Amen, brethren, I think between those three hymns, we covered just about all the verses of Psalm 72. I'm not sure if there are other psalms that do that, where the hymnal covers so much, and I'm glad they were there for us to get our hearts prepared to walk through Psalm 72. So if you have your Bibles, do turn there. Psalm 72, we will read the whole psalm and then seek the Lord again in prayer together. 20 verses. Let us begin. Psalm 72. Some of the titles of your Bibles will have the words, A Psalm of Solomon. Hear now the Word of the Lord. Give the king your judgments, O God, and your righteousness to the king's son. He will judge your people with righteousness and your poor with justice. The mountains will bring peace to the people and the little hills by righteousness. He will bring justice to the poor of the people. He will save the children of the needy and will break in pieces the oppressor. They shall fear you as long as the sun and moon endure throughout all generations. He shall come down like rain upon the grass before mowing like showers that water the earth. In his days, the righteous shall flourish and an abundance of peace until the moon is no more. He shall have dominion also from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. Those who dwell in the wilderness will bow before him and his enemies will lick the dust. The kings of Tarshish and the Isles will bring presents. The kings of Sheba and Sheba will offer gifts. Yes, all kings shall fall down before him. All nations shall serve him, for he will deliver the needy when he cries, the poor also and him who has no helper. He will spare the poor and needy and will save the souls of the needy. He will redeem their life from oppression and violence, and precious shall be their blood in His sight. And He shall live, and the gold of Sheba will be given to Him. Prayer also will be made for Him continually, and daily He shall be praised. There will be an abundance of grain in the earth on the top of the mountains. Its fruit shall wave like Lebanon, and those of the city shall flourish like grass of the earth. His name shall endure forever. His name shall continue as long as the sun And men shall be blessed in him. All nations shall call him blessed. Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only does wondrous things. And blessed be his glorious name forever. And let the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen and amen. The prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended. This, brethren, is the word of our God. Let us go to him together in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank You again for preserving Your precious Word for Your people through the ages. Lord, through it, we are more and more seeing Your glory. We are beholding the glory of Your beloved Son. We pray that we would see it again today as we exalt Him and as we see His Kingship, Lord, on the earth now and forevermore. Lord, we pray Your blessings upon this time together in Your Word. In Jesus' name, Amen. As Americans, we are all pretty independent folks in this particular society in which we live. We are accustomed to words like independence and freedom and liberty, and we are thankful for those terms. Most of us as Americans could never imagine what it would be like to follow some royal protocol like the citizens in the UK do when they are around the royal family. It is not in our nature as men, American men, to bow down to other men. It's not in your nature, ladies, to curtsy before another woman of any respect in our country. Now, we don't mind showing respect where it is due, but to act servile to another human being because they have some royal title is simply contrary to the American culture. And I'm very grateful for this system in which God has given us as a government in America. I'm very thankful that we don't have some sinful man reigning over us as a king who has sovereign control over my life and can end it when he wants. As in some nations now even still. But brethren, this independent spirit which has all been bred into all of us as American has not done much for us to help us to appreciate what it is to live under the sovereign rule and reign of a king. One to whom we will bow, and indeed all men will bow, and that is the glorious reign of our blessed Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. This, brethren, is the marvelous theme of Psalm 72. It is a messianic psalm speaking to us and teaching us about His glorious reign as King, as the Son of God. And it is a reign, brethren, that encompasses the present time upon the earth right now, and it also looks forward to His eternal reign in the new heavens and the new earth. Now, we know, at least I hope you know, that our Lord Jesus at His first advent inaugurated His Kingdom. He at that time became King. Remember what Herod tried to do, because he heard that a king had arrived. Indeed, a king did arrive. Later, our Lord would stand before Pilate in John 18 and ask him, Are you a king then? And Jesus would answer him, You say rightly that I am the king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world. Matthew 12, 28, our Lord says, I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, and surely the kingdom of God has come upon you. The kingdom of our God and of his king has become present on the earth. It is inaugurated. Christ is now reigning as king on