Please remain standing if you are able and turn with me now also in the book of Hebrews to chapter 7. Hebrews chapter 7 and we will begin our reading at verse 11 and read through verse 19. Hebrews chapter 7 beginning at verse 11. to verse 19, Congregation of the Lord, this is God's holy, infallible, and inerrant word preserved for us. Therefore, if perfection were through the Levitical priesthood, for under it people received the law, what further need was there that another priest should arise according to the order of Melchizedek? and not be called according to the order of Aaron. For the priesthood being changed of necessity, there is also a change of the law. For he of whom these things are spoken belongs to another tribe, from which no man has officiated at the altar. For it is evident that our Lord arose from Judah, of which tribe Moses speaks nothing concerning priesthood. And it is yet far more evident if, in the likeness of Melchizedek, there arises another priest who has come not according to the law of a fleshly commandment, but according to the power of an endless life. For he testifies, you are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. For on the one hand, there is an annulling of the former commandment because of its weakness and unprofitableness. For the law made nothing perfect. On the other hand, There is the bringing in of a better hope through which we draw near to God. And the reading there, verse 19, and I would invite you now to also turn to the Psalms, to Psalm 110. And we will read the entirety of the Psalm, but we will focus today particularly on the first three verses. Again, this is God's word, Psalm 110. The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool. The Lord shall send the rod of your strength out of Zion, rule in the midst of your enemies. Your people shall be volunteers in the day of your power and the beauties of holiness. From the womb of the morning you have the due of your youth. The Lord has sworn and will not relent. You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. The Lord is at your right hand. He shall execute kings in the day of his wrath. He shall judge among the nations. He shall fill the places with dead bodies. He shall execute the heads of many countries. He shall drink of the brook by the wayside, therefore he shall lift up the head. That is the end there, verse, pardon me, Psalm 110, congregation of the Lord. This is God's word. If you've heard and received it then as his word, confess that with me by saying, amen. Let's ask the Lord's mercy upon us as we seek to understand and apply his word. We come, our Heavenly Father, and we do plead that you might help our weakness, our frailty, our inclination to take your word and either twist it or simply ignore it, and that to our own hurt. May we not do so today. Pray that you enlighten our understanding. May the Holy Spirit work in us even now. We ask in Jesus' name, amen. Well, dear ones, I think that it's not too much of a stretch to say that, or for me to assume, rather, that you have somewhat of the same judgment that I have about something in particular, and that is that we sense in one way a certain weakness in the church, There is strength indeed and there are parts of the world, for example, where the church expands and grows and does so mightily with the work of God and particularly the Holy Spirit in building his church. And yet we sense, especially certainly in our own land and and much of the West that there is weakness. And I will repeat something now that some of you have heard, and I suspect some of you have not, but I'm going to share with you what is a very strong conviction that I have, and that is much of the weakness that we sense is because Christians, people like you and me, that we don't know the Bible. Well, we might know the New Testament quite well, actually, and we may have numerous verses from the New Testament memorized, and that's all to our benefit, certainly. But when I say we don't know the Bible, I'm talking about particularly the Old Testament. And that effect, somewhat contrary to what we might expect, it affects our ability to understand the whole of the scriptures. And the reason for that is that we tend to not think biblically. Now that's not original with me, certainly. but we tend not to think biblically. And in that sense, what I mean is that we don't think in biblical categories. We don't think in a biblical sense. We don't immerse ourselves, for example, into what's going on in things like Psalm 110 or in other portions of the scripture that we will interact with today. Rather, we often think in what would be maybe Greek categories. You might say, I don't know Greek. You don't have to know Greek. You can still think like a Greek. And if I say that you're thinking like a Greek, that means you're not thinking biblically. And that weakens us. Well, I say that in part as an introduction today, so that we might perhaps take that to heart, to maybe immerse ourselves into the world of the Old Testament, to start thinking in those categories, and to also use that to help us to interpret the scriptures. That is, the Old Testament ought to inform our understanding of the