Let's open our vials again to
Psalm 21. The title of the message this evening is The King Rejoices
With His Subjects. And we know that Psalm 22, the
psalm Lord willing we'll look at next Wednesday, is the psalm
of the cross. But before we get to the psalm
of the cross, in Psalm 21, we have the psalm of the crown.
So before next Wednesday, we go to the foot of the cross.
Tonight, I want us to go to the foot of the throne and bow and
rejoice with Christ our King. Now, throughout this psalm, I
tried to imagine David writing this psalm. I can't imagine what
it was to write under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but I can't
imagine David really felt like he was writing about himself
here. This is clearly Christ David's King speaking. He's speaking
through David and it's Christ the King, the Lord Jesus Christ,
the King of all rejoicing. Now, what does the Lord Jesus
Christ rejoice in? You know, I thought when I rejoice,
it's usually because something's happened I didn't expect or I'm
surprised by something. He's never surprised by anything.
What causes the God of glory to rejoice? It's got to be something
very spectacular, doesn't it? That would cause God to rejoice. I see about five or six things
in this psalm that our Savior rejoices in. And the first one
is this, and this is really the sum of the whole psalm. Christ
the Savior rejoices in the salvation of his people. Verse one. The
king shall joy in thy strength, O Lord, and in thy salvation,
how greatly shall he rejoice. Now the king shall joy in thy
strength. As a man, the Lord Jesus rejoiced
how his father strengthened him at all times so that he could
accomplish his purpose, his mission of redemption. Now as God, the
Lord Jesus has all power, all strength, doesn't he? But as
a man, he needed to be strengthened, to be able to do what he came
to do, because it's a big job. And the Father always strengthened
him to do it. You remember after our Lord fasted
40 days, and then Satan came and tempted him. And eventually
Satan left him, because he found nothing in him. There was nothing
in the Savior to be the same, to have fellowship with, and
nothing that was similar. between the two of them, and
he left the Lord. And after he did, angels came
ministering to the Lord Jesus. They came and strengthened him.
And then you remember in the garden, before the Savior went
to the cross, he was in agony there at the garden. He sweat
as it were, great drops of blood. His body was just in agony at
the thought of what he was about to do, at the thought of being
made sin at the thought of his father forsaking him. And he
prayed and the father sent angels to strengthen him so that he
could go finish the work of redeeming his people. And this is important
for us to always remember as a man, the Lord Jesus was strengthened
by his father. That shows us that the son of
God became a real man. Now, we can't understand that,
but the son of God became a real man. so that He could be the
representative of real men and women just like us. He became
a real man so He could be the sacrifice for real sinful men
and women just like we are. And because He received divine
strength from His Father, the Lord Jesus Christ is mighty to
save. And He rejoices in the salvation
that He accomplished for His people. And don't we rejoice
right along with Him? Well, sure we do. We're thrilled
that He's mighty to save because that's what it takes to save
sinners like us, doesn't it? It takes a mighty Savior. Well,
He's mighty to save. And He truly rejoices in the
salvation of His people. It's no small thing to Him. Now,
He wasn't surprised by it, was He? He knew from all of eternity
that He was going to save His people. But He greatly rejoices
to see them saved. He rejoices, he celebrates to
see his people redeemed because he loves them. And you think
of that, the son of God rejoicing because he loves a maggot like
us. He rejoices to see them saved. He rejoices to see them cleansed
from their sin. And he was so happy to do it.
He willingly, happily went to the cross to be made sin for
his people, to take all of their shame, to take all of their sin.
Even though he knew the agony he would suffer, the agony that
he would suffer at the cross was unspeakable. But he went
there willingly because with joy in his heart, he rejoiced
to see the people that he loves redeemed. And now that work is
done. And in complete and utter success,
he sits upon the throne of glory And he greatly rejoices to see
his people called out through the preaching of the gospel.
The Savior said there's joy in heaven over one sinner that repents.
