Welcome to our Thursday night
Bible study. I'm glad you could join us, and
I wanna get started. We're in Psalm 48 tonight, Psalm
48. You wanna turn there. This Psalm
will sound familiar, I'm sure, as we read it. But before we
get started, I want to ask the Lord to be with us in prayer,
and remember the prayer request that I sent out with the invitation
tonight. All right, let's ask the Lord
to be with us. Dear Lord, thank you for your great mercy, your
tender mercies toward your people. We know, Lord, that according
to your word, that your mercy is nothing we can deserve. Your
grace can never be earned by us, and we have nothing to earn
it with or deserve it anyway. But we only find ourselves before
you in complete need and utter dependence because we're sinners
and we need to be forgiven. We need to be washed, we need
to be accepted and brought into your presence and taught by you
and made your children. And these things you've promised
in your word so graciously and we're so thankful for that. Thankful
to you for the Lord Jesus Christ and for his abundant pardon that
he accomplished for us when he died on the cross with our sins
as his own. These are all things that we
understand from your word and find such endearment towards
you because of it. We pray, Lord, that by your spirit
we would be enabled tonight to understand your word and appreciate
the greatness of your person and your work and your purpose
of grace. And we pray, Lord, you'd be with those who are sick
that we know and love and all those who have need. Thank you
for so many mercies to us this holiday season. We pray, Lord,
that you'd be with us for Jesus' sake. In his name we pray. Amen.
All right. Psalm 48. If you're there tonight,
I want to read through this psalm and after we read through it,
I want to comment on it. It says in verse one, Great is
the Lord. and greatly to be praised in
the city of our God." So this is the Lord Jehovah, and we know
that Jehovah God is the triune God, God the Father, God the
Son, and God the Holy Spirit. But in particular, we also know
that Jehovah has become our salvation. So this is unquestionably speaking
about the Lord Jesus Christ, who is God with us. And He is
great, and He is to be greatly praised, and where He is to be
praised is in the city of our God, in the mountain, also called
the mountain of His holiness. The city is on the mountain of
His holiness. Verse 2 says, beautiful for situation,
the joy of the whole earth is Mount Zion on the sides of the
north, the city of the great king. Here the Lord is talking
about how beautiful the city of God appears to God. and to
God's people. And he also says, it's the city
of the great king, and it is the joy of the whole earth. So
all those things are meant here by what is said in verse two. And I want to point this out
before we go too much further. What God is saying in this Psalm,
really, is he is telling us what he thinks of his city, of his
mountain. And this city and mountain are
referring to the people who are saved by the Lord. They are the
city and they're on his mountain. And so, if you understand that,
what you understand here is that God is telling us how highly
he esteems his people. He holds them in such a conspicuous
esteem, which is what this means here, the beautiful for situation
or elevation. God has placed them in a very
high place. And it's a place of esteem. It's
a place of conspicuousness because he has made them conspicuous
by his love for them. But what I wanted to point out
here, as we look through this psalm, is going to describe the
greatness of this city, the greatness of God's dwelling place, which
is the people of God, the greatness of the king. And when we see
that, we're not to be led to that beautiful picture as if
the city itself is the greatest thing. But rather, just as the
gift tells us how great the giver is, we're to understand that
if God considers us, his people, with such great esteem for Christ's
sake, then God is great. And so in verse one, great is
the Lord and greatly to be praised fits that. God is to be greatly
praised because he has made his people beautiful, the joy of
the whole earth and the city of the great king. All right,
let's read on. Verse three, God is known in
her palaces for a refuge. He's describing the people of
God as a city and as a place where there are palaces. and
God is known there, and he is known there for a refuge, and
that fits because in the verse previous he said it's the joy
of the whole earth. Why is Zion, the mountain of
God's holiness, and the city the joy of the whole earth? Well,
he tells us here the reason it is is because God is known there,
and God is known there as a refuge for them. Poor sinners are brought
to God and find in God a refuge. And they know God, which is eternal
life. And this is all pointing to the
fact that Zion is a great joy over all the earth. OK, and then
verse four, it says, for lo, the kings were assembled. They