New Testament, and we find that in places such as Romans 12.1. You might say, well, wait, we're not in Romans 12.1. Right, we've been working our way there. This is the second of two introductory sermons before we go from the end of chapter 11 into chapter 12, and it's because we need to see these things before we actually look at verse 12. That is, as I hope to make clear today, what the Apostle Paul, inspired of the Holy Spirit, tells us in chapter 12, verse 1 of Romans, bears directly on what we find here, for example, in Psalm 110. I'm going to ask you, keep that in mind. Think about Romans 12.1, which you likely have memorized. Lord willing, we'll be there next Lord's Day. But think about what we read in Romans 12.1 and what we see here, and especially as I try to explain why it is significant for our understanding. And so this is a preparatory sermon in a sense, and yet it does I trust stand on its own in a more broad sense. So, as I mentioned, we're going to be looking primarily at the first three verses of this Psalm, and then I'm going to ask you here shortly to turn to another passage. because it's one that we haven't read yet and one that perhaps you're not that familiar with. So I will give you some warning about that. We're going to look at two other passages in the Old Testament. So this is very familiar here. We read out of Hebrews. multiple times today, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool. That language appears over and over in various ways throughout the whole of the scriptures. Now what we find here, if your Bible, if the editors included a superscription in this, that is the information that's above the first verse, it says it's the Psalm of David and sometimes I disagree with the editors and sometimes I don't, but here, particularly, I think it is, there's no doubt. that David wrote this psalm inspired of the Holy Spirit. And that's important because the psalm is not about David. It is explicitly from verse one about someone else, the Lord. And your editors probably have all capitals, right? Jehovah God, God's covenant name said something to someone else. And who is that someone else? My Lord, that's David speaking. Jehovah God, the covenant God, the creator of heaven and earth, the one who particularly made covenant with Abraham, made covenant with, as it happens, David, the one through whom Messiah comes, humanly speaking. Jehovah God says to Adonai, My Lord, my master, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool. So this Psalm is emphatically, when it comes down to it, not about David. It's about David's Lord. It's about David's saviour. And so this Lord, Lord, capitals, all caps, and then capital L, Lord, that distinction is key for understanding here, especially when we consider the perspective of the psalmist king, David himself, because what he says is repeated later on as the savior in his incarnation confronts those who were challenging him in what he was claiming. And in fact, what we find here, this Psalm, Psalm 110, is the most quoted passage of the Old Testament in the New Testament. Over and over again, you can use your various resources to find that. So this distinction is important because it is David, the man David, the king, certainly blessed, the anointed in that sense, certainly as king, as a, we might even say, as a type of Christ, rightly so, the one who received the promise, for example, when we read after Nathan confronts David, through David's troubles and trials, promises him that there will not be an heir that fails to be on the throne forever. The word forever there indicates to us that this is not speaking of things on this earth, ultimately. And so the lordship that David expresses here, that is his relation to Jehovah God, his relationship to my Adonai, his lord, his master, his king, What that does, it also rightly, as we understand it, it applies not only to David, but it applies to every single person that belongs to him, that is the Savior. There is a sense that we do share in the victory of Christ. We share in, certainly we have, we are joint heirs with him. We share not only in his death, but also in his resurrection. The great enemy of death is conquered by Christ, and we share in that. And so this promise that your covenant God said to your Savior, I will make your enemies your footstool, we share in that. We don't share in the sitting at the right hand directly, we do indirectly. Since our Savior sits there carrying, bearing, our flesh. And so what is said here is not abstract. And here's where an example of what I'm talking about when I'm saying we need to think in these biblical categories, Old Testament biblical categories to understand what the New Testament is talking about. He says, sit at my right hand. Now who's sitting on your right hand right now? Some of you, no one. It depends where you're sitting. What does that mean? Why is that significant? You probably sat down and you've sat, if you've been in the church for a while, you sit down in the same pew often and you sit down in the same order. I could probably lay out this week the map of the room here. the significance of who sits on what side has been lost to us somewhat. And