“The Summons to God’s Covenant People” – Psalm 50

Sermons – Harvest Community Church (PCA)

Hear now the word of the Lord from Psalm 50. The Mighty One, God the Lord, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. 2 Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth. 3 Our God comes; he does not keep silence; before him is a devouring fire, around him a mighty tempest. 4 He calls to the heavens above and to the earth, that he may judge his people: 5 “Gather to me my faithful ones, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!” 6 The heavens declare his righteousness, for God himself is judge! Selah 7 “Hear, O my people, and I will speak; O Israel, I will testify against you. I am God, your God. 8 Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you; your burnt offerings are continually before me. 9 I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your folds. 10 For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. 11 I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine. 12 “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine. 13 Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? 14 Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High, 15 and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.” 16 But to the wicked God says: “What right have you to recite my statutes or take my covenant on your lips? 17 For you hate discipline, and you cast my words behind you. 18 If you see a thief, you are pleased with him, and you keep company with adulterers. 19 “You give your mouth free rein for evil, and your tongue frames deceit. 20 You sit and speak against your brother; you slander your own mother's son. 21 These things you have done, and I have been silent; you thought that I was one like yourself. But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you. 22 “Mark this, then, you who forget God, lest I tear you apart, and there be none to deliver! 23 The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me; to one who orders his way rightly I will show the salvation of God!” Psalm 50, ESV The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. When I was in high school, I participated as an actor in one play. I had a lot of fun doing it. I learned a lot about what goes into putting on a theater production. One of the things that really struck me that was surprising was how much is happening not just on the stage, but backstage. Now, I had been to a number of plays before that and I had seen a lot of plays in the audience. But all that I had ever seen during those performances was what was happening in front stage, the performances of the actors as they were playing out, the story of the play itself. What I was never able to see, because it was always behind the veil, behind a curtain, in the backstage, what I was never able to see was how much of a drama there was going on backstage as well as in the front stage. You had a backstage crew that was always busy making sure the actors had the right props. You saw actors going back and forth behind the curtains to get to the next spot for the entry. At the right moment of the play, sometimes you saw heated debates happening that was entirely hidden from the audience. All of that backstage drama, though, was tightly integrated and meant to be coordinated with the front stage drama. You can't have a good front stage drama where the play goes off like it's supposed to without the coordination with the backstage. Now what the Bible is doing in a lot of places is to help us. We live in a life which is something like a front stage drama where we see things that are going on, the story unfolding around us. But very rarely can we see what's going on in the backstage, in the spiritual and heavenly realms. Unless and until the Bible gives us God's word to help us pull back the curtain to see what the eyes of faith, what's really happening spiritually around us. One of the clearest places we see this is in the book of Job. Job has this front stage drama where he knows that he's going through great suffering in his life, but he doesn't know why. But we, as we read the book of Job in the Bible, are given an ability to pull back the curtain and see what's happening in the backstage and the heavenly and spiritual realms where we are taken directly into the throne room of Almighty God to see that Satan has made an entrance. The great accuser of the brethren is bringing an accusation, saying that if you push Job hard enough, he will curse you. God, hearing this accusation and knowing full well the faithfulness of his servant Job, permits Satan to test Job to a certain degree and no further. Job, as the Lord says, never does curse the Lord. But all of this happens without Job's knowledge. It's front stage drama, but he doesn't know about this backstage drama. We alone are given this privilege as we read in the Bible. But still we don't always know what's happening in our lives. Very often, the front stage drama takes place without any realization of what's happening backstage. One of the most important places where we see this front stage, backstage coordination is whenever we gather for worship. Every time we gather for worship, there's a great drama unfolding in our midst now. I want to be very clear, understand, this