Amen. We're told that it was Julius Caesar who gave us the Latin phrase, veni, vidi, fisi, which is translated, I came, and I saw, and I conquered. He wrote these words in a letter to the Roman Senate around 47 BC, just before the Savior was born. after he had achieved a quick victory in a short war at the Battle of Sila that was fought in what is now modern-day Turkey. So he certainly didn't write a lot, did he? He was a master at summing it up, three points all alliterated and everything for us. Finae, vidae, ficeae. I came, I saw, and I conquered. It was a different experience, however, for the kings who are mentioned here in the Psalm number 48. It is indeed true, as we read there in verse 4, that they came and also that they saw. But the missing element and the vital element is it could never be said that they conquered. Indeed, verse 5 says they fled, they hasted away. And verse 6 graphically tells us that they did so in great fear and in great pain. The psalm itself is not dated. There's no clue or real clue within it as to any particular occasion to which it is specifically referring to. And therefore, the various commentators are very cautious as they ought to be in attributing to any one incident. However, there are those in verse seven who see this link to the Lord breaking the ships of Tarsus, and the great deliverance that was wrought in the days of Jehoshaphat. And you can read the account of that in 2 Chronicles and the chapter 20. God's people should always live the life of victory. Not a self-wrought victory, but the victory of the cross. We preach Christ crucified. Because in the cross of the Lord Jesus, that's where the victory ground really, really is. Remember what the apostle said? He talked about all the different things that could afflict the people of God, even death itself. Talked about famine, nakedness, peril, and all these things. And he said, nay, that's a strong word there, nay, he says, no. And all these things, all these things either individually are all these things all joining together in a great confederacy against God's people. In all these things, we are not only conquerors. He says we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. And where did He love us most, if we might word it like that? Where do we see the demonstration of His love? Well, He showed His love when He went to Calvary. Oh, wonderful. love. We want to concentrate, as we have said, our thoughts today in verses 12 and 14. We have come to this Zion, and unlike the kings who fled, we're going to linger a little moment there. Let's notice, first of all, number one this morning. We have the city stated, the city stated, and it's just that one name, and that is the name of Zion. And that was a beautiful city as a physical city, for you can point it out on the map, is indeed Jerusalem. And those that have been there tell us, they'd have been there myself on one occasion, that it is a city that is beautiful for the situation. We know from Psalm 125, verse 2, that it was surrounded by beautiful mountains. I can remember growing up They don't do it so much now. But it used to be, when you were growing up, the box of chocolates, the lid of the box of chocolates was always a nice, scenic photograph. And that's just come into mind now. It's usually pictures of hills, maybe in Italy or Spain or wherever. Well, you can try and picture here the Mount of Zion, the city of Jerusalem. It was surrounded by these beautiful mountains. It was also adorned. within the city by the beautiful temple of Solomon. And I find it interesting that our reading this morning in the Daily Light, and of course, that's a random reading. I don't pick the date. The date was there. But the texts that were there said how this temple that was going to be built must be exceeding magnificent. And so it was. And even as late as Matthew chapter 24, the apostles were still marveling at the magnificent buildings that had survived all that time. And they were worth showing, so they felt, to the Savior. However, the psalmist here is not speaking so much about the physical city. And certainly, the great temple was gone. All you have is the wailing wall that is now the great attraction. But he is more concerned, as we should be, about the spiritual beauty. We see that there, for example, in verse 1. It is described as being the city of our God. And right away, that puts us into the spiritual realm. Again, we have it called by that in verse 8. We have it, verse 1, the city of our God. Again, verse 8, it's the city of the great king. In verse 2 and in verse 8 again, which is a very full verse, the city of the Lord of hosts. Here was the outward epicenter at that time of Old Testament Jewish worship. And three times a year, the meals were required to attend with their sacrifices on to God. So if you lived in Dan, at the top of the country, down to Beersheba, wherever you lived, you were required, if you were a Jewish male, to attend the Mount Zion three times a year because it was there. It was this that was the attraction. It was there that God put his name. It is, of course, true. We live in a different age, a different dispensation, and we do not have an earthly epicenter anymore. It's nice to go out to Jerusalem, but we're not compelled to go. And if you never set foot in the place, from a spiritual point of view, you're not missing anything by not being there. because our Savior pointed out to the Samaritan woman. She entered into a controversy with him in John