If you have your Bible with you this evening, we are in the book of Psalms, again, Psalm 69. And while you're turning there, may I say what a joy and privilege it has been to come among you this week and to have this opportunity to minister in the Word of God. And I want to extend my thanks again to Pastor and to the Oversight for allowing me this opportunity to be part of this special week as we lead up into the Easter weekend. And of course, we are tonight at Good Friday, and we want to go back to the cross this evening and to think of our Savior's sacrifice. And this psalm indeed addresses the suffering of the Lord. Let's begin our reading in Psalm 69 and verse 1. Psalm 69 and verse 1. We'll read just as far as verse 12, but we will then touch on the psalm in its entirety as we go through the evening. Psalm 69 and verse 1. Save me, O God, for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep mire where there is no standing. I am come into deep waters where the floods overflow me. I am weary of my crying. My throat is dried. Mine eyes fail while I wait for my God. They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of mine head. They that would destroy me, being mine enemies wrongfully, are mighty. Then I restored that which I took not away. O God, thou knowest my foolishness, and my sins are not hid from thee. Let not them that wait on thee, O Lord, if hosts be ashamed for my sake. Let not those that seek thee be confounded for my sake, O God of Israel, because for thy sake I have borne reproach. Shame hath covered my face. I am become a stranger unto my brethren and an alien unto my mother's children. For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up, and the reproaches of them that reproach thee are fallen upon me. When I wept and chastened my soul with fasting, that was to my reproach. I made sackcloth also my garment, and I became a proverb to them. They that sit in the gate speak against me. and I was the song of the drunkards. We trust the Lord will bless the reading of his precious and eternal word to our hearts this evening. After Psalm 22, Psalm 69 is the most quoted of the psalms in the New Testament, and every quote there is given in relation to the Lord Jesus Christ, so that we can say with absolute certainty tonight that this is a messianic psalm. The key to understanding this psalm really lies in the fourth verse, in the last line of that verse, where we read, "'Then I restored that which I took not away.'" Here we see that the Lord Jesus not only secured our salvation by means of the cross, but he also brought restoration. He made restitution, not for the wrong that he did, but for that which we have done. The key word of the psalm, if we may focus on one, is the word reproach. If you notice in verse 7, he says, "'Because for thy sake I have borne reproach.'" Verse 9, "'For the seal of thine house hath eaten me up, and the reproaches of them that reproach thee are fallen upon me. When I wept and chastened my soul with fasting, that was to my reproach. And then verse 19, Thou hast known my reproach, and my shame, and my dishonor. Mine adversaries are all before thee. Rebroach hath broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness. At the cross, The Savior not only bore our sin, but he took our shame. He bore the reproach that fell upon me. And because of those actions in my life that brought disgrace upon me, he went to the cross. He was put to shame, to my shame, on the cross. for that reason, we call this psalm the Psalm of the Trespass Offering. Now, I want you to turn with me to Leviticus chapter 5, and I want to just look at the trespass offering and to point out some of the features of it, And we're going to read verses 1 to 6 to begin with, but really this offering is detailed all the way into chapter 6 of Leviticus, and down to verse 7 of that chapter. But I want to begin reading in verse 1, and just read verses 1 to 6 as this offering is introduced. And it says, And if a soul sin, and hear the voice of swearing, and as a witness, whether he is seen or known of it, and if he do not utter it, then he shall bear his iniquity. Or if a soul touch any unclean thing, whether it be a carcass of an unclean beast, or a carcass of an unclean cattle, or the carcass of unclean creeping things, and if it be hidden from him, he also shall be unclean and guilty. Or if he touch the uncleanness of man, whatsoever uncleanness it be, that a man shall be defiled withal, and it be hid from him, when he knoweth of it, then he shall be guilty. Or if a soul swear, pronouncing with his lips to do evil or to do good, whatsoever it be, that a man shall pronounce with an oath, and it be hid from him, when he knoweth of it, then he shall be guilty in one of these. And it shall be, when he shall be guilty in one of these things, that he shall confess that he hath sinned in that thing, and he shall bring his trespass offering unto the LORD for his sin which he hath sinned, a female from the flock, a lamb, or a kid of the goats, for a sin offering, and the priest shall make an atonement for him concerning his sin. Now, do you get a flavor there of what the trespass offering was about? You see how Leviticus speaks about the things we listen to, and the things that we touch, the unclean things that we touch, and the things that we say, and when an ancient Israelite had sinned in this way, he had brought reproach upon himself, and he had to bring this trespass offering on to the Lord. But not only that, he had to make amends in some way. He