And I can tell you the one who's rejoicing the most is the Savior
who bought them, the Savior who died for them, the Savior who
cleansed them. And all of his subjects rejoice
with him. Nothing makes a believer happier
than the salvation we have in the Lord Jesus Christ. Second,
the Savior rejoices because his prayer is heard. Verse two. Thou
has given him his heart's desire and has not withholding the request
of his lips. Now, you know, from reading the
four gospels, the Lord Jesus was a man of prayer. How often
he go apart and pray all night long, he would pray. This is
the son of God. He was a man of prayer. Now that
ought to tell us something about how important prayer is. He was
a man of prayer and he rejoiced that the father always heard
him. The father always gave him everything
he asked for. His father gave him his heart's
desire and he rejoices as someone who's fully satisfied. His heart
is satisfied. Now again, What did the son of God ask for?
He owns everything. It's all his. He said, if I was
hungry, I wouldn't ask you. The cattle on a thousand hills
are mine. This is all mine. What's his heart's desire? What
is it that he would ask his father for? What was so important that
it would be the heart's desire of the God man? It's eternal
life for his people. Look at verse four. This is what
he asked for. He asked life of thee, and thou
gavest it him, even length of days, for ever and ever. He asked
life of thee. First, he asked life for himself.
He asked that the Father glorify him in his work at Calvary, this
work of redemption. He asked the Father to glorify
him. He asked the Father to resurrect him from the dead, didn't he?
And he wasn't asking for a favor. He was asking, Father, glorify
me. because my sacrifice put away the sin of my life. All
that sin laid on me, my sacrifice put it away. Now honor me, glorify
me by raising me from the dead. And second, he asked life for
his people. And when he asked life for his
people, his father gave him his heart's desire. He gave him eternal
life, life that Christ purchased for his people. The father gave
him everything he asked for. Look over in in John 17. This
is talk about the Lord being a man of prayer. Here's his high
priestly prayer. The desire of his heart was to
glorify his father. And to receive the glory and
saving his people. John 17 verse one. These words
fake Jesus and lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father,
the hours come. Glorify thy son, that thy son
also may glorify thee. And verse four, he says, I have
glorified thee on the earth. I finished the work which thou
gavest me to do. And now, O father, glorify thou
me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee
before the world was. He asked for glory. He asked
to be able to glorify his father. And his father gave him everything
he asked for. The sacrifice of Christ. glorified every attribute
of God. We would think God's justice
and God's mercy are two opposing attributes. Those things could
never be satisfied by the same thing. God's justice, his insistence
on punishing sin, and his insistence on showing mercy to sinners,
how can they be satisfied at the same time? They both were
satisfied. They both were glorified in the
death of Christ as a substitute for his people. Christ glorified
both God's holiness, His absolute utter sinlessness, and at the
same time, His forgiveness of sin. That could only happen through
the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Father gave Him what He asked
for. He glorified His Father in every way. And when that great
transaction was done, the Father gave all glory to His Son. He gave Him everything. because his sacrifice glorified
him. Then second, or next, or third,
I suppose, Christ wanted his people to be kept, verse 11.
And now I'm no more in the world, but these are in the world, and
I come to thee. Holy Father, keep, through thine
own name, those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one
as we are. The Father granted him the request
of his lips, didn't he? The Father keeps everyone that
Christ died for. Why wouldn't he? Christ made
all of them perfect, and the Savior rejoices in them being
kept. Then, verse 24, he asked his
Father that all of his people be with him. Verse 24, Father,
I will, that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where
I am, that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me,
For thou lovest me before the foundation of the world. The
request of the Savior, his heart's desire, is that all the people
that he loves, all those people the Father gave him, be with
him where he is. That's his heart's desire. Now,
when one of our loved ones dies, one of our loved ones who believes
Christ, we sorrow, don't we? I promise you, the Cronin family
is sorrowing. Well, this is a time of loss
for them. But you know what's going on with our Lord? He's
rejoicing. He rejoices in the glorious homecoming
of one of his children. This is the request of his lips,
his heart's desire, and his father's given him what he asked for and
brought that child home to be with him. The Savior rejoices.