chapter 4. It was this theological battle between the Samaritans and the Jews. The Jews says it's in Jerusalem where we ought to worship. The Samaritans said, no, but our followers did not worship in Jerusalem. They worshiped in this mountain. And our Lord just cut that whole argument off right away. He said, the time is coming. This is the age in which we live now. The time is coming when men will not worship at Jerusalem. That is, they'll not be compelled to worship at Jerusalem or on this mountain. But in effect, wherever they are, they can lift up their heart unto God, and God will meet with them. And it may be said that our Zion, particularly this morning, is the congregation when we meet together in corporate worship. Or it might be said, if you want to take it another way, and we can hold the both, it is Zion which is above. And we sometimes sing that hymn, do we not, in better days than these, when we can, I trust they'll sing it reverently, but at least we can sing it triumphantly and loudly. We're marching to Zion, the beautiful city of God. But whatever way you view it, and not press my views upon you. It is a focus point denoting the blessedness and the personal salvation that we enjoy this morning in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the city that is stated in the text. It says there that it is Mount Zion. But then we notice when we get to verse 12, and again verse 13, number two, we have the defenses of the city that are studied, the defenses of the city that are studied, because we are called to walk around Zion, walk about her, and go round about her, and tell. That may mean to count the tars thereof, and mark ye well. Oh, this isn't just a little glance this morning. No, mark ye well her bulwarks, and consider her palaces, that ye may tell it. to the generation following. And you could picture this in the physical sense if we can go back there again. If we were walking around Jerusalem, you'd be walking around its sandy streets. You would be observing at this time the width and the direction of the various thoroughfares. The whole idea, of course, is that if the city is under attack, well, then you need to know where needs where and what is what. many men you could get down here and the ease with which you could do it and particularly you would be studying its great fortifications. Jerusalem was a walled city so walls have a horrible habit if they're neglected of falling down. We may think of Nehemiah when he came back years and years later on the city had indeed fallen and the walls were knocked down. He rebuilt the walls The gates were missing. They had been set on fire. But these words here were embedded. It is when the walls were still there. And the psalmist is urging the people, make sure the walls are strong. And think about the gates. If there's going to be an attack made upon the city, they're going to bring a big battering ram, and they're going to attack the gates. So don't go for the cheap gates. Make sure they're really strong. And think about the foundation. Because if the foundations be destroyed, then what can the righteous do? And we're being asked here to run a critical eye. The word critical being used, of course, in the good sense of the word. A judging eye, a critical eye over it. And by doing so, we will notice the weak spots. And if you notice the weak spots, well then, you're going to have to make that weak spot to be strong. If the gate is maybe a bit dodgy on the hinges, well, let's replace the hinge. Let's even replace the gate if needs be. And we'll notice in our observations, we're going to see the riches of the city because we have reference there in verse three to the palaces. And the normal meaning of the word palace, of course, is where the rich people live and where there is the great riches. And let's think about this. in the spiritual sense. Again, that's where we're going to benefit from it this morning. If we just kept to the physical end of things, it's just going to be a history lesson. And you might go out of the door and say, well, that was, I suppose, interesting enough. But spiritually, you're not going to gain much from it. So we need to make a spiritual application. Let us think about our fundamental doctrines this morning. We are a fundamentalist church. We call ourselves Reformed. Westminster Confession of Faith people, and that's good. But we're also fundamental. We share with others here, maybe not so reformed as us, but we share with them that common fundamental agreement of the Scriptures. And among the fundamental doctrines that we believe in and must proclaim, first of all, we might make reference to the inspiration of the Bible. We're all holding a book in our hands, are we not? We have read from this book. We say that it is a special book. And someone may say, well, you think it's special because it is a religious book. Well, we say, yes, it is a religious book, but it's much more than that. Because there's plenty of religious books out there. We could be holding the Quran this morning, or we could be holding the decrees of the Council of Trent, or the Vatican II, or the Book of Mormon. But no, this is something else. We're holding the word. of the living God. What profit was there being a Jew? Much every way, because unto them was committed the oracles of God. The pharaoh breathed out and inspired words of the Almighty. And we believe not only in the inspiration of the Word of God, but we believe in its preservation. One of the critics