Well we're back in Isaiah and
chapter 26. I know we skipped over a lot
of chapters because there was a lot of judgment on different
nations, but these chapters of 25 and 26 are very rich so we
don't go very far before we have to make comment on some, and
we're on verses seven to nine this morning, and I've entitled
this message, The Desire of Our Soul. It's a phrase that's in
those verses, the desire of, in the middle of verse eight,
the desire of our soul is to thy name, the desire of our soul. All around this world in which
we live, in Western culture, especially today, especially
in Western culture, it's cool, it's regarded as intellectually
superior to be an atheist. You know, oh, I'm an atheist,
or some even say, I'm an agnostic, I try and sit on the fence about
these things. But there's a lot of professed atheism. But despite
that, there's still a lot who acknowledge that there must be
a God. There are people who, they're
not clever scientists, but they're just ordinary people like you
and me. And they look around, And they look at this flower. They look at a flower. They look
at this. You see, look, who made these?
Look at this. They look at this, and they think, that's absolutely
amazing. How did that happen? How did
that flower happen? Well, I'll tell you how. A set
of genes, information, produced that. And there's another one
next to it that's different, and another one. a set of genes
produced it. Now, this is what modern science
says. You take a universe of trillions
and trillions and trillions of atoms and molecules and you give
it a really good shake and you leave it for an awful long time.
You think I'm being trivial, don't you? I'm not, I'm being
deadly serious. You take a universe full of trillions
and trillions and trillions of atoms that resulted from a great
big bang of energy that produced them all and you leave it long
enough And by itself, that happens. There's a box of Lego down there.
Isaac, if there's a box of Lego down there, can you ever imagine
shaking that box of Lego and opening it up and getting out
a nice car with all the wheels in the right place? You've got
to make it, haven't you? You've got to put it together.
God put this together. God put this universe together.
You know? So why don't the cleverest scientists
believe it? Should I tell you? They don't
like to retain God in their knowledge. That's what the scripture says.
Why don't they? Do you know what? I've told you
this before, I know, but it's worth repeating. A biology teacher,
a dear woman that I used to work with, years and years ago, I
used to talk to her about evolution and creation. And she said to
me, I hope that evolution is true. Because if it isn't, it
means that I am accountable to God. And the thought of that
terrifies me. That's what that biology teacher
said. Afraid of accountability. Afraid of it. And so what does
our society do? It suppresses the thought of
God. It suppresses the reality of
God. And the more suppressed the reality
of God becomes, the worse society becomes. I grew up as a little
boy, when I was Isaac's age, it was the mid-1950s. And in
the 1950s, I even remember then, me and my friends, we used to
get up to all sorts of mischief, but you know, we always thought
there's God watching me. There's a God who sees what I
do. And there's a God who is going to call me to account for
the things. That's what we were generally taught. We were taught
it in school. We were taught it by parents.
We were taught it in the society in which we lived. And crying
was a lot less. And politeness to one another
was an awful lot better. And there was very, very, very
tiny amounts of the sort of perversity we see on all side of us today,
it was restraint. And it was, you know, when we
did Revelation, that when in chapter six of Revelation, when
the first of the seals was open, what was it? It was a white horse
that went forth. The white horse is the horse
of religion, of the gospel, the gospel primarily, the saving
gospel of Christ, but the peripheral of it, Christendom, You know,
we say they preach a false gospel, but nevertheless, the discipline
that it brings has an effect on society. And I'm sure society
is the better for it than it would be without it. Society
is better and safer for it where it exists. But acknowledging
and even fearing God is not the same as knowing God. Do you hear
me? Do you hear what I said? Acknowledging
that there's a God and saying, yeah, yeah, I can see there's
a God. I can't see how those flowers could have put themselves
together. Yeah. That's not the same as knowing God. I think
in my prayer, I mentioned one of the phrases from one of the
great catechisms. What is the chief end of man? What's the chief objective of
man, of you and me? Answer? You see, let me give you an illustration.
