Well, it's good to be able to open our Bibles tonight. I trust you have your Bible with you there. And if you would, turn with me to the book of Psalms once again. Psalm 45. And I want to continue with where we left off. Does everybody have a copy of the notes that I had handed out there? If you're looking at that, The portion right at the top looks like a paragraph, maybe there at the top. That's the end of last week's message. And this is a continuation of that, so I just dropped down to leave a space to make it easy to find. And the Lord will just take up from there. So in your Bibles tonight, in Psalm 45, I thought of so many things as I was studying this once again. And one of the things that I think of is that one of these days, I'm going to have to get me some water here because I'm going to choke up if I don't. One of these days, there aren't going to be any elections. It's all going to be done. You don't have to worry about that anymore. Right now, you've got some responsibility, but then there aren't going to be any elections. One of these days, there's going to be a coronation, and all this other stuff's going to be done. All the thrones will have been turned over and turned over and turned over, the Bible says. He will overturn, overturn, overturn, until he come whose right it is. All these other people, we need them. God established government. And I'm glad any kind of government just about is better than total anarchy. Some governments end up being that. As a matter of fact, this wasn't in my notes, but I'll just say this. Don't get fooled by this, our democracy nonsense, because that's not what we are. Do you realize? Our country was made a republic because we believe in laws. So we have a constitution. So we have a constitutional republic. We have a form of democracy in the way that we vote, but it's not a democracy strictly because otherwise we wouldn't have an electoral college. We wouldn't have representative people in the House and in the Senate. And we wouldn't be divided up two different ways with two different systems as far as how long they serve and what they do and all that. We wouldn't have any of that stuff. We'd just have a democracy. But you see, they realized that when you have a democracy, you have no way to protect minority groups of people, if you will, or the weaker people in a nation from the People that have all the control. So that's why we're a republic. We have some laws to protect us from that, and that's what the laws are supposed to do. There should never be, which I know we have, but there should never be a favored class of people. We should get away from even thinking about the working class and some other class. Or you just name the class. We should be a classless society. Recognizing that human nature is what it is, people will abuse one another, so there's laws to protect them. And that's why we have a republic. So don't let people start using terms and all of a sudden we fall into using those terms, we just fall right into their trap. Don't do that. But what's coming is not going to be any of that. Men have had to make up forms of government, because God instituted government. But they're all failing because of man. The same reason when you buy a car, it breaks down. Why? Because it was made by man. That's all there is to it. Even if they try not to, even if they didn't try to build life into them, which they do, but even if they didn't, they don't have the ability to make something that doesn't fail. None of us have the ability to make something fail-proof. Because we're not fail-proof. You can't get any better than the source. But God's will be perfect. Because we'll actually have a perfect king. And I'm really looking forward to that, to be honest with you. I'm not looking forward to right now having our government overthrown. Don't misunderstand me. But in God's time, I'm looking forward to having a king, not a queen, a king. And the Bible tells us what he's like. And if you're a child of God, your heart should rejoice. When I study what he's like and the kind of king he is, is the kind of king he's going to be, and I rejoice in it. I get excited about it, to be honest. So if you look with me, I want to read again verses 1 and 2, and then down through verse 5, because we didn't get very far into this verses 3 through 5 part last week. So he says, my heart is indicting a good matter. I speak of the things which I have made, touching the king. My tongue is the pen of a ready writer. Thou art fairer than the children of men. Grace is poured into thy lips, therefore God hath blessed thee forever. Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O Most Mighty, thy glory and thy majesty. And in thy majesty ride prosperously because of truth and meekness and righteousness, and thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things. Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the king's enemies, whereby the people fall under thee. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you tonight for the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you, Father, for your precious word, the great hope that we have to look forward to not only eternity in heaven, but even on this earth to rule and reign with the Lord Jesus Christ and admire and adore our King for all eternity. We thank you, dear God, that you've given us a heart of appreciation for the Lord Jesus Christ and his office work as a king. And Lord, we pray that our desire would be that he would rule and reign over our lives and help us, Lord, to have hearts desiring to be submitted to your will through the Lord Jesus Christ. For it's in his name we pray. Amen. The king's coronation is what this is talking about, I believe, in verses three through five. and involved in that coronation, these comments, I want you to recognize these comments that are made, it changes the person, if you will. What I mean by that is when we talk, we talk about either, a sentence is either in first person, second person, or third person. We're either talking about ourselves, first person, or we're talking to somebody, that'd be in the second person, or we're talking to them about somebody else, doesn't have to be gossip, that'd be the third person. Alright? This changes from, in verse 2, talking to the king, thou art fairer than the children of men, and then to say, gird thy sword upon thy thigh, and then thy majesty first he started out talking about saying I speak about the things and then he starts talking to the king and now he says this and these comments are sung of course it's a song so this is to be sung and it's making requests in the song calling upon our king and so we can pray I'm not saying to pray this psalm the way it's written. I'm not saying memorize and pray that way, but when we understand what God shows us about the Lord Jesus Christ, we should pray about Him that way. When God shows us what He's going to do, we should pray that God will do that. And the sooner the better. John said, even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus. That means the sooner the better. I can't wait. I'll have to wait, but I can't wait. You know, when we say I can't wait, we know we're going to have to wait. We'll wait for God's time. But we should long for it to come and we should pray that way. And that's true in relationship to things that we know that are in His will right now. We should pray, believing when God shows us this is God's will for now. This is God's will for how I ought to live my life right now. This is God's will for the lives of God's people. We should pray for God's people that this will be the reality of their life. And so the psalmist is praying. In this song, it's a prayer. Now, the first thing I noticed, however, when you talk about coronation, you think about a ceremony, but there's something that has to happen for this king to have the ceremony. But it all goes together. Some of the instruments go together. For instance, you'll notice in verse 3, this is a preparation for battle. He says, So first thing is, there's a preparation for battle in preparation for the coronation. In other words, when he takes up his throne, there's going to be some battle to take place before that. And when I say that, I don't mean it's all necessarily future, but it means that there's some things that have to happen that he's definitely involved in. He uses man, but he's the one who's actually fighting the battle. And when he says, gird thy sword upon thy thigh, the sword, but you notice a couple of things about this. The sword, according to the ancient custom of what was done back then, hung on a belt put around the shoulder, and it reached down to the thigh. It didn't always, it wasn't always girt upon the thigh, but it was, it hung down to the thigh, as a matter of fact, past the thigh. It was suspended on the back part of the thigh and almost to the ground. but it was not girt upon it. But David evidently, I believe, is pointing to this, this particular custom that took place back then. Some of the times it happened in special occasions. And when there was an official character involved, a particular special person that was involved, like a king. And so, I'm not going to look at all of this. I just want to read something to you here about that. The prince went in great estate to the temple where he presented offerings and then the sword had been girded upon his thigh. Stop and think about that for a moment. We've been looking at 1 Kings chapter 1 and you find that Adonijah went out and he tried to take the kingdom to himself, but what did he do? Well, he went out and he made a big feast to celebrate him being the king, although he wasn't the king. He was a despot trying to take a throne that wasn't his to have and David was still on the throne and he was trying to take it before David died. But that's what he did. So there's a big feast. You'll find there are certain things that took place in celebration of Solomon becoming king. That was a common practice. There was a celebration in relationship to that. And so then, and it involved, the word of God tells us about Solomon. He didn't just have a feast, but there was a sacrifice that was offered, and they went into the temple, went into the tabernacle, got the anointing oil from the tabernacle, anointed him, appointed him with that oil to the office of a king. So all these things are involved in formally becoming the king. From the anecdotes that you find back in history, it's evident, and this is what I want you to get down to seeing here, it's evident that girding a sword on the thigh is part of a ceremony of royal inauguration. Now, the psalmist is addressing the Messiah and referring to these honors that belong to Him. But I want you to notice something else about this. The Word of God tells us here, "...gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O Most Mighty." That word, mighty, is a Hebrew word, gibbor. It's used of mighty men of battle and of power. David was a mighty man of power, a mighty soldier. The Bible talks in 2 Samuel, it goes down, it spends a whole chapter talking about David's mighty men. We're talking about that a little bit this afternoon in relationship to something else, but I won't get into that. But it brought up this fact, I said, You think that's not, well, I'll tell you, part of it was how much of a big deal is made about guns. And they did that