Thank you, Brother James. That's
a good John Newton song. Boy, he wrote a lot of good songs. I'll tell you, several of those
old songwriters, Newton, Top Lady, fellows like that, they
were not only writers of great songs, they were able preachers
of the gospel. And we're thankful, thankful
for them. Appreciate the special music
this evening, even as I appreciated the special music this morning.
Let's look at Psalm 36 tonight. Psalm 36. Well, I gave you the
introduction to this scripture this morning. It's about the
vitalness of man and the mercy of God. You know, it's a sad story, the
sinfulness of man, the fall of man into depravity. Our history
is is a distressing one. Our God made man upright. We've sought out many inventions. God made a man, and from that
man he made a woman. He made them to worship. Most
every confession of faith Almost every catechism begins this way. What is man's chief end? Man's
chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Our God made Adam and Eve and
they enjoyed Him for a little while. I don't know how long.
Sadness. It's a sad story. Man fell. He became a miserable rebel. And there's the thing of it,
when Adam, when he transgressed God's law, he didn't do it as
just an individual, just as someone who was private. When he defied God, He did so as a representative
man. Well, who did he represent? Everybody. Everybody. Everybody who'd ever
lived on this earth born of a woman. Born of the seed of man. He represented
everybody. Therefore, here's what happened.
When Adam sinned, Not only did Adam die, but we died. We died. It's a sad story. You read the book of Genesis
chapter 3. You read of Adam's transgression. Then you read in the word of
God how that he was our federal head. That's a good name for
it. That's a good terminology. He
was our representative. He spoke for us. And when He
acted toward God as He did in rebellion, we acted that way
in rebellion. And that which had a devastating
effect upon Adam, it had a devastating effect upon all of us. I tell
you, when Adam sinned, we sinned. When he died, we died. Wherefore
as by one man, just one man, this is what entered into the
world, sin. It entered into the world, and
death by sin. And so death passed upon all
men, everybody, because we all sinned in Adam. We all fell in
Adam. We all died in Adam. That's a
sad story, but that's not the end of the story. That's not
the end of the story. This passage of Scripture, it
tells us the vileness of man. It's a sad thing, the vileness,
the sinfulness, the wretchedness of everybody. You and me and
all of mankind, but thankfully sin doesn't have the final word. God has the final word. And God
is life. And God is gracious. And God
is forgiving. And God is plenteous in mercy
to all that call upon Him. It's what the Scripture says.
He's a merciful God. And in this passage of Scripture,
we see man's vileness. Oh yes. The reality of it. The awfulness of it. The wretchedness
of it. The blackness of it. The hideousness
of it. The corruption of it. But then
we see the mercy of God in Christ Jesus. We see His grace. We see His loving kindness. We read of His tender mercies. Oh, there's the reality of the
fall, but there's the reality that there's mercy of God for
sinners in Jesus Christ the Lord. Isn't that good news? That's
the best news there ever was. And once you hear the good news,
the good news of Jesus Christ and Him crucified, the good news
of the full and free, total forgiveness of all of sins, not on account
of something you do, not on condition if you'll do something or other,
but forgiveness based on the obedience unto death, even of
the Lord Jesus Christ, when you hear that good news and it becomes
good news to your soul, You won't ever hear any bad news. That
is good. Everything from then on is okay.
You let come what may. Let the doctor say to you, you
got cancer and you got six months to live. You can look me in the
face and say, hallelujah, I'm going home to meet my Savior.
The doctor said, your arteries are all plugged up and I tell
you, you're old ticker. It's not long for this world.
