts and our minds are like that, we start reacting on the basis of that doubt. Maybe we turn to fear, anxiety, And because we are anxious about our own security or the security of those we love or our positions in life, we can react. Sometimes we lash out with our tongues. Sometimes we spin stories with our tongues to try to create a web to protect ourselves from other people or what we think they might do to us. Sometimes it's covetousness. We don't really rest content in what God has given to us. And therefore, we begin to cast a desiring eye on what the world has to offer and why it seems so good, all of those unbelievers have. You remember the psalmist in Psalm 73. You remember the psalmist, how he talked about the evil man, this is in Psalm 37, I guess, spreading himself out like a green laurel tree, right? He was just putting himself out there, and he looked so good. He had everything this world had to offer. Here I've been trying to follow God, and yet the evil man has everything the world has to offer. Right there is what this psalm is praying about. Do not let my heart incline to an evil. Don't let me start reinterpreting things according to this world and how it looks so good, because that's when I start to follow that direction. Sometimes it's simply pride. When we don't crucify ourselves with Christ, I have been crucified with Christ. And we begin to want to protect and provide for ourselves instead of looking to Christ. That's when we're in great danger of sliding into participation with evil. Just for some examples here, sometimes we can be drawn to evil men because they seem to be tough in this world. They just say it like it is. They are really doing something in this world. That's one way we can be tempted to be drawn after them. But if they are mockers, scorners, scoffers, Proverbs warns us against getting mixed up with them. Drive out the scoffer, Proverbs 22 10 says, and strife will go out and quarreling and abuse will cease. Sometimes we can be drawn to evil men because they seem so compassionate and caring. They're not always saying everything is wrong. And all you want to do is wrong. They say, we accept you. We love you just the way you are. You can be whoever you want to be. And we love you. And yet all these, you know, following God, there's all these rights and these wrongs and everything else. Man. Remember, Satan always presents himself as an angel of light. This psalm prays that you would have no complicity or cooperation with evil men. That's what he's driving at here in verse four. Do not let my heart inclined to an evil to, as the ESV translates it here, to busy myself with wicked deeds, to involve myself in participation with wickedness, with men who work iniquity, who are themselves working crookednesses, Keep me from getting mixed up with them. It's praying. Keep me from getting all entangled, becoming complicit with them. In other words, we have to live in this world without being of this world. And this is so important for us to believe. And this is why this psalm is so important for us to pray. The scriptures teach that Christians must never intentionally cooperate with evil. We need to be distinct from evil. We deal with the world, 1 Corinthians 7 says, as those who have no dealings with the world. And in order to do that well, our hearts have to learn to discern what direction things are going. And I think that's why the request of this psalm is so wise. Guard the inclinations of my heart. Where are we going here? What is this all about? You know, we don't start out intending usually as believers, we don't start out intending to be complicit with working iniquity, but that is where we end up if we're not guarded by the Lord. And so just a word of exhortation about that. I believe that many Christians begin and end their moral reasoning in this world by simply doing this, looking for explicit commands in the Bible about what God has said. Okay. Here's issue A, issue B, issue C. Let's look for a command in the Bible about that. Okay, if they don't think they see any explicit commands, well, then we don't have to worry about that issue. We don't have to worry about discernment on that issue. That's not a moral issue. We just go along with whatever seems culturally relevant. On the other hand, if there is an explicit command, well, then that's a moral issue. Then we try to do what the letter of the law says. But folks, this is a very, I would say a childish way of going about it. Yes, we need explicit commands, statements of scripture, but that's not the beginning or the ending of our moral reasoning as believers. Instead, here's what we do. We must make sure that Christ sets the playing field for the whole discussion. It's in him that are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. It's in him that we even understand this word, right? This whole word is about Christ and for Christ. And we start with understanding Christ, who he is, what he does is the measure of everything for us because he is the revelation of God to us. He is the way, the truth, and the life. So we don't just begin our discussions of these issues by simply looking for abstracted biblical principles. Well, what principles apply to this? We'll need that discussion. But even biblical principles, taken