We're looking again at Psalm
72. And we looked at the first part of this psalm, and it is,
the scripture says, the prayers of David, the son of Jesse are
ended. And of course, this appears to
be the last Psalm that was penned by David, though there are other
Psalms in the book of the Psalms that appear after this one, yet
we understand that these things are not chronological. Most of
the Psalms were written by David, but, not all of them, and these,
at least at this point, this is the last of the Psalms of
David, and it is written ostensibly for his son, Solomon. Now, we know that David saw through
a glass darkly, even as we do, but he actually, in many ways,
saw through a glass more darkly. than we do because he could not
see the glories of the risen Christ as we do now. He could
not see the glories of the triumphant Christ who reigns as a king over
his kingdom. The kingdom that David had in
mind when the Lord said that he would set up his son and he
would reign forever, was he thought of an earthly kingdom. He thought
that was going to be something he could see with his own eyes.
But we understand, as the Lord plainly revealed, that his kingdom
is not one of flesh and blood. It is not one that can be seen.
It does not come with observation. But it is one which is established
as the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world to redeem His
people. And He is the King over His people. And He does rule
and reign in that kingdom even as we speak. And He has triumphed
gloriously over all of His enemies. And there is nothing left to
be done insofar as that work is concerned. Scripture does
tell us that He is coming back to receive that which He has
purchased with His own blood, and that is the glorious expectation
that we do have. But the Kingdom of God is not
yet to be established, but it is already established, and it
is that which is glorious. and completely the work of his
own hands. Now we looked at, like I said
at the first part of this, And we were looking along about verse
10. I'll begin reading there. It
says, the kings of Tarshish and of the Isles shall bring presents.
The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts. Yea, all kings shall
fall down before him. All nations shall serve him.
For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth, the poor also
and him that hath no helper. He shall spare the poor and the
needy and shall save the souls of the needy. He shall redeem
their soul from deceit and violence, and precious shall their blood
be in his sight. And he shall live, and to him
shall be given of the gold of Sheba. Prayer also shall be made
for him continually, and daily shall he be praised. There shall
be a handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains.
The fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon, and they of the
city shall flourish like grass of the earth. His name shall
endure forever. His name shall be continued as
long as the sun, and men shall be blessed in Him. All nations
shall call Him blessed. Blessed be the Lord God, the
God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things. And blessed
be His glorious name forever, and let the whole earth be filled
with His glory. Amen and amen. The prayers of
David, the son of Jesse. are ended. Now this, of course,
speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ, how that all of the nations of
the earth, the scripture says, every knee shall bow and every
tongue shall confess. And that is true, will ultimately
be true in the final day when He is revealed in His glory in
a fashion in which He has not yet seen fit to reveal in a manifest
manner over all the earth. Now, we as the children of God
see that glory. The glory of Christ will not
be any different to us. It will be more, I guess if you
want to say visible to us in that day. And we will see with
an undimmed eye to the glory of that. But the glory of Christ
is revealed even now to the children of God as we see Him high and
lifted up. We're not expecting another.
John the Baptist is the last of the Old Testament prophets.
At the end of his life, he wasn't completely convinced that, well,
maybe he was wrong. Maybe this wasn't really the
one. And he thought it was all the
time, because things weren't working out like he planned for
it to do. But dear brethren, we have seen
him by the eye of faith, and we shall see him, as Job said,
in my flesh shall I see God. as the Lord is pleased to raise
up His people from the dead, and we shall behold Him as that
One which He is, even at the present time, even as John saw
Him. And the Scripture says that He
fell at His feet as a dead man, you know, because the glory of
Christ was so great. I mean, we think that we have
seen the glory of Christ, and we have. The Lord has seen fit
to reveal the glory of his name in the face of Jesus Christ.
