Teach me ... lead me

I'm going to play a little bit of a song for you, and I'm going to ask you to sing along with me. I'm going to play a little bit of a song for you, and I'm going to ask you to sing along with me. Greetings from Psalm 143.

O Lord, hear my prayer, listen to my cry for mercy. In your faithfulness and righteousness come to my relief. Do not bring your servant into judgment, for no one living is righteous before you.

The enemy pursues me, he crushes me to the ground. He makes me dwell in darkness like those long dead. So my spirit grows faint within me, my heart within me is dismayed.

I remember the days of long ago. I meditate on all your works, and consider what your hands have done. I spread out my hands to you, my soul thirsts for you like a parched land.

Answer me quickly, O Lord, my spirit faints with longing. Do not hide your face from me, or I will be like those who go down to the pit. Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you.

Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul. Rescue me from my enemies, O Lord, for I hide myself in you. Teach me to do your will, for you are my God.

May your good spirit lead me on level ground. For your name's sake, O Lord, preserve my life. In your righteousness, bring me out of trouble.

In your unfailing love, silence my enemies. Destroy all my foes, for I am your servant. Thank you, Jackie.

We don't have Jackie with us very often here at the tab, because although she's the daughter of Hugh and Joyce, who helped lead our Maybridge Fellowship, she's also a student and is studying away from Worthing, and it's so nice to hear the Scottish lilt, isn't it, in the reading of Scripture, and that's one of the reasons why I asked her to bring that reading from the psalm to us this evening. This is an occasion when we have an opportunity, and rightly so, just to set our sails, so to speak, to the wind of the Holy Spirit and ask that he might blow us in the direction in which he wants our lives to travel during these next twelve months. It's also a time when perhaps we look back and think of the things that we should have done that didn't do and the things that we did do that we ought not to have done, and make constantly that confession, that confession that we were referring to this morning as we took a leaf from the book of our Anglican friends and read the prayer of confession from the book of Common Prayer.

But I want especially to draw your attention to the tenth verse of Psalm 143. Let me read it again, this time not with a Scottish lilt, but with Yorkshire bluntness. Teach me to do your will, for you are my God.

May your good spirit lead me on level ground. The text is really the classic one for a school situation. Many of our teachers have been so distressed during the past two weeks not to have had the privilege of getting to school at nine o'clock in the morning and attending to their honourable duty of imparting welcome information to young boys and girls here in Worthing.

And I thought that it would be rather nice to set a good tone to the first Sunday evening of a new year in taking the school teachers especially back into the classroom because, well, here is a text that really could come from the lips of a pupil. Teach me to do your will. Your pupils are always so anxious to absorb everything that you want to give them, to collect all the jewels that fall from your ruby lips.

Not so, and therefore you as school teachers can identify with this text. Not that as a whole, educationally, we're doing terribly well in the United Kingdom according to a report that came out this past week that you may have had a snippet of in the independent or lesser newspaper that you happened to take. The problem, actually, Tim, was that people don't know where the United Kingdom is on the map of the world.

And as far as South America is concerned the average number of people who had ignorance as to where Latin America is located was culpable. Of course, we know the reason why. Geography teachers are marching into the ministry with the net result that these lessons that are so vital for us to make our way around the world are not being taught as properly as they ought.

But here is a text which speaks of someone who's hungering for knowledge. Now, it seems to me that it's not a bad thing to consider a new year in terms of a fresh term at school. I went through a piece of educational blackmail when I was a lad in my grammar school in the north of England.

At the end of every term we would sing, parrot fashion, the same dismissal hymn. But some of us, of course, were not being dismissed finally. The majority of us were coming back for another term.

And the refrain, which was a bit of blackmail, had those returning, those returning, make more faithful than before. And we looked at the solemn character of our headmaster and we heard the enthusiasm of the staff as with rather astonishing verve they sang that refrain. It was a cry of desperation from their hearts that they might indeed get more response from their charge who returned the following term.