is not a stage where the performance is happening for you and audience. All of us together are brought and are playing our part and our role in this great drama unfolding in the worship of our God. But as a pastor, very often up through the last three months, I spent most of my time in the weeks preparing for that each Sunday. Where I would be steeped in the scriptures and I'd be in prayer, wrestling with God about what the Scriptures teach so that God could begin by illuminating His Word to expose the sin in my heart. So that I could repent for my sin before I tried to preach this word of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to other people. So as I'm working that through the week and preparing to preach when I come on Sunday, I always felt keenly aware of this drama. Not only what was happening in our midst and the external things that we're doing here, but spiritually. I'd been praying about this spiritual drama the whole week. One of the things that I reflected on while I was on sabbatical and I was neither at my own church or leading the worship in any sense or preaching. I just came into churches that I didn't know week by week. As I was reminded how hard of a perspective that is to really project, to really draw people into. One of the burdens that developed in my heart through this process, and I hope that will be a blessing for the church, is a realization I want to do a better job of being absolutely crystal clear what we are doing when we gather together. So this morning, we're doing a bit of an excursion around Matthew. We'll be back in Matthew, Lord Willing, next week. But to stop this morning and look at Psalm 50. One of the clearest passages that pulls back the curtain to the backstage drama that takes place every time we worship. As Pastor Andrew mentioned this morning. If we're only looking at the front stage drama, what we are doing here, sometimes we can begin to think that we have gathered together of ourselves to talk about God, to speak amongst ourselves about God. But what the Bible shows us in this and other passages is that we're not here to talk about God amongst ourselves. This isn't like a memorial service where someone has been in our midst and we've loved this person and they have died and we gather together to talk about that person, where that person only lives in a certain sense, in our memories. That's not what we're doing when we talk about God. Rather, when we gather in worship, we have not gathered to talk about God. God has gathered us to speak to us. God is the one who summons. God is the one who speaks by His Word and we speak back to him in this great dialogue of worship. What Psalm 50 particularly points us to is the reality that when God summons us into His presence, God judges His people by his word. That's a big idea this morning that In worship God judges his people.. Now, as we work our way through Psalm 50, three parts to our sermon this morning. 1. The Lord Call His People 2. The Lord Convicts His People 3. The Lord Comforts His People. The Lord Calls His People So number one, the Lord calls his people. This Psalm begins with a royal introduction. At very beginning of this, we have three titles and names of God the Mighty One, there's one title. God, there's another title. The Lord or Yahweh, that's His covenant name. Now, this is something that's fitting for the introduction of a king. You may know that whenever a sovereign is introduced, this isn't just an introduction of who this person is. Very often a king or a queen is introduced by all of their titles and attributes. For example, when we talk about Queen Elizabeth, she is not just Queen Elizabeth the Second. Her official title is Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom, of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and of Her Other Realms and Territories, Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith. Did you hear all those titles and attributes? That's how you introduce a king or a queen of this world. But here we have God introduced, The Mighty One, God the Lord. It's a royal introduction to let us know that we are dealing with a great king. What does this king do? He speaks and he summons the earth. This king issues his word and his word goes out to summon the earth from the rising of its sun to its setting. To gather into his presence out, of Zion the perfection of beauty God shines forth. In the Old Testament Zion was the name of a literal mountain, the mountain on which Jerusalem was seated. Jerusalem was the capital city of Israel. It was where the king of Israel reigned. It was also the place where God had set his name, where the temple was. Where all of Israel, wherever they were living, had to gather themselves three times. Every male in Israel had to gather to worship before the Lord in Zion. This is a description of God gathering His covenant people. In the New Testament, in Hebrews chapter 12, we are told that no longer when we deal with Zion are we dealing with a mountain, a physical place in the Middle East. We are dealing now with the gathered people of God, the church in Hebrews Chapter 12:22-24. But God's word goes out to then to the whole earth to summon into his gathered collective people into the church, just