passed. These next three verses are going to talk about the hatred
of the enemies of God's people. He says, For lo, the kings were
assembled, they passed by together, they saw it. And so they marveled,
they were troubled, and hasted away. Fear took hold upon them
there, and pain as of a woman in travail. So just like a woman
when she's giving birth can't escape the pain of that childbearing,
So these people are not going to escape the pain that comes
upon them. And it describes in the next
verse, he says, Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish with an
east wind. You recognize that city or that
place called Tarshish. That was the place where Jonah
was either fleeing to, I think he was fleeing from, got in a
boat at Tarshish and was fleeing from there. So we'll talk about
that more in a minute. In verse 8 he says, as we have heard,
so have we seen in the city of the Lord of hosts. In the city
of our God, God will establish it forever, Selah. So here we
see that as we have heard refers to we heard the report from God
and now we've seen it, the fulfillment of what God said. And so you
can see that fairly plainly here. And this is in the city of God
so that God will establish it forever. Think on these things,
reflect on it, which is what Silah means. And so basically
it's saying here, we heard by the hearing of faith what God
would do, and we've seen what he has done now, we've seen it,
and what he has done is in the city of our God, he will establish
it forever. This is an eternal city, okay? He says in verse nine, we have
thought of thy loving kindness, O God, in the midst of thy temple.
So this place where God dwells is called his temple, his city,
his mountain. And the people of that place
are those who say, we have thought on thy loving kindness there
in thy temple. This is where God is worshiped.
And in the worship of God, we are considering, we're meditating
on, we're learning, we're knowing God and we're knowing him as
a refuge and we have thought on his loving kindness because
it is his loving kindness towards us that has saved us and has
provided a refuge in himself for us, which is Christ. In verse
10, according to thy name, O God, so is thy praise unto the ends
of the earth. Thy right hand is full of righteousness. God's name is who God is. his
reputation, his character, his name, that he acts according
to his own person and character. And that's his name. And so according
to his name, O God, so is thy praise. We praise God because
we know his name. And when we think of his name,
what do you think of? Well, I think of his name is
Jesus because his name, Jesus, means savior. It means that he
is God's salvation, the salvation God has provided. And the salvation
God provided is God himself, the Lamb. God would provide himself,
the Lamb. And so He is not only the Savior,
He is salvation, and this is His name, Jesus, and it says
in Acts 4.12 that this is the only name under heaven given
among men whereby we must be saved. So you can see then that
the center of the subject here is salvation in Christ. His name,
His right hand is full of righteousness. All that He does, He does in
righteousness. And David in Psalm 51, 14 said,
he said, deliver me from blood guiltiness, from murder. So shall
I sing aloud of thy righteousness. So again, this is echoing the
fact that our salvation in Christ was not done by some compromise
on God's part. Instead, it was done to the absolute
magnifying of God's holiness and his perfections, his law
and his justice and his righteousness. OK. So that's what he's saying
here. According to thy name, O God,
so is thy praise unto the ends of the earth. Thy right hand
is full of righteousness. Verse 11. Let Mount Zion rejoice. So Mount Zion is a people. It's
not a mountain. not a physical mountain, and
it's not a physical mountain anyway. It's not a people that
you would think of as being on earth, a nation on earth or a
kingdom on earth. It's the kingdom of heaven. It's
the kingdom of God. It's the city of God in heaven. And we'll see that in a minute.
So he tells them to rejoice. Mountains can't rejoice, but
God's people can. Let Mount Zion rejoice. Let the
daughters of Judah be glad because of thy judgments. God's judgments
are for his people. And that's why his name is exalted
in their salvation. He justifies the ungodly by the
obedience and death of his son. And this is a judgment we rejoice
in so much that this is what we are glad about. We rejoice
and we're glad in this, that God has justified us for Christ's
sake. Verse 12 says, walk about Zion,
and go round about her, tell the towers thereof. So he's inviting
us, he's telling us, look around this place, which is God's dwelling,
this place God highly esteems, which is His people. His dwelling
is in them and with them. God is not against us, God is
not away from us, He's not separated from us, He's with us in Christ.