Now, in one sense, and humour aside, it is true for us to take this text and to look at it in this particular fashion. The psalmist wants to do better. Surely you and I want to do better in the service of the Lord.

We're in the school of Christ. We've not completely graduated. There is a lot of mileage, to change the metaphor, to do as far as the curriculum is concerned.

A lot more that we need to learn. Now, the psalmist here was in desperate condition. After all, the fifth verse refers to days of long ago.

Days when things were that much easier. Perhaps days when he had been more successful as far as his own spiritual life was concerned. He remembered those days.

Do you, my older friend? Do you always wax lyrical about ten years ago, or twenty years ago, or thirty years ago? You know when there was great blessing? Tremendous Bible teaching. But the years have passed. They're a fond memory.

But really, your heart has to twin with the heart of the hymn writer who penned the words, Where is the blessedness I knew when first I sought the Lord? The psalmist looks back to the days of long ago. He spreads out his hands. That, incidentally, is not some sort of novel thing into which the church has suddenly found itself engaging in terms of lifting the hands.

It was an old Hebrew practice. You lifted your hands in the presence of the Lord in recognition of His greatness and His grandeur. There was a sense of awe.

Sometimes you lifted your hands and on your hands were actually written the names of people who were a burden as far as you were concerned and you were bringing their burden before the Lord in this dramatic fashion. Well, this psalmist, he tells us the stories of old. He spreads out his hands before the Lord.

His soul thirsts for the Lord. He wants a fresh sense of God's presence and blessing upon him. And it seems to me that he summarizes all his longings in this 10th verse.

Teach me to do your will for you are my God. I love the story of Samuel, don't you? The boy Samuel. You remember how he went to a private school where there was only him and the headmaster? And on one occasion his knight was disturbed.

He hears a voice. He thinks it's Eli. It's such a lovely story.

I'm sure you know it and have no need for me to sketch out much more than just a general background. It's not Eli, is it? No, go back. Samuel says the old man.

And the next time you hear the voice say speak Lord for your servant hears. That lovely illustration from the Old Testament has given birth to one of the most beautiful hymns that we have which has as a middle stanza the opening line Oh give me Samuel's ear the open ear O Lord. Isn't that what you want this year? An ear that's open.

A heart that's responsive. A will that's buckled to the almighty will of God. Come back to the classroom and put up your request because it seems to me that this verse speaks of three best things.

There's the best teacher for is there a greater teacher than God? There's the best pupil for David it seems to me was streaks ahead of most of his contemporaries who were in the school of God in his day. And what's more here's the best subject. Teach me to do your will for you are my God.

Well let's break open this little text which has two aspects to it. They're both requests aren't they? Teach me to do your will for you are my God and then there's a supplementary. May your good spirit lead me on level ground.

Teach me to do your will. The request of the petitioner. Teach me.

Childlike isn't it? First prayer I ever learned was a childish prayer. Gentle Jesus meek and mild. Look on me a little child.

Pity my simplicity. Teach me. It's childlike.

There is a sense in which you have to be childlike which is not the same as being childish is it? Childlike before God. To be as a little child says Jesus is a prerequisite to enter the kingdom. To grow in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus needs that childlike dependence.

So you take from him the words that he communicates and you seize on them as ideally you would like if you're a teacher the children to seize the lessons that you share and to benefit from them. Teach me how childlike. Teach me to do.

How practical. You see there are some of us here in the tub I speak with love and affection in my heart or else I wouldn't have been here for so long who are very strong on the first part. Teach me.

But not so enthusiastic on the second part. Teach me to do. I was hopeless at physics.

There is the abstract study of physics and there is the applied study of physics. That's taking the concepts and working them out in some sort of laboratory situation so that what you have in a speculative abstract fashion really helps the particular quest that you're engaged in in the laboratory alone. Now there are some people it seems to me their understanding of God is in the former category it's abstract.

I spend my life for a great part of it studying the Bible but I have no time for theology in and of itself. Not abstract metaphysical propositions. If this theology does not work itself through in my life and in the lives of those who I try to teach so that as a result they are different then it means we've never gone into the second part of the request from this pupil in the classroom.

