Psalm 149, just a short psalm,
and yet a very lovely psalm, and our verse is going to be
taken this evening from the fourth verse of Psalm 149. Let's read
it together. Praise ye the Lord, sing unto
the Lord a new song, and his praise in the congregation of
saints. Let Israel rejoice in him that
made him. Let the children of Zion be joyful
in their king. Let them praise his name in the
dance. Let them sing praises unto him
with the timbrel and harp. For the Lord taketh pleasure
in his people. He will beautify the meek with
salvation. Let the saints be joyful in glory. Let them sing aloud upon their
beds. Let the high praises of God be
in their mouth and a two-edged sword in their hand, to execute
vengeance upon the heathen and punishments upon the people.
to bind their kings with chains and their nobles with fetters
of iron, to execute upon them the judgment written, this honour
have all his saints. Praise ye the Lord. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
these thoughts this evening and encourage us in the reading of
the scriptures together. The gospel is an amazing thing. And that is the phrase that I
want you to carry from this evening. The gospel is amazing. And tomorrow,
if you find yourself at work or in the garden or shopping
or studying or relaxing, and you find yourself pausing and
thinking and being somewhat distracted from the concentration of whatever
activity it is that you are embarked upon, then I hope you'll find
your mind returning to this thought that the gospel is amazing. We only know anything about the
gospel by grace and that in itself perhaps ought to give us an initial
foundation about thinking about anything to do with this gospel
of God or the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is only by the
grace of God that we have any revelation of God's nature, his
person, his will and his purpose, the means and the accomplishments
of that great plan of salvation. We only know about the gospel
because God has designed it and revealed it and directed it to
us. There are perhaps millions of
people in this world who have never heard the gospel. And yet God has led us to hear
that word, to receive that word, to find that word real and true
and vital and engaging in our life's experience. And for all
the men and women who have lived and died on this world, The Lord
God has given us to taste and see that he is good by the revelation
of his gospel to us. In another age and in another
place, we'd never have known these truths, but God in his
providential care of his people has brought these things to our
knowledge and to our awareness. So the gospel is an amazing thing. It's bigger than we can imagine. It's grander and more far-reaching
than we can possibly know. It's older and deeper and fixed
upon a more settled and sure foundation than we in our ability can comprehend. The gospel is the outworked wisdom
of God. It is deliberately designed for
the glory of Christ, and it is an expression of the eternal,
infinite, omniscient determination of God. to save his people and
glorify his Son. It reveals truths that are otherwise
inconceivable and incomprehensible to man. It provides a framework of divine
purpose and it states simply but powerfully how things are,
what has been, and what will become of all things. Most people, I would dare say
most churches, have not a sufficiently enlarged view of what the gospel
is. And there are many, many churches
who imagine that the gospel is a simple proposition that is
set before men to be accepted or rejected, that it's a few
trite statements a presentation that can be made in 40 minutes,
or 10 minutes, or five minutes, or one minute. But the gospel is
far less, or sorry, far more than a simple offer. made to men and women on which
their eternal eventualities and destinies are based. The gospel
is the whole work of God in accomplishing his purpose for both heaven and
hell. And as we read in our opening
hymn from Mr. Watts, that picture in Romans
chapter nine of the the potter and the clay, shows us, if we
have eyes to see, the extent and the nature of God's sovereign
power in the determination of the ends of men and women and
Adam's fallen race. The gospel is the everlasting
purpose of God. It is the revealed will of God. It is the express authority of
God, and it is the power of God unto salvation to chosen sinners. Those who preach and hold free
will, they just have a little gospel, a little gospel that
is no gospel at all. It is a cheap, crude, imitation
gospel that employs some of the vocabulary of the Bible, some
of the language of Zion, some of the words of gospel truth,
but it is merely peddled and sold for influence and power
and pride. To such free willers, To them,
the gospel is a few banal statements made to men and women by which
they are invited to pass judgment on the glory of God and the purpose
of God. And though they are insensible
to the fact that the choice of God in salvation and damnation
has already been fixed, they fail to see that eternal destinies
under God's gospel are unalterably settled. I came to the little
verse that we have before us this evening, somewhat late in
the week, truth be told, as I was anticipating this service. But
I believe that it has a lovely message for us. And I've been
thinking about it over the last couple of days and endeavouring
to forge and to mould a message for us from the Lord from this
little verse, the fourth verse of Psalm 149. Let me read it
to you again. It says, Now, what I want you
to notice in this verse is the order in which things are stated.