And one day we will too. One day we will. We don't now,
but one day we will. We will when we're there. We'll
rejoice fully, just like our Savior does. But you know, from
the time of our Lord's earthly ministry, as He was a man of
prayer, right up until now, right up until the end of time, nothing's
changed. Not one thing has changed. The
Father still hears Christ. The Father still gives Him every
request of His lips. The Father still gives Him His
heart's desire as the intercessor for His people. Christ asked
the request of his lips. Father, forgive, forgive the
sin of my people. And it always is always because
of the blood of the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. I've
heard this somewhere. I've told you this before, but
it's a good time to remind us of it. As Christ sits there on
the right hand of his father, making intercession for his people.
Really, he doesn't even have to make the request of his lips,
does he? The father sees the sacrifice. He sees the scars.
He sees that his son, the lamb as it had been slain. And that's
always all it takes. The sacrifice of Christ. That's
all it takes. And the father, without hesitation,
forgives the sin of his people. As the intercessor of his people,
Christ asks his people to be accepted. And they always are. Accepted in the beloved. Accepted
because the obedience of Christ is imputed to them They're accepted
as the son himself. The father gives his son his
heart's desire, always. And our Savior rejoices. He rejoices
to see his people blessed like that. And we join right in with
him, rejoicing with our Savior, because he's always heard. He's
always heard for this purpose. He ever lives for this purpose,
to make intercession for his people. Don't you rejoice in
that? Think right now, right now, Christ
himself is at the right hand of God making intercession for
our weak sinful worship, making intercession and it's accepted. The father always gives him his
heart's desire. All right, thirdly, Christ rejoices
in the eternal covenant of grace. Verse 3 of our text, Psalm 21. For thou preventest him with
the blessings of goodness. Thou set us the crown of pure
gold on his head. Now the word prevent us there
doesn't, isn't used in that day, like the way we would use it.
You know, we talk about a prevent, like you're trying to stop somebody
from doing something. That's not the way this word
was used at all. This is an old English word that
means to proceed or to go before. What the Savior is rejoicing
in is pervenient grace. It's grace that goes before,
grace before grace. This is God's grace that comes
to us before we even realize it, before we even realize it's
saving grace. And y'all know what that is.
It's God's grace that kept you alive so you could hear the gospel. It's God's grace that puts you
in a place where you could hear the gospel. Why weren't you born
in Timbuktu somewhere? It's God's grace. It's grace
before grace putting you in a place where you hear the gospel. The
Lord just took a bunch of seemingly insignificant and unrelated little
minor events and worked those things all together just to make
it happen that you'd be in a place where you heard a gospel preacher
where the Spirit moved to give you life. A man told me last
night at Danville. He said, I came here for years
and years and years. Heard Brother Don preach the
gospel over and over and over and over again. And he said,
we had a special service and Brother Henry was preaching.
And I was sitting there. And Henry made this statement.
Who else you gonna believe but God? And he said, all of a sudden,
that all opened up to me. He said he didn't say anything
different. Don's been saying all that time. But the Lord used
that moment to reveal himself to me. Why didn't that fellow
stay home and watch Bonanza that night? Grace before grace. It's God's grace that brought
him to the place that he could hear the gospel and believe it.
And our Savior rejoices in that pervenient grace. Grace that
goes before to bring to pass God's purpose of saving grace
for His people. Now we rejoice in that. What
little we know about pervenient grace, how the Lord worked things
together to bring us to a certain place. But our Savior rejoices
on a much grander scale than that. Think about the time that
David was writing this psalm. David sat down one evening and
wrote this psalm. Christ wasn't going to come incarnate
for another thousand years. But David's writing about the
work of the Lord Jesus, the redemptive work of Christ. He's all writing
about it in the past tense as a finished work that Christ is
already rejoicing in. Long before the Lord ever wore
a crown of thorns, he wore a crown of thorns bearing the curse of
sin for his people. The father had already crowned
him with a crown of pure gold. a crown of pure deity, a crown
of pure glory. Because in the mind and purpose
of God, the work was done. The work of redemption was done.
