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[ Music ] >> Amen. Let's all say amen again. Amen. Amen.

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I invite you to consider the ninth and 10th Psalms as the basis for our morning message, Psalm 9 and Psalm 10. The subject of the message is praying alphabetically. Praying alphabetically.

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These two songs, Psalm 9 and 10, should be considered together as a single song or as one prayer. They constitute a prayer that is arranged in alphabetic order. Such an alphabetic arrangement is called an acrostic psalm.

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It's an artistic device that provides the poet the distinctive framework to express his thoughts. The form is predetermined by the order of the alphabets. It's an educational tool which is useful in teaching the young particularly. Older persons can profit from it also.

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serves as an aid in remembering. When you remember the letters of the alphabet, you're also prompted to remember the thoughts that are related to them.

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So the psalmist often used such alphabetical arrangements As we are studying the book of Psalms, there are eight Psalms that are called acrostic Psalms. There are seven others.

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We're considering one today, and this one involves both Psalm nine and 10. Psalm 9 and 10 as one. Then there are seven others,

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Psalm 25, 34, 37, 111, 112, 119, and 145. Those are the other seven. The question for us today is what does it mean to pray alphabetically? The psalm that is arranged in such a manner follows the order of the Hebrew alphabet.

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Now the Hebrew alphabet consists of 22 letters beginning with aleph and ending with tau. In English we have 26 letters from A to Z. The Hebrews only 22 from aleph to tau. Our prayers ought to cover a wide range.

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They ought to go from A to Z, from Aleph to Tol. And there is value in praying alphabetically, because one knows where and how to begin, as well as where and how to end.

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You know, sometimes when some people get to talking with the Lord, especially in their public prayers, they don't know when to stop. We used to have a brother in our church when I was a boy,

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when we had old fashioned testimony meeting. We always had that on the first Sunday. And sometimes one, this particular person, would take up all the time telling his story,

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his testimony. And I remember one deacon would just start singing a song to sit the brother down. And the song was, "Let the church roll on.

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My Lord, let the church roll on." Well, it's a good thing to have an order, to have an arrangement to know how and where to start and stop. This alphabetical psalm, as we consider it, the first half of the Hebrew alphabet,

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The first half is in Psalm 9, and the other half is covered in Psalm 10. So it's a good thing, it seems to me, for us during this Thanksgiving season to join psalmist in praying alphabetically. Let us begin with Aleph, the first letter. And as we notice, each one of these letters covers two verses. So the first letter, the Hebrew

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alphabet will cover the first two verses of Psalm 9, and the next letter, the next two verses and for the most part with the few exceptions that's to order that it follows. So as we begin with all of the first letter we begin by praising God we begin with praise I will praise thee O Lord if you are following in your Bibles

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With my whole heart I will show forth all thy marvelous works. Begin with praise, praising God for his wonderful works. It's a good thing right now for us to recall what God has done in our lives. The wonderful works he has wrought, as some would put it, from the earliest of our existence until this present moment,

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how he has delivered us, how he has protected us, how he has preserved us. As the song expresses it, which we've sung earlier in this service, "Count your blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done. Praise God for his mighty works. Each of us can truthfully say that the

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Lord has been good to me. The Lord is good to all. There was a minister who was associated with me in the early part of my ministries, he was up in his 80s, and he He would often give his testimony and he says that the Lord has been better to me than I have been to myself.

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Praise God for his wonderful works. Keep on thanking him with the whole heart. The Lord's works are so wonderful. Oh, they are strange to be sure.

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We do not always understand the workings of the eternal. We may not always be pleased because he does not work just according to our satisfaction. He is not guided by our will and our way, but we are to be guided by his will and his way.

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So God works in his world. God has not abandoned his world. He is at work in his world. And he not only works in this world, but he works beyond this world.

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And his works are wonderful. They are beyond scientific analysis. We do not have to explain it. We do not really have to understand it, we need only to thank Him.

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If we would pray alphabetically, "Let us begin by praising and thanking God for His wonderful works. I just want to thank you, thank you, thank you. I just want to thank you, thank you, thank you, I want to thank you all the days of my

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life. So when we think of his goodness, we are led to thank him. That's the way to begin. That's the first letter.

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Death is the second letter. The psalmist moves on to consider the fact that he belongs to a fellowship. He's part of the family of God. Although each one of us is a single individual, we are a part of many.

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We have fellowship with God. We're not alone in the world. We're not forsaken and forgotten. There are enemies to be sure.

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There are difficulties and dangers to be considered. There are obstacles, there are hostile forces that threaten our well-being. But the good news is God triumphs over the enemies. delivers Israel and sustains Israel even in her wilderness experiences. That's good

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news. And so as we pray not only do we need to move from praise but we need to move from just considering our own personal concerns to recognizing the fact that we are a member of a family, that we are not isolated and left alone. Then to move on to the next letter, God helps our ancestors to overcome the battles of human

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existence. So, when we give thanks, as we sit here today and consider the wonder-working power of God, And we ought to remember that God has been at work even before we came on the scene, our ancestors.