These things are spoken. by God the Holy Spirit through
the psalmist and they are directed to us whether that is as a song
or as spoken word for our meditation. They are spoken to us in order
that we might hear the voice of God and discern the revelation
of God in these great truths. Because whether or not these
are from the Old Testament or the New, they speak of gospel
purpose and they speak of the plan of God for his people. so that those people who are
spoken of in this verse, though they may originally have been
Old Testament Jews, hearing the voice of King David in the words
of the psalm or whatever writer it happened to be. I read somewhere
once that the Jews have an idea that every psalm that is not
named is a psalm of David. Be that as it may, if they are
hearing in these words the Old Testament praises of God, They
must look beyond that to see gospel in these verses also. And with New Testament eyes and
understanding, we discern that the Lord is speaking here about
his people whom he has chosen. And those that are spoken of
when it says his people, for the Lord taketh pleasure in his
people, are a people for whom this pleasure that God takes
in them is pre-salvation. So when I said that I wanted
us to notice the order in which these things are stated, I want
you to notice that the Lord God takes pleasure in His people
before He bestows salvation upon them. Now often people will say
that God's pleasure in a believer begins when that believer gives
their life to God. But that's not what this verse
is telling us. This verse is quite clear. It
says, And so it speaks about a pre-salvation pleasure that
God has for his people. And indeed it is a pleasure that
he has in them before they are made beautiful, which is another
aspect of this verse. He will beautify the meek with
salvation. Now there is a sense of course
in which all men and women are God's people because they are
all created by God. God created all things and God
created Adam and from Adam and Eve came all people. But these
that are spoken of in this verse and in this psalm, they are not
all people, but rather they are the sanctified people. They are
the congregation of saints. They are that people that have
been set apart by the Lord in his eternal purpose for the good
of their souls. So these are not all people,
but rather a section of people. They are the elect people, the
people in whom the Lord God takes pleasure. and with whom God is
well pleased. They are a particular people,
and we've been thinking about the way in which God's elective
purpose set aside and set apart a group upon whom he chose to
be merciful and gracious. And this is that people upon
whom the pleasure of God now rests. And when we spoke about
the gospel being wonderful and amazing, this is the gospel. The gospel isn't just a message
that's preached in a sermon. The gospel is not an offer that
is made at the end of a sermon. The gospel is the whole plan
of salvation as it is vested in the covenant of God's grace
and peace. This is the message of grace
and goodness that God has revealed to the world. This Revelation
is a fact so wonderful, so undeserved, so unexpected, that to know it
is to wonder at it and to stand in its shadow with awe and amazement. So what I want to do is just
take the sections of this little verse and perhaps unpack them
briefly for our consideration this evening and trust that the
Lord is pleased to apply some of these things, some of these
phrases, some of these thoughts to our hearts and souls for our
comfort and encouragement this evening. The first thing I want
you to notice then is that the Lord taketh pleasure in his people. And that is a reference there
to the Lord God Jehovah. It is the Lord God in his three
persons, the triune God. And as we go through this verse
and these thoughts, we will see perhaps how all of the persons
of the Godhead are involved in the beautifying and the salvation
of God's chosen people. But we will see too, I trust,
that it is God himself that takes the initiative in all of these
things. It is God, the Lord God Jehovah,
that has pleasure in his people. And this immediately takes us
back to that everlasting love that God has for his people. I have loved thee with an everlasting
love. And as we go through and think
about some of the aspects that flow from these phrases this
evening, we will see that there is this everlasting, there is
this grand, this huge, this wonderful dimension to the purpose of God
and the pleasure of God in his people. And pleasure, of course,
is at once notable because here we have the triune God declaring
that he takes pleasure in men. Is that possible? We might wonder. Is that feasible
to think that that is in any way a truth and a reality that
God takes pleasure in sinful men? In sinners who are rebels
and wicked and disobedient? Could we not, for example, find
in the Word of God that sin is clearly set forth in the Bible
as abhorrent to a holy God? And might we not legitimately
construe and deduce from that with biblical warrant and authority
that wrath, not pleasure, characterizes God's justified attitude and
response towards men? That he is angry with the wicked? And yet the word of God says,
the Lord taketh pleasure in his people. Here it is, pleasure. While we see the testimony of
scripture, that anger and wrath ought to fall upon the head of
