Okay, well, if you have your Bible, it would be great to have it open, Psalm 97.
I found this Bible on the pew.
I don't know if it's the church Bible, but it's on page 603.
If you happen to have a Bible that looks a little like this one,
and that would be great to have that open before you.
Psalm 97, beginning at verse 1.
The Lord reigns, let the earth be glad.
Let the distant shores rejoice.
Clouds in thick darkness surround him.
Righteousness and justice are the foundations of his throne.
Fire goes before him and consumes his foes on every side.
His lightning lights up the world.
The earth sees and trembles.
The mountains melt like wax before the Lord, before the Lord of all the earth.
The heavens proclaim his righteousness and all peoples see his glory.
All who worship images are put to shame.
Those who boast in idols worship him, all you gods.
Zion hears and rejoices, and the villages of Judah are glad because of your judgments, O Lord.
For you, O Lord, are the most high over all the earth.
You are exalted far above all gods.
Let those who love the Lord hate evil, for he guards the lives of his faithful ones and delivers them from the hand of the wicked.
Light is shed upon the righteous and joy on the upright in heart.
Rejoice in the Lord, you who are righteous, and praise his holy name.
Let's pray together.
O gracious God and Father, we thank you that you are the most high over all the earth.
That the heavens proclaim your righteousness and all peoples will one day see your glory.
And as we come now to your word, Lord, we pray that we would have a glimpse of that glory.
You would show us something of the eternal things which are to come.
That you would quieten our hearts, you would humble our spirits.
And that by your Holy Spirit, you would speak to us and into our lives now.
That we might see your face.
We might love you more.
And we might live for that glory.
And we ask this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Well, let me thank you again for the invitation to come this morning.
It's always a joy to come to Brunsfield.
And when I realized there was a church lunch, my joy increased all the more.
And I've invited myself to lunch.
And Graham has very kindly accepted that invitation.
And I hope to spend some time with you after.
As I mentioned, this psalm was brought home to me in a very vivid way,
listening to that song, Let It Rain, by Michael W. Smith.
And it's just a wonderful psalm, isn't it?
That speaks of God, our God, who is exalted above all the so-called gods of the world.
One of the highlights, I suppose, of the summer, one of the images that will remain with us,
is the sight of the French national team driving up the Champs-Élysées in their open-top bus,
going up to the Élysées Palace.
The French planes flying overhead with the tricolor.
And it was just a wonderful scene, wasn't it?
Especially if you're, I suppose, a French football fan.
And the French team celebrating their victory in the World Cup, just as well for them.
Scotland didn't qualify.
But they were the champions.
They were exalted over all the other teams.
And those in France, the people gathered in Paris that day, celebrating their triumph.
But, of course, as they celebrated, there were many who grieved, who mourned,
who were disconsolate, people whose nations didn't win,
who might have been knocked out in the first round, maybe even the semifinals.
It was a sad day, wasn't it, for many.
And that was true in our house.
We have a little competition, these events where everybody picks a team,
and we follow that team's progress.
My seven-year-old daughter, Anna, picked France.
And her dad picked Croatia.
And while she was rejoicing, I, of course, was greatly distressed.
But that's what we see in Psalm 97.
We see God triumphing, God exalted over all the so-called gods of the earth.
And verse 7, those who worship idols being put to shame, sorrow, remorse,
that they were on the losing side.
They picked the wrong team.
That's what we want to think about today, the greatness of God over his earth,
over all the so-called gods.
And to do that, I just want to understand a little bit of the context.
I believe you've been looking at these psalms over the past few weeks,
really from Psalm 90 through to Psalm 97 today.
And as you've been reading these psalms,
you'll have seen certain themes which recur.
There is the idea that God is the creator.
He is the king and the ruler of the heavens and the earth.
Psalm 95 says this,
The Lord is the great God, the great king above all gods.
In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him.
This sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.
He is a great king, for he created this world.
And as the creator, he rules this world.
Psalm 96 verse 10,
Say among the nations, the Lord reigns.
The world is firmly established.
It cannot be moved.
He will judge the peoples with equity.
And the psalms speak about God as the righteous judge,
the one who will draw history to a close,
who will right all wrongs.
It's Psalm 96.
Let the sea resound and everything in it,
the world and all who live in it.
Let the rivers clap their hands,
the mountains sing for joy.
For the Lord comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness,
and the peoples with equity.