yet, the lordship of the Savior, which this is what this represents, is much more profound than anything we might expect here. Even if we lived in a monarchy, even if we lived at a time when such things mattered so much, where if you went into the throne room and you saw, well, there's the king sitting on the throne and there's the one sitting on the right hand, You know, based on that relationship, that relationship in time and space, that that person that sits there has a particularly special place, one that is one of authority. Whatever authority we have in this Earth is merely a delegated authority, but the lordship of the Savior as he sits at the right hand of the majesty on high is not delegated. He has it by right. So what that means is that the lordship of the Savior is unique. Sure, there are lords, lowercase. lords in this earth. There are potentates. There are those who would presume the powers of lordship. But when it comes down to it, there's no authority that exists in heaven or earth that does not belong to the Savior. And there is no one who can sit on the right hand of the majesty on high, but him." Now, as he sits there, what is going on? Well, that's the next phrase, of course. It is, "'Til I make your enemies your footstool." And that phrase there is explicitly referring to his enemies. I say, yes, pastor, I saw that, I read that. is I want you to note that. It's important because the psalm makes references to both enemies and his people. Both are represented to us in the psalm. Right here, right now, it is his enemies that will be subdued. And they will be subdued either by conversion That is by making them his people or he will do so as the king executing his power, executing as a mighty king with a mighty army executes his will among those that perhaps aren't particularly interested in the will of that particular king at that particular time. See, this is significant here, because what is it, in fact, that he's talking about here? Well, what he's talking about here is that all those who set themselves against the Lord and His anointed, Psalm 2, all those that rise up against the authority of Christ will be subdued. Well, how does that happen? Well, it happens in Christ's incarnation, his sin bearing, his going to the cross, his burial, his death, his burial, his resurrection, his ascension on high to sit at the right hand of the majesty on high. That's how. You might say, well, Pastor, but there are an awful lot of people that shake their fist in the face of God today. Yes. Yes, they do. And they are there. Yes. And so that tells us here that there's a significance to this temporal, that is time-related phrase, till I make. Now it is within the Lord's power, certainly in a hypothetical way at the death of Christ and as he's raised from the tomb three days later, that could have been the end. Everyone could have been subdued at that point, but that was not most explicitly not the Lord's will, that it would be over time, certainly from our perspective. So that means that here, it's an ongoing project. The work's been done, the campaign has been done from a divine perspective. See, we have to remember that there's often these two perspectives. Within the Godhead, there is no past, present, and future, but for us, there is. And so there's this ongoing project to subdue his enemies, that is, by the conversion of the lost or their actual subjugation, a term that we perhaps might be uncomfortable with sometimes. That is, what is being talked about here in this verse is right now. Right now, we see it. If we open up our spiritual eyes, we comprehend it. If we understand actually what the purposes of God are, truly revealed to us. And what do we know based upon this very simple phrase? What do we know about that project? Well, we know that it's ongoing, but the other thing that we know is that it will succeed. It does not say, an argument from silence, till I try to make your enemies your footstool. There's no sense of maybe, there's no sense of probably, there's no sense of I hope so, there is merely the promise, I, we might change it somewhat to say it without doing violence to the text, I will make your enemies your footstool. And so it will succeed. The absolute reign of Christ will exist even over his enemies. Okay, what does that have to do with the broader question? Particularly, what does that have to do with Romans 1-11? What it has to do with that is the explicit truth behind what we have seen all the way through chapter 11 is that the Lord reigns. The Lord is sovereign. There are enemies in the world. There are enemies in the spiritual sense is what I'm talking about. There are enemies that, yes, there are enemies. The project is ongoing, but the Lord is sovereign. The Lord reigns. He will accomplish all his holy will in this project that is ongoing. What does it have to do with Romans? Well, what it has to do with Romans is that the Lord is actually going to be glorified. He will be glorified in us as his people, and he will be glorified even in the subjugation of his enemies who never, never, show their allegiance to him who deserves the allegiance. He reigns, he reigns sovereignly and he reigns glorified