Children, if I say 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, what am I saying? Numbers, right? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. When you hear those, you just hear numbers. But do you know what a little Hebrew boy or girl would hear when they heard the number 7? they wouldn't just hear a number because to them, seven had two meanings. If I said the word seven, they wouldn't just hear a number, they would hear the word rest. And so if their mom was telling them they needed to take a nap in the afternoon, they might actually hear, little Johnny, you need to go take a seven. you need to go take a setup, a rest. And their weeks, they didn't just say Friday, Saturday, Sunday, like we do. They would hear Friday, Saturday, rest day. Friday, Saturday, rest day. all through their lives and the routines of their lives, they would hear again and again when they heard the word seventh or Sabbath. And you can actually tell if I say seventh or Sabbath, that there's a similarity between the two words. That's because when we say seventh, we're actually using a Hebrew root word that goes way back to Hebrew. We still speak little bits and pieces of different languages in our English. But when they heard that, they would hear rest. And their whole life and the routines of their life would lead up each week to a day of rest. They would work, work, work six days a week. And then on the seventh day, they would take a rest. And that was a special day. And this Psalm that we're looking at this afternoon, Psalm 92 is called a Psalm for the Sabbath day, which you could translate a Psalm for the seventh day or a Psalm for the rest day. the rest day. And this psalm is filled with all kinds of patterns that God used in those Old Testament times that taught His people about rest and what real rest truly is. This psalm is filled with different markers of routines and patterns, the poetry of the psalm. If you could read it in the original Hebrew, it can all be broken down into sixes and sevens in its syllables. And a Hebrew person would notice that. It's all pattern of sixes and sevens. The name Lord or Jehovah is used seven times in this psalm. And it's a pattern with a sort of structure that kind of goes up and down like a mountaintop in the way of what they call a chiasm, which doesn't really matter. But if you could see it as a diagram, the structure of the psalm kind of goes up and back down and the peak is actually verse eight. You Lord are high on high forevermore. And it's hard to put all this together in English, but think of a child thousands of years ago, 3,000 or so years ago, learning this psalm and learning to sing it on the Sabbath day and learning what real rest is. Now, when you read this psalm, And as you think about the topics in it, you might not think of it being about real rest, but it truly is. And we hope to see that real rest comes with growing in the Lord's presence. It was teaching them to worship the Lord, growing out of his presence. But that begins in this Psalm with acknowledging his works, acknowledging his works. Verses one through five are a sort of section of the Psalm that turned them on the Sabbath day the last day of the week for them to worship the Lord and to remember His work, to be thankful. It is good to give thanks to the Lord and to sing praises to Your name, O Most High, to declare Your lovingkindness in the morning and Your faithfulness every night. And so when they sang this psalm on the Sabbath day, and from what we know of history, they often, or perhaps even in the later time of the Old Testament, always perhaps sang this psalm in their synagogues around the world. When they sang it, it focused them when they came to the place of worship, whether a temple or a synagogue, to giving thanks. to the Lord Most High, to singing praises to His name. That already can correct us, can't it? How easy it is to come to church, to meet your friends first, to say hello to your friends. And yes, it's good you enjoy your friends' presence, but that's not the first and the main reason we come to worship. It is to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to His name. There's an attitude towards worship in our day that so easily becomes, what did I get out of it? Did I like that church? Did it meet my standards and my preferences? But this Psalm for the Sabbath and this ancient Old Testament worship says, you start to come to church first thing in the morning to declare the loving kindness of the Lord, to thank Him, to praise Him, to worship Him. An actual rest you see, an actual Sabbath rest, this is under the title of Sabbath or rest, is to celebrate God's work. In the Old Testament you see they remembered each Sabbath day, the last day of the week, they remembered God's creation. and that he had made all things and they celebrated his work and they remembered what we call redemption. So the 10 commandments are repeated two times in the Bible. Once in Exodus and once in Deuteronomy. In Exodus, they were taught to God's people at the beginning of their journey through the wilderness. In Deuteronomy, they're taught at the end of the journey through the wilderness. The explanation of the Sabbath is a little different in Exodus than it is in Deuteronomy. And at the beginning of Exodus, They're taught about the Sabbath. Remember the creator's works. In six days, the Lord created the heavens and the earth. At the end, it would have been easy for them to forget what their grandparents went through and their parents. They're reminded you were redeemed from the land of Egypt. And so when we come together to worship the Lord, we still do the same. We celebrate when it speaks here of the Lord's works. Verse five, oh Lord, how great are your works. We remember that God is the creator. We worship and we praise him for