verses, though I've already preached all of the eight verses of this particular stanza. And just to catch everybody up again, remember that Psalm 119 has a hundred and seventy-six verses. And those verses are broken down into stanzas, and each stanza is represented by a letter in the Hebrew alphabet. The one we did, the tenth stanza, began with the letter Jod, right above 73. And verse 73 through verse 80, I told you two weeks ago, was now the seeking David who was seeking membership amongst the saints of the church of the undefiled, verse number one. Brian recorded the whole service for me and as I listened to those prayer requests, last week and listened to you folks interacting with Fred on it, I began to think about the fact of how great it was that we could fellowship together the way we do here at the Providence Baptist Church. And I don't know about you, but I love fellowship. What we're having here in church, in the truest sense, is a family meeting every time we meet. and we're not just meeting with each other when we meet, we're meeting with the Father and our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, and fellowshipping with Him as well. As a matter of fact, when we come to church and we worship in true spirit and truth, I guarantee you the Holy Ghost inhabits our praise and brings it to the Father and the Son's ears, and they love it and will rejoice with us, aid us in all our endeavors, and certainly be our God and us His children. We do that here in our church, and I believe we do it well, but we always can get a little better at it. This is what the new disciples, the new converts began to do after Christ's ascension into heaven there in Acts 2 verse 42. You don't have to turn there, but they there are said to have continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship and in breaking of bread and in prayers. I like that breaking bread part as you well can tell and some of y'all like breaking that bread too a little too much I believe. But the deal here is it becomes a family unit. We're just not a place or a gathering spot. We are a family. Our greatest task is praise and worship, no doubt about it. But God has given to us the opportunity to have a grand time of fellowshipping with Him as we fellowship with one another. We are told by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 1 9 that God is faithful by whom you are called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. And as saved now, being saved, you have special entrance in, carte blanche, if you will. I don't know if you know what that means, but you have ready access and open access to all that God has. The Apostle John, if you want to turn to 1 John, Chapter 1 verses 6 and 7. I'll wait for you. We're going to come back to Psalm 119. Don't leave there. I'm going to read my text if it kills me. But go to 1 John with me and look at chapter 1, verse 67. The fast way to get there, Janice, is go to Revelations and flip backwards, you'll be there. 1 John 1, verse 67. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship, look here, one with another. And the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, "...cleanseth us from all sin." 1 John 1, verses 6 and 7. How about that? Let me read it again. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, in other words, in sin and things, we lie and do not the truth. But if we walk in the light, the light of the salvation He's given us, the light that is Christ Jesus, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another. And the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin." I like that, don't you? That's a wonderful treatise there, if you will, and promise. So my sermon of two weeks ago was reinforced as I thought about the seeking David as we found in the tenth stanza back there in Psalm 119. and we find that he was genuinely seeking fellowship with the saints around about him, and he wanted to be accepted by those saints, those believers that were in the main, the church of the undefiled, meeting locally in David's day. Now, I wanna tell you something, there'll be those who will listen to this sermon on Sermon Audio and take umbrage with me for calling that church, that calling the undefiled meeting together locally a church. And the reason why, they all want to believe that church is just a New Testament term and that I'm embellishing this Psalm by saying this about the church. Well, I only have to remind them of what Paul says in the book of Acts. You don't have to turn there, but in Acts chapter 7 verse 37-38, not Paul, but Stephen rather, Stephen says this about the church in the Old Testament. Stephen reported those folks that Moses spoke to the children of Israel and said to them a Prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren like unto me him shall you hear and he was talking about the Messiah to come verse 38 this Moses said While he was in the church in the