the earth through his people. The Lord Jesus bound the devil at the cross, defeated him at the cross, and now Christ is invading his house of souls. and calling them his own. However, the day will come, as we also know, when Christ will reign as king eternally with his people on the earth. Now he's running through them, but one day he will reign with them on the earth. And this, of course, occurs at the consummation of the kingdom. Revelation 11, 15, the seventh angel sounded and there were loud voices in heaven saying the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever And ever the angels words to Mary in Luke chapter one, tell us both of this present and his future eternal reign are both given to us there in Luke one thirty two. He will be great. Speaking of the birth of Christ and the reign of Christ, and he will be called the son of the highest and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father, David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever and of his kingdom. There will be no end. Brethren, both of these realities are also being prophesied for us in Psalm 72. It was not true of both of those things during David's and Solomon's day. It was looking forward to the first advent, and it's going to teach us about his reign through, up and until his second advent. And this is what we're going to be looking at today. Now, it's a very large text. Many wonderful truths, I hope, will come out to us today by way of applications for our present day. But as we begin, I want you to recognize here as we begin here that the context of what's going on here and the author as well is not so easily ascertained. As we look at the text, you'll notice that the heading, as I said earlier, is a psalm of Solomon, a psalm of Solomon. Yet, as you look to the end, if you were reading along at verse 20, it says this. It says in verse 20 that the prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended. So who wrote it? Well, there have been some, and it has led some to believe that these are the thoughts and the words of David, but it was written by Solomon. Spurgeon conjectures that it is the prayer of David, but the psalm of Solomon. Some believe, and I kind of lean this way, that it is a prayer of David as he's on his deathbed. He's about to hand over the kingdom, the reign of the king, to his son Solomon to reign. And it makes sense when you look at verse one. You would consider David praying this way. Give the king your judgments, O God, and your righteousness to the king's son. And so perhaps the immediate context is David praying for his son, Solomon, as he's about to begin his own earthly reign as king. But with that, brethren, it is universally accepted among Christian scholars that this is a messianic psalm. It is speaking of God the Son and of the reign of His Son who will reign in righteousness. There are things we're going to see today that could never have been said of David and could never have been said of Solomon. Therefore, brethren, while it may have immediate application, certainly it did some for Solomon in his own day, it looks past Solomon to the Lord Jesus Christ and His earthly reign here on the earth. And so that's going to be our focus here this morning, the messianic reign of the Son of God, going to be going back and forth and looking at the present and the future reign. Now, again, it's a large text. So we're going to preach the whole chapter on the way down this morning. Sinclair Ferguson preached the whole book of Romans in 40 minutes. So I'm going to attempt to preach the whole Psalm 72 and whatever time I have left here. But there's a lot here for us to look at. Now, there are five major points I'm going to give you. These are not original with me. Spurgeon had them and then he got them from somebody named Alexander. But here they are. We're going to look at verses one to seven, the righteous reign of Christ versus eight to 11, the universal reign of Christ. Versus 12 to 14, the benevolent reign of Christ, and then fourthly, 15 to 17, the perpetual reign of Christ and will conclude the glorious reign of Christ. And of course, obviously, brethren, With our limited time, we will not spend a long time on each one of these. Most of the time we'll be in our first one here. Notice it. The righteous reign of Christ again in verses one to three. The prayer. Give the king your judgment, O God, and your righteousness to the king's son. Notice, too, he will judge your people with righteousness and your people with justice. Verse three, the mountains will bring peace to the people and the little hills by righteousness. Notice verse seven. In his days, the righteous shall flourish and an abundance of peace until the moon is no more. His reign will be and is a righteous reign. David is praying that God would aid Solomon to rule righteously. Now, obviously, David was keenly aware of the effects of an unrighteous king over a kingdom, how his own sin brought great turmoil to the kingdom. And of course, the sons Solomon's sin would utterly divide the kingdom. So he's wanting, he's desiring that this kingdom would be reigned and ruled over within righteousness. And we know that after that kingdom of God is consummated in the second coming, the kingdom of God will only exist in perfect righteousness. But brethren, we need to see here this morning that the son of God at the beginning of the