and I include sovereignly because there are those who reign today and even the most absolute monarch today does so only because the Lord permits it. See, that is the nature of the reign of Christ as he reigns even now at the right hand of the majesty on high. And now in verse two, we see more explicitly that rule of Christ. The language here is, again, very important for understanding the rod of your strength out of Zion. Rule in the midst of your enemies. See, the Lord, the Lord in this ongoing project of subduing the enemies. What does it say? It says, the Lord, Jehovah God, again, will send out the rod of your strength, the Savior, to do a particular thing. You see, there is no passivity regarding this program. There's no sense in which, well, Again, we'll see what humans decide to do. We'll see if it works. See, Christ is not a passive king. He's an active king. He seeks and he accomplishes the expansion of his kingdom. And the advance of this program of Christ, the advance of his kingdom is not in doubt. Even though we might struggle to see it from time to time, you may look at the news on any particular day and you go, man, it's just getting worse and worse and worse. But for the Christian, We go, praise God, he's going to subdue all his enemies. You might not see it in your lifetime. And depending on your eschatology, it might not happen ultimately until Christ returns. That's not the point of the sermon here. Regardless, the Lord will accomplish his plan. It's a grave mistake for the Christian to look at the evening news, maybe in general, but more broadly speaking, to say, oh man, I wonder how I need to change my theology to match what I see on the news broadcast. Don't do it. Don't do it. Consider the history of Israel. Well, let's send spies into the land. The Lord has promised us this land. Let's send spies into the land. Let's see what we have. Oh, oh, they're big, big people there. big people there. We just can't do it. We just can't do it. You see it was the headlines looking at it from that way that turned the people aside and they end up not in fact inheriting what they were to inherit. Now again, This is not saying that it's formulaic. It's not formulaic. We may go through, in our lifetime, we may go through a valley of darkness, spiritually speaking, of everything that's around us. In fact, that would be normal for God's people. That's not the point. That's not how we make our judgments. That's not how we seek to understand the scriptures, to look around in the world today and say, well, let's see, how should I adjust my theology? No. That's getting it 180 degrees wrong. So you'll notice something else here. Where was Zion? What is Zion? It's a great study in the scriptures, by the way, because it's not entirely clear, and I think that's actually... on purpose. Zion, physically speaking, geographically speaking, was Jerusalem. And yet, what we find when you look in the prophets particularly, there's another sense of Zion. We see it in the New Testament. You have come to Mount Zion, for example. Does that mean Jerusalem? No, that doesn't mean Jerusalem in the sense, the geopolitical sense. So there's another way in which this ought to be understood oftentimes, if not in type, then explicitly so. And the rod of his strength, the rod is going out of Zion, it's going out of Jerusalem as a picture. The picture of, as it is now, at least in these last days, you might even say the church and Christians. and that is that you and I are part of the program. We don't sit idly by on the sidelines and say, well, I hope the Lord accomplishes all his holy will. I'm just gonna sit here and watch and eat my popcorn. Boy, I hope he does it. I know he's going to do it. I just don't have to do anything to make it happen. That's a great misunderstanding of the whole theme of the scriptures. Yes, the rod of strength is expressed out of Zion. How does the church, how do Christians express their strength? By confessing the Lord Jesus Christ. By living like Christians in a dark world, that's how. By showing the world the light of the gospel, that's how. Not with swords, not with guns. No, that's not how. See, we're part of this program. We participate in this program. Even as we participate in Christ's victory, we participate in the ways that God has given us to do. And we do so, as it says here, in the midst of the enemies. Christ rules. He rules us. Here we see it expressed, even now. So that's the divine imperative here. That's the way it's expressed as an imperative. Rule in the midst of your enemies. That's the commission, we might say, that's given to Christ. Rule. And it's a glorious thing here when we consider that that imperative of rule is given regardless of opposition. In fact, it anticipates opposition. See, if you're going about living your life as a Christian in this world, and you're going about seeking to do righteousness out in the marketplace, whatever your calling is, and nobody ever says anything, You never find yourself butting up against the powers of this world. You might wonder, perhaps, it might be a good time to ask, am I actually living like a Christian out there? No, it's possible, yes. It's possible you might be granted such peace. That's not been my experience. That's not been my experience. See, this rule of Christ here is a rule of power. It's designated here as a rod. The picture of a rod is a very interesting picture in the scriptures, right? Let's consider, for example, a very familiar text, Psalm 23, verse 4. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For you are with me. What's the next part? You know the next part. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. See, the rod comforts the sheep, right? To know that the shepherd carries the rod, to know that the shepherd carries the staff, the care, the protection, but that rod is a terror to the wolf, right? That's why it's a rod. It's an extension, it's an expression of the power of the right hand to beat away the ones who would consume, to kill and consume the sheep. No, how is it that we can, through the valley of the shadow of death, not fear any evil, no calamity, nothing can happen to us that bears any significance because somehow it's outside of the rod of Christ's rule. No, his rod and his staff comfort us. rightly so, because it is a terror to the wolf. See, the rule of Christ here, particularly in a land which is hostile, is a great source of comfort to you, ought to be. You live in a hostile territory. You may not realize it, but you do. But that hostility does not deny Christ's rule. They may deny it. It does not deny the reality. And so for you, Christian, for you, the one who belonged to Christ, Jehovah God, the one who claims Christ as your Adonai, your Lord, you respond to these things. Well, the response is to rejoice. That's here. Rejoice, people of God. Rejoice in his reign and rule as Savior. And that's just not Pastor Doug talking. That's the prophetic voice of the scriptures. Zechariah says, sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion, for behold, I am coming and I dwell in your midst. What a glorious promise. from Zechariah 2. Many nations shall be joined to the Lord in that day. What day? This day, these last days. And they shall become my people and I will dwell in your midst. Then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you and the Lord will take possession of Judah and his inheritance in the holy land and will again choose Jerusalem. Be silent all flesh before the Lord for he is aroused from his holy habitation. You see both exist there in Zechariah 2. Verses 10 through 13. Rejoice, daughter of Zion, because Christ has come. He's dwelling in your midst. He will keep you. He will establish you. And by the way, he will also subdue all his enemies there at the end of what I just read. Both are equally true. Both are comforting. Both are a cause rightly of rejoicing. And that leads us to verse three, because here, as I'm striving here, is we're looking particularly at this relationship to Romans 12.1, where it says, your people shall be volunteers in the day of your power. In the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning, you have the due of your youth. Your people shall be volunteers in the day of your power. For many, many years, I wondered what in the world that was talking about. But it is here that we find the primary connection, the primary relationship to Romans 12.1. I'm going to ask you to do something here. I'm going to, first of all, ask you to be patient as I develop this, because this is very, very important. I'm also going to ask you to take your Bibles, here's the warning, and turn to Exodus 35. Now in Exodus 35, I'm going to read two portions. I'm gonna begin at verse four, but before I do, the context here particularly has to do with the plans for the building of the tabernacle. And you think about, here's a group of people that have come out of Egypt and they did plunder the Egyptians on the way out, but they're in the middle of nowhere, not a whole lot of resources out there in the desert. How are they going to build this glorious structure? And it says in verse four, and Moses spoke to all the congregation of the children of Israel saying, this is the thing which the Lord commanded. saying, take from among you an offering to the Lord, whoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it as an offering to the Lord, gold, silver and bronze, blue, purple and scarlet thread, fine linen and goat's hair, ram skins dyed red, badger skins and acacia wood, oil for the light and spices for the anointing oil and for the sweet incense, onyx stones and stones to be set in the ephod and in the breastplate and all the congregation of the children. Oh, this is pardon me, skipping ahead to verse 20. And all the congregation of the children of Israel departed from the presence of Moses. Then everyone came whose heart was stirred, and everyone whose spirit was willing. And they brought the Lord's offering for the work of the tabernacle of meeting. for all its service, and for the holy garments. They came, both men and women, as many as had a willing heart, and brought earrings, and nose rings, and rings, and necklaces, all jewelry of gold. That is, every man who made an offering of gold to the Lord. And every man with whom was found blue, purple, and scarlet thread, fine linen, goat's