Turning to Psalm 107, so let's retrace our steps here and go back to the psalm that we began by reading earlier in the service. Psalm 107. We're going to sing the first three verses. Excuse me, sing. We're going to read. It is a psalm, is it not? We will read the first three verses and then ask for the Lord's help in our time together tonight. O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endureth forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say, so whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy. And gather them out of the lands from the east, from the west, from the north, and from the south. Amen. Again, may the Lord add his own blessing to this reading from his infallible word. With the Word of God open before us, let's now bow before Him and ask that He would open our hearts to the Word, and that He would open the Word to our hearts this evening. Father in Heaven, we come to Thee this night knowing that Thou dost know everything. Let us know that which will meet us in this next week. Let us know the spiritual foes that oppose Thy people. Let us know the physical illnesses and disappointments and setbacks that Your people will undergo even this week. And yet, Lord, we look unto Thee this night knowing that you have complete control over the affairs of men, that you can say, be still my soul. And Lord, our soul does become still. Lord, help us then to be in unison with thee this night. Help us this night to so rest and trust in thee that we know that you're in sovereign control of everything that we will face in this next week. Lord, we need to be spoken to by thee. We desire to hear a word from heaven. Lord, we would pray that you would fashion that word to meet the needs of all of your people. Lord, we confess that we are amazed at the times when we gather together, and you have a word in season for each of our hearts, and yet the word differs from seat to seat and person to person. Lord, we confess that Thy Spirit is certainly up for the task of dealing with our souls tonight. And we would come and ask that You would come and pull us all along heavenward tonight, that You would give us each one grace to rest in Thee tonight and to glory in Thee. We're thankful that Jesus Christ is indeed our merit before Thy throne, that He intercedes tonight on our behalf. that we are smiled upon tonight, not because of our works, but because of His work. We know that we have all failed and failed miserably before Thy throne. And yet, Lord, You see us in Christ. He is our living Head. He is our substitute before Thee. Lord, come then and bless us tonight for Christ's sake. Come and show us again what we have in Him and give us the power and the grace to follow Him in this coming week. Come and help us, Lord, even tonight, as we study Thy Word together. May we know that anointing upon us, that we would have ears to hear and hearts to respond to Thee. For we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. we have been looking at some of the distinctives of the free Presbyterian Church. And we have noted that many of these distinctives should not be distinctives at all. The things that we do should not be strange or abnormal in the world's eyes. It should be something the world, that is the world of believers, ought all to be doing. And perhaps two generations ago, that was the case. But now we come to a day and age in which many of the things that we do are viewed as strange and are ridiculed and are said to be that which is not helpful to the Christian life. Well, one of the great blessings that has been my lot since being in the Free Presbyterian Church is that of singing the great hymns. When I was first coming into the free church, we did not have a psalter. And then when Dr. Cairns came to the church in Greenville, he knew of a psalter that was put out by Oxford University. And it was a red psalter, the top part had the music, and then the bottom part had the words, and they were not joined, so you could fan through the music and change the music for every one of the psalms if you wished. And we began singing the Psalms as well as the hymns. What a delight. What a stirring of the soul. And then in the hymn book that was chosen for us, and then the hymn book that we came out with later on, there are hymns there that I never heard before. Hymns that are powerful, hymns that lift the soul and preach the sermon to you. Tremendous hymns. We were speaking last night on the way back from our prayer meeting. about Liberia. And one of the people in Liberia had said to me in one of our first trips, you're trying to take our music away from us. You're trying to take our songs away from us. I said, we're not trying to do any such thing. The songs that you are referring to, the music you're referring to, started in America. I can tell you the authors of some of those so-called hymns started in America. And we don't play those in our churches. They would be a distraction to our worship. They would stir the flesh, but not the spirit. We don't play those in our church. And yet we could fill the house, perhaps, if we did play them. That was their criticism. The criticism was that, you know, if we don't play this type of music, nobody's going to come to listen. Well, I said we don't play it in our country, where it originates. Now, there are many today who are singing things that are not honoring to the Lord, singing things that