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Good evening. If you got your bibles, you would turn to Psalm 1. Psalm 1 is where we're gonna be beginning just a few short moments. I've been sure to guess we've all probably seen some a little bit like this behind me. I don't know about you guys, but I really enjoy listening to little children pray.

It's really sweet hearing, you know, on the one hand, their innocent little hearts try to give thanks to God for, at the moment, what what matters most to them. It's also really funny sometimes, It's the things that they say. You know, I love to hear the things that they pick up from their parents. You know, right now, Nadine's not old enough to string too many words together. We're lucky if we can get her to just hold her hands together or hold our hands while we pray.

She hates doing that. It makes me so mad. But, eventually, we'll get her there. And I'm excited to hear her pray and to hear the words, the phrases, the structures of her prayers that she picks up from here in Abby and myself. I love when I go home and I hear my sister's boys or my nephews.

When when they pray before a meal, you know, I'm sure you probably experienced this. They usually say thank you for the food, and then they go into this long list of... They kinda, like, peek their eye open. They start saying thank you for mommy, daddy, you know, uncle p p. That's what I'm called.

Don't ask why. Actually, you can ask why. That makes it sound weird. Anyways... But they go around listening to every...

Or listing everybody's name. Right? And who they're thankful for is really sweet. As long as you're not left off the list, that always stings. But there's this times, right, where, you know, you hear a little child pray and they stumble.

They start to lose kind of what they're trying to say. And it's at this point where the mom and dad always steps in. Right? They help them finish the prayer. They help them get to the finish line.

And in the process, well, they teach them at the same time. But do you ever feel like this little child behind me? Do you ever feel like that when you're praying or you're sitting there? You want to pray. You know you need to pray.

You're trying to pray. And yet, either privately or publicly, maybe you struggle to know where to start. You struggle to know what to say. You struggle to develop a habitual prayer life. You struggle just to stay focused, to keep your mind from wandering off during your prayers.

Maybe you struggle because your prayer life has become stale, become shallow or repetitive. Well, the good news tonight I wanna bring to you is, you know, we're not left to figure out prayer by our lonesome. We have spiritual brethren who've come before us, who've wrestled with the questions and the problems of life that we deal with. But they've left us the treasury of the Psalms and their prayers therein.

And so tonight, wanna propose to you that that help can be found in praying the Psalms. They teach us on the one hand how to answer God when he speaks to us. And on the other, how praying them is really accessible. It's really easy to do.

Anybody, no matter how young or old of a Christian you are, can do it. And so tonight, our lesson really wants to kind of hone in on two major questions. Why should I pray the Psalms and how can I pray the Psalms? And much of our study really is gonna be leaning on that first question, why, and the how the practical application will will flow out of that second question, and that will be a lot more quick than our first three points this evening. I wanna start and let's just jump into our study and talk about why we ought to pray the Psalms in the first place.

This is a lesson I really needed. I needed to have a reset in my preaching over the last couple months, and so this was one that I've been wanting to pray and, wanting to preach. So let's start with that question, why should we pray the Psalms in particular? Well, hopefully, the answer is clear. It's really simple.

Right? The Psalms were meant to be prayed. That's why we should pray them in a nutshell. You know, typically, I think in our context, we think about... We think about Psalms.

We usually associate it with with songs. Right? Because we think about Paul's words in Ephesians 5:19 where he admonishes us to address one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the lord with your heart. And that word is used for psalms there. It's the same word that the Septuagint uses to title the Psalms and the Greek text and the Greek New Testament.

But while many of the Psalms were written in order to be performed as hymns either for individual use or in the temple, many of the Psalms were written as prayers. And as you know, most... We'll we'll talk about Psalm 4 and five here in a little bit. They're written or they're to be performed, but they were written originally as prayers. There's several Psalms throughout, that have superscriptions or these kind of edited titles that were added after the fact that tell us that, hey, this is a prayer of David.

This is a prayer of Moses. Psalm 102 verse verse 1 is really interesting. It's a prayer of one afflicted when he is faint and pours out his complaint before the Lord. Kinda general, but also specific at the same time. But more often, you come across these phrases, these kind of prayer phrases that are repeated.