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Those who brought us into being, so to speak, in a physical sense, that God watched over our ancestors and enabled them to overcome the battles of human existence. even though they're going on before us, that God has a divine design which he is working out. God is at work in the world and he is working out his plan according

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to divine justice. Sure things have gone wrong. Things have gone wrong with you and with me things have gone wrong with all of us. Things may not be going according to the way that we'd like for them to go now or in the future, but the good news is God is seated on his throne in eternity and his rule is firmly and

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and securely established. His throne is not just for a season, but his throne is forever. God endures the wicked fail, their name is blotted out, their memory is forgotten, but God rules. His throne is established in justice." That's wonderful. Give thanks for that. A whole lot of things you may see that are

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wrong that may seem to be thriving for a moment but the good news of God, the truth of God is that God is a God of justice and that his throne is established in justice and that justice will ultimately prevail. So let us thank God today that there is the throne of justice before which all must appear.

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That's good news. It's not to be kept within the secret chambers of the heart. It's to be passed on. Well you see God is a refuge for the oppressed. When you are oppressed and when you seem to have all kinds of difficulties and it seems that there is nowhere for you to go, there's always a place, God. But no one else seems

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to understand. God is a refuge for the oppressed. He judges in righteousness manifesting his creative love. Then there's this Hebrew letter Zain, Z-A-I-N, where the Psalmist moves on to say, "Sing in gratitude." In other words, this is a song that we ought to sing a prayerful hymn to the top of our voices for the

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superscription of this Psalm says, Psalm 9, to the choir master according to "Muth Laban" which literally means on the occasion of a death, the death of a son. Now this song is to be sung in celebrating the death of a youthful member possibly of the class. The teacher is led to consider the question of life

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and death and as he does so he exclaims "Sing with gratitude even in the face of death, sing a song of gratitude. That seems rather strange. But that's the way it is with the Christian life. That the very worst thing that can happen to us and that's death. That's the worst thing that can happen in this life, but in the face of the worst

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circumstances, sing a song of gratitude. You know so often I hear people say, they they're always saying, "Well, you know, the Lord took my father, the Lord took my mother, the Lord took..." And they seem to just keep pressing on the fact of what the Lord took. It's a good thing to remember what the Lord gave.

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"For the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, so sing a song of gratitude. Blessed be the name of the Lord. That's what the psalmist is saying here. And this song is to be sung on a high note as you give thanks today. Sure there may be those of our loved ones who've gone on, but not with a note of sadness, but with a note of gladness of what God has given and

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and how he has blessed our lives through them. And he says, "Sing this to the top of your voices." In other words, sing it in the treble clef. Don't be wobbling along there in the bass

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with some low, sad, pessimistic note. No, no, don't come here with that today. But sing it in the treble. Let it soar to the summits.

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Let a soprano sing it. let her sing it to the top of her voice, for that's the way to rejoice today as we give thanks and pray alphabetically. That's the way because the Lord rules in Zion. Don't forget that. "Heath" is the next letter.

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God cares for us when we're ill. That's what the psalmist moves on to say. You see, what I like about it is you move from one letter to the next, he covers different areas so to speak of human experience.

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God takes care of us when we're ill. Oh, I know a lot of us feel good today and we feel that we are in good health. Some of us do and some of us may not. Why don't we keep living?

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All of us gonna get sick if you keep living. I went to Scott and White this past week for my annual physical, and as I was there waiting to go from one test to the next,

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I thought how good God had been to me. Some 30 some years I've been preaching, and I have never missed a Sunday from the pulpit because of illness in 30-some years.

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That's not 'cause I'm so good. It's just that somehow that I have just shared some of the blessings of God to others who are just as good, who have had illness.

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And if I keep living, I know I'm gonna have some. That's the way life is. This body is finite, but here in the midst of it, When it comes to us, when we find ourselves facing some wall in a hospital room, don't

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think that God has done something wrong to us. But somehow think that God cares for us in the midst of all of our illnesses. Sometimes I've heard people who've been on that bed of affliction who testified, said, "Rev. I didn't know how many friends I had, what people thought about me, that my illness

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has been a blessing to me, that God cares for us, that even when we wander away from the fold, that God is there and God blesses us. When our souls need to be restored,

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God is there to provide that healing. And what the psalmist is encouraging us to do in the language of his prayers is to say, thank you. to thank God publicly for his rescuing care.

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Thank you, Lord, for having brought me a mighty, mighty long ways. Oh, evil is present. Evil is powerful.

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But God is the victor over evil. And though the cause of evil prosper, 'tis God alone who's strong. The wicked are caught in their own net.