like we are doing today. This call goes out, of course, to every place, to every church. Now reading verse three that, "Our God comes, the Mighty King comes, and he does not keep silence." Now, two things I want to point out there. First is the language of our God. This is not a general description of some distant God out there. We're going to have to pay attention to all of the possessive pronouns. Our, mine, his, to see who belongs to whom. What we are seeing is God is speaking to His people. Our God comes. And the second thing we need to notice from this first line in verse three is that it is not keep silence. I want you to remember that because we're going to come back later to see where God had kept silence up to this point. The same word is used a little bit later when God comes, he does not keep silence before him as a devouring fire around him, a mighty tempest. This is God coming in judgment. The language of a fire and a storm is an echo of Sinai. When God made that covenant with his people, mediated by his servant Moses, God brought His people to another mountain, Mount Sinai, and God met with his people by descending in a cloud, a thick cloud of darkness. Where they could see flames of fire shooting forth in lightning, where they could hear thunder. Where they were terrified to approach God, they said to Moses, you go up, we are terrified. We will die if we go up that mountain. So Moses goes up alone into the presence of God to mediate the covenant with His people. Now God is coming into the assembly of his entire people. You can't escape. God comes and He does not keep silence. Verse four, "He calls to the heavens above and to the earth that he may judge his people." His people, notice the possessive pronouns. And so he says, gather to me, my faithful ones who made a covenant with me by sacrifice. The heavens declares righteousness for God himself is judge. What we are seeing here is God is gathering his people. He is gathering His covenant people, people with whom He has a unique relationship. He sends his word out to the whole earth, but he's gathering his covenant people to himself. And when, as we are going to see, he's addressing both the righteous and the wicked within this covenant. Within this covenant and something of a mixed multitude, God is judging the people to see where they stand in the terms of this covenant before him. Now, remember, this is pulling back the curtain. What we are seeing here is not a distant message to an ancient people. What we are seeing here is God addressing us today. As we gather on this Lord day in the spiritual Mount Zion of God's gathered, collected people of his church. But this is pulling back the curtain specifically to the backstage spiritual and heavenly drama of what unfolds each time we gather together for our front stage drama. What we're doing here is not just us here, it is God coming to meet his people. So let me borrow a little bit more from the image of the theater to try to bring us a little bit deeper into what happens when we gather to worship. One of the other things I learned is how important a particular day or date is in the schedule when you're preparing to put together a play. It's marked on the calendars from the beginning, really everything you were doing as you were putting together a play and all the rehearsals and everything is leading up to one or maybe two or three days where you have a dress rehearsal or the dress rehearsals. Now, like it sounds, you actually put on the full costume and that day usually just show up and wear whatever you're wearing to rehearse. But on the dress rehearsal day, you wear your costume, whatever you're supposed to wear. They want the conditions to be as much like the conditions of a live play as possible. What's happening when you gather for a dress rehearsal is that it very much, in a real sense is a true performance. But what's different is it's not a final performance. Because it's real in every sense, you go directly through it. You don't stop and break out for a rehearsal of one scene, you don't have someone repeat their lines. You go as directly through the process as possible as you can because it is a very real performance that will be very fiercely and strictly judged. But it's not a final performance where there has been an audience to see whatever happened on that day. Sometimes some really big problems come up in the midst of the dress rehearsal. It is a real performance, but it's not a final performance in the sense that the whole purpose of having a dress rehearsal is to give the actors and the backstage crew time to fix whatever problems there are before the final performance day. Whenever we gather for worship. This is a dress rehearsal, not as though we're all wearing the costumes that we're going to be wearing in heaven. But this is a true time where this is happening, where God is coming in our midst to judge his people. But it's not the final time that will happen. The day of the Lord is coming, when God will come, when he will no longer remain silent. He's not silent today, but where he will not be in any sense silent. No ear will be able to close itself from hearing his judgment word. Where all the nations of the Earth will be gathered before the judgment seat