making all of these things around him. We remember his creation on the Lord's day, but then throughout the week also. But then also we remember his redemption. We now celebrate the new day of rest, the day that we remember the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we can look at the patterns of this psalm and the call to worship of this psalm and we can realize that we have even more reasons and more light and more explanation to celebrate the Lord on the day of rest. And this psalm has been used for thousands of years to celebrate and to refocus God's people on what God has done, remembering His creation, remembering everything He's been, remembering His redemption on this day. That's what these words are about, to declare your loving kindness and your faithfulness. It's remembering what God has done. And so this psalm focuses us on what the Westminster Catechism would call the chief end of man, to glorify God forever, that we would worship his name, that we would praise him. But notice it called them on the Sabbath to do that in an all-day way, to declare your loving kindness in the morning and your faithfulness every night. that we are called as God's people as we wake up from our rest and as we go to sleep the end of the day to remember His work and to look back to His work. There's something beautiful about resting in the work of the Lord instead of always chewing on our own works. Isn't that easy to do? You wake up in the morning, Think about, I've got to do this, this, this, and this today, and I have this big long list, and it sort of weighs down on you. And you begin to think, how can I get everything done in this day? And then when you go to bed, isn't it so easy in the evening that your thoughts chase one another? Maybe you even beat yourself up. I didn't get this done, and I didn't get that done. And what about this, and what about that? And the psalmist calls us, you see, to a new pattern on the Lord's day and on every day of the week, actually, to declare your loving kindness in the morning and your faithfulness every night, that we as God's children would use especially the special day of rest today to start the day declaring His mercy and His grace and to end the day. And by the way, this psalm is one of the reasons that God's people, before Jesus came and after Jesus came, actually saw the whole day of the Sabbath as a day for rest and worship, from morning to evening. Not just part of the day, but it was to be a whole day dedicated to His worship, morning and evening. And so the synagogue they would spend morning and evening worshipping, the temple they would, morning and evening sacrifice, the church would as well for thousands of years dedicated to remembering the Lord. But let's be encouraged to remember the breadth and the depth of the Lord's work, to give thankfulness to Him, to go to bed at night. to say your prayers, Thanksgiving, to wake up in the morning, to pray with Thanksgiving. And psalms like this in their poetry and in the way they're put together remind us that those routines are important. There's a false teaching in our day that says, just pray when you feel like it, when your own heart feels like it. That's certainly not. The theme of the Psalms and the Scriptures is have routines, have morning and evening prayers, come to God's house regularly, spend your time with Him as much as possible, and rest in Him. And more than anything, of course, we know even greater, to declare your lovingkindness in the morning and your faithfulness every night. You know, these Old Testament saints, they saw dimly what we can see so clearly now in Jesus Christ, that when we think of the morning and the new morning and the work of His hands and the gladness of verse 4 and the triumph, that we see that so much more clearly. Because we know of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and His death. in the place of sinners on the cross, and we know of His resurrection in the morning and His victory over sin and death, and the gladness that came to His disciples and His followers, knowing of His resurrection and the triumph. Verse 4, I will triumph in the work of your hands. And so our new covenant, we call it Sabbath, is a day of rejoicing in the triumph of Jesus Christ. remembering what he has done. That's why the church met now on the first day of the week, again and again, triumphing of rejoicing in his work. But then comes a contrast, contrasting his enemies. So those are God's people, resting in and rejoicing in God's work, remembering what he has done, not what they have done. But then there's a contrast. Verse 6, a senseless man does not know, nor does a fool. understand this. What we have just reviewed, creation, and redemption, and deliverance from Egypt, and the deliverance through Jesus Christ on the cross, and rejoicing in the work of God, and seeing God's fingerprints even on all of creation and nature around us, and seeing how the stars and the sun and the sky declare His lovingkindness, and every sunrise declares His lovingkindness, and His faithfulness every sunset. A senseless man can't see this. There's a whole category of people on this world who just think the sun rises because of some kind of gravity, some kind of pattern, some kind of mechanism created by chance. They are senseless. A fool does not understand this. There's a sense of brutishness in this, like beastliness. These are people who are not living in respect to God. They want to worship themselves. They want their own works remembered, not God works. Maybe they even want to come to a place like a church to be patted on the back, to have their own works celebrated. not to remember the Lord God. They have selfish motives, and they can't see or understand what the true resting Sabbath worshiper can see. They are senseless fools. They