Let's open our Bibles again to
Psalm 50. I titled the message this evening,
Judgment for Saints and the Wicked. This is a very solemn psalm. It's a psalm of judgment. I want
us to look at three different judgments. There are three clear
divisions in this psalm, giving us three different judgments
of God. Very sober in thought. Now, God
is holy. Holiness is God's chief attribute. Whatever God does will be holy. God is just. So we know God must
punish sin. God will deal with every sin,
the sin of everyone. So I hope that my first point
is very well known already to this congregation. My first point
is this, that God is gracious to his people because he already
punished their sin. He already judged their sin in
the person of Christ, our substitute. Now, all men are sinners and
we need a savior and God in his mercy and grace has provided
a savior and he calls his people, the people that he chose to save,
he calls them to that savior. Verse one says, the mighty God,
even the Lord has spoken. and called the earth from the
rising of the sun until the going down thereof. Now the original
Hebrew lists three names for the one name translated God in
our translation. The original Hebrew lists El,
Elohim, and Jehovah. God Almighty, God the self-existent
one, and God our Savior. That God, three names, but one
God. That one God calls to His people. Now that's gracious, isn't it?
That the Almighty, the self-existent One, calls to sinful men. And He calls to them because
He is God, our Savior. There's so much grace in that. The fellow, don't be careful,
he'll get carried away right to here. God has spoken. God's
called His people. And this call has gone everywhere
the sun touches, from east to the west. Now some people think
this is talking about a general call. Certainly there is a general
call of the gospel, a general call that calls all men to repent
and to trust Christ. That call does go into all the
world too. Some people have heard the voice
of creation say, God is. Now they see from creation God
is, but they don't seek him. Some people have heard the gospel
and they've rejected it. They heard it, but they didn't
hear it. They rejected it. But some people have heard the
gospel and they believed the Lord Jesus Christ. You know why
they did? Because God is gracious. God
will show he's not just going to talk about as a, in a, in
a theory, his sovereign grace, God will show his saving grace
on his elect. They will all hear a personal
call of God the Holy Spirit to their heart. And they're going
to come. Verse 5 says, gather my saints
together unto me, those that have made a covenant with me
by sacrifice. This is why I said when God graciously
calls his people, they come. The Holy Spirit gathers them.
He makes them willing in the day of God's power and they come. And they come. God calls and
they come. because of God's covenant of
grace. Mike has a good song. This book
is full of grace. These first verses are full of
God's grace, His covenant of grace. God promised before time
began to save a people by grace. Now, whatever God has promised
will come to pass. God brings it to pass in His
grace to His people. But notice here, don't get thrown
off by this. that God's going to gather those that have made
a covenant with me by sacrifice. Now what does that mean? You
and I did not make a covenant with God. No, God made a covenant,
didn't He? God made a covenant of grace
concerning His people. God didn't even make a covenant
with people. The Father and the Son entered into the covenant.
The Father made a covenant of grace with His Son, and that
covenant concerned God's elect. The Son promised to be surety
for those people. He promised to come in the flesh
of those people and to make them righteous by His obedience and
by His sacrifice for their sin. And those elect will be saved
because the Son promised to do everything necessary to save
them. That's the covenant of grace.
All right, now how have God's elect made a covenant with God?
Well, like I said just a second ago, when the father chose a
people to save, he put them in Christ, their surety. And I tell
you this all the time, whatever it is that Christ has done, his
people did because they were in him. And that's how God's
elect made a covenant with God by sacrifice. When Christ our
head agreed to the terms of the covenant, we who believe did
too. And the Holy Spirit's going to
come to those people, and He's going to give them faith in Christ.