had to compensate for the wrong that he had done. If you glance down that chapter to verse 16, you'll see, and he shall make amends for the harm that he hath done in the holy thing, and shall add the fifth part thereto, and give it unto the priest. And the priest shall make an atonement for him with the ram of the trespass offering, and it shall be forgiven him. Now, Jesus did that for us at Calvary. You see, the trespass offering, unlike the sin offering, addresses the issue of our debts, the fact that we owe to somebody something. If you look again there in verse 5 of that chapter is saying there shall be, when he shall be guilty in one of these things, that he shall confess that he has sinned in that thing. You see, in the trespass offering, besides the life that was sacrificed, the priest would take an evaluation of the wrong that was committed, and he would calculate a suitable amount of compensation to the wrong party, and he would add 20% to that figure, And then the sinner was paying the injured party in shekels by that amount. And if you look in the chapter 6 in verse 1, it says, and speak, the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying, If a soul sin, commit a trespass against the Lord, and he lie unto his neighbour in that which was delivered him to keep, or in fellowship, or in a thing taken away by violence, or hath deceived his neighbour, or hath found that which was lost, and lieth concerning it, and sweareth falsely, in any and all these that a man doeth, sitting therein, then it shall be, because he hath sinned and is guilty, that he shall restore that which he took violently away, or the thing which he hath deceitfully gotten, or that which was delivered him to keep, or the lost thing which he found, Of all that about which he hath sworn falsely, he shall even restore it in the principle, that is, for the full amount of the loss, and shall add the fifth part more thereto, and give it on to him to whom it appertaineth in the day of his trespass offering, and he shall bring his trespass offering unto the Lord, a ram without blemish out of the flock with thy estimation, for a trespass offering unto the priest, and the priest shall make an atonement for him before the Lord, and it shall be forgiven him for anything of all that he hath done in trespassing therein." In other words, in the trespass offering, the worshiper, the sinner, has to offer restitution for the wrong that he has committed. The sin offering demands that sin be punished, but the trespass offering goes a little further in the sense that it deals with daily living to ongoing forgiveness. That's what Psalm 69 is about. The wrong must be remedied. The wronged must be repaid in some way. And so, the psalmist says of the Lord Jesus, he restored that which he took not away. He made the restitution for us. Now, if we go back to the psalm, Psalm 69, before we get into the body of the psalm and we think about how the Lord did this, let's begin, even as we did with Psalm 22, by looking at the title Do you see it there? Through the chief musician, upon Shohanim, a psalm of David. We've talked about miktam psalms, and we've talked about other titles, and here we come to this title, Shoshanim. What does that mean? Well, it's the Hebrew word for lilies. Some people thought there was a lily-shaped instrument, and possibly there was. But I don't know about you, but I don't personally like lilies as a flower. And the reason I don't like lilies as a flower is because, as a pastor, I've officiated at many funerals over the years, and in most funerals, there's a spray of flowers on the coffin and in the midst of those flowers, and invariably there are some lilies, and there's always this very strong smell of lily. And so, in my mind, I associate that plant with death. Indeed, that's why the lilies are used, because in times past, before we were more advanced in our ability to deal with the dead and undertaking, the lily was used to mask the smell of corruption. But lilies in ancient Israel rather acted much like daffodils do in Northern Ireland. They signaled springtime, and they often grew wild in the valleys and in the mud and in the mire. The Lord references there in verse 2. So traditionally, lilies were associated in Israel with springtime, and in particular with the Passover season. And of course, that's why Easter is a movable holiday, because it's tied in with the Jewish Passover. One writer describes the lily as luxuriating in the valley and growing among the thorns. You know, what a wonderful picture of the purity of the Lord, the lily of the valley, in a world of thorns—thorns, of course, being a symbol of the curse at the beginning. And of course, on the cross, we know he had a crown of thorns pressed into his skull. Now as to this song... What do we discover? Well, in verses 1 through 12, where we began our opening reading, we see the suffering of our Lord. And like Psalm 22, this psalm focuses upon the cross, albeit from a different aspect, and it speaks about how he suffered our shame, how he suffered reproach, how he suffered shame from society, from his own family, and even, and ultimately, from us. Notice in verse 1 through 4 how he's mistreated by his foes. "'Save me, O God, for the waters are coming into my soul. I sink in deep mire where there is no standing. I am coming to deep waters where the floods overflow me. I am weary of my crying. My throat is dried. Mine eyes fail while I wait for my God. They that hate me without a cause, more than the hairs of mine