The psalmist certainly found in the promised Redeemer a blessed friend. And David could say, what a friend we have in Messiah who's coming, the Son of God. In Him all the people of God dwell safely and we shall be saved in Him forever. He is the shelter. in the time of storm. He took our place. He died our death. Our sins were drowned in His blood. And God sees us in the beauties of His only begotten Son. That song we sang, what a friend we have in Jesus. No was written by, if you bother to look up the top left-hand corner of the page, was written by Joseph Scriven. He was from Ireland. He was born into a wealthy family. And he attended and graduated from Trinity College. And he did some teaching, did some preaching. I don't know what he preached. I hope he preached the gospel, but I don't know. Nothing is recorded that I could find. And as far as I know, this was the only poem that he ever wrote. He fell in love with his childhood sweetheart. And they were engaged to be married. And the day- the afternoon before they were to be married, she rode out to meet him. She was on one side of the river and he was on the other side of the river. They could see each other. And she rode up, he did too, and she got to the bridge first and she started going across the bridge on the horse that she had saddled and the horse bucked her off. She fell into the river, knocked her unconscious, and she drowned. He dove in. Others did as well, but they couldn't save her. Well, he was heartbroken. Eventually, he moved to Canada, to Ontario, and there he did some tutoring. He was a well-known philanthropist. He went around helping people who couldn't afford to buy firewood and things like that. He'd cut firewood for them. And he taught the children of a wealthy sea captain. That's how he made his money. Well, the niece of the sea captain, Joseph Scriven, fell in love with her. This is ten years after his fiancée had died. And so, they planned to be married and then she took ill. And she got pneumonia. She was sick off and on for three years. And then she died before they could marry. His mother back in Ireland was quite upset. They exchanged letters. And he wrote that poem, What a Friend We Have in Jesus, for his mother. But it helped him, too. Because his thoughts were that through all of his sorrows and his griefs, losing two fiancés ten years apart, tragedy having touched his life, He still believed that he had a friend in the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's how he encouraged his mother. Eventually, he took ill. He was staying in the house of a friend. And he was delirious with a high fever. And so, as the story goes, Late one night, he left the house. He fell into a river. They found his drowned body the next morning. But still his hymn lives on. And there's another verse to it. When he first wrote it, he wrote it and just put anonymous. But eventually his friends wanted to know where he got that from, and he told them he had written it. But there was another verse, and the verse is on a monument erected in his honor in Port Hope, Canada. And it has all four verses of the song. We just have three verses. The fourth verse goes this way. Blessed Savior, thou hast promised, thou wilt all our burdens bear. May we ever, Lord, be bringing all to thee in earnest prayer. And then he continued, soon in glory, bright, unclouded, there will be no need of prayer. Rapture Praise and endless worship will be our sweet portion there. Till then we pray to our Lord, and we're reminded every day, where can a child of God find comfort in times of trouble, in times of grief, In times of difficulty, it's in the Savior, the friend of sinners. We find comfort in that One who is the very glory of God. You see, Psalm 4 has to do specifically, I know it's about David to a degree, and it's also applicable to us. But this is a prayer of our Savior during the days of His humiliation. He would often pour out His heart to God in prayer. He would go up in the mountain to pray. In fact, His disciples saw Him praying on one occasion and they listened and they said, Lord, teach us to pray. Teach us to pray. In verse one, he speaks to the father. He says, hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness. And that's a good way for us to begin our prayer. Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness. Our righteousness, our personal righteousness is just filthy rags. We're unfit for the presence of God. But God in His mercy, God in His grace, has given to us the blessed Savior whom Jeremiah calls the Lord our righteousness. He's the God of our righteousness. The righteousness we have is the very righteousness of the Son of God, freely imputed to us. As our sins were imputed to Him, so His righteousness that He attained for us, He already had a righteousness of His own. He established a righteousness for us by His obedience in life and His obedience unto death. For He, God, hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we, we sinners who drink iniquity like water, that we should be made the righteousness of God in Him, in Christ Jesus. So in verse one, Christ, the Messiah speaks to the Father. Thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress. Thou hast surrounded me. Have mercy upon me and hear my prayer.' And then the Son of God begins to speak to His enemies, to those who pursued Him to death. O ye sons of men! O ye leaders of the Jewish religion! O ye men who think you're godly, who think you're