the sinner. God declares that he takes pleasure
in his people. Now a key to understanding this
opening phrase of the verse is surely to lift our eyes off from
men in general to view the man. that is the Lord Jesus Christ. And as we raise our gaze from
off of ourselves and the wonder and the perplexity that
thinking about God's pleasure upon us, knowing our nature,
knowing our heart, knowing our attitudes, knowing our actions,
knowing the wickedness of our thoughts, that God should have
any pleasure upon us. When we see beyond ourselves
and look to the man Christ Jesus, then we are called to remember
that these are not saved. because of anything in themselves,
but on the part of that man, Christ Jesus. The Son of Man,
as we were thinking about a few days ago. And let us remember,
as we think about the Lord Jesus Christ in the context of these
people, that it is his representative role, his mediating, his role
as the intercessor that is here in view. Because let us remember
that these are not saved people. or at least any people who are
in existence who have, by anything in themselves, saved themselves
or received any knowledge of that salvation. Because their
salvation has not yet taken place. That's the point that we were
making when we referred to the fact that God's pleasure was
upon these people before he beautified them with salvation. So His pleasure is not founded
upon their obedience, or indeed their faith, or their desire
after Him, or anything in themselves that reflects goodness. But God's pleasure is in His
Son. He is the one who is beloved
and well-pleasing. He is the one who is obedient
to His Father. and God's people are blessed
only in so far and in as much as they are in Christ. So that the pleasure of God upon
his people is the pleasure of God upon his son as his people
are seen in that one, that man, Christ Jesus. It is in Christ,
through Christ, and by Christ that God has pleasure upon his
people. And that's what the Apostle Paul
For example, in 1 Corinthians 1, verse 2, calls being sanctified
in Christ, being set apart in Christ. Out of that mass of fallen
humanity, a people have been set apart, placed in the Lord
Jesus Christ, and the pleasure of God rests upon them. In 2 Timothy chapter 1 and verse
9, we read these words, God who hath saved us and called us with
an holy calling, according to his own purpose and grace, which
was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began. And this is a reference to this
great work that we've just been looking at. God calling with an holy calling, saving
according to his purpose and grace in Christ Jesus before
the world began. And Paul, writing to the Ephesians,
enlarges upon that in chapter one, verse four, where he says,
through verse six, according as he hath chosen us in him before
the foundation of the world. You see, this is this amazing
gospel again, bigger, broader, higher, more extensive, older,
deeper than we can at first appreciate. according as he hath chosen us
in him before the foundation of the world, chosen that we
should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestinated
us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according
to the good pleasure of his will. to the praise of the glory of
His grace wherein He hath made us accepted in the Beloved. These are beautiful verses because
they show us, they drive our minds, our attention, our thoughts
back to a time before time. when in the purpose of God a
settled covenant agreement was made between Father, Son and
Holy Spirit and a people were set apart in Christ and the pleasure
and the love of God rested upon that people as they were seen
in Christ. and the Holy Spirit bestowed
his will upon them to do them good as time began in creation
and unfolded. God's pleasure is upon his people and as his
people we are hidden in Christ, accepted in Christ, sanctified
by the Holy Spirit in Christ, even before the foundation of
the world. People tell us that we need to
get sanctified by the things that we do and the way that we
live, that we need to become more and more holy. Sanctification
is a work of the triune God and our first experience of that
the first knowledge of it happening to us even before we could experience
it was that placing of a people in Christ before the foundation
of the world. And to this extent our God is
pleased with Christ and his pleasure rests also upon his people. So The Lord takes pleasure in
his people. And he goes on to say that he
will beautify the meek with salvation. But notice this, that the one
who acts here is God himself. The Lord, the triune God, takes
pleasure in his people, as they are seen in the Lord Jesus Christ
from all eternity. and he will beautify them with
salvation. And so here we see again, the
initiative is taken by our God. And when it comes to our experience
of grace, and it comes to the outflowing of the plan of salvation,
and when it comes to the understanding of what salvation is, Through
the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and the work of God the Holy
Spirit upon the heart and mind of an individual, it is God who
takes the initiative, who instigates the blessing, who beautifies
and saves his chosen people. You know, I think we've probably
said it before, and it'll bear repeating again. Sovereign grace