do not please Him. When you come to this particular psalm, it is a psalm that is giving the Lord the glory for what He has done. Psalm 107 begins the fifth section of the Psalter. It includes the 15 songs of degrees or ascents as they would make their way up to Jerusalem. You see those, Psalm 120 and 134. It also includes the five halal psalms, where each one of the psalms begins and ends with a hallelujah. Praise the Lord. This section is met, as it were, with this psalm at the beginning. It is leading us into this time of praise, and it's very instructive for us tonight to learn how to praise the Lord and what to praise Him for. This psalm begins with the command to give thanks unto the Lord. This word actually occurs several times in the psalm where it is translated praise. You see it in verse 8, we read it there, O that men would praise the Lord. That becomes a refrain. And you see that refrain in verse 15? You see it again in verse 21? You see that refrain again in verse 31? The same word that occurs, O give thanks. Now in the Old Testament, this word is used for confession of sin to God, as well as profession of great truths about God. Many of these truths have to do with God's deliverance of His people. And so this deliverance produces in the heart a giving of thanks or praise to the Lord for all that He has done. These two ideas, giving thanks and praise, go together. And it is what the psalmist commands in verse 1. And yet how often our hearts are not ready to give the Lord praise for all that He has done. One of the Puritans, David Dixon, wrote this. Unto no duty are we more dull and untoward than to praise God and give thanksgiving unto him. Well, I think he understood his own heart and he understood the hearts of all of us tonight. Here's a spiritual exercise that all of us can do. He doesn't say, praise me if you only sing the right notes. He doesn't say, praise me if you have an orchestra behind you. He commands that we give him thanks, that we praise him. He has given us examples of that praise in this particular psalm, and yet we remain silent. We remain silent. We truly are to praise him. Now, when you go into this psalm, there are reasons as to why we ought to praise him. I was reading before I came out, C. H. Spurgeon's division of this psalm. And he says in verses 1 to 3, the psalmist likens their history to that of travelers lost in the desert. Excuse me, verses 4 to 9. Verses 4 to 9, it's the traveler lost in the desert. And then the praise comes concerning the prisoners who were in iron bondage, verses 10 to 16. And then praise for the sick of men, you see that in verses 17 to 22. And to that of mariners tossed with the tempest, you see that in verses 23 to 32. And in the closing verses, the judgment of God on the rebellious and the mercies of God to his own, afflicted people are made the burden of the song. You see that in verses 33 to 42. And then it's summing up at verse 43. And so the reason why we praise him is very diverse. And this psalm is broken up by this refrain that I said occurs over and over again. We can't really put all that is in this psalm into one isolated period of time. You would think that the psalm is about bringing people out of bondage and bring them back into Israel, and yet you have here those who are sailors on the sea crying out for fear of being destroyed. Well, that never happened in their wilderness out of Egypt and coming into Israel. That never happened in the second exodus coming out of Babylon and coming into Israel. God has led this psalmist, whoever he is, to recount for us different scenes that obviously would have taken place in the nation and in the people's lives. Strangely enough, what he writes about those that are on the sea and being tossed to and fro would more easily be something in the New Testament, would it not? The disciples on the Sea of Galilee coming and waking up the master and stirring him up to come and deliver them? Or perhaps in the book of the Acts, at the end of the book, where Paul and his companions are near death because of the ship being broken up by the tempest? We don't have any of this in the Old Testament that I can recall other than the book of Jonah. In Jonah, you had him fleeing from the Lord and the ship being torn up, and he was cast overboard because of it. What I'm saying is there is no occasion, no year in the history of Israel that you could come and say, all of this took place in that one year, or even in the 40 years. The psalmist is being moved upon by the Holy Spirit to give us very diverse reasons as to why we ought to praise the Lord. When we come to the first three verses, and that's where I want us to focus tonight, in the very first three verses, three reasons are given for our praising or giving thanks to the Lord. And those three reasons can be carried all the way through the psalm in different situations. What are the three reasons why we're to praise or give thanks unto the Lord? First of all, for He is good. We are to give thanks for He, the Lord, is good. It was Andrew Bonner who said, is not this the Old Testament version of God is love? God is good. And from His goodness flows all the benefits that we receive. From His love flows all the benefits that we receive. It's almost synonymous at times when you speak of His goodness and you speak of His love. So what we're thinking on in this first instance, we're thinking on