first advent and from up until this day, he is reigning in righteousness. He's reigning in righteousness. But we have to ask ourselves a question, and I'm so sure God's people are fully convinced of this today. With all the war and the crime and the evil and the murdering of babies and the homosexuality and the wicked and the vile and the evilness that's going on all over the world, can we really say this morning, brethren, that Jesus is reigning now on the earth in righteousness? Oh, brethren, I think we can. and in the most powerful of ways that you and I need to understand this morning. How does he do this? Well, he does it first through saving his people from their sins. It is the promise of the new covenant that when he saves his people, he writes his law on our heart. And that we change from those who love sin to those who love righteousness. He begins there by imputing his own righteousness to our own account, Accept it before God. But there's more to that. He so changes you and I as a people that we actually do love righteousness now. If you don't, you're not a Christian. When the Holy Spirit regenerates the spiritually dead sinner, that person is changed from a lover of his own sin to a lover of righteousness. He hates sin wherever he sees it. Therefore, when Christ has a people in the world, wherever they are, He is ruling and reigning in and through them in righteousness. If you're here this morning, you're a Christian, you are an object of one who is dispensing his righteousness to the culture, to the community. A righteousness not your own, but that which was created in you by the work of the Holy Spirit. You long for it. You desire it. And you didn't have it before you were converted. You are light now. You are salt now. You didn't have that before. And so the kingdom of God now on the earth, it is invisible. It is a spiritual kingdom. But there is no question but that it is a real, real kingdom of reigning in righteousness because the effects of it are seen everywhere. There's no way for us to so adequately gauge the enormous effects that Christianity has had upon the world since Christ's first advent, particularly as it relates to righteousness reigning in societies and nations all around the world. Our own laws here in America were founded upon a desire for a nation to be governed in righteousness. And why was that? Because there were godly men there at its founding promoting righteousness that did not spring from the car wells of their own hearts. There were real Christians there. The pilgrims came over because of religious needs and all that influence as it came toward the time of the founding of our own country. And so when America was discovered, she was occupied by Indians. who were in some cases rightly called savages for a reason. Indians with no moral compass, but natural law, like the mountains of Israel. That's where the vagabonds stood out. That's where they hid, and then they would come out in thievery and steal, and they were wicked and vile men. And this was true of America's mountains as well. But what does verse 3 say, brethren? The mountains will bring peace to the people. And the little hills by righteousness. Without Christ's righteous influence through the church, Little hope for the poor and the needy children of the world, our own country included. But what does verse 4 say? He will bring justice to the poor of the people. He will save the children of the needy. Brethren, it's amazing when you stop to think about it. Think of all the Christian ministries throughout the last 2,000 years and the influence it's had. Think of the Christian orphanages and the hospitals. They were all founded by Christians. Soup kitchens were started by Christians. All the good things that have ever happened in this world for the last 2,000 years have been influenced because of the righteous reign of Christ through His people. It's unimaginable the darkness that would be on this planet, on this earth right now, apart from the influence of Christ's church and the reign of righteousness through His own people. Remember what society was like before this was true, when there wasn't any righteous influence of Christ's righteousness on the earth. It was so bad, God had to send a worldwide flood to purge it and to cleanse it. Then God called one nation to be His own people, and they were governed in righteousness. It was temporary, but that nation of Israel at the time was the only righteous spot on the earth. All the other nations of the earth at that time were all pagan. They were all idolaters. They were all wicked. They were all vile. It was only Israel because God called Israel to be His people. Because in the new covenant, Christ has a people from every tribe, tongue and nation. His righteous reign and influence has spread like yeast all over the globe. Now, I'm not espousing, brethren, this morning an eschatology of post-millennialism that tells us that it's going to continue to get so great that at the end, we're going to be almost ready for the new heavens and new earth. You won't see much difference. But brethren, Jesus says that the wheat and the tares are going to grow together to the end and then he'll separate it out. There will be a final judgment, there will be gaining wickedness as well, the tares will grow. But the kingdom of Christ and his righteous reign has been going out and influencing the world