God is the king.
He is the ruler.
He is the judge, and the judge who judges in righteousness.
Psalm 99 verse 4,
The king is mighty.
He loves justice.
You have established equity in Jacob.
You have done what is just and right.
And so our psalm begins by looking at these great themes
and saying, verse 1,
The Lord reigns.
Let the earth be glad.
Let the distant shores rejoice.
This is cause for rejoicing,
that our God is a king,
that he reigns over the whole earth,
that he is the one who made it,
and he is the one who will one day judge it
and root out sin and evil and wickedness.
And that is rejoicing, isn't it,
for us too in our lives.
It was lovely to hear our brother Tim's testimony
that God is in control.
I remember interreeling once around,
ironically, Croatia.
That's not why I picked the team.
It was just a sheer coincidence.
But I was interreeling around once,
and I ended up in a Baptist church on Sunday
with some Americans,
and we went for a lunch,
another church lunch.
There seems to be a pattern emerging here.
And I was sitting talking to one of them,
and I said,
well, tell me, brother,
what are you doing tomorrow?
And he said,
well, I work as a policeman for the United Nations,
and tomorrow I have to go and arrest
an armed war criminal
who's locked in a hotel,
and he says he's not coming out alive.
And I said,
how do you as a Christian
approach these situations?
And he said to me,
my God is bigger than that situation.
Now, I don't know what your Monday morning
has in store,
but Psalm 97 verse 1
tells us that the Lord reigns,
and so we can rejoice.
And we can rejoice when there is talk
on the news, isn't there,
of food and medicine being stockpiled
in anticipation of a no-deal Brexit next year.
We can rejoice when there is talk
of a new Cold War
as sanctions bounce back and forth
across the Atlantic.
We can rejoice because,
as Psalm 97 verse 10 tells us,
that those who love the Lord hate evil,
for he guards the lives
of his faithful ones
and delivers them from the hand
of the wicked.
There is a higher throne
than all this world has known.
The Lord reigns,
and so we can rejoice.
And what the psalmist does now
from verse 2 down to verse 9
is he takes up this idea
of the Lord,
the righteous judge,
coming in judgment,
and he portrays for us
this very vivid scene.
It's an image we've seen in Psalm 96.
It's an image you'll see,
I guess, next week in Psalm 98.
And in both of those psalms,
the image is one of joy.
We have this wonderful language,
trees of the forest singing for joy.
We have the rivers clapping their hands.
And yet in Psalm 97,
it is a scene both of joy,
but also of terror,
as the awesome God
is revealed to his world.
We see that, don't we,
in the descriptions in verse 2
down to verse 6,
these descriptions of natural phenomena.
Verse 2, we're told,
clouds and thick darkness surround him.
Though it was a little bit cloudy
this morning, wasn't it,
when we woke up
and there was a bit of a har.
I lived next to Arthur's seat
and it was obscured by cloud,
but he's not talking about
a few pleasant little clouds
and a little bit of mist.
This is impenetrable cloud,
cloud in which you cannot see
your hand before your face
and thick darkness.
And again, he's not talking about
a pleasant evening under the stars
with your friends looking up
and looking at the Milky Way.
He's talking about the kind of darkness
those boys in Thailand experienced
when for over a week
they were in a cave
in which there was absolutely
no light,
complete and utter darkness.
Verse 3, we're told of fire
going before him.
I was at a wedding last week
and it was nice to have
these fire pits at night
and as you sat down
for the reception,
you were given a bag of marshmallows.
And I thought, well,
that's a rather interesting
wedding breakfast,
but maybe there's more to come.
And my wife explained
it was for after the meal
and you took them outside
and you toasted the marshmallows
and it was a lovely thing to do.
It isn't that kind of fire.
This is the awesome fire
of God's judgment.
This is the fire you see in Greece
burning like a wildfire.
As lightning lights up the world again,
it's impressive lightning,
isn't it?
Thunder and lightning,
particularly if you're inside
on a rainy night.
Not so impressive
if like a friend of mine,
you're in an aeroplane
and the lightning begins
to strike the wings.
Terrifying, awesome.
And the mountains melting
like wax before the Lord,
before the Lord of all the earth.
So we have this scene
and it is a terrifying scene
of the whole earth convulsing,
the whole earth preparing
for the arrival of the righteous judge.
And it is an awesome sight.
And of course,
it brings to mind
a scene from earlier in Scripture.