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Then he comes as he moves on in this hymn prayer to "he gion." "He gion." That's a musical term that appears here. We don't know for sure for what it means, but

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it probably means, the scholars say, that it's a note to the musician to play some quiet, meditative music right here. It's a good thing for us to meditate on God's goodness and his healing and his caring for us. Just some quiet music and just think about that. Think about

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it for a moment. Think about it in your own life. In the silence while you're meditating and the music is in your heart. Thank God. Thank God. And then after that comes another musical term, "seala." That means "to rest." That's a rest, a musical rest. You ought to rest on that. You ought to be able to rest on the fact that God is in control.

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This is my father's world. Oh let me dare forget, although the wrong seems oft so strong. God is the ruler yet. This is my father's world. I rest me in the thought of rocks and trees, of skies and seas. His hands the wonders wrought." God's in control. And so he goes on with all the other letters and he says, "There is

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danger in forgetting and ignoring God. But let us remember that God is God, He's eternal, and only God can make right the mess that we're in. We look at our world, we look at our nation, we look at our state, we look at our personal lives, only God can make right the mess that we're in. And so finally he comes to the last

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letter he says not only can God help his people, not only can he do it, but he wants to do it. A lot of people could help you but they just don't do it, but God not only can do it, but he wants to do it. And so when we pray alphabetically from Aleph to Taw in Hebrew, from beginning to end we are concerned with God, and

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In Greek it's from Alpha to Omega, from beginning to end. It's still concerned with God. In English it's from A to Z, so from beginning to end, we're still concerned with God. And you saw, saw, saw how our prayers ought to cover a wide range of human experience.

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It ought to cover everything within the range of human existence. Just as the alphabet covers the whole human language, whatever we say has to include some letter of the alphabet. Everybody needs to pray alphabetically.

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Everybody needs to praise God. Everybody needs to thank God for his goodness, for the Lord is good, and we should magnify his name. There's a story that comes to me

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of a lad who was talking to his grandmother. His grandmother was unable to read, and yet she was always talking about religion, talking about how good God is. And finally the little boy said to his grandmother, said, "Grandmother, how is it that you know

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so much about the Lord and you're unable to read?" And she said, "Well, son, I tell you it's just like this. I just remember the alphabets. I know my alphabets.

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And I just remember the alphabet, and when I think about him, I think about A, which means that he's able. I think B, that he's blessed, and C, that he's Christ. D, that he's divine, and E, that he's Emmanuel.

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F, that he's father, and G, that he's God. H, that he's holy, and I, that he's the I am. J, that he's just, and K, that he's the king of kings, and L, that he's Lord, and M, that he's magnificent, and N, that he's the Nazarene, the noble Nazarene, and O, that he's

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omniscient, P, that he's priestly, and Q, that he's quick with errands of mercy, and R that he's righteous, S that he's Savior, and T that he's my teacher, U that he's the ultimate, and V that he gives me the victory, and W that he's wonderful, and X means that he's that unknown quality in every equation that

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determines the outcome, and Y that he's the yardstick by which we are to measure our lives and see that he's the zenith toward which we are to strive. That's that's the way I think about it son. For God's our everything. He's everything. He supplies all of our needs. He covers the whole range of human experience and so

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we can say today, thank you Lord. Thank you that you're so good. Thank you that you have visited and redeemed your children. Thank you Lord, thank you. I just want to thank you all the days of my life. That's the way to pray alphabetically. From Aleph to Taw, from Alpha to Omega, from A to Z to express the gratitude of our hearts.

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We invite you now to come. Express your gratitude by what you give to God, your life, your future, your everything, because he's given us all in Jesus Christ.

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As the invitation, hear me, son. We invite you to come now. [MUSIC PLAYING] [Music]

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♪ I'm so grateful ♪ ♪ That I have Christ ♪ ♪ That I have Christ in my life ♪ ♪ What would my life be ♪

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♪ Without him ♪ ♪ It would be very dark ♪ ♪ And drear ♪ ♪ When I'm sad ♪

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♪ He ♪ ♪ Cheers me ♪ ♪ When I am lonely ♪ ♪ He will my comfort be ♪

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♪ That's why I'm grateful ♪ ♪ Truly grateful ♪ ♪ I'm so grateful ♪ ♪ That Christ is in my life ♪

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♪ When my friends and my foes turn against me ♪ ♪ And it seems I'm at the end of the road ♪ ♪ There is a still, soft voice ♪ ♪ Singing within me ♪

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♪ There is someone ♪ ♪ Someone greater ♪ ♪ Who's carrying the load ♪ ♪ And my way gets as dark ♪

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♪ Dark as the midnight ♪ ♪ And my body's all wracked with pain ♪ ♪ Christ appears with his holy light ♪ ♪ Holy night ♪

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♪ On the poor thief ♪ ♪ Thief and grace ♪ ♪ And make ♪ ♪ Whole again ♪

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And I am so grateful that I have Christ, that I have Christ in my life. What would my life be without him? It would be very dark and drear. When I'm sad, He cheers me.

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When I'm lonely, He will my comfort be. That's why I'm grateful. Truly grateful. I am so grateful that Christ is here. ♪ For that Christ is in my life ♪ - Let us pray.

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[Music] [ Silence ]