for 2000 years. And yes, brethren, it remains or remains a lot of evil and unrighteousness around the world. And I do believe the book of Revelation teaches there's going to be an increase in ungodliness before he returns. But brethren, he is reigning now in the influences incalculable of the righteousness that has been influenced of his people all through the history of this world since his first advent. Think of it in this way. Christ is reigning in both of these ways right now, not only in righteousness through his people, but also through judgment, through his church. He's conquering rebellious hearts through the gospel and through the civil magistrate. Romans 13. When do we get that? We got that in the new covenant. Pastor Timothy has been teaching in our Sunday school class how he holds the position, and I think it's a good sound argument, that the civil magistrate was created or instituted by God through the new covenant. It wasn't a creation ordinance. But from that time forward, there weren't a lot of Christians influencing the world through Romans 13. And so Christ is reigning now, though, through his people. And so the civil magistrate is an instituted thing by God. But so the Christians in this world, there are many who are working through the civil magistrate, and it has influenced it in many ways for good. Many ways for good. And so this is the sovereign king, and there will be a final judgment. He will mete out the rest of this at the end of the day. At the end of the time, but Christ is reigning right now, brethren, in righteous judgments and courtrooms all around the world. The influence of the Bible in every nation and every culture. We got it from him, they got it from him, he's the one that's influencing all of these things now through wars, he's meeting out judgment to the wicked, to the oppressors, they're dying, they're flourishing. They all come to before the King Jesus and have to give an account. So, brethren, we need to understand that I know it doesn't appear that way when we look at we focus on the evil all the time. But when compared to what it looked like before the flood, there is a righteous reign of Christ being influenced all around the world. Secondly, and we'll be a little shorter on these. Christ's reign is not only a righteous one, but brethren, it is a universal one. You notice verse eight. He says he shall have dominion also from sea to sea and from the earth to the ends of the earth. Verse 11, Yes, all kings shall fall down before him. All nations shall serve him. Now, I've already been alluding to this point, so I won't take much time here. But the reality is that Christ gave his great commission to the disciples. And it was very clearly pointing to the influence and the effect that the gospel would have on the world, starting in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and the other most parts of the earth. And that's been going on. And so now, God, Christ has a people everywhere. There's a tongue, tribe and nation. And those who are his are joyfully submitting to his reign over them through his word. Solomon's reign spread far and wide, but it did not encompass the whole known world of his day. But Christ in his kingdom, in his reign, it is. It's universal in its scope. Here's what Spurgeon said concerning verse eight. He said that Solomon's realm embraced all the land of promise and left no unconquered margin. So shall the son of David rule all lands given him in the better covenant and leave no nation to pine beneath the tyranny of the prince of darkness. No earthly king has complete reign over the hearts of all his people. Every nation in every nation, some of them belong to King Jesus. But here again, brethren, we must recognize that though Christ's present reign is universal in its scope, it's not consummated yet. But he must reign until he makes all of his enemies a footstool for his feet. This is where it's headed. The day is coming when all will bow. All tongues will confess Jesus Christ as Lord to the glory of God the Father. Notice what it says in verse 11. Again, the emphasis there on all, yes, all kings shall fall down before him. All nations. It's universal. This could not be said of Solomon nor David. Which makes me believe that David, even David, thought that what he was saying or thought that what he was writing was far beyond what he was able to comprehend. So it is a universal reign. But now, thirdly, brethren, I want you to see in verse 12, it's a benevolent reign. For he will deliver the needy when he cries, the poor also, and him who has no helper. Again, we've mentioned this as well, but Because of Christ's present reign upon the earth through His church, brethren, millions and millions of poor and needy souls have been ministered to by King Jesus. It was the church, as I said earlier, that started orphanages. It was the church that began soup kitchens and nursing homes and nursing in general and hospitals. You can trace it all back to God's people, which means you can trace it all back to Christ and the benevolent reign of Christ on the earth now. We are personally aware of ministries in Myanmar right there in the middle of war where people are getting needs. Children are being helped and needs are being met through the benevolent reign of Christ. The amount of good that Christ has done for the poor and needy through His church by the work of