Come now to the reading of our God's word, service of the word. Our Old Testament lesson will be from Psalm 107. So we conclude our summer series in the Psalms. Next week we will return to 2 Corinthians. This morning we were in Psalm 107. If you're using a pew Bible, you can find that Psalm on page 643. Psalm 107, verses one through 43, which are Old Testament reading as well as our sermon passage. First, let's pray to our God that he would give us understanding of his word, trust in it. Lord, we thank you that your word is indeed sure. that it is the solid rock and foundation upon which we can stand, upon which we can build our lives, the whole of our hope and our comfort in life and in death. So we do ask this morning that you would give us trust as we come to your word, that we would repose ourselves in your promises, that we would see Jesus and that we would rest ourselves in him. We ask these things in his mighty name. Amen. Psalm 107, Book 5. O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he has redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south. Some wandered in desert wastes, finding no way to a city to dwell in. Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted within them. And they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He led them by a straight way till they reached a city to dwell in. Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man. for he satisfies the longing soul and the hungry soul he fills with good things. Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, prisoners in affliction and in irons, for they had rebelled against the words of God and spurned the counsel of the Most High. So he bowed their hearts down with hard labor. They fell down with none to help. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death and burst their bonds apart. Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man, for he shatters the doors of bronze and cuts in two the bars of iron. Some were fools through their sinful ways, and because of their iniquities suffered affliction. They loathed any kind of food and they drew near to the gates of death. And they cried to the Lord in their trouble and he delivered them from their distress. He sent out his word and healed them and delivered them from their destruction. Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man. and let them offer sacrifices of thanksgiving and tell of his deeds in songs of joy. Some went down to the sea in ships, doing business on the great waters. They saw the deeds of the Lord, his wondrous works in the deep. For he commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea. They mounted up to heaven. They went down to the depths. Their courage melted away in their evil plight. They reeled and staggered like drunken men and were at their wits end. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed. And they were glad that the waters were quiet, and he brought them to their desired haven. Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man. Let them extol him in the congregation of the people and praise him in the assembly of the elders. He turns river into a desert, springs of water into a thirsty ground, a fruitful land into a salty waste because of the evil of its inhabitants. He turns a desert into pools of water, a parched land into springs of water, and there he lets the hungry dwell, and they establish a city to live in. They sow fields and plant vineyards and get a fruitful yield. By his blessing, they multiply greatly, and he does not let their livestock diminish. When they are diminished and brought low through oppression, evil, and sorrow, he pours contempt on princes. and makes them wander in trackless waste. But he raises up the needy out of affliction and makes their families like flocks. The upright see it and are glad, and all wickedness shuts its mouth. Whoever is wise, let him attend to these things. Let them consider the steadfast love of the Lord. Now, if you'll turn to our New Testament reading in the Book of Mark, Gospel of Mark, Chapter 4, verses 35 through 41. If you're using a pew Bible, you can find that on page 1,068. Page 1,068, Mark, Chapter 4, beginning in verse 35. On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, let us go across to the other side. And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was, and other boats were with him. And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing? And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, peace, be still. And the wind ceased. And there was a great calm. He said to them, why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith? And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, who then is this? that even the wind and the sea obey him." The Word of God is living and active. Humans were built to wonder. And when I say wonder, I'm not talking about the way that we most often use that word. I'm not talking about what some of you may be thinking even at this moment. I wonder what is for lunch. If you were not thinking that, now all of you are. Good job, preacher, keeping everyone focused. No, I don't mean wonder here in the sense of casual speculation. That sense of the word wonder is rather thin and unimpressive. There's a kind of idleness and triviality to it. We wonder about things in that sense as an exercise in curiosity. There's not much that's very important about that sort of wondering. When I say that humans were built to wonder, I mean that in a sense that has a lot more gravity to it. Humans were built to wonder and that we were built to admire and to