You know, we see the rain and
we are hopefully thankful for it. We kind of get accustomed
to it, I suppose, and we don't see it as a wonder or think that
it's anything out of the ordinary, but I think of it each time it
rains, that what a wonder it must have been to those men in
the days of Noah when the rain began to fall. Because the scripture
says it hadn't rained on earth up until that time. I'm sure
that that must have, some of them must have started getting
a little concerned. Maybe they had heard Noah talking
about that the Lord was going to destroy the earth. Well, what a wonder it is that
the Lord gives us such things as the rain to bind our hearts
to Him in thankfulness. You know, if it rained every
day, we would be aggravated, wouldn't we? But the Lord, He
sends the dry seasons in order to make those times of refreshing
from the rain seem that much greater. Because if it just rained
on a regular basis, and you never got to a place where you needed
the rain, you wouldn't appreciate it, would you? I mean, that's
just the way men are, and the unthankful nature that we have. May the Lord bless His Word today
and cause us to rejoice in Him. This is Psalm 45 that we're looking
at. It says, to the chief musician,
aban shoshanim, for the sons of Korah, Mashkel, a song of
loves. And that last part of that title
is certainly that which is most descriptive of this psalm. It
begins this psalm, it says, my heart is indicting a good matter. I speak of the things which I
have made touching the king. My tongue is the pen of a ready
writer. And that word there as we begin,
that word indicting, that's not a word that we use much. Especially, I mean, we know the
word, when we hear the word indict, we think of it as a legal term,
as they were, they indicted him for crimes, but that doesn't
have anything at all to do with this word. Because, of course,
the word, the English word indict is I-D-I-C-T, and this word is
I-D-I-T, indict, E, if it was not, it didn't have the I and
G on the end of it. But the word means full. It means
bursting. Elihu in the book of Job, when
he's sat there through all these men, you know, talking and Job
and all of this, and he gets down his turn to speak, he said,
I want you all to shut up a minute. Because he said, my heart is
about to burst within me. to tell you these things. And
he went on to say some pretty wise things for a man who was
the youngest of the bunch. But David, as we believe he is
the penman of this psalm, he says, my heart is indicting a
good matter. He says, I'm about to burst.
Now remember the title of the psalm is A Song of Loves. And
this psalm is about the expression of the love of the believer for
the Lord Jesus Christ, even as it is descriptive of him. As
we will see, my heart is indicting a good matter. I'm full, he says. I speak of the things which I
have made, touching the king. My tongue is the pen of a ready
writer. Thou art fairer than the children
of men. Grace is poured into thy lips. Therefore God hath blessed thee
forever. Gird thy sword upon thy thigh,
O most mighty, with thy glory and thy majesty. And in thy majesty
ride prosperously because of truth and meekness and righteousness. And thy right hand shall teach
thee terrible things. Thine arrows are sharp in the
heart of the king's enemies, whereby the people fall under
thee. Thy throne, O God, is for ever
and ever. The scepter of thy kingdom is
a right scepter. Thou lovest righteousness and
hatest wickedness. Therefore God, thy God, hath
anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. All
thy garments smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory
palaces whereby they have made thee glad. King's daughters were
among the honorable women upon thy right hand did stand the
queen in gold of Ophir. Hearken, O daughter, and consider
and incline thine ear, forget also thine own people in thy
father's house. So shall the king greatly desire
thy beauty, for he is thy Lord, and worship thou him. And the
daughter of Tyre shall be there with a gift, even the rich among
the people shall entreat thy favor. The king's daughter is
all glorious within, her clothing is of wrought gold. She shall
be brought into the king in raiment of needlework. The virgins, her
companions that follow her shall be brought unto thee. With gladness
and rejoicing shall they be brought. They shall enter into the king's
palace. Instead of thy father shall be
thy children, whom thou mayest make princes in all the earth.
I will make thy name to be remembered in all generations. Therefore
shall the people praise thee forever. than ever. Now this is a glorious psalm
in many ways. Of course, you know, the psalmist
begins here, he says, my tongue is the pen of a ready writer.