what the Lord is. What He is. time to walk through Exodus chapter 34, and what it said about His goodness, and how that broke down into the ideas of forgiveness, and mercy, and grace, and long-suffering, pity. All those things are flowing from the fact that our God is a good God. Everyone tonight benefits from the Lord's goodness. Even the wicked tonight are benefiting from His goodness. His goodness is seen amidst all of His creatures. You live in a land, in a world that God has made. And He made you to enjoy it. He gave you sight so you could see the beauties of what He made. He gave you smell so you could smell the varieties of flowers and trees and food. He gave you taste, touch, hearing. Things that we take for granted, and yet we use these five senses every day. Why? Because the Lord made you for this environment. He's good. But He also made the environment to be enjoyed by mankind. The environment gives us pleasure. God made it so. Men use that pleasure in wrong ways, but nonetheless, the Lord made the environment to give pleasure. And He made you in a way that you could take in that pleasure. You ever seen pictures of Mars or the moon? Barren wasteland. Nothing anywhere that resembles what is here. You couldn't live there. You would have to have a space suit and oxygen, and you'd have to have food imported. You couldn't live there. What we do is we're on this earth, and God made us in order that we might enjoy what he has made round about us. Why did he do that? Because he's good. He's good. The Lord shows His goodness because He is good. In Psalm 119 and verse 68, the psalmist says, Thou art good, and do us good. You're good, therefore you do good. Now, we can rebel against that, but nonetheless, He is good, and He does that which is good, so that makes our rebellion as sinners even worse, does it not? When I sin against God, I'm sinning against the One who is good. It would be different if I was sinning against the One who was evil. There would be justification for my sinning. But we sin against the God who is good. Oftentimes, we misrepresent Him. Oftentimes, we don't understand Him, even though He's made Himself known in the Scriptures so that we could better understand who He is. The sinfulness of our being still misinterprets God and perverts the goodness of God that is shining upon us every day. God is good. This is what He is. And we are to give thanks to Him for that goodness every day that we're here on this earth. We are to give thanks to Him. When you think of His goodness, as we're going to see in a few minutes, being manifested in salvation. You have been chosen from all of the fallen human race to come to Christ and to know Christ and to be found in Christ. That's His goodness, brethren. Tonight, He has been good to us. He has allowed you to hear the Gospel. He has accompanied that Gospel with mercies in the work of the Holy Spirit. And though we have stumbled along the way, though we have failed Him along the way, yet He still keeps us as His people, and He will not turn His back upon us. That's His goodness, brethren. His goodness. Thou art good, and do us good. If you ever come to think of God as not being good and doing good, you have been lied to by the devil. That is a simple truth. If you ever come to the conclusion that God is not good and that he does not do good, you are believing a lie. We must come and rid ourselves of all of the false teaching that is in our heads, coming from the nation in which we live, and settle this in our heart once and for all. God is good, and He does that which is good. He does that which is good. Whether it be the world of creation, or as we are going to see in a minute, the world of redemption. So that is the first thing. We are to give Him praise, and if that was the only thing that we had to praise Him for, we have reason to praise Him for all eternity, just because He is good. You and I live in a nation, in a world that is not good. And yet, He is good. And though men sin against Him, and rebel against Him, and fight against Him, He still shines that goodness upon them. allowing the rain to fall on the just and the unjust, allowing those that are sinful to breathe His air, allowing those that are sinful to eat and live their life on this earth, He is still shining forth His goodness, for He is good. Secondly, we must thank the Lord for His mercy, and this is what He shows us. You have that in verse number one. For he is good, for his mercy endureth forever." We have stated that God's mercy is the goodness that he shows to those who are in misery. And because of our sin and the sin of those round about us, we're all in misery. Right? We're on our way to hell. No way to get rid of our sin. And when he comes and he helps us in that misery, he is showing us his goodness. And the Puritans used to define this word as the goodness God shows to those who are in misery. Now, after you're saved, you're still living in this sinful world. You and I still sin. We still do that which is wrong. We still fall short. Even though we have desires now to do what is right, we can't live up to those desires completely. Paul speaks of that at the end of Romans 7, the bondage that he was in. because he had a desire to be perfect, yet he could not be. So the Lord does what for us? He continues to show His mercy, day after day after day. He is showing us His goodness to help us in our misery, whatever