can't see God's fingerprints all around them. See, the ability to see God's work in creation, to wake up in the morning and see a sunrise And to rejoice in what God has done despite the fallenness and the brokenness of this world is actually a gift. It's a blessing of the Holy Spirit. And I would encourage you to cultivate it in your own heart and in your own words as you speak to children, as you bring them up to say, look at that sunrise. Look at what the Lord has done. Look at the Lord's faithfulness. Look at His kindness that He gives us another day, and He makes us fruitful. But these senseless fools and these enemies of God, they spring up like grass. It's an image that's throughout the Psalms. Grass in the Middle East can sometimes spring up from the dew in the morning. And in a single day, a hillside, you could see just a hint, a sprinkling of grass on the side of a hill. And then in the evening, it can be, in the afternoon, the baking sun. By evening, it can be baked, dry, brown. It's a contrast with the strong and the fruitful trees that are below. God's children, God's people. Something to remember. The people around us. They come and go. The greatest and leaders and the most famous of wicked people, the ones who supposedly make the world go around, the movers and the shakers, maybe the billionaires and the politicians and the influencers that you might think are great, the psalmists again and again teach us, are temporary. They'll be destroyed. condemned forever, they'll perish, they'll be scattered, they have no favor of God, they do not see God's work, they do not give Him glory, and there's even destruction. They'll be destroyed forever. There's hell to pay. If you are an enemy of God today, if this describes you, the wicked that springs up like the grass, if you cannot see God's glory in a sunrise or a sunset, If you can't rest in Him on a Lord's Day, but it's all about yourself, do not continue. Confess your self-worship. Confess your self-love. Confess your obsession with your own works. Why be like grass that fades away and is ignorant when you can be as strong and a fruitful tree as we'll look at in a moment? Pray for the Holy Spirit to open your eyes. to show you the Lord's work and all things that you would celebrate Him and rest in Him each Lord's Day. Pray the Lord would work by His Spirit to open your mouth, to teach you to walk in His ways and to rest fully in Him. Pray that the Lord would also show you that to come to His table is an ultimate expression of this. I can't survive, live, thrive. just a piece of grass on my own. But in Christ alone there is rest and hope and feeding and nourishing and nurturing and strengthening and being like a strong tree to the glory of God, the Lord Jesus taught. The Father will give the spirit to those who ask. Pray for his spirit. Even now, pray for his spirit to come upon those in his congregation who perhaps seem senseless yet to these things. Pray that he would revive and strengthen that none here would be like those workers of iniquity, that it just flourish for a moment, but then are destroyed forever. But notice the contrast in the middle of this. The words about the workers of iniquity and the wicked, they bracket both sides of verse 8. And the contrast is, but you, Lord, are on high forevermore. The psalmist looks away from the wicked just briefly. He looks right up to heaven itself, as it were, and he says, compared to all this temporary stuff, even the wicked, who seem to do so well for a time and flourish for a moment, The psalmist breaks out into this testimony in the middle of meditating on the wicked that the Lord is on high forevermore. Now that's actually the main point of the psalm in one sense, verse 8. That the Sabbath rest and the coming together to worship the Lord would cause us to speak, even as we look at the sadness and wickedness and confusion and sin of this world, and testify, you, Lord, are on high forevermore. Or as the last verse says, you are our rock. And to give praise and to glory in the name of the Lord. But then now we come to verse 10. Verse 10 and following is a meditation It's not the main point of the psalm in one sense, but it's a meditation on what happens to a person when they become a true worshipper of the Lord. And when their focus has been turned from self and their own flourishing, so to speak, their focus now on the Sabbath day and morning and evening throughout their life has begun to be turned to praise and honour God. And now what does it look like? My horn, you have exalted like a wild ox. I have been anointed with fresh oil. Those are strange pictures to us. If we were to talk about blessing or spiritual blessing, maybe not what we would first think. My horn, you have exalted like a wild ox. What exactly is a wild ox is not even exactly known. It may have described different animals. They just had less words back then for different animals. We have thousands and thousands of words to describe different animals. Some translations actually say, if you have the King James Version, I believe it says unicorn, the unicorn. Others say wild ox. There are other verses that speak of the wild ox that speak of horns in the plural. But from Job, one thing we do know about this animal, whatever it was, is that this wild ox was unbindable. It was the kind of animal you wouldn't imagine putting a halter on or a rope on and tying down. It was an animal that ran free and went its own way. And the picture of a horn whatever this animal was, whether it was something like those great big water buffalo that you see in some places, or maybe a rhinoceros. It seems to be something in that category, an animal that was strong and powerful. A horn is an example of a powerful animal. And think here in this picture of a free and energetic and a strong animal that's