Our psalm for this morning, Psalm 84, is one that refers to the sons of Korah, a psalm of the sons of Korah. It could either be indicating that some of these sons or one of them was the author. Or it could be dedicated by the author to these particular Levites. We first encountered the sons of Korah in the introduction to Psalm 42. That's the first time they occur in the Psalter. Their father, Korah, had been part of a rebellious movement against Moses. Dathan and Abiram joining together with Korah. They thought Moses was going too far, claiming a special relationship with God, a special commissioning by God. They said, all the people are holy. Get along fine without your imperious leadership. And of course, this is recounted for us in Numbers 16. Those rebels and their families were punished by a destructive miracle of God's judgment as the earth opened up to swallow them alive just as Moses had declared it would. He did the the opposite or the darker side of the coin to what Jesus did with the paralyzed man, where his friends cut a hole in the roof and lowered him down because of the crowds around Jesus. And Jesus said to the paralyzed man, your sins are forgiven. And then he said, rise, take up your pallet and walk, because the people were saying, well, anybody can say that, but only God can do it. And this man is clearly not God. So Jesus said, which is easier to say your sins are forgiven or rise, take up your pallet and walk? Well, it's easier to say your sins are forgiven because nobody can verify that. But to say to a paralyzed man, rise, take up your pallet and walk, if he doesn't do it, then everybody will know the one who said that is not God. Moses did the opposite. He said, you claim that we're all on an equal footing here. See if my word comes true. The earth will open and swallow you alive and then close over you. And it did. But not all of the sons of Korah perish. And in First Chronicles 9, First Chronicles 21, we find them serving, serving in the tabernacle. We can't determine whether one or more of the sons of Korah wrote the ten Psalms ascribed to them and scattered throughout the Psalter. But their mention tells us that they at least sang these Psalms. They specifically and particularly sang these Psalms as they were, after all, Levites. And they, more than perhaps any other Levite, were keenly conscious of God's sparing, saving, delivering grace. They should have perished along with their father. That was the judgment of God. That not only the heads of these families that rebelled, but even their families should be swallowed up. But God spared some of the sons of Korah. So here we have the sons of God's saving grace. And we all, if we are in Christ, are children of God's saving grace. But some have a keen sense, a vital and strong consciousness that they are brands plucked from the fire. These are sons saved from the sin of their father, and that sends terrible consequences. In this 84th Psalm, we learn how completely happy and grateful the sons of Korah were in their duties in the Lord's house. You might think that that was their punishment. You maybe avoided the frying pan. of being swallowed up by the earth and dispatched to Sheol, as Numbers tells us. But you have jumped into the fire or been pushed into the fire of drudgery in the house of God. No, it's not like that. They're conscious that they were and they would have all of God's people in every age to be conscious of the great and precious blessings that such dwellers with God possess. The psalm opens with a beautiful note and the beauty runs throughout the entire psalm. A note exclaiming the loveliness of the dwelling place of the Lord. Loveliness. It doesn't declare that it's a place of awe or majesty or even glory. Though it is that where the God of glory dwells, even though for a time the glory may be obscured or hidden by God's wise and sometimes inscrutable purposes, any place where God is eventually breaks forth into glory. And while the house is all of that, our attention is drawn particularly to the aspect of loveliness. Glory in itself can awe a person the way that Peter and James and John were simply and boldly and almost entirely awed on the Mount of Transfiguration and said some pretty stupid things. Peter speaking for the others. When they saw Moses and Elijah discussing the death of Jesus, they thought, this is wonderful. Look, it's Moses and Elijah. Let's build tabernacles, three of them. Putting Jesus on an equal level, if not lower level, with Moses and Elijah. There was not loveliness that may be held there, but there is loveliness when we behold God in all of the glory of not only His bright and shining excellence, His effulgence, His radiance, His authority and power, but also His tender mercies and abiding love. How lovely. The house and the ordinances of the house of the Lord are truly lovely. And because lovely, attractive to and delightful to those who are, by God's redeeming and saving grace, dwellers therein." It's delightful in every way. The unredeemed and the unregenerate and even, alas, the redeemed who may be sluggish in their souls, if not asleep, The unredeemed and unregenerate and spiritually dull see nothing beautiful or attractive about the church. And that is where God dwells in the church. As He filled the tabernacle and after that the temple, so He fills the hearts of His believers and dwells in the midst of His church in every age. They unredeemed, though, see nothing of this beauty. Nothing attractive about the church or the Gospel or the God of the church. And that's why we saw in Psalm 2 that the unredeemed, the unregenerate, the spiritually dull may be being inclined to join