He said, I'm about to burst. He says, I want to write the
things of praise unto my God, because this is a song of love. Even as you read the Song of
Solomon, And you see that it is a account of the love of the
bride and the bridegroom. And the bridegroom is that one
who expresses his love in no uncertain terms for the object
of his love, the bride. And she in turn returns that
love. And even though she is of a weaker
standing and she does sometimes, as she says, you know, that she
was tired and she didn't want to get up and answer the door
when he came, but yet he never forsook her, but he loved her. And when he had removed himself
from her, what he did that for was in order that she might seek
him out. and she did seek him out and
so it is when the Lord is pleased to hide himself from his people
he does even that for their good so that they might desire him
they might seek after him because again just like the rain that
we talked about when everything is going great and you know blessing
upon blessing is coming upon us we just come to expect it
and then we don't really give God the glory of those things. And so when we go along through
life, it is a blessed thing when the Lord is pleased to meet with
us. And it is a precious thing because it's not a thing that
we always have the same level of enjoyment of. And only He
can cause that to come to pass. But He says here that I desire
to praise my King. My tongue is ready. I'm bursting inside. And He says,
Thou art fairer than the children of men. Who's He speaking about? Has to be speaking about Christ,
does He not? Thou art fairer than the sons
of men. Now when you see these pictures
that these artists paint of Him, they always paint Him You know,
as this one who's pleasing to look upon with the eye of the
flesh. You know, he's always a statuesque
type person and he's, you know, just everything about him. I
mean, because actually, how else would we desire to see him but
in that way? That is how we would desire to
see him. But the scripture says, that
there was nothing in Him, no beauty that we should desire
of Him. That is, we didn't see Him carnally in the sense of
beauty. Even as the carnal man cannot
see the beauty of Christ that you and I can, by the grace of
God, we see Him. But his visage was more marred
than any man. He was not, I don't believe,
as a man who was a man of the people, as a man who walked among
men. And I don't believe there was
anything that stood out about him in a physical way. But the glory of God was upon
him. And only those whom he gave eyes
to see could see it. You know, it's just like Samson.
When you see pictures of Samson in these books and stuff, buddy,
he's always Arnold Schwarzenegger, isn't he? I mean, he's this big
old guy. Well, if you looked at Samson
and you saw all those muscles and whatnot, you wouldn't have
any doubt as to why he could perform the great feats of strength
that he did, would you? But I believe Samson was just
a regular guy. And so they said, well, we've got to figure out
what is it that gives this guy his strength? Where does it come
from? See, they didn't get it. Same
way as we look at Christ. I mean, we understand the glory
of Christ because we've been given eyes to see it. But the
world doesn't see it. I mean, they, you know, Christmas
time comes around and they talk about the little baby Jesus in
the manger and, you know, it's a wonderful thing and all of
that. And that's what they see about
Him. And they talk about Him, you know, in various ways and
times. When the time of Easter comes
around, they think about, oh, well, this is the time when we
celebrate Christ's resurrection. But the world does not really
glory in the resurrection of Christ. For the most part, they
don't even really believe it happened. It's just kind of like
a fairy tale. It's just a tradition. You know, we just hand it down
from one generation to the other. But see, for those who've been
given eyes to see, it's the most glorious thing because there's
a reality in it. And there's a place of hope that's
given to the sons of God that because Christ rose from the
dead, so shall they be given that place of resurrection. And
so thou art fairer than the children of men. We're not interested
in the humanity of Christ in the sense that the world is.
Now, some men do believe that Jesus Christ was a historical
figure. Some people don't even believe
He existed. They just think all of this was just kind of made
up. Because that's kind of a comfortable way to look at it. But another
comfortable way is just to assume He was a good man. I mean, you
know, even the Muslims They believe that he was a good man and a
prophet. They believe he was a great prophet. Not the best, not the greatest,
but they believe he was a great prophet. And so the world is
comfortable with the man Jesus to some extent. But you see,
we know and we understand that he's fairer than the sons of
men. That is, he's more beautiful. than the sons of men. There's
never arisen another man who is like unto him, for we see
his glory. Grace is poured into thy lips.
The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus
Christ. He spoke the words of truth.
