Could you turn to Revelation chapter 22? Since Daniel was so perplexing to me, maybe I'll just preach Revelation after I finish Daniel. No, no, I don't know when I'll preach through this book, but topicals maybe. We'll see. Revelation 22, 1 through 21, the entire chapter. Hear the holy word of our holy God. He showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the middle of its street, on either side of the river, was the Tree of Life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month, and the leaves of the trees were for the healing of the nations. There will no longer be any curse, and the throne of God and the Lamb will be in it, and His bondservants will serve Him. They will see His face. and his name will be on their foreheads. There will no longer be any night. They will not have the need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun because the Lord God will illumine them and they will reign forever and ever. And he said to me, these words are faithful and true and the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets sent his angel to show to his bondservants the things which must soon take place. Behold, I'm coming quickly. Blessed is he who heeds the words of the prophecy of this book. I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed me these things. He said to me, do not do that. I am a fellow servant of yours and of your brothers, the prophets, and of those who heed the words of this book. Worship God. And he said to me, do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near. Let the one who still does wrong still do wrong, and the one who is filthy still be filthy. Let the one who is righteous still practice righteousness, and the one who is holy still keep himself holy. Behold, I'm coming quickly and my reward is with me to render to every man according to what he has done. I am the Elf and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are those who wash their robes so that they may have a right to the tree of life and may enter by the gates into the city. Outsider, the dogs and the sorcerers and the immoral persons and the murderers and the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices lying. I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star. The spirit and the bride say, come. And let the one who hears say, come. And let the one who is thirsty come. Let the one who wishes to take the water of life without cost. I testify to everyone who hears the words, the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to them, God will add to them the plagues which are written in this book. If anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book. He who testifies to these things says, yes, I am coming quickly. Amen. Come Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. From that to Psalm 84. That, what we just looked at was about to usher in to the world, eternal, perfect worship of God forever and ever and ever and ever. The psalmist sings a little bit about longing to worship God, longing to be in God's immediate presence, worshiping God, Psalm 84. For the choir director on the getith, a psalm of the sons of Korah, how lovely are your dwelling places, O Lord of hosts. My soul longed and even yearned for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God. The bird also has found a house in the swallow, a nest for herself where she may lay her young. Even your altars, O Lord of hosts, my king and my God, how blessed are those who dwell in your house. They are ever praising you. How blessed is the man whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. Passing through the valley of Baca, they make it a spring. The early rain also covers it with blessings. They go from strength to strength. Every one of them appears before God in Zion. O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer. Give ear, O God of Jacob. Behold our shield, O God. Look up on the face of your anointed, for a day in your courts is better than a thousand outside. I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wickedness. For the Lord God is a sun and a shield. The Lord gives grace and glory. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, how blessed is the man who trusts in you. Praise God. Let's pray. Lord, how we love your songs, how we love the songs of Zion. We love the praises. We love the petitions. We love the lamentations. We love every jot and tittle of this collection of wonderful books. It gives us, Lord God, an insight into the The hearts of believers, our hearts, Lord. We hear our voice here. We add our tears to these tears. We add our shouts of joy to their shouts of joy. Their words are our words. We have the same spirit. You gave us the same spirit. Help us tonight. Help us tonight, Lord God, acquire and grow in our desire to be with you, to be in your presence, to worship you, to love you, to adore you, and eventually live with you. We pray these things in the Redeemer's name. Amen. One of the, it's an interesting thing to me, but one of the interesting things and saddest things about being a Christian, or perhaps sad's not the right word, perhaps one of the biggest struggles we have as Christians in the world is to maintain a close relationship with God. And when I say that, I'm fully aware that as believers, the moment we first believed, whenever that was, We are instantly justified. You are as justified now as you were the moment