It's not going to keep beating very long. Well, bless the name
of God. I'll see Him who is my all in
all. I'll see my Savior. Oh, the mercy
of God in Christ Jesus. So that's what this psalm is
about. This psalm is about man's vileness. God's mercy. God's mercy. God's grace. And while our vileness is awful,
oh, there's something much, much greater than our sin, and that's
the wonderful grace of God in Jesus Christ. That's the subject
tonight. Well, let me give you a brief
outline of this psalm. Here are four points, four sections
we'll call it to this psalm. In the first four verses, David,
he describes the sad state of fallen nature. It's an awful
sad state. Man's fallen nature. But then
in verses 5 through 9, David extols the mercy of God. He extols the mercy of God. And
then in verses 10 and 11, He asks God, he prays to God and
he says, preserve me. This is a prayer for preservation. Preserve me. Preserve me in your
loving kindness and preserve me, keep me safe from evil. Here's a prayer for preservation.
He talks about the vileness of man. He talks about the mercy
of God. Then he cries out to God for
preservation. Preserve me, keep your loving
kindness upon me. Preserve me, keep me safe from
evil. And in the last verse, he foretells
the ruin of the ungodly. Let's go through this briefly.
Here's Psalm 36. Number one, look at the sad state
of fallen nature. Look at verse one. The transgression
of the wicked saith within my heart that there is no fear of
God before his eyes." The transgression of the wicked. The transgression
of the wicked. What is a transgression? What
is a transgression? Well, it's a violation of God's
law. In fact, that's what sin is. Every transgression is against
God's law and every transgression is an offense to every one of
God's children. But David is specifically thinking
about this offense. Now, there are many offenses,
many transgressions that you and me and everybody else commit,
but he's especially thinking about this one. There is no fear of God before
their eyes. That troubles David. There is
no fear of God before his eyes. No reverential fear of the Lord. No concern about God. No respect
for God. No reverence for God. David says,
I look the transgression of the wicked. And it saith within my
heart, what my heart says, my heart's response to transgressions
is this, there's no fear of God before the eyes of the natural
man. And you can read in Romans chapter
3, that's what the Apostle Paul said, there's no fear of God
before their eyes. No troubling of the heart due
to the impending wrath of God. Men just aren't troubled by God. Men don't fear God today. And
you think about people as we preach to them and as we talk
to them. You can set before them the very
wrath of God. You can talk about the threats
of God. God's going to send men to hell,
men who die in their sins. The Lord Jesus said, where I
am, ye cannot come. You can preach hell, the blackness
of hell, the horrors of hell, that hell means to be forsaken
by God, that there's judgment to come. You've got to face God,
the righteous judge. His standard is righteousness.
You can preach the wrath of God to men all day long. And He doesn't
move men. People aren't troubled. They're
not filled with fear. Or you could preach the grace
of God. You can preach the gospel of
Christ Jesus. Tell people about mercy. Tell
people about forgiveness. Tell people. Tell people about
the Savior who came from above. Tell people who He is. He's God
and He's man. He joined Himself to humanity. Well, what did He come down here
for? He came to save poor, vile, wretched sinners who couldn't
save themselves. What did He come into this world
for? Let's tell them He came. He came to save His people from
their sins. We preach the gospel of full
and free forgiveness of sins, of acceptance with God, of free
justification, of imputed righteousness, of a heavenly home awaiting us. We preach the good news of salvation
in, through, and by Jesus Christ, and that doesn't move them either.
The wrath of God doesn't trouble people. And the good news of
the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, that doesn't move men
to embrace the Son of God. There's no fear of God before
their eyes. This is what David says. There's
no interest in the gospel. There's no desire for the Lord
Jesus Christ. There's no real thoughts about
God. There's no reverence of God.
There's no worship of God. There's no respect of God. People
take God's name in vain and don't think anything about it. They use the name of Jesus, they
use the name of God, just like they use your name or my name. It's a byword to them. They don't
realize they're blaspheming God. They have no fear of God. That
troubled David and it troubles all of God's people. But I'll tell you what's more
troubling. Not the transgressions out there. But I'll tell you
what's more troubling to a child of God, his own sinfulness. You look at the wording of this.
He says, the transgression of the wicked saith within my heart. My heart is troubled. Well, David? David, how can your heart be
troubled so much about their sin? Well, I'm troubled about
their sin, but I think he's also talking about himself. I'm bothered
by my transgression. Because I'm wicked by nature.