may come along and say, but you're holding a book that is 2,000 years old at its youngest point. And well, you know what it's like. You get 30 people. We call it Chinese whispers, don't we? And somebody starts off. Number one starts off with a little sentence. Mary had a little lamb. And whispers it into the ear of number two. And it goes the whole way around. And by the time you get to the end, Mary's gone and the lamb is gone. and there's something else that's been said. And they say, and that's what happened with the Bible. Little bits dropped off, and people put little bits in. And we say, no, that was not the case. For not only do we believe in the inspiration of the Bible, we believe in the preservation of the Bible. And we believe that God in his wisdom, who gave us the word, has enough wisdom, enough wit, and enough power to preserve it. So what we have in our authorized version this morning We believe we have the Word of God. We can hold our Bible up. Yes, it's a translation. We accept all that. But we can hold it up and say, God has said we have the Word of God. We believe in that. We think about the full-orbed deity of Jesus Christ. We believe that as well. That's why we worship him. That's why we speak reverently of him. That's why we turn away upset when people blaspheme his name. or he's more than just a great leader, and he's more than just a great friend. We believe he's very God, a very God. And we look forward to that day when we see his face, when we fall at his feet, and we crown him Lord of all, for he is Lord of all. We believe in his full-orbed humanity. He really did become flesh and dwelt among us, took to himself a natural body and a reasonable soul. and at all the things that we have with the exception of sin. We believe in His virgin birth. We affirm that. We affirm the incarnation, God manifest in the flesh. We believe in His blood atonement, that when He died upon the cross, He really did bear our sins, that He came to suffer for our sins. Calvary just wasn't a great plan gone wrong. It wasn't as if he was just setting out to be an example. No, he came to suffer and to die. He came to give his life a ransom for many. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter. We believe in his physical resurrection. He's not just resurrected in the minds of the apostles, in the fond memories and dreams that they had. No, he really did rise again on the third day. And we believe that one day he's coming back. One day he's coming, oh, glorious day. And we say, the sky, not the grave, is our goal. We believe in election and predestination. We believe in justification by faith alone. We believe in sanctification by the word of God, the growth and grace, and in the knowledge of the Savior. We believe in the certain glorification of the elect of God, when every last one, saved by grace, will be gowered in. Oh, this morning, just even in the recounting of them, feel the weight and the glory of them individually. And remember what they mean to us when we think of the rock from which we were hewn and the hole from which we were dug. Remember, at one time, we were not the people of God. There was a time when we were in sin and nature's night. when the wrath of a sin-hating God was hanging over our head and could have fallen justly at any time, their feet shall slide in due time. And yet the grace of God intervened, and the Lord has drawn us to himself. Consider the harmony of these great doctrines, one to another. They dovetail perfectly. They come together. They don't jar. You and I made it difficult reconciling certain things, but in the mind of God, they dovetail perfectly. This might be a good place for me this morning to recommend to you a working acquaintance of the Shorter Catechism, our own pastor. I remember him preaching down in Sligo with the Considered Christ, and he made the statement from the pulpit, so I can repeat it here. It wasn't said to me privately, but he made the statement from the pulpit, He said that there was one book that he always kept beside him when he prepared, and that was the shorter catechism. All the younger ones in the church, you're learning, or you will start to learn the shorter catechism. Let me give you the words of St. Spurgeon. Don't want to get waylaid on this, but Mr. Spurgeon addressed those whom he called his young friends. And he says, you do well to read the confession of faith. and study the proof texts, or to learn the assembly's catechism, which is the grand condensation of the holy scriptures. And then he addressed the many aged Christians. And he said, they could not spend their time better than going over the shorter catechism again, and comparing it with the book of God, he said, from which it is derived. And he tells us why he instructs us to do so. He says, Protestantism, I don't warm our hearts, Protestantism grew in this land when there was much simple, plain, orthodox teaching of the doctrines which are assuredly believed among us. The catechism was the very bulwark, that's our word here, the very bulwark of Protestantism. You think about the enemy this morning who would attack us. Always remember when the devil comes, the devil is not playing. playing games. And we would appreciate more the bulwarks when we see their great necessity. It's not that there was money to spare and they decided they were going to build a tower so many hundred yards. No, it's there because of necessity. Because we have an enemy, a real enemy. And these great truths