See, and all that in them is, who
by the mouth of thy servant David hath
said, Why do the heathen rage?
And the people imagined vain things.
The kings of the earth stood up, and
the rulers were gathered together against the Lord,
and against his Christ.
For of a truth against thy holy child
Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod and
Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people
of Israel, were gathered together.
For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy
counsel determined before to be done.
And now, Lord, behold their threatenings, and grant
unto thy servants, that with all boldness they
may speak thy word.
By stretching forth thine hand to heal, that
signs and wonders may be done by the
name of thy holy child Jesus.
And when they had prayed, the place was
shaken, where they were assembled together, they were
all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they
spake the word of God with boldness.
As we have been saying on previous evenings,
we always have present some who have not
been with us earlier in the week to
look into the earlier portions in this book
of the Acts.
For their information we say that we have
been looking into various portions here in the
early chapters of the book of the Acts
to see the various ways in which our
blessed Lord is presented to us.
And we were noticing in chapter 1 how
is the man who was taken up, the
ascended one who went home to glory, the
wonderful reception he got.
And in chapter 2 we noted the coming
of the Spirit, which is something which is
attributed to the Lord himself, the risen Christ.
And so we followed along in the third
chapter.
We came to other aspects of our Lord's
person and work, the Prince of Life, the
Cornerstone.
And this evening we want to close this
brief series, and I think I shall begin
with a little review of the early chapters,
noting particularly the Old Testament scriptures which are
referred to in these chapters in the book
of the Acts.
If I mistake not, there are no less
than eight of these Old Testament scriptures which
are referred to in the early chapters of
the book of the Acts.
And we'll come up to the scripture which
is referred to this evening, which we have
just now been reading, a quotation from the
second Psalm.
But to begin with, we go back to
chapter 1.
There we notice a quotation that actually has
to do with Judas Iscariot, you'll notice in
chapter 1 and verse 16 we didn't consider
this in our talk.
But here it is, the Apostle says, Men
and brethren, this scripture must needs have been
fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost by the mouth
of David spake before concerning Judas, which was
guide to them that took Jesus.
For he was numbered with us, and had
obtained part of this ministry.
Now this man purchased a field with the
reward of iniquity, and falling headlong he burst
asunder in the midst, and all his bowels
gushed out.
And it was known unto all the dwellers
of Jerusalem, insomuch that that field is called
in their proper tongue, aseldomah, which that is
to say the field of blood.
For it is written in the book of
the Psalms, Let his habitation be desolate, and
let no man dwell therein, and his bishopric
let another take.
Now a word of explanation is in order
at this point because very frequently we go
back to the Old Testament reference and we
don't find the wording is exactly like we
have here.
The reason for that is that many of
these quotations which we have in the New
Testament are taken from the Greek translation of
the Old Testament.
This Greek translation is referred to as the
Septuagint, and is sometimes represented in print by
the Roman numerals LXX, which of course is
Roman numerals for seventy.
And it is from this that that translation
takes its name, from seventy men or so
that made this translation some centuries before the
Christian era.
And evidently this was in use among people,
and so when references were made to scriptures,
frequently they referred to the Greek translation rather
than to the original Hebrew, which of course
had a broader meaning in many places.
I say this by way of explanation lest
anyone should think that, well, how can you
trust this because it isn't exactly as you
find it in Psalm 69 where this quotation
is taken.
This is the first one.
Then we turn over to chapter two, and
there we find in verses sixteen to twenty
-one another reference to the Old Testament, Acts
2 and verse sixteen.
But this is that, and it has been
noted by commentators that the Apostle does not
say this is the fulfillment.
He says this is that.
It's very evident that the scripture which he's
quoting here was not fulfilled in those days,
because you'll notice that it has to do
with all flesh, whereas all we see here
in chapter two of the book of Acts
is the Spirit of God coming down on
a very few people.
But nevertheless the Apostle identifies it with that
which is yet going to take place in
the day to come.
So he says here, Acts 2, 16, but
this is that which was spoken by the
prophet Joel, shall come to pass in the
last days, saith God, I will pour out
of my Spirit upon all flesh, and your
sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your
young men shall see visions, and your old
men shall dream dreams, and on my servants
and on my handmaidens I will pour out
in those days of my Spirit, and they
shall prophesy.
And I will show wonders in heaven above,
and signs in the earth beneath, and blood,
and fire, and vapor of smoke.
The sun shall be turned into darkness, the
moon into blood, before that great and notable
day of the Lord come.