Teach me yes but teach me to do. How childlike. How practical.

How humble yourself under what you believe is the purpose of teacher in your life. Teach me. Teach me to do.

Teach me to do your will oh my God how logical. The greatest teacher with the greatest knowledge you'd be a fool to have shared with you what he knows and not to respond to it. The request of the petitioner.

But then the reasoning of the petitioner. For you are my God. Have you noticed how sometimes the psalmist will put up a proposition and work from that proposition a certain consequence or sometimes he'll put the consequence up first and then he'll hook it onto the proposition.

You've got an illustration of the latter here. Teach me to do your will for you are my God. That's the proposition you are my God therefore teach me to do your will.

You get it inverted in the 23rd Psalm. The Lord is my shepherd that's the proposition. What follows from that? Therefore I will want nothing.

I will lack nothing. Because the Lord is my Lord says David I will engage in prayer there is here an illustration of David being so sure of a certain thing about the Lord you are my God that compels him as a result to ask that God will teach him the reasoning of the petitioner. Teach me to do your will.

Have you been doing God's will? You say well yes I have I've tried to do God's will in my life but there have been times and particularly during the past year when I blew it as our American friends would say. You know I was on course and then to use the language of the Apostle Paul as he writes to the Galatians someone sort of cut across me and I fell. Do you remember the story of Mary Decker and Zola Budd the Olympics in Los Angeles wasn't it just the ones before this occasion when the South African cut in on Mary Decker and she stumbled and fell.

She wasn't able to progress any further to make any more mileage. It was for her a great tragedy. Do you remember the story of Eric Liddell going back to an earlier Olympics in France and the film Chariots of Fire.

You recall how he fell and then he got up and he started to pace himself as quickly as he could and ultimately he was able not only to finish the race but also to win the race. The crowds were cheering him. My friend the problem is not falling but then I don't say this critically of her because she proved herself to be an outstanding athlete doing a Mary Decker.

You need to do an Eric Liddell getting up and going on deeper more surely into the purposes of God. That's what my psalm my classroom text indicates. Teach me to do your will for you are my God.

That was a major request but there's a supplementary request is there not in the second part of the verse. May your good spirit lead me on level ground. My wife bans me from watching certain programs on the television.

For example if the Bishop of Durham comes on she knows that's going to ruin the evening. Actually I can tolerate him to some degree. A greater hate of mine or a great antipathy of mine to use a lesser word are astronomers.

I'm sorry astrologers astrologers and even worse clairvoyants. You know these people who've got it all sort of mapped out as to what's going to happen in the future. I think ITV went mad when they had in their news program in the morning regular consultations with an astrologer.

Can you believe it? Well I was driving down very late from London last I think it was Wednesday night or Thursday night at twelve o'clock and Rowena was with me we'd spent time with friends her relatives in London and we'd left late. And I tuned in to BBC and they had a clairvoyant on. You never had such tripe in all your life.

It was a sort of phone in answer question session and this man he really did need to just be silenced. And somebody was asking him about the Holy Spirit and he was trying to work out some ridiculous doctrine of the Holy Spirit because of course he's into spiritism and what have you and he can't cope with Orthodox Christianity and it's teaching on the Holy Spirit and he tried to tell this person that actually the Holy Spirit is not the third person of the ever-blessed Trinity and all this was concocted in the fourth century and so on and so forth. He was historically all askew let alone theologically dull in his understanding of the Bible.

But here is the word of God in the Old Testament which makes reference to the Good Spirit. May your Good Spirit. It's an interesting word that, isn't it? Because very often you think of the Spirit of God in terms of the Holy Spirit and that's right.

In our hymns we sing of the Gracious Spirit. Gracious Spirit I myself would gracious be. Gracious Spirit dwell with me I myself would gracious be.

It's not very often that you come across the term Good Spirit. But the Spirit of God is a Good Spirit. The Good Spirit.