the Holy Spirit leading His people is truly immeasurable. We need to be encouraged and we need to see that so that we can worship Him and praise Him and give Him His due. David was a compassionate king. He helped his people. Solomon, not so much. But Christ has poured out an abundance of kindness towards the poor and needy of this world for 2,000 years. Imagine the vast cruelty, brethren, that would exist around the world from the hands of wicked men who care nothing for their citizens if Christians did not exist in these places. Every nation would be ruled by men like Kim Jong-un for North Korea, The poor would starve and they would still be needy today. All of us sit here in this building, lavishing in the blessings of Christ's benevolent reign today. He's been going out and spreading His benevolent love and goodness toward all. It rains on the just and on the unjust. Oh, the goodness and the kindness of Christ that has come upon you and I has come down from the hand of our King. But his benevolent reign goes far beyond the physical needs that you and I receive and that the world receives. His benevolent reign also reaches the deepest needs of men's souls. Verse 14, he will redeem their life from oppression and violence and precious shall be their blood and his sight. John Gill states, I figured that was going to go off today, I thought about it on the way up here, it's like the bad weather's coming in. John Gill states concerning that verse, see their need of Christ, those that see their need of Christ and his righteousness and salvation by him and cry to him for the same under a sense of their misery and danger. These he delivers out of all their troubles and out of all and out of the hands of all their enemies and supplies all their needs. He is the greatest of all benevolent kings who not only can, but he is willing to deliver the poor from their despair and cry. Brethren, hell awaits all of us. The mighty fallen angel, the devil and his minions has power to create total destruction. Who is mighty enough? Who is gracious enough to deliver us from all of this great darkness? It's Christ and Christ alone. And this is the hour and this is the time and some there might be some in here this morning who have not yet bowed the knee to Jesus Christ right now. It's kind of like I used this illustration the last time I walked through this. I was thinking about Moses in that movie where he's the waters of the river on both sides and God's holding it up. And later, they get on the other side, they come crashing in on Pharaoh and all of his people. This is the picture of us now in this age. The waters of the Gospel are holding it up. And now you're being invited to come across. But the waters are going to come crashing in someday. Benevolent King is holding it up for you to come and to bow now and receive salvation. Today is the day of salvation. Today is the day for you to repent and believe. Because those waters are coming back down again. Brethren, Jesus' reign is a righteous, universal and benevolent. But now, fourthly, I want you to see it's perpetual as well. Verse 15b, he states here that prayer also will be made for Him continually and daily. He shall be praised. Verse 17, His name shall endure forever. His name shall continue as long as the sun. And men shall be blessed in Him. All nations shall call Him blessed. Kings of Israel, as I said at the beginning, were never to be worshipped. But the citizens of the kingdom were to pay homage to the king. The people are to give praise to the king. Even now, the UK citizens will sing out or call out, long live the king, if you will. But the kings of the earth are never to be worshipped, and none of them are today to receive praise. That's the reality of every earthly king that's been on this earth. They were all just a little small blip in history. But the name and the praise of King Jesus shall endure forever. And since he was inaugurated king at his first advent, he has been receiving that praise and honor for 2000 years. Think about this, brethren, since the disciples in the early church worshiped after Jesus's ascension and it began to be spread throughout the known world. There is never an hour of the day that King Jesus is not praised and worshiped in this planet. Every Lord's Day church is underground in China, above ground in many other places. There is corporate worship going out and local assemblies all around the world. Just as the angels and the saints in heaven right now are offering up praise to our God, to his King. So also on the earth, there is never an hour that some believer around the world isn't offering up thanks to his King. All around the world on the Lord's Day, it occurs corporately. Each Wednesday's worship begins around the globe. As soon as one church finishes up corporate worship, another one begins. So throughout the day from New Zealand to New York, churches corporately are meeting and all that Sabbath day Christ is getting exalted and praised from churches all around the world. All around the world. Malachi foretold this in Malachi 111. Listen to this. From the rising of the sun even to its going down, my name shall be great among the Gentiles. This was happening. And it wasn't happening in Malachi's day. It wasn't happening in Solomon and David's day, but it's happening today. This is the reality of Christ's kingdom on the earth right now. It