So they don't want anything but Christ. They don't want any obedience,
but Christ's obedience. They don't want any sacrifice,
but Christ's sacrifice. Because by God's grace, they
know something. They know that in Christ is the
only way they can stand accepted before God. And God's going to
see to it. All those people are going to
be called to Christ. They're going to be called to
faith in Christ. And one day he's going to do something really
glorious. He's going to gather all of them together to be with
Christ forever. How gracious is it that God would
call sinners to his Son, make them just like his Son, and cause
them to live forever just like his Son, beholding his glory. That's God's grace for those
people. And he describes them in verse 2. He says, out of Zion,
the perfection of beauty, God hath shined. Now here's a description
of all of God's people, the church. God, the Holy Spirit has made
them perfect in Christ. He's made them holy. He's made
them righteous. That's the nature he calls to be born in them in
the new birth. God makes his elect beautiful
by putting Christ's beauty on them, by making them one with
Christ so that he is their beauty. He's their righteousness. How
gracious is it that God would do that for sinners, make them
one with his son so that you can't tell where Christ stops
and where his people begin because they're just one. And this is
another way God makes himself known to the world. It's through
his church. Now we know Christ is the light
of the world, but God spreads the light of the gospel through
this dark world, through the church preaching Christ. God
gives a living example on this earth. of His grace to His people
in the church, what He's made them. And there isn't a chance
any of them can ever perish. Verse 3, Our God shall come and
shall not keep silence. A fire shall devour before Him,
and it shall be very tempestuous round about Him. There seems to me to be long
periods of time Or God's silent. Often it seems like God is silent,
but he won't always keep silence. He will come. He will speak to
his people. He's not going to leave them
to themselves. And when he comes and speaks,
you're going to know it. You're not going to have to wonder,
well, is that the voice of the preacher or is that God? No,
you're going to, when God speaks, you're going to know it. He can't be mistaken. He comes
with this fire that he talks about here, a fire shall devour
before Him. That fire is a picture of God's
justice, God's holiness. Our God is a consuming fire. When you're in His presence,
you'll know it. And everything about Him is tempestuous. Everything
God does, He does in power. When He comes in power, He shakes
everything up. He destroys all the old foundations
and makes new foundations. When God comes in grace, you'll
see His power. Now that applies to every time
the Lord comes to His people. His first coming, when He appeared
in the flesh, was tempestuous, wasn't it? The whole earth was
shaken. He came and made everything new. He did away with the first. He
revealed how that first, that law, all that ceremony all pointed
to Him. He shook everything up and removed
it. Everything was tempestuous about His first coming. And when
He comes to each of His people and He reveals Himself through
the preaching of the gospel, it's a tempestuous time. Everything's
changed. All those old foundations of
faith are removed. Everything but Christ is shaken
away. And then He's promised us He's
coming again. He's coming to this earth a second
time, and when He does, it's going to be as a consuming fire.
Everything about Him is going to be tempestuous, and He's going
to gather all of His people to Himself. You see, every time
Christ comes, it's always better. Every time he comes, it's always
better because he comes in the power of his grace and mercy
and love for his people. Look at verse four. He should
call to the heavens from above and to the earth that he may
judge his people. Now, this is why I've been saying
this first point. Christ has already been judged for his people,
and that's why God can be gracious to them. He's already judged
their sins. He don't have any reason to be
mad at them anymore. And he calls to all of heaven and all of earth.
He says, now you look and see, is there any sin left to their
account? Is there one sin of my people
not paid for? No, there isn't. Because Christ
put everyone, all the sins of all of God's elect, he put it
away under his blood. And every witness in all of creation
one day is going to admit it. Verse six. And heaven shall declare
his righteousness. For God is judge himself. In eternity, everyone, both those
in heaven and those in hell will declare God's righteousness.
They will declare that God is righteous. They'll declare God
judged them in righteousness. Everybody will say they'll, they
will admit God's given me exactly what I deserve. That's what the
people in hell say. They'll say, God's given me just
exactly what I deserve. And everybody in heaven will
say the same thing. God's gracious. But there is also since God given
me everything I deserve because of what Christ earned for me.
I'm here because of God's grace, how Christ earned this for me. There's no need for them to go
to hell, no need for them to go to purgatory. Their sin has
already been judged completely in the person of Christ our sacrifice,
Christ our substitute. I know here's the second judgment.
This is a judgment on God's people who are just going through the
motions of religion. Now, I wish I could say that
this never happens to us. But to our great shame. There
are times when we find ourselves just going through the motions
of religion. Now, we still worship. But there's
no urgency in worship. There's no urgency in finding
Christ in it. There's no urgency to drive down
Hurricane Road to hear word from God. Now, we don't miss very many
services while we're doing this, but you know that this is true. There are times you've just been
to the service and you just know in your heart you might be I
don't know if the word is too smart or too proud or whatever
it is to say it in too shame to say it out loud, but it's
not been a true worship service. Every believer goes through times
like that. Now, the Lord is not going to punish his people who
fall into this trap. The Lord will never punish his
people for their sin. Because of our first point, all
the sin of God's people has already been punished in Christ our substitute.