And it saith within my heart, no fear of God. You mean I don't
have any fear of God? You mean I don't have any real
respect for God? You see, here's what's most troubling
to a child of God. It's our own lack of gratitude. It's our own lack of reverence.
It's our own lack of respect. Our own lack of fearing the Lord.
I know sin is all about me. And I know sin is spread throughout
the world. But my greatest grief, the thing
that breaks my heart more than anything else, is my own sinfulness. My own transgressions. My own
iniquities. My soul, I don't fear God like
I ought to. God's not in my thoughts very
much. Oh, He is some and I'm thankful
for that, but I confess before God and I acknowledge before
you, Christ Jesus is not on my mind all the time like I want
Him to be, like He should be. My heart is not always filled
with adoration. I am torn here and there. I am
violent in myself and I confess it to God and I weep over it. My own transgression, my own
wickedness, my own violence, my own heart. My heart that is
deceitful above all things. It is desperately wicked. I can't
trust my heart. Somebody said, well, if I know
my heart. Well, that is one thing you don't know. You don't know
your heart. We're such rebels, we're so sinful,
and the sinfulness that bothers the child of God the most is
his own sin. Isn't that true with you? That's
the way it is with me anyway. That's what bothers me the most.
And I venture to read this passage of scripture and I say that every
regenerated sinner, every child of God, he thinks to himself,
oh my sinfulness, oh God help me, I'm such a sinner. I'm such
a sinner. You see this matter of light.
You know, God gives us light. The more light He gives us, The
more it shines on our filthy hearts, and the more it shines
on our filthy hearts, the more filth we see, the more we see
how rotten we are, how corrupt we are. Listen, we are not good
people, we are bad people. You say, yeah, but you are a
Christian, you are a child of God. I am a child of God by His
grace. But I have within me such wickedness
that it could start another devil. Start another devil. Oh, how
foul we are. We just don't have any idea,
really, do we? We talk about, oh, I'm a sinner.
A sinner. A rebel against God. There is
within me and there is within you a vileness, a vileness that's
so awful, a stench that's so horrible by nature that the only
one who can do anything about it is God Himself. And He has
to exert His almighty power and satisfy His justice in the death
of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the only way, only way
to forgive us of our sins. A believer knows by experience
this wrestling within that the Apostle spoke of in Romans chapter
7. You remember reading Romans chapter
7? He talked about the good that I would do. I don't do it. And
what I don't want to do, he said, that's what I find myself doing.
I've got, there's this war going on within. Can you relate to
that? Man, I can. The Spirit in the
flesh. It's like life and death. It's
just an awful, I'm torn within me. That's what Paul said. And
finally he just kind of throws up his hands and he says, oh
wretched man that I am. You ever say that? Well, I do. The man who wrote
that in Romans chapter 7, he was an apostle. He said, Oh,
wretched man that I am. He didn't say, Oh, wretched man
that I used to be before God saved me. Oh, I was a real rebel
back then. Yeah, you were. And you still
are. You still are. Oh, wretched man
that I am. I am. He said in 1 Timothy, this is
a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that Christ
Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief. I'm the chief of sinners. That's
what an apostle said. Oh my. If you're the chief of
sinners and you're an apostle, what does that make the rest
of us? Well, I tell you what, he's only an apostle by the grace
of God. He wasn't a super Christian.