goes on, Malachi 1.11 says, In every place, incense shall be offered to my name. And a pure offering for my name shall be great among the nations. He has a people in North Korea. He has a people in India. He has a people all over Latin America. He has people everywhere. And brethren, it will be this way until the end of time itself. And when the king returns to consummate the kingdom, there will be no square inch, no gap in time where the king isn't receiving worship and praise for all eternity. Solomon's reign ended, and so also are all the earthly sovereigns of this world, but the reign of Christ is earthly right now, currently a perpetual reign, and it will always be so. But now, lastly, we've seen the Righteous reign, the universal, the benevolent, the perpetual, but there's only one thing left to conclude at this point. Jesus's reign is a glorious reign. Verse 19, and blessed be his glorious name forever. And let the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen and amen. Listen to me, only those who've been born from above can see this, but that doesn't make it any less real to us, brother. Let us not forget that his powerful reign doesn't only include his benevolence, but because of his reigning and righteousness, everyday judgment is being meted out on the face of the earth. Kings have risen and kings have fallen. Wicked men of the past and wicked men of the present are being judged and will be judged. All authority has been given to him and he is judging and will judge. Yes, there remains, brethren, as I know and as I said, much cruelty, much evil in the world. But our reigning Lord Jesus is even now executing righteous judgment upon the earth. And he'll continue to do this, as I said, until he makes all of his enemies a footstool for his feet. He will make every crooked place straight. If we can, by faith, brethren, even now see how glorious Christ's reign is this way, by faith, think about how glorious it's going to be at the consummation. Final judgment upon all his enemies. Nothing but a pure and perpetual, benevolent paradise ruled over by, provided by the great King, the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, brethren, there are so many applications for us as we consider this psalm together. I look back over, I told Pastor Timothy that I felt like I should have gone back and did a whole series on Psalm 72. It's so wonderful. But let me conclude with a few applications with you, brethren. First of all, it's a reminder to all of us in here. That the righteous reign of Christ means that those who own him, those who own him as their king must also be righteous, even as he is righteous. The idea that a true Christian can be born again by the power of the Holy Spirit and continue to live in carnality as his people in the world is nowhere taught in the New Testament and the Word of God anywhere. John was very clear about this in his epistle, 1 John 2, 29, if you know that he's righteous, You know that everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him. 1 John 3, 7, Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous just as He is righteous. We can never, brethren, listen to me today, use free grace as an excuse to stop fighting remaining sin. If it is not your desire to live righteously before your king, then it is likely you're following a different king. Martin Lloyd-Jones said, if the grace you've received does not help you to keep the law, then you have not received grace. There's always mercy and forgiveness for when we sin, but living daily, brethren, in presumptuous sin is to be deceived. We can never take up the attitude that the world has, and you've all heard it. Oh, well, we all sin. Nobody's perfect. And this is true. But the difference is God's people want to be perfect, even as he is perfect. The world uses this language to justify their iniquity. It must be never said of you and I to use that kind of language. Oh, well, we all sin. Nobody's perfect. That's what the world uses to justify their iniquity, but not you, brethren. He's a righteous King and His subjects are to live righteously. To fight remaining sin. To live holy and to be holy, even if He is holy. He's going to have a kingdom of holy people. That's why He chose you. Well now, secondly, we learn, brethren, from this psalm, that Christ's reign on the earth is in great measure exercised through the church. And we need to be reminded of that today. You are His body. His hands to the world. His justice is being carried out through his ministers called the civil magistrate. But brethren, his benevolence and his gospel of mercy has been carried out primarily through his church. We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. I'm amazed at how much the New Testament points you and I to good works. They don't justify, but they show forth who Christ is and His reign and His Kingdom. When we love our neighbors, Christ is loving those people. Whenever you serve God in any way, for surely whatever I say, you've done the least of these, my brethren, you've done them to me. Paul was meeting the Lord on Damascus Road Why are you persecuting me, Paul? We are His people. We are His hands on the earth. When we go to the convalescent home, we went this past Wednesday, we sang hymns, we preached the gospel, we put our arms around them, we shared the gospel with them. It's Christ. Christ showed up and there He was