And from eternity, Christ the Savior rejoiced in that grace. Look over at Proverbs chapter
8. He always has rejoiced. When only the Father and the
Son, the Holy Spirit, when only God existed, Christ the Savior
rejoiced in the salvation of his people, in God's grace that
would save his people. Proverbs 8, verse 30. Then he says, and you know the
preceding verses there, but before anything was ever created, then
I was by him. As one brought up with him, and
I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him, rejoicing
in the habitable part of his earth, and my delights were with
the sons of men. Even at that time, my rejoicing
and my delights were with the sons of men that God chose to
save. At that time, when only God existed,
Christ the Savior rejoiced in God's electing grace, His election
of a people. Long before us, He rejoiced in
that. He rejoiced in the eternal justification
of His people. You know, people like to argue
about, well, when is a sinner justified? You know, were we
justified in eternity when the Father chose us? Were we justified
when Christ died and gave up the ghost? Were we justified
the moment we believed? Yes. It takes all three, doesn't
it? And in eternity, Christ rejoiced
in the justification of his people. He rejoiced that the Father always
saw his people washed in the blood of Christ. the lamb slain
from the foundation of the earth. God has never seen his people
in their season. Never. He's always seen them
as pure and spotless. He's always seen them washed
in the blood of Christ and Christ the Savior rejoiced. He rejoiced
in that eternal, unchangeable covenant of God's grace that
guarantees the salvation of the people that he loves. All of
his subjects join with rejoicing with our King. What a salvation. What a Savior. All right. Fourthly, Christ rejoices in
his success as the Savior. Bagnartek, Psalm 21, verse 5. His glory is great in thy salvation. Honor and majesty has thou laid
upon him. For thou hast made him most blessed
forever. Thou hast made him exceeding
glad with thy countenance. Now you know that God's chief
glory, of all the glory of God, his chief glory is saving sinners
by his mercy and by his grace. This is the glory that Christ
prayed for. You just read it in John 17. He prayed for this
glory and the Father gave it to him. Christ did save his people
from their sin. He went to the cross and he completed
the transaction. He paid for the sin of His people,
put it away, made them holy, made them righteous. And because
He accomplished this great purpose of Almighty God, the Father gave
His Son all glory and all honor. It all belongs to Him. Christ
did what He came to do. He came to this world to save
sinners. Now I'm talking about real sinners, vile, guilty sinners
that couldn't be saved any other way. They cannot be saved by
their law keeping. They can't be saved by all their
religious activity. Matter of fact, all that stuff
that they're trying to do to please God, all it does is just
adds to their condemnation. They can't do one thing for themselves. They're so vile, they're so guilty.
They're such rebels, they wouldn't do anything for themselves anyway.
They wouldn't even try to please God. The only way they could
ever be made whole is in Christ. The only way they could ever
be washed from all of the filth and stain of their sin was by
the Son of God dying in their place, shedding His blood to
wash away their sin. And that's what Christ came to
do. And He did it. He had to take their sin away
from them and make it His. And then He paid for it with
His life's blood. That's the only way they could
be saved. He had to die in their place. The only way they could
have life is if Christ died in their place. And he did. The
Son of God actually died. There's another thing we can't
fully understand. We can rejoice in it, but we can't understand
it. The Son of God died. They took a dead corpse down
from that tree and put it in a tomb. Wrapped it up and did
whatever they did with it and put it in a tomb. And he lay
there dead for three days. And then he rose, rolled the
stone away and walked out because death couldn't hold him. Death
had no reason to hold him. All the sin that was charged
to him had been put away. Death could not hold him. He
rose again. He appeared to his disciples.