that misery might be. And it could be very vast. This is the particular word in the Old Testament that is translated, loving kindness. We have said that Mercy is the goodness he shows to those who are in misery. But if you view goodness as love, It's his loving kindness that he is showing to those in misery. God's loving kindness, God's mercy are the same. It's flowing from the heart of a God who is good, a heart that is full of love for his people. And he interacts with his people, and he meets their need, and he continues on meeting their need. This is the mercy that is new every morning that Jeremiah speaks of. This is the mercy that is as high as the heavens that David speaks of. This is the mercy in our text that is forever. forever. God gives it to us. Something you can't see in the English, but I wish to point it out to you tonight. Turn to verse 8 of this psalm. It says, Oh, that men would praise the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the children of men. The word there for goodness is the word mercy. Now, mercy is goodness. It is one of the special acts of God's mercy. But this word, astley, is the word for loving kindness, the word for mercy. His mercy we're praising Him for. Look down, if you would, to verse 15. You see the refrain again. Oh, that men would praise the Lord for His mercy. For His mercy, His loving kindness. Look down again to verse 21. Oh, that men would praise the Lord for His mercy. and for His wonderful works to the children of men." Look down to verse 31. Oh, that men would praise the Lord for His mercy and for His wonderful works to the children of men. Then in verse 43 it says, "...whoso is wise and will observe these things, even they shall understand the lovingkindness, the mercy of the Lord." Our translators have tried to show us something of the diversity of this word. But you could translate every one of these verses mercy or loving kindness if you wished. The psalm is all about that. It's all about that. Whoever this psalmist is, whether it's David or someone who came after David, perhaps someone after the Babylonian captivity even, whoever it is, they're taken up with the idea that the Lord is merciful. They can't get away from it. You have all of these different trials that the people of God go through, and then the conclusion is that the men of God should praise the Lord for His mercy. And then another trial, praise the Lord for His mercy. And then another trial, praise the Lord for His mercy. You know, you get the impression that God allows trials to come upon us, that we might seek His goodness and know His mercy in a powerful way. When Jeremiah said that the Lord's mercy and compassion are new every morning, that was after a 50-year ministry in the worst of conditions. The worst of conditions. I would not want the congregation that Jeremiah had. I would not want it. I thank the Lord that I don't have that type of congregation, that I'm preaching to believers, that I'm preaching to those who are at least trying to follow the Lord. And here are people fighting us against Jeremiah, trying to put him to death, planning his death, putting him in a pit where he would have died. And yet 50 years later, he looks back over all of his days, and he said, the Lord's mercies were new every morning. No matter what they did, God had mercy for me. No matter what their plans, God had another plan. And God spared him. Well, brethren, that's the lot of all of us tonight. He's got mercies for us, and he's going to let trials come into your heart and your life. And in those trials, he's going to show you his mercy, his compassion, the goodness to you in that misery, that which you're feeling as being misery. He's going to come and help you. Would you note that men are to study His mercy for wisdom? That's what the last verse says of this psalm. Whoso is wise and will observe these things, even they shall understand the lovingkindness, the mercy of the Lord. You are to study His mercy for wisdom. Study His mercy for wisdom. You're not very wise in the earth. If you're a rocket scientist and can take people around the moon and back home again, and you do not know what the mercies of the Lord are about. And I can say that as a believer, you can fill your head with all kinds of theology, good and bad. But if you do not know the mercies of the Lord, you're losing out as, as to how he's dealing with you and how he deals with others, his mercies. His mercies are that which we must consume our attention. We must focus on His mercies and think on His mercies and meditate on His mercies. Do you know it again in those first verses that we are told that His mercy endureth forever? Spurgeon said the word endureth is proper. But you know it is in italics. In the Hebrew it literally says His mercy forever. great stress being placed on the fact that His mercy never ends. You and I think it does. Especially when you sin and you say, well, I've sinned this sin and I've sinned it again. And you think, certainly there's no mercy for me. And the scripture comes along and it says, God is not like you. He is not like you. He is good. And He will forgive. And He will show mercy again and again and again. His mercy forever, the psalmist writes. This mercy then must be associated with salvation. The preacher William Romaine said, mercy is all free grace and unmerited love. And then he again said, mercy was and is and will be forever. All the benefits that flow to us because of the Lord's mercy keep coming and keep coming and keep coming. They're like the tide of the ocean that never ceases. One wave after another wave after another wave of mercy meets us and greets us and leads us as we seek to follow Him. Well, He's good and He does good. And when He sees us in misery, what does He do? He shows forth His mercy to us. And one of the great aspects of that mercy is what? It is redemption. And so we find the third thing given to us as to why we should praise Him is for His redemption. Look at verses 2 and 3. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy, and gather them out of the lands from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south." His redemption. That is the great demonstration of mercy. And for us who are bound by sin and on our way to judgment, it is the great demonstration that He is good. He could have left us in our sin. Instead, He made a way of salvation, and He made that way known to us, and then He gave us the grace to be convicted of our sins and desire that salvation, and then He gave us the power to come and embrace that salvation. Why did He do that? Because He's good, because He's merciful, and because He desires that you and I be redeemed tonight. We must thank the Lord for His redeeming. This is what He does because of the mercy that he shows. It is a special type of mercy. Now, Jehovah redeems by a kinsman redeemer. When you look at verse 2, it says, let the redeemed of the Lord say so. And if you could see that in the Hebrew, it's the word goel, from which the word redeemer, kinsman redeemer, comes from. There are actually two words for redemption in the Old Testament. They're parallel. They're synonyms. And they're used interchangeably at times. But this word has within it the idea of a kinsman. Who does the redeeming? Now you know from our studies in past days that the great object lesson for this kinsman-redeemer is Boaz. He was indeed a kinsman to Naomi, and when she fell on hard times and came back to to Israel, he had the right to redeem her and bring her out of her hard times. And he exercised that right. And in doing so, he also bought, with Naomi and all of her hardships, he also bought Ruth. And he raised up through Ruth a godly line that would be the line of the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. The kinsman redeemer. Someone next of kin who could redeem us from our sin. What you probably would not know, unless you could read Hebrew, is that the word for revenge, or the word for avenging the people of God, is also this same word. It is the word kinsman-redeemer, or kinsman-avenger. So that if something happened to me, and Boaz was my kinsman, Boaz could come and deal with the one who harmed me. So if there is someone who comes and takes my life, it was incumbent upon the kinsman to go and take the life of the one who killed me. It was his job. He was the kinsman, the kinsman-redeemer. And so we see in this word two ideas coming to us. One, the idea of deliverance, where the Lord comes and He comes into our misery and He delivers us from it. He purchases us. And then the other one, when someone comes to harm us and they're successful in that, he comes and he wreaks vengeance upon them. Both of those are true of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is our next of kin. He took upon himself a nature like yours. This is the second person of the Godhead. This is the one who created the ends of the earth. But he took a nature like yours. He took a body like yours. a mind like yours that He might die in your place and by the shedding of His blood He purchased you. You are now redeemed. We were reading Ephesians chapter 1 and verses 6 and 7 this morning and we have there the statement that we're forgiven because He's redeemed us through His blood. He's purchased us. He's that lamb that was slain in order to redeem us just like He redeemed Israel out of their bondage there in Exodus chapter 12. So that's our Savior. But our Savior is also the one who will go after those who have fought with his people. Turn, if you would, to Romans chapter 12. And we see this second aspect of the Lord's ministry. The first is clearly taught throughout the New Testament. And many of God's people pass over this statement that we have at the end of Romans chapter 12. Look at verse 18. If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him. If he thirst, give him drink. For in so doing, thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." Who is the one who brings vengeance upon the head of those who attack God's people? It's the Lord Jesus Christ. Some mischaracterize our Lord by speaking of Him as loving everything, and loving everyone, and not even loving sin, and all types of sin, and debauchery, and murder, and say, that's Christ. That's not Christ. He's holy. He's righteous. And He made a way of salvation by going to the cross and dying for the sins of His people. But He will come back. And when He comes back, He'll come back with vengeance. You see that stated in 1 Thessalonians chapter 1. He's coming back with vengeance. You see that stated in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. He's coming back. He is the avenger of his people. Well, tonight we have come to trust in Him as our Redeemer. Have we not? We trust in Him that He's done the work. We can't see the work. We