Just a quick reminder that Lance
Heller will be here next Sunday morning to preach to us the unsearchable
riches of Christ. It will be good to see him again. Our friends from overseas and
various parts of the world send their greetings. Peter and Clay
from this week. Did you get Clay's letter? Thank
you. It's a cause for rejoicing to
think that his father after all those years, imagine how Clay's
heart must have been bursting with joy, after all those years
of being a preacher and his father not a believer, to find him coming
at the end of his days under the sound of the Gospel and especially
that it became a joyful sound for him. It warmed his heart
and he's obviously got some little distance to go on this earth
just yet, but anyway, there lies before all of us an eternity. Last week we had a glimpse into
the songs of heaven. Here we have a glimpse into the
songs and into the heart, the hearts of God's people. Let's
just read this beautiful psalm. It's called the Psalm of praise,
the psalm of praise. Make a joyful noise unto the
Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness,
and come before his presence with singing. Know ye that the Lord, he is
God. It is he that has made us, and
not we ourselves. We are His people and the sheep
of His pasture. Or it could be read, the flock
of His feeding. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving
and into His courts with praise. Be thankful unto Him and bless
His name. For the Lord is good. His mercy is everlasting. and His truth endureth to all
generations. What a remarkable God. What a
remarkable God we have. He has seven instructions for
us in this short, short psalm. He says, make a joyful noise.
He says, serve the Lord with gladness. He says, come before
His presence with singing. He says, know, know that the
Lord is God. True worship is knowledgeable
worship. And then He says, enter, enter
into His gates with thanksgiving enter into His courts, be thankful,
be thankful unto Him, bless His name, praise His name. Then he has seven descriptions
of himself. The Lord, He is God. He's a creator, verse 3. He's a protector. He is a protector
and a provider. We are His people, the sheep
of His pasture. He is, in verse 5, He is good. He is merciful. And He's true. He's faithful. It's a simple psalm, isn't it? And I just have a simple prayer.
Why don't we pray? Our Father, we pray that we would
be led in our hearts into something this morning of the wonder, of
Your call upon us, the wonder of what it is for Your people
to be the flock of Your feeding, to be Your people, Heavenly Father,
the wonder of what Your dear and precious Son has done, has
achieved so perfectly and so fully that we can now enter into
the courts of God. We thank You, Our Father, for
the promise of your presence with us. We thank you for the
promise of your Spirit's work in the lives of your people."
I love what the Lord Jesus said. He said, the Spirit will come
and He will take the things of me and He will reveal them unto
you. We pray, Heavenly Father, that
You would be a revealer again this morning and that You might
make our hearts sing with joy to our great God and our great
Saviour. We pray these things in His precious
Name. Amen. So it begins, doesn't it, just
with Psalm of Praise. As I said earlier, the Lord Jesus
is called the Praise, isn't He, the Praise of Israel. Praise
and He is your God. I suppose the thing that is so
evident in this psalm is the scriptures reveal the hearts
of people and the question is, isn't it, is what we rejoice
in, is what we worship, what sends our hearts? What sends
our spirits into just clouds of delight? What causes us the
greatest joy? That's where our worship will
be, isn't it? Ultimately where our worship
will be is where we find most joy and delight. And I pray that
we'll be moved to be unmoved is a shocking stage, isn't it?
To have the glories of the Lord Jesus, the glories of our great
God laid out before us, and for us not to be moved by it is a
shocking thing. I've often read that verse to
you in Lamentations 1 verse 12, where the Lord Jesus and God
the Father asks the earth, he says, is it nothing to you, all
you that pass by, behold and see if there's any sorrow like
unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord,
where his Father has afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger? I remember after the Lord first
sort of moved in my heart some years ago, I remember thinking
again and again, and it just burned into my soul, that God
the Father was saying, what about my son? What about my son? What about him? What about what's
happened to him? when we see Him as God and Saviour,
when we see Him as God and man, we see Him crucified on that
cross, and we see Him in the way He dealt with men, where
hearts are moved, and when we see our sin, we see our sin laid
upon Him, and we see it dealt with, as we just read, Fierce
anger of God fell upon His dear and precious Son. The sword of
holy justice was raised out of its scabbard and it slew our
Saviour. And yet the scripture said, for
the joy that was set before Him." What's the joy that's set before
Him? The joy that's set before Him
is the salvation of His people and His communion with them and
His joining in their joy. He sings with His people. He finds it a delight, a joy. The Lord Jesus warms the people
who heard Him and heard John and He says, John came as someone
who lived a life of great austerity in the desert and was dressed
in the poorest of clothes, just camel's fur, and he ate locusts
and wild honey and just lived in the desert regions. And the
Lord Jesus came eating and drinking, and the Lord Jesus said, How shall I liken? What's this
generation like? Is it like unto children sitting
in the markets, calling unto their fellows, and saying, Matthew
11 verse 17, saying, We have piped for you, and you have not
danced. We have mourned unto you, and
you have not lamented. And then he explains why. For
John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, he has
a devil. The son of man came eating and
drinking, and they say, behold, a man gluttonous and a wine-bibber,
a friend of publicans and sinners. And then he says that wisdom
is justified by her children. God's people are moved. I pray
the Lord would move your hearts. And I think that's the issue,
isn't it really? The real joyful noise is a joyful noise in the
hearts. We live in a religious world
where there is more music and singing and noise than there
ever has been in all of God's time in this world. And we've
never seen such nonsense paraded as Christianity by these people.