And it shall come to pass that whosoever
shall call on the name of the Lord
shall be saved.
I might remark in connection with this quotation
that here we have an explanation, shall we
say, of the pouring out of the Spirit,
even though it is only partial as compared
with that which is yet going to take
place in the day to come.
But how wonderful to know that there will
be a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit
in these days of which the prophet Joel
spoke.
You know, a lot of people get the
idea that this is the age of the
Holy Spirit, and this is the only age
in which he does anything.
The fact of the matter is that the
Holy Spirit has been operative since the very
beginning.
He is the first person of the Holy
Trinity to be named by name in the
first chapter of the book of Genesis, where
we find the Spirit of God brooding over
that chaotic mass.
And then in chapter 6 we find him
again striving with men.
And so we could go along and point
out other references to the Holy Spirit which
we did on a previous occasion.
But here we find another ministry of the
Spirit of God, and how wonderful it is
to see that even in those dark days,
people who have never had an opportunity to
hear the gospel, who have not heard his
name nor seen his glory, are going to
have an opportunity to hear what the Bible
calls the gospel of the kingdom, and whosoever
shall call upon the name of the Lord
shall be saved.
And that prophecy has to do with that
particular time.
We believe it is true now, of course,
but its particular primary reference is to those
days in which Joel was prophesied.
Then in the same chapter we have another
reference, an Old Testament reference.
Chapter 2, and verse 25, For David speaketh
concerning him, that is, the Lord Jesus.
And I saw the Lord always before my
face, for he is on my right hand,
that I should not be moved.
Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue
was glad.
Moreover also my flesh shall rest in hope,
because thou wilt not leave my soul in
hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One
to see corruption.
Thou hast made known to me the ways
of life.
Thou shalt make me full of joy with
thy countenance.
Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto
you of the patriarch David, that he is
both dead and buried, and his sepulcher is
with us unto this day.
Therefore, being a prophet and knowing that God
had sworn with an oath to him that
of the fruit of his loins, according to
the flesh, he would raise up Christ to
sit on his throne, he seeing this before
spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his
soul was not left in hell, neither did
his flesh see corruption.
Here is a lengthy quotation from the sixteenth
psalm, one of the most wonderful and magnificent
of the messianic psalms in the Old Testament,
having to do particularly with the resurrection of
our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Then in the same chapter we have still
another reference to the Old Testament.
I continue reading at verse 32.
This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we
are all witnesses.
Therefore, being by the right hand of God
exalted, and having received of the Father the
promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed
forth this which ye now see and hear.
For David is not ascended into the heavens,
but he saith himself, The Lord said unto
my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand,
until I make thy foes thy footstool.
Another quotation, this time from Psalm 110.
So you can see that Peter is continually
giving us the foundations upon which he is
building everything that he has to say about
the Lord Jesus.
Now in chapter 3.
We have here a very comprehensive statement in
chapter 3.
No particular prophet is named here, but looking
at verse 17.
Chapter 3, verse 17.
And now, brethren, I know that through ignorance
ye did it, that is, crucified the Lord
of glory, and did also your rulers.
But those things which God before had showed
by the mouth of all his prophets, that
Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled.
So the prophets told about the sufferings of
Christ.
And what Christian is there tonight who has
not again and again, notice this, for example,
in such wonderful passages as Isaiah 53, which
has been referred to as the golden passion
of the Old Testament.
Such psalms as Psalm 22, which unmistakably applied
to the Messiah, opening with the very words
that he uttered upon the cross when he
said, My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?
And then, of course, in Psalm 69, from
which we had a quotation in chapter 1,
we get another one of those wonderful outlines
of the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And so I could go on.
I could go into the prophecy of Jeremiah,
go into the prophecy of Zechariah, but here
the Holy Spirit simply says, All the prophets
testified beforehand of the sufferings of Christ.
Then we come in that same chapter, chapter
3, and verse 22, For Moses truly said
unto the fathers, A prophet shall the Lord
your God raise up unto you of your
brethren, like unto me.
Him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever
he shall say unto you.
It shall come to pass that every soul
of which will not hear that prophet shall
be destroyed from among the people, yea, and
all the prophets from Samuel and those that
followed after, as many as have spoken, have
likewise foretold of these days.
And here we have Moses actually prophesying concerning
the Lord Jesus in the book of Deuteronomy,
and calling the Lord Jesus a prophet, like
unto himself.
You know, it's remarkable when you think of
it that so much of what we hear
about Moses in the New Testament stands out
in contrast to the ministry of our Lord,
yet here we have a similarity, a likeness,
a prophet like unto me.