is not a few verses in a few key chapters of the Bible. And
yes, we love those portions in Ephesians, and in Romans, and
in Galatians, and in Philippians. And we were thinking about them
in Colossians. And that's the whole point. That
sovereign grace is in the whole of the Bible. It's on every page. You cannot take a passage of
Scripture without discovering and discerning the great glory
and sovereign purpose of our God. It is the consistent message
of Scripture. And if you once see it, You can't
miss it ever after. And that is why blindness is
such a good description for those who can't and won't accept this
doctrine of sovereign grace. It is hid from them. It is hidden
from them. They read the same books of the
Bible. They read the same pages of scripture. They read the same verses. And
they cannot see and discern sovereign grace in them. But once you've
grasped these things, once you've seen these things, it's everywhere. Because it's God who takes the
initiative. It is God who acts in power. It is God's will and purpose
that drives forward his great accomplishing plan of grace and
mercy upon his people. The Father, having placed his
people in the bosom of Christ in eternal election, the Spirit,
having sanctified them and hid them safe and secure and preserved
eternally in the Lord Jesus Christ, now prepares them in time for
the adornment of their persons. with a righteousness that makes
them acceptable to God. And that's the great purpose
of predestination. It is to make us Christ-like. It is to conform us to the image
of Christ. It is to make the church like
our Redeemer. Now, I personally believe in
a doctrine which is called the doctrine of justification from
eternity. And I believe that in the eternal
purpose of God, God justified his people in Christ when he
separated them and placed them in Christ. And that eternal before
the foundation of the world was an act by God by which his love
and his mercy and his grace and indeed his righteousness was
imparted to that people in Christ. But it takes the process of time
and the outworking of that plan of salvation for his people to
come to learn and discern and discover the purposes of God
in their own personal experience. But this is what predestination
is all about. This is what the elective purpose
was for, that we should be made like unto Christ, that we should
be bound together with him. He our head, we his body, and
that we would be formed together and conformed together so that
we would be forged in His image, to be made like our Redeemer
and to carry His likeness in our souls. So that is the point
about the he. And I want to just twist the
order of these phrases about, perhaps if I can, to make a little
bit of a point here. We're told that he will beautify. That is, he will make a people
willing. He will bless that people that
he has made willing. But the thought here is to do
with the meek. And perhaps this will make the
point a little clearer. Because he who beautifies the
meek with salvation, he is identifying these as having a meekness before
they experience salvation. He beautifies the meek with salvation. or to twist that around a little
bit, the meek are beautified with salvation. So who is given
this beauty of salvation? The meek. Before they have an
experience of salvation, they are made to feel a meekness before
their God. And I think that's what the psalmist
is driving at here. So what is that meekness that
these individuals feel before they are beautified by salvation? Well, surely that is the humility
of their need. It is a spirit of confession
and an acknowledgement of guilt before the holiness of God. That is their meekness. Those
whom the Lord beautifies with salvation, he first convicts
of sin. You see, these two things walk
together hand in hand. Repentance and faith, faith and
repentance. It has been said that true faith
is a repenting faith and true repentance is a faithful repentance. There's no place for pride in
the heart of a believer who has seen their true standing and
state before God. Because we see and know what
we are, and that all that we have become is only by grace,
We can declare, there but for the grace of God go I. There's no reason for a believer
to have any pride whatsoever. Meekness and humility are an
initial characteristic of those who have been brought to see
their true nature before the holiness of God. And these qualities
that are being expressed here, meekness and patience, they're
two beautiful qualities of Christ. And in the converted believer,
they are evident fruit of the Holy Spirit post-conversion. But here, that meekness that
is in our verse is the earliest of the Holy Spirit's dealings
with the sinner in his experience. It is conviction of sin. It is to be humbled under a sense
of sin. It is to be brought to that place
of submitting to the righteousness of God's judgment. It is to see
and perceive and experience a dependence upon the grace of God for salvation. It is to know that we can do
nothing of ourselves, that we are guilty before God, that he
might legitimately cut us off, cast us down, and separate us
in hell for all eternity, and we have no claim against him. And that is true spiritual meekness. It is subjection to God and to
Christ. I want to read a couple of verses
from a hymn just to draw your attention to something here.