You know, hear my prayer. Listen to my prayer. Give ear to my prayer, the psalmist say so often. So often, we see the psalmist calling on god to listen and ask god to hear their prayers. Furthermore, if we need another excuse to, understand why I need to pray the Psalms, well, Psalm, 72 verse 20, it concludes with this statement at the end of the second book of the Psalms.

It says, the prayers of David, the son of Jesse are ended. And this seems to suggest if, you know, at least some, if not all of the preceding Psalms, the 72 Psalms that came before were considered a compilation of David's prayers or songs that originally could be read as prayers. All these examples, the outset, I want us to see really clearly the Psalms are meant to be prayed even though maybe we think of them in terms of songs. But there's more that I wanna get to than just those points. The songs I want us to understand are compiled not simply as, you know, individual songs kinda like those weird greatest hits albums from a ton of different bands just put together and you're like, there is no rhyme or reason to why these songs were put in this album.

But these things were put together to be Israel's, not only hymn book, but their prayer book. While many of the Psalms were written by individuals like David, the psalter, it reflects a process of collection of kind of editorial shaping that took place some time after the Babylonian exile, what is known as second temple period. And the editorial work is we're gonna see in just a moment, it was really intentional. Of course, again, these were... These songs were written along beforehand, but they're they're being put together in a particular way.

That's what we're saying. But if we pay attention to this editorial work that's been done, we pay attention to the book structure, We can receive direction on why and also how we should use the Psalms. And rather than listing just a bunch of random kind of practical benefits of the Psalms that I just pull out of my own head, I want us to listen to the editors of the Psalms and the Psalms themselves and let them tell us why we should pray the Psalms. And here's here's what I want us to see in this first half of the lesson here. That the editors of the psalter, they framed and they organized the book, the Psalms, to guide our use in them in prayer.

And what we'll see in these next three points is that through the work of this editing, the placement of specific Psalms, the editor show us that praying the Psalms, they form us into the kind of people that listen to God. They help us identify with God's people, and they help us to walk with god daily. Let's start with the first one here. That praying the Psalms, why should we pray them? Well, first, I think it's because they prepare us to answer god.

Of all the old testament scriptures, you know, the Psalms are so unique because most of scripture, it records God's direct action or his direct speech towards humanity, but the Psalms are the other way around. The Psalms, they give us words to speak to God. One of my professors in college said one time that the Psalms were the words of humans to God before they were God's words to humans. And that's always really stuck with me. That was a really clear way of thinking about the book of Psalms.

It's been helpful. But Israel and ourselves, we all understand that we can only speak to God because he's spoken to us first. And put another way, let me say it like this. Prayer is not simply some one way dialogue that we direct towards God, but it is our answer to God's speech. But to answer God properly, well, we have to come prepared.

And Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 really help us do that. The... They together really kinda function as the entryway into the psalter itself. And these two Psalms, historically, by Jews and Christians alike, have often been read together. Some some people even consider them as one single psalm.

That's because a number of reasons, but the two main ones are they share a bunch of vocabulary in the original languages. They're kinda copied and pasted in both, but also they're framed by the word blessed, which is really important. Psalm 1:1 begins saying, blessed is the man who walks not in the council of the wicked nor stands in the way of sinners nor sits in the seat of scoffers. And of course, Psalm 2:12 ends saying, kiss the son, the Messiah, the Christ, lest he be angry and you perish in the way for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

So that's signaling to us that these need to be read together. But there's even more going on. And there's one more correspondence of the language I want us to key in on, between these two Psalms. I think it's really important to consider in our first point about preparing us to answer God. And then there's this connection between this word in Hebrew.

It's translated meditate in Psalm 1 and plot in Psalm 2. In Psalm 1, of course, we know it describes the individual who meditates on god's law and on the... During the day and during night. Psalm 2, it's depicting the nations rather than an individual. And these nations rather being obedient to god are plotting against the lord and his anointed one.

You see, Psalm 1:2 continues and it says, that his delight is in the law of the lord and on his law, he meditates day and night. Whereas Psalm 2:1 says, why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the lord and against his anointed saying, let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us. See, Psalm 1 starts and it highlights it highlights the individual and his or her obedience to God's word. Whereas Psalm 2, it concerns the nations and their allegiance to Israel's Messiah.