And then he opened their understanding that they might understand the
scripture. Now they understood what all those sacrifices were
talking about. Now they see how sins can be
put away. And about 40 days later, he ascended
back on high. They stood there watching. There
he goes up into the clouds. And when he got there, when he
arrived in heaven, the Father crowned him with all glory and
all honor. I mean, you just imagine what
a homecoming that was. The Father just covered. He's
not talking about just a little crown he put on his head. He
covered him with all glory and all honor. And the father told
his son, now you sit right here at my right hand. You sit on
the throne of glory and you just wait. To all those people that
you suffered and died for, all those people that you love, you
sit here right on this throne and you wait till they're all
brought home. Till they all come to your feet at this throne to
behold your glory, to be with you where you are. You wait right
here on this throne. Let all your enemies become your
footstool. You're the mighty, successful, victorious Savior
and all glory belongs to you. Look at Philippians chapter 2.
Now for a while, for a little while, the Lord Jesus Christ
was humbled as a man. He was humbled to become a servant
of His Father. For a little while, for a few
hours, He was humbled to become the sacrifice for his sin, for
the sin of his people. For a little while, he was humbled
to suffer death for his people, but no more, no more. The man
of sorrows will never be a man of humility and sorrow anymore.
Now he's a man who has all glory and he rejoices in it. Philippians
2 verse 5, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ
Jesus, who being in the form of God, Thought it not robbery
to be equal with God. It wasn't robbery for him to
say he's equal with God because he was. He's equal with God because
he is God. But look what he did, verse 7.
He made himself of no reputation. He took upon him the form of
a servant. He was made in the likeness of men. And being found
in fashion as a man, he humbled himself. How he humbled himself
and became obedient unto death even the death of the cross,
even the cursed death of the cross, wherefore, because he
did that, God also hath highly exalted him and given him a name
which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee
should bow, things in heaven and things in earth and things
under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. He's been given
all glory. And every one of His subjects
rejoices. All glory and honor ought to
be His. We want all glory and honor to be given to Him. And
right now, Christ is the successful Savior ruling over this whole
shooting match. And He rejoices in it. He's ruling
over everything to guarantee the salvation of His people.
Now I'm telling you, that's the most glorious thing I've ever
heard. I can't imagine anything more glorious than that. It's
no wonder all of his subjects join in rejoicing with Christ
our King. He's the successful Savior. And we can never forget how amazing
this is. You think who he did this for.
He didn't do this for good people. He didn't do this for people
who liked him. He didn't do this for people who backed him. No,
he did it for sinners. He did it for people who were
the opposite of him. He did it for his enemies. He did it for
people who were so much lower than him, how he condescended
to get down on our level, to save his people. But that's what
he did. And if salvation is of God, that's
the way it has to be. God saves sinners by grace. then
he's got to condescend to Satan. It's by grace, not because they
earned it, not by merit, but by His grace. And we rejoice. If the Savior rejoices, if the
source of all God's grace, if the source of it rejoices, how
much should the objects of grace rejoice? We do, don't we rejoice
with Christ our King? And our rejoicing is all in Him. It's in Him. It's in Him. It's
Him. As Christ sits there at His Father's
right hand, He says, Thou hast made Him exceeding glad with
Thy countenance. Now He's talking about Him. He's
talking about God. But Father and the Son, they
rejoice in seeing each other's face. You can understand something
about that. Nothing makes the believer rejoice
more than the smiling, gracious countenance of our Savior. Nothing
will make a child of God rejoice more than seeing the glory of
God in the face of Jesus Christ. It's Him. We desire Him. Look here at verse 6 in our text.
It says, Thou hast made Him most blessed forever. It doesn't just
mean you've given Him all blessing. What that literally translated
means is you have made Him the blessing. He has made Christ
to be. every blessing for his people.
Christ is the blessing. Seeing Christ by faith. That's
the blessing of his people. Being in his presence. Those
times we feel like we've been in the presence of God. Worshipping
him. That he has blessed our meeting
as we've opened his word and read it and preached from it.