I believe that there's a thing called the police force. And
I believe that they crack down very hard on driving your car
when you've got too much alcohol in your blood. I believe that.
I really do. And it really does deter me from, you know, I'm
frightened of being apprehended, being arrested. I'm frightened
of losing my license. I'm frightened of the shame that
would go with it. I'm frightened of being taken into custody and
having my car taken off me. I'm frightened of it. I believe
in the police doing that. It doesn't give me a warm relationship
with the police, though, does it? It doesn't make me think,
oh, they're my best friends. Not at all. No, it's like that
with God. To believe that there's a God
doesn't make you have a relationship with God. To truly know God.
You know what Jesus said to Nicodemus when Nicodemus came to him to
talk about the kingdom of God? And Jesus said, Nicodemus, except
a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. You must
be born again. Now that's a phrase that is banded
around North America so glibly. Everybody's born again. Are you
a born again Christian? They don't know what they're
talking about. 99% of them don't know what they're talking about.
To be born again of the Spirit of God is for the Spirit of God
to come to you and quicken you. That part of you, that spiritual
part of you that is dead in trespasses and sins, he comes and he makes
alive. He's quickened you together with
Christ. He's made you alive and he's
given you faith. You know, like you sense things,
you taste things, you smell things, you see things, you hear things.
He's given you another sense, which is the sense of faith,
which is the sense to detect, to interact with spiritual things,
to be aware of spiritual things. It's called regeneration, being
made alive to spiritual things. God said to Adam, in the day
that you eat thereof, you shall die. And he did, spiritually.
And later, he died physically, as all men died physically. But
the giving of faith is regeneration. It's the giving again of that
ability to see and hear and commune with God. You become a citizen
of Zion. Look at verse 2. Open ye the
gates that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter
in. You become a citizen of Zion.
What is Zion? It's the church of the living
God. It's the church of Christ. It's not a dirty word of suppression
in the Middle East, Zionism. No, it's talking about the Church
of the Living God, the Kingdom of the Living God. And you must
come in. How do you come in? You come
through the door. And you can come from any direction
through the one door. The one door is Christ. Jesus
himself said, I am the door. We read it last week in John
10. But having come in, you're given a new sense and a new savour
to taste. What does it say in the Psalms?
Taste and see that the Lord is good. Taste, taste. You and me, men and women, taste
and see that the Lord is. Oh, taste this food. It's dilly.
Oh, that's lovely. I love that. This is the same
thing. Spiritually, taste and see that the Lord is good. Heavenly
things. You know, when you've had a cold
and you've lost your sense of smell, I remember It was one
Christmas, and we had a sumptuous banquet all organized, and I
remember getting a cold, which is not uncommon at that time
of year. And it was one that I completely lost all sense of
smell, so that everything tasted absolutely uniformly bland. I
couldn't tell the difference between roast turkey and Christmas
pudding. It just all tasted the same, apart from variations of
sweetness and saltiness. And then I remember the day,
two or three days later, when that cleared, and it was like,
oh wow, I can sense it, I can taste it again. Well, it's the
same with spiritual things. We get a spiritual sense from
what the Holy Spirit gives us. In Isaiah 26 verses 7 to 9, we
have a description of a true believer's intimate relationship
with God, what he tastes and sees of the living God. If you
are in Zion, if you're a believer, your desires will be different.
from those of everybody around you in the world. Look what it
says, let's read these verses. The way of the just, this is
verse seven, the way of the just is uprightness, that's evenness.