in from time to time. Or in an uproar against the Lord and against His Christ because they say there's nothing beautiful there. There's nothing lovely there. It's all appalling. And we don't desire it. It's bondage and misery that we see. But to those who have been saved from the awful divine judgment that we all deserve, there is nothing in all of creation to compare with the beauty and the loveliness of the house of the Lord and the ordinances of the Lord, the gospel of the Lord, the people of the Lord. Nothing. Nothing. That's why the psalmist says, I would rather just spend one day at the threshold of this house than to dwell forever in the midst of the wicked. There's nothing lovely about sin or wickedness. Nothing at all. And though the sinner tries to put on not just fig leaves, but all manner of artistry and contrived coverings to hide shame and to project a kind of garish and perverted attractiveness, the way that a modest dress does. That's that's one of the great curses and one of the great pitfalls of our day. Immodest women, not so much men, though they can be a modest too, but there's not much for many men that's very attractive about showing more rather than less of the natural body. But women, though they're perhaps it's a protection, insecure, no matter how beautiful people tell them they are, they think they're just saying that to be nice. If women had any idea how men thought they were beautiful, they would have great power. But you know, a woman who exposes herself immodestly is at one and the same time irresistibly attractive and repulsive. Because any man is attracted to the sight Joseph, I believe, part of the reason he ran out of Potiphar's wife was because Potiphar's wife made herself, in a vulgar way, very attractive to him. But, I say, not just attractive but repulsive because any person who knows what true inner loveliness is all about, the loveliness of a chaste and modest and humble and yet noble character, a godly character that shines from within and shines out. Who would trade that for a tramp? There's nothing in all creation to compare with the beauty and the loveliness of God's house. and such living trophies of God's grace and love, love to tell the Lord how conscious and appreciative they are for His church and for the ordinances of His worship. That's why this psalm begins on this note of exclamation. How lovely are thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts. The psalmist isn't telling us that. He's not declaring that to men primarily. He's first and foremost speaking to God. How lovely are your dwelling places, God? And this is going to come, we'll see, to the Lord himself. The dwelling places are lovely because the Lord is lovely. But then you see these sweet beauties are ascribed to the Lord's dwelling places. And at the time this psalm was written, even allowing for a certain range, if we can't be certain about the author, it could have been David who wrote this psalm. There are many features here that are quite, quite close to some of the images that David uses in Psalm 16. But allowing for some some range of dates, there should only have been one tabernacle. And one temple, not tabernacles and temples, only one legitimate tabernacle, one legitimate temple, why is it dwelling places, plural? Because, of course, this psalm is as all of the songs speak to the generation in which the Psalms were composed. But beyond that, Look to God and the fruition of his work. Dwelling places, plural, indicates to us the individual's heart and soul in whom God resides by his Holy Spirit. And such a person takes on a lovely spiritual beauty like that of the whole body of Christ composed of such living stones. Because you see, the loveliness of the house and ordinances and people of God result from the ineffable and glorious beauty of the living Lord himself. So the sons of Korah don't just observe the loveliness of God's dwellings and then turn around and deliver a lecture to God's people and say, now, listen, you people should really be attracted to God because he's quite lovely. And then to give a further lecture on aesthetics and how we should have sensitivity to true and right beauty and not the garish counterfeits that is so popular, especially in our day. No, the sons of Korah don't just observe their loveliness and turn around and dispassionately tell about it. They exclaim their observations. They confess that they love and ever long for times when they are in God's house, though they were assigned the duty to be in the tabernacle and had jobs to do there. They're not waiting for the time when they can go to their own homes and be free from the public responsibility. They're not wage slaves the way so many people are, alas, even Christians. Wage slaves. I've got to work to make money to pay for a house and a car and buy food and clothes for my family, but I hate my job. But I've got to do it. Not a soul here should be like that. I don't care if you have the worst, most menial, most miserable and dangerous and dirty job on earth. If you're a Christian, you should be aiming higher, even if you're a slave. As Paul writes in his letters to the Ephesians and Colossians, if you're a slave, don't be looking at your master, your earthly master. Look at your heavenly master. He's the one you're serving and he's the one who will reward you. And that transforms everything. You take delight in what you're doing then. Well, these men are the polar opposite of the wage slave. They long to be at work. They long to be in the house of God, worshipping Him and being edified by their holy, loving communion with God. And we see that in verse 2. My soul longed and even