If you go to them, and you read the scriptures in their presence,
they find it offensive to know that God is sovereign, that He
loves His people and He loves them from eternity and He saved
them in the Lord Jesus and He's put away their sins. They love
singing songs and some of the songs have good words in them,
but the songs are a show of flesh. Isn't it extraordinary in church
history that there has never been a heretical movement in
church history that wasn't based on music? When the first Jehovah's
Witnesses, the Arians, came along, Arius was famous in the 4th century. He was famous for making these
very tuneful ditties. that talked about God and then
denied the deity of the Lord Jesus. And it has been thus through
all of history. God's children make a joyful
noise. What a joyful noise, salvation. It means to make that joyful
noise is when a king appears, the people rejoice. They rejoiced
to see Him. Imagine the rejoicing of those
people that we read about in the scriptures. Look back to
the rejoicing that you had when the Lord moved in your heart
and He exposed and revealed the Lord Jesus, and you saw yourself
and your sins taken away, and you saw Him high and lifted up,
and you saw Him reigning, and you saw Him reigning for His
people, and you saw Him reigning gloriously. There's joy, isn't
there? Imagine. Barabbas is a great
picture, isn't it? Barabbas, who was there in jail,
condemned to die on that morning. And outside the jail he hears
the shouts, Barabbas, give us Barabbas. And what could he have
thought inside that cell? Here I go. Death is now awaiting
me. The cross is where I'm heading
to." And he hears the jailer walking down that corridor and
the clink of the keys and it turns in the latch. And he says
to Barabbas, you can go free. You're a scoundrel and a murderer
and you can go free. Because there's someone else
dying in your place today. A substitute's dying for you. What rejoicing. What rejoicing
there is. One of the most beautiful pictures
of the people of God rejoicing. And it's rejoicing because of
who the Lord is and because of what He does. In the story of
Jehoshaphat in 2 Chronicles 20, I can read some of the story
too if you don't want to turn there, but it's a beautiful picture,
isn't it? There is this little nation, Israel, and three huge
nations have risen up against them. Moab and Ammon and others
beside the Ammonites are there. And this is little Judah, and
Judah in verse 4, gathered themselves together to ask help of the Lord,
even out of all the cities of Judah they came to the Lord.
And Jehoshaphat stood in the congregation of Judah and Jerusalem
in the house of the Lord before the court. and said, O Lord God
of our fathers, art thou not God in heaven, and rulest not
thou over the kingdoms of the heathen in thy hand? And in thy
hand is there not power and might, so that none is able to withstand
thee? And he goes on to describe his
great God and down in verse 13, and all Judah stood before the
Lord with their little ones. their wives and their children,
there they all were. And the Spirit of the Lord came
upon this man and he said in verse 15, Hearken ye all Judah
and you inhabitants of Jerusalem, and thou King Jehoshaphat. Thus
saith the Lord unto you, Be not afraid or dismayed by reason
of this great multitude, for the battle is not yours, but
God's. They're told to go down there.
He says in verse 17, You need not to fight in this battle.
Set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the
Lord with you. O Judah and Jerusalem, fear not,
nor be dismayed. Tomorrow go out against them,
for the Lord will be with you. And Jehoshaphat bowed his head.