Thou most upright, speaking to God, dost weigh the path of the
just. Yea, in the way of thy judgments,
O Lord, we have waited for thee. The desire of our soul, the desire
of our soul is to thy name and to the remembrance of thee. With
my soul have I desired thee in the night. Yea, with my spirit
within me will I seek thee early. For when thy judgments are in
the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness. Now, let me break that down for
you. Let's take it apart and examine it. First of all, if
you're in Zion with this new life from the living God, so
that you interact with the living God and you can sense the things
of eternity, you have a desire to seek God. Verse 9, with my
soul have I desired thee in the night. In the night, not just
the night when the sun goes behind the horizon, I'm talking about
the night of the natural human soul that is dark to the things
of the living God and in that he gives his people a desire.
I can remember as a teenager, I can remember Reading a book,
I don't think it was a particularly Christian book, but somehow God
used it to put within me a desire to find out more about God. To
try and get some explanation for this thing that was all around
us, for this consciousness that was me that I didn't understand.
And in that night of spiritual ignorance, I desired to know
more about the living God. With my soul have I desired thee
in the night. Have you had a sense of longing
for God, God who made us, God who upholds all things, to know
him and to commune with him. Those born again of God's spirit
do have that. Oh yes, it fluctuates in intensity,
but it's always there. Think about the prodigal son.
You know the parable of the prodigal son that Jesus told? He said
to his father, Father, give me my inheritance now. I don't,
you know, why should I wait? Like today's generation, why
should I wait for anything? Give me it now. And his father
said, okay, there you go. There's your share of the inheritance.
And off he went with his friends to a distant country. And it
says he wasted his life in riotous living. People sometimes misread
that if they're not very skilled at reading the scriptures and
they read riotous as righteous. No, it's most definitely not
righteous living. It's riotous living. He lived with his friends
in a very wasteful, prodigal way. A wasteful way. And hard
times came. And economic depression came.
This is in the parable that Jesus told. Economic depression came.
And there was a famine. And all the money was gone. And
as soon as all the money was gone, the fair-weather friends,
they all flitted away. They all flew off to better climes.
They didn't hang around. And he was desperate. And he
had nothing. and his friends that he'd given
so much to, they didn't do anything to help him at all and he became
so hungry that he went and found himself a landowner of that part
of the world and he found some work and his work was feeding
the pigs and cleaning up after the pigs and it was menial work
and he had to be there from dawn till dusk and it was hard work
And in that sense of the discipline that it brought, it brought him
improvement like religion, that's mere religion can do. But in
the midst of it, in that night, he came to himself and he said,
even the servants in my father's house have bread and enough to
eat. I will arise and go to my father
and say to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and against
thee. Will you just let me be one of your hired servants? I'm
so sorry for what I've done. You see, he had a soul desire
to go back to his father. And this is what this is talking
about. With my soul have I desired thee in the night. Yea, with
my spirit within me, I will seek thee early. Soul desire, to know
God. A soul desire to hear God speak. Do you know where God speaks?
Through his word, by his spirit, especially as it's preached.
This is why preaching is so important. Don't worry, those of us that
do this thing called preaching, we don't have any kind of, you
know, we don't wear robes. The only robe I wear is a tie,
which I don't normally wear, and I wear it because there are
so many people out there on the internet these days watching
that some might find it a bit disrespectful if I didn't wear
a tie. So that's why I do that. But apart from that, we don't
have priestly robes that set us apart or anything like that.
We do it because the Spirit of God has taught us things, that
he's given an ability to pass on to others, and it's by the
foolishness of preaching, what the world regards foolish. Not
only the method, but the message. The world regards it as foolish,
and by that it pleased God, it says in his word, to save those
who believe. This is how God calls his people
out of darkness into light, by the preaching of his word. by
having it opened up and explained. Like Philip, the deacon in the
early church, went alongside the Ethiopian eunuch on his way
back from Jerusalem to Ethiopia. And while he was there, he bought
himself a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. And he's reading and
he's saying, I don't understand this. And Philip comes alongside
him and says, do you understand what you're reading? He says,
how can I except a man explain it to me? So Philip preached
to him, Jesus. Philip preached to him. That's
what preaching's about. You know, as Paul wrote to Timothy,
I'm teaching you that you might teach others that they might
teach others also. There's this chain of teaching,
teaching, teaching. And this is where we learn the
things of the Spirit of God. You know, my teachers were our
brethren in the United States, not just because they're in the
United States, but because they preached the truth. Don Faulkner,
Henry Mahan, Scott Richardson, all those older ones, and then
the younger generation that's come after them, Todd Nyvert,
Paul Mahan, Clay Curtis, they preach the truth of the gospel
of grace, and many others, apologies to those I've missed, many others.