We have seen him. But yet, just like those disciples
on the Mount of Transfiguration, they were humbled before Almighty
God when they saw him face to face, even as Isaiah, whom the
Scripture says, he said in the year that King Uzziah died, I
saw the Lord high and lifted up to me, high and lifted up,
and his train filled the temple. And he said, I said, woe is unto
me, for I'm a man of unclean lips. And what a humbling thing
it is to be brought into the presence of the Lord. But the
Lord, he shall deliver the needy when he crieth the poor also
in him that hath no helper. The Lord is the helper of the
helpless. He doesn't help those that can
help Himself. He doesn't help those that can
do things for Him, those that serve Him and do great things. And they figure He'll pat them
on the back. That's not the ones He's going to help. The ones
He's going to help are the ones that cry out daily, Lord help
us. We're an unclean people in the
midst of an unclean people. And we need help. We need deliverance. The Lord will help the poor and
the needy. He shall save their souls. He
shall redeem their souls from deceit and violence. And precious
shall their blood be in His sight. The Lord said that the redeemed
of the Lord are precious. The death of His people are precious
in His sight because He loves His people. He died for His people,
came into the world to deliver them. And their blood shall be
precious in His sight. Now men wonder, well why is it
that the Lord, if He loves His people so much, why would He
have them to suffer sometimes and lay down their life in literal
blood, because men is the man and the woman that because of
their love for Christ have had to lay down their lives, would
not in any wise accept the offer of mercy from the hands of men
if they would just, you know, deny the Lord. And so why is
that? Well, because the Lord is the
Lord, and His ways are above our ways. And see, the thing
that we don't grasp is that these things that we see, we see them
as men see them. But you see, God, in His infinite
wisdom, He sees things in a different fashion than we do. But even
though He may send some of his children into the very presence
of death itself for the cause of Christ, even though he may
send them into what men would think was a terrible thing, yet
he will have glory. in this, and it is a pleasing
thing in his sight. Because you see, all souls of
mine, he said, every man, woman, boy, and girl belongs to him.
And what can a man say about that? What kind of thing could
he bring against the Lord? Can he bring against the Lord
a railing accusation and say, Lord, you shouldn't do that?
No, but he says their blood is precious in his sight. You know,
when Lazarus died and they came, they told the Lord Jesus, well,
when he was sick, they said, Lazarus, your friend, is sick.
You need to come. The Lord carried where he was.
He didn't just drop everything and go. Mary said when she came, or Martha
said to him, well, Lord, if you'd have been here, Lazarus wouldn't
have died. He said, oh, he's not dead. He's just sleeping. He'll live again. Because you
see, life and death is nothing unto the Lord. It belongs to
him. Life belongs to him. Death has no power at all. Death
is nothing. except as the Lord is pleased
to use it for His own purpose. And so it is that the blood of
the people of God are precious in His sight. He shall redeem their soul from
deceit and violence. He shall live, and to Him shall
be given of the gold of Sheba. It says that again. He said it
up there. The kings of Sheba shall offer
gifts. The gold of Sheba. Prayer also shall be made for
him continually, and daily shall he be praised. That could not
be speaking of anybody. It could not have been speaking
of Solomon, is it? Did you think about Solomon today? I mean,
when you woke up this morning, did you think, I need to praise
Solomon? No, but you see, the Lord has
ordained that God's people shall bring forth praise unto the name
of the Lord continually. And so David speaks, though he
thinks perhaps he's speaking of Solomon in a measure, yet
I believe he had some understanding of the fact that there was one
greater than Solomon to come. Also shall it be made for him
continually and daily shall he be praised. There's not a day
that goes by in the earth when the Lord Jesus Christ is not
praised on every continent and on the face of the earth, from
the sea to the shining sea. It does not make a difference
what time of the day or night that it is. There are praises
that go up continually unto His name. And there is not a thing
in the world that anybody can do to stop that. You know, if
they systematically go out and start killing off every one of
those who praises His name, the Lord will be raising them up
faster than they can put them down. Because the Lord said he
could raise up stones to praise him if it pleases him. So his
name shall indeed be praised daily and continually. There
shall be a handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the
mountains. The fruit thereof shall shake
like Lebanon, and they of the city shall flourish like the
grass of the earth. Now you know, when the Lord came
and walked among men, it seemed like a little thing. And the
Lord seems like a little thing unto many. The work of the Lord. It doesn't appear like much.