you first believed, and you will never be increasingly justified. It's instantaneous. You have the holiness of Christ imputed to you, and our guilty sentence reckoned back to him. I recognize that. There's no increase. to our justification. And as well, as far as our adoption, we're instantly adopted by God. We will never be more part of God's family than what we are in Christ right now. So if you're a believer, you're God's son or God's daughter. And as a believer, you'll always be God's son or God's daughter. It's not as if you can do anything special and he'll make you a special son or a special daughter. He loves you because he loves you, and when he adopted you, instantaneous, it doesn't change, and I recognize that. And I know that in the process of sanctification that we're all engaged in, and we cooperate with the Holy Spirit in our sanctification by God's grace, I know as well that that will culminate in our glorification in the Lord Jesus Christ. We're gonna have a glorified body like him, a perfected spirit, how it will work, I don't know. I know the Bible tells us the general things about it, 1 John 1 and 2. But as regards to that process of sanctification, that's where we find the psalmist, here. He is expressing the heart of a person that is a believer, but not yet glorified. He is justified, not fully sanctified. And he is in the process of dying more and more to sin and living more and more to righteousness, more and more being conformed into the image of God. And when we talk about the process of sanctification as regards to maintaining a close relationship or a warm relationship with God, I mean in that holding right thoughts about God more constantly. It seems to be, I don't know about you, but I do know about me. My Christianity is not like this. It's not a straight line. Become a believer, and then boom, and I'm always growing. It seems like I have right thoughts about God, and then I don't have right thoughts about God. right thoughts about God, and then I don't have right thoughts about God. And as regards to what we're looking at here, those right or wrong thoughts produce right or wrong feelings. We talked a lot about, a lot of this morning's we'll touch on tonight. We have a warm affection for God, and we chug along, and we feel very close to God, And then we go through times, days, weeks, months, years, where we believers justified, adopted in the process of being sanctified, but we can go through seasons where we feel that God is a million miles away. Am I right with this? Say the right things, preach the right sermons, and the heart is just cold as a rock towards God. The struggle is to maintain a warm, close relationship with God. Have you ever heard the phrase, felt needs? Not a reformed phrase, it's not a good phrase, not biblically theological. Felt needs, you just sell whatever the felt need is. I feel I need this, I feel I need that, and so we sell, it's a product. There's a fellow, Morris Roberts, we had him in the pulpit many, many years ago, and he was preaching in, in Tallahassee. He said, well, not talking about felt needs, but you better have the felt presence. Not felt needs. You better feel the presence of God. Because he said, if you don't feel the presence of God, really, truly, your heart's gonna go chasing paramours. You're gonna chase other things. We're creatures that God has designed to think right things and to feel right feelings. And here we have a man a Psalmist who is lamenting and then asking and longing to be in the presence of God. He wants to live with God. He wants God. He wants to think right things about him. And he has a heart clearly that's overflowing with a feeling, a longing, a desire after God. He wants God. It is when we consider these things, our relationships with human beings, we qualify them. It's a good relationship, a bad relationship. Relationships get better when we long to be with the person, right? If you, husband, wife, you know, I'll see you in 20 years. Great, I'll see you in 20 years. You would say, there's something bad wrong here. Do you not desire to be in the presence? No, no, actually I don't. But when we desire the object of our love, God, it makes for a better relationship. That's what the psalmist is singing about. And kind of behind all of this business of longing to be with the Lord, and obviously we're gonna touch on the fact that he separated from God's worship for some unknown reason, I wanna ask you a question. As believers, I know everyone in the room, Is it easy to lose your first love for Christ? You know, Revelation chapter two and three have various churches, various types of Christians, and one of them loses their first love. They don't feel warm or loving towards God. They're still doing religious things, but they don't really desire God in Christ. Is it easy to lose that? It's really easy. we can lose what the Psalmist has. We can lose a desire for God. But as I say that, referencing the Revelation passages, we can actually not long for God's dwelling places and preach sermons and go to church, be an elder, be a deacon, be a Christian mom, Christian dad. It is super easy to not want God. And we're looking at a psalm where the man wants God. He longs for the presence of God. He longs to live with God. That's why I, and I fully recognize it's in, in the particular context, it's in reference to corporate worship. But the idea is it's