But together, both of these Psalms at the outset, these two doors that we have to enter through in order to read the Psalms, they're making the same point that everybody is meditating on something. You're either learning to obey God or you're learning and trying to find new ways to rebel against him. You know, it may seem really strange for the Psalms to kinda enter this way if we think about it in terms of a prayer book. Why in the world would we start here? But, again, remember our central point here, that prayer, first and foremost, is about answering God.

You know, psalter, it opens with this meditation of law because this is how God had first spoken to Israel long ago. It's organization in the five books. It's meant to mirror the five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. I like how Eugene Peterson, a gentleman I'm very indebted to tonight for a lot of my thoughts. So he says, the Psalms in five books are responsive to the Torah in five books.

Five is matched by five like fingers clasped in praying hands. The psalter not only is structured by this number five, but it also concludes with the number five. This fivefold shout of praise. Hallelujah is what it says in Hebrew. In our English, the Bible is usually it says, praise the Lord five different times after Psalm one forty five.

The only one... These last couple of Psalms that has a title to it. It's called a song of praise. It's of David. And then it's five Psalms right after.

Praise the Lord. The Lord. Praise Lord. Praise the Lord. From beginning to end, what I wanna wanna see with this point is that the psalter, all the psalms, they're directing us back to God's word at the outset and at the end and in the middle, everywhere in between.

And it's calling us to respond to God in praise. And so when we talk about praying the Psalms, we're not merely talking about just preparing our words, going and reading some Psalms, finding some flowery language that makes us seem smart or feel really spiritual or something. No. We're talking first and foremost about preparing our hearts before God. Prayer is not a one way conversation.

We don't pray simply because we wanna be heard or because we want something from God. But we pray first and foremost because God has spoken and we cannot do anything else but respond. And by prepared, we talk about being prepared. We're not talking about coming to God perfect, squeaky clean. We're not talking about having all of our stuff together being all sorted out, but rather we're coming to prayer, we're coming seeking to be rooted in God like a tree planted by the living water.

We come to kiss and take refuge in God's Messiah and his son. Like Jesus, the Psalms here in Psalm 1 and Psalm 2, they help us to begin our prayer saying, thy kingdom come, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as is in heaven. And we pray like Jesus in the Garden Of Gethsemane, not as I will, but as you will. Before we're allowed entry into the Psalms, the Psalter, it puts us in our place. If we've listened to the Psalmist and most importantly to God, well, we've become...

We've come prepared in order to pray. Secondly, I think, why should we pray the psalms? The psalmist point us in a direction. It's because they connect us with the people of God. We're connected immediately when we pray the Psalms to the people who first prayed them in the first place, but also the generations of Jews and Christians who made these very words their own.

As we enter through the... These doors of the Psalter, we're immediately met at this point in Psalm 3 with these words in the superscription of Psalm 3. When it says, a Psalm of David when he fled from Absalom, his son. David says, oh lord, how many are my foes? Many are rising against me.

Many are saying of my soul. There is no salvation for him in God. Selah. Might wonder why is Psalm 3 placed here? Why is this the first one we get after we enter into the Psalms?

Why a Psalm about David's flight from Jerusalem? We know it's interesting that this follows right after Psalm 2. Because Psalm 2 is a song about god's anointed whose rule has been established firmly on Zion and Jerusalem. And yet, Psalm 3 begins with David, god's anointed, now fleeing Jerusalem. The placement of Psalm 3 is really important.

It tells us... It teaches an important lesson. It doesn't teach that god's people never suffer, but it teaches us what to do when suffering comes and adds to cry out to god. You know, 73 Psalms that are attributed to David throughout the psalter, And 13 of those in particular relate to a specific kind of moment in David's life. And these 13 situations, they're not abstract.

They're usually times of intense crisis, whether it'd be danger or sin or deliverance that he needs. Think about Psalm 3, you know, it's reflecting a family conflict, but a family conflict in which David's own son is attempting to take his throne. Psalm 51, a Psalm we know really well. It shows Dave... David's penitence and search for forgiveness after his sin with Bathsheba.

Psalm 63, Psalm 42, they relate David's circumstances to the places that he's in. Some really dangerous places. He's in the wilderness. He's hiding in a cave. His enemies have driven him away from Jerusalem and out to these wastelands.