He tells us to consider all that God has done in this city. He's the one who built it. The
stones of it are his people. We're lively stones, living stones,
it says in 1 Peter 2. And we're built up, the walls
of this city are salvation, and the foundation of it is Jesus
Christ and the apostles. So we know that this city is
founded on Christ and his gospel, which is brought to us by the
men sent by Christ into the world, which brought the gospel of his
salvation to his people. And that's what we are to do,
we're to consider this. Look what God has done. Walls,
he says, go around about it. The towers of it, the towers
are places where you can't get to the people safe there. It's a it's a refuge. No one
can get there because it's in heaven. OK, verse 13. Marquis, well, her bulwarks are
defenses. Consider her palaces. The places
that are gorgeous with the architecture and the riches that are put there,
the place of God's dwelling, which is Christ and Him crucified.
The spiritual and eternal and heavenly blessings that are in
Christ are the riches of this temple. He says, Markey, while
her bulwarks consider her palaces, that you may tell it to the generation
following. Our duty and our delight and
privilege is to tell about the greatness of Christ. and His
people by the work of God and in the esteem of God. God looks
upon His work in creation and He says, very good. How much
more does He look upon His work in salvation and declare for
all eternity, very good. And that's what He's saying in
this psalm. Verse 14, finally. He says, for this God, this God,
The word this there is highlighting emphatically, in contrast to
all the idol gods of men, this God, the true and living God,
is our God forever and ever. The one who has established this
mountain of holiness and this city which his people personify. and Christ with them. They're
holy because of Christ. They're holy because of what
God has done, but they're beautiful in Christ's righteousness. And
so he's saying here, this God who's done this is our God. Forever
and ever he will be our guide even unto death. And it doesn't
mean that only unto death, it means unto the end. And if God
is with his people in their life, then he will be with them throughout
all eternity. As Jesus with his disciples in
John 13, he loved them, he loved his own while he was in the world
and he loved them to the end. It doesn't mean he stopped loving
them. It means that he loved them with an everlasting love.
Because he loved them through life, then he loved them before
time, and he loves them after death, he loves them through
death, and there's nothing about death that can separate us from
the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Okay,
so that's a quick read through and a quick overview of this
psalm. Now I wanna go through it with a little more detail
here. Look at verse one. So again, in summary, this Psalm
is God's high esteem of his people in the Lord Jesus Christ. And
he's also describing here their safety in Christ. and what they
are to praise him for and how that they have this great joy
and gladness and rejoicing because of what God has done for them
in this mountain, this city, this temple, these palaces, this
tower of refuge, which is God himself. Okay. But look at verse
one. He says, great is the Lord. All
of our songs and all of our prayers should always begin this way.
And they should end with this, the greatness of our God. And
this is something that I have to I have to remember, because
I often start my prayers with, Lord, would you dot dot dot and
begin asking God to do something for me. We should always start. and end our prayers with God's
greatness, because whatever God does for us as the giver is to
highlight his goodness and his greatness to us. And what he
has given to us is eternal life. He's given to us a perfect righteousness
and standing before him, access to the very throne of grace,
comfortable repose in his presence, communion with the living God
in the Lord Jesus Christ from his word. That's what he's given
to us. He says, and I go on about this phrase, great is the Lord,
that we should always start our songs this way. and our prayers. We should begin them this way
and end them this way with the greatness of our God. And we
should always be full of acknowledging His greatness and His goodness
and our admiration and our adoration and trust in Him and our reliance
and consignment of ourselves to Him for our eternal life and
His care His all wise and His almighty and His all good hand.
