For our study in God's Word this evening, I invite you to take with me your Bibles and open to Psalm 122. Psalm 122. I mistakenly said we'd be in Psalm chapter 122 this morning. I should have known better. There are no Psalms chapters, as some people reminded me of, and I reminded myself of, but there are Psalms and Psalms. And we'll be in Psalm 122 this evening. I'm titling my message, The Upward Trajectory. I'd like to begin by reading this Psalm, and then we'll come back and exegete it together. We'll read all of the verses. There are nine of them in Psalm 122, beginning in verse one. It says, I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord. Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem is built as a city that is compacted together. whether the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, under the testimony of Israel, to give thanks under the name of the Lord. For there are set thrones of judgment, the thrones of the house of David. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. They shall prosper that love thee. Peace be within thy walls and prosperity within thy palaces. For my brethren and companions' sakes, I will now say, peace be within thee. Because of the house of the Lord, our God, I will seek thy good. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of all the tragedies in this world is a tragedy of a wasted life. I was reading a book on that very topic, and in the book, the writer of the book had the readers consider the story of a Reader's Digest article that came out in February 1998. In the story, it tells of a couple who reached the age of retirement, early age of retirement in their particular case, in the Northeast. The retirement began when he was 59 and she was 51 years old, and they had worked hard to get to the place where they could retire. When they retired at 59 and 51 respectively, they went to the east coast side of Florida, and they decided there they would live out their dream. They purchased a 30-foot boat. played softball, and collected seashells together. That was, according to their article, on their story, their dream. They had worked their whole life to be on a boat, play softball, and collect seashells. Now come to the end of your life, and you come to your one and only precious God-given life, and here is a couple investing the last great work of their life before they face God face-to-face in boat rides, softball games, and seashells. You can imagine them coming face to face with God and the Creator and saying, God, to them, what did you do with your life? What was your goal? What was your dream? And for them to have the audacity at that moment to say, well, we played softball, and check out our seashells. What a waste that would be. But tragically, that is the great tragedy of many people's lives. They have dreams and aspirations that amount to really no more than collecting seashells by the seashore. But over and over again, against the tragic waste of a squandered life, Psalm 122 puts its protest to us. Rather than live for a sense of self-ease and self-gratification and self-indulgence, the psalmist says, live for God's glory. In fact, Psalm 122 calls us to honor God's name, to honor God's kingdom. Psalm 122 calls us to seek God first. Psalm 122 calls us to seek after the highest things of life. This is what we have in this psalm. And we see here someone in the psalm who is writing and he is seeking to not waste his life, but to wisely invest his life. And the psalmist is losing his life for God and investing it in pursuing the glory of God. And that is what we all must seek to do. Psalm 122 is a psalm about one who is encouraging others to come and invest their life in the pursuit of God. The psalmist, of course, this particular psalm is part of the psalms of ascents. We have been studying them together. And that was the first, these psalms were, as we noted the last couple of weeks, first sung. by the worshipers in ancient Israel as three times a year, they would traverse upward to get to Jerusalem and their pilgrimage. And at first glance, this Psalm seems to be exclusively about the city of God, Jerusalem. We saw it repeated. In verse two, it says, our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem. Verse three, it says, Jerusalem is builted as a city that is compact together. Verse six, pray for the peace of Jerusalem. But as I poured over this psalm, I came to realize that there is a deeper meaning and message to the psalm. You see, this psalm is not about where the psalmist is coming to worship, as important as that was. They were not to go to any other city. They were to go, in that case, to Jerusalem. They would go to Jerusalem because it was the prescribed city of God. But this psalm is not so much interested in where he is going, but why he is coming to worship. And as they come to worship God in the right place at the right time, it is also incumbent that they have the right heart attitude. And what is necessary is to be in the right place at the right time with the right heart. And that's what we see in this Psalm. And what jumps off the page to me is really what is not immediately noticeable. What jumps off the page to me is this truth that we will explore together this evening. It does no good to be in the right place at the right time if you do not have the right attitude. And as I look at this psalm, there are three basic heart attitudes I want you to note with me that describe what the psalmist was seeking to do as he invested his life in God and didn't seek to waste his life in this world. But before I give you those three, I want you to make this point by way of parallel. It is possible for you to