apart from the whole controlling framework of Christ, won't be sufficient. We don't begin with mere duties, as if that's sufficient for living a moral life. What are the duties God commands me to do? Okay, do my duty. Okay, now I've got it. We as believers won't begin our moral evaluation simply with history. Well, this is the way my grandparents did it. That's not good enough, is it? Even though they might've been living very well. Instead, what we as believers do, we begin by understanding ourselves, the world, and everything in it from the perspective of being in Christ. I think this is part of what the Apostle Paul is driving at when he says, I have been crucified with Christ. And it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. In the life I now live, in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Christ is the rationale, the logos for everything. And that's where we start. As one man has so wisely put it, Christian ethics must arise from the gospel of Jesus Christ. Otherwise, it could not be Christian ethics you'll develop a moral system of some kind, and you might even have some good principles in that moral system, but it won't be pleasing to God. It won't be communion with God. It won't be seeking first his kingdom and his righteousness. Folks, what this means is that the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ are decisive for us. They set the determination of what everything is, what everything means. the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who Christ is and what he's accomplished. You see, the resurrection is God's decisive yes to his created order. Sinful man rejects God's order for his world and is confused in his perception of it. And yet that order is there, it is given, it is given by God. And the resurrection of Jesus is God's guarantee that we will participate in the fulfillment of his order. The gift of the Holy Spirit begins that work even now, and we begin to participate in real freedom, the freedom of the sons of God in the Spirit. Pardon me. And you know what this looks like in our lives? As the Holy Spirit is bringing us to free participation in the true order of God, in knowing God? You know what this looks like? It looks like love. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. Love is the fulfilling of the law. That's why love is the overall shape of Christian ethics. This is what human life looks like when it's lived in God. We sometimes talk about having a counterculture of love at High Country Baptist Church. And what we need to ask ourselves is, how does God's gospel open our eyes to the real order of the world, and then enable us to intelligently submit to that order, participate in that order? How does the good news of Jesus Christ enable us to participate freely in new creation reality? Not just merely the elementary principles of this world, but the new creation reality. What does life in the spirit look like? And then we ask ourselves, how do we together, and I emphasize that together, how do we together act in faith, hope, and love, making judgments which attest the reality of Christ's coming kingdom? You see, what this is leading us to is a deliberation that we do well together as God's people so we develop mature moral judgment to the end that we will be fruitfully faithful. How did the Apostle Paul pray in Philippians chapter one? I pray that your knowledge would abound more, your love would abound more and more, excuse me. I pray that your love would abound more and more in knowledge and all discernment so that you would approve the things that are excellent so that you would be very fruitful at the day of Christ. You see, that's the opposite prayer. The prayer here is protect us from going the other way. What does that imply? Call us, Lord, to the fullness of life with you. That's what we need to develop as God's people. Another way to put this is to walk according to the new creation rule, like Galatians chapter 6 calls it. And yes, we have to take into account that in all the various determinations of various situations, all the constraints, obligations, expectations, Desires, hopes, moral laws, mission we are on, all these kinds of things enter into our thinking. Prudence then brings that order that we see in Christ, in love to bear on our future actions. We don't want our hearts to incline to evil, to this world, so we develop true love for God and others. Now in all of this, let me just mention this point. You need to watch out for desire directors. I'll call them that here today. Desire directors. What is telling you what to desire? What is desirable? And you have to train your desires all the time. Train your desires rightly. And let me urge you, do not rely on this world system to direct your desires appropriately. It just won't. The whole way this world system operates around you, it might be even appealing to something good and not inherently evil, but it's not going to call you to seek first God's kingdom and his righteousness. And so you can't just take what this world offers you on its own terms and let that shape your desires. You see an advertisement for a cool car. There's nothing wrong with having a cool car, right? But how is that shaping your desires? What is the real value of that car in light of the kingdom of God? And how does that totally transform the way you think about that car? The world is presenting it to you one way. It's trying to train your desires. But you see it differently in Christ. Don't let the world shape, that's what this prayer is. Don't let my heart incline to any evil. Don't let the world shape your desires. Why? Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires. But whoever does the will of God abides forever. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. You're gonna have to spend a lot of time, folks, if you want your desires to be rightly directed, you're gonna have to spend a lot of time and effort getting to know Christ, learning of Him, meditating on Him, communing with Him, calling upon His name, walking in obedience to Him, walking in fellowship with Him. He is the way, the truth, and the life. And let's just be honest, sometimes we as believers get weary. It's so hard to have to discern everything all the time, right? Can't I just chill out for a while and go along, right? It's hard to have to be different all the time. But folks, is it worth it if we can commune with God? Is that not what the heartbeat of this psalm is? Come to me, God. I need you. You are my true desire. That's what you need to ask God. Meet with me, set a guard, Lord, so that I am truly directed to you. Pardon me. And that leads right into verse five, where you need to ask God to give you a rebuke. from the righteous, to give you a rebuke from the righteous. He says, let a righteous man strike me. It is a kindness. Let him rebuke me. It is oil for my head. Let my head not refuse it. In other words, this psalm is teaching us to say, I would rather have friends, real friends, who are righteous people, who rebuke me, than enjoy the delicacies of the wicked. The wicked might whine and dine you. but they won't be a real friend in the end. You want a real friend who's a righteous man who will be willing to rebuke you. He actually calls it here a kindness. If he strikes you, if he slaps you upside the head, that's a kindness here. Why? If it's keeping me from going the way of the wicked, it's what I need. It's what I want. Let him rebuke me, it's oil for my head. You remember when we saw the imagery of anointing earlier in the Psalms? Psalm 133, I just lost the number here, where it talks about the unity of brothers is like oil running down the head, right? Does that unity always mean getting along really easy because we always agree with each other? or always mean, hey, we always say nice things to each other and make each other feel good. Not always. There's a lot of encouragement here, obviously, in that. But he says, it's oil for my head if a righteous man rebukes me. When I'm starting to, my heart starting to drift, it's starting to go away after what the world says, a righteous man who rebukes me is what I need. Let my head not refuse it. I welcome that. I want that. I would submit to you today that the more a person is living in union with others, true union with others, the less he usually needs direct confrontation like this verse is talking about. The more sensitive he is to others in his life, the more he has others in his heart, to use the language of the Apostle Paul, I have you in my heart. The more he recognizes himself to be a member along with other members of a living body, the body of Christ, the less he usually needs to be whacked upside the head and say, hey, get with the program here, right? Nevertheless, the more a man genuinely loves others, the more he is able to recognize the value of rebukes from the righteous. Proverbs 9, 8 says, if you reprove a wise man, he will love you. Proverbs 19, 25 says, reprove a man of understanding and he will gain knowledge. Proverbs 27 verse 6 tells us, Faithful are the wounds of a friend, profuse are the kisses of an enemy. Folks, you would ask God, I think this psalm teaches you to ask God to send me rebukes from righteous people. In other words, I want to be connected to the righteous, and I need whatever you send in my life through them. God, help me to receive that. That's good. Let me move on quickly toward the conclusion of this psalm. Verses, as we follow into this psalm, actually the next couple of verses are actually difficult to interpret. And depending on how you take them, people understand them in different ways. It says, I'll just read it here as it's translated in the English Standard Version, when their judges are thrown over the cliff, often understood to be some kind of a judgment against the judges, wicked judges, who are not judging rightly, who are perhaps working against the righteous, when they are given to the, if you want to translate this super literally here, given to the hands of the rock. We think that's probably picturing something like being thrown over a cliff. That was one way sometimes people were executed. When their judges are thrown over the cliff, then they, perhaps speaking of the wicked here, the psalmist says, shall hear my words, for they are pleasant. I'm trying to pray in the truth, trying to speak in the truth, and when God enacts judgment, then they will hear my words, the words of truth and goodness and rightness. So perhaps that is what verse 6 is alluding to. That's also challenged