And he's met with us. That's the blessing. That's the
blessing that we live for. That's the blessing the believer
lives for, for those times that we're in the presence of our
Savior, worshiping Him. Our greatest blessing is not
things. I imagine it's always been this
way, but it is more blatant and more obvious than It has to be
now, anytime in the history of this planet, that all people
want are things. They just, they want things from
God. They just, you know, they're
trying to bribe God. Well, if I, you know, go to church and I
give and I do these things and I live right, you know, you give
me more stuff. That's not the blessing of scripture. He is
the blessing. He is the blessing. The greatest
blessing is a person and our rejoicing is in him. to know
Him, to be found in Him. He's the blessing. If you get
Him, you got it all. All right, here's the fifth thing.
Christ the Savior rejoices in a salvation that cannot be lost. For the King trusteth in the
Lord, and through the mercy of the Most High, He shall not be
moved. Now, the Father and the Son,
in eternity, before anything was created, entered into a covenant
of grace. And it's like a contract. They
both agreed to do something. It's a large contract with far
reaching effects. Yet it's a simple contract, simple,
clear terms, but they're terms that are hard to fulfill. Only
the father and only the son can fulfill the terms of this covenant.
The father elected a people to say, gave them to his son. And the son agreed to do everything
it takes to save those people. And the father and the son trusted
each other. They trusted each other to do
what they said they'd do. Look in Ephesians chapter 1. The son said, Father, I'll take
these people. I'll be surety for them. I'll
bring them back. I'll bring them back to you.
And the Father trusted the Son to do it. Ephesians 1 verse 2,
or verse 12, excuse me, verse 12. That we should be to the praise
of His glory who first trusted in Christ. Now who is that that
first trusted in Christ? It's God the Father. He's the
first one that trusted Christ to save His people from their
sins. And the Son trusted the Father. He trusted the father
to accept his obedience as righteousness for his people. He trusted his
father to accept his sacrifice for the sin of his people. And
you know, he could trust the father that way completely because
the father is holy. He's just, he'll do what's right.
And now the great transaction is done. The price has been paid
and Christ rejoices that the salvation of his people cannot
be He's been set upon the throne of glory and he cannot be moved. He can't be moved away from his
purpose for his people. He can't be moved off of his
throne because God's mercy endureth forever. So it cannot be changed. And the objects of God's mercy
join in rejoicing with Christ our Savior, rejoicing in mercy
to sinners. You know, people talk about falling
from grace, falling from mercy. You can't fall from mercy if
it's mercy. Now, if it's something you earned,
if mercy is something that you earned, if grace is something
that you earned, well, I reckon you could lose it because you
might do something to unearn it, right? But mercy is unearned. You didn't earn grace. God gave
it to you freely. You didn't do anything to get
it. then you can't do anything to lose it. His mercy endureth
forever, and sinners rejoice. We rejoice. If we trust Christ,
we ought to rejoice, shouldn't we? If he said, I shall not be
moved. Well, if we trust in him, we
shall not be moved either. That's what David said in Psalm
62, I shall not be moved. He'll not be moved. If I'm in
him, I'll not be moved either. A sinner rejoices because salvation
is received in mercy. Mercy is for the guilty. Now,
a guilty sinner, they can't earn something. They can't do something
to make God happy with them. But a guilty sinner can be saved
in mercy. Christ the Savior rejoices in
mercy for his people. You know, you can't really rejoice
in something that you earned. You find satisfaction in it.
When I used to work at the warehouse, they'd come around every Friday
and give me a check, and I was glad to get it. I didn't really
rejoice in it, but I found a lot of satisfaction in it, because
I earned that. I mean, I earned that. I found
some satisfaction in it, but I didn't really rejoice in it.
But we rejoice in mercy. Mercy is undeserved. Mercy is something a sinner can't
expect, but God gives it to us anyway, and we rejoice. All right, now lastly, Christ
rejoices because all of his enemies will be destroyed. Verse eight.