I mean, He didn't come on the scene with grandeur and pomp
and circumstance, but He came humbly. When He came into Jerusalem,
the Scripture says He came meekly on a coat, the fold of an ass. He came riding into town on a
donkey. And it didn't seem like much.
to the rank and file person, but to those who knew Him, they
threw down the palm fronds in front of Him, and their coats,
and they worshipped Him. They knew who He was. The Scripture
says that the Kingdom of Heaven, in one of the parables of the
Lord, He said the Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed,
which when it's sown in the ground and it grows up into a mighty
tree, Now that tree, many try to make that to be like the seed
of faith. You put this faith in the ground
and you sow your seed and it grows up this mighty tree and
you've got this big tree. Well brethren, the tree That
sprout from the seed that's home is the Lord Jesus Christ. He
is that tree. He's that one who is that treasure
which is hidden in the field. You see, He is that one who's
worthy to be praised. And even though men can't see
Him, as He is by the eye, natural eye. It is by the eye of faith
that men are given to see. And so when it says here, there
shall be a handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the
mountains. Think about a handful of corn
on top of the mountain. What is that? It's nothing. But you see that handful of corn
is indeed the Lord Jesus Christ. For in Him, in Him is the seed
that belong to Him. You see, He is that handful of
corn which is ultimately sowed into the earth. He is the glorious
One who has all of His people in Him when He came into the
world, when He went to the cross. When he prayed, he says, I pray
not for the world, but I pray for them whom Thou hast given
me out of the world. Thine they were, and Thou hast
given them to me. What a glorious thing to consider.
The covenant of Almighty God is made with men, but it's made
with Thee, man. And we receive the benefits of
the covenant blessings of God because of the covenant made
between the Father and the Son. The Father said, ask of me and
I'll give thee the heathen for thine inheritance. And here's
what we read about right here. There is a handful of corn in
the earth upon the top of the mountains. The fruit thereof
shall shake like Lebanon, and they of the city shall flourish
like the grass of the earth. Are there few that be saved? In some measures, as we read
in the Scripture, we would come to the affirmative of that. But
yet, in the consideration of the fact that the Lord has people
in every kindred, tribe, and tongue in the earth, there's
a multitude. John said he saw a multitude
which no man could number. That's a lot of folks. And the
Lord has spread that in the earth, and He causes that seed to sprout
at the appointed time. What a glorious thing! The city
shall flourish like grass of the earth. You know, grass is
a good thing, unless you've got a garden. You try to get rid of it. Well,
the people of God are like the grass that grow up in the garden
of men. And they do everything they can
to get rid of it. where our nation we can see that
uh... as time has gone on our nation
has uh... uh... abandoned the foundations
uh... of righteousness upon which it
was in a measure founded now let's don't get too sentimental
about that into thinking uh... as some people do thinking that
the United States is somehow a righteous nation because we
were founded on the Bible and all of that stuff. Now having
said that, it is a true thing, however, that many of the men
who were the founders of this nation were indeed godly men
and so you can, in that fashion, say that many of the principles
upon which our nation was founded are indeed godly principles.
And we are fast trying to do away with all of them. And in
fact, if the rank and file had their way, if it was not that
the Lord was the one that preserves these things, we would have been
overthrown in a heartbeat. But as long as the grass flourishes
in the earth, see the gardeners of the of the way of man, they're
constantly trying to get rid of the garden. They'll spray
it with stuff, and they'll hoe it, and you know, they just do
all kinds of things. They pull it out, they try to
get rid of it, but it just keeps coming back. Anything in the
world they can do about it. And as long as the Lord is upon
His throne, He will have a witness in the earth of His glory. And
He will be testified to. And the people of God shall indeed
flourish like the grass of the earth. His name shall endure
forever. His name shall be continued as
long as the sun, and men shall be blessed in Him. All nations
shall call Him blessed." Even the nations where there are other
religions that worship other gods. The Lord has a people in
their midst, and they call Him blessed. They worship at His
feet. Now in many of these places they
do their dead level best to stamp these people out. China is a
place where the Lord has a witness. Iran is a place where the Lord
has a witness. North Korea is a place where
the Lord has a witness. All of these nations indeed have
a witness unto the glory of God. And it can't be put out, because
His name shall endure forever. He has a people. Now they're
not necessarily those that you see. I mean, you know, there's
a Christianity that goes by the statistics. You know, they say,
well, there's so many Christians here in this country and so many
in that. Well, this doesn't have anything
to do with that. I mean, you can't tell how many Christians
are in the world by statistics. But you see, the Lord knows every
one of those that are His. Because not everyone that saith
unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. And
not all of the statistical Christians that are in the earth are indeed
those that belong to the Lord. But the Lord has His people.