awe. Another way of saying that is that we were built to marvel. But so much about modern life works to stamp out wonder in us. Our scientific and technological accomplishments have the unfortunate byproduct of fostering in us a sense of arrogance that is the opposite of wonder. Wonder involves the feeling that something is much bigger than us and our abilities. Wonder lives with a recognition that there is much that is unfathomable, much that is mysterious. But the folly of the modern mind is in our thinking that there is nothing left, really, that is mysterious. Even if there is, with the right amount of intellectual elbow grease, we can still get to the bottom of it. We do not have the sense that there is really anything too big for us. Maybe not for each one of us individually, but at least for all of us collectively, we have a sense that there is nothing in the universe that is beyond the capacities of humans to master. That even in our technological advancements, we still cannot fully shake off this instinct for wonder. We're amazed by new discoveries and advances. Who's not mesmerized by the latest feats of Silicon Valley and all the gizmos that they've produced for you? Even antiquated pieces of technology that sit in museums still stir admiration and awe in us as we consider the ingenuity of generations long past. Our instinct for wonder is a stubborn thing. It resists our arrogance on many levels, and that's because it's hardwired into what it means for us to be finite creatures. We're made in the image of God, Yes, and though we are made in his image and commanded to exercise dominion over his world, we are confronted with the reality that that exercise of dominion, in the end, does not alter the fact that this is still God's world. That his infinite genius has crafted it and continues to govern it. So whether we delve smaller and smaller into the realm of the subatomic or larger and larger out to the edges of space, we are faced with the fact that creation is relentlessly too big for us to master, too much for us to comprehend. And so creation itself is a pointer to this reality this bigger reality that God himself is this way, but to an infinite degree. God is too big and too wonderful for us to get our arms around. The world is a theater of his wonders, wonders which consist not only of what he has worked in the natural world, but also, more importantly, about God's work of wonders above nature, in the realities of His redeeming grace. And Psalm 107 is a call for us to remember this and to do what wonder naturally prods us to do, to worship. Worship the only true and living God. And so I want you to see from Scripture this morning, it's in your bulletin insert, if you want to take notes along with the points, it's this. Give thanks to the Lord For he will lead us to his city through his wondrous work in Christ. Give thanks to the Lord, for he will lead us to his city through his wondrous work in Christ. Three points we'll consider. First, the work of the Lord. Second, the wisdom of the Lord. And third, the worship of the Lord. We preachers love it when we can figure out an alliteration. the works of the Lord, the wisdom of the Lord, the worship of the Lord. Speaking with our first point then, the work of the Lord. If you've been here as we've been moving through the Psalms, you know that I've said repeatedly that the Psalms are not randomly arranged. They are not shuffled together like a deck of cards. There is a discernible purpose to their arrangement and a thematic movement to their ordering. It's quite evident here in Psalm 107. This psalm, as you can see from the superscription on top of it, it opens up a new book, Book 5 of the Psalter. But as the first psalm of Book 5, it immediately looks back to the ending of Book 4. Psalm 106, which ends the fourth book of the Psalter, it ends with this plea for God to restore Israel from her exile. Verse 47 of Psalm 106 declares, save us, O Lord, and gather us from among the nations. The specter of the exile hung over all of Book 4 of the Psalms. It was set up that way by the way that Book 3 concluded with a psalm lamenting the exile, Psalm 89. The Lord had judged his people. He had brought their life in the land to an end and sent Babylon and its empire to lay waste to Judah. Jerusalem was in ruins, the temple was destroyed, the Davidic throne was vacated, and the children of Israel were scattered among the nations. But we see here at the opening of Book 5 in Psalm 107 that it speaks as though the exile of Israel had already been undone, as though the restoration from exile had already been accomplished. Verses 2 through 3, let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he has redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south. God has remembered his covenant. He has proven his faithfulness. He has kept his promise. Now it's hard to tell whether Psalm 107 is speaking from the position of the post-exilic state of Israel that we read of in the Old Testament with Zerubbabel and Ezra and Nehemiah, or perhaps if it's speaking of that restoration from exile in the prophetic mode that speaks of it as though it is already accomplished and therefore certain. But in either case, the point still stands The Lord is good, and his steadfast love endures forever. He's gathered his people back. The exile is being undone. The exile will be undone. And so Psalm 107 speaks then of those gathered from the four corners of the world from these four different camera angles. In verses four through nine, there are those who wander in desert places. In verses 