have it recorded for us in Scripture. But we believe the work. He has done the work. We've been redeemed. Our sins are removed from us for all eternity. We believe that. But do you believe that he will attack those in this world who are fighting with you and harming you? That's why Paul says, the Lord is the one who takes the vengeance. Leave it alone. Don't waste your time with it. Don't bloody your hand with it. Don't spend time planning your revenge on someone. Give it to the Lord and leave it there. In fact, when you see your enemy, feed him. That's what Paul says. Hopefully you'll win your enemy. Hopefully they will turn from their sins as you have turned from your sins. And they will come to embrace the Christ that you embrace. But if they will not, the Lord says, vengeance is mine, I will repay. You can count on that. You can leave it with Him. So if someone harms you, come and bring it to the Lord and leave it at His footstool. He'll take care of it. He may do it in this life. He certainly will do it in the next. Our Lord is able to bring vengeance upon those that are attacking His people so that His people could be busy dealing with what we normally think of as redemption. Spreading that message of redemption and calling out people to come and follow Christ. Jehovah redeems by the kinsman redeemer. Would you note Jehovah redeems from the hand of the enemy or the adversary? You see that here in the passage. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so. All right, we have been speaking of that. Then he goes on. He says, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy. Now John Gill has a number of comments on this that I thought worthy of bringing to your attention tonight. He redeems us from the hand of the enemy. Well, one of our enemies is the sins that we have committed. Some of those sins are known to others, some of them are not. But nonetheless, all of our sins are known to God. And John Gill says, He delivers us from all our sins which war against our soul. We all have them. And our sins war against our soul, but He delivers us from that enemy. And then he says, from Satan, their implacable adversary, who is stronger than they. We are under the power of Satan. We are part of his kingdom. And yet he has taken us and brought us out from that enemy. He's redeemed us from him. And then he goes on to say, from the law which threatens and causes them damnation and death. The law is screaming for our judgment. We've broken the law. There's nothing you can do to wash that law clean. It's got your stain upon it. It's got your sin upon it. But God, through Christ, has redeemed us from the law. The law's mouth has been stopped. It's been stopped. And then from death itself, the last enemy. That is what is spoken of in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. He will destroy all of our enemies, and the last enemy He destroys is death itself. It's been guaranteed. He's risen from the dead. All of His people are united to Him. They must rise as well. He will not let death rule over His people, either over their bodies or over their soul. He will not let that happen. So John Gill says, this is what He redeems us from. And when He redeems us from the hand of the enemy, He redeems us from all our sins, which war against our souls, from Satan, our implacable adversary, who is stronger than we, from the law, which threatens and causes us damnation and death, and from death itself, which is the last enemy. Lastly, when we think of redemption, we must note that we are to praise him for our redemption because he has gathered us from the lands of the world. We see that in verse 3. and gathered them out of the lands from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south. Jehovah redeems and gathers his people out of the world. Now in the original redemption, he was gathering them out of Egypt, which was southwest of where they would be going, that is in the land of Canaan. But he didn't go directly into Canaan. He took them through the nations that were to the south and to the east of Canaan. And then finally, under Joshua, he took them in eastward, westward, excuse me, going from east to west. And he brought them in over the Jordan. And they had those battles. Here he was gathering his people. That happened. In the second redemption, and this is what it is called, another redemption. You can see Isaiah referring to this as a redemption. When he brought them out of the Babylonian captivity, that was called a redemption. and he brought them under the Medes and the Persians. The Babylonians were conquered, and under the Medes and the Persians, Cyrus gave a decree to go back and build the temple, and they came from every part of the, of the world. When the Babylonians had conquered Israel, they took the Judeans and they spread them throughout the world so they could never rebel against them again. So now you have out of that empire. Israelites coming to be God's people again in the land. Proselytes as well coming. That is Gentiles who have been converted to the testimony of God's people. They also are coming and they were brought in. Certainly this is a statement that would be parallel with that redemption out of Babylon. But you know when you think of our redemption, our redemption tonight. Our redemption is a redemption of people from every tribe, kindred, tongue, and nation. In Matthew 8, our Lord says, I