You know who the most outstanding woman in the world is I beg your pardon in our country is? Well you guess it wasn't quite Mrs. Currie Mrs. Thatcher got in by a few votes. Good for Mrs. Currie or else you'd never get back into the government. But who came as a lead in the polls as far as the most favoured man in the world is concerned? Mikhail Gorbachev.

Do you know I have somewhere in my files the translation of a Russian speech of his given in the West some years ago in which he actually made reference to the Good God of Heaven. It was interesting that when the speech was reprinted and published in the Soviet Union that little phrase was completely taken out. But he's right.

The Good God of Heaven the Good Holy Spirit. If you turn to the book of Nehemiah you will find Nehemiah referring to the Good Spirit that the Lord God poured out upon the Israelites in the days in which Moses was their leader. So here is the description in the second part of this text which has a two-fold request of the third person of the Trinity.

May your Good Spirit lead me. Now that's what you need. You need the leading of God's Spirit in your life.

Not so throughout the whole of 1989. May your Good Spirit lead me. But not just a description is here given but also direction.

May your Good Spirit lead me on level ground. The Spirit of God doesn't lead us through bumps in the night. That's the language of clairvoyance.

He doesn't lead us through absurd the absurdities that the clairvoyant and the various fortune tellers get into and the astrological charts. All this is a take-off by the devil. A simulation of what is real on the part of God who wants you and me in our lives as He wanted the psalmist years ago and the Hebrews before the days of the psalmist.

How He wants to lead us so that we're not going incautiously into or so that we're not going into 1989 with a sense of well, there's no guidance, there's no particular point on the compass that we can take reference from. The Bible tells us may your good spirit or invokes us to use the prayer may your good spirit lead me on level ground. You see the psalmist had had his ups and downs hadn't it? That's probably the reason why the terminology is used level ground.

It's translated differently in the authorised version but actually it amounts to the same thing. When Abraham was on the plane of Mamre you remember he had been separated from Lot who'd chosen to go his own way. Uncle Abraham was on that plane.

It was a high plane. Because it was a flat. And there in the middle of the day he had an encounter with the Lord.

He came to him in the person of three angelic beings. Do you remember the story in the book of Genesis how Moses, typical man, invited these men as he thought they were on first encounter back to his tent for hospitality and then tells Sarah get cracking we've got people to have a meal with us. But it wasn't just an ordinary encounter with ordinary men was it? It was God himself disclosing himself to Abraham and he did so on level ground.

The psalmist I don't think is concerned about topography. That means the actual heights and depths of the ground itself. The hills or the valleys.

He is very concerned however that spiritually as he makes his progress through future weeks and months he may be led by God's good spirit. Because it seems to me that he confesses here as perhaps you and I confess that there was a time when he held ground which was higher than the point that he was at at the moment spiritually and he wanted to retrieve the spiritual status that he used to know. Now maybe you're like that or maybe you've never really been to a place where you've been on high ground and you want to get to that high level ground and you say preacher how do I do it? How can I be assured that in 1989 I might make better spiritual progress, I might scale higher heights than I have done to this point in my spiritual life? Three things and then I'm through.

Lord lift me up and let me stand by faith on heaven's table land where love and joy and peace abound. Lord plant my feet on higher ground. I used to sing that back in the north of England, not on my own with the rest of the congregation.

How do you work it out? Number one, an Americanism. Prioritise. That means make first certain things in your life.

The psalmist says one thing if I desire, that is to seek after. When you have the one thing, it levels out the ground and it enables the other things that are not so important to be pushed on one side. Prioritise.

Says the apostle Paul, this one thing I do. Campbell Morgan, a great preacher in London some 30 years ago preaching on that text was accused by someone in the congregation of having a narrow mind. Just one thing Morgan, is that all that you live for? And Morgan says when your thing is as big as mine is, that's all you need to live for.

This one thing. The apostle Paul talked about putting on one side, having leveled down all those things which some of them were quite legitimate that had prior place in his life before the Lord Jesus stopped him, stepped in and unhorsed him on the Damascus road and revealed himself to him. And from that moment on, Paul prioritized.