If you turn back in your minds
to the life of Moses,
you remember Moses
as he met God
in the fire of the bush.
And the Lord used Moses
to deliver his people
from their enemies in Egypt.
And after the Passover,
the Lord went before them
in a pillar of cloud by day
and a pillar of fire by night.
And the Lord led them
through the wilderness.
And he brought them to Sinai,
to Horeb,
the mountain of God.
And when he brought them there,
the Lord appeared to them
in cloud and in fire.
Listen to the description
in Exodus chapter 19.
Mount Sinai was covered with smoke
because the Lord descended on it
in fire.
The smoke billowed up from it
like smoke from a furnace
and the whole mountain
trembled violently.
As the sound of the trumpet
grew louder and louder,
Moses spoke
and the voice of God
answered him.
The Lord descended
to the top of Sinai
and Moses went
to the top of the mountain.
When the people saw
the thunder and lightning
and heard the trumpet
and saw the mountain in smoke,
they trembled in fear
and stayed at a distance.
What happened in that scene
is that God
presenced himself
among his people
in cloud and in fire
and the mountain shook
and the lightning struck
and it was a terrifying scene.
And they were afraid
of the Lord.
Afraid of his power.
Afraid of his purity.
Remembering that righteousness
and justice
are the foundation
of his throne.
He is the holy God
and he taught them
that he is the only God
as he gave them
the commandments
instructing them
to have no gods
except him.
We've been singing
these wonderful songs
this morning,
haven't we,
about God
in his glory,
God
in his exaltation.
Our God
is an awesome God.
We didn't sing that one
but it came into my mind
and the psalmist
wants us to recognize
that our God
is an awesome God.
And sometimes,
of course,
we can forget that
in our Christian thinking
and perhaps even
in our evangelism.
As Christians,
we have the great joy
of being children
of the living God
through our faith
in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And we rejoice
and speak rightly
of the fatherhood
of God.
And as believers,
we know what it means
to have friendship
with God.
Romans chapter 4
speaks about Abraham,
the friend of God.
And though once
we were enemies,
we are now reconciled
to God
and are friends.
We rejoice
in the fatherhood of God.
We rejoice
in our friendship
with God
but we can perhaps
neglect to speak
of the fear
of God.
Of course,
a former generation
spoke of this
perhaps too much
but we're in danger,
I think,
of losing this idea
of the fear
of God.
I was reminded
of it the other day
just in the central library
as you go down the stairs
to the art library
and there's that
lovely tiled
frieze
and it has certain
verses from the
book of Proverbs
and the first
quote it has
is Proverbs 1
verse 7
the fear of the Lord
is the beginning
of wisdom.
Interestingly,
apparently that's
the motto
of Aberdeen University.
Well,
in our generation
we always run
the danger,
don't we,
of forgetting
about the fear
of God.
Craig Bartholomew,
the Bible scholar
defines it like this,
to fear Yahweh
is to sense
his power
and holiness
and yet at the same
time to embrace
him in love
and obedience.
We are in danger
of making God
as David Wells,
the author says,
weightless.
This is what he writes
in his very helpful book
No Place for Truth.
It is one of the
defining marks
of our time
that God
is now weightless.
I do not mean
that he is ethereal
but rather he has
become unimportant.
He rests upon
the world
so inconsequentially
as not to be noticeable.
He commands
less authority
than their appetites
for affluence
and influence.
He is less interesting
than television.
His judgments
are no more awe-inspiring
than the evening news
and his truth
is less compelling
than the advertiser's
sweet fog
of flattery
and lies.
That,
says David Wells,
is weightless
because we have lost
the fear
of God
to sense
the power
and holiness
and yet at the same time
to embrace him
in love
and obedience.
And I find here
an analogy
with the sea
quite helpful.
We holidayed
at the start
of July
in Dornach,
around Dornach
and we had a lovely day
at the beach
and we took the children
down to the sea
with the buckets
and the spades
and we played
in the water
and we looked at jellyfish
and we had a lovely day.
But at the end of that week
I visited some friends
in Oban
and one of the friends
had organised
a boat trip
on a speedboat,
a rib.
If you're familiar
with that sort of boat,
I wasn't
and I'm not very much
familiar with it now actually
but it was very fascinating
and it was very exciting.