Thine hand shall find out all thine enemies. Thy right hand
shall find out all those that hate thee. Thou shalt make them
as a fiery oven in the time of thine anger. The Lord shall swallow
them up, and his wrath and the fire shall devour them. Their
fruit shalt thou destroy from the earth, and their seed from
among the children of men. For they intended evil against
thee. They imagined a mischievous device which they were not able
to perform. Therefore thou shalt make them
turn their back, when thou shalt ready thine arrows upon thy strings
against the face of them." Now here we've been looking at God's
elect, His mercy for His people. They'll all be saved. And the
Savior rejoices. But now he talks about his enemies.
Here's the other side of the coin, his enemies. They'll all
be destroyed. Every one of them will perish.
And that's cause for rejoicing too. There's not going to be
a trace of them left. Their seed's going to be destroyed
from the earth. Just like a piece of paper tossed
in a fire. They'll be utterly consumed.
There's not going to be a trace of them left. I feel sorry for them now. I
mean, honestly, I feel sorry for them. It just is heartbreaking
to me to see the things that people trust in, to trust in
an idol that cannot save, to trust in their own works that
are just condemning them. It's so sad. And I pray that
the Lord save them. I pray that the Lord would have
just a mighty work of grace in this day. But I don't feel sorry
for them in this way. They're enemies of Christ. Now,
they're enemies of Christ. It's not that they've got some
good things that we can, you know, find some common ground
and agree on and there's some good things, you know, we can
take from them and learn from them. No, sir. They're enemies. They're enemies. There's a clear line drawn on
the sand here. They're enemies of God. Now, I pity them. I do. I pity them. But I'm not
going to make allowances for them. I'm not going to join in
with them just because I feel sorry for them and, you know,
make some compromises because I feel sorry for them. No, they're
enemies of my God. And when the Lord finally does
destroy them, we're going to rejoice. We won't pity them a
bit. But until then, that's then,
that's not now. Until then, let's pity them.
Let's pray for them. What does scripture say? Such
were some of you. You talk about the enemies of
Christ out there. Man-made free will religion.
What about the enemy that for years and years and years sits
in the pew? Such were some of you. Maybe
the Lord be merciful to them just like he was us. Could be,
huh? But make no mistake about it. Right now, they're enemies
of God. They plot to make it so you can't
hear the gospel. They put the gospel out of business
in this town, everywhere if they could, but they're not going
to succeed. Every plot to overthrow our king
fails, and he rejoices in their failure. They failed all through
history, and they're going to keep failing. Herod tried it,
didn't he? I'll tell you what I'll do. He
didn't learn anything from history. He tried to do what Pharaoh did.
Let's just kill all the boy babies. You don't have to worry about
this deliverer. And God laughed. Pilate tried to get rid of him.
The scribes and Pharisees tried to get rid of him. And all they
did was exalt him all the more. So don't you fear them. Don't
you fear their plots. They're not going to succeed
in overthrowing our king. He rules and reigns with all
glory, rejoicing in the salvation of his people. Now verse 13,
here's the response of his subjects. Be thou exalted, Lord, in thine
own strength. So will we sing and praise thy
power. All of the subjects of Christ
the King say, let Christ be exalted. Everything we do, everything
we say, everything we think, let it go to the glory and exaltation
of Christ our King. And that's what we're gonna get
ready to do. Here in a moment after we close in prayer, us
join together and sing the praises of our Savior and our King. Our
Father, how we thank you for this time of worship. Father,
I pray that you would apply your word to our hearts, that it would
cause us to see the glory and the honor of Christ our Savior
and cause us to rejoice in him. How we thank you for a Savior
who would condescend to do such a glorious effective saving work
for sinful people such as we are. Father, we're thankful.
Enable us now to sing the praises of our Savior and to go home
and go through the rest of our week not being quite so worried
and quite so taken up with the goings on of this life and cause
us to go forth rejoicing in Christ our Savior. It's in his precious
name we pray and give thanks.