10 through 16, there are those who sit in darkness and captivity. Verses 17 through 22, there are those who suffer affliction because of their sin. And then in verses 23 through 32, there are those who took to the sea. It's four different camera angles. And this is not necessarily a literal treatment of four mutually exclusive groups. Rather, what it is is a way of vividly portraying the agony and the terror that Israel experienced in various ways throughout her exile from these different camera angles. First and verses four through nine pictures the pain of exile as this kind of erratic wandering in the wilderness, in the wastelands of the desert. And there they experience a kind of rewinding of the redemptive historical clock. They moved out of the promised land and back into the wilderness in this unraveling of the exodus. And the second And verses 10 through 16 pictures the pain of exile in terms of imprisonment and bondage, clasped in iron bars and held captive. They sit hopeless in darkness in the shadow of death. And this too evokes this notion that there's been a reversal of the Exodus experience for Israel. We see in verse 12, they are bowed down under hard labor, forced upon them by their captors. This is repetition, as it were, of the trials of slavery in Egypt. And the third angle, verses 17 through 22, pictures the pain of exile from the self-inflicted desperation and pain of those who've brought that down on their own heads through their sin. And then this fourth picture of pain and exile, it pictures it in the tears of the watery depths. those who took to the sea and experienced chaos and sheol. And there's here too also these echoes of the undoing of the Exodus as they experienced the abyss of the sea once more. God brought them through the sea in its watery depths in their passage through the Red Sea. But in all of these horrors, they are met with the steadfast love of the Lord. Their covenant-keeping God answers their distress, and He enacts a second exodus for them. He leads them through the wilderness back to a city. He breaks the iron bars of their captivity and sets them free. He heals them and delivers them from their destruction. He tames the sea, and He brings them through once more its watery depths. Each one of these pictures of this second exodus is then punctuated with this chorus that sums up what the Lord has done. Verse 8, verse 15, verse 21, and verse 31, we read the exact same refrain. Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man. All of this is the Lord's work. And his work is wondrous. It's a thing at which we are to marvel as the children of man. The Lord's mighty work of salvation is too big for you to perform and too much for you to comprehend. It commands your awe. And of course, we should not fail to understand where the wonderful works of God find their ultimate fulfillment and climax. You see, the restoration of God's people from exile, though there is a kind of installment of it in what takes place in the Old Testament in the days of Zerubbabel and Nehemiah and Ezra, still what those Israelites experience comes nowhere close to what the prophets foretold. The grandeur of Zion, the majesty of the final temple, the glory of new creation did not come in the pages of the Old Testament. They have come instead in Christ. Jesus is the one in whom the second exodus has finally been accomplished. So we see on Pentecost, as he fills the tongues of the world with the tellings of what? Of the wonderful works of God. Christ is the one who fulfills verses four through seven. He leads his people through the wilderness to a home. He is the one who declares in the synagogue of Nazareth that he has come to proclaim liberty to the captives, to set free those who are oppressed. He's the one who thus fulfills verses 10 through 14. Jesus is the one who fulfills verses 17 through 20. What does his ministry not continuously demonstrate, but his ability to heal disease and deliver from destruction? And, of course, we see Jesus give a live demonstration of the events of verses 23 through 30 in what we read for our New Testament reading this morning in Mark's Gospel, chapter 4. When the tempest of the Sea of Galilee threatens to overwhelm the disciples in their boat, Jesus wakes up, speaks, and makes the storm to be still, the waves to be hushed. So the disciples ask in dread wonder of the one who stands before them, who is this that even the wind and the sea obey him? And the answer to the disciples' question is found in Psalm 107. This is Yahweh. This is God the Son come down to take flesh and to tame the watery chaos once more. That is indeed why this psalm is not just to fill the hearts of those exiles returning to Israel in the Old Testament, but to be in your heart, to be in the heart of everyone who belongs to Christ. For you to know Jesus is for you to know wonder, the wonder of God's work in him for you. It's to know the wonder of God's mighty deeds, that he is affected in Christ's life, death, and resurrection, and to know the wonder of the power of those deeds if they have broken into your very soul. Jesus answers the anguish of your exile. He leads you through the wilderness. He brings you out from your darkness and from the shadow of your death. He delivers you from your destruction. He has come to rule the raging chaos that threatens to swallow up your life. The horrors you faced in a cursed world and in a sinful existence, they're met by the marvels of the gospel of Jesus Christ. His steadfast love will endure throughout your days and beyond. The death of death and