not that he wants the corporate worship, he wants God. That's kind of, you know, we talk a lot about a lot of things here in this church. He wants God is what he wants. Here's my question. Do you want God? Do you have this? My soul longed and even yearned for the courts of the Lord. Some of the texts say, my soul faints, I want God so much. Is that you this evening? Here's my struggle. Sometimes it is, And sometimes it isn't. Sometimes I long for God. Sometimes I don't. That's the struggle. And so God gives us a psalm that sets before us a believer that adores God. Clearly adores God. Your believing heart, my believing heart, looking at this believer, looking at God saying, I want you so much, I'm ready to faint. Now, for the unbeliever, it makes them uncomfortable. They just, that's too much. It's too much love for God. They just have to look away and do other things. Check the phone. What's going on with the phone? It's just too uncomfortable, right? Am I right with that? When people do that, look out the window. Don't, no, no, don't do that, baby. It's just too uncomfortable. You're looking at something too intimate. But for us, they believe. What do we say? I want that. That's why I chose this psalm tonight. I'm in the middle of trying to figure out what kind of series. When I'm in that state, I always go to the psalms. I love the psalms. When in doubt, go to the psalms. And this is a psalm that I've been using for my morning worship. And I'm looking at this psalmist singing, how lovely are your dwelling place. Oh God, I want you so much. And in my morning worship, I'm like, I want that. I want that, and I don't have it. I have this much. I want what he has, and that's okay, because this is something holy and good, and we can ask God for it, even as he asks God for it. Now, as we say these things, let's just be honest. It's easy to say we want God. We're Christians, we're not heathens. And it's easy to convince ourselves, I really, really, really want God. Do we really want God or do we want the things that God can give us? Make me healthy, make me wealthy, make me wise. Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme. I'm not picking on that particularly. If you have something you want, please ask God. He tells you to. But wanting things from God is not the same thing as wanting God, right? This guy wants God. And again, so much of my life is I want this for you, I pray for you and I pray for you. Oh God, do this for them, do this for me. How much of our prayers is this? My soul longed for your courts, to be with you, to look upon you. You're my beauty, you're my joy, you're my strength, not giving me anything, just you. It's stunning. It just really is stunning. It's almost so foreign to us. Could you tell us something about really important in your Christian life, like crown finances or something like that? longing for God. That's what we're looking at. Psalm 42, this is not something particular to this one psalm. Psalm 42 says the same thing, essentially, same fellows. Psalm 42, 1 through 2, for the choir director, a masculine of the sons of Korah, same fellows, as the deer pans for water brooks, We sing that, I used to sing that in Calvary Chapel. Probably not supposed to say that. My soul pans for you, oh God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? Do you want that? My soul pans for God. I would be ashamed if you listened to my prayers, the lack of the intensity of my prayers. Listen to your own prayers. I listen to your prayers. I listen to my prayers. When do we have that kind of intensity? Usually it's surrounding some physical calamity. Oh God, please help me. And those are legitimate. When outside of that, do we ever do this? Oh, my soul is panting just for you. David in Psalm 63 speaks of this burning desire for God, to live with God. Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah, oh God, you are my God, I shall seek you earnestly, my soul thirsts for you, my flesh yearns for you in a dry and a weary land where there's no water, thus I have seen you in the sanctuary to see your power and your glory because your loving kindness is better than life. My lips praise you. He may be in a real wilderness, but he's essentially looking out at the whole world and saying the world is a dried-up wasteland in comparison with you. No satisfaction do I have in the world. All my satisfaction is in you. That's what this is all about. It's stunning, it is absolutely stunning that God the Holy Spirit works in the heart of these believers to long for the God of glory. And since they have this, and they're flesh and blood like we're flesh and blood, they have the same kind of faith that we have, spirit wrought, grace given, we can have this. Not perfectly, we realize, but we can have a measure of it. And all three of the psalms I just mentioned, Psalm 84 and 42 and 63, they have something in common which adds to this deep desire for God. It appears, whether the first two psalms are the sons of Korah, I'll talk about that in just a bit, and the other psalm, 63, is of David, it seems as if they're separated from the temple of God. They are not, for some reason, they're providentially prohibited from corporate worship. And in their case, temple worship would have been, they would have been prohibited from the pilgrim feast, which is when all of the people got together, all of the men got together in the