I was thinking, I was telling Denise this last week, sometimes
when I pray, I realize I should never presume to ask God for
something specific. when he's the one who knows best
what is good and what is right for me, we should always come
to the Lord and ask him to do what seems best to him, shouldn't
we? Because we trust him. We trust
that he's wise and that he's good. He can't do wrong. He can't
mess up. He always does what is the very
best. So anything that in our lives
is an opportunity for us as his children to depend on him and
in depending on him, patiently waiting for him to make himself
known in our trouble and through it. And this is what Jesus prayed,
remember, for Peter when he told Peter, you're gonna deny me three
times before the rooster crows in the morning. And Peter did. He denied him three times before
the rooster crowed twice. But Jesus said to him before
all that, he says, Satan has desired to sift you like wheat.
And he doesn't say, but I prayed to get you out of it. He says,
I prayed for your faith. And he says, when you are converted,
then strengthen your brethren. Because all of our troubles,
in all of our troubles, faith is built up. Faith is tried,
and faith honors God in trusting him with a patient waiting on
him to do what is best according to his grace to us in the Lord
Jesus Christ. Now, this is so important that
we depend on God according to his grace to sinners in the Lord
Jesus Christ. What else can we do? We're sinners. We have no claims. We have no
merit, no worth, no works, nothing we can do to earn anything from
God. All that we've done has only
earned his His justice, His just wrath, and now we are before
Him, helpless and utterly dependent upon His grace to save us to
the uttermost by Jesus Christ, His Son, through His blood and
risen life and intercession. So since that is the case, then
our trials are designed by God to keep us leaning on Christ
according to this grace of God towards us in him. And that depending
upon him for all grace and life and everything is the way that
God glorifies himself in the lives of his people. It's the
way God gets glory. It's the way that he teaches
us more and more to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. There's
no better place There's no better place for a believer than to
have nothing and be utterly dependent on the Lord Jesus Christ. And
this is what we find ourselves when we read Romans 8, for example. He says, what can separate us
from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus? Nothing. Can
tribulation? No. Nakedness? No. Famine? No. Peril? Danger? No. How about
hunger? No. Thirst? No. Life? No. Death? No. Nothing past? No. How about present things?
No. Future? No. He answers every
objection, everything that could possibly separate us from the
love of God. He answers with an emphatic no. Nothing. If God has given his
son for us, then he's going to give us all things with him.
And so we are dependent upon him. And when we are feeling
the most doubtful of our deserving, then we realize by God's grace
and his teaching, that's the place we have always been. But
we're just beginning to realize it. And now we need to depend
on him to give us this salvation and life for Christ's sake alone,
to uphold us through life itself, past, present, future, life and
death, everything. So we experience trouble, and
those troubles are designed by God to strengthen our faith.
He doesn't take us out of them. He brings us through them by
His grace. He teaches us over and over again to look to Christ
only. We have nowhere else to look
and there's no one else that can save us. No other name under
heaven given among men. All right. So we talk about this
need on our part to bring in our songs, in our prayers, in
our thoughts, always this attitude of realizing our Lord and our
God, the only true and living God is great beyond words, beyond
comparison. There's nothing we can compare
God to. If you think about His power,
there's no power that you can even use to measure God's power. You can't. How about His immensity? You can't even use space itself
to describe the immensity of God. Solomon says, the heavens
and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee. It's beyond measure. God is beyond measure in His
wisdom. His knowledge, it says in the
Psalms, is infinite. And His love is everlasting.
His grace saves sinners from hell and brings them to heaven
as the sons of God. This is our God. And so we can
say, great is our God, great is the Lord, and greatly to be
praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of His holiness. Now, When we talk about being to be
greatly praised, we see here that it's in the city of our
God. He's not praised outside of this
city. God is not praised outside of this mountain and this city.