head. They that would destroy me, being mine enemies wrongfully, are mighty. Then I restored that which I took not away." He was mistreated by his foes. What a remarkable statement, that he was hated without a cause. You know, there are many people who are hate figures in history for obvious reasons—Hitler and Lenin and Stalin, and maybe in modern times, bin Laden or Putin. This is the psalm of David. David was a warrior king. David had blood on his hands. And no doubt, David, in the tenure of his reign, had made enemies. And certainly, they would have been perhaps more than the number of his head, poetically speaking. But Jesus, what did Jesus do? Well, Jesus healed the sick, Jesus raised the dead. Jesus fed the hungry. Jesus loved the unlovable. Jesus taught good things, and yet he was hated for no apparent reason. As we said, the Scriptures read there that the enemies of his numbered more than the hairs on his head. He presents them as an innumerable company. And so, by the end of his life, he's hated not only by the upper brass, the top brass of Judaism, by the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the chief priests, but he's hated also by the people themselves. Did this have any impact upon him? Was he aloof to this castigation by the people? Did he feel anything about it? Well, of course he did. His feelings are articulated in those first three verses. He felt like a man who was going down into the mire, a man who was in quicksand. You know, a man who sinks in water is in a better place than a man who is sinking in quicksand, because the man who is sinking in water can have the ability to swim out of trouble, but the man who is in sinking sand, in a quagmire, well, he's going only one way, and that's down. He describes himself as being overwhelmed by a wave of hatred against him there in verse two. He says, I am come into deep waters where the floods overflow me. He's like a man who's crossing a ford in a river and suddenly he's washed away by a sudden flush of water. His feet are swept from beneath him. And there's only one way this is going to end. It's going to end in death. And as he contemplates his sure end, the Lord is given to prayer, and that's the truth of verse three. I am weary of my crying, my throat is dried, mine eyes feel while I wait for my God. We know the Lord Jesus was ever a man of prayer, but nowhere was his prayer life more vividly illustrated than that night, the night the dark night of a soul in Gethsemane, when he pours out his heart to his heavenly Father, such is the intensity of that moment that he says here, my throat is dried. He's letting us feel it. He's allowing us to walk, as it were, in his shoes. into that garden, knowing he's soon to be arrested, knowing he's soon to be put to the cross, knowing that soon the Father shall disown him. How his foes hated him, and yet how he loved them. He says, They would destroy me, being mine enemies wrongfully. He was mistreated by his foes. But notice in verse 8, he was mistreated by his family. He says, I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother's children. My brethren there is not a spiritual brotherhood fraternity. It refers to his own kith and kin. It literally means the sons of my own mother. You know, David's brothers misunderstood him. You'll recall how he was almost overlooked when the opportunity came to anoint a king, and Samuel the prophet comes, and Jesse is pointing out various ones of his sons that might fit the bill, that might meet the criteria to become the next king of Israel. But David is completely overlooked. He's completely bypassed. And even when he goes out onto the battlefield in Elah to face the mighty giant Goliath, he is mocked and belittled by his own brother Eliab. But Jesus, too, suffered the rebuff of his friends and of his family. Look with me in Mark chapter 3 for a moment. Mark chapter 3, we're at the outset of his Galilean ministry. He's beginning to gather crowds around him everywhere he goes. People are coming to hear him preach. He has chosen his twelve disciples, and we read in verse 20 of that chapter, the multitude cometh to gather again, so that they could not so much as eat bread. And I want you to notice verse 21, and when his friends heard of it. Now, notice it's his friends now, not his foes. "'When his friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him, for they said, "'He is beside himself.'" What are they saying? He's taking leave of his senses. He's off his rocker. He's completely mad. My friends, I'm sure you've heard things like that in your life. When I became a Christian, people said to me, Oh, listen, you don't want to read that Bible. You don't want to get too deeply into that Bible. You know, people have read the Bible and have gone mad reading the Bible. Well, I haven't met too many of them to date that have gone mad reading the Bible. But that's the estimation of those in the world. It's not a new thing. Jesus' friends come to him, and they say, What are you doing here preaching to this crowd? Why are you doing this? You know, you're beside yourself. You've taken leave of your senses. But even his family, even his own loved ones, came looking for him. Look in verse 31. There came then his brethren, his physical brothers, half-brothers, and his mother, and standing without, sent unto him, calling him. They're trying to draw him away from his ministry. They're trying to pull him away from that which the Lord would have him to do. Look also in John's Gospel chapter 7. John's Gospel