Word of Salvation – November 2025
A MORNING PRAYER
Sermon by Rev. John Haverland
Text: Psalm 5
Readings: Romans 3:9-26; James 3:1-12
Theme: A morning prayer for God’s help because of the lies of the wicked.
Purpose: To assure you of God’s protection in times of trouble from the wicked.
Are you a morning person? Some people are. As soon as they wake up their brain switches on immediately and they are ready to go!
People like that can be very irritating to those who are not morning people.
In marriages and families it can take understanding and patience to have smooth mornings while everyone gets ready for school, study or work.
Psalms 3, 4 and 5 all have references to the morning and evening, to waking and sleeping.
In Psalm 3:5 we read; “I lie down and sleep; I wake again because the Lord sustains me.”
And Psalm 4:8; “I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone O Lord, make me dwell in safety.”
And Psalm 5:3 reads; “In the morning, O Lord, you hear my voice, in the morning I lay my requests before you…”
One thing we can all do in the morning, whether or not we are morning people, is to pray.
It is fitting to begin the day with prayer because we can thank God for our night’s rest, and we can ask him to help us during the day.
We can pray that we will have strength to do our duty, to resist temptation, and that God will protect and guide us.
Spurgeon, in his great commentary on the Psalms, “The Treasury of David, wrote on this Psalm, “prayer should be the key of the day and the lock of the night.” In other words, we ought to open and close the day by praying to the Lord.
The psalms are all prayers – all 150 of them. They express the broad range of types and varieties of prayers: prayers of praise, thanksgiving, confession, intercession, lament.
In Psalm 5 David prays for God’s help because of the lies of the wicked.
We too need to pray every day for God’s help as we begin each day living in our pagan and godless society.
Verses 1-3 introduce this prayer to the Lord.
“Give ear to my words, O Lord.”
He wants God to hear him, to listen to him.
“Consider my groaning”. When he first comes to God he has no words; he cannot express how he feels; all he has is deep emotion, strong feelings.
Sometimes we are like this.
We find it hard to gather our thoughts, let alone put them into words.
We know that when we are deeply troubled all we can do is sigh and groan.
But his sighing progresses into a cry for help (v 2).
Sometimes our prayers are little more than a cry for help.
When a child cries often his mother can tell what he is crying about – she understands him.
When we cry out to God we can be sure that God understands us and knows what is on our heart.
But David’s prayer increases in clarity. It goes from sighing, to crying, and then to an “articulate, disciplined and expectant prayer.” (Kidner)
In v 3 he says; “in the morning I direct my prayer to you.” (This is the alternate reading in the ESV). The phrase “I direct my prayer” translates one Hebrew word which means to order or to arrange.
David ordered his prayers; he arranged his requests.
When you pray it is helpful to pause and consider what you will pray for, to plan your prayers, to think about your requests.
Spurgeon wrote that our prayers should not be “the flashes of a hot and hasty brain, but the steady burning of a well-kindled fire.”
Reading the Bible provides us with matters for prayer and helps ‘kindle the fire’.
Notice also to whom he prayed in these opening verses.
In verse 1 he prayed to the Lord because he is the covenant God who has brought us into a relationship with himself.
In verse 2 he prayed to the King because God is always ready to listen to the citizens of his kingdom, and he prayed to God because he is the almighty and great Creator. And he is our Lord, our King and our God.
After he had prayed he said he would “watch”(v 3).
This is the word used by the prophets as they watched and waited to report the first sign of God’s answers.
Too often we pray and then forget to look for God’s answer.
After prayer we need a hopeful expectation that God will respond to us.
There are four parts of this Psalm.
v 1-4 are about the wicked
v 7-8 describe David’s worship of God
v 9-10 warn of God’s judgment on the wicked
And v 11-12 call us to rejoice in the Lord!
- After the opening prayer in v 1-3 David described God’s hatred of the wicked. (v 4-6)
He began with an understatement (v 4);
“You are not a God who delights in wickedness.”
The emphasis in the wider church is often on God’s love, and this is a key attribute of God.
But God is also holy and just, pure and perfect.
He cannot tolerate sin and evil.
The arrogant cannot stand in his presence.
David expresses God’s attitude to the wicked with strong verbs; God hates all evildoers, he destroys those who tell lies, he abhors bloodthirsty and deceitful men!
In our society we hear of many acts of violence and cruelty and murder: men rape women, parents abuse their children, and gangs carry out acts of cruelty without any pangs of conscience.
And consider the terrible violence and destruction and loss of life going on in the Ukraine and Gaza.
Let’s remember that God abhors all those who are evil and all their acts of wickedness!
- But then, in verses 7-8, David contrasts this with his worship of God.
He has explained that the wicked cannot stand in God’s presence, but in v 7 he says, “But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house. I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you.”
God’s house or temple represented his presence with his people.
God was with them, close by them, near to them.
The Sons of Korah, who were part of the tribe of Levi, yearned “for the courts of the Lord” ( Ps 84:2): “Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord than dwell in the tents of the wicked.” (v 10)
This was also David’s longing. He wanted to be in the temple to worship the Lord and to be in his presence.
He knew that this was only possible “through the abundance of your steadfast love”. (v 7)
None of us can come to God on the basis of our own good works, with our own merit, boasting our own righteousness.
We can only approach God because God is merciful to us his people.