No. He said, by the grace of God
I am what I am. By the grace of God. And if tonight
within your heart you find a love for God's gospel of grace, if
within your heart you find a love for Christ Jesus, If within your
heart you find yourself being submissive to God's way of salvation
by substitution and satisfaction, God had to do that for you. God
had to give you that love for the gospel because there is still
within you that iniquity, enough iniquity to ignite the coals
of hell. Oh, we're so vile. That's what
David is saying here. It's a sad state. Our state is
a sad one. I tell you. It's a sad state. Look at the second verse. He
says, concerning the wicked, concerning now the unbeliever. He flatters himself in his own
eyes. He flatters himself. He loves
to be flattered by others and he flatters himself. Now he may
flatter himself in saying, well, I think in the end I'll be alright
because really I'm a good person. He flatters himself. Well, you
know, I may have made some mistakes but I'm as good as anybody else. Well, you are but the thing of
it is nobody else is good either. He flatters himself by saying,
well, I have my heritage. You know,
my dad was a preacher. My mother, she's been to church
all her life. And I've been in church since
I was just knee high to a grasshopper. He flatters himself by saying
something like, Like the Jews did, we be Abraham's seed. That's how they flattered themselves. You see, the wicked love to flatter
themselves, and they love to be flattered. You know what the
Apostle Paul told the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians 2 verse 5? He said, when I came to you,
it wasn't with flattering words. I didn't come flattering you.
I wasn't paying any attention to having PR skills. I'm not trying to be politically
correct. He came preaching the gospel
and if the gospel's stripped, it just has to strip. When the
gospel slays, it just has to slay. We call a spade a spade. We cross the T's and dot the
I's. We don't hold anything back.
I'm not trying to win friends and influence people tonight.
I'm not trying to get you to like me. I'm trying to tell you
who God is. I'm trying to tell you what you
are, what I am, what we all are and tell you about Jesus Christ
the Lord. I'm not going to flatter anybody. That's what Job said. I'm not going to give flattering
titles to anybody. I'm not going to call you doctor.
I'm not going to call you reverend. I'm not going to call you anything
like that. I'm going to call you what God calls you, a sinner.
A sinner. We're not going to puff anybody
up, man. We've got enough trouble with that already. Oh, you're
such a good person. We need somebody like you in
our church. Oh, won't you come in? We throw
the red carpet out for them. Come on in. And a visitor comes
in. Oh, Bob, we got a visitor today.
Whoopee! We got a visitor. I tell you,
the visitors ought to thank God there's a church here to attend.
Visitors ought to thank God that they're somewhere they can come
and hear the truth. And when a visitor comes in the
door, and if we got any visitors here tonight, you ought to hug
the members and say, thank you, thank you, thank you for supporting
this work where I can come and my poor soul can hear something
about the grace of God in Christ Jesus. I'm not going to congratulate
you for coming. It's good to see you. I'm thankful
you're here. But man alive, we're not going
to just, well, let's stop the music. So and so's here. You have just done us the greatest
favor in the world by choosing to attend our church tonight. You're not going to get flattered
here. We're just not going to flatter anybody. We're going
to brag on God. We're going to brag on Christ
Jesus. And God's people, that's the way they want it. Isn't that
right? That's exactly the way God's people are. Don't say anything
flattering about me, preacher. I'm just a sinner saved by God's
free and sovereign grace. Brag on my Savior. Brag on His
blood. Talk about the blood. Talk about
substitution. Talk about satisfaction. Talk
about my Redeemer. I'll sing of my Redeemer, but
I'm not going to sing of my love for Him because it's not worth
singing about. Oh, the wicked, they love to
be flattered. Well, watch this, second part of verse two. He
flatters himself in his own eyes until his iniquity be found to
be hateful. That word hateful means till
it's found to be distasteful to him. More fully it means till his
iniquity to be found to be his enemy. Now everybody is going to find
out that your iniquity, your sin is your enemy. Everybody is going to find that
out. Do you know that? Everybody is going to find that out. Now
some people find it out by grace. Iniquity will be found to be
hateful to you when God shows you what you are. And then you'll
hate yourself. You'll say, oh my, my biggest
enemy is within. See, that's the way it is with
you, that's the way it is with me. I know we got enemies of
our soul without. And I know Satan is our enemy. But my biggest enemy is me. It's my own iniquity. That's
my biggest enemy. That's my biggest foe. And I
wrestle with me every day. And you do too. You wrestle with
yourself. until God shows us that our iniquity
is hateful. And it's a blessed day when God
by His grace, by His Spirit, He shows us, you are your worst
enemy. Your sin. Your own iniquity.