hair, red skins of rams, and badger skins, brought them. Everyone who offered an offering of silver or bronze brought the Lord's offering. and everyone with whom was found a cashew wood for any work of the service brought it. All the women who were gifted artisans spun yarn with their hands and brought what they had spun of blue and purple and scarlet and fine linen, and all the women whose hearts stirred with wisdom spun yarn of goat's hair. The rulers brought onyx stones and the stones to be set in the ephod and the breastplate and spices and oil for the light and for the anointing oil and for the sweet incense. Children of Israel brought a freewill offering to the Lord, all the men and women whose hearts were willing to bring material for all kinds of work which the Lord, by the hand of Moses, had commanded to be done. The reason that we read that extended passage through this perhaps more obscure portion of the Scriptures has to do particularly with the word that is used in Romans 12.1 which is reflected by the word which is here, volunteer. The word here in the Hebrew means exactly what it might say. Your translation might say willing, it might say volunteers. It's all the same range of meaning here, but it was used also to refer to a particular kind of sacrifice. and that sacrifice is what is known elsewhere in the scriptures as a free will offering. That is, as we find here in this one passage, this is not the only passage by the way, we find that the people had of their own free will had provided all that was necessary for the building of the tabernacle and not only the tabernacle but also the adornment of the high priest and so on. What is the distinction that I'm making here? The distinction that I'm making here is that when the Apostle Paul refers to a living sacrifice, he is, in the categories of thought that he has, he's referring to this kind of sacrifice. Now, why is that important to us? Well, it's important to us because the sacrifices that we're normally accustomed to talking about, for example, particularly the sin offering, right, where the animal is taken and the animal is slaughtered and then put on the fire and it is consumed and there's all sorts of beautiful pictorial things that are true of this. Or we're thinking of perhaps the high sin offering on the day of atonement of the goat and the two goats as it happens, one killed and the other not and so on. We think about those things. Well, when we look at what the Lord Jesus Christ has done, when we look at this project of the subduing of the enemies, when we look at this project of the salvation of his own people and to bring them in under the rule of his rod and the care of his staff, when we consider all those things, those things are fulfilled in Christ. You're not the sin offering. You're not a sin sacrifice. The Lord Jesus Christ has done that. And if we go and refer once again to the book of Hebrews, we find that there's no longer a need for a sacrifice. Even as we read from chapter seven, it indicates that the entire system has been changed because now the priesthood is Melchizedek, not Aaron. because Christ has fulfilled it. The sin offering is completed and yet there remains an offering to be made. Again, Old Testament categories. What was the difference between a sin offering and the offering that's being referred to here? And it's later codified, that is more particularly codified in Leviticus 22. which we won't read today particularly. That is, that a free will offering was given, as the name indicates, because you wanted to do it, because the Lord had blessed you. You brought a sacrifice because of all that the Lord had done for you and out of your abundance of what the Lord had done, or perhaps even you had made a vow. you would bring the sacrifice. You didn't have to do it. The sin offering, you had to do that. You had to participate on the day of atonement and the slaughter of the goats and then the scapegoat. You had to participate. That was necessary. Those are obligations. The nature of this sacrifice is different and it is different in type because of what the Lord Jesus Christ has done and now what it is that you are to do. What is the nature of your sacrifice in Romans 12.1? It is a free will offering. And it is a free will offering because the Lord has poured out his blessings upon you in particular that the sin offering has been accomplished in Christ. Now there's another little detail here. that really drives home the point. And it drives home the point because, and you can read this on your own, in Leviticus 22, if you read about the law concerning the free will offering, as I mentioned or indicated, there are two types of free will offerings. You can make a vow and then at the end of that vow and the accomplishment of the vow, you bring the offering and that's a particular kind of sacrifice. And these are animal sacrifices. But if you, out of the abundance of the joy in your heart, rejoicing in the redemption, and think about what we're reading in Exodus, this is in the context of being delivered out of Egypt, redemption in type, that if you want to just simply make a freewill offering to bring a sacrifice because of your thankfulness