been given horns. You know that horns take a sheep. from being a harmless domesticated animal that's easily killed to something that can hurt you pretty bad. Fight off a coyote or a wolf, because it's got horns now, it's strong, it's a picture of power. And here the picture is, is that the Lord has taken one of his lowly people, small and poor and needy, and makes them by his word and spirit, and through coming to worship him, exalted like this wild ox. Free, strong, an energetic animal not easily bound. Then, anointed with fresh oil. I have been anointed with fresh oil. Anointing to them, because we don't see these pictures all around us, it's a little harder to grasp, but anointing to them is sort of the ultimate picture of hospitality. That if you showed up at somebody's house after a long walk through the dry and dusty wilderness, If they gave you some oil to anoint your head with, first they would help wash you off and wash your feet. You know that from the example of the Lord Jesus. And then to top off that picture of foot washing and hospitality, they would anoint with oil. Oil was expensive, had to be pressed out of many olives or other sources. It was often a picture of being special to somebody. to anoint them with oil. Being set apart, the priests were anointed specially, the kings were anointed specially, and here is a picture of the anointed one. And again, it's another word, anointed, that sometimes just like Sabbath meaning seven, anointed can get lost to us. Because behind it is the same root as the word Christian. We use the title anointed ones for ourselves. is a picture of the privilege of being anointed by the Holy Spirit of the Lord, pouring out His Spirit on His people as He did at Pentecost. Yes, convicting them of sin so they were cut to the heart, but then also giving them freedom in Jesus Christ. And here is the picture in the Old Testament, literal, a picture of love and hospitality and blessing being poured out upon someone. But we know the greater fulfillment that the Lord gives freedom to His people, that they skip like a young animal at times, that they go free, and then He anoints them with oil. It's a picture of victory and power and blessing and being set apart from God. It's a picture of the Holy Spirit, a picture of blessing. So you put these two together. Here this psalmist who's come to worship has been strengthened with God's favor. A life-giving favor, going to God's house and to worship with His people and taking that day of rest and looking to the Lord, has given life and rescue and victory. These are all pictures, of course, of the finished worship work of the Lord Jesus Christ, who went to the cross, the place of destruction that those wicked deserve to go to. He went to the place of the center of the psalm, where the wicked who spring up like grass and then they're destroyed. He went there for his people so that they may be saved from the place of destruction. And the temple and the worship of God's people in the Old Testament was filled with pictures of that, of forgiveness of sin, of atonement for sin. In his history, you see, it didn't end on the cross or in the grave, but with victory, he defeated sin and death, and he ascended from the grave, and those pictures were woven all through the Old Testament, even Noah's Ark and the flood, a great work of the Lord that they would remember on Sabbaths, or the crossing of the Red Sea that they would remember, or the pictures of God bringing his people back from exile, bringing them back and restoring them and restoring their temple that they would celebrate on the Sabbaths. And they would remember again and again, we remember that the Lord has delivered us in His Son, Jesus Christ. And so we have this hope. God will destroy His enemies, verse 11. He'll get rid of the wicked, and one day He will. Any of the wicked who continue to struggle against God and His church or maybe even persecute His people, they're going to have an end. But the Lord's people, they're going to flourish. Verse 12, the righteous shall flourish like a palm tree. He shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. The righteous shall flourish like a palm tree. Here's the last main picture of the psalm, this picture of different growing trees. The palm, it's probably from the word that's used originally, a date palm. We don't eat that many figs or dates usually in our diet, but they're a staple in the Middle Eastern diet. And they're also another picture of blessing and help. A date palm tree can be 100 feet tall and well over 100 years old. But what's interesting about date palms is they can grow around the sides of an oasis in the middle of the desert sometimes. And there's these date palms around that oasis. And from what I read up, sometimes a mature date palm tree can give 300 pounds of fruit in a year. And so a date palm to them was a great blessing. You come to an oasis and actually this date palm tree, it gives that 300 pounds throughout the year. Sometimes you can harvest it again and again and again, and imagine coming into one of these oasis, a long wilderness journey, and there it is around this body of water. There's these date palm trees, and they reliably, and with much fruit, they have these figs coming off of them, and it's a picture of ongoing fruitfulness and great fruitfulness, sometimes hundreds of pounds of harvest. Then there's the cedars of Lebanon. I don't know if anybody knows what the flag of Lebanon looks like. Even to this day, if you look at the flag of Lebanon, it's a pretty simple flag. It's green and white with a picture of a cedar tree in the middle. And so Lebanon, still to this day, identifies with the cedar. That tells us something. This was important to them. A cedar in Lebanon could be eight feet across the trunk, and it also could be 100 or more