But now God's still God. God's still holy. He still sees
sin. He's not going to let this matter,
this attitude of heart, go undealt with. Just let it go unchecked. Verse 7. He says, Here, O my
people, and I will speak. O Israel, and I will testify
against thee. I am God, even thy God. Now this is God speaking to His
people. He's talking here to believers.
He calls them My people. And He testifies against them.
And it could be he's telling them something they don't even
realize yet. Now, maybe they do, but it could
be they don't even realize that they've fallen into just this
habit of religion, just going through the outward motions of
religion without any true worship. And he starts to tell us what
that is, verse eight. He says, I will not reprove thee
for thy sacrifices or thy burnt offerings to have been continually
before me. And here's what this verse is
saying. True worship is spiritual. It's not fleshly. True worship
is from the heart. It's not seen in the motions
of the flesh. Now, it's very important for us to
show up at the public worship service, but true worship is
a whole lot more than just showing up and being in the pew. True
worship is a gathering of God's people who've gathered together
to hear word from God and to worship Him in heart, to praise
Him in heart, to worship Him in spirit and in truth. And this is what the Lord is
saying here. He said, I'm not reproving you because of your sacrifices.
You haven't missed one. But the sacrifice has just become,
all it is to you now is a form of religion. It's just offering
the sacrifice so the priest can have his portion or so everybody
can see you, you're offering the sacrifices. and it's not
looking to Christ in the sacrifice. It's not looking to Christ in
our sacrifice. See, the people have fallen into
thinking, well, God will be pleased with me because I'm faithful
to all the aspects of public worship. They think that God
will accept me for my faithfulness. Now, we ought to be faithful.
We ought to be faithful. But when we fall into this, we've
lost sight of how God accepts us in Christ. Not in anything
about it. We ought to be faithful, but
that's not why God accepts us, is it? No, he accepts us in Christ. And we get into these spiritual
stupors, we're not thinking right. If you could think about it clearly
for a moment, how can God be impressed with my faithfulness? God is faithful. God is impressed
with the perfect faithfulness of his son, not ours. And when
we fall into this stupor, the Lord's gonna correct us. That's
what this judgment, this judgment is a correction. And I'm thankful
he does. He's going to always force his
people back to looking to Christ. Verse nine, he says, I will take
no bullock out of thy house, nor he goats out of thy foals.
For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon
a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains
and the wild beasts of the field, they're all mine. If I were hungry,
I would not tell thee. for the world is mine and the
fullness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of bulls
or drink the blood of goats? Now, just like believers sometimes
fall into the trap of thinking that God could be pleased with
us for our faithfulness, we fall into the same trap of thinking
about our giving, that God will be pleased with us because of
our giving. Now again, just for a moment,
think about this, try to clearly. How can God be pleased with our
giving? when he's the ones giving us
everything we have. Whatever it is we give to God, it's just
a small portion of what he's given us, isn't it? How can God
be pleased with our giving when you consider what he's given?
He's already given the unspeakable gift of his son. His son gave
himself to redeem his people. Now you think of that, you think,
oh, I want to be a cheerful giver. I want to be a generous giver
out of a thankful heart. Because that's the only way God's
going to accept our worship, our giving, or anything. It's from a thankful heart. This
worship has to do with the heart. And that's what the Lord's saying
in these verses. He said, I'm not going to take anything from
you, accept anything from you, because you think I need it.
It all already belongs to me anyway. I don't need your cattle
as an offering. All the cattle in the world belong
to me. I don't need the birds that poor people bring as an
offering. If you're too poor to have certain sacrifices, you
could bring a bird or something, you know, but God says, I don't
need those. All the birds in the world are mine. They're mine
to start with. We need to constantly keep this
in the front of our minds. God does not need us. We need
Him. God required those sacrifices
for our benefit so that we would look to Christ. Not because God
needs anything for the likes of us. He required those things
for our benefit so we look to Christ. Now, that being said
about this giving, we ought to give because we want to, because
we're thankful, but not because we think God needs something
from us. Look at verse 14. Offer unto God thanksgiving.