What does that mean? It means that God is only praised
according to truth. by the people of God. And the
people of God are His people by His choice, by His redeeming
blood, and by His life given to them by His Holy Spirit. We
didn't bring ourselves to life. We didn't choose ourselves to
be believers on the Lord Jesus Christ. We were hostile to God
in our minds and by our works. God had to arrest us. And so
what we see here is that only in the church is God praised. And it's true, all the works
of God shall praise him. But not this praise that comes,
as he's describing here, in the city of our God, in the mountain
of his holiness. This is a special praise. It
comes as Zacharias praised God when God opened his mouth after
he wrote that his name shall be John and then Zacharias through
the Spirit of God poured forth all this praise and prophecy
of Christ and how he would save his people according to God's
promises. And this is great praise and
it comes from God's people. It doesn't come from others.
When Jesus was on the earth and he cast out devils, the devils
were told, don't you talk. They said, you're the son of
God. He says, you be quiet. That is not your job. We're not
going to have the Son of God declared by liars. We're not
going to have His praise sung by devils whose only motive is
their own glory. and the murder of God's people? Why would God privilege devils
with the praise and the expression of God, of who Christ is? That
is the gift he's given to his church, to his people. And so
he gave the gospel to his apostles and he says, you go. and you
make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe all
things I have commanded you." So we can see then this fits.
It fits all of scripture, doesn't it? God's people praise God through
Jesus Christ. We know God in Jesus Christ and
only they can do that. The creation brings praise to
God. Sinful, unbelieving men are hostile
in their minds. According to Romans 8, 7, they
cannot be subject to the law of God. And that's the way our
sinful nature is. But what is born of God does
praise God. And that gift of God, that gift
of Christ in us, that life from God, that seed of God that's
in us, the Holy Spirit of God, that praises God. And that's
a wonderful thing. So he tells his people to do
that. All right. Let's see, and I've touched on
some of these things in the notes. If you want to read back through
them, I encourage you to. Now it says here, in the city
of our God, in the mountain of his holiness. We know God is
holy, don't we? And we know no one can see the
Lord who is not holy. Without holiness, no man can
see the Lord. It says in Hebrews chapter 12,
verse 14, I think. So we know that God is holy.
He's not going to put up with anything that is unholy. And
yet, by nature, we are just that. We're ungodly by nature. We're
sinners by nature. In fact, in our minds and by
wicked works, it says in Colossians 1, we're enemies of God. We were
enemies. When we were enemies, God reconciled
us to himself by the death of his son. So while we were enemies,
while we were ungodly and helpless in our sinfulness, then God sent
his son. Then God loved us. He commended,
he made known his love to us. He loved us from everlasting,
but he made known his love to us while we were yet sinners.
Romans chapter five, verses six through 10. All right, that's
our condition. in ourselves. We're not holy.
We're ungodly. We're enemies of God and sinners
by nature. And never think of somebody as
being holy because of their observance of certain rules and regulations
of abstaining from one thing and doing something else. That
doesn't make people holy. And nothing we do can make us
holy. There's only one way we can be made holy. God makes us
holy. It says in Exodus 31, verse 13,
I am the Lord that sanctifyeth thee. Exodus 31, verse 13. The Lord Jehovah, which sanctifyeth
thee. That's his name. He sanctifies,
He makes His people holy. He sets them apart for Himself. That's what it means. God is
holy. Everything that God touches, everything that He uses is holy.
