Sweet hour of prayer! sweet hour of prayer!
That calls me from a world of care,
And bids me at my Father’s throne
Make all my wants and wishes known.
In seasons of distress and grief,
My soul has often found relief,
And oft escaped the tempter’s snare,
By thy return, sweet hour of prayer!

Sweet hour of prayer! sweet hour of prayer!
The joys I feel, the bliss I share,
Of those whose anxious spirits burn
With strong desires for thy return!
With such I hasten to the place
Where God my Savior shows His face,
And gladly take my station there,
And wait for thee, sweet hour of prayer!

Sweet hour of prayer! sweet hour of prayer!
Thy wings shall my petition bear
To Him whose truth and faithfulness
Engage the waiting soul to bless.
And since He bids me seek His face,
Believe His Word and trust His grace,
I’ll cast on Him my every care,
And wait for thee, sweet hour of prayer!

Sweet hour of prayer! sweet hour of prayer!
May I thy consolation share,
Till, from Mount Pisgah’s lofty height,
I view my home and take my flight.
This robe of flesh I’ll drop, and rise
To seize the everlasting prize,
And shout, while passing through the air,
“Farewell, farewell, sweet hour of prayer!”

Christ leads us in triumph; we do not win it for ourselves. This triumph is a spiritual victory that belongs to us by being in Christ. “Thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ.” Jesus won the victory at His death, burial, and resurrection. Now, He wants us to look to Him to lead us in that victory day by day.

Finally, the call to “walk humbly” is an exhortation to live in submission to God’s will. Romans 12:1 is a New Testament equivalent: “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” The call is to think and feel and act in such a way as to love and honor the Lord. Our lives must align with how great God is and how mightily He has acted on our behalf.

By the time we arrive at what God requires in verse 8, it’s all too easy for us to neglect the call in verse 5 to remember and know what the Lord has done. But unless we ourselves have come to know the steadfast love of the Lord, we have no hope to rightly dispense it to others, and we can neither do justice nor love kindness nor walk humbly with God.

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This article has been adapted from the sermon “What God Requires” by Alistair Begg

For the original recipients, to “do justice” was at the very least a call to act in such a way as to reverse all the evil taking place. It meant doing justly in accord with the will and purpose of God as He had manifested it and revealed it to them in Scripture.

For example, in Deuteronomy 10:18, Moses says that God “executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.” So within the framework of God’s revelation of Himself, we want to take these things seriously—perhaps far more seriously than we have to this point in our lives. Surely James had Deuteronomy in mind when he wrote, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (James 1:27).

In short, we might say that this command to “do justice” is the inevitable fulfillment of our Lord’s command to love our neighbors as we love ourselves (Matt. 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27; see also Lev. 19:18; Matt. 19:19; Rom. 13:9; Gal. 5:14; James 2:8).

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This article has been adapted from the sermon “What God Requires” by Alistair Begg.