That's your worst enemy. That's your foe. That's your
foe. And God shows all of His people
that. But if He doesn't show you that
in grace, It's going to be shown to you at the judgment that the
reason you're going to perish is because of your sin. Because
God's a righteous God. God's just. He's just in all
of His dealings. He's fair. He's fair. And I'll tell you, at the judgment,
everybody's going to get what's coming to them. I absolutely
believe that everybody's going to get what's coming to them
at the judgment. You see, we have the imputed righteousness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our sins have been washed away.
His obedience is our obedience. And we are going to get what
is coming to us because He earned it. He is our righteousness. He is our perfection. He is our
beauty. And the gates of glory are going
to open wide and the Lord is going to say, come in. Beloved
of my Father, blessed of my Father from the foundation of the world. And the wicked, they are going
to get what they deserve too. No Savior, no Mediator, no Redeemer,
no Righteousness, no Forgiveness. You appear before God in your
self-righteous, stinking, rotten rags. Do you really expect God's
going to accept you? You're filthy in sin. You smell
to high heaven. The odor of your rottenness ascends
into the nostrils of God. You really think He's going to
accept you? He's going to show you it's your
own rottenness, it's your own sinfulness. Depart from me. I never do. Oh God, make my iniquity to be
hateful to me right now. Right now. Verse 3, he says, the words of
his mouth are iniquity and deceit. The words of his mouth. Everything
that he says. Every word that comes out of
his mouth. Well, the words of our mouth,
the words of the wicked, where do they come from? From a heart
that hates God. Well, I don't hate God. Yes,
you do. You hate the God of the Bible.
No man loves God naturally. Oh, he loves his own imagination
of God. He loves his ideas about God,
but the God of the Bible, the God who does as he pleases, the
God who's strict, who's holy, who's just, who's righteous in
all of his ways. Man doesn't want anything to
do with that kind of God. But that's a God you got to deal
with. Every word of the wicked is iniquity
and deceit. He's left off to be wise. When did we lose our wisdom?
In Adam, we lost all wisdom. We're just ignorant fools now.
When it comes to the things of God, we're absolutely ignorant.
Oh God, teach me and bless the name of God. It's like the Lord
Jesus said in John chapter 6, they shall all be taught of God.
Everybody therefore who hath heard and learned of my Father."
That's who comes to me. That's what Christ said. I tell
you, we've got to learn from the Father. He's got to teach
us. Look at verse 4. He devised mischief
upon His bed. The wicked goes to bed at night
and He just plans more mischief. Everybody when they lay down
at night, they are not planning mischief. Listen, everything
the natural man does is mischief. He can't do any good. The natural
man, here he is, he is self-motivated. Everything's about self. He's
in love with himself and he lays on his bed at night and he devises
more mischief. Because his thoughts are about
himself. His thoughts aren't about Christ and not about God. He said it himself in a way that's
not good. Because it's not the way of grace.
It's not the way of Christ. And any way except Jesus Christ
is not a good way. It's not a good way. And here's the thing, the last
of verse 4, he abhorreth not evil. He doesn't hate evil. Because he doesn't see evil for
what it is. It's against God. It's striking
out against God. That's what sin is. That's what rebellion is. You
see, sin, Adam, if he could have his way, he'd jerk God off his
throne and he'd sit on the throne. That's Adam's sin. That was Satan's
sin. That's Lucifer's sin. He said,
I will be like the Most High God. I'll take the place of the
Son of God myself. And Satan, when he came to Eve,
he said, you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. Well,
that sounds pretty good. We'll be gods. We don't have
to answer to anybody. Man's sin. He doesn't hate evil. But oh, in verse 4, here we get
to the mercy of God. The mercy of God. David extols
the mercy of God, the perfections of God, from the baseness of
the wicked. The psalmist transitions to consider
the perfections of the Almighty. And by the way, notice the areas
that David has covered in considering the violence of the natural man.