will withstand the attacks of the evil one. What attention has been given to the notion of destroying these great truths. There's always somebody out there seeking to undermine them. Even in the Apostles' day, we have very kind of romantic views about the early church and the days of the Apostles. And we have this kind of view. Well, it must have been great. I'm sure it would have been to have sat there and heard the Apostle Paul expounding the Scriptures or the Apostle John But please remember that the church in those days, there was always trouble in the church in those days. There was attack on the fundamental doctrines. Paul wrote a lot of his epistles to answer those attacks. The resurrection was being undermined in Corinth. That's why you have 1 Corinthians chapter 15. There were many heresies. John was constantly combating the heresy that Christ was not a real man. That's why he keeps emphasizing he came in the flesh. And yet, even despite all these attacks, not one major truth has been lost. We still have the faith that was once and for all time delivered unto the saint, because God preserves His word, and He preserves His doctrine, and they're still being proclaimed. We proclaimed them this morning. W.P. Nicholson was asked to step in at the last moment into a mission over in England, one of the great universities, Oxford or Cambridge, I can't remember which. And he agreed to step in at the last moment. And he found that he was sharing the pulpit with William Temple. He was the Archbishop of Canterbury. Well, you know the English universities riddled with Anglicanism. So here we had WP Nicholson, the Volster stock Presbyterian, straight down the line, no-nonsense preacher. And we had this Archbishop of Canterbury. I mean, outside of Cromner, they were hardly noted for their fiery preaching. And Nicholson stood up, and he read the Apostles' Creed, and he preached on it, and he affirmed it as if he believed it, for he did. And old William Temple took a bit of offense at that. He didn't like it, just stated it so clearly. But that's what we do. We proclaim these things because we believe them, and we stand by them, and we contend for them. and somebody comes along and denies them, we feel compelled to speak up and say, what you're preaching, sir, is error, because you are attacking the very truth of God. These doctrines will stand fast, but we need to make sure that the bulwarks around them are strong. And then the devil is going to attack us, because every last blow that is struck against the Bible Well, it only serves to strengthen its truth in the mind of the believer. The scripture says, when men bring themselves and array themselves against God, do you think God gets into a panic? Do you think God pulls the muscles of his stomach in and blows out and so on? No, the Bible says, he that sits in the heavens shall laugh. And there's a sense in which so do we. A believer who hides his great doctrines in his heart, the Bible says he will not sin against God. He is well-equipped to resist the devil and to live in victory day by day. But there's one thing is sure here. We need to stay behind these walls in order to be safe. And the further you stray away from the walls, then the less advantageous they become to you, and the more likely you are of falling away to the enemy. You remember Jacob had 12 sons. He had at least two daughters that are mentioned in the prayer. One of them is named a girl called Dinah. And Dinah's daughter went out, it says, to see the daughters of the land. Many ways you feel sorry for the wee girl, don't you? With all these brothers, and they weren't exactly all walking with God, were they? And there she was in the encampment of Jacob's house, but she wanted to go out a little bit further, see the daughters of the land. Very awkward kind of situation there. Well, she left her Zion behind when she went out. And you know what happened there. And it's very evident that this went beyond the idea of normal social contact. And she was not able to cope as she obviously thought that she was. She's on the wrong side now of Zion's walls. There's no bulwarks. Devil came along, made a mess of our life. If you walked around Zion recently and studied her bulwarks, are you familiar with them? Have you a working knowledge? From time to time when we fly on planes, you sit in the plane and just before we're going to take off on comes the captain. as his captain so-and-so, welcome aboard the flight from Belfast to London. He throw her wherever you're going. And then he asks us to, he says, we're going to make a safety announcement here, what happens when it is unlikely, if we get into difficulties. And we're going to have to put a parachute on, or at least a safety jacket on, or whatever. And he asks us to pay attention. And you look around you. Some people still reading the paper that maybe they're flying twice a week. They've heard all this before. They know what's going to happen. There's all the arrows up in the doors. We've seen it all before. Are we going to listen, or are we not? And he's nearly begging us to listen. And I've seen examples, or I've heard of examples, when maybe you had a rugby team on, and they were all in great form, and they were whistling at the lady who's showing them all that there. And the captain has made the statement, this plane will not fly. If I don't have your full attention, and you've read the rad act of them, threaten to put them off the plane if they don't listen. Because if