He was concerned to put Jesus Christ first, the study of his word first, the dissemination, the spreading of the gospel first. Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, says our Lord Jesus, and all these things shall be added unto you. You didn't make progress, test yourself, pupils, on the basis of what your priorities were.

What did you prioritize last year? Visualize. Your old men shall dream dreams. You expect old men to dream dreams, don't you? Dear old men, as they slumber and think about what has been, nothing wrong with that.

But your young men, you see visions. You're not content with what is. You don't know what used to be because you didn't live down memory lane, but you have an idea of what you want to be.

Visualize. Not in some sort of clairvoyant fashion away with all that damnable rubbish, but have some idea in your mind of who you want to be and what you want to do for the Lord and visualize yourself doing that and make every effort to make the dream the vision by God's grace a reality. And finally, capitalize.

This is what the psalmist is doing. He's capitalizing on the promises of God. You are my God, therefore teach me to do your will.

I have your good spirits, impulses in my life, therefore lead me on level ground. Dennis Clark used to say that it's not enough to stand on the promises, you have to step into the premises. What he meant was taking God's promises and working them through, capitalizing upon them, cashing in on them and through.

A text, not just for teachers, not just for those who'll be in a classroom situation in two or three days time, a text for all of us at Worthing Tabernacle. We've got the best teacher, the Lord God. We've got the best subject, the will of God.

May we be the best pupils who have responded to his grace as illustrated in the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus. May we absorb all that God wants to tell us, and may our lives be changed as we're lifted onto higher and level ground, and may God give each one of us, each one of us elders, deacons, Sunday school teachers, ordinary members, I don't use that word advisedly, it's not a good word, special members, for everyone's special, everyone's an individual. As Richard Sharp used to say, when God made you, he threw away the mold, he didn't want another, he was happy about you, special in the service of God.

May each one of us have a good year, graduating further in the school of Christ, a classroom text, take it, respond to it. Let's sing again about our Lord Jesus. Somewhere on the overheads, the folk are looking after them, is the old hymn, Fairest Lord Jesus, Ruler of Nations.

Now, if memory serves me right, which it often doesn't, it's in the white supplement as well, it is number 11, so if you can't see the overheads, we're going to be singing this beautiful old hymn, sing all the verses, we'll be arranging the communion down here. Some of you who are at the sides there, now at this point we would like you to help us, because we want to give bread and wine to you and there are some seats right on the front rows here and we'd like you to fill them up, so will you move around during the time that we're singing these verses and let's just hold our attention on our Lord Jesus, our great tutor, our great instructor, let's praise him, the fairest Lord Jesus will stand and sing. Fairest Lord Jesus Lord of all nations Lord of all Jesus is the greatest Lord Jesus shines brighter Jesus shines to save beautiful Savior Father Son of God and Son of The best subject, the will of God, the gospel of God, the best instructor, our Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit, God the Father.

We prioritize the Lord Jesus in our thinking as we turn to our next hymn, it's in Songs of Fellowship, 277, Jesus is King I will extol him give him the glory honor his name he reigns on high enthroned in the heavens word of the Father exalted for us. When we get to that one, two, three, fourth verse, that's really a doxology, which means that you can let rip. You can have your praise shout.

You can praise the Lord with great volume, with great enthusiasm as you bring the passion of your heart into focus and you have attention to, mentally, what you're singing about this great Savior that's ours. You see, you combine the mind and the emotion in your praise and sometimes you can get to the greatest in fortissimo O Holy One our hearts do adore you Jesus is King 🎵 Jesus is King almighty he reigns on high enthroned in the heavens We have a hope that is steadfast and certain, Strong through the passionate. We have a priest who is there in the singing, Pouring his grace on our lives day by day.

We come to him, a priest and apostle, Flowing his glory with gladness before him. Filled with his spirit, we worship the King. So much true and glorious, Filled with your love, We give you our praise.

He is surrounding, Jesus the Savior. Amen.