Shall the Lord your God raise up.
Then in chapter 4, the passage which we
were considering last night, verse 11, This is
the stone which is set at naught of
you builders, which is become the head of
the corner, a quotation from Psalm 118.
Now this will give you some idea of
how this whole portion of the Word of
God is based upon one prophecy of Scripture
after another, and I would especially commend this
to my younger friends who are perhaps just
being introduced to Bible study.
I'm not pretending to teach those of you
who are older, but if any of you
here tonight have only recently begun to dig
into the Word of God for yourselves, I
trust that this will be a little hint
as to how you might go about it.
But now coming to the passage which we
read in chapter 4 and beginning at verses
23 and following, you notice that here they
are in the presence of God.
These men who a little while ago were
standing in the presence of their enemies, and
Peter being filled with the Holy Ghost, speaks
out boldly and tells these men the truth
right to their faces.
But now he is in the presence of
God.
And here he quotes from another one of
the Psalms, and this time from Psalm 2.
And inasmuch as we have been looking at
the various names of our Lord Jesus as
revealed to us in the opening chapters of
this book of the Acts, I would like
to go now for the rest of the
evening back to Psalm 2 to see what
the Holy Spirit has to tell us about
the various characters of our Lord Jesus.
The second Psalm.
You will notice that here these very words,
almost exactly as you have them in Acts
4, Why do the heathen rage, and the
people imagine a vain thing?
This has been translated, Why are the nations
in tumultuous agitation?
And you can see that this Psalm probably
had a fulfillment in the days of the
Psalmists, when the nations around little Israel were
in agitation against them, trying to swallow them
up, even as they are now.
And then we can see how this also
had a fulfillment in the days of our
Lord Jesus.
We get that in the fourth chapter of
the book of the Acts, from which we
have just been reading, that at the time
our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified, the Apostles
say, Then that second Psalm was having another
fulfillment.
But I am persuaded, beloved, that we are
living in days when this Psalm is due
for another fulfillment.
And I do not know of any passage
of scripture which more aptly describes the international
situation as you see it today.
International unrest.
Of course, if you read this archaic English,
Why do the heathen rage, you do not
get this idea.
But if you consult a translation, for example,
like that of Mr. Darby, which was made
a hundred years ago or more, he gives
you the idea, Why are the nations in
tumultuous agitation?
What is the matter with them?
What is the reason for all this international
unrest that we see?
And the peoples imagining a vain thing.
And the peoples here, I should explain that
the word in the original language refers to
peoples of a common origin, and how aptly
that describes both the Arabs and the Jews.
Yes, they are singled out here, the nations,
the Gentile nations in tumultuous agitation, but the
peoples imagining a vain thing.
Now, I am not going to speculate as
to how this might be applied in detail
tonight to what Israel may be thinking about
in her present possession of the land, nor
yet of what the Arab countries around her
would do to her if they could, but
merely to point out to you that the
Holy Spirit has given us a comprehensive statement
here concerning the unrest, the international unrest, in
which we live today.
Now, there have been many explanations of this.
Many will tell you that the reason for
all this international unrest is because, well, first
of all, there's the economic inequalities that we
see, the haves and the have-nots, and
they tell you this is it.
Others again have other reasons which they offer
for the international unrest, some going even into
the idea of philosophy and psychiatry and so
on.
But you know, the Bible simplifies this thing
very easily right here in this second psalm.
Here it is.
The kings of the earth set themselves, verse
2, and notice it's not the common people
it's referred to here.
This thing doesn't start at the bottom like
some revolutions, but this comes right down from
the top.
The kings of the earth set themselves, and
the rulers take counsel together against the Lord
and against his anointed.
What do they say?
We don't want any restraint from that quarter.
Let us break their bands of thunder and
cast away their cords from us.
That, my friends, is the reason for international
unrest.
And one doesn't have to be an expert
diplomat or a politician to know this.
Here it is in the book.
This is the reason for it, because men
no longer wish to be governed from above.
Let us break their bands of thunder.
We don't want to be restrained from there.
Neither do they want to be drawn by
the cords of love.
Let us cast away their cords from us.
But I just want to notice the name
which they give to the object of their
hatred.
You notice it says in verse 2, against
the Lord and against his anointed.
And that word anointed should have been printed
with a capital A.
That's none other than the Messiah.
We have three words in our English Bible
which are synonymous.
The word anointed, which is the Greek form,
or rather a translation of the Greek form,
Christos, and then Messiah.