What we wanna make a point of here in talking about connecting ourselves with God's people in prayer is that we understand like David that our prayers, they need to give voice to our real lived experience. We're not lifting up a bunch of abstract spiritual sounding aphorisms that sound really good, you know, that have nothing to do with our everyday life. We have grounded prayers, prayers that express our deep dependence upon God. You know, though David's prayers, they originated in these kind of particular circumstances of his own life, These are no longer just David's prayers.

We're not reading the Psalms to kind of read them analytically. It's just historical writings, but these are now our words too. His prayers and all these others, they were collected in the Psalms and they became Israel's prayers. And for the last, more than two thousand years, Christians have prayed these very words. And now the same prayer book is being held out and placed into our hands.

We may never face a bloody coup. We may never be forced to hide in a cave, But we do know what it means to be in need, to be vulnerable, and to be hurting. And like David and so many of the other psalmists, we bring our prayers to God, asking him for deliverance, for refuge, and for forgiveness. And we do so because like David, we believe that God can help us and we actually trust that he hears us. We trust that he hears us even when we don't know how or when his answer is gonna come.

And like like David, even before deliverance has come, we can confidently pray this. For David says, but you, oh lord, are a shield about me, my glory and the lifter of my head. I cried aloud to you and he answered me from his holy hill. Selah. You know, praying the Psalms is about connecting ourselves with God's people of old and God's people today.

God's people have always brought their prayers and their petitions before him, but we don't pray because we always expect a direct answer from God. But we pray because we know he hears us. And like all of God's people, we trust that he will help us. And so we wait even in the midst of trouble for God to answer according to his time and will. But when we pray these Psalms, when we learn to pray with God's people, and we trust the same God who hear...

Heard them who now we trust hears us. Thirdly, I also consider how the editors of the Psalms and the placement of Psalm 4 and five help us understand that praying the Psalms help us develop healthy rhythms for our prayer life. Kinda recap. You know, Psalm 1 and two, it describes the blessed life under god's rule. While Psalm 3, it reminds us, god's people, we still face trouble.

But how is it that we live faithfully when our lived experience doesn't match the ideal? Well, Psalm 4 and five, it shows us that prayer needs to shape our daily life. You know, these are composed of songs, as I said earlier, but, as you can see on the screen, these are, clearly the written to be prayers initially. Psalm 4 says, answer me when I call, oh god of my righteousness. You have given me relief when I was in distress.

Be gracious to me and hear my prayer. Psalm 5, give ear to my words, oh, Lord. Consider my groaning. Give attention to sound of my cry, my king and my god, for to you do I pray. What's so cool, I think, about Psalm 4 and five is that when you read them together, you realize that they were most likely intended to be read as morning and evening prayers.

Psalm 4:8, it concludes the Psalm 4 with these words saying, in peace, I will both lie down and sleep. For you alone, o Lord, make me dwell in safety. In Psalm 5:3, it begins, o Lord, in the morning, you hear my voice. In the morning, I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch. Again, specific placement of Psalms teaches us some really valuable lessons.

And that's... That even though prayer is often motivated by need, we can't wait until trouble comes to pray. David's trust and his patience that we saw exhibited in Psalm 3, that wasn't... That that didn't come about just because of one single prayer he just prayed all of a sudden. No.

That prayer life was forged in a life of persistent and daily dialogue with God. It's really difficult to maintain a relationship with somebody who only wants something to do with you when they're in trouble. Right? All of the parents who have kids in college right now said amen. Right?

What bank accounts empty? You know? I remember those days. They still love you. I still love my mom even though I only called her for money.

But those relationships, if they persist, if they're 50, you need you need... Something something needs to change. Right? Those... Because those relationships, they become more transactional than they do relational.

And, of course, we understand we can't treat god like that in our prayer life. Our prayer life, it has to be defined by regularity and rhythm. As Paul puts it, you know, we need to pray without ceasing. We cultivate these kinda habits, this kind of, this practice within ourselves through regular practice of prayer. And the Psalms are intended to help us find these healthy rhythms.

I want you to notice here that the Psalms, they present the evening before the morning. You know, whether intentional or not, this echoes Genesis 1 where God's days, when he created the world, it begins with evening, and there was morning the first day. There was evening. There was morning the second day. When you read, there is this kind of rhythm to Genesis 1, isn't there?

They mark that rhythm of each day. Perhaps, maybe this is meant to remind us that our lives need to be ordered around god's purposes rather than simply our own schedules. Maybe that's looking too much into it. But Psalm 4 and five do teach us some really important things. I think first Psalm 4, it reminds us when we lay down our head at night and we pray, trusting that God will take care of us as we go to sleep.

