Sermon for Sunday, February 8th, 2026 at First Presbyterian Church at Unionville, NY (BPC)
Old Testament Reading:
[Exodus 15:11-18 ESV] 11 “Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders? 12 You stretched out your right hand; the earth swallowed them. 13 “You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed; you have guided them by your strength to your holy abode. 14 The peoples have heard; they tremble; pangs have seized the inhabitants of Philistia. 15 Now are the chiefs of Edom dismayed; trembling seizes the leaders of Moab; all the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away. 16 Terror and dread fall upon them; because of the greatness of your arm, they are still as a stone, till your people, O LORD, pass by, till the people pass by whom you have purchased. 17 You will bring them in and plant them on your own mountain, the place, O LORD, which you have made for your abode, the sanctuary, O Lord, which your hands have established. 18 The LORD will reign forever and ever.”
New Testament Reading:
[1 Thessalonians 5:12-24 ESV] 12 We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, 13 and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. 14 And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. 15 See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone. 16 Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not despise prophecies, 21 but test everything; hold fast what is good. 22 Abstain from every form of evil. 23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.
Gospel Reading:
[Matthew 6:5-15 ESV] 5 “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 7 “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread, 12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. 14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Sermon Text:
[2 Samuel 7:18-29 ESV] 18 Then King David went in and sat before the LORD and said, “Who am I, O Lord GOD, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far? 19 And yet this was a small thing in your eyes, O Lord GOD. You have spoken also of your servant’s house for a great while to come, and this is instruction for mankind, O Lord GOD! 20 And what more can David say to you? For you know your servant, O Lord GOD! 21 Because of your promise, and according to your own heart, you have brought about all this greatness, to make your servant know it. 22 Therefore you are great, O Lord GOD. For there is none like you, and there is no God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears. 23 And who is like your people Israel, the one nation on earth whom God went to redeem to be his people, making himself a name and doing for them great and awesome things by driving out before your people, whom you redeemed for yourself from Egypt, a nation and its gods? 24 And you established for yourself your people Israel to be your people forever. And you, O LORD, became their God. 25 And now, O LORD God, confirm forever the word that you have spoken concerning your servant and concerning his house, and do as you have spoken. 26 And your name will be magnified forever, saying, ‘The LORD of hosts is God over Israel,’ and the house of your servant David will be established before you. 27 For you, O LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, have made this revelation to your servant, saying, ‘I will build you a house.’ Therefore your servant has found courage to pray this prayer to you. 28 And now, O Lord GOD, you are God, and your words are true, and you have promised this good thing to your servant. 29 Now therefore may it please you to bless the house of your servant, so that it may continue forever before you. For you, O Lord GOD, have spoken, and with your blessing shall the house of your servant be blessed forever.”
Introduction
We saw some months ago in our series in Matthew’s Gospel the model prayer of Jesus – The Lord’s Prayer. But that is not the only prayer in the Bible. We can learn from other passages as well; other prayers.
Maybe you feel stagnant in your prayer.
Maybe you don’t know that there is more to learn when it comes to prayer.
How do we pray? That is a big question that I have often asked myself as well. HOW am I to pray? WHAT am I to pray?
You might ask also:
How do I improve my prayers?
Do I tend to pray for the same thing over and over?
And do I pray in the same way over and over?
What else might be added to your prayers?
How can we have growth in our prayer life?
Let us go to the Scriptures, and see this “model prayer” from David.
As we look at this text, in 4 parts, I’ll stop to note ways to improve our prayer. This is a prayer to learn from.
In this text we’ll see:
I. The Humility of David
II. The Greatness of the Work of God
III. The Blessings of God upon the People of Israel
and
IV. The Request that God would Confirm His Promises.
And as we look at this text, we’ll note various ways we can improve in prayer. I’ve listed those ways in the bulletin, so that you can follow along.