over in England, and they got them outlawed over there. And so now, here just this last week, somebody went into a school and with a knife slaughtered four kids and a couple of teachers and bloodied a whole bunch of people with a knife. Now, you may not realize this, but I'm telling you something. My own personal taste, you know, how do you want to go? Just shoot me. Don't pull a sword on me. I mean, that's just my personal preference. I mean, I get more paranoid about someone, thinking about someone coming after me with a machete than I do with a gun. Just shoot me in the head. Get it over with. All this, I mean, to me, that just is the most threatening thing I can think of. I know bombs are terrible too, but I mean, I'm just saying, it's all up here. You know, how you want to go is just all up here. But I think about, listen, changing weapons doesn't change anything. David had mighty men. One man slew 500 men. His hand claved to the sword. He'd gripped it so long, couldn't get his fingers peeled off the sword. That's some real dedication and commitment right there, but it also tells you that guy was a guy you don't want to mess with. I look at that and think, how in the world can a guy do that? Well, there's only got four sides to a guy. And some of those guys are fast. And of course, God helped them. Another man slew 300. I'm telling you something, the wrong guy with the sword can do a lot of damage. You just don't want to mess with him. This is talking about a mighty man of battle and of power. The Lord Jesus Christ, there are many battle heroes There's none like the Lord Jesus Christ. None is as worthy of honor as our King. I mentioned last week in your notes there, you notice the part from last week, it talks about the sword of the Word of God. He doesn't need a physical sword. He has the sword of his mouth that goes out of his mouth that he's going to have when he comes back. But I will tell you this about him. He's never lost a battle that he set out to win. And he never set out to lose one. He's never lost a battle that he fought. He has never failed to conquer a soul that he determined to conquer. Whether an enemy that he has determined he's going to make his friend, or an enemy upon whom he's going to take vengeance. He's never lost. The book of Psalms says that my people shall be willing in the day of my power. My people shall be willing in the day of my power. When you look at the nation of Israel, when is it that the nation is going to be born as in a day? When the Lord Jesus Christ comes back and they see him, and then he's going to win the greatest last battle, and the last battle, he's going to win it with the sword of his mouth. He's never lost. He's never failed. He's never failed to conquer a nation he determined to conquer. However he did it, most of the time, he uses one nation to overthrow another nation. Look at the book of Daniel. He raised up Nebuchadnezzar to chasten Israel. Then he raised up the Persian Empire. You have the first Darius, and then you have Cyrus, and then you have the second Darius, if you read through the book of Daniel. God raised them up. And then along came, I say along came, facetiously, Alexander the Great. And God said, out of him, he's going to fall, and then there's going to be raised up. He died in his thirties in a drunken stupor. And then God raised up four captains out of him. And you have four kings in the same kingdom. God said what he's going to do. He raises men up, he puts men down. God has never, and then after that came the Roman Empire. God said he'd do that too. He has never failed to raise up whom he will and put down whom he will. He will gird his sword along with his glory and his majesty. That's what the verse tells us here. Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, all most mighty, with, in other words, gird thy sword with thy glory and thy majesty. The sword again is called the word of God. One of the names of the Lord Jesus Christ is the Word. He's the incarnate Word of God. He is the one who has all of the glory of the Father given back to him as a man. As a king now, he has the glory of the eternal God in his humanity. He has the majesty of the eternal God in his humanity. When He comes back, He will have all the glory of God Himself. When He came the first time, His glory was veiled off by His humanity. But the second time, it's going to radiate through His humanity, because He is glorified. His majesty speaks of His sovereign power. Now, follow me with this, because you see, we're going to get, look at a passage here in the Word of God, just shortly. Follow me with this. Today we don't see Him that way. We know it's true of Him. But we know it because we believe the Word of God, do we not? Now if we believe that, then we should live like it. We have a glorious King. He's a glorious Savior and a glorious King. He's a majestic King. Our King is sovereign in power and authority. There is no one greater in power than Him. There is no one greater in authority than the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, the Bible tells us plainly in Romans chapter 13 that we are to be respectful, we are to fear, we are to reverence and honor the King. and rulers. There are levels of authority. That means there's none that is higher. Nebuchadnezzar learned this the hard way. He came to openly confess he is king of kings and he is Lord of Lords. That is the God of Daniels, what he's talking about. Before he was polytheistic. When God got done humbling him, he wasn't polytheistic anymore. And God is God and the other ones, well, they're just small g gods. Because there's one God that rules in the heavens. And our God rules in the heavens over