Peter, one of my favorite passages of scripture, when all the disciples
of the Lord had gone away, or not all of them, but the majority
of them had gone away. And the Lord looked at his, the
12 there, and he said, well, will ye also go away? And Peter
said, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal
life. See, that's the place that God's
people are at. That's what true faith is. It's
that wherein we look to Him because we can see no one else that has
the truth. Grace is poured into thy lips.
We want to hear what you have to say. I'm not interested in
what the world says. We live in a time when the truth
of God is defined by men. I'm amazed, you know, how all
these different groups, and I'm not going to get into naming
all of them, and the initials and all of that stuff that goes
along, and they say, well, you know, God, He teaches us to love
one another. And they paint all of these things
as being how they would like them to be. But that's not what
the Word of God says, and we're not interested in how men interpret
the things of God. We want to hear the word from
His lips. As much as the Lord does bless
the preached word, and if He sends it, it is a glorious word. It is a word that comes straight
from His lips to our ears. But we're not interested really
in what the great preachers have to say, or any preacher for that
matter. We wanna hear from the Lord,
do we not? I mean, you didn't come down
here this morning, hopefully, because you wanted to hear a
word that I was gonna say, or Brother Al was gonna say, or
anybody else was gonna say, but you came here because you wanted
to hear what the Lord would say. And you wanted that word to be
applied to your heart. because we know that grace is
poured into his lips. Therefore, God hath blessed thee
forever. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
sum total of the blessings of God to the people of God. We
wouldn't have any blessings if it wasn't for him. Now, some
people think that they can earn blessings from God. Of course,
you know all the TV pressures, not all of them, but a good portion
of them, especially the ones that's on late night channels,
you know, they teach unashamedly that if you'll send them some
money, or if you'll do this, or if you'll do that, God will
bless you. Well, I'm here to tell you that
you cannot buy the blessings of God, you cannot influence
the blessings of God, you can't gain the blessings of God, except
in Christ. Because in Christ are all the
blessings of God. He is the fullness of the Godhead
bodily. He's walked among men, and he
has received all blessing because they belong to him, not only
as he is God, but they belong to him as he is that perfect
man who fulfilled the Father's will. And the blessings of God
are upon him. Therefore God hath blessed thee
forever. gird thy sword upon thy thigh,
O most mighty, with thy glory and thy majesty. Now many would
say that the gospel, speaking about the world, the worldly
wise, they would say that the preaching of the gospel as we
preach it, or hopefully as we preach it. That is, Jesus Christ
and Him crucified. They would look at that as like
a divisive message. And they're right in that. They
do have the right understanding. They don't have the right application
of it. But they would say that what
we're doing is we're dividing men. And again, they would be
right. But they're looking on that as
a bad thing. We're looking at it as a good thing. The Lord
said He came to Do what? Bring a sword. He said he didn't
come to bring peace in the earth, but to bring a sword. He would
cause a man's own household to be divided because he would call
whom he wills. Now, men don't like that. Even the people that like it
don't like it. You know what I mean by that?
I mean, sometimes you get aggravated when you get thinking that the
Lord has chosen His people. And maybe there's somebody you
wish He would choose. Of course, you don't know who
He's chosen or who He has, but you get to thinking about it,
and it kind of aggravates you a little bit. But then, by the
grace of God, you understand that it's according to His mercy.
They loved us. And I wouldn't want anybody else
to have that power because it's unto His glory. Gird thy sword
upon thy thigh, O Most Mighty. Perform thy will, do thy bidding,
and triumph with thy glory and thy majesty. Because you see,
that's the place where the Lord has given to His sons and His
daughters to see that men can't see. Men can see everything in
Christ that you can see. I mean, a man can read the Bible. Anybody can read the Bible. But
only by the grace of God can a man be given eyes to see the
glory of the Bible. See, some people read, in the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and they say,
oh yeah, that's the story I learned when I was a little boy about
how God created the world. But when God gives a man eyes
to see the glory of it, he falls on his face and he says, Lord,
it's your world. Lord, you've made it according
to the good pleasure of your will. And may your will be done
in the heavens and the earth. You see, that is to see the glory
of God. And not all men can see that.