I. The Humility of David (v. 18)
There very first word in our text is “then.” “THEN King David went in and sat before the LORD”
This is a note of TIME, but it is also a note of RESPONSE.We have here David’s RESPONSE to God establishing a covenant with him; a covenant of grace. In the previous section of 2nd Samuel, God promised to be with David and to build his house and establish the kingdom of his offspring. NOW, David responds that promise. And he does so with a prayer of gratitude to God.
We should do the same.
Let us call that #1 in our list of what we can learn from this prayer. (and you should write this down)
#1 Pray in RESPONSE to God; his Promises and His Blessings. That’s how we can have conversation with God; in His Word we have His good promises, and in our prayers we response to those promises.
In David’s response see that “King David went in and sat before the LORD.” What this probably means that David went into the tent or tabernacle where the Ark of the Covenant was. Others have suggested that it has an “air” of indicating “being somewhere for a prolonged period of time.” It is like the saying we have “SIT, and STAY AWHILE.” If you stand, its going to be quick, but if you sit you can stay longer.
Then, #2 of what we can learn about prayer. Not only are we to pray as a response to God, but …
#2 We are encouraged to pray at length. Now, you may pray a short prayer and that is not wrong. Don’t ever think your short prayer is “bad.” Prayer itself is a good thing. Here we learn that it is OK to pray at length. Of course, Jesus warns us against vain repetition; we don’t pray the same thing over and over, but we are encouraged to pray at length with many various things, or to pray, as David does here, in DEPTH on a certain subject.
Then, something else we can glean about prayer. Regarding the PHYSICAL posture of prayer. From this text alone we can conclude that SITTING is an acceptable posture in prayer. But this is by no means the only acceptable posture. There are Scripture examples of praying while standing (1 Samuel 1:26), while bowing down (Exodus 34:8), kneeling (2 Chronicles 6:13, Psalm 95:6), and even lying in bed (Psalm 4:4, Psalm 63:6). We should conclude from this Scriptural data that any REASONABLE physical posture is acceptable for prayer. So…
#3 Don’t get hung up on the physical posture of prayer.
In fact, it is the SPIRITUAL posture that is more important than the physical posture. And we see that Spiritual posture with David: a posture of humility. Let us call this #4.
#4 Pray with humility.
Davis is humble. He says, “Who am I, that you have brought me thus far?” “And what is my house, that you have brought me thus far?”
Humility is a self-awareness of our place with respect to God.
I think of the character from the Richard Scarry books: Lowly Worm. Poor guy: do you think his mother worm named him that? Lowly Worm. Anyways, if we were to give ourself our own name, and it were to be accurate to our condition, we might name ourselves “lowly worm.” That is, we recognize our place as sinners before a Holy God. We say, like David, “Who am I.” And though David is now King and no longer just a little shepherd, he is yet NOTHING compared to God. He recognizes that he is but a lowly worm, unless God will bless him.
So we must pray with humility; not demanding anything, but understanding our proper place before God. We don’t come with chests puffed out and pride through the roof, saying “I’m better than others, and I am holy, therefore I deserve your blessing” but rather we come to God saying, “Why in the world God would you choose me?”
So we are to pray with humility. Of course, this also means that we DON’T pray to get attention to ourselves, or as a performance.
Rather, we pray as a lowly worm, recognizing that we are sinners, made from the dust of the earth, not worthy of the Lord nor of his blessings, but dependent on Him in all things. Pray with humility.
As we pray with humility, we pray also with gratitude recognizing that our salvation is dependent on the Lord.
It is all the work of God.
Israel is not a mighty nation, but God chooses them.
And we are not better than others, but God chooses us and redeems us through Jesus Christ.
David has been raised from shepherd to King.
And we’ve been raised from sinners to Saints.
For that we ought to have gratitude. So…
#5 Pray with gratitude.