And then he sends out his army that next day. And who does he
send out first? Verse 21, And when he had consulted
with the people, he appointed singers unto the Lord, that they
should praise the beauty of holiness. As they went out before the army,
in front of the army they went out singing. and to say, praise the Lord for
His mercy endures forever. And if you read on you'll find
that the Lord set ambushes there and these warring enemies all
destroyed themselves and it took the people of Judah three days
to collect all the bounty that they brought there. See, when
God is revealed in salvation, when God is revealed as a Saviour,
He sets His people free. We make a joyful noise. There's
not a slavish fear. It's not that noise that people
make under bondage. It's in the newness of the spirit. It's a spiritual joy. It's that
spiritual freedom that's typified as the calves being let loose
from the stalls. Someone read on Dairy Farm, it
was just amazing. You would have seen them best,
wouldn't you? You let the gate open and these little things,
they bounced and bounced and bounced and bounced. It's a beautiful
picture, isn't it? It's a picture of God setting
His children free. Free. We are the circumcision,
says Paul, which worship God in spirit and rejoice in Christ
Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. That's as good
a description of a Christian as anywhere in this book. We
are the circumcision. We are the real Jews who worship
God in spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence
in the flesh. God's children sing a joyful
noise because of who He is and because of what He's done. Do
you see who we sing to, brothers and sisters? We make a joyful
noise unto the Lord. We sing to Him. We sing to Him. And this is a
psalm which has been applied to the fact that in that temple,
that temple that the Jews turned into a den of thieves and robbers,
there was a court made by God, and it's the court of the Gentiles. There was a place for the Gentiles
in the purposes and plans and providence of God. All ye lambs,
make a joyful noise. Make a joyful noise. Serve the
Lord. Serve the Lord with gladness.
Come before his presence with singing. Serve the Lord. Isn't it interesting how the
natural man is so much like Pharaoh. When we hear that word, serve
the Lord, we think of Pharaoh saying, who is the Lord, that
I should obey his voice. A sound that grates on proud
hearts, doesn't it? No one is going to tell me what
to do, but the humble And the teachable heart finds the light
where the flesh reveals so much of its stubbornness. What a blessing
it is of our God. He asks us to make a joyful noise. And he who owns the cattle on
a thousand hills and said if he was hungry would he ask you?
He has no need of anything. He can speak and the universe
comes into existence and yet it says serve him. Serve him. How do we serve him? We come before his presence with
singing. We delight in who he is. As I said earlier, you know whom
you're serving by whose joy is in you. What makes music in our
heart reveals so much of us. The new creation, the new man,
Christ in you, the hope of glory, longs to serve. We delight in
the opportunities, aren't we, to bear witness to our God. Think
of how our hearts are lifted when someone stops, stops on
their mad rush to hell and wants to talk about the Lord Jesus.
Think of how much our hearts rejoice as coldly when someone
asks some serious questions in response to some things that
have come directly from the Word of God. God's children, the new
creation, just loves the opportunity. We love the opportunity. We love
being together. We love being with our brothers
and sisters. We love the opportunity to talk
about the Lord Jesus. We love to bear witness to Him.
The Lord makes it clear, doesn't He? He says you can only serve
one Master. You can only serve one. You are
serving one and you can only serve one. You can't have two. You'll only love one. You'll love one and you'll hate
the other. The only reason a believer can
serve with gladness is because of the salvation of the Lord
Jesus. What gladness it is that we can
serve free from sin, free from its guilt, free from its consequences. We can serve with gladness because
in the Lord Jesus we have absolutely everything. We have no want but
Him. We have no need but Him. And having Him, I can take everything
in this world away from me. And we still have absolutely
everything. Heirs of God. Heirs of God. An inheritance
prepared and preserved and protected and kept in heaven. The only
service the Lord Jesus will accept, the only service that God accepts
is a service that comes from a gladness of heart. The legalist
serves trapped in a bondage, fearful. The legalists I've met
are always fearful people. They are fearful if they don't
do enough, they don't perform enough, then all of a sudden
they're not going to be accepted by God. The children of God are
accepted in the Beloved. Accepted. Service, true service,
is just trusting Him. It's just faith, isn't it? We agonise that we get to serve
Him so little, and mercifully He keeps us humbled. I love how the Lord Jesus describes
the people that will come before him in that day. And he'll be
talking to the righteous. He divides the sheep from the
goats in Matthew 25. And he says to them on his right-hand
side, his sheep, in verse 34, Come ye blessed of my Father,
inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of
the world. And then he describes, he says, I was hungry and you
gave me meat and I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was
a stranger and you took me in naked and you clothed me. I was
sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came
to me. All of that service. And then
the righteous, let's look at it in verse 37, the righteous
answer him saying, Lord, when did we ever do those things?