everything. He is in charge and in control of what's happening tonight. He's going to be in charge and in control of what happens on next Tuesday. I may not like it on an earthly plane, but I'm thankful for this. I don't have to lose my mind like a lot of people are. I mean, you got people that are already thinking that if the one they're voting, and it's on both sides, Because it's true of one side, and then the other one lies, because that's what they do every time they turn around. They lie and accuse the other side of what's true of them. And so as a result, people don't know the first thing about the truth, so they don't know what to believe. Some people think if the other side wins, their world's going to stop. And the other people on the other side, well, if the other one wins, then we won't have a nation anymore. So they both believe we're not going to have a nation anymore. Let me tell you a little secret. We're going to have a nation as long as God wants us to have a nation. And my hope, now don't misunderstand me. I'm praying about it. If you don't know what I think about how it should turn out, I don't know where you've been. But if you're not sure, please ask me. I'll let you know. But I want you to know something about the Lord Jesus Christ tonight. Right now, we may not see Him reigning in all of His grandeur and all of His royalty. That would be in His majesty. But let me show you something. Look at this passage in the Word of God. Hebrews 2, verses 5-9. He will girt on His sword along with His glory and His majesty. Look at what it says in Hebrews chapter 2 and verse 5. For unto the angels hath He not put in subjection the world to come. God the Father established that there's a time when this world as we know it is going to be dramatically changed. I mean, if you leave here and you come back then, you wouldn't know it. That different. But he says in verse 6, But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? Or the son of man, that thou visitest him? That is, that thou visitest him with the son of man. Thou matest him, that is, the son of man. Thou madest him a little lower than the angels. The Son of Man is the Son of God that he's talked about from chapter 1 on up to this point. Son of God made man. Thou madest him a little lower than the angels. That would be his incarnation. Thou crownest him with glory and honor. Glory and majesty belong to him. And set him over the works of thy hand. Thou hast put all things, everything, you and me, this church, this nation, and every other nation on the globe, all things. Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet, for in that he put all things in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now, we see, and I don't misunderstand when I read that and I say, including this church, I know what the Bible says, that he's the head of the church, I understand that. Now, thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet, wherein that he put all things in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now, notice that adversative, but, but, now. It's all in subjection to him, but now. We see not yet all things put under him. Now, which is it? He hath put all things under him, but we see not yet all things put under him. Well, they're all under him, but we're not seeing it that way right now. You look at it with the human eye, you go, you might think, God's not running this thing. God wouldn't do this. God wouldn't do that. Everything's happening according to God's purpose. God has a purpose for everything. It's good. It's right. I didn't say everything men do is good and right because it's absolutely not. Most of it's not. But God has a good and a right purpose for it. Men are unjust. God is not. We're going to see that in just a moment. He's going to correct all these things. It's going to set all these things straight. But now we see not yet all things put under Him. I look out and I look at what's going on. My Savior is not running this. It's not going according to His righteousness and holiness. That's true. We don't see it. But what do we see? We see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death. Some things have to take place first. For the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man. When he tested death on the cross of Calvary, the world looked at him and all the lost people mocked him and said, look at that, God won't have anything to do with him. But God had everything to do with him. It didn't seem that way. It didn't look that way. As a matter of fact, the Lord Jesus Christ himself said, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Because as a man hanging on that cross, he did not have any sense of the presence of God. But I can assure you, God had not fallen back or away from any promise that he made. He was totally in control of everything that happened to his son on the cross of Calvary. It was by his eternal decree that men did what they wanted to do with his son on the cross of Calvary. It was by God's eternal decree that they did what you and I would do. And he bore our sin because we'd have done what they did. Say, I don't think I'm like that. Well, I got news for you. That's what the Bible teaches. And yet, God was in control. Now, the Word of God tells us here, coming on down through this, it says, He's going to gird him on his sword, on his thigh, along with his glory and his majesty, all coupled together. I come down a little bit further. When you look at this passage, what we're looking at, first of all, we're seeing today the work of Christ on the cross of Calvary, Him humiliated, then raised unto glory. And we preach Him that way. Men can't see Him that way, but we preach Him that way. He's