But before we got on it
we were given
waterproof suits,
we were given
life jackets,
we were given instructions
about what we should
and shouldn't do
and then we sailed out
into the Atlantic
and the pilot of the ship
said we're now going to go
and we're going to sail past,
sail over,
in fact,
the third biggest whirlpool
in the world,
I think it was called
the Korovaque Ridge
and I questioned in my head
whether that was
a very good idea
but we got there
and there was no whirlpool
and I breathed a sigh of relief
and then he said,
well,
we'll try and start it ourselves
and he circled round and round
and created these giant waves
and lo and behold
the whirlpool appeared.
But it was quite a different experience,
wasn't it?
Playing on the beach
in Dornoch with the children
and then sailing out
into the Atlantic
and trying to raise
a giant whirlpool
from the ocean floor.
We love the sea
and we play with the sea
and we delight in the sea
and yet we fear
and respect the sea
and you don't trifle
with the sea,
you don't mess around
with the Korovaque whirlpool.
And so it is with God,
we can fear the Lord,
we can sense his power
and holiness
and yet at the same time
embrace him in love
and obedience.
As Christians,
we perhaps take ourselves
a little bit too seriously
but we can never take God
too seriously.
And we need to examine our lives
and think,
do we manifest the fear of God
in our worship?
Are we more interested
in the screens on our phone
than the pages of Scripture?
Do we neglect prayer
trusting that everything
is by grace
and the Lord knows
in advance what we need
before we ask it
and so we forget to pray?
Or we leave prayer
to the very end of the day
when we've done everything
that's important to us
and we squeeze in a few words
before we fall asleep
on the pillow?
Do we make time
for the Lord
or do we,
as one man said to me
this week when I invited him
to church,
I'll come if I have time.
Do we wait and see
if we get a better invitation
on a Sunday morning?
Or do we honour the Lord
with the firstfruits
of all that we have?
It's very easy, isn't it,
to forget
as we rejoice
in the fatherhood of God
and the friendship of God
to remember the fear
of the Lord
which is the beginning
of wisdom.
But of course
when Scripture speaks
of the fear of the Lord
it doesn't mean
that we have confidence
to approach God.
On the contrary,
we are invited
into his royal courts.
We are invited
to come before
this throne of grace.
The New Testament
says that we come
with confidence
and with boldness.
We come,
as the song says,
as guests invited.
And we must remember,
therefore,
when we come to God
to pray
as we are commanded
and invited to do so
before whom we come.
I enjoy our little time
with the children
at night before bed
and we say our prayers
and we just think
about things
we want to give thanks for
and to pray for
from the day.
And it's lovely
when young children,
our children are primary age
and some of the things
they pray for
are very sweet.
They might pray,
for example,
that their teddy bears
will sleep well
or after a trip to the zoo
they might give thanks
for the penguins.
Just sort of little
sweet prayers
of course,
they pray for other things
and it's right to encourage them
and it's lovely to hear
the young voices praying
but some of the things
they pray well,
they bring a smile
to my face
and I'm sure
they bring a smile
to the angels in heaven as well.
We must encourage them
in all of their prayers.
But I suppose the problem is
when a child becomes an adult
and when the mature Christian
gets down to pray,
whether our prayers
are of the same type,
whether we're just so concerned
with small things
in close proximity
to our lives,
Lord, help me get a parking space
when I go shopping.
Help me to recover
from this cold
before the weekend.
May we have good weather
on our family holiday.
I trust the interview goes well,
that the kitchen engineer
will come and repair
the washing machine quickly.
I mean,
these are nice prayers,
they're important prayers,
they're prayers that
perhaps we should pray
but if that's the end
of your prayer life,
then there's an issue.
If all we are praying for
as the Lord will help us
in our daily lives,
it's right for that
that may be the beginning
of our prayer lives
but not the end.
John Newton in his,
one of his hymns says this,
you are coming to a king,
great petitions with you.
Bring,
we need to be ambitious
for Christ in our generation
and in our prayer lives.
There is nothing
the Lord cannot do,
there is no one
he cannot reach
by his grace.
On Friday,
I had lunch with an American
who works for an international
mission organization
and he told me of a story.
They were given a house
on an island
in New York State.
It was a Christian couple
and when they passed away,
they left the house
in the will
to this Christian organization
and it's a beautiful island
and they run
a Bible college there
but it was just spoiled
because as you got on the island,
there was a big inn
where wealthy New York residents
would come at the weekend
and there would be drunkenness
and all kinds of misbehavior.