He's covered his actions. That's transgression in verse
1. The transgression of the way.
That's man's actions. He's considered His words, His
words are iniquity and deceit. So there's His actions are bad,
His words are bad, and then His thoughts, He devises mischief. Everything about man is bad.
There's nothing good about us. No wonder the Lord said through
Isaiah, from the top of their heads to the bottom of their
feet, there's no soundness. There's no wholeness. You sit
through and through. I'm talking about all of you,
and I'm talking about everybody who's watching on the internet,
and I'm talking about this preacher too. There's no soundness in
us. It's just rottenness. We're just
full of putrefying sores. And they hadn't been bound up
and mollified yet, and they got to be. But David extols the perfections
of God. Now, if you study the failures
of man, you'll find that that's all he does is fail. You know,
man was created on the sixth day. Six is the number of man.
Six is the number of failure. One is short of perfection. Seven
is the number of perfection. That's six, six, six. That's
on the mind. on the mind, on the heart of
all who defy God, all who despise His gospel. That's man, triple
failure. Man's a failure, a failure, a
failure. But oh, the perfections of God. Let's study the perfections of
God. And notice here, beginning in
verse 6, how many times it uses the word thy. In verse 6, it's
thy mercy, thy faithfulness. That's verse 5. Thy mercy, thy
faithfulness. Verse 6, thy righteousness, thy
judgments. Also in verse 6. Verse 7, thy
loving kindness. Look down in verse 8, thy house. Verse 8 again, thy pleasures.
Verse 9, thy light. It all belongs to God. Verse
10 again, thy loving kindness. Verse 10 again, thy righteousness. David extols the perfections
of God. Give yourself to the study of
God, the perfections of God. Verse 5, he talks about thy mercy,
O Lord, is in the heavens. Oh, the mercy of God. The psalmist
said, Psalm 57, verse 10, thy mercy is great under the heavens.
Heaven is the repository of God's mercy. Mercy is with the Lord. He's got to show it if we don't
receive it. He's got to pour it out. And
thank God He does. He's full of mercy. Thank God
for His saving mercy. For as the heaven is high above
the earth, so great is His mercy toward them that fear Him. When
Moses said, Lord, show me Thy glory, God told Moses, God told
Moses that He said, I'm gracious and I'm merciful. I'll show mercy and I'll be gracious
to whom I'll be gracious. I'll manifest tender affection
to whom I will is what God's saying. When I consider my great
sinfulness, I know God has to have great mercy. He's great
in mercy. And the greatest mercy that ever
came from heaven is His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Thy great
is mercy and thy mercy is great in the heavens. And His greatest
mercy is the gift of His Son. See His incarnation, His life,
His death, His resurrection, His ascension, His intercession,
His work of mediation for us. He says in verse 5, the last
part of it, that faithfulness reaches under the clouds. The
faithfulness of God. He's faithful. The Apostle Paul
in 2 Timothy, he talks about if we're unfaithful, God abides
faithful still. God's faithful to His covenant
promises in Christ Jesus. He'll do everything He promised.
You ever make promises God didn't keep? Sure you have. Has God ever made a promise to
you and he didn't keep it? Impossible. Impossible. Thy faithfulness reaches under
the clouds. Thy righteousness, verse 6, thy
righteousness is as firm and unbending as the great mountains. And thy judgments are deep. God's
ways, God's ways are deep. Their paths found finding out. Oh Lord, He says in verse 6,
Thou preservest man and beast. Everybody's dependent upon God.
All of you are dependent upon God. I'm dependent upon God.
Everybody who's watching on the internet, everybody in the world,
whether they realize it or not, man and beast, we all depend
upon God. And He's faithful. He keeps sending
the rain and He keeps sending the sunshine. But for His people,
look at verse 7. David says, How excellent is
thy lovingkindness, O God! Exclamation point. That word
excellent means how valuable, how exquisite. Take all the gold
and the silver and the diamonds in the world. They are nothing
compared to the loving kindness of God. Listen, child of God,
if God has shed His loving kindness abroad in your heart, you are
the object of His grace and you have the riches of His grace.