Everything that, everything and everyone He allows into His presence
must be holy. Because God is holy. And there's
nothing unholy in heaven. And so he says this is a mountain
of his holiness. How are we made holy? How does
God make his people holy? Well, in Jude 1, verse 1, the
first verse of the book of Jude, there's only one chapter there,
so verse 1, it says that God the Father made us, he sanctified
us, he made us holy in his election of his people in the Lord Jesus
Christ. Let me read that to you here
because I don't have it memorized. He says in Jude chapter 1, He says, Jude, the servant of
Jesus Christ and brother of James, to them that are, notice, sanctified,
made holy, by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ
and called. All right? So there you have
it. God the Father did. He made us holy. But how else
are we made holy? Well, He made us holy by preserving
us in Christ, but Christ made us holy by His own precious blood. In Hebrews chapter 10, verse
10, He says, by one offering, He sanctified the people according
to the will of God by His own blood. Let me read that also
to you in Hebrews chapter 10 and verse 10. He says, by the which will, by
the will of God, the eternal will, we are, notice, sanctified,
made holy through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once. The offering once made by Jesus
Christ, which has perpetual, eternal effect, was he made us
holy. Think about that. The high priest,
the eternal high priest, Jesus Christ, unlike those priests
on earth, actually made his people holy, and it took only one offering,
the offering of himself to God for them. That's so profound. It's mind-boggling beyond words that
Christ, by one offering, made his people holy forever. And
then he says in Hebrews 13 verse 12, notice this also, in Hebrews
13, 12, sometimes I put these references in the notes and I
don't read them, but I'm gonna read this one. He says here,
if I get the pages separated, he says, wherefore Jesus also
that he might, notice, sanctify the people, that is to make them
holy, with his own blood suffered without the gate." There you
have it again. So God the Father made us holy, the Lord Jesus
Christ by his own blood, the offering of himself to God for
us made us holy, and then of course the Holy Spirit sets us
apart when he calls us and gives us life from the dead. creates
us in Christ, births us as God's children, and so we're made holy,
the sons of God, by the redeeming work of Christ and by the sanctifying
work of the Holy Spirit, which causes us to see and know and
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ And this in our hearts are made
holy. He takes away the old heart.
He gives us a new heart, a heart of flesh in the place of the
heart of stone so that we know God and we believe on Christ. That's amazing. And so here we
have a mountain of holiness. And he's describing this because
this is God's dwelling place, the church and every individual
in the congregation of the Lord's people. is a holy people. First Peter chapter two says,
you are a chosen generation, a holy nation. Okay, so you get
it there? This is the mountain, this is
the nation of his holiness. Think about that. God is pleased
to make a people as a mountain. not by themselves, but in the
Lord Jesus Christ. He, with his people, the Lord
Jesus with his people, are the mountain of God's holiness. This
is where his city, that beautiful city described in Revelation
21, is situated, and it is a high, a highly conspicuous and highly
esteemed, elevated by God to be a city of great beauty, okay? All right, I don't want to press
too far on that. So going on here, I want to look
at this next part where it says in verse two, beautiful for situation. Beautiful for situation. The
joy of the whole earth is Mount Zion on the sides of the north,
the city of the great king. We may not be able to get further
than this verse tonight, but look at this verse carefully.
Beautiful for situation. I've already said that the word
situation means elevated or highly conspicuous and highly esteemed
by God, set forth to be admired. This is the people of God in
the Lord Jesus Christ because of what of who Christ is, because
of what he has done, because we are in him, then we are esteemed
by God as beautiful. And he has highly exalted us.
Notice this in in Ephesians chapter two. It's always good to take the
New Testament and explain the Old Testament with the New. Ephesians
chapter 2, listen to these words. How he has taken us from the
depths of ruin to the heights of glory. He says, you hath he
quickened, you hath he quickened, made alive, who were dead in
your trespasses and sins. Not just somebody's, yours. wherein
in time past you walked, this is the way you lived, according
to the course of this world, this world is opposed to God
in every way, according to the prince of the power of the air,
that's Satan, the spirit that now works in the children of
disobedience, which is all of the people on earth whom the
Lord has not made obedient to the faith of Christ. Verse 3,
among whom also we all had our conversation, our lifestyle,
our behavior in time past, in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling
the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature,
this is what we were, by nature, out of the heart, We were the
children of wrath, even as others. All right, that's the situation.