yearned. There's an intensity of desire there. Long didn't even yearn for the courts of the Lord, the courts of the the arrangement of the tabernacle and later the temple. And as you proceed through those courts, you're getting ever, ever more close to the place where God. caused His glory to dwell in the Holy of Holies. I want to be ever nearer, deeper into the church. I don't want to be sitting on the fringes, on the outskirts. That's a place where so many are content to dwell for various reasons, but none of them good reasons. This psalmist is encouraging us to be in at the heart of things. I'm longing for that. My heart and my flesh, body and soul, not just his emotions, but his body. This is more important. This is more necessary and vital than bread, daily bread. As Jesus, in resisting the first temptation in the wilderness, declared, man shall not live by bread alone. We have to have bread. We're not ghosts. But we don't live by that alone. But we do live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. And if we fed more on that word, we would be able to work better in procuring our daily bread. Because we're taught by God in His Word to pray for it. Then we go out and work and produce in the answer and spirit and power of those prayers. So my heart, my flesh, sing, sing. Here's beauty. See, what's the difference between prose and poetry? Or prose and song? Prose just conveys information. But singing and poetry convey information beautifully, elegantly. And the closer we walk with God, the more poetic and the more metrical we become. Because he's that way. So he sings for joy to the living God. The dwelling places, well, as wonderful as the dwelling places are, they're not alive and pulsating the way God, the living God who indwells those places, lives and pulsates. This is this is wonderful in the opening verses to see this loveliness and beauty and to think about it. And, you know, if we do think about it, we we may be a bit convicted here, at least informed. That we don't often rank loveliness as highly as the word of God does in terms of godliness. We might think being right, being obedient. Or we might think God's blazing glory. These are the highest things. But the loveliness of the Lord is captivating the worshiper here and should captivate us. This is the height, not very height, of God, because you take all of his attributes. Yes, there's the power, there's the holiness, there's the purity, the righteousness, there's his infinitude and his eternal nature. There are all these, the majesty, the sovereignty, all of these aspects of God, his attributes and and all that pertain to him. And you put all that together, His mercy, His grace, His compassion, and what you have is exquisite beauty. And that's the best and most accurate way to describe it. God is not just great or good or glorious. God is beautiful, lovely, lovely, Attractive to every right perceiving and rightly sensing soul in every way. But, what's this with the bird in verse 3? We come down from these musical heights of grandeur and beauty to a bird? But in verse 3, we find a sweet and subtle stroke that indicates to us how the whole of creation, not just the church itself, but the whole of creation is blessed by the Lord's gracious dwelling within and amid His people. You know, it's always been to me striking how in the book of Esther, The people of Susa, the capital of the land where Ahasuerus, the king, was making such an imbecile of himself, giving himself to drunkenness and then even worse than that to Haman, the agagite. That when Haman prompted Ahasuerus to seal and authorize a decree to annihilate the Jews, The city of Susa. Now, this was this was part of where the Jews had been captive and the Jews hadn't returned there. The city of Susa was in confusion. And when the Jews were delivered and exalted, we're told the city of Susa. These are unbelievers. Rejoice. Rejoice. The world of men sent that they're better off with a church of God in the midst of the world? I've talked with men high up in the Communist Party of an emerging superpower. And they are keenly interested in the Christian church. Not because they care a hoot about God or Christ or salvation. But what they do know, just on a phenomenal level, observable level, demonstrated level, is that Christians are diligent. That's a good thing. Christians are honest. That's a good thing. Christians are kind to one another. That's a good thing. At least the kindness, the communists, the atheistic communists view that kind of kindness as a softness that they can mold and manipulate easily. And in the meantime, it seeks to soothe and oil the frictions of society. So the psalmist observes how even the birds of the air delight to settle within the security and sweet serenity and melodic joyfulness of the house of God. And note, by the way, how observant of all things are those whose focus is riveted upon the God of all beauty. When we love God with all of our hearts, we find that we desire and are enabled to love everyone. Not just our family members. Not just our brethren in Christ. But our neighbor. And how far does that extend? Our neighbors. Anyone we encounter. As the story of the Samaritan. Teaches us when the question was asked, who's my neighbor? Neighbor is anyone you encounter. Love him, love him. If you love God with all your heart, you find yourself loving others. Well, so it is with the focus upon God's beauty and being enraptured by the beauty and loveliness of the Lord. You don't become a pietistic mystic. Uninvolved with or unconscious of or unaware of other things, you in fact become keenly aware of all sorts of other things in the world. Down to a