be in the right place even to be married to the right person, to have the right geographical location, to have the right job, to be in the right church, it is possible for you to be there and have the wrong attitude and miss the whole point. And so we see in Psalms that three qualities of a right heart comes to worship God the right way. And these are so basic that in some ways I am hesitant to tell them to you because you might say, well, these are elementary. But I want you to remind you that the Christian life is often built up on basic fundamental principles. We all need, almost like Vince Lombardi, the famous football coach who brought his players into the locker room at halftime for their football game that they were losing and held up the football and said, gentlemen, this is a pigskin, speaking of the football. And sometimes we just need that basic, rudimentary fundamental. And so as I look at this psalm, it is a psalm of basics. And there are very simple, basic requirements for the Christian life. And if you don't have them, you won't invest in God. You'll be investing them other places. And if we get down these, we'll be doing the right thing. If we're going to use sports metaphors, we would be scoring touchdowns. We would be hitting home runs, if you like baseball. And there are three of them. I'll give them to you at the outset, and then we'll explore them together. Verses one and two, we see joyfulness. That's a basic requirement for the Christian life. And verses three and five, we see thankfulness. That's a basic requirement for the Christian life. And verses six through nine, we see peacefulness. That's a basic requirement for the Christian life. Now let's explore them together, starting with number one. Basic number one, in verses one and two, Joyfulness. And I think you'll find that joyfulness is very apparent in this verse. I grew up going to church. My dad was a pastor, so I went to church always. In fact, I like to say I was a prenatal Baptist because I was going before I was born. Some of you are like that. And when we came into church, ascribed above the doors to our auditorium as you came in was a placard. I believe it was carved by my grandpa on my mother's side after he got saved. And it read this verse. I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord. And every time you came into the auditorium at that church, that placard was there. And the last time I visited that church, which this is a year ago, it's still there. That's what it says. But notice the third word of that verse. I was glad when they said this unto me. What we should notice here is that there is a happiness here. There is an excitement. There is a joy. There is an enthusiasm. This is all about coming to the house of the Lord. And this is not done out of a sense of a monotonous routine. This is not done out of a sense of empty tradition. This is a passionate desire to be in the house of the Lord. And the reason is that there is a passionate desire. Look what it says. I was glad. Again, that word, glad. You have to stick on that for a moment. The word glad in the Hebrew is a verb which really could be translated even laughter. It means delight. It means to be filled with bliss. It means to be filled with contentment and blessing to the point of laughter. He was saying, I was, you could say, ecstatic when they told me I get to go into the house of the Lord. There is no drudgery in this psalm, only delight. And as he shouted out this joy, the response would be echoed from the crowd. Notice the singular to the plural. I was glad, verse two then, the plural, our feet shall stand within thy gates. There's an anticipation of excitement, and that anticipation of excitement is echoed by others. In other words, he's not just glad because he gets to go into a building. He's glad because in that place, he will gather with others who are likewise excited. We are to gather ourselves together with great joy. Notice the plural. Verse one, I was glad when they, plural, said unto me, singular, let us, all of us together, go into the house of the Lord. Now let's pause for a moment and interpret this verse on a Sunday night so we understand who is writing and what he's talking about. We talked about the house of Lord here. It probably does not refer to the temple. And there's a reason for that. It probably more likely refers to the tabernacle. And the reason we would say it's probably the tabernacle and not the temple is because of who is writing this song. I said last week that some of the Psalms of Ascent we don't know who wrote, but some of the Psalms of Ascent we do know who wrote these psalms, and this is one that we do know who wrote the psalm. The inscription says, it is a song of degrees or a psalm of ascents of, and there he is. David. David didn't have a temple yet. David did not build that temple. Solomon built that temple after David's death. And so if David is the author of this psalm, which most probably he is, then this is a tabernacle he's talking about that is likely set up in Jerusalem where the temple will one day be built. He has relocated the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, and it is now his base of operation. And so the psalmist says, let us, all of us, go to the house of the Lord with joy. Reminds me of the story I heard of a mom who went into her son's bedroom on a Sunday morning to awaken him to get him ready for church. And she shook her son's shoulders and said, son, it's time to get up. You've already almost slept past the time. You need to get ready to go to church. He rolled over in his bed. He put his covers over his head and said, I'm not going to church today. Well, his mom