Part of that gratitude is the timing; we pray even when things are going well. David is now king of Israel and still he prays; he doesn’t rely on his status on earth, but looks to God in all things. When I was a child I think I more often prayed when things were really bad. Here’s some I remember: praying when I was losing a checkers game; And praying when the literal flood waters were coming up around us once while on vacation. I didn’t really know about praying with gratitude or with praise. But that we ought to do.
As we continue in the text we then move from the humility of David to the Greatness of the Work of God.
II The Greatness of the Work of God (v. 19-22)
God has done great things for David, but this is yet “a small thing” in the eyes of God. God’s promises of additional blessings are far greater. So David is praising God for God’s blessings AND promises.
David recognizes the Omniscience of God: “20 And what more can David say to you? For you know your servant, O Lord GOD!
He recognizes the greatness of God: “you are great, O Lord GOD.”
And he recognizes the uniqueness of God: “For there is none like you, and there is no God besides you.”ONLY GOD is great.
This is the “adoration” part of prayer. If we forget about thanksgiving, we forget all the more often about adoration. But David establishes a good precedent. So we learn about prayer:
#6 Pray with praise of God.
That, it seems to me, is what we’ll be doing in heaven. There won’t be any need of prayers of request; we’ll have the Lord’s presence. There won’t be any confession of sins since we will no longer sinning. That leaves adoration and thanksgiving; praying about God and His greatness and proclaiming He has done fro us. And if that is what we do in heaven, we ought to practice now. [REPEAT: If praising God is what we do in heaven, let us start now.]
III. The Blessing of God upon the People of Israel (v. 23-24)
David then recognizes that God has not only blessed him, but has blessed the whole nation of Israel.
In choosing this “one nation on earth” God is “making himself a name and doing for them great and awesome things.” David mentions specifically the nation being redeemed from Egypt and its gods.
This part of David’s prayer in a sense defies categorization. It is both thanksgiving and praise. He is thankful for what God had done and He attributes what God has to done to God’s greatness.
David says again and again that it is ALL OF GOD. “you established for yourself your people Israel to be your people forever. And you, O LORD, became their God.”
What glorious things God has done for His people. And David revels in that.
We ought to learn here…
#7 Pray for all the people of God.
We don’t just pray for ourselves, we pray for others. And we pray for the people of God, the church, all together. Its not wrong to pray for self. But don’t forget others. That is “the communion of the saints” in the creed. And then, we find that in the Lord’s prayer it is not “my father” but “our father.” We might even note there, not only “pray for all the people of God” but pray WITH the people of God. We can pray alone or we can pray corporately; each are good and right.
IV. The Request that God would Confirm His Promises (v. 25-30)
Now, in the last part of David’s prayer we have the request that God would confirm his promises. Or to say it another way, David is saying to the Lord, “Make complete that which you have promised.”
We all should pray, pleading the promises of God.
#8.Plead the promises of God.
So we must KNOW the promises of God. They come from His Word.
In His word he promises salvation. So we pray for that to come.
And in His word, the Lord Jesus promises to return, so we pray “Come, Lord Jesus.”
Then, have you considered this?, there is an overarching promise. That all of his promises find their yes and amen in Christ. A promise of promises!
So we have the Biblical example and warrant for asking God to confirm his promises; to make them reality and fulfilled entirely.
Ultimately, we ask because we know that God will give. He will fulfill his promises. If God had not such power, then little use would it be to pray to Him. But God has all-power and therefore hears our prayers and answers our prayers as they work in conjunction with his eternal plan.
Conclusion
So let us improve our praying.
And rest on the promises of God, in prayer.
#1 Pray in RESPONSE to God; His Promises and His Blessings.
#2 We are encouraged to pray at length.
#3 Don’t get hung up on the physical posture of prayer.
#4 Pray with humility.
#5 Pray with gratitude.
#6 Pray with praise of God.
#7 Pray for all the people of God.
#8.Plead the promises of God.
And we improve our praying, let us ever rest on the promises of God, in prayer.