The Hebrew word for mercy is chesed, which refers to God’s covenant love or his loving-kindness. This love is abundant, generous and free.
This love and mercy of God is seen most clearly in the Lord Jesus:
“This is love; not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.”
(1 John 4:10; 3:16)
It is in his Son Jesus that God has shown us his great mercy, and it is through Jesus that we can gather together to worship him.
David also prayed (v 8); “Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies; make your way straight before me.”
David had been a shepherd; he prayed that God would lead him as a shepherd leads his sheep, or as a father leads his child by the hand,
or as a friend leads a blind person by the arm.
David wanted God to lead him along a straight path;
he wanted to be led in God’s way.
Sometimes you hear someone say; “It’s my way or the highway!”
He is insisting on his own way. We are often like that.
Instead we need to say to the Lord; “Not my way, but your way.”
Solomon advises us;
“In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight.”
“Make level paths for your feet
and take only ways that are firm.
Do not swerve to the right or the left;
keep your foot from evil.” (Pr 3:6; 4:26)
Is this your prayer? “
Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness… make straight your way before me.”
Are you walking that narrow path that leads to life?
Are you keeping your foot from evil?
Are you following your own way or God’s way?
- In verses 4-6 David had described God’s hatred of the wicked.
In verses 9-10 he prays that God will judge the wicked.
There were people speaking against David, slandering his name, bearing false witness against him.
This is the repeated theme in verse 9 with the mention of their mouth, their throat and their tongue.
There is an expression that claims, “The pen is mightier than the sword”, but David knew that the tongue could be deadlier than the sword.
This is a recurring theme in many of the psalms where the people of the Lord were attacked by the lies and deceit of the wicked. (e.g. Psalm 12)
In v 9 David pictures their throat as “an open grave”. Think of a grave that has been dug, waiting to receive a dead body; in the same way their throats are waiting to receive the people of God brought down by their slander.
This is why the book of Proverbs warns how careful we must be about what we say to others and about them.
The same message comes through in the letter of James, which is the wisdom letter of the New Testament.
James repeats this same warning about the tongue, which is a restless evil, full of deadly poison (James 3:1-12).
And the Apostle Paul quotes these words of Psalm 5:9 in Romans 3:13 –
“Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit”.
He quotes these words to prove that “Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin” and that “there is no one righteous” (Rom 3:9-10).
Because of the lies and deceit of his enemies David prays, in verse 10, that God would expose their sin; “Make them bear their guilt O God.”
Then he asks; “Let them fall by their own counsels”, and he asks God to “cast them out.”
This type of prayer is known as an imprecation, or a curse on God’s enemies. Many people object to these imprecatory prayers in the psalms.
But we need to see that David was not seeking any personal revenge on his enemies; he was not being vindictive or spiteful.
Rather he put the whole matter in the hands of God as the righteous judge.
He appealed to God to do what is right and just.
This is what we need to do when we are mistreated, or when people lie about us, or when they persecute us in words or in actions.
Paul urges us; “Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written; ‘It is mine to avenge, I will repay’, says the Lord.”
(Rom 12:19) God is the just judge and he will do what is right.
- Finally, in the closing verses of the psalm, David calls on all believers to rejoice in the Lord.
He began by praying for himself; he concludes by including all God’s people;
v 11-12:
“But let all who take refuge in you rejoice;
let them ever sing for joy, and spread your protection over them,
that those who love your name may exalt in you.
For you bless the righteous, O Lord;
you cover him with favour as with a shield.”
Earlier we referred to Psalm 84. That psalm closes by affirming,
“The Lord God is a Sun and Shield.” (v 11)
In the ancient world some armies had very large shields that could protect the entire body of a soldier.
In our spiritual battle we do not rely on physical shields for protection, but on the favour of the Lord that surrounds us like a shield.
In the early days of the Reformation Martin Luther was summoned to Augsburg by Cardinal Cajetan to give an account of his views.
Luther had been under the protection of the Elector of Saxony.
As he was going to meet the Cardinal one of the priests asked him;
“Where will you find a shelter if the Elector deserts you?”
Luther replied, “Under the shelter of heaven.”
Later he expressed this in his version of Psalm 46, when he wrote his great and famous hymn, “A mighty fortress is our God.”
Be assured that the Lord blesses his people; he will bless you, he will protect you from evil, and he will cover you with his favour.
At the end of this psalm David applies what he has learned to all of us.
He had learned to take refuge in God and he wants us to do the same.
The appropriate response, he says, is to be glad!
“But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy…
that those who love your name may exult in you” (v 11).
This is our response to the Lord.
This is why we are here today: we are glad in the Lord, we want to sing for joy, we want to rejoice in our God!
We do that in our prayers and in our singing.
We do that with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in our hearts to God.
We rejoice in who God is and in all his marvellous attributes, in his character,
in his love and justice, in his mercy and wrath, in his grace and his holiness.
We rejoice in what he has done for us in and through the Lord Jesus –
in forgiving us our sin and giving us Christ’s righteousness,
in protecting us from evil and even turning it to our good.
This psalm began with a morning prayer – a cry to the Lord for help;
it ends with confidence and joy in God’s protection.
You may not be a morning person, but you can begin each day with a prayer to the Lord, your King and your God;
and you can end each day with thanks and praise to him for surrounding you with his favour like a shield.
Amen