What we're doing is we're letting go of control. We're placing our lives in God's hands. You know, we're never more vulnerable than we sleep... Than when we sleep. And yet the psalmist, he says, based on God's past acts of deliverance in his life, he trusted that God would watch over him.

At some point of the day, you've got to close your eyes. Gotta lay down the shovel, stop working. You gotta stop your scheming. You gotta lay down your defenses. But the thing that Psalm 4, I think, shows us is that when we stop and pray before we go to bed and we go to sleep, if we trust that God and his work to set the world right, that work doesn't stop when we go to sleep.

We trust that God is still at work. But when we wake, we understand that we're one more day closer to that final capital d day. Psalm 5 kinda builds off of this surrender where we give give... We let go of control. You know, morning prayer is that opportunity for us to dress for action, to align ourselves with God's mission for a new day that's dawned.

Before our feet even have hit the floor each day, we have the opportunity to ask God to direct our steps rather than simply pursuing our own desires. It was really, really hard to slow down and develop sound rhythms. I think especially today. We're so busy. We have so much going on.

We make so many excuses. This is why I wanna preach a sermon because I knew if I got up in front of everybody and said, I'm gonna pray the Psalms, it was gonna force me to pray the Psalms for a little while. So I'm try... I need I need some accountability in praying the Psalms myself. I wanna practice what I preach here.

But the Psalms, I think, offer us such a much needed course correction, especially in terms of our prayer life. They call us to slow down. They're written to slow us down. I mean, when you read poetry, you can't rush it. Right?

You can't rush reading a poem. That sounds ridiculous. Rose are red, olives are blue. You know you know, that sounds silly. Right?

We don't do those sort of things. But to pray the Psalms, it's to let them shape our lives, to learn to pray in the evening, in the morning, and to learn to pray consistently and with regularity over a lifetime. Why should we pray the Psalms? We should pray the Psalms because they form us in the kind of people that listen to God. They connect us to his people, and they help us to walk more with him daily.

Let's talk about the second half. And don't worry, we're not going quite as long. This will be a lot quicker. This is the application. How do I pray the Psalms?

Again, I want you to see tonight that it's really simple. It's real... They're accessible and easy to use. I think the first kind of answer on how I pray the Psalms is simply, you know, just do it. Open your Bible, start in Psalm 1, start reading.

This is your prayer book, and you can start in Psalm 1. You don't need to divide the Psalms and all their different types and kinds. Right? This... Well, I need to read the lament ones right now.

I need to read the praise ones right now or the penitential ones are really something I need to read at some point. We don't need to divide them up in categories. Life often doesn't, you know... It's not reflected like that. It's kind of like reading the Psalms.

We kind of come across a praise. So there's a lament. There's several more praises. And then there's this imprecatory Psalm that comes out of nowhere that we don't know what to do with. Right?

We just need to read these psalms carefully. We need to read them in order. We need to read them faithfully. You can just pray the psalm directly or you can read it and then build your own prayer off of it. Sometimes, personally, when I pray the Psalms in my life, I like to do both.

I like to pray it as it appears and then put myself in the shoes of the Psalmist and pray it kind of using both my own words and the words of the Psalmist together. However you choose to pray the Psalms, the point is that we allow the Psalmist words to shape our own. The analogy we started our lesson with tonight that, like a child, we humble ourselves. We stop praying and we let the Psalmist take over and allow our spiritual family to help us find the words with which we address God. And whether you're learning to pray for the very first time, if you're a newer Christian or if you're an older Christian who's just needing to restore an an...

A neglected prayer life, Just pray the Psalms. There's no secrets. There's no shortcuts to developing a sound prayer life. You simply just learn by doing it. You start imperfectly.

You start with a lot of questions. Start maybe... Like, you're not doing things right, but understanding comes with doing. I think secondly, following a schedule is really helpful. That's easy with the Psalms.

Right? There's a 150 Psalms. The book of Psalms is... You know, has more chapters than any other book in the Bible. Of course, most of them are pretty short.

Right? Most fit on one or two pages. But you think... I think it's a little bit daunting when we open up the book of Psalms and we consider maybe trying to read it cover to cover. But there's so many different ways in which you can break the Psalms down to try and read them over a poor...