wilderness When the angel of the Lord spoke to him on Mount Sinai and with our fathers who received the lively oracles to give us. So church is not a foreign term to the Old Testament. Church then was the same thing it is today. Assembly of called out believers in the Greek Ekklesia. Some say Ecclesia, have it your way. But it's assembly of people that have been brought together by God. Now, who led the children of Israel out of Egypt? Some would say Moses, but we know who it really was in the background doing all that. It was God. The angel, I believe, was Christ on Mount Sinai delivering the Father's Word, and Moses would be moved by that Word to bring the children of Israel out of Egypt, and together they would constitute the church in the wilderness. That's just for your edification. But notice, if you will, back in Psalm 119, that David sought membership and fellowship in that church in his time, whose members he called the undefiled. And certainly based upon what David says of them in verse 74, look there, this was indeed a called out assembly of they that fear thee. Now, who the they here is, is the folks around him that feared thee, that is the Lord. They that fear the Lord, which were believers that would be glad when they saw David. The me here in verse 74 is David. And David tells them, in essence, that he was one of them by the evidence of David having hoped in the Lord's Word. And I told you, you don't get into the church unless you hope in the Lord's Word, even now. That means you're saved. You believe the gospel. You're saved. You're looking for His return. You're saved. You don't get into the church unless you believe those things. You must be saved, you must be born again. And David is proving to these folks by physical and spiritual evidence that he was indeed one of them. David saw that those members of the undefiled were blessed by God and he wanted to be a part of them, to fellowship with them. So let that be an answer to those who would question why I would use the term church and the undefiled. The undefiled church is those who fellowship with Jesus. And if Jesus fellowships with them, my friends, it's a good thing. But the greater question in all this is why would David want to fellowship with them? Why would he desire or NEED to fellowship with them? And the best answer I could come up with, and this is your first major heading if you're taking notes, David desired it because God Himself desires fellowship with His people. Did you hear what I said? David desires fellowship because God desires it. First of all, from God comes the idea and fact of family. We find this true in James 4, 8, which reads, draw nigh to God and He will draw nigh to you. Now, no man in and of himself can draw nigh to God unless the Father by Christ Jesus and the Holy Ghost initiate the relationship first. THERE IS NO FELLOWSHIP UNLESS THE FATHER INITIATES THE RELATIONSHIP FIRST. YOU MUST BE BORN AGAIN TO SEE THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND ENTER THE KINGDOM OF GOD ACCORDING TO JESUS IN JOHN 3. AND IT IS GOD THAT IS CHOSEN, THAT CHOOSES THOSE THAT WILL HAVE PROCESS OPERATED ON THEM AND IN THEM. HE HAS AN EXCLUSIVE RIGHT AS TO WHO HE WANTS IN HIS FAMILY. But why would the sovereign God, this supreme, omnipotent, omniscient being, care one whit about fellowshipping with any of us? We're a bunch of wretches. We're nothing. We're nobody. We're like a speck of sand in truth. And yet God desires to fellowship with us. And the best answer I have to that question as to why He would want to is because even so, for it seemed good in His sight. He wanted to. That's the whole thing wrapped up right there. He wanted to. Thank goodness He wanted to, because dead in my trespasses and sins, I would never have wanted to. Neither would Ted. Ted didn't want to. But the Lord wanted to have Ted, you, and Hill, Terry Hill, all of us to fellowship with. Revelation 411 says that God has created all things, and for His pleasure they are and were created. He created us for His pleasure, not to toy with us, mind you, but to enjoy the pleasure of fellowship, to have and to hold in constant union together throughout eternity, which secondly gives us the idea or the fact of faculty." Now, that's going to sound strange. He gives us the fact of family, and now He gives us the idea or fact of faculty. Faculty means a capacity or ability one is born with, or in this case, inherent to someone, and in this case, meaning inherent to or an attribute of God. God has this desire in Him, it's inherent in Him. Now, why is it inherent to Him? Because God is love. And if you love, evidently you want to be loved in return. And evidently you want to shower that love you have on somebody. Are you hearing me this morning? Are you with me? Stay with me. Stay with me. Love is God's overall consuming attribute. And that love must be expressed. It is part and parcel, if I can say this, of