This evening I've selected for a meditation, Psalm 68. If you'll turn in your Bibles there, I'll be reading from the ESV. This is God's very word. Please give careful attention to it. To the choir master is Psalm of David, a song. God shall arise, his enemies shall be scattered, and those who hate him shall flee before him. As smoke is driven away, so you shall drive them away. As wax melts before fire, so the wicked shall perish before God. But the righteous shall be glad, they shall exult before God, they shall be jubilant with joy. Sing to God, sing praises to his name, lift up a song to him who rides through the deserts. His name is the Lord, exult before him. Father of the fatherless, protector of widows, is God in his holy habitation. God settles the solitary in a home. He leads out the prisoners to prosperity. But the rebellious dwell in a parched land. O God, when you went out before your people, when you marched through the wilderness, the earthquake, the heavens poured down rain before God, the one of Sinai, before God, the God of Israel. Reign in abundance, O God, you shed abroad, you restored your inheritance as it languished. Your flock found a dwelling in it, in your goodness, O God, you provided for the needy. The Lord gives the word. The women who announce the news are a great host. The kings of the armies, they flee, they flee. The women at home divide the spoil. Though you men lie among the sheepfolds, the wings of a dove covered with silver, its pinions with shimmering gold. When the Almighty scatters kings there, let snow fall on Zalmon. O mountain of God, mountain of Bashan, O many-peaked mountain, mountain of Bashan, why do you look with hatred on, O many-peaked mountain, at the mount that God has desired for his abode? Yes, where the Lord will dwell forever. The chariots of God are twice 10,000. Thousands upon thousands, the Lord is among them. Sinai is now in his sanctuary. You ascended on high, leading a host of captives in your train and receiving gifts among men, even among the rebellious, that the Lord God may dwell there. Blessed be the Lord who daily bears us up. God is our salvation. Our God is a God of salvations. And to God the Lord belong deliverances from death. But God will strike the heads of his enemies. the hairy crown of him who walks in his guilty ways. The Lord said, I will bring them back from Bashan. I will bring them back from the depths of the sea, that you may strike your feet in the blood, that the tongues of your dogs may have their portion from the foe. Your procession is seen, O God, the procession of my God, my king, into the sanctuary. The singers in front, the musicians last, between them virgins playing tambourines. Bless God and the congregation, the Lord, O you, who are Israel's fountain. There is Benjamin, the least of them in the lead, the princes of Judah in their throng, the princes of Zebulun, the princes of Naphtali. Summon your power, O God, the power, O God, by which you have worked for us. Because of your temple at Jerusalem, kings shall bear gifts to you. Rebuke the beasts that dwell among the reeds, the herds of the bulls, but the calves of the peoples. Trample underfoot those who lust after tribute. Scatter the peoples who delight in war. Nobles shall come from Egypt. Cush shall hasten to stretch out her hands to God. O kingdoms of the earth, sing to God, sing praises to the Lord. To him who rides in the heavens, the ancient heavens. Behold, he sends out his voice, his mighty voice. Ascribe power to God, whose majesty is over Israel and whose power is in the skies. Awesome is God in his sanctuary, the God of Israel. He is the one who gives power and strength to his people. Blessed be God. Shall we pray? Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we do thank you for your word. It is indeed broader than all the heavens. Once again, we plead with you that you would open up the eyes of our heart to hear your word anew and afresh this evening. Father, do pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart would be acceptable and pleasing in your sight. Oh God, our rock and our redeemer. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, some of you will remember when Calvin Christian football team was great. That was in the days of Brad Jansman when he was at the helm. And I'll never forget one game in particular that was a rout of our competitors. And there was one person in the crowd on the Calvin Christian School side who is not present this evening and will remain anonymous, but I have her permission to use this illustration. And there started to be a change in the momentum, and this particular person felt bad for those boys and started to express some sympathy and say, oh, good, they won't feel so bad, you know, if they score and they get a point. And there was another fan in the Calvin Christian School stands who happens to be filling this pulpit tonight who said, no, we have to keep the big goose egg up there. And I raised my voice and I began to try and rally the troops and tell the defense to stand firm and keep that goose egg up on the board. And she looked at me straight in the eyes and she said, And you call yourself a pastor. She eventually came around a couple games later, and it was very enjoyable to watch her yell at the top of her voice as well, for her boys. But this rushing cataract of a