of the Lamb, to whom has been entrusted all authority in heaven and on earth. The books will be opened. And that day will be both a real judgment and a final judgment. But today, God gives us opportunity to repent. Opportunity to look to the Lord Jesus. God judges us, not in a final sense. He judges us so that he can prompt us to repent from our sins and look again to salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. When we gather together as God's covenant people, we are entering into a covenant renewal ceremony. Gather to be my faithful ones, God says, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice. God is summoning us to judge us, He is not silent. We have heard God speak this morning already, as Andrew read to us, addressed us not with his voice, but with the voice of God speaking through the word, he reminded us that we don't gather just because or of our own initiative. We gather because God calls, and here we are who have come. We've been summoned and we have come. Then God judged us by his law. We read from the Word of God, and we were invited to respond in confession. God speaks, we speak. He called us. We praised him. He convicted of our sin, we confessed. And so on back and forth. This dialogue of worship. Again, this is not a distant message to an ancient people. God is speaking to us today. This is a real judgment, but it is not the final judgment. The Lord Convicts His People So what does God say to us? Well, this brings us to the second point where the Lord convicts his people. What we are seeing here is God brings essentially three charges against his people. And looking verse seven, once again, the possessive pronouns "Hear, oh, my people and I will speak, oh, Israel, I will testify against you, I am God your God." God calls His people and testifies against them. He's bring a charge, bring a legal case according to the terms of the covenant that bound them together. So what charges is God bringing against his people? The first charge we see in verses eight through 13. The first charge has to do with the charges of the false worship of legalism. God says, look, it's not that you have failed to dot an i or to cross a t of the external obligations that were required of you. You have brought every sacrifice. You have brought it on time. I have nothing to say against you, then. But that's not the problem. What's the problem, God says, is that you seem to have thought that I needed those sacrifices from you. You seem to have thought that I ate the flesh of bulls and I drank the blood of goats, and I would go hungry unless you brought those sacrifices. So that if you brought them, you thought that your duty was discharge, that I was full and happy and satisfied. I am not a God like that. In the ancient world there was a very common thought along these lines that the whole reason for sacrifices was to feed the gods. In fact, in many of the ancient thinking about how the world was created, most people thought that the human beings were created by the gods in order to take over the menial task of gathering together sacrificial animals. We were created to serve in the kitchens of the gods to make sure that they were always properly fed. That's the whole purpose of being a human being, why we were created. But God sets that aside and says, I'm not a god like that. Even if I was hungry, I wouldn't tell you because all the cattle and a thousand hills belong to me. I own every animal. You don't give me something I can't provide for myself and I don't even need it. So the point has never been that I needed these animals that you were offering a sacrifice. The point is that I wanted you God says. This is where legalism creeps up in our hearts. We think that so long as we are doing the external things, so long as we are going through the motions, so long as that we are here, we think we've got us satisfied. I'm sure the Harvest Session sends the attendance sheets directly to God and God is using those and I will have a good attendance on the last day and I will be fine. God says, I don't rebuke you for that, I just don't care about that for its own sake. God wants you here, but God wants you here. He wants your heart and your soul and your mind and your strength to turn to him in worship. He wants all of you, not just your external body. This is what legalism does. Legalism looks for loopholes. We think, well, so long as I have dotted the I's and cross the T's, I am fine. But God says that the external is easy, I don't want it. It's the internal that is hard, even impossible for you to do apart from the work of the Holy Spirit in you. God first charges his people with the charge of false worship of legalism. The second charge is the inverse and versus 14 to 15 that God's people have failed to offer him true worship. True worship with which God summarizes as praise and prayer. Look at verse 14. Here's what God instructs them to do, "Instead, offer to God a sacrifice of Thanksgiving and perform your vows to the Most High." Now, it isn't that God is saying, well, you've given me your bulls and your goats, but I really want this different kind of animal sacrifice. You haven't given me your lambs or your sparrows or your grains or your drink offerings. He's not saying that. It's not that they haven't physically brought him something that he needs. He's saying you haven't brought me a spirit of praise. You haven't responded to me from your soul for the salvation I have given to you. That's what I want from you, to respond with a kind of thanksgiving that gives me glory in heaven for what I have done for you on Earth. Then in verse 15, God says, I don't only want your praise, I also want your prayers. Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver you and you shall glorify me. He says, I don't want you to look around, I don't want you to look to the foreign nations to come to your aid. I don't want you to lean upon your own military strength. I don't want you to lean upon your own wisdom. As we talked about this morning in our call to confession not to lean on our own wisdom. God says, I want you to call upon me in the day of trouble. God wants our prayer and our praise and really everything we do in worship is it one of those ends of the spectrum. To call upon God for what we need, especially for the salvation that we can only have through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and then to praise God that He has accomplished everything we needed and given the far more abundant than we could think or imagine. Everything falls into one of these categories, and John Calvin points out in his commentary, it's actually interesting that God mentions praise first. You'd think the God would say pray first, and then after I respond to you, then you can give thanks for that. But what John Calvin says is, if you think about it, it makes absolute sense. God has already met their needs. God has already provided salvation. There are already a thousand ways to give God thanksgiving even before they show up at worship. So this is why when we come into worship and God summons us, our first response is to praise God for His glory in His person and for everything He has done for us to provide for us in creation. Praise and prayer is what God wants, and God charges people for failure to offer this true worship. The third charge is in verses 16 through 20. What God says then is that first of all, you've offered false worship of legalism. Second, as a consequence of that, you haven't offered the true worship, the worship of your heart, soul, mind and strength engaged with me. But the third thing is God charges his people with something that comes out of legalism. Legalism, God says leads to lose living. Legalism looks for loopholes, that's what it does, but legalism also leads somewhere. It leads to lose living. Once we are content to just stiff arm God, to keep Him at arm's length, to offer our bodies, but not really our hearts and our souls. Well, our hearts and souls start to drift to somewhere else. And we see that God's people are filled and we don't know who all this addresses, but God addresses the wicked in the midst. Those who have hardened in their hearts against God and their lives are headed in an entirely different trajectory because it. He says, "What right have you to recite my statutes or take my covenant on your lips? For you hate discipline and you cast my words behind you. If you see a thief, you are pleased with him and you keep company with adulterers. If you give your mouth free rein for evil and your tongue frames deceit, you sit and speak against your own brother. You slander your own mother's son." What these people have failed to realize is that our hearts are worship vacuums. Our hearts have this God shaped hole. And if when we gather in worship, we are not finding our joy and our satisfaction in the infinite, eternal Almighty God. Then we will certainly look for something else, something that will not be able to satisfy us, but because our souls will crave it, we will go after it nonetheless, in place of God. And that's what's happening here. Whatever these people are seeking, it leads them into all manner of wickedness and God repudiates them, rebukes them because of the way their legalism has led to lose living. The most terrifying part of this section is in verse 21. God says, "These things you have done and I have been silent." Now remember the beginning, when God comes, he does not keep silence. Here is where we read that God had previously, up to this point, seemed silent. You know, one of the things that I think crops up in our hearts sometimes is the sense that if God really wanted me not to do this, I'm sure he'd stop me in some way. Then maybe we step our toes over that line and we say, boy, no lightning fell from heaven, maybe this isn't really that bad. But that's not the way the Bible looks at this. The Bible is giving us these warnings. In Romans 2:4, the Apostle Paul warns you and says, haven't you heard? Don't you know why God is tolerant with you? He says, "Do you presume on the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?" But instead of repenting, we presume upon that kindness, we think that because God is silent, because He hasn't come in a tempest and in fire, that well, it must not be that big of a deal. Instead, the Bible says we are storing up wrath for ourselves for the day of God's righteous judgment. Notice here, God says all these things you have done, and I have been silent. Well, he has, but he also