chapter 7. And I love this little look through the keyhole of Jesus' family home, and seeing the interaction there in that living room, as it were. And it says, after these things, chapter 7, verse 1, after these things, Jesus walked in Galilee, for he would not walk in Jewry among the Jews, because the Jews sought to kill him. Now the Jewish feast of tabernacles was at hand, His brethren therefore said unto him, Now notice who's speaking, his half-brothers. His brethren therefore said unto him, Depart hence, and go unto Judea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest. They're provoking him. Therefore there is no man that doeth anything in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known openly. they're criticizing him. "'If thou do these things, show thyself to the world.' For neither did his brethren," notice this, "'believe in him.'" I wonder if you're here tonight, and maybe you have been recently saved, or maybe even you've been saved some time, and you're the only member of your family that's a Christian. You leave this place of fellowship on a Sunday morning or a Sunday evening, and you go to a home full of unbelievers, and you're subject to their taunts and to their mockery and to their criticisms and to their foolish talk. Maybe sometimes you feel a little bit sorry for yourself. Or maybe you go home to an unsaved husband or an unsaved wife, and that person wants nothing to do with the gospel. They're in unbelief, and they're critical. They say, you're not the man I married. You're not the woman I married. And you feel all alone, and you feel isolated, and you feel like you're not enjoying fellowship to the same degree as others in the church. And you think to yourself, well, I wonder does even the Lord care about me? Listen, Jesus was there before you were there. He knew what it was to live in a home full of unsaved men. So he says, I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother's children. Notice also he was mistreated in his father's house. In verse nine of the psalm, it says, for the seal of thine house hath eaten me up. What does that mean? Well, that means he find no welcome. in the temple. He found no welcome there because he withstood those who oversaw the rituals and the rites of the temple as an opportunity for personal gain. He overturned the money changers' tables. He released the animals as sacrifice from which they were making extortionate profit. And so, even in his own house, he discovered it was a den of thieves. He says, the seal of thine house, those who are charged with the oversight of the temple. Well, it has eaten me up. Even there, I'm not a welcome figure." He was mistreated by his foes. He was mistreated by his family. He was mistreated by his followers. Look in verse 5 of the psalm, if you will. He says, "'O God, thou knowest my foolishness, and my sins are not hid from thee.'" Now there are those who are loath to attribute the fifth verse of this psalm unto the Lord Jesus. Augustine, a man with whom I rarely find myself in agreement, and here is no different, said that the fifth verse applied to the body of Christ but not to the head, to his followers, and not to him. So he makes that fifth verse apply to those who are Christians, but not to Christ. But verse 9 explains verse 5 in a messianic context. For the seed of thine house hath eaten me up, and the reproaches of them that reproach thee, Lord, are fallen upon me. You see that? He identifies with our sin. He takes on himself our foolishness. My sins become his sin. He is bearing it. The wrath of God will smite him, will fall upon him, and I will go free, even as we sang in our opening hymn. He bears the reproach. He becomes sin for us, so that our folly becomes his folly. Our sin becomes his sins. Our shame becomes his shame. Bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned he stood. sealed my pardon with his blood. Hallelujah. What a Savior. And then he was mistreated by his fellows. Look in verse 12. It says, They that sit in the gate speak against me, and I was the song drunkards. Those that sit in the gate are the elders of the city. The city gate is the place of local government. It's the place where local legal matters are settled. If Jesus was looking for sympathy there, well, he didn't find any. Not at all. The city fathers joined in with the rabble in putting him to the cross and putting him to shame. In Psalm 22, we saw something of a humiliation in terms of that title when he says, I am a worm and no man but nigh. We find that he becomes the song of the drunkards. Drunkenness never lends itself to godliness. In short—and I want you to get this this Good Friday evening—Jesus on the cross found himself without a single friend in the world. Look in verse 19 of the psalm. It says, Thou hast known my reproach, and my shame, and my dishonor. Mine adversaries are all before thee, reproach hath broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness, and I looked for some to take pity, just someone, but there was none, and for comforters, but I find none." So there he is, suffering and dying, alone, no one to hold his hand, no one to whisper a prayer in his ear, no one to sing a hymn as he passes away, no one to offer him an ounce of mercy, subject to the wrath of God and mistreated by every strata of society. Here's the sufferings of the Lord. Now we pick up in verse 13 of the Psalm, and we want to see the supplications of our Savior. He says, My prayer is unto thee, O Lord, in an acceptable time. O God, in the multitude