They don't keep any record of what they have done. Their record
is kept in heaven. It's the Lord Jesus, His work
and His faithfulness and His righteousness. When did we see
you do these things? When, when, when, they ask. Because they have no record of
it. What freedom. What freedom to serve Him with
gladness, when He is our great reward. We're no longer servants,
He says to the disciples in that Upper Room Discourse on that
last night. We're no longer servants, but
friends. Friends. of God and come before
His presence with singing. What a remarkable thing that
this holy God who is a consuming fire, He's awesome in holiness,
He dwells in inapproachable light. He can't be found by searching
out. Holy and reverent is His name. Worship Him in the beauty of
holiness. Holiness is an extraordinary
thing, isn't it? We don't have a concept of holiness
except as the scriptures give us light to it. We don't understand
how awesome our God is. We just need to go to the scriptures
and follow the paths of those men in the scriptures who met
with God. Job met with God and he abhors
himself and he repents in sackcloth and ashes. Isaiah met God and
he was undone, he was unraveled. Ezekiel met God and he just collapsed,
unable to speak and say a word for days. Daniel met with God
and his comeliness was turned from him. John, the apostle,
meets the Lord Jesus as a saved apostle, a saved and an old and
dearly beloved servant and friend of the Lord Jesus, and he meets
him in heaven. He falls down as a dead man and
the Lord in each of those situations, He comes to His own having revealed
who He is and He picks them up. What an amazing invitation from
our God. Come before His presence with
singing. How do you come into the presence
of God who is like that? Come into His presence. You come into
His presence in only one person, don't you? You come into His
presence hidden in the Lord Jesus. You come clothed in the Lord
Jesus Christ. You dare not come to God outside
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Don't bring anything. You come
naked. You come helpless. You come to
Him. We come to that God. He says,
come into my presence. come into my presence and sing."
What a remarkable invitation from our great God. Where is
His presence? His presence is in heaven, isn't
it? We sang about it and read about it last week and again
this morning. His presence, in a sense, is
all over this world, isn't it? The psalmist in Psalm 139 says,
where can I go from your presence? You cannot get away from the
presence of God. People pretend that they're hiding
from Him. They can't. You cannot hide from
God who is everywhere at all times and knows absolutely everything
at all times. David's great fear when he'd
sinned, that shocking sin with Bathsheba, he says to the Lord,
cast me not away from your presence. And he says, restore unto me
the joy of your salvation. Let me be in your presence again. What an awesome God. We can come
into His presence with singing like Jehoshaphat and the others
did when the Lord reveals Himself as salvation to us, when He's
revealed Himself as gracious, when He's revealed Himself in
His Son. He's perfectly pleased. This
is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased. If you're in the
Son, you are well pleasing to the Father. We come into His
presence. What an extraordinary opportunity
that Christians have, the children of God have, to come before the
very presence of God. May He cause us to take that
opportunity again and again and again. And we come before Him,
according to the next verse, we come before Him and into His
presence, we come as knowledgeable people. We don't come as ignorant
people. We come because of His character
revealed. He says, know you that the Lord,
He is God. He uses two names for himself
there, two of his great names, and there are many because one
name doesn't seem sufficient to describe his character. He
says, Know ye that the Lord, Jehovah, Saviour, Deliverer,
know that he is God, and that word God is the word Elohim,
and simply it means the worshipped one. Come before Jehovah. And know that the Lord Jesus,
Deliverer, Saviour, Jehovah, know that He is God. We live in a world where everywhere
we look there is just increasing superstition, isn't there? Increasing
belief in the most extraordinary rubbish that has ever been spewed
out on this planet, isn't it? People involved in tarot cards
and all sorts of other nonsense. You read the newspapers now and
they're full of horoscopes and you have to avoid them almost.