hasn't been silent. God has spoken. God speaks to us by His Word. We don't need to say God is murder okay in this moment. Well, haven't heard from him, I guess I can go ahead and do it. God has told us that murder is wrong. God has told us about what is right and what is wrong. Just because God doesn't come in some furious storm yet doesn't mean that it's okay. Again when we are gathered in this front stage drama of worship, part of what is happening in the scriptures that are being read in the way that we are being led to confession is we are being reconciled to the God who is in the backstage. One day God will come into the front stage drama. One day there will be a final judgment. But God is rebuking us to lead us to repentance. He doesn't want our formalistic, legalistic, external worship. He wants you. Our whole soul is to seek him in prayer and to acknowledge him in praise. Again, this is not a distant message to an ancient people. We haven't gathered together to talk about God. God has summoned us to speak to us so that we might repent. The Lord Comforts His People That's what the last section is about, about the necessity of repentance. This is where the Lord comforts his people. Now, it doesn't sound comforting at the beginning, but think about what God is doing as he says this in verse 22. He says, "Mark this, then you who forget God lest (in order that this might not happen), lest I tear you apart and there be none to deliver." Again, this is a true judgment, but this is not the final judgment. That day will come when God comes in fury and fire and wrath and will judge the wicked. There will be no way to turn back his judgment. He will tear apart and there will be none to deliver. Now when God comes into this dress rehearsal of that day of the Lord. God says, mark this, listen to this, heed this. Turn from your sins, lest that day come and you'll be on the wrong side of my judgment. The Lord then, who has been speaking this word of judgment. We start with the confession of our sin and our liturgy. But then that brings us to the rest of what the Bible offers, the hope that we have. We are not just left cowering under fear. God himself gives us confidence to enter into His presence in the holy places. And he does this through his son, Jesus Christ. And here's what the Psalmist says in verse 23, speaking prophetically, the words of God, "The one who offers thanksgiving as a sacrifice glorifies me." Again, with thanksgiving, it's not that God wants us to offer the right offering animals in those days, maybe a monetary gift in these days. What God is saying is, I want your heart to be brimming and overflowing with thankfulness. That is the kind of heart that has put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Who recognizes that what I could never have done for myself, God did for me through Jesus. And this is to come into His presence and to thank him and glorify Him. That God's own son was crucified in my place. Took the brunt of the judgment of God's fire and tempest and wrath that I had incurred because of my guilt. To the one who orders his way rightly, I will show the salvation of God. Now, this doesn't mean that God is calling us to do enough good things so that God will then accept us. Remember the Gospel promise of Jesus, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me." Jesus says that he is the one to whom we must go and whom we must put our faith to order our ways rightly. We don't order our way rightly, in order to come to Jesus. Jesus has come down out of heaven to us so that He might be the one in whom our ways are put back together. The Lord comforts His people in this last word as He points us to the salvation of God held out in Jesus Christ. Well, let's bring this together now to sum all of this up of what we have seen in Psalm 50. Again, what this psalm is doing is standing as an enduring witness to what's happening behind the scenes whenever we gather for worship. We all have seen you come in here once, you know what happens. We know what happens in the front stage drama of our worship, but this is pulling back the curtain to give us a glimpse into the backstage all that is happening in the great spiritual and heavenly drama. When we gather to worship, again, it's not because we have come together to talk about someone who is absent. It's that God has summoned us, called us, and he calls us to judge his people. God speaks by His word to convict us of our sins, and especially God judges us of the legalism that is all too easy when we come into this place. I know I have to stand at the right time, sit at the right time, bow my head, fold my hands in prayer, sing a few songs. I have to appear to be attentive when the preacher is preaching. I know that if I can just gut it through that, then I'm done. And God says, I don't want that. I want you. God may seem silent. He's not here in wrath and tempest and fire today, but he speaks clearly in this dress rehearsal that we have before the final day of judgment. Again, what then does it mean that God has called us to speak to us? We see in this passage that God speaks to us first of all, corporately. That means as a people, as a body, corporately, God calls us together as a people in public. He says, gather to