to God, the free will offering could be less than perfect. You might say, what? You could bring an offering, specifically as it says in the law, that the leg of the, perhaps the leg was too short. You had an animal that had a little bit of a defect, a birth defect of some kind. That was an acceptable offering as a free will offering. Now there are other elements of it that made it not permitted to be brought. But if it was less than perfect, it was permitted. Isn't that an extraordinary thing? Why is that? Why is that? Well, I can assure you, every offering you make in your obedience to Christ is less than perfect. It's beautiful. See, it doesn't have to be perfect. It's great if it is. Sure, we should strive for that, of course. See, the offering is you. The offering is me. What does Romans 12 say? I know we haven't read that yet. Present yourself. You're not dragged into the court of the temple. You're not dragged into the courts of the tabernacle. Present yourselves. present yourselves because the Lord is even now exercising his power. He exercises power in converting someone like you and someone like me. And here when it says particularly that we will be volunteers, we shall be, we'll be free will offerings is how I'm understanding this. In the day of your power, the day of your power can also be interpreted in the might of an army. We are as a mighty army of God. I think that's a great way to understand this. It's not power in the general sense, but in the power that is expressed in the army of God that is, in particular, the host that belonged to Him. See, we do this, we present ourselves in the beauties of holiness, as it says here, that the glories, and it's plural, The glories of holiness are manifold. The glories of our sanctification are manifold. Not only the fact that in principle we are fully sanctified and yet we work it out in time. Yes, that is true. But the majesty of that holiness that we have in Christ requires us. If we look at Romans 12.1, it requires us. It is our rational, logical, natural response to the salvation we have in Christ. That's how we ought to understand Romans 12.1. Well, of course we would bring a freewill offering. Why would we not bring it if Christ has saved us? Yes, the priest, our priest king, and prophet. He was holy, his offering was holy, its efficacy remains, and we're set apart also under service and sacrifice and holiness in Christ. And then it changes here somewhat abruptly, it's not uncommon in the Psalms, that you have to do of your youth from the morning, from the womb of the morning, from the beginning of the morning, that is, who is being referred to here, and not everybody agrees, but I do think it's a reference, again, turning attention once again back to the Lord. It's talking about Christ, that he is ever young, we might say, or might put it, he's ever renewed in this sense in which we could understand it. it doesn't fade away, it doesn't lose its application at all. And what we'll see here in a moment as we look at the final verse of the Psalm, it applies very directly here. But focusing particularly on what we're to do, we are to do. See, your willingness, your free will offering in the day of His power is in fact your reasonable service. It is what you ought to do as a Christian, rightly so. The difference has to do with the nature of the sacrifice and whether it remains alive or not, because the Lord has already made that sacrifice for sin. And as we're going to see, your sacrifice is, in fact, a living sacrifice, even though the Lord lives. He gave all, even unto death, and we don't have to die. Now it says, finally here, concluding that he shall drink the brook by the wayside. That is, again, referring to Christ. Therefore he shall lift up the head." Somewhat vague, isn't it? I think that's intentional. Who's the he? Who's the lifting up and so on? Well, this is again speaking of Christ, I think, directly. Of course, we know in his divinity, he does not hunger or thirst. And if he did, he wouldn't tell us, as the scriptures say. But the Lord is refreshed. The Lord in his project does not tire. He does not grow weary. In fact, he's refreshed in the way. The Lord is not discouraged, and neither should you be discouraged. The Lord is not defeated. And we have that victory in him. Now, his victory was at the cost of his life, certainly. And in this sense, he lifted up his head in the resurrection, and we can certainly understand that way, but it also means that because he is not wearied, that he also lifts up your head. He also lifts up your head. If you remember, again, this is Old Testament categories, lifting up of someone's head, bringing them out of prison, for example, to lift it up the head of the prisoner. That picture is to essentially to restore, to comfort. And so the Lord goes forth conquering and to conquer. And yet, even though he does so with great vigor, he's not weakened in the vigor. He's refreshed. His strength is ever potent, and he will, in fact, complete it unto his ultimate glory at the last day. And so, congregation, as we move to Romans 12 next Lord's Day, if he wills, consider what it is that your sacrifice is in your obedience to him. Amen.