God's will, of God's DNA. Now, I don't know if he has DNA or not, but in him is this great faculty of love. He loved his people so much that he was willing to give his only begotten son as a sacrifice for us. Man, that's love. That's wondrous love. That's all powerful love. And he did that to make us holy and blameless before him so that we can love him back. Man, if that isn't love, the oceans are dry, the mountains ain't high, there's no stars in the sky, said this song, but it's true, that's his love. This attribute of love and this desire for fellowship is also in Christ's DNA, and he as a member of the Godhead, yea, what constitutes the family of God, wants to share that with us as well, or else he wouldn't have volunteered to die for us. The family of God prior to God's election to have a people was simply the one in one, one in three, the three in one. The three of them fellowshiped together. And I can only imagine what that fellowship is like. Can you? Can you imagine what kind of fellowship the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost have had? And then to allow us in on it. Holy mackerel! That's stunning to me. The great Godhead of Father and Son and Spirit wanting to fellowship with us. John 17, if you turn there, verse 26, Jesus says this remarkable thing, and He means what He's saying. He's getting ready to leave the world. He's getting ready to be crucified. He's down on His face in the Garden of Gethsemane, and of all things there, He's thinking about us. Can you imagine that? He's gonna go to the cross. They're gonna bludgeon him to death before he gets there. And yet he's thinking about us. Look at verse 26. John 17, and I have declared unto them thy name and will declare it that the love wherewith thou has loved me may be in them and I in them. Can you imagine that? He's thinking about that. We were on his mind with the cross staring him down. And just as God created a bride for Christ, and Christ had this all-consuming desire for them to be with Him where He is for eternity, God places that desire in us. Jesus says, as the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. John 15, 9, and I'm going to make sure you be with me where I am. As a matter of fact, he says, none of them are lost. That's amazing. That same desire for family and faculty, that have to have someone to express love upon, to have fellowship with, is given, by the way, to every man, woman, boy, and girl that's ever lived and will ever live. God breathed it into humanity when He breathed it into Adam, and Adam became a living soul. If you remember, Adam had fellowship with God every day in the cool of the evening. But he didn't have anybody on his own level to share his love with. And God saw that. He saw how lonely Adam was in the garden. So God, in Genesis 2, verse 18, does him a good turn and makes him a helpmate. He said it's not good for man to be alone. And he put Adam to sleep, took a rib, and made Eve. Which shows us that God's desire for a family as well, or He wouldn't have even messed with that. You realize that, don't you? He wouldn't have messed with that. He would have just went on. If man is created in the image of God, surely man will have the desires that God has. That was... until Satan came along and ruined poor old Adam. The desire to have fellowship with God was ruined the moment Adam bit into that fruit in violation of God's command. We know this because Adam tried to hide himself by running from God. That desire for fellowship went out like a light. God had to go get him. Which brings us to the third point in this message, and that is we see in this the idea or fact of fraternity. We've had family, we've had faculty, now we move to fraternity. Fraternity means brotherhood, which idea and fact originates with God. As we see the God of God, which is all male by the way, operating in fraternity with one another in heaven. The Father decreeing, Christ coming and performing, and the Holy Spirit delivering the results of the Father's decree and the Son's sacrifice as a fraternity. And giving Adam a help me was just not to chase away his loneliness. Remember, God made Adam a what? What did God make for Adam? A helpmeet. Now why would he say helpmeet? Well, for all you ladies who have a hard time getting him off the couch, Ecclesiastes 4 tells us in verses 9 through 12 what you're doing here and what you gotta remind him of. Verse 9, two are better than one. I agree with that. Because they have a good reward for their labor. Ecclesiastes 4, 9. Verse 10 says, for if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him that is alone when he falls, for he hath not another to help him up. Like that poor lady, help, I've fallen and I can't get up. Again, verse 11, if two lie together, then they have heat. But how can one be warm alone? Turn up the little controller on the blankets, what I say. And if one should prevail against him, that one