Psalm 6:8–10 — Depart from me, all you workers of evil, for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping. 9 The Lord has heard my plea; the Lord accepts my prayer. 10 All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled; they shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment.
Do you see it? “The Lord has heard….., the Lord has heard….., the Lord accepts my prayer”. It’s only 4 or 5 words but it is a huge truth, and worth dwelling on today!
I followed some cross-references from these verses and here are the verses that I found:
Psalm 3:4 — I cried aloud to the Lord, and he answered me from his holy hill. Selah
Psalm 34:4–7 — I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. 5 Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. 6 This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. 7 The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.
All these Psalms are attributed to David (and I am sure additional ones like this could be found). In Psalm 6, he testifies to an unshakable confidence that God has heard him, on the basis of which he anticipates his certain deliverance. In Psalms 3 and 34 he recounts occasions when the Lord has delivered him in answer to his prayers. So his past experience encouraged his present confidence.
Why was David so confident? These words are from a Psalm that is not attributed to David, but he certainly knew the truth of them (as parts of Psalm 51 make clear):
Psalm 66:16–20 — Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has done for my soul. 17 I cried to him with my mouth, and high praise was on my tongue. 18 If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. 19 But truly God has listened; he has attended to the voice of my prayer. 20 Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me!
Sin separates us from God - and if we cherish sin and will not repent, we cannot expect that He will hear us. David knew that his sins had been forgiven and he did not cherish sin - therefore God would hear.
I am also reading Leviticus at the moment - with all the blood that had to be shed to make the people outwardly clean so that God could dwell among them. And only the High Priest could enter into the Holy of Holies (where God’s glory was specially present) once a year with atoning blood. But Jesus, our great High Priest, entered heaven itself with His own blood, and opened the way for us to come with confidence into the Holy of Holies in heaven (Hebrews 9:11–14, 10:19–25). And such is the power of His blood and the relationship we now have with God through it that we may approach our Father 7 days a week, 24 hours a day!
Sometimes we can forget our past deliverances in answer to our prayer. That will increase our tendency to lack confidence that He has heard us in the here and now. Sometimes we doubt, perhaps, that He will deliver us again and again because of His steadfast love - that He will allow no destruction to come upon those for whom Jesus spilt His precious blood at the cross. Sometimes we forget that before the throne of God above, I have a strong, a perfect plea: a great High Priest, Whose Name is Love, Who ever lives and pleads for me”.
To loop full circle back to David in Psalm 6, we have exactly the same grounds for confidence that God will hear us and accept us as David had. And, since we have the benefit of looking back on the fulfilment of Christ’s work to cleanse us, to adopt us into God’s family and to open the way into heaven for us, we have reasons for even greater confidence than David. He only saw these things as distant types and shadows but we have the reality in Christ.
In troubling times especially, we can find great comfort in the certain knowledge that when we cry out to the Father, by the Spirit, in the Name of the Son, He will hear us, accept us and deliver us!