tried to pull the covers down off his head and said, son, you need to go to church. It's time to get ready. You need to go to church. He said, I'm not going. The people in that church don't like me. They don't talk to me. No one will speak to me. Everyone is unkind to me. Give me two good reasons why I should go to church. And the mom said, well, number one, you're 44 years old. And number two, you're the pastor of the church. And the psalmist was not like that, was he? He was not having to be drugged to church. He was excited. He was glad to go to church. And I have to ask, why was he glad? Why was he happy to gather in the house of the Lord? It was for the same reason why we should be happy to go to church. He was glad, he says, this is why I was excited. I was ecstatic. I wanted to be there. Why did you want to be there? Well, you go to church, you gather with others to hear God's word. Christians live to hear the word of God read and expounded in their ears. It causes their hearts to leap out of their chest. That is the effect upon a spirit-filled believer. We are drawn to being in God's house because that's where the word is preached. You don't have to make the Bible relevant. It's already relevant. Psalmist says in Psalm 119, 114, I have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies as much as in all riches. That's why I want to go. That's where the word of God is preached. And you go to church to herald God's worth. In that house, in that place, in that tabernacle, something was going to happen that the very heart and soul was created to do. You were created to worship God. That's why you exist. And when you get to do what you were made for, that makes you happy. That makes you fulfilled. In God's house, we gather to worship and adore and magnify the name of the almighty God and the regenerated redeemed heart is enjoying this. This is wonderful to him. And you go to church to have harmony with God's people. And this day and time, they were making their way to pilgrimage. In their pilgrimage, they're making their way to Jerusalem, and the majority of them did not live in the buckle of Palestine. They had to get there. And when you read Acts 2, you'll understand how many and how vast a group gathered in Jerusalem. In Acts 2, you'll remember, that's the day of Pentecost, and Peter goes out and preaches. Why are there so many people there? Well, they've traveled there for one of these feast days. And why did they have to have the gift of tongues? Well, because of all these languages, these human languages, mind you, that are spoken. It is a very diverse group, but there's something special there. They are coming from Europe, they are coming from Africa, they are coming beyond the Near East to the Far East out of every minority group. They are there in God's house, and when they gather, they are family. And what a joy it is to come to the house of the Lord and to be with kindred spirits. God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. And God's house ought to be a gathering place of hot hearts for God. And so he says in verse one, I was glad. I was glad when they, plural, said to me, let's all gather in house of the Lord. May I just quickly show you what it is not like to be in the house of the Lord? One way to communicate something is to communicate the positive, which we just did, but sometimes to communicate a truth, you also look at the negative. So what's it like if you as a believer don't gather in the house of the Lord with joy? What would that be like? Come with me to Psalm 42, just for a moment. In Psalm 42, we read of one away from the centralized presence of God in Jerusalem with God's people. And this is a man who, for some reason, and we don't know why, we don't know why, but for some reason, he has not been gathering with God's people. And now we read what it is like to be cut off from kindred spirits in the house of God. Psalm 42, let's just read verses from this. Look at verse three. He's been cut off, verse three, my tears have been my meat day and night. while they continually saying to me, where is thy God? You're out there in the world slugging it out. And there are tears because there is not a reinforcement in his own soul. Look at verse four. When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me for I had gone with the multitude. At one point I had done this. I went with them to the house of God with the voice of joy and praise. At one point, he was like the Psalm 122 author. That's how I used to do that. At one point I did that, and with that multitude that kept the holy day. This is probably someone who had sung in the choir, I think of, and been part of the processional into the house of God. He knew what it was like to be part of this joyous procession, and he is now away from the house of God, and look at the low of his soul as he is now separated from this joyous occasion with gathered kindred spirits. Look at verse 5. Why art thou cast down, O my soul? Why are you disquieted within me? His heart is down. His heart is discouraged. I'm going to stop myself here because we're not exegeting in the 42nd Psalm. We're in 122. But this is one who I think once sang in the Hallelujah Chorus in God's house, and now he is geographically removed for whatever reason, and notice the effect on his soul. He is despairing. Now come back to Psalm 122, the positive. You take your connection with this church and with the spiritual dynamics of what God is doing in this place and your spiritual life will grow, but you disconnect from the body of believers and you will wilt and be disquieted. The house of God should be a source of spiritual vitality to you. You should come