To hear him speak through his word and his preached word, there's
a soul desire to pray to him. Do you know, Prayer is communion
with the living God, to behold his glory. Where do we behold
his glory? I want to see the glory of God.
Where do you see the glory of God? Ah, in the sunrise. No,
in the face of Jesus Christ. God who shined in the darkness
at the beginning of time when he said, let there be light and
there was light, it says, has shined in our hearts to give
us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. My soul needs the hope that he
gives. I have a need in my soul. I need
a hope of eternity. You know, man through fear of
death all his lifetime is subject to bondage, says Hebrews 2. I
need the hope of eternity. I need the hope of welcome. When
Jesus said, I will say to those who are my people in that day,
when we die and go into eternal, he'd say, come ye blessed of
my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation
of the world. I need to know peace with God,
with whom I'm at enmity. I'm his enemy by nature because
of sin. And the more I know him, The
more my faith that he's given me feeds on this knowledge. You
see, it's not prayer or reading or listening to sermons just
for their own sake. But if you would find God, if
you would find the one who is the beloved of your soul, go
where he's most likely to be found. That's why we read Song
of Solomon earlier. Song of Solomon captures this.
Look at chapter six of Song of Solomon and the first three verses. The daughters of Jerusalem are
asking the Beloved, when she's described her Beloved, you know,
what is your Beloved more than another? And she gives this wonderful
poetic description at the end of chapter five. And then in
chapter six, the daughters of Jerusalem say to her, where is
your Beloved gone? If your God is so good and so
soul satisfying, where can we find him, oh you fairest of women? Why are they fair? Because he's
made her fair by his righteousness, by his grace. Whither is thy
beloved turned aside that we may see? We want to find him
as well. She says, my beloved, he's gone down into his garden
to the beds of spices to feed in the gardens and to gather
lilies. I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine. He feedeth
among the lilies. What's that talking about? Go
where you're most likely to find him. You know, you want to find
somebody, you think, where are they most likely to be? Where's
he most likely to be? Where his word is being preached.
Where his people are gathering together to worship him. Go amongst them. Meet with believers
whenever you can. That's his garden of spices.
He's promised. Go looking, he's promised. Jesus
himself in the Sermon on the Mount said, seek, look for, and
you shall find. Ask and it shall be given. He
has said he stands at the door and knocks. Revelation 3.20,
behold, he says, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear
my voice and open the door, I will come into him and will sup with
him and he with me. What do you have to do? Open
the door. That's what he says, doesn't he? I'm knocking on the
door. If any man hear my voice, open the door. Simply open. Spurgeon
said you don't need to clean the house and get the supper
ready before he'll come in. Just open the door. And this
will be your priority. Look what it says here. I will
seek thee early. I will seek thee early. Life can be crowded with things
that need to be done. Believer, let seeking God be
your priority, above everything else. Let seeking God be your
priority. Matthew 6.33, Jesus in the Sermon
on the Mount again, seek ye first the kingdom of God. Seek him
early, before everything else. Seek him first and his righteousness. And all these other things, all
these necessities of life, all these other things that you have
to do shall be added to you. Put God first, seeking Him, communing
with Him, and everything else will be naturally better. Everything
will be naturally better. Secondly, He gives you a desire
to seek God, then secondly, a desire to follow God. Look in verse
7, the way of the just is uprightness. Thou, most upright, dost weigh
the path of the just. And then in verse 9, with my
soul have I desired thee. And then the second half of the
verse, for when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants
of the world will learn righteousness. If we're members of Zion, if
we're citizens of Zion, if we're members of the Church of the
Lord Jesus Christ, if we've been made alive to the things of the
Spirit of God by the rebirth that only the Spirit of God can
give, then our desire is to follow Him, to follow Him. Spurgeon,
again, he said, you can tell a good dog by the way it wants
to follow and obey its master, can't you? You know when you're
out sometimes walking and you see people with dogs and they
clearly haven't got the dogs under control and the dogs don't
know who the master is and basically the dogs are in control and the
people are following the dogs, but no, when you see a good dog,
a dog that's not going to attack you or be a nuisance to you or
anything else, it's under control and it wants to do what its master
says. And he says that's the same with
believers. You can tell a good dog by the
way it wants to follow and obey its master. So it is with God's
people. As our God is righteous, and
surely he is the definition of righteousness, what is righteousness? God. Everything that God is,
is righteousness. So his people have an inner desire
to be righteous. His people want to be righteous.