We live in a world that is full of superstition. Ignorance, says
Matthew Henry, is the mother of superstition. All true worship,
all true worship, all true praise of God, all true singing is bound
up with true character of our God, that He is almighty, that
He is absolutely sovereign. that He is perfectly faithful. He is a covenant keeping and
a covenant making God. Know that He is God. Know that He rules and reigns
supremely over all things. No one else does. He's written
down in this book that you have in your laps, He's written down
His promises. Can you find one place where
He's been unfaithful to His character, unfaithful to His people? Not
in all of history has he done anything other than that is perfectly
in keeping with his character. He is the almighty God that Jehoshaphat
called upon. He is that powerful sovereign
that holds this world in his hands and he is perfectly faithful
to his covenant. People worship in ignorance who
don't worship God in His true character. Saving faith, I think
this is a definition of Don Faulkner's and I think it bears repetition. It says, Saving faith is a heart
knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ in His true character as is revealed
in the scriptures. You'll find that statement backed
up again and again throughout the scriptures. He is God, but to know Him you
have to know Him as His character is revealed, not a God that we
make in our own image. Norm's done a great job examining
the most popular evangelical tract probably in all of the
world called Two Ways to Live. and you can ask Norm for a copy
of it. We need to put it on our website soon. And one of the sections in it,
Norm, examines what modern evangelicalism does in terms of the character
of God. See, if God loves all humanity
but fails to love them to the end, you're attacking the faithfulness
of God. If God loves humanity and changes
his mind at the end, the immutability, the unchangeableness of God is
diminished. If God loves all humanity and
is powerless to save them without their consent, the sovereignty
of God is diminished. If God loves humanity but only
if they make the right choice and do the right things, the
grace of God is nullified and diminished. If God loves all
people, knowing that He will punish most in hell and the end,
the omniscience, the infinite knowledge of God is diminished.
If God has done everything He can for humanity, but now it's
over to you, the glory of God is diminished. If God punished
His Son for the sins of humanity, but sin remains for most, and
they'll be suffering for that sin. The justice of God is diminished. If God made salvation available
and just available, created some possibility, if man will pick
up the present. So often we had in presentations
around Christmas time, you'd have this beautifully wrapped
up present saying, there's the Lord Jesus, this beautifully
wrapped up present, and it's there. And if you will just come
and undo the bow and unwrap the wrapping and then the present
is yours. We're dead, brothers and sisters.
We're dead in trespasses and sins. We have absolutely no ability
to save ourselves. If we can save ourselves one
tiny little bit, we can save ourselves the whole lot. If God,
as that's all that God has done, is to make salvation available,
the purpose of God is diminished. And Christ, they're saying, actually
saved no one. All he did was try and save them. You can't worship a God like
that. You cannot worship a God who
is not absolutely sovereign. To worship is to look at Him
in the beauty of holiness and in His glory and fall down in
adoration. If He is someone who tries hard
and fails, you cannot worship Him. What characteristic of Him
do you worship? He goes on to say, the psalmist,
he is God. Know him in his true character.
Go to this book and read. Read what it says about his character
and if you find it offensive, pray for mercy to bow to him. Read Romans 9 and bow. Bow in adoration. Read what he
says about himself in his true character and find it delightful. He goes on to describe, doesn't
he, He has made us, and not we ourselves. We are His people,
the sheep of His pastures. He has made us. He has made us. Salvation is described in 2 Corinthians
4 in exactly the same terms as the creation of the universe.
Salvation is a new creation, isn't it? And how did God create? It's God who's shed light to
shine out of darkness. His creation originally is a
picture of His new creation. It's a picture of salvation.
How did He create? He created alone and unassisted. He didn't need anyone to help
Him. He created out of nothing. He
didn't need anything to start with. He is God. He created by
a word. created by a word and it created
by a separation, didn't it? In that creation was a separation. And the new creation is exactly
the same. When God saves His people, He
saves them alone and unassisted. He doesn't have any good material
to work with in us. All He has is sin. There is nothing
there. And He saves by a word. He saves by the preaching of
His Gospel. He saves by the declaration of
Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And then in that new creation
there's a separation. He takes the light out of the
darkness. He separates the light from the
darkness. That's what He's done, brothers
and sisters, in saving you. He has made us. and not we ourselves. We live in a world of self-made
men and they worship their Creator, don't they? So many people are
worshipping the imagination of their hearts, worshipping an
idol they've created, ultimately worshipping themselves. He has
made us and not we ourselves. He has the right He has the right
of Creator to rule His creation as He sees fit, and God's children
bow delightfully to Him. Job, Jeremiah 10.23 says, O Lord,
I know that the way of man is not in himself. It is not in
man that walketh to direct his steps. And may God teach us,
teach us to look to Him to direct our steps, teach us to wait on
Him, to teach us who are His people to delight in the fact
that we are His people. We are a new creation. We are created for the praise
of His glory, for the praise of the glory of His grace. You
are not your own. You have been bought with a price. You are a chosen generation,
a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, a particular
people that you should show forth the praises of Him who has called
us out of darkness into His marvellous light, which in time past you
were not a people, but now you are the people of God. And you hadn't obtained mercy,
but now you have obtained mercy. We are His people. We are the
sheep of His pasture. We are the flock of His feeding. When we buried our friend Isabel
almost exactly this time, 12 months ago, She wanted us to
spend time meditating at her grave site on Psalm 23 and she
used to delight in it. I used to read it with her when
I went down to see her in Canberra and in the midst of all of the
pain and the anguish that she was going through she used to
have this amazing smile come over her face when we read this
psalm and we talked about the Lord Jesus. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me
to lie down in green pastures. The green pastures are the Word
of God. They're forever green and they're
forever fresh and they're forever nourishing. He leadeth me beside
still waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of
righteousness for His name's sake. Yea, though I walk through
the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou
art with me. Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort
me. Thou preparest a table before
me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil,
my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall
follow me all the days of my life. and I will dwell in the
house of the Lord forever." That's what our psalmist goes on to
say, doesn't he? Because we are his people, because we are the
flock of his feeding, we enter. We enter into his gates with
thanksgiving. A sheep coming into a sheepfold. We come into His place, don't
we? We enter into His gates. We enter
into His fold, as it were, and He shuts the gate, just like
He did for Noah, didn't He? He took His people out of this
world that was condemned and He put those 8 people in the
ark and God shut them in. He closed that gate and there
they were in that ark which so amazingly beautifully represented
our Lord Jesus and His death on our behalf and His resurrection.