our mediator right now. We have to recognize a distinction in Christ's apparent work. There's what he's doing that we can't see. That's not apparent to us. It doesn't mean he's not doing anything. And then there's what's going to be apparent. It says we see not. And so Peter speaks in 1 Peter chapter 5 and verse 1. He says this in relationship to the second advent of the Lord Jesus Christ. The elders which are among you I exhort and I'm also an elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed. I'm already a partaker of it. There's something the world can't see about you and I. Hopefully we trust that they can see enough in our life to recognize little glimpses, though they don't recognize it for what it is, that they see glimpses from time to time of the glory of God manifest in our life. The glory of His grace is what I'm talking about. An increased likeness to the Lord Jesus Christ. We see the glory of Christ, the word of God says, and it transforms us from image to image. That transforms us. But we're certainly not fully glorified right now. So Peter says a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed. So now that leads us up to something else. And that is the next point, and that is that there's a progress and success of the king that you see in verse 4. In other words, God is still doing things. He's writing, if you will. It says in verse 4, and in my majesty Ride prosperously, because of truth and meekness and righteousness, and thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things." Ride prosperously. You say, well, when he comes back, he's going to be riding on a white horse. Well, yes, that's true, but that's not all this is talking about. This is a metaphor. All of this is, I mean, it's literal in its accomplishment, but it's using figurative terms, if you will. When he says to ride, it's, if you will, he's going to get on his horse or get on a chariot. It's a picture of a king. It's a picture of a king that begins to reign. And he gets in his chariot and he rides through his kingdom. And he sets out to do things. And he does it. It's a metaphor, then, of sending off or carrying on business as a king. Ride prosperously. Carry out your business as a king, prosperously, as to send off on the affairs of a kingdom. Look at this passage here in Isaiah 53 in verse 10. Isaiah chapter 53 in verse 10. Actually, I may have left that one off. I don't see it on your sheet there, so it looks like I left it off. So let me just read it to you. Isaiah 53 and verse 10 says this, and this is about the justifying work of the Lord Jesus Christ, but it is the basis of all of His accomplishments. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him. He hath put Him to grief when Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin. He shall see His seed, that is, He sees those whom the Father has given Him. That's his spiritual seed. When he died on the cross of Calvary, he saw me. If you're a child of God, he saw you. And when he died, he saw his seed, it says. He shall prolong his days. That's the resurrection. And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He prospered, he accomplished everything he set out to do. And then he says, as we read in the book of John, we pointed out already, he says, all that the Father giveth me shall come to me. All that the Father gave to him, he justified. They were predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. Those whom he predestinated, them he justified. Whom he justified, whom he justified, whom he also called. And whom he called, he also glorified. But I'm not glorified yet, but he's glorified. You are tasting a little bit of it already if you're a child of God and you're going to be fully glorified. He set it down and it's a settled fact being accomplished as we speak. He prospered his work, the Lord's pleasure in his hand. the work of redemption was fully accomplished. Any realization of fruit through the preaching of the gospel will be when Christ prospers it. He prospers it. I'm thankful tonight that when I give the gospel to a lost sinner, I don't have to depend upon, and I'm not at all dependent upon, as a matter of fact, I reject salesmanship approach. I'm not depending upon my great personality that never has existed. I'm not depending upon my winsomeness that I've never had. I'm not depending on any of that. I want to be approachable, you know, and I don't want to be as kind as I can, but the number one objective is to be honest with the truth of God. Because I'm not planning on winning anybody. He wins them. I'm trying to give them the truth of the gospel. And he brings forth the fruit. He prospers it. He prospered the work on the cross. He prospers the accomplishment of it. And if he doesn't, it doesn't happen. But I will tell you this. He always causes it to bring forth fruit, and everyone for whom He died will be part of His prosperity. He'll gather them all to Himself. I'm just thankful that He would look down and decide that I could have the blessing be used of Him to help in that. Not because He needs my help, but I get the blessing. Christ made it strike in power. When the apostles preached, It came in power and the Holy Ghost. That's what I'm depending on. I don't pray before I preach and ask God to help me to be, you know, the salesman that He needs. I just ask that God will help me to make the message clear and plain, and that God will use it, help me to do that, and that God will use it and accomplish His purpose. Because all I am is a clay instrument in His hand. can't do a thing by myself. Not a thing. I'm not depending upon devices of men, any wiles that I come up with, none of that. I thank God for every time he's