I'm actually going to read this as my closing hymn as well, but
there's a couple of verses which we would do well to have heard
twice. So let me read verses three and
four of hymn number 89 in Gadsby's hymn book. It's a hymn by Joseph
Hart again. And it's in the context of what
we've been thinking about, about the fact that there is this meekness. He will beautify the meek with
salvation. Joseph Hart says, To understand
these things are right, this grand distinction should be known. Though all are sinners in God's
sight, there are but few so in their own. To such as these our
Lord was sent, they're only sinners who repent. What comfort can
a saviour bring to those who never felt their woe? A sinner
is a sacred thing, the Holy Ghost has made him so. New life from
him we must receive before for sin we rightly grieve. And so here is a picture of this
Holy Spirit work in the life of a sinner, bringing them even
before that experience of salvation to an understanding of their
terrible state before God and the legitimacy of God's judgment
upon them. True meekness as opposed to the
adamant and resolute rebellion of the flesh against God. True meekness is a spirit-imbued
characteristic, and it comes with a glimpse of our own sin
and corruption under the law of God and before the holiness
of God. Once again, the verse says, for
the Lord taketh pleasure in his people. He will beautify the
meek with salvation. That is, those who are his people
are those whom he has placed in Christ, those whom he has
sent his Holy Spirit to regenerate and to quicken, those that he
has given a sight of their own sinfulness and the justifiable
wrath of God upon them. and in that state of humility
and repentance and conviction and meekness, for them to see
their need of God to provide them with the salvation that
they require. Then we come to this phrase that
God will beautify us. He will beautify the meek. And I doubt that there are very
many of us think that we are beautiful. And we've got good
cause to doubt it. But that is the heart of this
great enigma of grace. That is the wonder of this amazing
gospel, that we who feel ourselves so unworthy, so unlikely to be
the recipients of God's grace. We who feel ourselves to be so
much at the far extreme and the opposite end of anything that
we read in these sacred pages about the love of God and the
grace of God and the goodness of God and the peace of God. are the very ones that God is
pleased to beautify. We have good cause to doubt our
beauty when we think about ourselves, when we think about our heart,
when we think about our walk, when we think about our words,
when we think about our thoughts. We feel the least lovely and
yet we are designated the beloved of the Lord. And again, this
is sovereign grace. This is God's work. This is God
at work in the hearts of men and women. We do not make ourselves
beautiful. It is God's work in us to beautify
us. That's why we emphasize that
little word, he. He will beautify the meek. This is God's work. and he works
that work in sinners like us. We are his workmanship and what
he makes, what he creates, what he makes a new creation, he makes
beautiful. He makes it beautiful. Listen,
What hasn't been marred and spoiled by sin, even in this creation
as it still is, fallen though it is, we still discern beauty
and wonder and majesty and design. And whether we're looking at
the stars in the heaven, or the oceans in their depth, or the
mountains with their majesty, or the prairies with their glory,
or in the simple rose petal and rose bud, we see a beauty, we
can discern a wonder and a majesty. We see the hand of design. And we find ourselves, do we
not, saying things like, wow, isn't that amazing? That's God
at work. And the gospel and salvation
and grace is that greatest of God's work for sinners. And He makes sinners beautiful. He beautifies us. He beautifies
the meek. Love the little verse in Genesis
29, verse 17. I stumbled across it and I thought,
well, I'm just going to repeat that anyway. It says, Leah was
tender-hearted, but Rachel was beautiful. And that's how the
Lord looks upon his people. He sees us as beautiful. Did I say tender-hearted there?
I meant tender-eyed, that's what Leah was, tender-eyed, but Rachel
was beautiful. In Song of Solomon, chapter 6,
verse 4, we hear the Lord Jesus Christ speaking. And this is
what he says to the Shulamite. He says to the Shulamite this,
Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem,
terrible as an army with banners. And there is a sense in which
that terribleness as an army with banners does describe the
church of the Lord Jesus Christ here in this world. As we read
together in Revelation chapter 21, there is an awesomeness about
this church with its four square and its three walls and its and
its clarity, and its beauty, and its preciousness, and all
the wonder of God dwelling in the midst of it, and all those
entering in and gathering in from the four corners of the
earth, whose names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life. That
is a picture of the church in this world. And if men had eyes
to see and ears to hear, they would distinguish that church
as terrible as an army with banners. But to Christ she's just beautiful.