A short period of time. If you read one Psalm a day, you finish in about five months. That's a long stretch of time for me personally. I like to kind of do these kind of things in a little bit shorter span of time. Five psalms a day, that's a lot per day.

But if you have time, you can finish the whole book of psalms in a single month. If you read two or three Psalms a day, maybe you do one at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, well, that can help you finish in about two months time. That may be what I try to do before the end of the year. You have two months before the end of the year, you can try and do this yourself. You know, following the schedule, it's a practice of spiritual discipline.

It gives us a manageable way not only to become familiar with the psalms themselves, but also a regular guide for our prayer lives too. And then lastly, I'd consider, you know, journal your experience as well as you're writing. You know, record the things that resonates with you. There are new words. There are new expressions or phrases that that just jump off the page at you.

Maybe maybe you don't know why. Maybe it takes a couple weeks or months of praying the Psalms for you to come away with why that jumped out to you in the first place. May you start taking notes on how the Psalms are beginning to shape your prayer life. May you ask yourself questions, you know, after praying the Psalms for several weeks, may... I feel a lot more honest with God than I did, and I felt like I could be before.

I read Psalms like Psalm 88, and it shook me, and I thought, wow. I can say it. I can be more honest to God in my prayers than I thought. I can say what's really on my heart, and he can take that. He can he can handle what I have to say.

Maybe ask yourself, are these new prayer habits? Are they actually taking root in me? Am I seeing God myself or God's people in a new and different way? Am I becoming more dependent upon God, and am I becoming more aligned with his will? This evening, what I wanted to show you...

And again, this is something I desperately need right now. I need to kind of... I feel like I've fallen in a rut in my prayer life personally. I need to be kind of reinvigorated by the Psalms myself personally. I want you to see is that we have a treasury of Psalms and prayers at our fingertips.

Doesn't mean that when we read the psalms that every single one is gonna be easy to understand or that they're gonna leave us without any questions or anything. But we do have a lifetime to get to know this treasury, to learn its words, to share in the experience of God's people, and to allow them to shape our walk with God. So as we conclude tonight, I just wanna read Psalm 6 with you. I wanna pray Psalm 6 together, and we'll offer an invitation after that to kind of conclude our lesson tonight. I changed all of the first person singular pronouns in this prayer to collect our...

To a collective kind of pronoun here to conclude our lesson. I wanna pray this Psalm with us. It's just the next Psalm in this altar to kinda put our our sermon into practice right now. And afterwards, we'll offer an invitation and the lesson will be yours. If you would pray with me.

Oh, Lord, rebuke us not in your anger nor discipline us in your wrath. Be gracious to us, oh, Lord, for we are languishing. Heal us, oh, Lord, for our bones are troubled. Our souls are greatly troubled. But you, oh lord, how long?

Turn, oh lord, deliver our lives. Save us for the sake of your steadfast love. For in death, there is no remembrance of you. And Sheol, who will give you praise? We are weary with our moanings.

Every night, we flood our beds with tears. We drench our couches with our weeping. Our eyes waste away because of grief. They grow weak because of all our foes. Depart from us, all you workers of evil, for the Lord has heard the sound of our weeping.

The Lord has heard our plea. The Lord accepts our prayer, and all our enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled. They shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment. And all the saints of Timberland Drive said, amen. This evening, this isn't a lesson, you know, that particularly appeals maybe to someone who's seeking and searching...

Who's considering to become a Christian. But I hope you see the dedication that we have in wanting to commune with our God and wanting to speak with him faithfully and to connect ourselves with his people from of old. I hope you've seen tonight Jesus in some of these Psalms as well. That Jesus, in Psalm 1, he is the true blessed man. He is the Christ of Psalm 2.

God's anointed who's seated not in Jerusalem but in the heavenly places at God's right hand. He is our shield that protects us from sin, from death, and from evil spiritual forces. And though his death on the cross ended with darkness and night, he overcame death through the resurrection of the dead on the following Sunday morning. So this evening, if you yourself want to pray the Psalms, if you wanna speak to God like one of his children, well, Jesus is that mediator. He's the one who hears our prayers and carries them to the father on our behalf.

If you desire to be one of God's children, the only way through is through Jesus. He is the door. So if you would, come now and stand as we sing.