bird. Down to an ant. The Word of God, and you find this in no other religious writings, tells the people of God to go to the ant and learn from her ways the wisdom of foresight. and the practicality and fruitfulness of diligence. So these sons of Korah are singing and taken up with the beauty of God and then, oh yes, there's a bird here. And there's something fitting about that. We haven't been invaded by a pest. Why shouldn't the God who knows when every sparrow falls to the earth allow birds and other manifestations of His creation into the dwelling places of the new heaven and the new earth. The fourth verse declares the blessedness of all who dwell in God's house. They are blessed because they are conscious of and nourished upon the light and liberating power of God's ordinances His word, prayer, fellowship with His people, all of that. They feed upon and grow strong in the grace and the love of the Lord and His people. And so a declaration, how blessed are those who dwell in thy house. They are ever praising thee. You see, the first line declares what the state is. And we can be in a state and not have any sense of the significance of it. We everyone are sitting this day, whatever state we're from, we're sitting in the state of Virginia. And in the state of Virginia, there are certain rights we have and restrictions. And they're not always the same as, say, in the state of Louisiana or Texas or in a far country up north called the Yankee land. They differ from state to state. You may be in the nation of America and not aware of certain laws and regulations. You may be in violation of them. But they're there, you see. It's one thing to be in a state. It's another to be aware of, conscious of, whether you're in a good place or a bad place in that state. So, verse four says, how blessed are those who dwell in thy house. That's the state. We're all blessed here today. The Bible tells us that if we're in Christ, every single one of us has every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, every one of us. We don't have poor Christians here and rich Christians, some with great blessings and some with no blessings or few. We all possess the fullness of God in Christ and every blessing that emanates from Christ. But what makes the difference is our subjective consciousness or lack of consciousness. of these blessings. So this fourth verse of Psalm 84 speaks of the blessedness of those who dwell in the house of God and to the extent that we are conscious of God and his beauty and his blessing. We will ever praise him. We will ever praise him. That's all we have cause to do if we see God rightly. See him by the very faith that he gives us to exercise. Faith which can penetrate the counterfeits and the oppressions of the world and the distractions and enticements and intimidations of the worldly and even of Satan. And penetrate even the disguises that God is always wearing. The disguise of weakness. For example, the disguise of foolishness. If there is a living God, why does He depend on a silly man to stand up and talk to people sitting down and listening? But God is pleased, through the foolishness of preaching, to do a work that only His almighty hand can do. To bring people out of death into life, out of sin into righteousness, out of misery into joy. Faith perceives the beauty of God and praises God. Job was praising God even when he lost all of his possessions and all of his children were killed by the hand of God. His wife told him the logical thing, the understandable, the natural thing, curse God and die. But Job said, the Lord gave. The Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Friends, I submit to you that a man, a woman who speaks like that, who thinks like that, is like Jesus. They are one of three things. And only one of three things. The way Jesus was. The way He spoke. saying he's God. He either was God, he was the Lord, or he was a liar and a deceiver, the Lord or a liar, or he's crazy. He thinks he's God. He really does. But, of course, he's not. So he's a lunatic, the Lord or a liar. The Christian who ceaselessly praises and thanks God, even in the most dire circumstances, is either crazy They don't have this good sense to realize that they're in a situation that should be calling for howls and even curses. They're either crazy or they're hypocritical and lying and deceiving. Really inside, they're filled with rage and fear. Or they are the Lord's children who have their eyes opened the way that the prophets Servant had his eyes open to see greater of those who are with us than those who are against us. Which is it with you? Hmm. It's a mixture here. If we could tell God today. Make the liars read. Make the lunatics blue. And make your children green. We wouldn't all be green. So, you see, they will praise God. They will, in sum, all those who long for this intimate and holy communion with the living God and His regenerate people, and who determine to dwell in the house of the Lord forever, will find themselves ever praising God as they behold and possess and taste the sweet, delightful, and potent blessings that only the living God can give. They will praise God for who He is and for all that He's done, all that He is doing, and all that He will do. Our praises often are dissipated because we don't consider the whole sweep of time what God has done. He has loved us by giving his son. So I don't think he doesn't love you because he didn't give you the pay raise. He's loved you because he's given his son. He is loving you now because he's using all things, causing them to work for your good. And what will he do? He will ultimately raise us from the dead and we will reign