prospered his word. And he has. He has. We get a glimpse of the glory that's going to be revealed at Christ in God's word concerning his first coming to this earth. When we read the word of God and we see what God did in Christ and how he revealed himself, we get a glimpse of what it's going to be like when we see him also. Because Peter reveals it. You remember, Peter and James and John went up on the mountain with the Lord Jesus Christ. And there they saw a vision. And they saw the Lord Jesus Christ glorified. When you look at 2 Peter chapter 1 and verses 16 through 17, look it with me there. We see now a glimpse of it in scripture of what we're going to see. He says, for we have not followed cunningly devised fables when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He's not talking here about his first advent. He's talking about his second advent. And so he goes on to say this, we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. Yes, they beheld him, as John says, they handled him, they touched him, the word of life, they spoke to him. Who is the word of life? But that's not what he's talking about here. He's talking about his second advent where he says in verse 17, for he received from God the Father honor and glory when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory. This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. That was on the Mount of Transfiguration. They got a little glimpse of what it's going to be like when the Lord Jesus Christ comes back. He's going to prosper everything that the Father gave him to do. He's going to ride prosperously. Now I want you to notice that there is a standard. There's something that causes his prosperity. What is it that is foremost with the Lord Jesus Christ? Here's what is the cause of his prosperity. It says in this, it says, and in thy majesty ride prosperously because of. Because of truth and meekness and righteousness. This is the cause that the Lord Jesus Christ has. David said in relationship to Goliath, he looked at his brethren and he said, this is not a cause. There is a cause. Well, this is Christ's cause. If it's His cause, it ought to be our cause. We have a cause for which to stand. We have a cause to live for. And he says it this way, first of all, the Lord Jesus Christ is the truth of all the types. He's the truth of all the promises. He's the truth of all the promises, the truth of all the doctrines in the Word of God. He's more than just, listen, they are not just true. He is not just true. He's truth. There's a difference between those things. You see, Something can be true today and not true tomorrow. But truth is absolute. Truth doesn't change. Truth is the standard by which things are judged to determine whether they are true or not. Truth is the standard. The Lord Jesus Christ is the truth. He's the standard. He didn't just come because of some things that are true. He came because of truth. He gave His life on the cross of Calvary. He lived His life for the sake of truth. His witness before Pilate, in John chapter 18 and verse 37, it's right there on your page, it says this. John's 1837 Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end, this cause, this goal was I born. For this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness of the truth. Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice. Why did he come? He came for the cause of truth. Satan is a liar. He brought deception into this world. And everything that has come out of Satan and out of man by his nature since then has been falsehood. The Lord Jesus Christ came to establish truth. God is a God of truth. And He came to establish it in the earth. He came because of meekness. There is no arrogance in the Lord Jesus Christ. He's humbly submitted to the will of God in all things. Everything that he said, everything that he did was out of humble submission to the will of God. That's what meekness is. That's what takes it a step further, a huge step further than just being humble. There are people that are humble, but they're not humble before God. This is humility before God that means that a person is in complete, total submission, subjection to the will of God. And that's true with the Lord Jesus Christ. He said of Himself in Matthew 11, verse 29, I am Me, and lowly in heart, fully subject to the lawful ordinances of human government, when they were lawful, and to the law of the Old Testament, and the law of His God. Righteousness. He came for the sake of the cause of righteousness. Aren't you thankful for that tonight? I'm thankful for all of these things, but I'm thankful for this. He came for the sake of righteousness. Satan brought sin into this world. There is a standard and a distinction of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ that flows from the very, His very personal essence of His being. He is righteous. He lived perfectly righteous because He is righteous. And our salvation was wrought out for Him on the cross of Calvary because He satisfied justice because He is righteous. And He did it before a perfectly righteous God. And so therefore we have the righteousness of Christ that we can trust and that is indeed imputed to our account. There can no fault be found in us because the righteousness that hides us is that of the Lord Jesus Christ. He established righteousness for his people by his own glorious righteousness on the cross of Calvary. His saints and his servants are made righteous in him, and they're clothed in his righteousness. Revelation chapter 19 and verse 8 should be there on your second page there. It says, and to her was given that granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints. The standard of His reign is