and pay thy vows unto the Most High. Offer unto God thanksgiving. See, this has to do with the
heart, not the hand. Look at over page at Psalm 51
verse 16. For thou desirest not sacrifice,
else would I give it. Thou delightest not in burnt
offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken
and a contrite heart, O God, that will not despise. See, this
has to do with the spirit, with the heart. True worship is heart
worship, and that applies to everything about it. Our giving,
our faithfulness, our singing, our whatever it is. It's the
issues, the heart. Look at 2 Corinthians chapter
9. 2 Corinthians 9. Verse six. But this I say, he
would sow with sparingly, shall reap also sparingly. And he would
sow bountifully, shall reap also bountifully. Every man according
as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give. Not grudgingly
or of necessity, not because you have to. For God loveth a
cheerful giver. See, nothing's mentioned there
about the amount, is it? No, it's from the heart. It's being
a cheerful giver. That's why that, Poor widow woman's
two little coins were of more value than everything else everybody
else put in there. It's from a cheerful heart. That's
what God loves. Now, the psalmist says something
very interesting here. He says, pay your vows. Pay your
vows unto the Most High. Now, what does that mean? Pay
your vows to the Most High? Well, it's not the Nazarite vow
or all other kind of vows you could read about. God, if you
get me out of this, I'll never do that again. God, if you get
me out of this, I'll go to church every Sunday." That's not a vow. That's a lie. That's not a vow.
I'll tell you what it means. It means this. While I'm explaining
this to you, find Jonah, chapter 2. Jonah is right before the
book of Micah. You've got the authorized version.
It's page 1151. This is what paying your vow
means to God. If you claim to believe God,
you claim to believe salvation by grace, not by works, you claim
to believe salvation is in Christ, it's received by faith, not by
works, then pay your vows and quit working. Rest in Christ. That's what that means. You believe
salvation is by grace? Then quit working. And the best
example of that I could find in scripture is in Jonah 2, verse
9. You know the story. Here's Jonah
down there in the belly of that whale. And he says in verse 9,
chapter 2, but I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving.
I will pay that I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord. The Lord must have been pleased
with it because the Lord spake to the fish and the fish vomited
Jonah out on dry land. That is paying your vow. It's
living your life following and looking to Christ. It's worshipping
God because He ought to be worshipped, not because you want to, not
because you have to. It's giving generously because
you want to, not because you're trying to get God to do something
for you. It's serving the Lord out of
love, not out of a sense of duty. That's paying your vow in faith
in Christ. Now that's the way we all ought
to be all the time, isn't it? But every child of God can find
themselves getting lazy and having worship become fleshly from time
to time. So here's the judgment, the second
judgment. Here's how the Lord corrects
his children. It's with trials, it's with troubles, it's things
that force us to seek the Lord. Verse 15, back in our text, Psalm
50. And call upon me in the day of
trouble. I will deliver thee and thou shalt glorify me. Now,
there's no mention of if God would send this day of trouble.
No, there's going to be a day of trouble. That's just a given.
And when it happens, he says, call on me and I will deliver. God has promised in his word
to send his children the day of trouble, the day of trial.
He's going to throw us in the deep end. Well, we're in water
way over our head. And here's why he's going to
do that. He's gonna make it where we, it's obvious to us, we cannot
change this situation. We can't help it, we can't dig
our way out. So that the only thing that we can do is cry to
the Lord. Like Peter, Lord save me. Lord
help me. Lord have mercy on me. Now here's the Lord's love and
mercy and grace. Even to His erring people. That
in spite of everything that we are, in spite of everything that
we've done, how we've become lazy in this matter of worship.
He said, when you call on me in the day of trouble, I am so
gracious. I will hear you. I will hear
you. See, the trouble was all God's
correction that forced us to look again to Christ, to come
again to Christ. That might be why Peter said,
to whom coming? Because we keep coming to him
over and over and over again. We look to him and we keep looking
to him. Because He showed us our need of Him and His sufficiency. So when His people call, God
promises to answer. And see, all that work is done
in the heart. So what is our great need? Our
great need is the need that God would give us a new heart. A
heart that does love Him, that will look to Him, that does trust
Him. And our thanksgiving will be thanks from the heart. Our
worship, when we realize His sufficiency in our need, our
worship will go right back where it belongs. It'll be worship
from the heart. Truly seeking to hear a word
from God. And then we'll glorify God. We'll
glorify Him for who He is. We'll glorify God for what He's
done for us. And the thought was not going
to enter into our mind until the next time. I'm not thinking
about anything I've done for God. It's all who he is and what
he's done for me. See, that was the correction
of grace that we need. It wasn't a punishment at all.