in glory and perfection with Christ forever and ever. The mention of praising the Lord moves the psalmist to a clearer focus upon the excellencies of the God of this lovely house called the church. This Lord is Himself the source and giver of all true and pure and lasting pleasure. As David writes in Psalm 16, verse 11, in thy presence is fullness of joy. In God's presence. Nowhere else. We may take joy because we take joy in the Lord. We may take joy in the legitimate aspects of creation and human society and cultures. But in Thy presence is fullness of joy. We all have different interests. Some are interested in sports. Some are interested in music. Some are interested in engineering. All sorts of different things. Legitimate things. We can all come here and bring those things with us. And in the Lord's house, we all can hear according to our disposition and apply to our particular area of devotion in social and cultural things. We can apply the wonders of the Gospel, but when we're in our particular area of interest, viewing paintings and artwork and so forth, we can't fully enjoy ourselves. Because we're standing there and some rude person bumps into us. Or the temperature in the room is too hot or too cold. Or there's sickness. Somebody's coughing. Coughing our way. We can't and we might be there just by ourselves. And we're not in the midst of our loving brethren, you see, only in God's presence, their fullness of joy, beauty and loveliness gives such pleasure. So the strength. Verse five, how blessed is the man whose strength is in thee, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. How blessed is the man whose strength is in thee. You know, we want to we want to have our strength not in God because he acts foolish and weak. We want to have our strength in something that's always strong and wise. Money. The more of it, the stronger I am. The more of it I have, the stronger I am. That's not the way of blessing, though. That's the way of the fool who will have his soul required of him when he least expects it. But how blessed is the man whose strength is in thee. What does that mean? That means that God not only is beautiful and lovely and makes his children to be beautiful and lovely, but God is almighty and makes his children to be strong, strong in the Lord and the strength of his might. And that that gives pleasure to boys and girls. Have any of you been sick this winter? Maybe you've been sick to the stomach or you've had aches and chills or you've had a nasty cold. Weren't you happy when you were sick? Wasn't that fun? And I know you have to say no, because if I say here, I have a bottle of sickness. Come here and drink some of it and you'll immediately be as sick as you've ever been. Not one of you would come and take it, would you? Because it doesn't give us pleasure to be weak and miserable. But when we're strong, when we're sick or injured or just plain weak, we're miserable and sad. But when we're strong, we are happy. I know that I've taken some shots at sports from the pulpit and ridiculed the uncritical and exuberant fanaticism of sports fans as they scream and howl as though big men kicking a ball around, or people hitting, whacking it with rackets in some fashion, or trying to stick it through a hoop, as though they're doing something so important. But there is a legitimate aspect of attraction in all of these endeavors, and it's here. It's strength. Not one of the sports characters can be on the field or on the court and be weak. I mean, yes, they're not perfect in strength, but you take a professional athlete on his worst day and he'll annihilate you in a one-on-one basketball game on your best day. Strength. That's what the appeal is. Now, foolish men can start making it into, oh, we've got to win the game, my team and my colors. And I want to put a flag on my car and that kind of stuff. But there's nothing beautiful about that. But strength. How many can remember seeing Lynn Swann's Immaculate Reception? And if you, like me, love ballet, there has never been a more beautiful display of human strength and mental concentration and sheer agility than in that man's catching that particular pass. Or take an animal. 1973, at the Belmont Stakes, a horse that's more interesting than most humans ran a race that's never even been approximated since then. The horse Secretariat opened up from the very beginning with all of his strength. And apparently he had never done that before. They always held him back in the early part of the race, you know, because you don't want him to burn himself out. Halfway through, he seriously opened up a gap and won the race by something like 25 or 30 lengths. People who saw it, I saw it on the TV. They screamed, they howled, they wept, but they were in true awe. It was a display of strength like no one had ever seen. That's what God is making of us. That's what Romans chapter 8 is all about. God is making us more than conquerors in Christ. Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee. And how does one get that strength? Well, such strength isn't natural. It's received from outside of ourselves as a gift from God. So you don't you don't sit and think, how can I make myself strong? Or you don't even tell yourself, let's let's try this out. Let's try that out. Let's try education. Let's try sports. Let's try our let's try different things to make ourselves strong. It's a matter of receiving it from God, hence the image of the highway. Do we give this God such easy access to our lives as is represented by this image? In whose heart are the highways? And though the Hebrew doesn't say to Zion, if you follow the highway that's sketched out here, it leads there. Passing through the valley of Baha, which word means weeping. And you might think, ah, I don't want that highway. That's the wrong way for me. But weeping in the morning comes joy. Those who pass through the many tribulations enter the Kingdom of Heaven. They make it a spring. They make it a place of many springs. Those are fruitful tears that we weep if we weep following the Lamb of God. who goes in circuitous places and routes and often into places we would never dream of going. He delights to go through furnaces of affliction, to walk through valleys of the shadow of death. He delights to determine to go to Jerusalem and be mocked and beaten and betrayed and to take up his cross and die. But fruitful springs result in the soul. Invigoration of the soul. Strength. The early rain covering it with blessings. They go, verse 7 says, from strength to strength. And every one of them appears before God in Zion. The appointed end. Perseverance of the saints. Do we give God such easy access to our hearts as this highway image indicates? If not, that accounts for our weaknesses. That accounts for our weaknesses. But if we do have this highway, the very road and scenery surrounding it, captivate us with delight. And when we arrive, what do we do when we appear before God? This is more personal and intimate than our dwelling in His environs, even in His house, where we're filled with wonder and express His praise. What do we do, though, when we come face to face with Him, our saving God, our sovereign Lord, our Maker, our Redeemer? What do we do? We speak to Him. We speak to Him. We're not mute. the way a guilty, fearful sinner would be in the face of the Holy God. We don't even do what the publican did, beating his chest and saying, God be merciful to me. We've already said that. That's why there is the highway. That's why we're finding loveliness in the dwelling places of God. If we're believers, we say this, my Lord and my God. The way Thomas did when he saw the resurrected Jesus. My Lord and my God, we pray, we pray. That's why Jesus characterizes God's house as a house of prayer. And it's on this praying note that this beautiful psalm concludes. Those who appear before God call upon Him as the God of saving grace and love that they already have been made partakers of. That's why in verse 8, the psalmist says, O Lord God of hosts, And that's our strength, too, knowing that we're surrounded by a host of God's holy ones, his own holy angels. Lord, God of hosts, surrounded by a company of redeemed people, hear my prayer, give ear, O God of Jacob, Jacob. That's a reminder of the of the sinful name that was later changed to Israel. But God is the God of sinners. We're here before you because you have been merciful to us. You are the God of grace. They call upon him as the one thing necessary. Verses nine to eleven. Behold our shield, O God. God has given to his people a shield of protection. But notice the shield is a living shield. And look upon the face of Thine Anointed. It's the Son of God. Psalm 2. The world's against the Lord and against His Anointed, but He who sits in the heavens laughs. And He says, you better kiss My Son or you'll perish in the way. Look upon the face of Thine Anointed. We are accepted by God and His beloved Son. And no lesser source than that. He'll never fail us. He'll never forsake us. For, he says, a day in thy 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 wicked. But the Lord is a sun and a shield. He gives light as well as protection. Some places, you know, like bomb shelters that people were building in the 50s and 60s to save themselves from nuclear annihilation. There were dark places. Maybe you had a shield, but you didn't have the sun. But God is both. The Lord gives grace and glory. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. Walk literally with integrity. We're now, integrity means something that's whole, not fractured. Sin has fractured us and separated us from God. Integrity means we're united to God. We're one with God. No good thing to see withhold from those who walk in that union to God by faith. Notice the images. Shield, living anointed Savior, supreme delight. I'd rather be in your house for one day than outside forever with the wicked. Supreme delight. Son, giver of grace, giver of glory, giver of all and only good things. Who would not dwell with, who would not rely upon, who would not trust in this God of all blessing? Blessing that's pure. He tells us that he makes rich his people and adds no sorrow to it. He's a taker away of sorrow, not an adder to our misery. It's blessing that's pure, that's sweetly satisfying, that's strengthening and it lasts forever. One of the early church fathers, Polycarp, was on trial for his faith and he was going to be burned at the stake and his captors said, look, just deny Jesus Christ and we'll let you go. Polycarp was an old man and here were his words. Eighty-four years I have followed him and he has never disappointed me. How can I deny him now? Do your worst. Bring on the fire. I will never deny Him, but will continue to praise Him." That was a man who knew the liberating truth and strengthening power of the words of this psalm. O Lord of hosts, how blessed is the man who trusts in Thee. If Polycarp were to have bowed to the power of the flames, he would have trusted their destructive power more than the saving power of God. Are all of us here trusting like that and rejoicing in the blessing of this gracious and glorious God? Our greatest good and deepest delight is found only in our consistent and determined and trusting communion with the God who loved us and gave His Son for us. Amen.