together and you should be energized and equipped to enter out into the mission field on Monday and continue to serve the Lord and come back and be re-energized. There should be a joy here. So the first characteristic of a worshiper should be obvious, shouldn't it? We should come together with gladness because true believers love God's word, they love God's character, and they love God's people. That's what we do when we come. And I pray you have found this morning and again this evening a bit of that joy in God's house. But there's another basic, number two, and that is thankfulness. And we find that in verses three through five. There's a gratitude wrapped up in the heart of a true worshiper, and I want you to now, in verse three, look, and we'll go through to verse five, and I'll just tip my hand, because verse four really is the highlight of this second point. Give thanks unto the Lord, unto the name of the Lord. Now look at the context. I just tipped my hand, but let's go look at the context. Verse five. Jerusalem is, or verse three, rather, Jerusalem is builded as a city. Now Ezekiel 5 verse 5 calls Jerusalem the navel of the world. In other words, it is the very center of the world. It's the very center of this activity. Verse 3, Jerusalem is built as a city that is compacted together. It is a very tight-knit city. Everything is revolving around one centralized location, the house of God. And everyone wants to live near the house of God in this city. Everyone wants to work near the house of God. Everyone wants to build their whole life around the house of God. No one wants to miss out on what is going on in the house of God. It is the center of their earthly activities. And he says, verse four, whether the tribes go up, referring to Jerusalem, they're going up, even the tribes of Israel. And these are the various tribes now ascending to Jerusalem. Verse four, under the testimony or ordinance, we could say, of Israel. What that means is that God has commanded them by divine ordinance to come these three times of year to the holy city, and their coming is out of obedience to a divine command. And what do they do in obedience to the divine command? What do they do when they get there? Verse four now, to give thanks unto the name of the Lord. They come together with grateful hearts. It's hard for me to say something that we have not already heard about grateful hearts. You've heard about grateful hearts. So I thought about simply putting it this way, just to emphasize tonight that gratitude we ought to have as we come to church. Let me ask you this. Just think of what you would be tonight if it wasn't for Christ. What would your life be? What would you be without Christ? Where would you be without Christ? What would you be doing tonight without Christ? You'd just be lost. You'd be blind. You'd just be deaf and dumb. You'd just be like everyone else, wandering the streets. You'd just be like everyone else in this town. You wouldn't have a clue what's going on, really. You just wouldn't get it. The Bible says you'd be blind. You'd be living for everything else that didn't matter. You'd be collecting seashells by the seashore. That's what you'd be doing. With no real value there, other than just having trinkets on a table. You'd be living for your job, perhaps. You'd be living for your sports, perhaps. You'd be living for the lust of the flesh and the pride of life and the lust of the eyes. But because of Christ, you have purpose. You are here tonight saved and in your right mind, I trust. You are clothed with a perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. God has saved you. God has saved your marriage. God is answering your prayers. You are not the person you used to be. If there's anything worth saying thanks about, it's that. I think we all ought to be grateful tonight. We could just be going to hell tonight and not even know the gospel. We would be lost, but we've come to church with a Bible under our arm, a testimony in our heart, and a pulpit with an open Bible, and some of you have kids in other places that are hearing God's word even now as I preach. Aren't you thankful? And I don't know why, I don't understand how it is, but the devil loves to work all kinds of complaints and he loves to do it in conversations in church lobbies. Have you noticed that? How strange is that? Here is the gathered body of believers complaining about the weather or whatever it may be. I think we might just need to pause and consider our own prideful arrogance to gather together and do anything other than thank the Lord. And notice what the psalmist says about this theme. He does it often. Psalm 100 verse 4, enter into his gates with thanksgiving, into his courts with praise, be thankful unto him and bless his name. Psalm 95 verse two, let us come before his presence with thanksgiving. Psalm 147 verse seven, sing to the Lord with thanksgiving. If God didn't give us anything tonight at all that was new, we still have everything to thank him for. It's been well said and it almost sounds trite, but it's true. All we really deserve is hell. And that's all we deserve. Anything better than hell, you didn't deserve. We deserve to be kindling in the fires of hell under the wrath of God tonight. And yet God, in his great mercy, has allowed you to come and hear his word preached. And if you've never been saved, God, in his mercy, has given you that opportunity even now. In fact, you don't even have to wait for this message to end. You could do it right now. It's been told that when Jonathan Edwards preached his famous sermon, Senders in the Hands of an Angry God, people started coming out of the aisles to get saved. Of