then by what verse 7 is talking about. As when one plows and breaks up the earth, so shall our bones be scattered at the mouth of Sheol. The question here is, who is talking and what is he talking about? Some understand this to be talking about what a wicked man could say when judgment is enacted. And so sometimes I think even in English translations, they might put something in there like that, like maybe an italics or something, they will say, or something like that, giving you, say, this is the words of the wicked man, saying, God has enacted judgment. And what has happened to us? Our bones are scattered at the mouth of Sheol. That is possible. Sometimes in the Psalms, as condensed poetry, the voices of people who's speaking changes. And you have to kind of follow that. It seems a little bit more straightforward simply to read this, however, as the words of the psalmists of David. Because he says, our bones. And he's speaking about the condition of the people of God, even as he's crying out to God here. He's picturing almost as if death has sort of swallowed us up, chewed us up, spit out our bones on the ground, and they're desecrated and desolate. We need God to work because of that. And that might be the case although it's difficult to see exactly how that fits into the flow of thought in the psalm. So I simply express that to say there's a little uncertainty how exactly this fits into the whole prayer. Obviously, it's expressing a confidence in God, whether it's the wicked who are judged or the current condition of the righteous. We are calling upon the Lord. and looking forward to him to work. And that's why it turns to that in verses 8 through 10. A refuge for my soul. But my eyes are toward you, Yahweh, my Adonai, my Lord or Master. In you I seek refuge. My eyes are toward you. What a beautiful statement of trust. All this, this world around us, and all the turmoil, all the deception, all the danger, Here's where I look. My eyes are toward you. I call upon you. You are my covenant God, the one I'm subservient to. You are my master. And so you are the one in whom I seek refuge. He's saying a moment ago, Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly. That's looking to the Lord. My eyes are to you, right? That's finding refuge in him. In fact, one of the reasons that song, excuse me, came to my mind as I was thinking about songs to sing together today is because of the next statement in this psalm, which kind of mirrors some of the pictures in the song. I'm gonna forget the words of the song, Jesus, lover of my soul. When it talks about covering my defenseless head, that's not the line I wanted. Hangs my helpless soul on thee. There, that's the line I wanted. Hangs my helpless soul on thee. The next line here in verse 8, the final line, is actually very similar to that. Here in the ESV it's translated, leave me not defenseless. Pardon me. Sometimes I wish our English translations would just let the full force of some of these metaphors come loose. That's not wrong. It's certainly what it's praying for. But in the original, the metaphor is different. It is, do not expose, lay bare, make naked my soul. Don't cast me out like a naked soul, exposed. Nothing to protect me, nothing to sustain my life. Don't leave me a naked soul, you might say, is what it's asking. Hangs my helpless soul on thee. That's what the song is praying. We need that because we know we need God. Folks, without God, we are simply naked souls. We have no protection in ourselves. This is why we call upon him. Keep me from the trap that they have laid for me and from the snares of the evildoers. Let the wicked fall into their own nets. Again, that great theme of evil that men do coming back upon their own heads while I pass by safely. God is a true refuge for our souls. Folks, if you don't want to be a naked soul, exposed to all the deceitfulness of this world, if you want to be guarded and protected, you need to ask God this. Ask God, be a refuge for my soul. Let me close with this. James Montgomery, the hymn writer, wrote a hymn which summarizes this psalm well. Lord, let my prayer like incense rise, and when I lift my hands to thee, as on the evening sacrifice, look down from heaven. well-pleased on me. Set thou a watch to keep my tongue. Let not my heart to sin incline. Save me from men who practice wrong. Let me not share their mirth and whine. But let the righteous, when I stray, smite me in love. His strokes are kind. His mild reproofs like oil allay the wounds they make and heal the mind. Mine eyes are unto thee, my God. Behold me humbled in the dust. I kiss the hand, pardon me, that wields the rod. I own thy chastisements are just. But oh, redeem me from the snares with which the world surrounds my feet, enriches vanities and cares, its loves, its hatreds, its deceit. Pray this psalm today. Evil entices, so look to the Lord to keep you. In faith today, drawing near to the Lord, and in response to that call, would you confess your faith in Jesus Christ? Based on the scriptures, as you have it there in the bulletin, let's confess our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ together today as a congregation. He was manifested in the flesh. vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory. Jesus is Lord.