He says, be ye holy for I am holy. Don't be like this world
with its sin and its corruption and itself. He's not saying this
as a legal works-based obligation, but for the honor and the cause
of the gospel of Christ. for the honor of him. I've told
you before the illustration of Trooping of the Colour, you know
those troops that are there in their uniforms on the parade
ground in early June when the Queen's there to inspect the
troops and whichever regiment it is. I've worked with the military
down many years and I can tell you the pride of being asked
to be that regiment that year and why do they do they polish
their shoes because they fear that they'll be put on jankers
that's a punishment in the in the army not a bit they do it
for the honor and pride of what they're doing and so the believer
wants to follow Christ the man Jesus because he was a man he
was God but he was man John 8 29 he said I do always those things
that please the father He, the man, did always those things
that were pleasing to God. And we learn that God, as it
says in verse 7, weighs the path of the just. The just? The justified
ones. Those made just by what Christ
has done. He weighs the path of it. He
looks at it. He observes. Can't you live your
life conscious that thou God seeth me? The living God sees
me, sees what I'm doing, what I'm saying, where I'm going.
He sees me. He weighs the path of the just.
He guides the path. For he says, thy word is a lamp
to my feet and a light to my path. And the Holy Spirit not
only imputes the righteousness of God, imputes means makes it
over to your account. He legally makes it over to your
account. So it's yours. Really, not pretending,
really, it's yours. He imputes the righteousness
of God. How does he do it? Christ, who
knew no sin, he made him sin. Why did he make him sin? It was
the sin of his people, the people he chose in Christ before the
foundation of the world. He made him that sin that he
might satisfy the law's demands regarding that sin. For the soul
that sins, it shall die. And he died on the cross. He
shed his precious blood. The life is in the blood. He
poured out his life blood. as the penalty payment to the
law of God for the sin of his people, and thereby he made his
people the righteousness of God in him. He imputes that righteousness
to his people, but not only that, he imparts a righteous nature. He puts within his people, though
the flesh is still here and the flesh still falls into sin constantly
because it's always flesh, it never improves, nevertheless,
The man of the Spirit of God grows, grow in grace and the
knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, grow in grace, grow, says Peter,
writing in his second epistle. He imparts a righteous nature
that wants to do the things of God. In verses eight and nine,
it talks about the way of thy judgments. It talks about learning
righteousness at the end of verse nine. We want to walk in the
way of God. We want to, learn his judgments
and learn his righteousness. And the desire of our soul is
to his name, to his name, to his character, the honor of God's
name and of his character and of his being. The child of God
knows he's one of the great shepherd sheep. and he delights to follow
him. Jesus said, I am the good shepherd. My sheep hear my voice and they
follow me. They won't follow a stranger,
a hireling. They know he's not really their
good shepherd, but they hear my voice. How do we, as the sheep
of Christ, if we're believers, we hear his under shepherds who
are his preachers. And if, you know, somebody might
say to me, Who ordained you to preach? Which committee of elders
got together or which church hierarchy got together and put
their hands on you and authorised you to preach? And don't be under
any doubt, days might come when, because of the political correctness
that's all around and because of the confusion that there is
in political circles about what constitutes hate speech and what
doesn't, before too long, as it has been in the past, A couple
of hundred years ago, 300 years ago, Parliament sought to control
who could preach. So people might say, who ordained
you? Who gave you the authority to
preach? And do you know what I would say? The people who hear
me. I don't do it for any other reason
than the people who hear me. The people who hear the sermons
online and write in. That's all that it is. I know
in me, in myself, there is no qualification whatsoever. But
the people that hear, they're saying, we're hearing the good
shepherd's voice through what you say, generally speaking.