hell's destruction will land you safe on Canaan's side. When the mighty acts of God, they are deep and wide, they are filled with mystery and wonder, a mystery and wonder that envelops the whole of your life and the life of all those who are in Christ. And Psalm 107 calls you to consider this and thus to be wise. That brings us to our second point, the wisdom of the Lord, the wisdom of the Lord. The psalm concludes with a summons to contemplation. Verse 43, whoever is wise, let him attend to these things. Let them consider the steadfast love of the Lord. When we think of wisdom, we tend to think of practical action, and rightly so. Wisdom is justified by her deeds. That's what our Savior says. True wisdom must issue in prudent action. However, we're tempted to jump a step, especially as we are surrounded by an American culture that majors in pragmatism. We can tend to think that wisdom is only about action, that to give wisdom is merely to tell you what you should do. That's generally what American evangelicals want from sermons. Tell me what I should do, preacher. And practical sermons should fulfill that request, at least eventually. But do not be in such a pragmatic hurry that you rush past what verse 43 is calling you to do. It's calling you to take note and to consider. Real wisdom, biblical wisdom, is contemplative. It does not just rush into action. It acts, but it acts on the basis of consideration. It first contemplates, and then it executes. It first ponders, and then it lives. But what is verse 43 calling you to take note of? What is it asking you to consider? It's asking you to contemplate the steadfast love of the Lord that's made manifest in these things. But what are these things? Well, everything that proceeds in Psalm 107, namely the wondrous works of the Lord. You see, you are not going to live wisely if you rush past the gospel. Rush past the mighty acts of God's salvation and just jump straight into action. Whoever's wise attends to the steadfast love of the Lord that has been made known in the wondrous work of Christ. Also, do not underestimate the practical value of meditating upon the gospel. The wise will do so. Now, wisdom is more central to the purpose of Psalm 107 than may appear at first glance. It's not mentioned frequently, certainly, but it is the conclusion which punctuates these 43 verses. And it actually reaches back there at the end of the psalm and connects with something that's earlier in this psalm, something we see in its middle, because before we hear of wisdom, first we hear of wisdom's nemesis, foolishness. Verse 17, some were fools. How were they fools? They were fools through their sinful ways, and because of their iniquities, they suffered affliction. See, what this is doing is actually hearkening back to the previous psalm in some sense, Psalm 106, which is a penitential psalm, a psalm of confession of sin. There's this need for the ownership of culpability, a recognition of the fact that the author of most of the besetting problems of your life is the person who is staring you back in the mirror. That's fundamental to wisdom. Verse 17 cuts Israel to the quick. What is it that precipitated the darkness and the misery of her exile? It was her sin. Her affliction was brought down upon her by her own hand. They played the fool and they reaped the fool's reward. And wisdom considers this. True wisdom is not an amoral calculation of how to come out on top and do what works best for you. fulfilling your own wants. No, true wisdom considers the folly of sin. It understands the disaster that lies in wait from all those who pursue a path of just doing whatever feels best to them. And yet wisdom also contemplates the fact that the steadfast love of the Lord meets you even at times when you play the fool. Consider the movement of verses 17 through 21. Foolishness leads to sin. Sin leads to misery. But misery leads to a cry for salvation. And that cry of faith is answered with redemption. It's answered with the saving power of the wonderful works of God. This is Israel's story. This is your story. This is my story. The mysterious vastness of the work of the Lord is not only too big for your comprehension, it is too big for your sin. It comes to drown your folly and your iniquity in the unfathomable depths of God's mercy. Wisdom considers this too, contemplates the gospel of Jesus Christ. And in so doing, it meditates upon the dynamics that are displayed in that gospel and thus displayed in the verses that immediately precede this call to the wise in verse 43. In verses 33 through 41, at the end of the psalm, we see a manifestation of the same thing, in essence, that's been on display in these four different camera angles in the previous verses. The Lord is sovereign over all that he has made. Man's pretensions to mastery over the world are exposed for the foolishness that they are. And in his awesome sovereignty, the Lord is completely capable of reversing the fortunes of the world. We see that in verses 33 through 37. Rivers and springs of water give every reason to think that you would be secure in your provision, that you would enjoy stability in what is needed for life. But as we see in verses 33 through 34, the Lord can work wonders in dreadful ways as well. The God who made all things and sustain all things is fully capable of taking the fertile abundance of nature and turning it into a barren wasteland. And this is what Israel experienced. And they experienced it because of the reason listed in verse 34. God does that because of the evil of the inhabitants of that