righteousness. Isaiah 16 and verse 5, and in mercy, the throne shall be established. It's talking about the throne of, well, in the immediate context, it's talking about Hezekiah, but ultimately it has to do with the Lord Jesus Christ. In mercy shall the throne be established, and He shall sit upon it in fruit in the tabernacle of David, judging and seeking judgment and hasting righteousness. Hasting righteousness. Did you know, I'll illustrate it this way. In our establishment of our government, there was established something that we need to somehow figure out how to get back to practicing today. And that's called hasting righteousness. Hasting righteousness means there's no protracted sentences. Hasting righteousness means there's no deferred sentences. Hasting righteousness means there's a speedy trial, not two or three years, or maybe six months, or eight months, or a year before it even comes to trial. As a matter of fact, we've got people that were put in jail over January 6, and they still haven't had a trial. They're just getting persecuted, political prisoners. Just thought I'd throw that in to show you how far off base we've gotten to be. He's his own instructor. Look at this. It says, and thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things. Thy right hand shall teach thee. I thought, well, why would the Lord need to be taught anything? That's the whole point. His own right hand will teach him. He doesn't need you and I to point out anything. His own right hand will point it out. And what he points will be according to his will. What He determines by pointing it out, that will be according to His will. No one needs to instruct Christ on how to win souls. He knows all about that. He's the Savior. No one needs to instruct Christ on how to defeat His enemies. He's the source and the authority of that also. Where His will determines, His hand points. and therefore his hand instructs him. Terrible things, fearful to bring about reverence for him. He can bring enemies to bow before him in gracious knowledge of him, in acknowledgment of him rather, or he can bring his enemies to acknowledge him as Lord before the execution of their judgment. You see, he can do it in grace and he can do it in vengeance. And he does both, and he will do both. The very last thing, and I'll just close with this quickly, the Lord's arrows. The Lord has arrows. He has all kinds of instruments, doesn't he? He's got a sword, and he's got arrows. There's a book that Spurgeon wrote that illustrates this very well. Now, his was his own short little story, but he had these little illustrations that he had, that, as a matter of fact, they'd been taken from his messages by his son-in-law, actually. and put into a book. But it's called Barbed Arrows from the Quiver. Barbed Arrows from the Quiver. I've done enough bow hunting to have success one time, and most of the time I was just trying. But I know what it is to sharpen an arrow. When you hit something, you don't want to just tear something up. You want it to be sharp. The Lord has his own arrows. He doesn't need anybody else's. He's got his own. His are perfect. He sharpens his own arrowheads. He doesn't need anybody to do that for him. When he shoots them, it may be by, as it was with Ahab, when he was done with Ahab, a man drew a bow at a venture, but it landed right between the joints of the harness. God's aim is perfect, regardless of who's shooting the bow. Now that'll make you pray about your hunting, won't it? I'm serious, though, when I say God never misses. When God takes the mind to take an arrow and take just something out of a message that a preacher preaches and take that one barbed arrow and strike it into the heart of a sinner and pierce the heart of that sinner and bring them under conviction of sin, he knows exactly how to aim that comment, though the preacher doesn't have a clue what he said. except he knows what he said, but he doesn't know who it was for. I've had that happen so many times. I can tell you people who said, you know what, I came there and he started preaching, I thought he was preaching right at me. And I've had a lot of preachers say the same thing. Why? Not because they knew, not because they planned it, but God did. And he puts his arrows right where they need to go. And when he hits his mark, they accomplish his purpose. God is the mighty God. He's the mighty conqueror. We sing about that. He's the mighty conqueror. Yes, he is. He can conquer souls in grace. He can conquer souls in vengeance. But he never fails. He is going to win the last great battle before he sets up his kingdom. He will have earned the right on the cross of Calvary And he will have won the victory over all of his enemies. And then the coronation starts. Let's stand and have a word of prayer. Our gracious God and Heavenly Father, we bow before you tonight, humbled with the glory and the majesty of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. We thank you for your grace and your mercy, that you would, sovereign and sovereign mercy, reach out your hand to us and save us by your grace. And dear God, we ask for those of us who know the Lord Jesus Christ of a certainty, Lord, we pray that you would help us to rejoice in our Savior and our great God and King every day and throughout the days. And Lord, if there be one here tonight that does not know the saving work of your Holy Spirit in their life to bring them to conviction of sin and repentance and faith, Lord, may you work in their heart and cause their heart for once to truly desire to know the Lord Jesus Christ, whom to know is life eternal. For it is in his name we pray and for his sake. Amen. Brother, what's our song tonight?