me, my faithful ones. Furthermore, God speaks to us covenantal, not only corporately, but covenantal. "Gather to be my faithful ones who made a covenant with me by sacrifice", verse five. But God calls us corporately in covenant because He's invoking the legal terms of that covenant in order to convict us of our sin, "I will testify against you." But he does this not just to bury us in shame. He does this toward our conversion, "Lest I tear you apart and there be none to deliver." Because ultimately, when God speak to us, even in his judgment today, there is great compassion. Turn be saved by the Lord Jesus Christ. Which means that this morning we have two pathways. There are two paths that we can take away from here. The first is to carry on the pathway of legalism. To seek security in simply going through the motions. God says not for your sacrifices, do I rebuke you. Not for your attention. Not for your attendance. Not for your appearance do I rebuke you. Not for your good works, not for your reputation, not for whatever ethical ideals you think you have that make you a good person. I don't judge you for those things. You stand very well in those things and I don't care about them. I want you God says. Legalism looks for loopholes. It says, As long as I've dotted I's and cross T's, I'll be safe. But God wants you. Because if you judge your heart this morning, you may realize that legalism in worship has led you astray into loose living. If so today's the day to turn, today is the day to repent. Today is the day to find the other pathway of faith, where we are not seeking security and external actions that we perform for God as though He found them acceptable. God calls those filthy rags. But rather to seek security in Jesus Christ alone. As God speaks to you, He doesn't call you to formalism, but neither does he call you to pile up ever more works for you to earn your salvation. And he certainly doesn't call you to take his silence as though it were his tolerance. Rather God calls you to call upon Christ. Again, this is a real judgment. Understand that when we come under the judgment of God, this is the day of trouble. God's wrath comes down heavy upon us, even if it is not in a final sense. And so in the midst of the day of trouble, God calls you to call upon Him in the day of your trouble to look to Christ. Christ who loved you with an everlasting love that He had in his heart for you from before the first brick of the foundation of the earth was laid at creation. Christ, who loved you so much that He took upon himself a human nature, veiling the glory of his godhood to take the form of a servant. Christ who served you, who suffered for you, and who sorrowed throughout his whole life for the sake of your salvation. Christ was passed already through the consuming fire of God's judgment for you. The flaming sword set outside the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve were cast out, Jesus Christ has passed under that sword for you. So look to Christ who was crucified, who died and was buried for your sins in accordance with the Scriptures. And on the third day, in accordance from the Scriptures, he was raised from the dead in vindication of his righteousness and for your justification. Christ, who ascended into Heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father. Christ, who received the Promised Holy Spirit, whom He pours out from Heaven to His Church, the Spirit who dwells in our midst now. Christ, who is at the right hand of Father, who ever lives to intercede. We sang that this morning, arise, my soul arise, so that we may be saved to the uttermost. Will you hear Christ's voice speaking today? He hasn't come in as fire and flame, but he's not silent. Hear him. Have ears to hear, eyes to see and hearts to understand. Turn to him in repentance and look to Him in Christ. God has gathered us here for a purpose. He's gathered us in worship to judge us. But for all those who flee for refuge in Jesus Christ, our Savior, you are in someone who has already taken the judgment. For whom the judgment is already passed over so there's nothing left for you. You blessed children of God Almighty stand in confidence. Not only today, but on the last day when you stand before the presence of His glory, it will be with great joy. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you so much for the good news of the Gospel, that though we have fallen so far short of the righteous standard that you have called us to in your covenant, but Jesus Christ has paid it all. He did everything required of us, and he paid every bit of the debt that we had incurred. He did all of this through the pain and the sorrow and the suffering of his crucifixion. Under which he bore your wrath for us. Father, we know that he died and he was buried and he was raised from the dead, and that Jesus Christ now lives. And it's to him that we look and we pray. If this morning you would help us to embrace Christ by faith. No other hope we have except in Jesus Christ, our Lord. And we pray this morning, as you judge your people, that we would find refuge from that judgment in Jesus Christ, who has already borne all the judgment for the people of God. It is in our high priest's name that we therefore pray. Amen.