of thy mercy, hear me in the truth of thy salvation. Deliver me out of the mire, and let me not sink. Let me be delivered from them that hit me, and out of the deep waters. Let not the water flood overflow me, neither let the deep swallow me up, and let not the pit shut her mouth upon me. Hear me, O LORD, for thy lovingkindness is good. Turn unto me according to the multitude of thy tender mercies, and hide not thy face from thy servant. For I am in trouble. Hear me speedily. Draw nigh unto my soul, and redeem it. Deliver me because of mine enemies. Well, here we see the prayer of the Lord. Again, this psalm, as this prayer is offered, it turns upon this phrase, but as for me, in verse 13. And indeed, that's a recurrent term throughout the entirety of the book of Psalms, and it would profit you well if you were to take the time and look at the as for me texts of the book of Psalms, each one important in its own right. But the Lord Jesus says, "'As for me,' he says, "'they hated me without a cause. My family disowned me. The elders offered me no comfort. There was no justice coming my way. I was completely alone, on my own, dying the death, bearing the shame, carrying the reproach of all. So what did he do? What do you do when the whole world is against you? What did Jesus do when every strata of society was against him, from the elders of Israel all the way down through his own loved ones, till you finally get to the drunkards? You know what we would do? We would feel self-pity. We would complain. We would gossip, perhaps. We would want to find somebody who would take our side, whose ear we could bend, whose shoulder we could cry on. But you know what Jesus did? He committed himself to his heavenly Father. Look in 1 Peter chapter 2, if you will, please. 1 Peter chapter 2, I want to begin reading in verse 21. 1 Peter 2, verse 21. It says, For even hereunto were ye called, because Christ also suffered for us in our stead, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps. Now, notice the example he leaves. Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth, who when he was reviled, reviled not again. He didn't spit back the criticisms and the mockery and the reviling. When he was reviled, he reviled not again. When he suffered, he threatened not, but committed himself to him that judges righteously, who his own self bear our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness by whose stripes ye are healed." Notice what he did there in verse 23. He committed himself to him that judges righteously. Many years ago, when our children were very small, we went on holiday to Scotland, up around the Stirling area, and we visited Stirling Prison. And it was a very interesting attraction. We went inside. There were actors there in period costumes playing various roles. One actor in particular, I think, played all the roles, if I remember correctly. And so, when you went into the prison, you paid your money, you went in, and you waited in line to be led into the prison proper. And while we're standing there, this man comes out dressed as a prison guard. And he begins to scream in our faces. about what a terrible bunch, what a motley crew we were, and how they were going to sort us out, and what was going to become of us. And as he was going on and on playing his part, I felt my thigh getting increasingly more painful as our little girl, who was about five or six at the time, began to bury her fingers into my leg. She was terrorized, and she began to bury her fingers into my leg, and I could feel her getting in behind me. What was she doing? In her moment of terror, she was committing herself to her father. And that's what the Lord Jesus did. He didn't spit back. He didn't complain. He didn't feel sorry for himself. He committed himself to his father. And he says, you will judge me righteously. You know what this is all about. He says, as for me, my prayer is unto thee, O Lord. It's a prayer for deliverance from the hateful attitudes and the hateful actions of men. And if you glance down that passage, you will notice a seven-fold petition of his prayers in verses 16 to 18. He says, hear me, turn on to me, hide not thy face, hear me speedily. draw nigh unto my soul. Redeem it, not in the sense of paying a ransom for it, but in the sense of avenging it. Deliver me." The prayer for vengeance of his soul, at first glance, seems to be out of character for the Lord Jesus. And of course, the natural thing to do, if you're a Bible commentator and you're uncomfortable with that thought, is to make this psalm an imprecatory psalm. That's a psalm in which David calls judgment down upon his enemies. You say, well, this is David calling for revenge. This is not Jesus calling for revenge. This is David calling for revenge. But look at the nature of this prayer. In verse 22, he says, take their security from them. Let their table become a snare before them. In verse 23, he says, blind them. Let their eyes be darkened. In verse 24, he says, pour out your fury upon them. pour out thine indignation upon them, let thy wrathful anger take hold of them. In verse 25, he says, make their homes desolate, let their habitation be desolate, let none dwell in their tents. Verse 26 and 27, he says, Lord, don't let them off, don't let them go free, for they persecute him whom thou hast smitten, and they talk to the grief of those whom thou hast wounded. Add iniquity unto their iniquity, let them not come into thy righteousness." And finally, in verse 28, he calls for their names to be taken from the book of life. Let them be blotted out of the book of living and not be written with the righteous. That's the sentiments of Jesus. Scroggie struggled with this. He said, these imprecations do not belong to the spirit of the New Testament, and are in sharp contrast to the prayers of Jesus and Stephen, but underlying them is an ethical principle which we cannot afford to ignore. Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and God is just. Well, what did we just read in 1 Peter 2? He committed himself unto him who judges righteously. Oh, this is Jesus speaking. Whilst it's certainly true that on the cross He prayed for those who were gathered around Him, sneering at Him, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, it's equally true that they as a nation, having rejected the offer of salvation that came in the person of Jesus Christ, fell foul of God's righteousness and consequently were to suffer His judgment as the nation of Israel was set aside. This passage has to do with just that, the judicial dealings of God with the nation on account of their rejection of Christ. Look at the Gospel of Matthew chapter 23, the very last time that Jesus walks away from the campus of the temple. The Gospel of Matthew chapter 23. He's been absolutely scathing of Pharisaism, has condemned it outright in all of its forms. And he leaves that scene, and he says this in verse 37, "'O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them which are sent unto thee. How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not." Now, watch the next verse. "'Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.'" What was one of the prayers there? Make their homes desolate. Let their habitations become desolate. Let none of them live in their tents. Now he says, behold, your house is left unto you desolate. He's speaking to them as a nation. He's judging them. And that judgment is referenced in the book of Romans in chapter 11, if you want to go there for a moment. It was Romans chapter 9, 10, 11, speak about what is to become of national Israel. now that the gospel is going out into all the world, and the Gentiles are to be included in the plan of God in that respect. In Romans chapter 11 and verse 9, Paul says this, and David saith, Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumbling block, and a recompense unto them. Let their eyes be darkened that they may not see, and bow down their back all way." You know, that's right there as a quotation from Psalm 69. He's saying, let everything that was prayed for back there be true with respect to Jesus. May God judge the nation of Israel. And if you remember, those people on one occasion said of Christ, let his blood be upon us and upon our children. And sadly, that was a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the Jewish people have paid very heavily down through the centuries for their rejection of Christ. Even to this very hour, they are suffering because of their dealings with Jesus. But I want to close this psalm in verses 30 to 36, and I want you to see the song of the Savior. We've seen the suffering of the Savior and the supplication of the Savior. I want you to see the song of the Savior. He says, I will praise the name of God with a song. will magnify him with thanksgiving. This also shall please the Lord better than an ox or bullock that hath horns and hoofs. The humble shall see this and be glad, and your heart shall live that seek God. For the Lord heareth the poor, and despiseth not his prisoners. Let the heaven and earth praise him, the seas and everything that moveth therein. For God will save Zion, and will build the cities of Judah, that they may dwell there and have it in possession. The seed also of his servants shall inherit it, and they that love his name shall dwell therein. You know, I love this psalm, that it closes in a note of praise. We saw that even in Psalm 22, at Yeleth Shehar, it was to be sung on a joyous tune. Hand it to Haman. told to be sung as a song of praise. And here we come to this psalm. And also, speaking of the cross, it strikes a note of praise. The Savior's cry is heard. His offering is said to be better than that of oxen or bullocks. He not only redeems his people, but I want you to get this, he restores his people. God's answer to his prayer comes Three days after the crucifixion, in terms of his resurrection, and forty days after that, in terms of his ascension, he is delivered! And Israel is cursed. But yet we read here that Israel becomes the recipient of blessing and salvation, ultimately, in verses 35 and 36, for God will save Zion. and will build cities of Judah, that they may dwell there. Earlier it was, let their habitation be desolate, let none of them dwell in their tents. Now we find God is saving Israel, saving Jerusalem, building the cities of Judah, that they may dwell there and have it in possession. The seed also of his servants shall inherit it, and they that love his name shall dwell therein. Brothers and sisters, what we find in this psalm this evening is this, that Jesus doesn't just redeem by means of the cross, he restores by means of the cross. He redeems and he restores. He took the fall of Eden. He bears our sin and our shame. He is reproached, but in that reproach he pays our debt—a debt that we could never pay. He made amends for us. Because of Calvary, we are ransomed, redeemed, and ultimately restored. And what a thought to bring to the table this Good Friday evening. May God bless these thoughts to your hearts.