Now look at the glory. But God, who is rich in mercy
for his great love, wherewith he loved us even when we were
dead in sins, this love was not deserved, was it? Has made us
alive, has quickened us together with Christ. By grace, you are
saved. Take those words and overlay
them on Psalm 48, verse two. Beautiful for situation, the
joy of the whole earth is Mount Zion on the sides of the north,
the city of the great king. And verse six, and he has raised
us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in
Christ Jesus. You see that? That's beautiful,
isn't it? That's beautiful for the esteem,
for the conspicuous elevation of God's people in Christ to
be seated with Christ in heavenly places. All right. The joy of
the whole earth. It doesn't mean every individual
on earth. It means that throughout all
the earth, like it says in Luke chapter two, the angel said,
peace on earth, goodwill toward men. There was peace on earth
with those God made peace with in the blood of Christ. And it
was joy to those He made peace with because of Christ. We have
joy and peace, according to Romans 15, 13, in believing. Not just
because, you know, we live our lives in this world and happen
to be citizens of this world. Christ must have made peace with
God for us and we have joy. We don't have, people of this
world have no joy in Christ. Only the believer has joy in
Christ, because we know the basis of our peace, and the basis of
that peace is the righteousness of Christ by his shed blood for
us. So he says, the joy of the whole earth, meaning all of God's
people throughout the earth, wherever they be, whatever race,
place, and condition, is Mount Zion, okay? So the joy of the
whole earth is Mount Zion on the sides of the north, the city
of the great king. This Mount Zion, what is it?
Well, in Hebrews chapter 12, verse 22, he says we haven't
come to Sinai. We didn't come to the mountain
that's physical, the mountain where God gave the law that was
a law that pronounced what God required and the guilt that we
would have if we didn't do what God required, and therefore it
identified our sin and condemned us to death. We're not come to
that mountain. That mountain could not be touched.
Because if anyone touched it, they were to be stoned or thrust
through with a dart. And Moses said, I exceedingly
fear and quake. We're not come to that mountain,
but we are come. in the gospel to Mount Zion. He goes on in Hebrews 12, the
city of the living God, the city, the new Jerusalem. OK, so this
is where we're come. We're not come to. I'm going
to go to Hebrews chapter 12 and read this to you. This is this
is telling us in the most plain language how to understand Psalm
48 is talking about the people of God. Hebrews chapter 12, he
says, You're not come unto the mount that might be touched,
meaning the physical mountain of Sinai, and that burned with
fire. Of course, it would burn with
fire because God, without a mediator, is a consuming fire. nor unto
blackness and darkness and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and
the voice of words, which voice they that heard entreated that
the word should not be spoken to them any more, can't tolerate
it any more. Please don't say any more. The
more God says, the more terrifying it is to a sinner, and the more
guilty I become, And the pending doom that I'm facing is just
unbearable. Like Cain, my punishment is greater
than I can bear. Stop, please stop. Don't say
any more. For they could not endure that
which was commanded, and if so much as a beast touched the mountain,
it shall be stoned or thrust through with a dart. And so terrible
was the sight that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake.
But you are come unto Mount Zion. and unto the city of the living
God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company
of angels." These are those who serve in the presence of God
in His holiness, holy angels, elect angels, chosen by God and
therefore preserved from the fall as all the other angels
fell. just like God's people were preserved
in Christ, to the General Assembly and Church of the Firstborn.
The General Assembly and Church of the Firstborn is just another
way of saying the Church of Jesus Christ. The people of the Lord,
those redeemed by his precious blood, which are written in heaven. Why are we why are we saved?
Because God put our names in heaven. before the foundation
of the world. He wrote them in the Lamb's Book
of Life. And all whose names are written
in the Lamb's Book of Life are in heaven, and all whose names
are not, are not in heaven. God did this. Our salvation is
entirely in God's will and His work. And to God, the judge of
all the earth, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, We
were made perfect at the cross, but in our souls, our spirits
were made perfect by the work of the Spirit of God by Christ
in us. He's conforming us to the image of Christ, and when
we see him, we'll be like him, we'll be made perfect. And to
Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of
sprinkling, Christ's blood, that speaks better things than that
of Abel. Abel's blood said, vengeance, my brother Cain killed me. And
his blood cried to God for vengeance from the ground. The blood of
Jesus Christ cries for forgiveness, justification. He bore our offenses. He was raised for our justification.