ministering to these poor, mentally disabled people who have no hope. Nobody else is coming in. I haven't seen any Mormons there. Muslims there. I'm not saying that these folks don't do this kind of thing, but they certainly don't have anything to give them that can give them eternal life. The Roanoke mission that we go to. Timothy going to the abortion mill. Brethren, you are His hands. What are you doing? What good works are you involved in as a church? This is the time. This is the season. This is Christ's benevolent reign. through His people. Well now, thirdly, brethren, I have a third application in light of looking at this glorious reign of our Lord. Let us not forget that as His children, His benevolence is still presently accessible to you and to me today. I keep going over this with our folks back in our own church. And I go through the Gospel accounts. I just can't believe how often our Lord speaks of prayer and then telling in telling His people these words. Mark 11, 24, I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them and you will have them. I don't think most of God's people believe that verse. I told them the last time I went through this that I'm not handing that verse to T.D. Jakes and the prosperity gospel. It's in my Bible. Whatever you ask, believe. That you receive them and you will have them. Now, the Bible teaches a lot of other things, doesn't it? That it must be the will of God and these sorts of things, and there must not be any sin in the camp. But whatever you ask. What a benevolent king, we're not using the storehouse of price riches. You have a lot of needs in this church. We need to be asking, we're going to ask this afternoon in our corporate prayer time, I hope you'll all still be here. Because there's a very needy season that the church is in. But there might be other needs some of you have. Don't forget that your benevolent King is right there. Whatever you ask, you shall receive. But now, lastly, brethren, Psalm 72 has given us a bird's eye view of Christ's glorious and sovereign reign presently and eternally, which means this, which means we have a great cause to take courage today. The total and absolute sovereignty of our reigning king is the ultimate comfort of all God's children. The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, Psalm 103, verse 19, and his sovereignty rules over all. There's no fear, there is no pain that the child of God endures, that a true faith in Christ's sovereign rule over all does not soothe and comfort. We have many losses and crosses in this world, but our Lord has ordained them all. It is hard for us to understand how our failures, our sins, our remaining sins, our present struggles, our future struggles, how they all fall under the sovereign reign of our glorious King. But we must, brethren, submit to this truth for our comfort. As well as our motivation to holiness, because If you're not comforted by God's sovereignty, you will continue to just mull in the misery of your own iniquity and anxiety. Over and over, we're taught in the New Testament, be anxious for nothing. Do not worry about tomorrow. That's what the king said. That's what the king said. We can trust the king. I told him as well, thinking through this, There are times, brethren, and I know you all have experienced the same thing. There are some things that happened in my life that I would be so crippled by. I could never serve my King. I could never walk in righteousness. I could do much of anything if I did not trust the sovereign hand of God. People that I love who've perished without Christ. And I begin to dwell that there's no return for them. I know where they are. And I have to just force my mind off of that thought. But I can't just force it off. I have to put it on Christ, who does all things well, who is righteous and good and holy. The sovereignty of God, of the King, is our great comfort, brethren. Well, let me conclude with a quote from him who wrote, I think, some of the best things on the sovereignty of God, other than the Bible, and that's A.W. We'll close with this and then we'll have prayer and take the supper together. He states that divine sovereignty is not the sovereignty of a tyrannical despot, but the exercised pleasure of one who is infinitely wise and good. Because God is infinitely wise, he cannot err. And because he is infinitely righteous, he will not do wrong. Here, then, is the preciousness of this truth, the mere fact itself that God's will is irresistible. And irreversible fills me with fear. But once I realized that God wills only that which is good, my heart is made to rejoice. May God help us to rejoice in our King today. Let us pray. Our Father, we thank you for this glorious psalm opening up to us what was only shadow form for Solomon and David. But now being on the other side of the first advent of our precious king who came into the world to seek and to save sinners. Lord, we thank you that you have shown us he is reigning and ruling and he will continue to do so until indeed he has put all his enemies under his feet. Thank you for the encouragement that you are the sovereign king. There's no tornado that can touch us. There's no storm. There's nothing, nothing, not a hair Not a leaf that falls to the ground. Not a hair from our head. All of it is sovereignly ruled by You and ordained. And it's all good. For Your glory, we pray. Amen.