It was a correction of grace for our good. All right, now
here's the third judgment. The third judgment is God's judgment
on the wicked. As we read these verses, I want
you to notice this, that the wicked are not people who live
in what we call open, vile sin. The people that God calls wicked
are people who are in religion without Christ. That's who he's
talking about here in these verses. Now I want to give you just a
few marks here of the wicked religious hypocrite. Number one,
they use the word for their own gain, but they hate what the
word teaches. Verse 16, but under the wicked
God saith, what hast thou to do to declare my statutes or
that thou shouldest take my covenant into thy mouth? seeing thou hadest
instruction and castest my words behind thee. Now the wicked are
religious people and they talk about religious things. They
get some words and some terms here from the book and they talk
about it. They hear something about a covenant,
so they talk about it. Now their covenant is you do
something for God, God will do something for you. But they use
the word covenant. They frame it. We'll see this in just a
minute. They frame it in a lie, but they use the word. They use
the word grace. But it's not unmerited favor. You do something and then God
will be good, you know, God will be gracious to you. They talk
about salvation, but salvation is God doing things for you in
this life and it doesn't have anything to do with the soul.
They never answer the problem of sin. They talk about righteousness,
but righteousness is you quitting all those things you used to
do and start doing some new things. They use those words, but they
don't say what God's word says about them. because they hate
God's instruction on those things. So they're just using this for
a prop. That's all they're using it for.
I noticed today, most of them didn't care anymore. You know,
they got a PowerPoint or something. They don't even make the pretense
of you carrying a Bible anymore. But when they do, they're just
using this for a prop. They hate what's taught in here.
So instead, what they do is they hold this book, but they teach
the traditions of men, not the word of God. That's exactly what
the Pharisees did, isn't it? I mean, this is nothing new.
And the problem is not that they do not understand God's word.
They carry it around in their hand. They read it. They can
understand it. The problem is they hate it.
And God says, you've got no business taking it in your mouth. You
hate because you hate it. They hate what the word teaches.
Now, what does the word of God teach? It teaches Christ, doesn't
it? Well, they hate Christ. They
don't preach Christ. So you know what they do? They
declare statutes. They declare laws. They declare
rules. They declare regulations. They
declare a form of religion. They tell you how to live a better
life in this life. That's all they do. But they
don't teach Christ. They don't teach. If they would
teach Christ, you know what they'd have to do? We'd see Him. In comparison to Him, we'd have
to talk about how sinful we are. We'd have to be like Job and
say, oh, oh, I've heard about you by the hearing of the ear,
but now mine eye seeeth me. I'm putting my hand over my mouth. We'd be like David. Who am I?
What is mine? We'd have to talk about man's
sinfulness, wouldn't we? If we did that, then how can a sinner
who's dead in sin, who can't do anything for God, how can
that sinner be saved? Well, it can only be in Christ.
It can only be by God choosing him because he can't choose God.
It can only be by Christ dying for him because he can't do anything
to put away himself. It can only be by God keeping him because
he can't keep himself. See, if they preach Christ, they're
going to have to talk about the truth of who we are. They're not going
to do that because they hate what the Word teaches. Second,
the wicked religious hypocrite will compromise anything. Verse 18, when thou sawest a
thief, then thou consentest with him, and hast been partaker with
adulterers. False prophets never call sin,
sin. They never call anything that's
wrong, wrong. And isn't that our whole society
today? I was thinking about that today. Is this from what false
prophets have done? Is that why our society today...
I give you a challenge this week.
You find something that society says is wrong. I mean, is wrong,
wrong or nothing? And if you say it's wrong, you're
a bigot for saying it. Even if God's Word says it's
wrong, you're a small-minded bigot for calling it sin. Well, let me go back to my challenge. You'll find something that this
world says wrong. It's teaching this book. But
outside of that, find something. All these scandals you read about
with these false prophets and this, I mean, it's no wonder
they get caught up in these things. But that's not even the real
issue. The real issue, the way you can identify a religious
hypocrite is they will compromise their doctrine. Get along with
people, especially people that got something they want. If you
don't believe in election, they just won't talk about it. Or
they'll deny it altogether. If you just don't believe in
total depravity, well, they just won't talk about it then. Just
keep coming here and keep putting your money in the box, you know,
you're tithing. They just won't talk about depravity and sin.
If you don't believe that there's grace for the guilty, but grace,
God gives grace, people deserve it, well, they just won't even
talk about it. Matter of fact, here's what they'll do. They'll
compromise before you tell them you've got a problem with them.