psalm also contains a kind of unique spiritual dialect that one has to understand in order to understand the psalm. So just like as I was explaining to this other fan that the Sermon on the Mount doesn't exactly apply out on the gridiron or on the field, except that I was always proud of our boys when they knocked somebody down really hard, they'd reach out a hand and help them out most of the time. This takes a spiritual heart and a spiritual head in order to understand the meaning of the enemies being scattered and routed. For what we see in this psalm is a very magnificent jewel. the cadence of which may actually have been informed by an ancient arithmetic pattern. It's beautiful. And here we have the unfolding of all kinds of innumerable historic occurrences where God has actually executed and prosecuted, that is, played out his eternal plan in order to redeem a people unto himself and in order to call in a host of captives and the elect and build up the church. And so we see this in all kinds of historical occurrences from ancient times into the present and all the way up into the future. And this should cause our hearts as the church of God, of which we're members, our hearts to redouble with joy for what he has done by including us in this plan, and especially in light of the wonderful display of God's care for his people in generations past and the present. And into the future. So I'd like to have three short points tonight. First of all, I'd like to look at the prayers for victory in verses 1 and 2. And then the praises for the past deeds that God has done. And finally, the proclamation of what God was doing in the past, what he is doing currently in the church, and what he will do in the future. So prayers, praises, and proclamation, that's the best an Old Testament scholar can do. So first of all, notice the prayers for victory. The psalm starts out and gives us the tone right in the opening two verses. Right at the beginning, it sets this fundamental tone for the entire psalm. And although the psalmists had undoubtedly watched and experienced as people go through times of oppression and times when they must have wondered whether God really was sovereign and caring for them. Nevertheless, at the beginning, he starts out with, I don't think the ESV gets it right. I think it's actually not an indicative voice, but rather a kind of a volative voice, optative voice, if you will do these things, oh God, please do these things. And there's ebulence and joy and a cry out to God and prayer that he would accomplish these things at the very beginning, namely scatter the enemies of God. The best I could come up with to approximate this is it's something like what we do when we pray the Lord's Prayer. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Now it may be, as this psalmist boils over with these kind of desires for God to take action, that there's a historical background to this. There's been all kinds of conjectures about what the background of this particular psalm is. Many people notice, especially because of the references to the procession and the ark and past victories and then bringing the ark into Zion, perhaps that that's the background. And the background actually may be the song of the ark, which occurs in Numbers chapter 10 verse 35 and 36. To refresh your memories, a little snatch of poetry. Whenever the ark set out, Moses said, Arise, O Lord, let your enemies be scattered, and let those who hate you flee before you. And when it rested, the ark that is, he said, Return, O Lord, to the ten thousand thousands of Israel. Now that language is strikingly similar as it's echoed here in our psalm. It may be that this was composed on the occasion of one of David's great victories. We don't know for sure, though. Whatever the allusions are referring to with regards to specific historic events, it's hard to nail down. But there seems to be all kinds of echoes and reminiscences of what God has done in the past. even if we were to be able to nail down the historic occasion upon which this psalm was composed, either in part or whole, that in and of itself would not exhaust the meaning of this psalm. Because what happens in the psalm is there is an ascent. All the stanzas lead up to a stanza and a verse, verses, which reach a climax in verse 18. And then you have a descent of stanzas, which only reinforce the meaning that was in the first stanza building up to verse 18. But in verse 18, there is a kind of surplus of meaning that could not have been exhausted in that original context. And so we look beyond the original context in order to try and understand, indeed, spiritually what God is teaching us through this psalm. So we turn from the prayers here at the beginning in verses 1 and 2 to the praises for the past deeds in verses 3 and 10. And notice when you turn to verse 3, it's no longer the wicked who are the subject. So the wicked are going to be scattered. The wicked are going to be routed. They're going to flee before God in his majestic power. But notice what it says about the righteous. The righteous will have stability. The wicked will melt like wax, but the righteous have stability when they are at peace because God, the rider on the clouds, provides for them and cares for them. He is called the rider on the clouds, probably borrowed from the neighbors to the north. It