person gets attacked, two shall withstand the one that's attacking them, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. In other words, you have a better chance of fighting off the enemy with two than you have with one. That's why you need to read together in the Word of God every day. Fellows with your wife, pray together. That's what you need to do. You need to do it for yourself, but you need to do it together. Brotherhood gives feelings of friendship, creates mutual support between people. Adam and Eve would produce the brotherhood of man from their very loins as the DNA in them both would pass on the need for fellowship. Now, under our second heading, we have this. David is seeking fellowship with the saints because God decided to renew his relationship with mankind. If God hadn't decided to do that, Adam and Eve would have been just allowed to die off, and that'd be the end of it. By the way, time we get to Genesis 6, it repented God that he made man, because all the world lay in wickedness, and only eight people got mercy, no one in his family. But God had to condemn all humanity and everything around them because when they threw their allegiance to Satan in the Garden of Eden, they just quit immediately in their heart and mind having the desire of fellowship with God. And God had no choice. Sin entered in and God can't be around sin. Sin is anathema to him. God holds it repugnant. It makes his stomach turn. He wants to vomit when any kind of sin comes before him. That's why Christ came and took our sins because we couldn't come to the Father with it. The sweet fellowship of family and faculty and fraternity was broken in the Garden of Eden. Man no longer desired fellowship with God and God certainly couldn't fellowship with man. The great chasm it created made it impossible for him to come to us and us to him. In order for there to be a reconciliation, there had to be an emissary, a go-between, a mediator to rid the process of its problem. And this emissary, which is a representative or agent sent on a particular mission would be Jesus Christ. Genesis 3, 16, read it for yourself when you have time. God sent an emissary to them and to David and all the Old Testament saints, and they would trust in Christ, though they had not seen Him, but because of the Word of God they believed He was coming, and He's known in the Old Testament as the Messiah to come. And He has come. We look back at Him all the time. And He's coming again. Can you say amen? God, by His grace alone, sent Christ into the world and Christ voluntarily came to bring salvation to the Old Testament saints as much as He did for us. Secondly, God would send a new energy. He sent an emissary, now He would send a new energy. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. and He would do that by regenerating them. They were dead. Dead in trespasses and sin, a new energy had to come. Jesus told His disciples, I'll send you another Comforter and He'll not only be with you, but He'll be in you with an energy that will revitalize you. And David shows us throughout the Psalms that this energy had been given to him and restored in him as he wants to serve the Lord with his whole heart. But knowing, sure, Lord, this whole heart, but with this whole being, and that is within the church of the undefiled. Thirdly, God would send a new excitement. He sent emissary, a new energy, a new excitement into those that He restores His fellowship with. Suddenly, they want to fellowship with each other. Why? Because He's fellowship with them. This new heart that's energized by the Holy Spirit restores the desire for family, for faculty, for fraternity that allows fellowship with God. The new birth restores it. This new excitement that is given makes David say these things. Look at Psalm 34. Are you still holding Psalm 119? I'm gonna read those two verses, I guarantee I'm going to. Look at Psalm 34, what David has to say there. Look at verse one, beginning with verse one, look with me there. David says, I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make her boast to the Lord. The humble shall hear their love and be glad. Boy, that's energy and excitement, ain't it? but he didn't want to do that alone. He wanted a fellowship with the saints that he found in tabernacle worship or anywhere else the undefiled met. So in verse three, he says to the undefiled of his day, oh, magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together. Look back at Psalm 119. Look at the first verse of Psalm 119. David here begins to write out this prayer, this poem, this song. In verse 1 he says, Blessed are the undefiled in the way. Folks, that's plural. Are the defiled? That's plural of this group. There's a bunch of these folks. These are those who walk in the law of the Lord. Again, plural. These are those who walk in the law of the Lord. Verse 2, Blessed are THEY. plural once again, that keep his testimonies