These three words, anointed, Messiah, Christos, these three
mean the same thing.
And that's the one who's referred to here.
So the very first name we notice in
Psalm 2, given to our blessed Lord, is
the anointed of God.
And it's remarkable that there's only one other
man that I know of who was singled
out in this way, and that was a
Gentile king by the name of Cyrus, referred
to in the book of Isaiah and given
the title of the anointed.
But usually we find this title is connected
with one person only.
You even talk to the common man on
the street who doesn't know very much about
the Bible, and you mention the name of
Christ, and there's only one person that he
connects that name with.
That's the Lord Jesus, the anointed of God.
But then you'll notice in the, as we
read down in this psalm here, we get
another name of his.
He that sitteth in the heavens, verse 4,
shall laugh, the Lord shall have them in
derision.
Then shall he speak of them in his
wrath, and vex them in his sword as
pleasure.
And now in verse 6, another name.
Yet have I set my King upon my
holy hill of Zion.
And you don't need to spiritualize this text
and make it refer to something in heaven.
We believe that God is here speaking in
what we call the prophetic past, because he's
so sure of fulfilling it that he can
speak of it as if it's already done.
I believe that this text of Scripture was
literally fulfilled in a place called Zion, and
God says, I have set my King.
What a reply to those who refer to
Him merely as Jesus of Nazareth, the King
of the Jews.
God says, He's my King.
He brings out His royalty right here, my
King, and I have set Him upon my
holy hill of Zion.
Yes, it's as good as done.
I give you another sample of how God
speaks in the prophetic past.
This was a rather embarrassing situation for me
as a young Christian.
I was about seventeen years of age at
the time, and I was taking my vacation
in Nova Scotia on a farm very near
to the scene of Evangeline's, Longfellow's Evangeline.
It was a rainy day, and we were
kept indoors, couldn't work on the farm very
much in the rain.
As I looked out of the window, I
saw a man coming up the lane with
a white cane, moving it from side to
side, which of course indicated he was a
blind man.
He had a little black case in his
hand, and I went right to my hostess,
Mrs. Stewart, and I said, There's a man
coming up the lane.
He must be blind.
He's wearing a white cane.
Oh, yes, she said, I know who that
is.
Has he got a little black case in
it?
Yes, I said, he has.
Oh, she said, that's Diamond the Jew.
Diamond the Jew.
I said, what does he do?
Well, she said, he sells eyeglasses.
And this struck me funny, you know, a
blind man selling eyeglasses.
Well, she said, he can't use them himself,
but he sells them to other people.
He had a whole box full of them.
She says, I've got nothing on the stove
today but some pork, and I can't give
this dear man pork.
I know he doesn't eat it, neither does
your speaker eat fresh pork.
I have a kosher stomach when it comes
to that.
I can eat the cured meat all right,
but let's forget about that.
Let's focus our attention on this Jew coming
up the lane.
And my hostess said to me, You entertain
him in the parlor.
You remember that word?
That was a good old word, wasn't it?
You entertain him in the parlor till I
get something else cooked for him.
So considerate was she of this dear old
Jew.
But now it was up to me, a
seventeen-year-old boy, green as grass, shall
I say, with regard to dealing with men
like this, to entertain him.
He sat down and stroked his beard and
sat there with his blanks there, you know.
And I said to him, Diamond, would you
like me to read to you while we
wait for dinner?
Yes, I would like that very much.
All right.
So I said, I'm going to read to
you out of your own scriptures.
All right.
So I read the fifty-third chapter of
Isaiah, and I came down to that verse.
He was wounded for us.
He was bruised for our iniquities.
The chastisement of our peace was upon him.
I said, Diamond, do you know to whom
that refers?
There he said, Who can tell?
Well, I said, We have in our part
of the Bible, the New Testament, we have
a verse which refers to this, to the
Lord Jesus Christ.
Ha, I said, yes, but that was spoken
seven hundred years before he came.
Well, you can imagine how red my face
was.
A man facing me with a text in
the past tense, he was wounded for our
iniquities, bruised for our iniquities, wounded for our
transgressions, and so on.
All in the past tense.
I didn't know then that we don't really
have tense in Hebrew.
This is decided by the context.
But that's something for the classroom.
I didn't know just what to say, but
I sent up a silent prayer, Lord, help
me now.
Answer this man.
I said, Diamond, do you believe that God
knows everything ahead of time?
Oh, yes.
Yes, he said.
We say Elohim.
He is omniscient.
Good.