feet tall. But one of the best things about a cedar in Lebanon is that if you harvested the wood, it doesn't decay, just like cedar over here. It's wood that can last in a structure for hundreds or even more years. And it's a very strong wood. It's amazing when you start reading into wood and woods like the cedar of Lebanon, how the Lord God in his wisdom has engineered woods that are beyond imaginable in their strength and in their ability to resist decay. And so when Solomon built the temple, he had these special cedars brought in because they were strong and long lasting. They were from a different land just to the north. and often to the east of Israel. And think of this. There are cedars in Lebanon that were standing when this psalm was written. It's actually true. There are still cedar trees, cedars of Lebanon, standing strong and true. As far as they can tell, and I think the science is fairly reliable, for over 3,000 years. standing strong and true. And so you think of these two pictures, and now contrast for a moment. Grass shoots up, dries in the sun in a day, and God's people who worship Him and who come into His presence and who find their hope and their help in Him and not in themselves and not in their own work, They're like date palms and cedars of Lebanon, strong and fruitful. Those who are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. And what does our culture say? I can worship the Lord at the beach. I can worship the Lord my own way. I can worship the Lord in my own house, better than at church. But God's Word says that these pictures, flourishing like a palm tree and growing like a cedar of Lebanon, that's those who are planted in the house of the Lord, flourishing in the courts of our God. In the Old Testament, the picture of that was the temple itself. And it's a reassuring and a hopeful picture that those who come into God's presence and those who worship the Lord and who publicly showed their devotion to Him by coming to His house again and again had this long-lasting, flourishing, abiding picture. The temple, interestingly, was filled with pillars and artwork that spoke of trees. And so when a person went to Solomon's temple, or even the tabernacle before that, they'd be reminded of these sort of garden motifs, it's called, these pictures of a garden, and it was all around. The cherubim also, pictures of the Garden of Eden. And the picture was, those that came to the Lord, confessing their sin and worshiping his name, would be planted in his house and would be like strong, fruitful, flourishing trees. And we know, even more, that that is in Christ, that we as living stones are being built up in Him, rooted in Him, in His work, that it's not so much about the physical place. Rather, it's about being in Him and gathered into His body now, His people. It doesn't matter if we're worshiping in a church building or in a or in a house, that God's people come together and we together are the body of Christ, or as Peter puts it, the living stones of his temple, and we grow out of the gospel and the person and the work of Jesus Christ were planted here. And that is flourishing. But notice the miracle of it. They shall still bear fruit in old age. Contrast again with the grass. God's people bear great fruit in old age. God's people bear some of their best fruit when they're in wheelchairs and on hospital beds. God's people bear some of their best fruit to the glory of his name when they're sick and weak because the Lord God delights to shape and mold his people so that they would testify and even in their old age would be fresh and flourishing. It's one of the things that we do miss in this church. And we should miss. That we don't have so many in this place. I listened to a beautiful sermon by Al Martin, the Reformed Baptist minister, on this passage. And he talked about how God's people in their old age have an opportunity to outshine and to out-fruit in a way and bear fruit and be loving and kind and gentle and nourishing and flourishing as especially they bear the fruit of the Spirit. Because as you age, there's more opportunity to show peace and patience and kindness and gentleness and self-control. And so God's people, as they age, you notice those true saints of the Lord actually become more patient, more gracious, more gentle, more kind. And so what should we do in our church situation? Well, we should pray that the Lord makes us older than our years, that He causes us to grow caused us to grow even exceptionally, to look in true humility to the Lord Jesus Christ, to renounce our own works, and to look to His works, to trust in Him, and to grow in faith. And as we come, Lord willing, to His table in a moment, may that be our confession. Lord, it's not in us. How we need Your help to mature and to grow. How we need Your Spirit. How we need Your Son. how we need to give glory to your name alone. And so we would grow to be those worshipers who honor him alone. Amen. Let us pray. Father in heaven, we come before you and we come with praise and thanksgiving that you have given your son, the Lord Jesus Christ. and that you pour out your spirit upon your church. We pray that we would be those anointed people who take a true Sabbath rest in Christ. That as we come to this table, we would renounce our own works and that we would be confessing with our lives and our mouths that you, Lord, are good, that you are kind, that you are merciful and gracious, slow to anger and full of kind compassion. Please forgive our sins. Please prepare our hearts as we read this form in a moment. And as we come, Lord willing, to your table, to be gathered into your presence, that we would be fruitful and flourishing, that we would be mature in the faith that is in Jesus Christ. Please guide us to walk in your ways. We pray this for Jesus' sake, amen.