And you'd be sitting
in the Bible college
and you'd see this
and you'd hear this
and the people there
running the Bible college
thought,
well,
we need to pray about this
and so they began to pray.
The Lord would do something
and one day,
the director of the Bible college
after a time of prayer said,
I'm just going to go
and speak to them
and he walked across the island
and he got to the inn
and the manager was in a bad mood
and he said,
what do you want?
And he said,
well,
I'd like to buy the inn
and the manager said,
well,
that's incredible
because this morning
I woke up
and I'm so fed up
with running this place.
I said,
if somebody walks in here now
and offers to buy it,
I'll give it to them for free.
And the inn is now
part of the Bible complex.
You are coming to a king,
great petitions with you bring.
We need to be ambitious
praying about our own lives
but remembering we worship a God
whose heavens proclaim his righteousness,
who sits upon the throne of the universe.
F.B. Meyer says this,
you do not test the resources of God
until you attempt the impossible.
Andrew Murray,
the theologian,
not the tennis player,
says this,
beware in your prayers
above everything else
of limiting God,
not only by unbelief
but by fancying
that you know what he can do.
Expect unexpected things
above all that we can ask
or imagine.
Psalm 97,
verse 2 to 9
reminds us that we have
an awesome God,
a God whose glory
is far above the heavens
and yet a God,
verse 10,
who guards the lives
of his faithful ones
and who sheds light
upon the righteous
and pours joy
into the heart
of the upright.
And that is great cause,
isn't it,
for rejoicing.
The psalm goes on
to tell us
that not everybody rejoices
in the Lord.
You've noticed
as we've read through
there are really two categories
of people in this psalm.
There are those
who are introduced to us
as the worshippers
of idols.
And then there are those,
verse 8,
who are the worshippers
of the Lord.
And on the day
of the Lord's appearing,
there are two
very different responses.
There is the response,
verse 7,
of those who worship idols
and they will be put to shame.
All peoples will see
God's glory
and they will be put
to shame.
However great the throngs
which worshipped with them,
however marvellous
their temples,
however ancient
their traditions,
they will be exposed
as having been worshipping
created things
rather than the Creator.
And they will be put to shame
that their worship
and their service
were misdirected,
that they supported Croatia
instead of supporting France.
There is a danger
that we can invest our lives
in the wrong things.
We can invest them
so thoroughly
in making names
for ourselves
and making fame
for ourselves
in our career
or academic success
in our relationships
that there is no space
or place for God.
and that at the end
of our lives
or when the Lord returns
we will be put to shame
because we invested
too much
in the wrong places
and we forgot
the primary thing
to seek first
His kingdom
and His righteousness.
When the glory of God
is revealed
among His people
we will be put to shame.
There are those
who worship idols
but there are also
those in this category
who oppose
the true worship
of God.
Verse 3
Fire goes before Him
and consumes His foes
on every side.
In every time
in every generation
there are people
who oppose
the worship
of the one
true and living God.
We see that periodically
don't we?
In Scotland
one of the stories
over the summer
was the humanists
I believe
who were complaining
that you find crosses
in crematoria
and they argue
that because
less than 50%
of people in Scotland
now identify as Christian
this might cause distress
or offence
to non-religious people
using the crematoria
for their funerals.
Paul wrote,
didn't it,
in the first century
there were enemies
of the cross of Christ
and it seems
in the 21st century
the offence
of the cross
is still an issue.
So there is
mild opposition
in Scotland
but of course
we are living through
one of the worst
persecutions
of the modern age
the persecution
of Christians
in the Middle East
in Iraq
and of Syria
and we know
there are enemies
of God
enemies of the cross
who oppose
the true worship
of the one
true God.
Psalm 97 says
they will be consumed
on every side.
So on the day
of the Lord's appearing
there will be those
who are put to shame
and yet
the Psalm
goes on to say
there are many
who will rejoice
verse 8
Zion hears
and rejoices
the villages
of Judah
are glad
because of your
judgments
O Lord.
The Lord's people
will be delivered
from the hand
of the wicked.
The Lord's people
will be vindicated
for their faith
in him
when he is revealed
as the one
exalted
far above
all gods.
They will be rescued
and they will be
rewarded
for their faithfulness.
Isaiah 25
has the people
of God
saying
this is our God
we waited
on him
and he
saved us.