Here's how they do it. They'll compromise before you
tell them you've got a problem with it. They talk about everything
in a way that both Armenians and Calvinists won't find fault
with. There's a lot of preaching like
that going on in today's world. People call, men who call themselves
Calvinist, but you Armenian wouldn't find one thing wrong with what
they're saying because they refuse to offend the flesh. I compromise. You find a person like that,
you get away from it. God's going to judge that. All
right. Thirdly, the religious hypocrite
speaks evil of people. Verse 19. Thou givest thy mouth
to evil. And thy tongue frameth deceit.
Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother. Thou slanderst thine
own mother's son. Now, here's how they speak evil
or why they speak evil about people. It's because they think
they're better than everybody else. They think they're fit
to be judging everybody. They're quick to speak against
people. They're quick to speak against
God's preacher. They're quick to speak against
God's word. Their tongue lies about it. They
take God's word and they frame it in deceit. They're quick to
speak against God's word. Well, that does not what that
really means. And they're quick to speak against their brother.
They're quick to speak against people in the church. Now, that
seems contrary to saying they won't call sin, sin. This is
what they do to people in the church, what people they call
their brethren. And you know, and you know, the great big fancy
religious title they use for it, church discipline. Well, we've got to have some
church discipline. Better send the elders around. Boy, this
would be an awful job, wouldn't it? You've got to go around and
do some inspections in everybody's house. Kind of grill them while
they're unsuspecting. See if you can find something
wrong in the home. No. Church discipline. You know why they do that? I
can tell you exactly why they do that. They want to know everybody's
sin. They want everybody to confess
their sin. And you know why? It makes them feel holier than
now. That's exactly why they do it. And that's a legalistic
way to operate that doesn't have anything to do with grace, does
it? Now, you confess your sin in your closet alone before God.
That's where you confess your sin. See, that's a way of self-righteousness. That's not a way of Christ, our
righteousness. And we shouldn't be surprised
when God destroys it. All right, here's the last thing.
The religious hypocrite does not know God. And the proof of
it is how they talk about it, verse 21. These things hast thou
done, and I kept silence. Thou thoughtest that I was altogether
such a one as thyself, but I will reprove thee, and set them in
order before thine eyes. Now consider this, ye that forget
God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.
Now these folks go on in their way, and they, I reckon they
really think it. They think God loves everybody.
You know why they think that? Because they think God's like
them. Now, they don't love everybody, but they sure love themselves.
And the only way they can be sure God loves them is to say,
God loves everybody. And they think God should love
them. I love myself so much, I think God should love me. And
they're not holy. You know, they don't think sin
is all that bad. And they think God is just like
them. So they think God will just look the other way on these
things too. Just do the best you can and God will accept it.
And God doesn't swiftly damn them for their rebellion. So
they think he never will, but that's not so. Now the wheels
of justice are turning. God's not going to stay silent
for long. When he comes, it's going to come as a fire to devour.
Everything will be very tempestuous round about him. God is long
suffering. Thank God he's long suffering.
But the day of reckoning is coming. Now, I don't want to end on that
note. All that sounds very frightening,
doesn't it? And I tell you why it sounds
frightening to us, because that's the very nature every one of
us carries around with us. So our comfort in all that is
this. It's right back to where we started. God's grace will
conquer all of His people. God's grace will deliver His
people from all their error. Verse 23. Whoso offereth praise,
glorifieth me. And to him that ordereth his
conversation aright, will I show the salvation of God. God's people
will offer praise, praise from the heart, praise that glorifies
God. And God's people, by God's grace,
they will see God's salvation. I wonder if there's anybody here
tonight We didn't come out to a service on a Wednesday night
because that's just the thing we've always done. This congregation
is very faithful to Jesus. But I wonder if anybody came
like Simeon of old with a heart's desire to see God's salvation. If you did, you're going to be
like old Simeon. He could show it to you. because
he's merciful and gracious to his people. All right, let's
bow together in prayer. Our Father, we humbly bow before
you. The verses that we've just read
has given us a description of who and what we are has humbled
us before you. We fall at your feet with our
face in the dust, humbled before you, begging for your mercy. begging for your grace. You promised
grace to your people. Father, we beg you for it. Oh,
would you be gracious to us? Father, deliver us from going
through the motions of religion. Give us a heart that seeks after
thee, that hungers and thirsts after thee, that desires to hear
word from God. Give us a heart that will praise
you, thank you, follow you, and worship you. Father, continue
to speak to us. You promised you won't stay silent
forever, but you speak to your people. Father, come to us and
speak to us that your glory might be made known, that we might
see your glory in our day, the glory of your power and salvation
of your people. Father, it's in the precious
name of our Lord Jesus Christ for the glory and majesty of
his name.