was an epithet that was given to Baal in Ugaritic literature, which was up in Syria, present-day Syria. And that very title, which was applied to Bel, the God of weather, the God of provision, the God of fertility, the God of thunderstorm, is taken over by the Hebrews and actually applied in the Psalms and elsewhere to Yahweh, the one true God. But notice the great care that God gives his people for which he is praised here. Innumerable deeds, countless kinds of examples, and his compassion never displaces his almighty power. such a thought as that would have been a contradiction to the ancient Near Eastern mindset. God is powerful, and therefore he can cure for his people. And in verses 7 to 10, the tone switches even more, and you have a kind of telescoping of events that demonstrates that God cares for his people constantly. It's almost staccato in its effect as far as the lines and versification. God has shown his care in the paradigmatic salvation event of the Old Testament, namely the Exodus. God has shown his victory in triumphing over enemies like Sisera. God has shown his care for his people in the Theophany, that is the manifestation of God at Sinai. And then in the more general but nevertheless effusive and regular way he demonstrates his care, He gives them reign on a constant basis. And so one thing you should note in the first part of the sermon, by way of application, something that Dr. Godfrey points out in his recent little excellent book on the Psalms, is the constant care that God has given to his people. In times past, in times present, and all the way up until we enter the world to come, God cares for his people. But nevertheless, I want to push you towards verse 18 in the psalm because I do think that's the center and the core of the psalm, and that's where you find this surplus of meaning, if you will, that I was talking about. And so not only do we see prayers for God to be victorious, not only do we see praises for God's past deeds, which brings consolation and encouragement for the present, but also we see proclamations of what God has done in Christ, what God is doing in Christ, and what God will necessarily do in and through Christ in the future, all the way from verse 11 through verse 35. Now, many of you may remember in the news, and probably many of you saw on the news or YouTube, depending on what generation you belong to, the pictures of the Oroville Dam breach that happened earlier this year. Tallest dam in the United States. And, you know, this large spillway began to give way. And they were concerned that a 30-foot wall of water, if it gave way completely, would wipe out the neighboring communities. And so they evacuated hundreds of thousands of people. Unprecedented evacuation in the United States as far as potential dam breaking loose. This psalm is like that rushing cataract. All people who engage themselves in this psalm recognize the constant effusive and ebullient praise that the psalmist is trying to express about the blessings of God, the victories described. In fact, the psalmist seems to strain to even find expressions that will capture what is going on with regards to his observation of what God has done in the past and is doing in the present and will do in the future. And so it's almost as if human language can't comprehend or express all that the psalmist wants to talk about here. So in verse 13 and following, he uses these images and metaphors that have received all kinds of ink trying to explain them. You know, the wings of a dove. What's that all about? At the end of the day, in the gold and the silver, I don't think these should be taken overly, literalistically, as if they belong to the spoils of war and would be true gold, true jewels, true silver because the divine warrior has conquered his people and as typically happened with a king when he makes a big conquest, he divides the spoils. Rather, I think probably what's going on is if you've ever taken a bird's wing or a dove's wing there in verse 13 and you turn it and you notice the shades and the hues of color come out and they're beautiful and then notice the white snow capped Mount Zalman. So whenever you get fresh snow how beautiful it looks even in our hills even though it's occasional. You know the purity and the beauty that's communicated there. What the psalmist is communicating here at this point through the poetry is, that's the essence of when God's people are in the lap of rest and peace because their sovereign is watching over them. It's beautiful to behold. And then he marches on, and we get to the point of the climax with God ascending the highest mount. Did you notice verse 15 and following? Let me read it again so it's fresh in your minds, because this is where the center of the communicating intent is. O mountain of God is Mount Bashan. A jagged mountain is Mount Bashan. Why so hostile, O jagged mountains, towards the mountain God desired as his dwelling? Indeed, the Lord abides forever. The chariots of God are myriads of myriads, thousands of thousands. The Lord is among them. Sinai is in the sanctuary. You went up to the heights, having taken captives. You received gifts among men, indeed, even among the stubborn to dwell, O Lord God. Now there's the core stanza. Myriads and myriads of chariots. What's strange for us Westerners is that you have this kind of mountain