that plane gets into difficulty, and that plane goes down into the water, you'll be wondering, well, what do I do now? What do I do now if the air goes and this thing comes down in front of me? Do I inflate my life jacket now? If everybody did that, we'd all be like Mr. Tubby, trying to get out. No, you get out, and then you inflate the jacket. These are all things that we maybe would smile at, but everything depends on it. And the Lord says, I want you to walk round Zion. Mark her palaces, mark her walls, mark her bulwarks. We notice here thirdly, and we must move on quickly here, the children of the city are specified, because it says here that we may tell it if we ourselves got to know, but that we may tell it, pass it on, pass it on to our children. And we need to think about our children, what a joy they bring to the family. But we have a great responsibility with that joy. We brought them into the world. They're called the heritage of the Lord. We care for their bodies. We try and make sure that they're healthy, they're warm, they're fed. We think of their emotional needs that they have. We try and ensure that they're happy. But what about their spiritual needs? And we need to remember that there was a previous generation cared for our souls. On a better day than this, even the state encouraged school assemblies. And the mainline churches ran reasonably decent Sunday schools, and how much more. What a tremendous privilege it is for those who were born into a Christian home. What a treasure. They were trained up. The word there, train up a child, and away he shall go, is the word caddy case. had his finger on the pulse. Can he cause a child in the way that he shall go? And the apostle Paul certainly knew the value of it, for when he wrote to young Timothy, he said to young Timothy, he says, you have the benefits of your godly grandmother and your mother, Lois. Continue in the things that thou hast learned, knowing of whom you learned them. And he told him to hold fast to sound doctrine, And he says, pass it on, commit it to faithful men who will be able to teach ours also. And being children, then we need, of course, to keep it simple. But never let us think in keeping it simple that we don't need to keep it full. We certainly do. Don't clip at it. There's nothing surplus in the scripture. And it's very important that our children are able to withstand what pressures there are in children now, and what an age, but they can be strong in the Lord. And if we bring them up in their fear and the nurture of God, well, then that is a priceless treasure. And then, fourthly and lastly, and very quickly, the safety of the city is secured. You say, you're asking us to do a lot this morning. How can we do this? because of verse 14, because this God, this God who has been speaking to us this morning, this God who Zion it is, the city of the great king, this great king is speaking, and this great king, there is his sovereignty. This God is our God. He's our God forever and ever. You see, even with taking all the warnings, even taking all the precautions and all the instructions, We cannot hope to be secure in our own strength. You say, what happened to this city? It fell to the Babylonians. Jeremiah 34, verse 2, the Lord said to the people, because they weren't really bothering with the spiritual, they had forgotten God. And God said, behold, I will give this city. Notice how he's still in control. I will give this city into the hand of the king of Babylon. and he shall burn it by fire. And he did. You see, the key verse is Psalm 127, verse 1. Accept the Lord, keep the city. Yes, we go and we strengthen the doors. We see the bricks are here in the wall. The blocks aren't too good. Well, let's replace them. Let's get the cement going and so on. But the scripture says, accept the Lord, keep the city. The watchman waketh but in vain. And there's two great complementary truths. They're both sides of the one coin. When we emphasize our duty, we call that the perseverance of the saints. We're willing to do what God wants us to do. And we persevere in the battle and in the work. And we overcome. And we refuse to surrender to the taunts or the seductions of the devil. We use the ordained means of grace. But this is only possible because the other side of the coin is we persevere because we are preserved in Jesus Christ and called, kept on one hand by the power of God, but it's the power of God through faith. And this is because God is our God. It sounds so basic and vague, doesn't it? Maybe a little bit, but it's anything but. Because when we read that God is our God, there with all his attributes, God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, as we were singing this morning, unchangeable. And His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. And this God, with all those attributes, is on our side and all standing between us and a beaten enemy. The old devil, a beaten enemy, and he knows that he hath but a short time, and yet he is so hateful and so vicious that he's going to fight it out to the very end. We've got a duty as God's people to withstand the devil. The word of the unsaved outside of Jesus Christ, God's Son, you have no refuge. You're a prey to the devil. He already has you. There's only one place of safety, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. The name of the Lord is the strong tower, and to Him the righteous run and is safe. May the Lord bless these words to all of our hearts this morning.