righteous, who think you're holy, O ye sons of men, he says, how long will ye turn my glory into shame? What is his glory? It's the glory of who he is, his own deity. He's God in the flesh. But they would turn His glory into shame by accusing Him of blasphemy. Of doing His miracles by the power of Beelzebub. And He says, how long will you turn My glory into shame? He says, how long will you love vanity? Will you love things that are absolutely nothing? Things that are useless. And how long will you seek after leasing? That's all they did. Seeking after falsehoods. I want you to turn to John 5. Let me get you turned to a few verses here real quick. First of all in John 5, you see, That which they hated about the Son of God, about the Lord Jesus, was that He, being a man, said He was the Son of God. And that irritated them, that provoked them to anger and to hatred. Here in John chapter 5, our Savior healed a man who'd been sick, lame on both feet for 38 years. And the Lord sovereignly came by and healed only him. There were a lot of other people waiting for an angel to trouble the water, and they wanted to get in because they all wanted to be healed. That's the reason they were there. And this man, every morning, somebody would take him to this pool, and he'd wait for an angel to come by, and hoping and praying somebody would put him in the water, but he couldn't get in fast enough. Somebody always beat him. And the Lord Jesus came that day and walked through that throng of sick people. He's looking for one man. One lost sheep, the shepherd come and called him. And our Lord Jesus healed that man. Take up your bed and walk. And it was on Sabbath day, and I don't have time to develop this story all the way, but he did this on the Sabbath day. Now look at verse 17. This is where the Jews, they were hot under the collar because of what the Savior did on the Sabbath day. In verse 16, therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus and sought to slay him because he had done these things on the Sabbath day. It didn't matter that their friend, their acquaintance was now walking and jumping up and down and all excited and healed. That didn't matter to them. Verse 17, but Jesus answered them, my father worketh hitherto and I work. Therefore the Jews sought the Moor to kill him because he not only had broken the Sabbath but said also that God was his father making himself equal with God. That which they hated about him was that he professed to be the son of God thereby claiming equality with God. Now you hear me. If Jesus of Nazareth, if he was not equal with God in every single way, he couldn't save anybody because he had to deal with the majesty on high and satisfy the demands of infinite justice. And he only knew what God demanded. And he alone being the God-man could render to God that which was demanded. They hated his deity. Look at John chapter 10. John chapter 10. He's spoken about the sheep, verse 30, John 10, verse 30. He said, I and my father are one. And then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. Verse 32, Jesus answered them, many good works have I showed you from my father, for which of those works do you stone me? The Jews answered him, and I've said this before, when you read in the Gospel of John, most of the time when you read the Jews, When our Lord called the Jews, He was speaking about His enemies. He was speaking about the religious leaders of Judaism who believed in salvation by works and detested salvation by grace through the man, Christ Jesus. They detested that. So they answered Him, verse 33, saying, for a good work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy. and because that thou being a man makest thyself God." That's what they hated. The fact that this man said he was the Son of God, thereby making himself equal with God. Go back to John chapter 2. John chapter 2, this is his first miracle in Cana of Galilee. John chapter 2 and verse 11. This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee and manifested forth His glory. What glory? The glory of God. The glory of His deity. And His disciples then believed on Him. He manifested the glory of His identity over in John chapter 10. Turn back to John 10. Just get you to turn a few pages here. Go back to John chapter 10. I want you to see and consider the glory of Christ our Savior. And He manifested His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace. He manifested that often. John chapter 11. Look at verses 1 through 4. And a certain man was sick. named Lazarus of Bethany, the town of Mary, and her sister Martha. It was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. Therefore his sister sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick. When Jesus heard that, when he heard from the messengers, He said, this sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, watch it, that the Son of God might be manifested or be glorified thereby. And he was glorified thereby. Over later in the chapter, in chapter 11, he gets to the tomb of Lazarus. And in verse 39, John 11, 39, Jesus said, take away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh, for he hath been dead four days. Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God? You see, He who is full of the glory of God was standing right in front of her. And He's going to manifest His identity as God Almighty. the God of life. Did he not say in John 14, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. So he stands here before the tomb of Lazarus and he says, Lazarus, come forth. And he who was bound came forth because the one who has life in himself gave life to Lazarus, thereby proving his deity and manifesting His glory. And so back over here in our text in Psalm 4, He asks His enemies. Our Savior asks His enemies. He says, ye sons of men, how long will you turn my glory into shame? Literally, how long will you despise my deity? How long will you despise my royalty? How long will you maintain your unbelief that I am God manifest in the flesh? How long? How long? Well, I'll tell you how long men will despise the true identity of Jesus of Nazareth until a work of grace is done in the heart and the glory of God is seen in the face. of the Lord Jesus Christ. He says to these enemies, how long will you turn my glory into shame? How long will you refuse to bend the knee, bow the head, and acknowledge that I'm king? When Pilate put a saying up over his cross, this is Jesus, the King of the Jews. They despise that. We don't want to say, he said, he said he was the King of the Jews. Pilate said, what I've written, I've written. And they just seethed in their anger, in their anger. It's one of the most obvious truths of Holy Scripture. that the glory of God is the ultimate end of all things. And I'm sure you'll agree with that. God's glory is himself. God's glory is his essence. God's glory is his nature. God's glory is his very being. And that man who walked on this earth for some 33 years, He was the glory of God manifested. That's what Paul said. Turn over to 2 Corinthians chapter 4. And I alluded to this just a couple of minutes ago. 2 Corinthians chapter 4. Look at verse 3. But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost. in whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God precisely and exactly, should shine unto them. For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness has shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. Where is it seen? Where is the light of the glory of God seen? In the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Have you seen his glory by faith? Have you seen his glory? Behold His glory. And as you do, you're beholding the fullness of the glory of the triune God. So great is the glory of God seen in the face of our Lord Jesus Christ that God has determined an eternity for us to gaze on that glory, on that brilliance, on that awesomeness of the Son of God. Turn back to 1 Corinthians 2. 1 Corinthians 2. Look at verse 7. 1 Corinthians 2.7. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory, which none of the princes of this world knew. For had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." The Lord of glory. There is a peculiar and wonderful preciousness about this everlasting revelation of the glory of God in the face of Christ. You're just a few pages away from Ephesians 1. Look at Ephesians 1. Ephesians 1. Verse 4, it talks about we're chosen in Christ. In verse 5, 4, we're chosen in Christ. In verse 5, we're predestinated under the adoption of children by Jesus Christ. In verse 6, to the praise of the glory of his grace, The glory of His grace. And the glory of His grace is always tied to the Lord Jesus Christ. The glory of His grace. We know that the glory of God is bright and marvelous and wonderful. Wherever that glory is seen, The psalmist says in Psalm 19, the heavens declare the glory of God. The glory of Christ is seen in creation. The glory of Christ is seen in providence. For of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory now and forevermore. The glory of Christ is seen through the scriptures. But look at Psalm 21. Psalm 21. Let me tell you where the glory of Christ is especially seen. And it's seen in this like it's seen nowhere else. Psalm 21, verse 5. As great as His glory is in creation and in providence and in all other things that He does, 21, 5, His glory is great. You want to see the greatness of His glory? You want to behold the majesty, the sweetness of His glory? His glory is great in thy salvation. The Lord Jesus asks in Psalm 4, why do you turn my glory into shame? Let me just make two statements here. I mean, which is worse? To deny the glory of his person, that's bad, isn't it? They denied the glory of his person, but which is worse? to deny the glory of his person or the glory of his work. And that's what false religion does. You see, the free willers, the works mongers, the so-called fundamentalists, they will talk about the glory of the person of Christ. But when it comes to the work of Christ, That's where they back up. Say, in so much as he did all he could do, now it's up to you to validate what he did by your faith. I ask you, which is worse, to deny his deity or to deny the work of deity? You see, this is His great work. It's the greatest of works, His salvation. When He died to honor God, when He died to put away our sins, when He died to satisfy justice for all of us, for all of His people, and to deny the victorious death of our Lord Jesus Christ, is to turn his glory into shame. And God will not hold those who deny either his person or his work. He will not hold them guiltless. They are guilty. Thank God for the glory of the person of Christ. and thank God for his victorious, triumphant work of redemption whereby he satisfied God and he saved us. That's when he saved us. That's when our sins were washed away by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, let's sing a closing song.