rivalry communicated. Now we say, that seems strange, what is going on here? But actually, let me explain, that's exactly what's going on here in Palestine. at this time you had a kind of mountain rivalry if you will. Bashan probably not a single mountain but a mountain range which by the way was on the boundary of Canaan and therefore is a symbol for all hostile peoples who would levy attacks and war against God's people. That mountain looks with hatred on the mountain of God. This is the only time this word occurs in the entire Hebrew Bible. But we know from its constant use in Arabic, it probably means looks with hostility towards the mountain of God. So you must realize, if you slow down and think about the application of this, God cares for you. He wants to arrange your mental furniture so that you understand what life is going to be like as we pilgrimage towards the world to come. On the one hand he provides tremendous care for you constantly. But on the other hand there is hostility from the world. And the more you try and live like a Christian, the more you try and live like a godly Hebrew, the more you're going to feel the chafing against the grain. There is hostility. And especially for serious minded Christians. Now, these Hebrews, they did not like to represent images visually, so they had a custom of painting in words, you might say. And so the idea that God resides on a mountain and that that's his holy abode is tremendously evocative. God wants the highest mountain. That's what's being communicated. Why, O Bashan, do you look upon the mountain of God with hostility, despising God's people, despising God's holy place? Now that may seem strange, but let me remind you what Isaiah 2 says, because that's exactly what Isaiah 2, chapter 2, verse 2 and following says. It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of mountains, and shall be lifted up above all hills, and all nations shall flow to it. And many peoples will come and say, Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways, and that we may walk in his paths. For out of Zion shall go the law, and the word of the Lord shall come from Jerusalem. Brothers and sisters, there is this antithesis set up in the Hebrew Bible. On the one hand, you have the horror of God, which is Hebrew for mountain. On the other hand, you have the midbar, which is the desert. The latter term would connote to the people at that time wilderness wanderings, disobedience, temptation, but nevertheless recollections perhaps of God's guidance and care. The former term, the mountain of God, in the ancient world would be very strange. Although a lot of cultures in and around Israel had the tendency to say that certain places were unalterably holy. Especially mountains. So we know from the myths of the ancient Near East. We know from the surrounding cultures that they counted these places as sacred. Where do you go to meet the divinity? Even a ziggurat, you know, like a pyramid, all the way back at Genesis 11. You didn't climb a ziggurat. You came to a temple at the base, and there was a little heliport at the top where allegedly God touched down, and you had this communication between the divine and the human. The ancient Near Eastern peoples thought these places were holy. Modern people think that's the case, too. Mount Fuji, has been considered sacred for centuries. People think that it's sacred in and of itself. The Hebrews rejected this notion. What makes a place sacred is not the fact that it's a mountain peak, not the fact that it has some kind of special aura or transcendence about it in and of itself. What makes it sacred is the fact that God abides there and is present there. That's how the Hebrews thought. What makes an unusual place, like a mountain, sacred is the fact that God chooses to dwell there, and that's what makes it sacred for the Hebrews. Mountains represent when God is present there, in Israelite 5, the connecting link between heaven and earth. That's where you meet God, because God is there. God has chosen to dwell there. In fact, as you go through redemptive history and through the rest of the Bible, God's mountain becomes a place of sanctuary. You heard in the psalm, Zion is his mountain, that is the elevated place where he has chosen to reside, and that's why it becomes sacred, because God's presence is there. In fact, many previously chosen sacred places in Scripture were rejected, even in this psalm and others, and you see a movement, A movement that shows a direction. What was previously holy in ancient times, like Sinai, is rejected. What becomes holy in the future? Zion. The whole direction of scripture and subsequent biblical testimony shows that there's a movement from Sinai to Zion, not only in this psalm, but throughout the Hebrew Bible. When the divine warrior theme is first introduced, God is a great king who fights on behalf of his people, Often that's communicated that he descends from a mountain to war on behalf of his people, to rout enemies on behalf of his people. And where does he descend from early on in the scriptures? Mount Sinai. The further you go, you know where he descends from? Zion. The whole direction is from Sinai to Zion. The one of Sinai is going to become the one who dwells on Mount Zion. The desert on the one hand, the mountain on the other. The desert will be replaced in Scripture by the city of Jerusalem. David, David, not Moses, becomes central as the Hebrew Bible unfolds. And moreover, the theme of the presence of the mountain gives way to God's presence in the temple. People of God, because Christ is one with God, When you read what God has done and is doing, you are already reading about Christ. Christ was really there to these people in Psalm 68, albeit he was not incarnate yet. These typological signs that the people read about, this surplus of meaning even in verse 18, this rushing cataract of Psalm 68 really did broker the truth of Christ to the people at that time. As one person has said, Jesus had a book out already long before the New Testament apostles put pen to paper and expressed what they did in the New Testament. 