Not all men want to see that. I mean, listen, the people that
don't want to worship God, I mean, all men think they want to worship
God in a measure, whether it's themselves or whatever, they
think they want to worship God as long as they can be the one
that says how that's going to be. Or as long as they can kind
of dictate how God's going to be. But you see, we're serving
an absolute God. And He does according to His
will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the
earth. There's none that can stay His hand or say unto Him,
What doest thou? And I'm glad. By the grace of
God, I'm glad. Now again, this old natural man
gets aggravated about that sometimes. Why does it have to be like that?
But oh, thanks be unto God that He's given me eyes to see the
glory. And I say with the psalmist,
gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O Most Mighty, with glory in
thy majesty. Oh, that the glory of Christ
might be exalted in the earth, that He might be magnified. That's
our desire, to see Christ lifted up. And in thy majesty, ride
prosperously because of truth and meekness and righteousness. Now, you wouldn't kind of think
of triumph and meekness going hand in hand, would you? But
you see, that's the fashion in which Christ has manifested His
kingdom, is through meekness. A bruised reed will he not break,
and the smoking flax will he not quench, till he brings forth
judgment unto victory. Because you see, the Lord, He
doesn't smash men, He smashes his enemies, but he is very kind
to those whom he calls. And in meekness and tenderness
he calls, even as the gospel message goes forth in the earth,
in a measure as an indiscriminate message. But at the same time,
a very discriminating message, because as we come to understand,
we know that the only ones who will hear that message are those
whom the Lord is pleased to call. But you see, we don't discriminate
in the message, we declare it. Even as the Lord did, He said,
Come unto Me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest. Did He say, Come unto Me, some
of you that labor and are heavy laden? No, He said, All that
labor and are heavy laden. Now we know that is discriminating
in itself, because men by nature will not hunger and thirst after
righteousness, but by the grace of God. their cause to do it. And in thy majesty, ride prosperously
because of truth and meekness. Oh, that the truth of God might
be set forth in the earth, that his meekness might be known,
for he was the meekest of all men. You know, Scripture says
Moses was. Now, when you look at the life
of Moses and some of the things that he did, you wouldn't, in
your mind, think of him as a meek man, but Scripture says he was.
But Christ's meekness exceeded his. And he was, before God,
a meek man, a quiet man. Blessed are the meek, for theirs
is the kingdom of God. And righteousness, because you
know, righteousness is that which causes a man to stand before
Almighty God. A man can't come into the presence
of God without righteousness. Now the natural man thinks that
he's going to come up with some righteousness. Even as a rich
young ruler, remember he came to the Lord and he said, Lord,
what can I do to inherit eternal life? I mean, he was looking
for righteousness, wasn't he? He knew he had to have righteousness.
He said, Lord, what can I do? And the Lord said, well, you
know what the commandments are. Do all those, do these things.
He said, well, heck, I've already done that. I mean, I've been
doing that ever since I was a kid. And then the Lord, the scripture
says the Lord loved him. And he looked at him and he says,
if you'll be perfect, go and sell all that you have and give
it to the poor. And he went away sorrowing. Now
again, a lot of times people look at that and they see the
rich young ruler going away sorrowing And it says, because he had great
possessions. And they just assume, well, they
say, well, he loved his possessions more than he loved God. I don't
believe that's it at all. Because you see, I believe the
Lord brought conviction to the man's heart and he went away
sorrowing because he realized that he had no righteousness
of his own and the Lord had shown it to him. He said, you know,
if you really loved your neighbor as yourself, you'd sell all that
and give it away. And he recognized for the first
time in his life that he did not keep the law of God. What
a mercy. What a kindness. You see, the
Pharisees never, they never got such a thing as that. Now, the
Lord basically told them the same thing, but not in the same
fashion, did he? Because he didn't bring conviction
to their heart. What a mercy. There He is in
God as He reveals His righteousness, the righteousness of Christ. Brethren, that's the only righteousness
wherein a man can stand before God because men think that they
have some sort of righteousness. Well, surely, you know, if I'm
kind and I do good and I think of my neighbor and I do good
deeds and all of these things, surely that will count for something.