They might not be counted, because they might not be out in the
open. in such a fashion that anybody
would know who they are, but the Lord knows who they are according
to the good pleasure of His will. Blessed be! the Lord God, the
God of Israel who only doeth wondrous things. He's the only
one who does wondrous things and all the things that He does
are glory. There's not anything that He
would undertake to do which is not, first of all, designed for
His glory. I guess that's the one thing
that As a man begins to understand
what it is that the Lord has done in the earth, it's to understand
that all that He's done in the earth is unto His glory. Why
do we preach the gospel? Unto His glory. See, a lot of
people think that the Lord is trying to do something in the
earth. I listen to a fellow on the radio sometimes, and he's
all the time talking about what God wants us to do. Now, dear
brethren, when God wants somebody to do something, you can be sure
of this, that they're going to do it. You see, God wanted Jonah
down in Nineveh. Jonah didn't want to go to Nineveh,
but the Lord wanted Jonah in Nineveh. And Jonah thought he
was getting on a boat that was going the other way to escape
from going to Nineveh. But the Lord wanted Jonah in
Nineveh, and He wanted Jonah on that boat because the scripture
says that he had prepared a fish to swallow Jonah. Now, wouldn't
that have been something if Jonah decided to go? And the fish would
have been swimming around out there wondering where Jonah was. But you see, the Lord calls Jonah
to buy a ticket away from Nineveh as well as he sent him to Nineveh. because his name would be glorified. Because the Lord said, as Jonah
was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so
shall the Son of Man be. See, it was necessary. Oh, what
a glorious thing. It was necessary for Jonah to
be swallowed by the whale, was it not? If he hadn't been swallowed by
the whale, how would that have been? It had to be that way according
to the purpose of God. Now men look at that and they
scoff and say, how foolish kind of a thing is that? But brethren,
there is glory. The glory of God is seen in the
minute details of how He works all things for good to those
that love God who are called according to His purpose. All
things. Even those things that we wouldn't
consider at the time are good, the Lord works them together
for our good. Blessed be the Lord God, the
God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things. What can a man
say about the things the Lord is pleased to do? Not a thing
in the world. And blessed be His glorious name
forever. and let the earth be filled with
His glory. Amen and amen. Now what is there,
can there be any of the children of God, is it possible that there
could be a man who is a child of God who would not desire for
the name of Christ to be glorified in the earth? I don't think it's possible.
Because you see, that's what God has called His people from
the earth to do, is to bring glory to His name. Through the
ages to come, He might demonstrate the glory of His grace in that
people that He has raised up from the dunghill. That handful
of corn that He's been pleased to sow from the top of the mountains. and he's caused his kingdom to
rise like a mountain out of the earth, and there's nothing that
anybody can do to overturn it. Blessed be his glorious name
forever. Let the whole earth be filled
with his glory. That's our desire. Oh, that men
might worship him everywhere. I mean, do we? Are we against
folks worshiping the Lord wherever they are? I mean, we want men
to glorify the name of the Lord in the earth. But we're not so
foolish to think that because somebody says they're going to
worship God in some fashion that they've made up, that that is
the worship of God. You see, there's one God and
He's revealed Himself in the earth. God has spoken by His
Son. Dear brethren, there is no other
way that a man can know God apart from knowing Jesus Christ, the
Lord of Glory. It is impossible. It does not
make any difference how sincere somebody is or how moral they
might be or how many good deeds they might do in the earth apart
from the knowledge of Jesus Christ and being found in Him. There
is no salvation. Now that's a glorious thing.
It's not glorious to the natural man because he doesn't like that.
Oh, well, you're just too narrow-minded. You're just ruling out a bunch
of people. Well, I'm not ruling out anybody
because the Lord knows them that are His. But I know this, that
the Lord has chosen to bring glory to His name through the
name of one individual who has walked upon the earth who spoke
to Philip when he said, I and the Father are one. His name
is Jesus Christ, and He will be glorified in the earth. Oh, that men might fall down
and worship Him. That's our desire. I mean, if
there was something I could do to cause that to occur, I'd do
it right now. But all we can do is that which
we're sent to do, and that is to magnify the name of Christ
in the earth. Oh, that he might be glorified. Amen and amen. Not just amen,
but amen and amen. Let it be, let it be. The prayers
of David the son of Jesse are ended. What a glorious way to
end them. Was it not? You know, wouldn't
that be a glorious thing? That that be the last words that
you speak in this earth? Let Christ be praised. Oh, what
a glorious thing. I can't think of a better way
to go out than with the praise of the Lord Jesus Christ upon
our lips. May He be praised and may we
with our last breath praise Him who is worthy of all praise.