I said, then he knew what was going
to happen seven hundred years later.
He wasn't so ready to say yes to
that.
But it was true, wasn't it?
And God could speak of it seven hundred
years before, as if it was already, as
the French would say, fait accompli.
It was an accomplished fact.
So in the same way, in this psalm
tonight, I have set my King upon my
holy hill of Zion, it's as good as
if it were done.
And oh, how we long for the day
when we're going to see our blessed Lord
seated there on his throne.
Seated there by God the Father.
But now we let the King speak for
himself.
You notice here it says here in verse
seven of our psalm, Psalm 2 verse seven,
he says, I will declare the decree the
Lord has set unto me, thou art my
son.
Anointed King, Son.
Yes.
And you and I have been looking at
some of those passages, haven't we?
We've been referring to them in the Gospels.
How the Lord, in approving his Son, opened
the heavens over him at his baptism and
said, This is my beloved Son.
Hear ye him.
Again in the time of his transfiguration.
This is my beloved Son.
Hear him.
And then in the fifth chapter of the
Hebrews, we find that this was actually a
call to the priesthood.
Because when he's brought into the priesthood, it
was by the one who said unto him,
Thou art my son.
God recognizing him as such.
Yes.
That's the third name we have here.
And then we move on to verse eight.
Ask of me, and I shall give thee
the heathen for thine inheritance and the uttermost
parts of the earth for thy possession.
You know, friends, if he's the Son, he's
also the heir.
It's true the name heir isn't found in
this eighth verse, but the idea is there,
you see.
Very simple, isn't it?
Incidentally, let me say this in connection with
this eighth verse.
I often hear it quoted and claimed in
missionary meetings.
The promise was never made to you and
me.
This promise was made to one person to
whom God says, Ask of me, and I
shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance
and the uttermost parts of the earth for
thy possession.
How easily the Lord Jesus might have referred
to this when Satan spread all the kingdoms
of the world before him in a moment
of time, as you know he did on
the Mount of Temptation.
Sometimes we wonder how this was done in
the days when there was no television and
so on.
How could Satan present to the Lord Jesus
Christ all the kingdoms of the world in
a moment of time?
It seems to be a physical impossibility.
Some have tried to get around the difficulty
by saying, Well, yes, he was right there
at the junction of three great continents and
the known world, and it was easy enough
to see parts of everything, and therefore the
part must do duty for the whole.
Has it ever occurred to you that this
may have been a summit conference of the
princes of the various nations of the world?
We have been referring to some of them.
In the tenth chapter of the book of
Daniel, for example, we have the prince of
Persia, a superhuman being, the prince of Grisha,
a superhuman being, Michael, your prince, who is
undoubtedly a superhuman being, and these are the
princes.
And if Satan wanted to call together a
summit conference there as he could have, bringing
together all the representatives of these kingdoms, and
the scripture says he showed him all the
kingdoms of the world and the glory of
them.
How easily our Lord could have said, to
Satan, and where is the glory, pray tell?
The glory of Babylon had passed.
The glory of Assyria had passed.
The glory of Egypt had passed.
Yes, the glory of these great nations had
already passed, and the nation which was in
power at the time, the Roman Empire, was
on the point of going to pieces as
well.
But let us leave the statement stand.
The Lord Jesus never invoked this promise.
He never said, all I have to do
is ask and I'll get it.
Why didn't he?
Because in the temptation he was taking the
place of a man, and he was not
using any other means except those which you
and I can use.
Therefore, he simply says to Satan, it is
written, thou shalt worship the Lord thy God,
and him only shalt thou serve.
And you look at the answers which our
Lord gives to Satan in that wonderful temptation
scene.
In every case he uses only that which
you and I can use.
Man shall not live by better law.
Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and
him only shalt thou serve.
But he is the heir, and he is
so spoken of in the first chapter of
the epistle of the Hebrews, isn't he?
Yes, he's the heir of all things.
But if he's the heir, he's also the
judge.
Look at this, please, in verse 9 of
your psalm.
Thou shalt break them in pieces, thou shalt
break them with a rod of iron, thou
shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's
vessel.
That doesn't sound like a missionary text, does
it?
And yet it fits perfectly with the eighth
verse.
This is what he's going to do as
the judge.
A lot of people get the notion, you
know, that the millennium is going to be
a sort of a lackadaisical time when everybody's
going to do pretty much as he pleases,
and nothing is further from the truth.
This is going to be a time of
the despotic rule of the Lord.