No, it won't count for anything. Why? Because sin overrules it. And apart from the perfect righteousness
of Christ, you have none. And thy right hand shall teach
thee terrible things. He learned obedience by the things
which he suffered. It says, thy right hand shall
teach thee terrible things. He learned things as a man, did
he not? Now that baffles my mind totally. I don't reclaim to stand before
you here this morning to be able to really explain to you 100%
everything that's about that. But I know this, that as a man,
he underwent the same things as a man. He was tempted in all
points like as we are, and he came to that place as a perfect
man that he understood the plight of men exactly as they are. Thy right hand shall teach thee
terrible things. He learned what it was to suffer
for sin, did he not? Because he gave himself in the
behalf of his people, and he suffered for it. These are terrible things. Thine
arrows are sharp in the heart of the king's enemies, whereby
the people fall under thee. The Lord will destroy his enemies.
Now, I'll leave it to the great learned scholars to tell us what's
going to be the ultimate end and plight of the wicked. I know the Scripture indicates
this of assurity, that the Lord will destroy His enemies. The
name of the wicked shall rot. I know that. And beyond that,
you know, I'm not going to speculate. about these things. But know
for a surety that the enemies of God will be brought to account. He will destroy his enemies.
The heart of the king's enemy is whereby the people fall under
thee. Remember the Lord said himself,
he said that blessed is the man who casts himself upon this stone
which the builders rejected. But he said woe to that man upon
whom this stone fall, for it shall grind him to powder. I
don't know if you've ever ground anything to powder before, but
it's done for. I mean, that's it. It's destroyed. It's of no use whatsoever. Thy throne, O God, is forever
and ever. The scepter of thy kingdom is
a right scepter. Oh, what a glorious God we serve
as he has revealed himself in Jesus Christ. Is that one whom
he speaks about in Psalm 2? As he says, yet have I set my
king upon my holy hill of Zion. And he is the one who rules and
reigns in the army of heaven among the inhabitants of the
earth. But He has a more glorious reign than just simply reigning
over the earth. See, again, a carnal man can
have some understanding of the extent of the Lord's reign over
all the earth. But you see, the extent of the
reign of the Lord over the earth is that He will call His people
unto Himself. He'll cause His people to be
willing in the day of His power. And out of the midst of a rebellious
people scattered on the face of the earth, the Lord calls
His people and He triumphs in that. And the glory of His name
is seen as He is the Redeemer of His people. I mean, that's
the place where the glory of God shines the brightest. I mean,
we can talk about the sun and the moon, and I read the other
day one of the silliest things I've heard of in a long time,
but some scientist somewhere has now come up with the idea
that, and he may be right as far as looking at science and
how it's supposedly gonna happen, and that might be where the end
of us comes, but he says that the Earth is moving closer to
the sun, and that if we don't do something about it, that one
day we're going to burn up. So his proposal is that we're
going to put this thing called a solar sail out in the space
and somehow or other that's going to exert some force on Earth
and we're going to change the trajectory of Earth's orbit.
And we're going to get it so that in a billion years or whenever
it is that he's proposing that we're going to burn up that by
then we'll be moved enough so that we won't burn. Now how silly.
It's such an idea as that. But you see, men look at the
creation and they see the wonder of it, but they think they have
it in their hands to do something about it. But the glory of God
is not in the control of the planets, although that's glorious. The glory of God is not in the
holding back of the oceans, He set the bounds of their habitation
that cannot pass. Now the bounds of the habitations
of the ocean might be 50 foot higher than it is right now.
I don't know what the ultimate habitation of the sea is, but
I know there's a place at which he said it won't go past that.
And it won't. And nothing will stop it from
going that way. I don't care how much global
warming we prevent or how much we cause. It's not going to change
that in any fashion, shape, or other. But the glory of God is
not in all of that, although that is glorious. But the glory
of God is seen as He calls His children out of darkness and
into the light, as He causes them to rejoice in Christ as
the Savior of sinners. As He says, Come unto Me, all
you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
And some, like the Philippian jailer, cry out, sirs, what must
I do to be saved? That's the glory of God. When
He calls sinners unto Himself, only the redeemed can see it. Only the redeemed desire it.
Only the redeemed will praise His name for it.