Maybe you're here
today
and you're coming
under pressure
because of your
Christian life
and your Christian
testimony.
Maybe you are
thinking
it would be easier
just to give up
and to follow
the crowd
and to do things
just the same
as everybody else.
It would be so much
easier just to fit in
and accommodate
to the standards
of this age.
People maybe say to you
why do you spend
all that time in church
when you could be away
every weekend
you could take your boat
round the Koravaki Ridge
off the west coast.
Why do you give up
your evenings
to go to the Christian
Union at university
and get involved
in those lunch bars
and those outreach events?
Why do you spend
so much time
and give so much money
to that church
in Brunsfield?
Why do you experience
such mocking
and ridicule
from your friends
or from your colleagues?
Life would be
so much easier
if you just went
the same way
as everyone else.
Well,
Psalm 97 verse 8
tells us
there is a day
when we will rejoice
and be glad
because of the judgments
of the Lord.
All the earth
will see his glory
and we will know
that we supported
the right team
that our hope
and our confidence
were in the right place
and we had faith
in the one true
and living God.
This is our God.
We waited on him
and he saved us.
So the psalmist
describes the coming
of God in judgment
and it depicts
these two camps
those who worship
other gods
so called
or oppose
the true worship
of God
they will be put
to shame
they will experience
that judgment
and yet the Lord's people
those who kept faith
who waited upon him
who lived
in the light
of his coming
will be rewarded
and vindicated
and saved.
And these two themes
of the Lord's enemies
being judged
and the Lord's people
being saved
run all the way
through scripture.
We see it
don't we
at the story of Noah.
We see it
as we've mentioned
in the story
of the Exodus
as the people
of Israel
were delivered
and the armies
of Egypt
were judged.
And we see it
of course
in the New Testament
and if you have
your Bible before you
if you could perhaps
open to the page
on which we have
Thessalonians 4
again in my Bible
it's page 1188
but we want just
to look at two passages
in this book.
Thessalonica
is the city
in Greece
it's a very
attractive
seaside town
and Paul
you recall
went there
in Acts
he preached
all around
the Mediterranean
and as he got
to Thessalonica
he experienced
some of that
opposition
and this mob
it brought him
to the court
and said
this man
is preaching
he's defying
Caesar's decrees
because he says
there is another
king
one called
Jesus.
we've been
thinking
haven't we
in the
psalm
of a great
king
who comes
in cloud
and who
comes in fire
to judge
and to save
well in the
New Testament
Jesus is called
the king
and the Thessalonians
put their trust
in this king
and they
believed on him
despite much
opposition
and Paul
wrote to the church
he was unable
to visit the church
but he wrote
on two occasions
to encourage them
in their faith
and to remind
them of their hope
and in 1 Thessalonians
4 he writes
to tell them
about the coming
of the Lord
the day of the Lord
when the Lord
will return
for his own
and in chapter 4
verse 17
verse 16
rather
Paul says this
the Lord himself
will come down
from heaven
with a loud command
with the voice
of an archangel
and the trumpet call
of God
and the dead in Christ
will rise first
after that
we who are still alive
who are left
will be caught up
together with them
in the clouds
to meet the Lord
in the air
and so we will be
with the Lord
forever
Paul reminds us
in this chapter
that when a Christian
dies
they simply fall asleep
in Christ
that's why
cemeteries
were called cemeteries
it's from the Greek word
meaning to sleep
because we fall asleep
in the Lord
trusting that one day
the voice which rose
Lazarus from the tomb
will wake us
from our sleep
we will be taken up
caught up
with the Lord
in the clouds
Jesus used the language
of clouds
didn't he
just before his trial
Mark 13
he said this
people will see
the son of man
coming in clouds
with great power
and glory
and he will send
his angels
and gather
their elect
from the four winds
from the four ends
of the earth
so the New Testament
gives us a picture
of this king
coming in clouds
to save his people
to save them
from their enemies
to save them
from the last enemy
which is death
what a wonderful hope
to have
as Christians
that we fall asleep
in the Lord
and one day
as he woke
Jairus' daughter
with those words
little girl
I say to you awake
you will come to us
and speak our names
into our ears
and say
I say to you
wake up
and we will be
forever
with the Lord
the king
who comes
in cloud
and as we go
to 2 Thessalonians
we see
another image
of the Lord's
return
this time
not coming
to save his people
from their enemies
but coming to judge
those enemies
in verse
chapter 1