To Christ she is his love. She is comely as Jerusalem. She is the new Jerusalem. and she's beautiful in the eyes
of our God. Zechariah chapter 3 verse 4 and
5 speaks of a man called Joshua and to Joshua it was said, take
away the filthy garments from him. And unto him he said, Behold,
I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will
clothe thee with change of raiment. And I said, Let them set a fair
mitre upon his head. So they set a fair mitre upon
his head, and clothed him with garments. And the angel of the
Lord stood by. This is a picture of the loveliness,
the beautifying of that people who are made meek by the work
of God, the Holy Spirit in their souls and reflect the good pleasure
of God's eternal purpose upon them. 1 Peter 3, verse 4 and
5 says, but let it be the hidden man of the heart. in that which
is not corruptible. You see, there's where the beauty
is vested. That's where the beauty lies,
in the hidden man of the heart. On the outside, we're wrinkled
and we're bruised and we're battered and we're beaten. On the outside,
we carry this mark of sin. We carry the works of the flesh. but in the hidden man of the
heart there is a beauty that has been implanted, a glory that
has been imbued. There is a loveliness which is
beyond words, a glory that is seen by God himself. and causes Christ to declare
of his bride and his people that you are beautiful in my sight. Let that be the hidden man of
the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament
of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great
price, of great beauty, of great value. For after this manner
in old time, the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves
being in subjection unto their own husbands. You see, that's
the beauty, that's the beauty of the inward man. that Christ
sees. And so we read in Revelation
21 and verse 2 where John says, I, John, saw the holy city, the
new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as
a bride adorned for her husband. subject to him in all of his
glory and yet loved by him. These are the pictures that we
have seen, is it not, in our study in Colossians? These are
the very testimonies of the nature of the relationship that we have
with the Lord Jesus Christ. Husbands, love your wives. Wives,
submit to your husbands. This is a picture of Christ and
his people. And here she comes out of heaven. Here she comes, the new Jerusalem. Here she comes, beautified by
the Spirit. Here she comes, the recipient
of grace, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a
bride adorned for her husband. And he looks upon her and he
declares to her, you are beautiful. What will we be beautified with? What will the meek, the pleasure
of God be beautified with? Well, they will be beautified
with salvation. And this is what the elect receive. This is what the church are. This is what the redeemed of
the Lord possess. They are beautified with salvation. Now I do believe that Adam was
a handsome man and I believe that Eve was Beautiful beyond
comparison. They used to talk about Helen
of Troy as being the most beautiful woman in the world. Well, I think
probably she was in Eve's shadow. Because Adam for his handsomeness
and Eve for her beauty must have been the handiwork of God. God who crafted their form and
shaped their characters. They must have been a sight to
behold. But salvation beholds a beauty,
or bestows a beauty beyond the perfection of Eden. True, Adam
was made very good, but Christ makes his people holy. We are
fitted for His service. Not works of obedience, but worship. Worship is what we are fitted
for. God makes us holy. God makes
us beautiful that we might worship Him in spirit and in truth. That is the great end. of our
being conformed to the image of Christ, that we might worship
our God eternally, bound together with the God-man in heaven, the
head and the body. And there the church worships
the Lord in the beauty of holiness. You know, there is a beauty in
a single bloom. but there is a grander loveliness
in a bouquet of flowers or in a field of blossom. And so the church is more beautiful
gathered than its individual parts considered separately. And when we get to glory, We
will see ourselves not any longer bound by this corrupt flesh,
but as we really are by grace and precious blood, as we really
are seen by God in Christ, as we really are beheld by the God-man
as his beautiful bride. And we, as that gathered congregation,
as that people of God, singing a new song to the Lord, our God
and our King, we shall not be preoccupied with our own beauty,
beautiful as we are in the garments of salvation, but we will be
preoccupied with the loveliness of our Bridegroom. The gospel
is a love story of eternal dimensions and everlasting proportions. And the gospel is an amazing
thing. The hymn writer says, The bride
eyes not her garment, but her dear bridegroom's face. I will
not gaze at glory, but on my King of grace. Not at the crown
he giveth, but on his pierced hand. The Lamb is all the glory
of Emmanuel's land. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us and encourage our hearts in them. Now let me return again,
if I may, to the hymn that we spoke of earlier, and I'll read
it now in its entirety, and then we will bring our service and
our stream to a conclusion. When Adam by transgression fell,
and conscious fled his maker's face, Linked in clandestine league
with hell, he ruined all his future race. The seeds of evil
once brought in, increased and filled the world with sin. but lo, the second Adam came,
the serpent's subtle head to bruise, he cancels his malicious
claim and disappoints his defilish views, ransoms poor prisoners
with his blood and brings the sinner back to God. To understand these things are
right, this grand distinction should be known. Though all are
sinners in God's sight, there are but few so in their own. To such as these our Lord was
sent. They're only sinners who repent. What comfort can a saviour bring
to those who never felt their woe? A sinner is a sacred thing. The Holy Ghost has made him so. new life from him we must receive
before for sin we rightly grieve. This faithful saying let us own
well worthy it is to be believed that Christ into the world came
down that sinners might by him be saved. Sinners are high in
his esteem and sinners highly value him.