77% of your Bible, the Hebrew Bible, brokered the truth of Christ. Now that may seem like a big claim, but I have a good friend on my side, namely the Apostle Paul. You recall how this is phrased in Ephesians 4, verses 7 through 13. You can turn there, or I'll read it for you. You can just listen. It's familiar, especially on Ascension Day. To each one of us, this is chapter 4, verse 7 to 13. To each one of us, grace has been given as Christ appointed it. That is why it says, when he ascended on high, he led captives in his train, and he gave gifts to men. What does he ascended mean except that he also descended to the lower earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens in order to fill the whole universe. It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, some to be pastors and teachers to prepare God's people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of God, close quote. You see, people of God, brothers and sisters, when Paul says that Christ ascended on high and when he quotes Psalm 68 there in verse 8 of chapter 4 of Ephesians, There surely is typological development. There surely is advancement from Psalm 68. But the apostle uses a preposition he rarely uses when he's citing Old Testament scripture. And he uses this preposition at this point to say, therefore it says, and then he launches into the quote from Psalm 68, when he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men. Paul is making use of this special preposition in order to say that there's an inference there in Psalm 68. Already there, already resonant there in Psalm 68, to the effect that Ephesians 4.8, the apostle Paul is basically saying, because to each of us grace is given, therefore scripture says, when he ascended on high. My colleague, Professor Ba, explains the apostle is basically teasing out the meaning of Psalm 68. It was already residual, already beginning, already uncoate there. Psalm 68, verse 18, when he ascended on high, the core, the climax, the very summit of that psalm is basically a preaching of the gospel beforehand. And it demanded a deeper, more sublime interpretation because there was a surplus of meaning there that even went beyond the original audience. It was already there in Psalm 68. This is not just backwards reading, this is forward reading. In other words, the Psalms did broker the truth of Christ. Christ was there for them, even though in shadowy form. Did you notice that Paul changed the quotation from Psalm 68? Did you notice that the divine warrior in Psalm 68, when he ascended on high after the victory, he received gifts from men? Did you notice what it says in Paul in Ephesians 4? He gave gifts to men. Now, how can he get away with that? You can't change scripture. There's been bottles of ink spelt over this particular issue. Let me explain. For Paul, the act of ascending, talked about in Psalm 68, implied an act of descending. Paul now realizes this side of the resurrection and the ascension of Christ, that the one who descended, the one for our sake who was born of a woman, the one who for our sake was born under the law, is the one who has descended in order to ascend again and be highly exalted. Highly exalted to the highest summits. God will get the highest summit. He has gotten the highest summit. And that's why Paul says in verse 10, he who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens in order to fill the whole universe. Christ, the divine warrior par excellence, is now in a position to distribute gifts, and he does so that his purposes may be accomplished. And then towards the end of the psalm, you have this cavalcade of Israel. Now that's a word that's fallen out of favor in English, unless you like the lumineers, which some young people here may. A calvacate is basically a ceremony or a procession that often involves chariots and horses with chariots. And here, that's exactly what you have as you have this celebration, perhaps even a re-celebration of the great exodus-despoiling events. Did you notice the women singing? That may be an echo of Miriam and her friends singing after God's great victory as was celebrated in Exodus 15. But not only does this great calvacate proceed to Zion, in these final verses, but what else do you observe? There's the homage of people coming from nations all around the world. Nothing like that ever happened in Israel. As one author said, what the poet has done is he's pulled this wonderful knot together from the beginning of the psalm, together with the end of the psalm, to reveal this beautiful tapestry that reaffirms the truth of the core of