You got something more valuable. Money can't buy that. Money can't
buy that. You see this person who just
won some kind of mega millions in a lottery or somewhere up
in Michigan. I think she finally took home
$130-some million or something like that. Somebody said, that can't buy
happiness. Well, it can buy a lot for you. But it can't buy everlasting
happiness. I'll tell you what, if the loving
kindness of God Almighty has been shed abroad in your heart,
you've got something money can't buy. And he is the poorest of
the poor who doesn't have the loving kindness of God in Christ
Jesus. Therefore, he says in verse 7,
the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy
wings. That is, because His loving kindness
has been shed abroad in our hearts, because God has revealed to us
His love in Christ Jesus, while we have fled to the Savior like
little chicks run to a hen, we find our shelter in Him. We hide
under His wings. A few years ago, a lady, one
of the parents in Nancy's class brought her a sitting hen and
some little chicks. Brought it to the house in a
cage, and then I took the cage to school the next day. And I
tell those little chicks, they're just so cute, aren't they? I
went down here to Rural King, just wanted to buy one of those
little chicks. I don't know what I'd do with that. Raise it so
I could eat it, maybe, or something like that. But anyway, that mother
hen and those little chicks, And I tell you, when those kids
come running up, they all ran to her and they hid under her
wings. You couldn't even tell there was any little chicks under
her wings. That's the way the people of
God are to our Lord. We flee to the Lord Jesus Christ. We hide in Him. And you know
what? Nothing can touch us. We're safe
in Him. We find shelter beneath the shadow
of His wings. And look at verse 8, they shall
be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house. Oh,
the fatness of his house. You know, under Jewish law, Jews
couldn't eat fat. They couldn't eat fat. The fat was for God. Remember studying the offerings?
The fat was for God. The best was for God. And you
know what? He gives us the best. That's
what that means. He gives us the best. We don't
get leftovers. We get the best. We get Christ
Jesus and His propitiation. He's the propitiation of our
sins. We get His justification. We get redemption. We get all
of that. If you got Christ Jesus, you
got it all. Got it all. We're abundantly
satisfied with the fatness of thy house, and thou shalt make
them drink of the river of thy pleasures. The river of God's
pleasures is Christ Jesus himself. We drink of the water of life.
For with thee, verse nine, is the fountain of light, of life. And in thy light, we shall see
light. He gives us light to see light. Here we are in our darkness by
nature and He shines the light of the gospel to our hearts. He illuminates us and enables
us to see Him who is the light of the world. Look in verse 10, He begins to
pray. Oh, continue Thy loving kindness
unto them that know Thee. Thy righteousness to the upright
in heart. Don't take righteousness away.
Who is our righteousness? Christ Jesus. Don't take Christ
away from me. And then he prays this in verse
11. Don't let the foot of pride come
against me. My own pride. The foot of pride.
We have a way of just stepping on ourselves. The foot of pride.
Don't let it come against me. And don't let the hand of the
wicked remove me. The hand of Satan. Keep us from evil. That's what
the Lord told His disciples. He said, you pray that in that
model of prayer that He gave. Deliver us from evil. Save us
from the evil. Save me from the evil within
me and save me from the evil one that's in the world who goes
about seeking whom he may destroy. In verse 12, there are the workers
of iniquity fallen. They're cast down. They won't
be able to rise. That's what's going to happen
to the wicked. Oh, if God doesn't do something for us. This is
what's in store. We're going to fall. We've fallen in Adam. We're going
to fall into the pit. The cast down won't be able to
rise again. Give me ears to hear the gospel.
Oh God, give me eyes to see the beauties of Christ Jesus. Oh
God, like David said in Psalm 51, create within me a new heart,
oh God. Give me a heart of faith. Shed
your love and kindness abroad in this old heart of mine. I
don't deserve it. Do it for your glory. And I'll
praise you forevermore. This is the vileness of man.
and the mercy of God, which is in Christ Jesus. Well, let's
sing a closing song.