temple, and they worshiped God. For some reason, they're away from the temple, and this is where they are longing for God in his corporate worship. My soul faints, he wants to be with God so much. Obviously, as I said, connected with corporate worship. I do wonder, I do wonder, it's not one-to-one, but it's like one-to-one-and-a-half or one-to-half. I wonder how much that would apply to us when we come into, say, Sunday worship. Do we come in here expecting to see God, hear God, feel God? Do we? If we really thought, remember Jesus as he walks among the lampstands of his, he's here. Wherever two or more are gathered, there's at least three. He's here. And so in some way the psalmist is tying the presence of God with corporate worship. He finds God in corporate worship. He hears God. He has a chance to see God or adore God and love God and meet with God, talk with God, hear from God in corporate worship. So he comes to corporate worship expecting to see God. Now, I don't mean a Christophany or a Theophany or a dream revision, anything like that. However, I want to see Christ. I mean, I want to see Christ. I don't expect to see Jesus Christ until he calls for me or until he comes back. I'm not talking dreams or visions, but I don't know about you. I want to see Jesus. That's why I read Psalm, that's why I read Revelation 22. Theologians call it the beatific vision. We're going to see Jesus. and the longing to be with the Lamb of God glorified and to actually see Him. And like John, our eyes beheld His glory. We got to touch Him. I wonder if Jesus will let me touch Him. He's the object of our love. And so he's connecting that with corporate worship, mentions, references to the temple. What's going on in temple worship? that would excite the psalmist as reference to God? Where would he find God? In temple worship. Why would he come into temple worship and say, this is where I see God. This is where I meet with God. What would be going on in temple worship that would cause his soul to jump with joy, which is what's going on? Well, there's lots of, you might say, well, You know, this is the Old Testament, John. And in the Old Testament, all of the embroidery, and the gold, and the purple, and the badger skins, and the porpoise skins, and all these gold. He must have been enthralled with the beauty of the place. Have you ever walked into Catholic cathedrals? If you've been to Europe, you've seen a Notre Dame of this, the Notre Dame of Pace, the Notre Dame of Milton, the Notre Dame of Pensacola. And Notre Dame means what? Our? Lady, so when you go in, who's gonna be front and center, Jesus? No, Notre Dame, our lady, just so you know. It's like gigantic idolatry. But my point is this, when you walk into a cathedral, what do you do? You're like the guy who just goes to the big city. Man, that ceiling's 500 feet high. How did all those peasants build that spire? That's amazing. I love this place. Can I tell you something just from a personal experience? I went from seeing Notre Dame of everything. I hated them. One more cathedral, I was gonna flip. And then we walked into Kaiser's Louton, and they had an old Protestant church from the 1600s. You went in, there was wooden benches and a pulpit. And I said, this is what I want. This is where I meet God. I'm going to hear the word. I don't care about the stupid pictures of Mary. I want God. I want to hear his word. Well, like that, what was going on in the temple that the psalmist said, I'm going to meet God here. You had the mercy seat. You say, well, you're back to the beautiful things. No, no, no, no. It's not the beautiful things. If we were to be translated, this is why I don't know why people are so keen to build the temple. If we were to be translated back in time to the worship of the old Epoch, would we be thrilled with the external beauty of the place? Now think about it. You say, yes, I would. I just would shazam, I would love the worship. That's what he's singing about. He loves the style of worship. No, he isn't. How many people here have ever seen an animal get slaughtered? I know Gray has. Saw a cow get slaughtered. I had to go to counseling after that. I mean, you just think it comes with cellophane on it. It does not come with cellophane on it. They cut its throat. What was going on in this beautiful place? You were hearing the bleeding of animals, and you were watching the slaughter of animals. You had the spilling of blood and the stench of death. there would have been enough in this Old Testament worship edifice to terrify you. And everything's covered with blood. So I'm arguing it's not the beauty of the place, it's the meaning. This is where God meets me. This is where I'm reconciled. This is where he takes away his anger. This is where he gives me his mercy, the mercy seat. All of these things testify of what? Jesus. This is where I get to meet Jesus. This is where I get to meet the lover of my soul, my savior. And I want him. That's what's going on. He opens up, it's something of a lamentation, then there is a petition in it. And the whole psalm, really, I like it so much. It's because it's just an extended adoration of God. In part, he adores God, as I said, because he's longing or yearning for the courts of the Lord, meaning he doesn't have them. He's away from God, as it were, away from the corporate worship. What's the common proverb? Absence makes the heart, what is it, grow fonder. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. And in this case, absence from God's corporate worship makes his heart grow fonder for at least this particular believer. But actually we see, in our experience, the more regular we are with corporate worship, prayer, And when I say corporate worship, prayer, Bible reading, here's what I don't mean, which is a lot of what I do and a lot of, I'm sure, what you do. Bible reading, check. Prayer, check. Preach a sermon, check. Listen to a sermon, check, check. Take the sacrament, check. How much of it is, read the Bible and I'm not gonna stop until I hear you, God. There's a Puritan who used to say that he would not stop praying until he wept tears of joy for being in the presence of God. Man, who does that? Who reads the Bible? Who prays really? Who comes really? Oh, I'm gonna hear from God today. Not that crazy short man, God. The more, the more we do that, the more we read the Bible, Oh God, I want to hear from you. I want to meet you. The more we pray, I want you not to make me healthy, not to make me wealthy. It's okay to ask those things, but come and ask for God. I'm talking to myself. The more that we, we, we want, him. But it is true, I think, to some extent, that God uses privation to whet our appetites. Sometimes it is true that we don't really appreciate God, the goodness of God, the presence of God, the closeness of God, that felt love of God that Morris Roberts talked about. Sometimes we don't appreciate that until God hides it a little bit. He never takes it away. He hides it a little bit. So even that privation in God's alchemy will work to increase our desire. We chase Him more for it. That's what we see here. a believer, praying, the invocation. He speaks about the lovely places of the Lord of hosts. He uses an invocation. An invocation is, you see, oftentimes the names of God, the works of God, the attributes of God. He uses the covenant name, O Jehovah, the God that is, the God that was, the God that always will be, uncreated, independent, infinitely perfect God, my God. It's the covenant name. for the people of Israel, or if I could put it this way, for the Israel of God. He's my God. I'm his, by covenant. That's what thrills his soul. And that's our God as well, by covenant, by gospel grace. And God says, how lovely are your dwelling places, plural, at this time God was worshiped in the temple, in the synagogues, in the homes, in individual hearts. Anywhere God is worshiped, the psalmist says, is lovely. It's beautiful to me. Again, not because of anything, but because God is there. Because we're meeting with God and we're adoring God, and this thrills the heart. You see the intensity of it. This is the antidote for when, not if we lose our first love. I don't know anybody. I don't think I'm looking, I'm not picking on you. I don't know anybody. I don't know one Christian that the nanosecond they believed upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, they had an insatiable, intense longing for God that was never abated until they died. I don't know anybody, right? This is the antidote for the problems that we face, which is what? The world is making us worldly. The world is making the church worldly. Our flesh is exhausted. We're exhausted. Everybody in the world is depressed out of their eyeballs. Am I right with that? You know I'm right with it. You know I'm right. What's the antidote? This. This. It's not new techniques. It's not newfangled anything. It is God, having God. And looking at this man saying, he longs for God. He says, God is his joy. God is his strength. When he's in the Valley of Baka, which means the Valley of Weeping, who here is in the Valley of Weeping? When I am in the Valley of Weeping, you are springs of joy. When I'm weak, you are my strength, from strength to strength. Not what God can give, but God. This is possible, this is possible. It's attainable, it's here, it's in the Bible. We're looking at it. Sons of Korah had it. David had it by grace. I'd rather stand in the threshold of the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness." That's the believer. I'd rather have nothing. I'd rather have Jesus. What's the little ditty go? I'd rather have Jesus than silver or gold. He says, what does he say? He talks about it's better than life. We read somewhere, one of the Psalms, having God. better than my physical life. All that means is I'm really gonna have the beatific vision. Beloved, my prayer for you is my prayer for me. Is this, that we would grow in this. I'm not 12 and I just didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday. You're not gonna hear one sermon Give me the pill, give me the technique, and it's just gonna work. But beloved, God's word has power, right? We have the Holy Spirit, you have the Holy Spirit. We can have this. My prayer is that increasingly we would, our souls would long for God, just for God, just for his presence. that we would come to prayer group and I would say, anybody have a prayer request? And we'd say, I just want, I have a praise of God. He's my delight. He's my joy. He's my strength. What do you mean he's your strength? You just got out of, you're sick as a dog. What do you mean? He's my strength. What are you talking joy? Your life is a mess. He's my joy. That's my prayer for you, and that's my prayer for me. May God be pleased with the preaching of his word.