And He goes through all the wrath of God is poured out on that
ark and God's children are safe. say inside. We enter into His
gates with thanksgiving. We enter into His courts with
praise. We come to the very courts of
God and we come to the very courts of God now with praise. We praise Him for who He is,
we praise Him for what He's done, and we come boldly, says Hebrews
14, we come boldly to the throne of grace. What a wonderful description
of the courts of our God, that in the middle is a throne of
grace. Grace. What an amazing word. So devalued
of its power and wonder in this religious world, but still a
great word for the people of God. That God looks to His Son
for absolutely everything that He requires of me. He's taken
away my sin that's been punished. The death that I needed to die
has been died. The punishment in hell that I
deserved has been suffered by my Saviour. I'm robed in His
righteousness. I can come and praise Him. I
can come boldly to the throne of grace to obtain mercy and
to find grace in time of need. I don't have the time and I'm
not in time of need. I wish the Lord would show me
more and more of how much access we have. What a glorious, glorious
invitation to come and be thankful unto Him and to praise His name. And there is a reason for all
of this at the end of the psalm. He says, for, because all of
this enter into his gates, be his sheep, rejoice, for the Lord
is good, our God is good. One of the great tragedies of
the fall, isn't it, is that Adam and Eve were led to think that
God is not good, that God was withholding some good from them
and they could take and do of their own and they would achieve
more than God would give them. What a shocking exchange. What
a necessary exchange our Father made that we might see the glory
of God. Now we know what goodness is
in a new and new way, don't we? He is the Good Shepherd. He's
a good shepherd. He's a great shepherd. He is
good. He's good to his people. He's
always good. His mercy is everlasting. It's everlasting. It can also
be translated as grace. It is all sufficient. It's always
the same. Having loved His own which are
in the world, He loves them to the end. He can't stop loving
them. He rejoices over them with singing
and His truth. Isn't it wonderful that all of
these things are wrapped up in a God according to Titus 1 to
a God who cannot lie. Nothing that we've read today
is a lie. He cannot lie. He is true. He's perfectly faithful. And that truth is an enduring
truth. What a comfort. It endures. It
has endured for all these thousands of years. It'll endure until
the Lord comes back. He will be faithful, faithful
in fulfilling all of His promises. The Lord Jesus asked some things
of the Father in that great High Priestly prayer in John 17, and
it's really good for us to rehearse them again and again. The things
that He asked of His Father. He says, Father I will that they
also whom Thou hast given me, verse 24, be with me where I
am that they may behold my glory which Thou hast given me for
Thou lovest me before the foundation of the world And you can go back up a little
bit to verse. He prays for us in verse 20. I pray for these alone, but for
them also which shall believe on me through their word, that
they may all be one as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee,
that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe
that thou hast sent me, and the glory which thou gavest me I
have given them. that they may be one even as
we are one. I in them and Thou in me that
they may be made perfect in one and that the world may know that
Thou hast sent me and hast loved them as Thou hast loved me." What
a remarkable God. We share that love of the Son.
Why? Because we are one with Him.
We are one with Him, united to Him. Flesh of His flesh, bone
of His bones. What a Saviour. What a great
Saviour and God. Let's pray.