That's it, that's the authority. How do they follow? How do the
people of God follow him? It's in the principles of your
life. You know, His word is clear, the principles of life, the values
that we live by, guided by God's truth, constantly seeking His
guidance and His wisdom in everyday things. This is how we follow
Him. We follow Him in terms of what He says regarding salvation.
We believe this book. We don't interpret it to try
and fit with what we think people will like to hear, which is what
so many do. They take what they think is
the gospel, and they say, oh, I don't like that bit. Do you
know the bit they don't like? That God is a God of absolute
sovereignty. That God, before the foundation
of the world, chose a multitude to salvation, and the rest of
his own free will choice, he left to themselves. And they
say, oh, that's shocking. What a terrible, how on earth
can you believe it? I'll tell you how I can believe
it. This book, this book says it from start to finish. It's
utterly clear. What do we do? Do we say, no,
he didn't really mean that. He can't possibly have meant
that. No, Jesus is gentle and mild. Jesus can't possibly...
Jesus said, why do I speak to them in parables? He said, as
Isaiah said, lest hearing they might understand and believe
and be converted. God is absolutely sovereign.
If you don't like it, get used to it because it's a fact. You'll
believe it one day. You'll believe it in eternity,
you certainly will. Now. This is the royal law of Christ
as a guiding principle of life that believers seek to follow.
We desire to bear the fruit of the Spirit. You know, the fruit
of the Spirit, not the works of the flesh. Galatians 5, the
fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace. Against such, there
is no law. We seek, as Paul said, to Titus,
to adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things by being
kind to others, by not being selfish. by looking out for the
needs of others. This is the principles, this
is seeking to follow him. Knowing that in Christ, even
though we're in the flesh and all our works are tainted with
sin, yet, if you're in Christ, remember that verse we saw a
couple of years ago, Ecclesiastes 9 verse 7, God now accepteth
thy works. If you're in Christ, God accepts
even, you know like with a child, the parent, sees the child try,
and the child makes an absolute mess of it, and it's no good
really, but the parent is delighted because the child's desire was
to do the right thing, to do it right. The child's desire
was to get it right, and the parent's like, even though they
got it wrong, you're so touched. Well, it's almost like that with
God. If you're in Christ, God now accepteth thy works. Third thing. Patience to wait
for God. Yea, in the way of thy judgments,
O Lord, we have waited for thee. Waiting? Waiting, what is it
to wait for God? What is it to wait? The scripture
talks a lot about waiting for God. What is it to wait for God? Well, fundamentally, it's believing
Him. It's living all the time, believing
God. It's trusting that what we can't
see is all in the care of God. At times we're in difficulties,
difficult situations, but if we're waiting for God, we know
that he causes all things to work together for good to those
who love God, who are called according to his purpose, whatever
those things might be. We might be going through a trial
of terrible illness. We might have had a terrible
diagnosis. We might have lost an awful lot of money. We might
have got serious problems with our work or family or whatever
else it might be, heartache and so on and so forth. But we know
if we're a child of God, he causes all things, even those things.