the psalm, the summit of the psalm, the climax of the psalm, namely verse 18. So the beginning lines are brought together with the final lines in this knot, and it's all affirmed because the apostle picks up on this surplus of meaning and unpacks it because he realizes the great and sublime truths of a future event which were talked about in the gospel proclaimed beforehand by the psalmist. And then notice the end of the psalm, Psalm 68, oh kingdoms of the earth sing to God, sing praises to the Lord, to him who rides in the heavens, the ancient heavens. Behold, he sends out his voice, his mighty voice, ascribe power to God whose majesty is over Israel and whose power is in the skies. Awesome, awesome is God from his sanctuary, the God of Israel. He is the one who gives power and strength to his people. Blessed be the Lord, blessed be God. So what does the psalmist appeal to at the end of this psalm? He appeals to the universal rule of God. The tone becomes universal in the sense that all nations now bow the knee, and they come from all around the world in order to bring homage to God, in order to give their tribute, in order to be vassals to the great king who has won them. But notice what the apostle says that this victorious Christ, this divine warrior now gives men. Normally after a king has a great victory, he gives them the spoils of war, jewels, property, wealth, riches. That's not what Paul says Christ gives as the ascended Lord. The ascended Lord gives men. The ascended Lord gives gifted men. The ascended Lord as a gift to his church gives particularly offices of the church, officers to the church. And these gifts come in the form of ministers, ordained servants who are going to live and work sacrificially on the behalf of the benefit of the church. Not only evangelists, not only prophets, not only apostles but shepherds and teachers. That's God's gift to you after he ascends on high. That he gives officers to the church and not for their own self-aggrandizement but to be spent in the purposes of building the kingdom of God. So by way of conclusion, I told you I was going to keep it short. I want to be invited back. One of the great delights I had when working through the Psalter in great detail for the upcoming Psalter Hymn project was reading John Brown of Hattington's metrical analysis of the Psalms and his outlines, which I suspect were his outlines from preaching through the Psalter. And when he came to the end of Psalm 68, he says, while I sing, this old Scott preacher, let me behold, let me admire what God is and hath done for and to my soul and to the church of God of which I am a member. Let me behold what God hath done in instances unnumbered in prosecution of the covenant he made with his eternal son. We cannot help but recall John 17. You'll remember that prayer in the garden of Gethsemane. As your Heidelberg says, he suffered his whole life long but especially at the end and here he is alone in the garden his disciples can't stay awake and we get this picture of the son of god talking to his heavenly father i have glorified you on earth having accomplished the work you gave me to do and now father glorify me in your own presence with the glory that i had with you before the world existed i have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world yours they were and you gave them to me having observed the prayers of this victory in verses one and two and the praises for god's past deeds verses three to ten and the proclamations of his execution of this covenant with his son not only in times past but in times present and into the future. I want to draw to your attention a few applications, three in particular. First, I want you to realize, church, especially the constant care that God has for you in light of this psalm and God's word this evening in the midst of that development of his worldwide plan. Even though it may seem at times that the church, and not just the church corporately, but we individually are under great duress because we are all subject to the common curse. Disease, death, being injured against because of other people's sin, injuring other people because of our sin. God nevertheless has cared for the members of his church, his elect pride in ages past, ancient times, in the present. And he also will do that into the future, all the way up until we enter the world to come. Take heart. Be encouraged. Did you notice subtlety in a text? You may not have because, sorry for pointing this out again, I don't want to distance you from your English Bibles, honestly, but ESV gets it wrong here. Look at verse 19. God cares for you. He will provide a salvation, singular. But the texts go on to say in the very next line that God is for us as a God of saving acts, deliverances, in the plural. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that's no accident, brothers and sisters. The smallest little things can be huge conveyors of meaning. Not just a salvation, but constant salvations and deliverances God gives to you. The chief blessing of which is deliverance from death in the next line. That's what God gives you. And he does that through the self-sacrificial ministry of the benefit of the church through her officers. That's the first thing I want you to see, but I also want you to be thankful for the eternal plan of God. As he builds up his church, of which you were members, brothers and sisters, we should burst with gratitude like this psalmist does, like the ancient Hebrews did. What God has done for our souls and for our church and making us members of the church and part of this grand scheme and participating in this glorious drama, the greatest drama ever told. He has made manifest that he is prosecuting an eternal covenant made with the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And Christ discharged his duty to accomplish all that the Father gave him to do so that he might have his reward, namely his elect, his bride, his church. And he did it without sin. He's merited the world to come on our behalf. He ascended the highest summit. And even though it doesn't appear so now at times, he will rout all the enemies of us and the church. The gates of hell shall not prevail against his purposes. And finally, I want you to think upon this. And no one else put me up to this. I'll own it. I want you to realize how significant it is that you have an orthodox theological seminary in which many of you are involved stewarding the gifts that God has given in our very midst following the ascension. Think about this psalm and what it says in Ephesians 4. This is not a sales pitch for the seminary. I think this flows right out of the application of the psalm. the people's lives in which you are involved across the way on the other side of town, in whatever form that may be, and I know this congregation especially has taken many forms of expression in doing that. What you are doing is you are actually stewarding the gifts that God gives you for your own benefit and for the benefit of the church worldwide. Because of his eternal plan of redemption between the Father and the Son. And now that Christ has descended and ascended to the highest summit, now he gives gifts to you and for you and for the great wide world. On Saturday, I was at an ordination service on Sunday, giving a charge to one of our grads, a man who's going back to Japan. He's still Filipino, but he married a Japanese woman and he knows Japanese. He has a 40-year plan in his hand to go back to the rocky soil of Japan and build a church. That's Christ's gift to the world. Rui Wang, one of our students who's graduated, I didn't even know until this last week, he was a professor of electrical engineering. He has a doctorate. You would never know it. He's so humble. And there he sits in front of class, diligently working. He's going back to Japan himself with his wife, where there's a church of over 500 Chinese believers and growing. That's in a nation where less than 1% even professed Christ, broadly defined. Ming Li, a Chinese student who came here from the mainland, plans to say and plant one of the few, if any, reformed Chinese churches here in Southern California. Fyder Minnikov, who was exiled from his home in Donetsk, you know the story. A place where Dr. Van Drunen and I ministered years ago. But he had to flee that town. But he's training to go back and be one of the cream of the cream and the leaders to train the church there. That's Christ giving gifts to his church to call in the elect, to mature the saints who are there all over the world, and in order to protect them from false doctrine and help them on their pilgrim way in order to enter the world to come. I could go on, but I won't. When you participate as a church and as individuals in the lives of these folks across town, you are actually part of prosecuting, by God's grace, the eternal covenant that's being executed in real history by the living Christ who gives gifts to his church and he wants us to develop these gifts that he gives us as the ascended Lord. I'll sneak a fourth one in. Pray for your pastor. He is your gift. He's there as a gift from Christ to you, to mature you and help you get all the way to the end so you might enter the world to come. Shall we pray? Father, we thank you for the truths that you express in your word. It is all beautiful and broader than all the heavens. And, Lord, like a diamond that's refracted in the light, we see beams from different parts of your scripture that cause us to realize the truths anew and afresh that are seen there. We thank you, O Lord, that you sent your son into the world, that he was not only the penalty payer but also the probation keeper fulfilling all the work that you gave him to do and lord that he has merited a salvation being our human mediator and our divine mediator such oh lord that we can enter boldly before your throne that we can be your people that we can have our consciences cleansed perfectly oh lord so that we can worship you in purity and truth forever and ever, and we pray, O Lord, that you would use the gifts that you give to your church, having ascended, to help your people along their pilgrim way, to shepherd them well, to protect the sheep, indeed to mature them, to watch over them, to help them, O Lord, so that they indeed may go their whole lives long and indeed keep the faith and remain faithful and enter into your presence in due time at a time of your choosing. Father, seal these truths unto our heart, even if they don't resonate. Even tonight, we pray that you would seal them unto our heart, recall them by your Holy Spirit at a time of need to old and young alike in this congregation. We ask this all for Jesus' namesake. Amen.