say unto you that many shall come from the east and west and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. Now, when you look at this congregation, we're from different places. I didn't grow up in Pennsylvania. Some of you didn't grow up in Pennsylvania. Some of you didn't grow up in the United States. God pulled you from here and pulled you from there. Actually, when you look at what was said by our Lord, we're part of those that were from the West. We're way over here, across the Atlantic Ocean, in America, and yet the Lord has reached down and pulled us to Himself. And yet, in Africa, there are brethren that have been pulled to the Lord. In China, there are brethren that have been pulled to the Lord. In Europe, there are brethren pulled to the Lord. From the East, from the West, from the North, and from the South, He is gathering a people. And when He returns, you will see those people like a mighty army. leaving the graves and leaving the earth. And they will go to be with Him from every part of this globe. That's going to be a glorious day. A glorious day. In Revelation chapter 5 and verse 9 it says, they sung a new song saying, Thou art worthy to take the book and to open the seals thereof, for Thou wast slain and hast redeemed us by God. By thy blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation." In this small assembly, we have a smattering of that. People that know different languages because they grew up somewhere else. People like myself whose language has accents that are not familiar to this part of the world. Right? What has he been doing? He's gathering of people, and gathering of people, and gathering of people. And one day, he will gather us all to himself because of the blood that was shed. He has redeemed us to God by his blood out of every kindred, tongue, and people, and nation. When we praise him for his redemption, we praise that the kinsman redeemer has redeemed us. We praise him that he has redeemed us out of the hand of our adversary, yes. But we praise him that he has made this a universal redemption, bringing in souls from everywhere over every generation. And one day he will assemble us all before himself as king. We have reason to praise him. We haven't even gone into the psalm and shown how these three things are found in every section of the psalm. That is, the fact that God is good and that he is showing mercy and that he's redeeming a people and bringing them to himself. We haven't even looked at that. Tonight, if we should close the meeting just thinking on those three things, you have reason tonight and tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day continually to give him thanks and to praise him for what he has done for you. Let's bow our hearts in prayer. This should not be a distinctive of any church, it should be the distinctive position of all of his churches. Sad to say many of his churches have perverted this very idea. Tonight God has called you to give him glory. That's one of your purposes as to why you and I were made, to give him glory. And certainly he has given us adequate reason to glorify his name. Make that your purpose this week. As you're serving Him, as you're studying His Word, as you're trying to reach the lost, also take time to give Him praise and glory and honor for your salvation. If tonight you're without Christ, then come to Him. Come to Him. Jesus is the Savior of sinners. He's able to bring you into the kingdom. He's able to redeem you completely, bring you to Himself. Come to Him, He is the Redeemer, and He is happily and gladly redeeming a people even now this very night. Come to Him. I am your servant for Christ's sake, if I can help you in the coming to Christ, speak a word with me. If you're listening to this by way of internet, write to us. We're happy to send you literature about this redemption. Come to Christ. He is the great Redeemer. Father in heaven, we come to Thee tonight thanking Thee. that you have put us into a church that has stressed the need to praise thy name. Lord, we confess there are some churches, and they're all about doing. There are other churches, and they're all about a central type of worship. But Lord, you have put us into this building into this congregation, that we might feel our redemption, that we might praise Thee according to that redemption. And Lord, You've put before psalms and hymns and songs, spiritual songs, whereby we can express this glorious truth to Thee. Lord, we are, this night, thankful for our salvation. We do, tonight, come and praise Thee for it. We know, Lord, that there's coming a day when we will leave this life and go to be with Thee. And in that day, we will see and understand and feel things that we can't see and understand and feel now. But Lord, while we are here below, we do praise Thee. And we ask that You would give us that heart and that desire to give glory to Thy name every day that we're on this earth. Help us, Lord, to see ourselves as we really are seen by Thee. Lord, we would pray for those tonight, whether it's by your the internet, or whether it's by the presence here, who are yet outside of Christ, Lord, we ask that you would help them to come and to embrace Christ, to know the forgiveness that's freely offered through him. Do that, Lord, in our midst. And we will give you the glory and the praise and the honor, for we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.