course, it's also been told Edwards told them to go back and sit down because he wasn't done preaching. I'll tell you, if you want to get saved tonight, just get out of here and go get saved. But if you are saved, you have every reason to be glorifying God. Verse 5 then gives a specific reason for this thankfulness that I have not yet mentioned. It says in verse 5, for there are set thrones of judgment and thrones of the house of David. Now when a sentence begins with for in the Bible, it introduces an explanation as to why. So he gives thanks. Why does he give thanks? For. Well, here is his explanation. Why is he thankful? Well, in the house of God, Jerusalem, right was rewarded, and Jerusalem in that house of God, wrong was punished. And for this reason, he is thankful to go up to the house of God, because in a world with twisted morals, he can know that the house of God, builded upon the truth of God, will justly know what is right and what is wrong. And in the house of the Lord, good is honored, and in the house of the Lord, evil is punished. That's the way it was and should be in the church. When you come to church, you rejoice. You should be thankful that in a twisted and corrupt world that is wasting away and redefining morals, God's house has truth. You come to 2 Timothy and we find out that it is the pillar and the ground of the truth. That is the church. Spurgeon, in his sermon on this text, put it this way, we who come to church and its public worship are charmed to come to the throne of God. To a true saint, the throne is never more amiable than in its judicial capacity. Righteous men love judgment and are glad that right will be rewarded and iniquity will be punished. How thankful we are to come to a place where purity is honored. A place where holiness and righteousness is upheld. A place where you can safely bring your family into a wholesome environment and know that what they will hear is pure and righteous and moral. There is a protection of purity and morality that is vestiged in God's word that we find housed in places of God's word being preached. Aren't you thankful that you have in God's house a place where moral truth is held pure? But number three, and again, very basic, peacefulness. It does, after all, no good to be in the right place at the right time if you do not have the right attitude. And so he says in verses six through nine, the basic number three, as worshipers come to the house of God, they come with a spirit of peacefulness. They come seeking to promote peace and not conflict. He's praying, pray for peace of Jerusalem. As we come to the house of God, where the people of God will gather, let us pray for peace. Now, it is possible to interpret this as an international peace so that Jerusalem will not be attacked from invading armies. That is a possible interpretation. It is more likely that the interpretation is that as I go to Jerusalem, I am praying I will not find conflict or friction in the house of God. And the reason for this more likely interpretation is because of the following verses. He's praying for unity and harmony and love and forgiveness in the house of God as he gets there. Here's what he says, they shall prosper that love thee. What he essentially is saying is that those who seek to promote peace and unity within the house of God among the people of God will see the favor of God. And the psalmist is praying specifically that such a person will have God's great favor resting heavily upon them. But again, it's possible to communicate truth both positively and negatively, isn't it? If you seek to destruct the peace of God and the house of God, the exact converse will be true in your life. In such a position, you would expect the curse of God, not the blessing of God upon your life. Read with me about what God will do to the one who divides the house of God from 1 Corinthians. Here's what 1 Corinthians says in chapter three, verse 16. that you are the temple of God and the spirit of God dwelleth in you. If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy. For the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are. God will deal with that one. But for the ones who seek peace in God's household, he says in verse 7, peace be within thy walls and prosperity within thy palaces. Notice the parallelism, the Hebrew parallelism. Verse 6, the first line of that verse talks about peace. The second line of that verse talks about prosperity. Verse 7, the first line of that verse, talks about peace. The second line of that verse, prosperity. It's a cause and effect relationship that is going on here. Those who seek peace in the house of God, among the people of God, are those who will know the blessing of God, the favor of God, if you will. And that's what the psalmist is saying in these verses. Where there is peace among God's people, God is blessed and blessing. You read the Mountain Dew verse of the Bible? How many Mountain Dew fans do we have in the church, all right? Did you know that Mountain Dew is mentioned in the Bible? Well, it is. In Psalm 133, let me read it for you, verse one. Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. It is like the precious ointment upon the head that ran down upon the beard, Aaron's beard that went down to the skirts of his garments. Here's the dew. It is as the dew of Hermon. There's the Mountain Dew of the Bible. As the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion, for there the Lord commanded blessing, even life forevermore. That's where you find Mountain Dew in the Bible. What is the result when brothers and sisters dwell together in unity? What's the result? Verse three of Psalm 133, for there the Lord shall command blessing, even life forevermore. Friends, God is serious about unity. So serious that some of the most monumental promises of God toward us are tied directly to our pursuit of unity. and some of the greatest curses toward us are tied directly towards those who will cause disunity. Verse eight of our passage, for my brethren and my companions' sake, I will now say, peace be with thee. It will be for the common good of everyone else that the psalmist is seeking to be a peacemaker. Verse nine, because of the house of the Lord, our God, I will seek thy good. How will he seek their good? By seeking unity and harmony and reconciliation. Remember what Jesus said in his Sermon on the Mount? Blessed are the peacemakers. What will they be called? They'll be called the sons of God. Romans 12, 18 says, if at all possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. Romans 14, 19, let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, the things which edify one another. Mark 9, verse 50, salt is good, but if a salt is lost, his saltiness, wherewith will we be salted? Have salt in yourselves, have peace one with another. How sad it is when carnal, proud, demanding, arrogant people come together at church. It's like a food fight in a fraternity house. It's just war, and nobody wants to be there. But sad to say there are many who come to church that will sit on one particular side, because if they sit on the other side, they might just happen to rudge shoulders with the person they're still fighting about. how pleasant it is when brothers and sisters dwell in unity. People want to be at a place, friends, where peace and love and unity is seen. And when that is seen in this community, our testimony should be, I was glad when they said, let's go to Faith Baptist Church of Taylor, South Carolina. I was drawn to the fellowship of Faith Baptist Church of Taylor, South Carolina. I want to be with the peacemakers, the reconcilers at Faith Baptist Church in Taylor, South Carolina. There should be something that is so unique and so godly about the peace of this place that folks can't stay away from here. And if we are going to really practice united fellowship in our church, we must follow clear principles. We must practice love as was just sung about. We must practice and demonstrate forgiveness and we must offer reconciliation. And when we do these things from a heart of love built in Christ-like unity, we can experience true gladness in our time together. And as long, however, as you allow petty differences and hard feelings and I am right and you are wrong mentalities to pervade this church, we will never be a sweet-smelling savor in the nostrils of our God. How serious is God about unity? So serious that he commands us to practice the Lord's table, but before we do, he says, first consider your own heart. And consider your responsibilities vertically with God and also horizontally with others, so that you may gather at the Lord's table with a pure conscience before God vertically and others horizontally. At the beginning of this message, I said, it does no good to be in the right place at the right time if you don't have the right attitude. And there may be some in this room at the right place, and you checked your watch, and you're right on schedule, but there's someone in this auditorium you know you have a difficulty with. You have, sir, or you have, ma'am, then, the wrong attitude. How serious is God about peace? He's so serious that some of his greatest promises are attached to it. And those who are opposed to it, also some of his greatest curses are attached to it. May God be a great grace forge for us on the anvil of his word and conform us into the image of our son. And I believe, I really do, if we had more gladness in this church, I believe if we had more thankfulness in this church, I believe if we had more peacefulness in this church, I believe if that were to happen, it would be such a sweet smelling aroma that would be emitted from this place that people would be flocking in wondering what is going on at Faith Baptist Church of Taylors, South Carolina. Songwriter put it many years ago, friends all around us are trying to find what the heart yearns for, but sin undermined. I have the secret. I know where it is found. Only in Jesus true pleasure is abound. May God increase in us gladness, thankfulness, and peacefulness as we come into the house of God. We have every reason under heaven to do exactly that. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for your word. A psalm that as we parse it through, we understand that the why of worship becomes very, very Lord, I'm thankful so many have gathered here this evening to worship you. And their presence, I trust, is a commitment of their desire to have joy, peace, and thankfulness woven into their very countenance and spirit. But Lord, we recognize that each one of these is a growing process. None of us are perfectly peaceful and always thankful and always joyful. We have a lot of work to do. And so, Lord, even as an invitation song is played, may you stir in the hearts of your dear saints to respond as you have spoken to them. With every head bowed and every eye closed, the instruments are going to begin to play. Just a closing and invitation. Would you respond as God has spoken to you? Yeah. Let's pray together. Lord, we thank you so much for your continued work in our hearts. Lord, may we always be sensitive to the Spirit's call and responding to you. Lord, what a wonderful day it's been in the house of the Lord, as we've had an opportunity to both be in the Old and the New Testaments together. We trust, Lord, that what we've done has brought