Look what he did with Job. Look how he tried Job, and the
objective was the good of his soul. Whatever the situation,
all things work together for good to those who love God. And
we believe it, and we patiently wait. Israel was trapped. between
the Egyptians and the Red Sea. When they came out of Egypt,
finally, when Pharaoh said, go after the Passover, he said,
go, get out, go. And then they changed their minds
and they came chasing after them. And Israel was trapped between
the pursuing army of Egypt and the Red Sea. And what did Moses
say? He said, stand still and see
the salvation of the Lord. Don't worry. Wait for God. Just stand still. Just wait.
Wait for God. He that doubts, hurries, and
worries. But the psalm says this, My soul,
wait thou only upon God, for my expectation is from Him. Waiting for God, we say, I can't
see now, but I know I shall see when I need to see. We say, I
don't know where I'll get food from, But I know God will provide
it, even if he has to send ravens to bring it to me, as he did
for Elijah. Sometimes the waiting can be
through very difficult times. I've already mentioned Job. Job
refused to heed the counsel of his wife. His wife said to him
when he'd lost everything and he was sitting in sackcloth and
ashes, covered in boils and in absolute physical agony of body,
his wife said to him, there, look where it's got you. Curse
God and die. And he said, though he slay me,
yet shall I praise him. He waited. He waited. He was
perplexed. You read the book of Job. He
was perplexed. And he had comforters who were
supposedly comforting him. And all they were doing was telling
him it must be his fault. He must've done something wrong.
Through extreme trial. But the storm of that trial,
like an ocean storm. I wonder if it's happening somewhere
in the Carolinas in America now, that storm that surged up the
sea and I wonder if somebody's going to walk along a beach that
they've walked along every day and they'll just be lying there
on the beach, a fabulously wealthy jewel, valuable jewel at their
feet because that storm washed that jewel there. The storm washed
such a jewel of salvation and the knowledge of salvation and
the knowledge of who God is. Job was a righteous man as man
counts righteousness. But when he saw God in truth,
in salvation, what a jewel of true salvation was washed up
by that storm that he went through. And while waiting, we have the
Holy Spirit's assurance. Be content, Hebrews 13 five,
be content with such things as you have, for he has said, while
you're waiting, he said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. Finally, just one brief thing,
verse 20. Come, my people, enter thou into
thy chambers, and shut the doors about thee. Hide thyself, as
it were, for a little moment, until the indignation be overpassed.
A willingness to commune with God, always. The life of faith
is not just a Sunday service thing, and then you park it till
next Sunday. It's your way of life. Wherever
you are, whatever you're doing, the inner man of the Spirit of
God can heed God's call. Come, my people. Enter. Enter. Enter into the chambers of salvation. Enter into the peace and safety. Come within Zion's walls. Verse
1, we have a strong city, Zion. Salvation will God appoint for
walls. Come inside this chamber, this place of safety, this sanctuary,
aware of God's oversight. This world is going to be judged.
It is being judged. aware of God's protection, of
His direction of His people. He guides our path, of His eternal
good purpose. The unbelieving world in its
sin is the object of divine indignation. But you, believer, can always
take refuge, as it says here, in thy chambers, thy chambers
of salvation. Well, that's it. Do you see? The things that God gives to
true believers that a mere belief in God does not give, it gives
a desire to seek God, a desire to follow him, the patience to
wait for him whatever the circumstances, and a willingness to commune
with him. And it's not just a Sunday thing, it's all the time. Do
you see the difference between simply acknowledging that this
book is true, that there is a God, and actually knowing God and
enjoying Him forever, seeking Him, following, waiting, communing
with Jesus. Do you know Jesus? Jesus, lover
of my soul. We'll sing that hymn as our closing
hymn now. Hymn number 303, Jesus, lover
of my soul, let me to thy bosom.