That's the Zion we're come to. That's the place. That's where
God dwells, his temple, his people. He dwells in their hearts. He
dwells with them in the Lord Jesus Christ. OK, so I wanted
you to see that. in this verse. And then I want
to just briefly mention this and then I'll close. It says
the sides of the north. The sides of the north. You see
that in Psalm 48 verse 2? Mount Zion on the sides of the
north, the city of the great king. Now I'm going to have to
point this out quickly here for time's sake. But the north refers
in scripture to God's dwelling on his throne among his people. And let me give you a scripture
to show that, a couple of scriptures. First of all, in Isaiah 14, verse
13, accusing Satan of what he thought in his heart, he said,
you said in your heart, I will ascend into heaven. This is Satan
speaking. And God says, you said in your
heart, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will
sit also upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of
the north. So this is God's dwelling place
among his people, isn't it? The congregation. His armies
in heaven and his people there gathered around his throne. Satan
said, I'll go there. God said, no. No, you won't. In fact, you're going to be cast
down to hell. And then also in the Old Testament, in the book
of Exodus, The north part of the tabernacle, you know what
was in the northern part of the tabernacle? The northernmost
part of the tabernacle where the priests were to go in and
do the service of the priest and worship God, you know what
was there? The Ark of the Covenant, the Holy of Holies. It was against
the north side. And outside of the veil of that
Holy of Holies was the Table of Showbread right outside the
veil. And that's where, and it was facing northward. And so
we see that North is not only where God rules on His sovereign
throne among His people and also for their salvation, but He does
so in the Lord Jesus Christ because of His shed blood, the Ark, the
Holy of Holies. What was done inside the Holy
of Holies is that the blood was sprinkled on the mercy seat and
the cherubim looked down upon that blood, that sprinkled blood,
and God was pleased so that in the Lord Jesus Christ, His law
was fulfilled, that was inside the ark. and his people were
accepted. And so the publican said in his
prayer in Luke 18, 13, God be merciful, be propitious to me,
the sinner. Look upon the blood of propitiation
on the mercy seat and be merciful to me for Christ's sake. And that's where that's the north.
That's the north. That's where God meets with his
people. And so he says here in verse two, beautiful for situation,
the joy of the whole earth is Mount Zion on the sides of the
north. We have joy. We worship God in Christ because
of his redeeming blood. This is the subject of our contemplation
all the time. It's the subject of our confidence. It's the subject of our trust.
It's the subject of our hope. It's the only way we can come
to God. It's our access into the very presence of God is by
the blood of Jesus and in every trial. In Romans chapter 5 verses
1 through 10, he's teaching us that in every trial, every trial
of our life on this earth is intended to bring us to realize
what God has done for us in Christ. And so say, as it says here in
the psalm, how beautiful God has made his people. They are
the joy of the whole earth. Mount Zion of his holiness, where
God dwells and he rules because of Jesus Christ and makes himself
known to them and they praise him. You see that? The city of
the great king, which is the Lord Jesus Christ. Now we'll
pick this up next time with verse three, God is known in her palaces.
Let's pray. Lord, thank you for your word.
It's so rich. It's so extensive. I can't really
be ever brought. We can never come to the end
of it. It's like an ocean depth and we have no ability to plumb
the depths of it. It's infinite in its and its
extent and in its meaning, because you're infinite and it describes
you and your heart and mind and purpose and work. And so great
is our God in the Lord Jesus Christ that we are instructed
here and we are encouraged here to come to Him with this attitude
of honor and adoration in our hearts when we come in prayer,
in song, and throughout the contemplations of our day. Help us, Lord, to
trust Jesus. Help us to call on his name,
whose name alone is given to us, the way, the truth, and the
life of salvation. It is for his sake that we come
by him and to his glory. In Jesus' name, amen.