verse 5
Paul says this
this is evidence
that God's judgment
is right
and as a result
you will be counted
worthy of the kingdom
of God
for which you are suffering
God is just
he will pay back trouble
to those who trouble you
and give relief
to you who are troubled
this will happen
when the Lord Jesus
is revealed from heaven
in blazing fire
with his powerful angels
he will punish those
who do not know God
and do not obey
the gospel
of our Lord Jesus Christ
the Lord coming
the same event
but from a different perspective
not the Lord coming
in the clouds
to save
but the Lord coming
in fire
to judge
the great king
of heaven and earth
his glory visible
to the whole world
saving his people
and judging
their enemies
and so we see
the same themes
appearing
both in the Psalms
and in Paul's correspondence
to the Thessalonian church
and the wonderful thing
of course
about the Christian gospel
is that we're able
to move
aren't we
from one body
of people
to another
maybe you're here
today
and maybe you're
saying well
I'm not a worshipper
of God
and I'm not a follower
of the Lord Jesus Christ
what hope have I
the wonderful thing
about the gospel
is that the door
is open
the way
is open
for us
to return
and that through
the death
and the resurrection
of the Lord Jesus Christ
our sins
can be forgiven
we can go
from being sinners
to being saints
we can go
from being those
who walk
according to the flesh
who go the way
of the world
to those who are led
by his Holy Spirit
we can go
from being enemies
of God
to being his friends
those who go
from hating God
to those who
love him
and are loved
by him
those who are dead
in sin
and trespass
who are alive
in Christ
and raised with him
and living
according to his
ways
we can move
from being
children of wrath
to children
of God
and this is a profound
transformation
isn't it
we have the great hope
verses 8 and 9
but we have the present
experience
verse 10
of knowing the Lord's
providential care
in our lives
he guards the lives
of his faithful ones
and he delivers them
from the hand
of the wicked
wonderful to hear
Tim and Hazel's testimony
of the Lord guiding
and the Lord providing
and I'm sure
many of us
will be able to share
something of that
the Lord's provision
just the right time
and in just
his way
we know God
as our father
and we know him
as our friend
and that transforms
our present experience
verse 11
light is shed upon
the righteous
and joy
on the upright
in heart
what a wonderful
joy it is
to be a Christian
to be brought out
of the domain
of darkness
and brought into
his wonderful
light
instead of hostility
with God
and with others
to know peace
with God
and peace
with men
so let me ask you
friends
where are you
this morning
are you verse 7
a worshipper
of idols
or are you
verse 8
somebody who
rejoices
in the Lord
are you somebody
under God's judgment
or somebody
who has enjoyed
his salvation
are you somebody
who fears the Lord
oh yes
but knows him
as a father
and a friend
or are you
somebody opposed
to his purposes
indifferent
to his promises
and his plan
for all that he has made
the wonderful news
in the gospel
is that we can come in
to that family
we can be cleansed
from all of our sins
we can be filled
with his Holy Spirit
and incorporated
into his people
and we can have hope
and a future
what a wonderful
gospel
we can be on the
winning side
like my daughter
who supported France
we can join
in the celebrations
and we can share
in that wonderful joy
the Lord reigns
let the earth be glad
let the distant
shores rejoice
well we rejoice
and let's
pray together
as we close
Father we do thank you
that you are indeed
an awesome God
that your lighting
lights up the worlds
the earth
sees and trembles
and yet we thank you
oh God
that you
though exalted on high
stooped down
to lift us out
of the ash heap
to set our feet
upon a rock
to put a new song
in our mouths
and we pray this week
Lord as we face
trials and temptations
of many kinds
that we will look
not to our
weakness
but to your strength
and we will bring
before you in prayer
all the matters
which trouble us
trusting that you
care for us
and we pray
that you would help us
to walk in your ways
Lord
to live distinctively
as salt
and as light
to be willing
to suffer
for being a Christian
knowing that there is
in store for us
great glory
and that you have
plans and purposes
for us
to give us hope
in the future
so we thank you
for our Lord Jesus Christ
through whom we have
boldness and confidence
to come to you
and we pray
that as we
close our service
and begin our time
of fellowship
you would
just bless us
as our Father
as our best
and our most powerful friend
and help us
to encourage one another
toward love
and good deeds
and all the more
as we see this
glorious day approaching
and so we thank you
for this time now
in Jesus name
Amen