He's going to rule with despotic power, and
I use the term advisedly because in the
very passage of Scripture which we read to
open with this evening, when they said, Lord,
thou art God, they used the word despot.
Despot.
Thou art God.
Despotic power.
He's going to come down in judgment upon
us.
See how these various things then are brought
together.
The anointed, the king, the son, the heir,
the judge.
Is that all?
No, we have a little bit more here.
Verse 10 of our psalm, Be wise now,
therefore, O ye kings, be instructed, ye judges
of the earth.
Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with
trembling.
Kiss the son.
Now you say, we had that up in
verse 7.
Yes, you do in English, but not in
Hebrew.
It still happens we have two words for
son in the original language.
Up in verse 7, it's the word B
-E-N, Ben, which you find as a
prefix in names like Benjamin, Ben-Hadad, and
so on.
The plural is sometimes seen in the gate,
over the gate of a Jewish cemetery, B
'nei B'rith, the sons of the covenant.
But down here in verse 12, it's the
word Bar, B-A-R.
It also means son.
But why did the Holy Spirit here use
the word Bar instead of Ben?
You remember when they rejected the Lord Jesus?
What did they say?
Not this man, but Bar.
Bar-Abbas means the son of the Father.
That was the devil's counterfeit.
And now the Holy Spirit is bringing this
word home to their consciences.
And he uses the very word which they
used when they said, not this man, but
Bar-Abbas.
Now he says, come and kiss the Bar.
Which, of course, is the Old Testament way
of saying what St. Paul says in 2
Corinthians 5, to be reconciled to God.
This is it.
It's the kiss of reconciliation.
How marvelous is it that a psalm which
opens up with this international unrest and universal
hatred of the Lord, closes with this beautiful
invitation to come and be reconciled to the
very one that they nailed to the cross.
And then this concluding word, blessed are all
they that put their trust in him, having
warned them that this offer will not go
on without, go on forever.
This is an offer which may be terminated
tonight, when his wrath is kindled but a
little.
But blessed are all they that put their
trust in him.
Friends, I trust that this little outline of
names of our blessed Lord will bring before
you pictures as you read the word of
God for yourselves.
I trust that as you, whenever you read
the second psalm again, the thing that's going
to loom up in your thinking as you
go from verse to verse is this blessed
person of whom it is said in the
book of Revelation, the testimony of Jesus is
the spirit of prophecy.
And dear friends, in this little series which
we conclude this evening, for we'll be doing
something else next week, God willing, I just
wanted to sum things up, to have leave
in your minds and your thoughts the blessed
person of the Son of God himself.
And how sweet to think that in these
closing words, the last thing we hear is
an invitation from God himself to be acquainted
with this one.
And so we say in the language of
the book of Job, acquaint now thyself with
him and be at peace.
In closing, I couldn't think of anything better
to sing than those words of Bernard of
Clairvaux, hymn number 327.
Bernard of Clairvaux was a Roman Catholic, and
he certainly did not love the Protestants, but
he loved the Lord Jesus.
And he wrote this lovely hymn, Jesus, the
very thought of thee with sweetness fills my
breast, but sweeter far thy face to see,
and in thy presence rest.
Number 327.
As we bow
here in thy holy presence, O we thank
thee for these varied.
We feel like saying join all the names
of power and glory.
All are too mean to set thee forth,
Lord Jesus.
But O how wonderful to know thee tonight
as our personal Savior.
To know that we have one in heaven
who loves us with an everlasting love, and
whoever liveth to make intercession for us.
And who is coming again to receive us
unto himself, that where he is, there we
may be also.
O Lord Jesus, we thank thee for this.
O our hearts are full tonight, full to
overflowing, Lord Jesus, as we think of thy
love and thy grace.
And we just long to see thee face
to face.
What a moment is in store for us,
Lord, when we will see that face which
was once marred more than any man's.
To see that brow upon which they planted
a crown of thorns, wearing heaven's royal diadem.
Precious Lord, we thank thee that we're going
to be with thee then.
And now, Lord, send us forth here with
these thoughts of thyself.
O grant, Lord, that the very fact that
we've been dwelling on this may somehow have
lifted our weary souls above the scenes of
which we move, and give to us by
way of anticipation the days of heaven on
earth.
We thank thee again for these hours of
fellowship.
We thank thee for the way in which
thou hast moved hearts to come together from
night to night.
And now as we go to our respective
abodes, we pray for thy blessing upon us.
May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
thy love our Father, and the comfort of
thy Holy Spirit abide with us till Jesus
comes and forever.
Amen.