and that seek him with the whole heart. Verse three, they also do no iniquity. They walk in his ways. Look at verse four now. Thou has commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently. There's a whole bunch of folks and he wants to fellowship with them. But these folks are the church, verse one, of the undefiled. Now some folks say, what's the big deal? Why are you belaboring this point for? Because folks, it is without a doubt what we're supposed to be doing here. Not only fellowshipping with one another, but fellowship with the Lord. The Lord has chosen this little church on this little old road here and this little old burg for us to meet together Noted as Providence Baptist Church to fellowship together with each other and whoever comes to that door and to fellowship with Him. Our fellowshipping together is fellowship to Him. It is in the fellowship of the saints together that we praise and worship God. We sing together, we pray together, we learn together, we share one another's burdens together. Hey, we even eat together. We're Baptists, it's in our DNA. The word potluck is stamped somewhere on our stomach lining. The Holy Spirit directs this by the new birth into the heart of every believer. And then moves upon that new believer to desire to unite with other believers, which constitutes an assembly. And together in that assembly, he helps them, us, help each other. We ought to be ready to help each other at a moment's notice. You know that. WE OUGHT TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT EACH OTHER'S BURDENS. THAT'S WHY I'VE BEEN TRYING... I TOLD YOU THIS MORNING I OUGHT TO KEEP YOU A LITTLE POCKETBOOK WITH YOU ALL THE TIME. WRITE DOWN YOUR PRAYER REQUEST. YOU MIGHT HEAR SOMETHING JUST OFF THE CUFF ABOUT ONE OF US. HAVING A HARD TIME, NEEDING SOMETHING. AND IF YOU CAN'T FULFILL IT YOURSELF, WRITE IT DOWN SO WE CAN PRAY ABOUT IT. I CAN'T PRAY ABOUT WHAT I DON'T KNOW. NEITHER CAN YOU. Get to the point. Say it out loud. Unspoken requests. I got you. I got you. Some things you don't want to talk about out in the open. That's fine. But as much as it lies possible in you, let your fellow family members here help you. We can conceive that the Sovereign Trinity, the Godhead of the Father, Son, and Spirit, as it fellowships together and wants to fellowship with us, desires to see us fellowship together. They love to see us in one mind and one accord. Yet, through God's purpose and election, we who were once dead in trespasses and sin, we who were in the depths of condemnation and enemies of God, have been brought into fellowship with God. And when He brought us into fellowship with Himself, all things passed away. Behold, all things become new, and there should have been planted in you a new desire to fellowship with the saints." I don't get it when people lay out of church for no reason at all. I don't get it when people have a hard time getting to the church. I just don't get it because that desire is planted in you in the new birth to be in church. Paul says, "...forsake not the assembling of ourselves together as some is." Why does he say that? It's because it's in church that you get additional power to live in this world. We've been made partakers of the heavenly calling. We've been made partakers of Christ, partakers of the Holy Ghost, partakers of the divine nature. And as partakers, we have been made to sit in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And whether you know it or not, this is one of those places. In Psalm 34, 15, it reads, the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears are open unto their cries, the righteous cry, and the Lord hears and delivers them out of their trouble. The Lord is nigh unto them that are of broken heart, and save as such as be of a contrite spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers them out of them all. And that's why we fellowship. First John 1.3, that which we have heard and seen, that which we have handled, the Lord Jesus Christ, says John the Apostle, you can fellowship with. And you can fellowship with us. And truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. We have that fellowship. Now 1.19 verse 79, David's plea in that stanza, "...Let those that fear Thee turn unto Me, and those that have known Thy testimonies." He really wants to be a member of this church. David's investigation of the Word and the Holy Spirit's illumination of it that led to its salvation had put in a desire in him to be a part of the family of God, meeting in his day as a church of the undefiled." I believe Christ was praying for David as much as he was praying for us. I don't know. But I do know this one thing. The only way he's going to fellowship with us is that we get true about our fellowship with one another, because the Lord can't stand a fake. It's one thing to say you love somebody. It's another thing to show it. Actions speak a lot louder than words.