land. Israel experienced this. In their arrogance, they grew complacent in the promised land. Their prosperity led them to think that they could worship other gods, that their own might had secured what they had, and the Lord took the land that was flowing with milk and honey and He reduced it to a salty waste at the hands of Israel's invaders. We see also in this something of the logic of the great flood in Genesis. Just as God created, so He is also capable of de-creating. as man's wickedness calls for him to come and to judge it. And yet also we see in verses 35 through 37 that just as decreation is in the awesome hands of the Lord, so too is the power of recreation. He could turn a desert into pools of water. He can turn a parched land into Eden reborn. And this is indeed what God will do in Christ. He will make all things new. Wisdom looks to this. It looks to the realities of the Lord's judgment that are coming against the world, that will one day decreate it, but it also looks to the hope of what comes on the other end of that as he will recreate it. in the new creation. And true wisdom does not ultimately put its trust in the technological mastery of humanity, but in the wondrous works of the Lord who can decreate and recreate. True wisdom also considers the reversals of God's sovereignty that we see on display in verses 39 through 42. God's people are often in the position we read of in verse 39, diminished, brought low through oppression, evil, and sorrow. But Psalm 107 bids you to contemplate the realities that Jesus lays out in the Beatitudes, those who are poor in spirit. those who mourn, those who are meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, those who are persecuted for His namesake. These will meet the blessings of the kingdom of heaven as it comes to reverse the state of the world. They will see the great reversal of God's salvation. As we read in verses 40 through 41, the powerful of the world, the princes of this passing age, they will be confronted with the contempt of the Lord, but the needy will be raised up out of affliction. True wisdom is wisdom that does not assess things by the standards of worldly power. And that is most important for you to consider and to remember in an election year. As right as it is for you as Christians to be concerned about the well-being of the civil sphere in which you live, nevertheless, you should consider that it is not through instruments of worldly power that things will ultimately be made right. Neither the workings of the civil magistrate nor the efforts of Christians culturally are the route through which God sets creation free from the curse. The renewal of this world and the establishment of God's order of justice in it will not come through political action. It will come through the foolishness of the gospel. the weakness of the cross, the great reversal that has already been enacted through the one who was crucified in humiliation but raised up in glory. Wisdom considers this. It considers the true state of things, not according to the measurements of worldly power, but according to the wisdom of the cross in which God chooses what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, chooses what is weak in the world to shame the strong, chooses what is low and despised in the world to bring to nothing the things that are. Whoever is wise, Let them attend to these things. Let them consider the steadfast love of the Lord. And as wisdom considers the wondrous works of the Lord, it will then do what is reflexive to wisdom. It will wonder and it will worship. And that brings us to our third point, the worship of the Lord. Psalm 107 is an important orientation to the conclusion of the Psalter. As you get to Psalm 107, you're reaching the end of a very long book composed of five different books. As Opalma Robertson notes, Psalm 107 serves as an introduction to the final phase of the Psalter, which focuses on the climactic restoration of worship for God's people at Yahweh's permanent dwelling in Jerusalem. You see, book five of the Psalms has this thematic flow to it as well, and that flow makes its way to Zion. If you read through book five, you eventually come to this sweeping reflection in Psalm 119 on God's Torah, God's law, God's word. And then after that, Psalms 120 through 134 take you as a reader on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Those are the psalms of ascent, the psalms that would be sung by the traveler as they were going up to Zion, ascending to the mountain of the Lord to worship Him there. And then after this series of Psalms from the Psalms of Ascent that reflect again on the history of the Lord's redemption, the tragedy of exile and the hope of the Davidic throne, the Psalter concludes in Psalm 146 through 150 with the Hallelujah Psalms. So the Psalter, it moves to Zion and finishes in this cascade of worship. And Psalm 107 sets us on that journey. There's a little detail in these verses that is actually not so little. Notice a piece of the tragedy of the wilderness meanderings that are spoken of in verse four. Some wandered in desert waste, finding no way to a city to dwell in. No way to a city to dwell in. What was the city that the exiles looked to dwell in? What was the city they longed to find their resting place in? It was Zion, Jerusalem, the city of David, the place of the temple of the Lord, the pinnacle of Yahweh's enthronement upon earth. That city was lost in the exile. Jerusalem was laid to waste. Babylon destroyed her and reduced her to rubble. That's the lament of Psalm 89 if you stretch back at the Psalter, but it's also the occasion for weeping that you will find in Book 5 when you eventually reach Psalm 137. In Psalm 137, Israel's captors taunt her and they say, sing us one of the songs of Zion. And the psalmist weeps, how shall we sing the songs of the Lord in a foreign land? And then he says rhetorically, if I forget you, oh Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill. Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy. What was the city they were looking for? It's Jerusalem, Zion. That was the city they sought but could not find. The metropolis which housed the habitation of the Lord Most High. But then there's hope. Note the hope of the second exodus spoken in verse 7. He led them by a straight way till they reached a city to dwell in. This hope emerges again in the closing movements of Psalm 107. In the midst of the flourishing abundance of new creation, look at what the Lord does in verse 36. There he lets the hungry dwell. There they establish a city to live in. a city. The return from exile, the gathering in of God's people from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, is a gathering into a city, namely the city of Zion. Why? Because that is the place of worship. That's the resting place of the Lord's temple. It's a location of beatific fellowship with the God who comes down to dwell with His people. The whole of redemptive history drives to this end. All of the wondrous works of the Lord push forward to this objective. Psalm 107 starts with a call to do this. Verse 1, O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. for His steadfast love endures forever. That's the refrain that we then meet throughout the whole of the psalm. Verse eight, verse 15, verse 21, verse 31, let them thank the Lord for His steadfast love, for His wondrous works for the children of man. In all four of these vignettes of the return from exile, worship is the conclusion, worship is the outcome, worship is the goal. And so never forget this, Christian, that this is the destiny to which you are moving. This is the ascent you are making. This is the end of your pilgrimage through this wilderness that is below, to be before the throne of God and of the Lamb and to worship Him and to see His face for all eternity. And we're tempted to think about that and perhaps secretly, maybe not openly, dread the prospect of heaven being one long worship service. That sounds a bit boring, perhaps. But I think that's because we're tempted to measure the joy of what we will experience in our fully glorified state by all of the imperfections that we experience now in our unglorified state. You come to worship and there's all kinds of limitations that tug on you. But all of those things that tug on your worship now, the weakness of your mind, the fatigue of your body, the distractions of your earthly recreations and your earthly anxieties, the sinful idols that seek to supplant the place of God in your heart, all of those things will have fallen away when you are gathered to the Lord in glory. There will be no immature Christians before the throne of God. Only the spirits of the righteous made perfect. So the idolatrous distractions of your sin, all the frail limitations of your body, they will be no more. Even the weakest, most struggling of Christians now will then have been brought to complete maturity. And then he who began a good work in you will have finally brought it to its completion. There you will know the bliss that is undimmed and undiminished by the passing of the countless moments of eternity. There you'll have the deepest longings of your soul, satisfied as you behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. There you will swim in an ocean of beatitude. Among all the many blessings Jesus has come to give back to a fallen humanity, this is the crown among them, the fulfillment of the chief end for which you were made, that you would glorify God and enjoy him forever. This is the blessing you taste uniquely in the Lord's day every Sunday as you come to worship God with his people as they've assembled to do that. But it's the blessing that you will have consummated in the heavenly presence of your Redeemer. And there, as you're safe on Canaan's side, as you've ascended to the mountain of the Lord, as you are gathered into the heavenly Zion, you will taste glorified worship and you will never be bored because you were built to wonder. You were built to wonder. And that deep instinct of your soul will find its highest object as you wonder before your God unto ages of ages. Your maker and your redeemer, who is too big for you to master, too mysterious for you to comprehend, and too merciful to let you sink down into the nothingness of your sin, He will command your admiration and occupy your joy in a way that will never end. Give thanks to the Lord, for he will lead us to his city through his wondrous work in Christ. Let's pray. Oh Lord, our God, we know that our instincts to wonder and to marvel before you have become dull by our sin, by our frailty. But we thank you, Lord, that you are too merciful to let us sit there, that you come in your wonderful works, you purchase us out of the apathy of our sin, the wanderings of our exile, and you bring us back that we might enter your courts, that we might know fellowship with you, that we might stand in awe of your majesty. And so we ask, oh Lord, that that majesty would command our affections even now and all the days of our life through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. We ask these things in his name, amen.