A joy of seeing your loved ones after a period of separation. It's a great joy. That joy is

experienced both by adults and children. However, the children show much more exuberance,

enthusiasm than adults. I'll never forget in my own experience

many, many years ago when our children were young. And my ministry at the time took me all over

the world and I traveled overseas a great deal. I never forget those moments of reunion,

the excitement in the children faces as I arrive

back, the joy of seeing me again, the satisfaction of that reunion. In many ways, Psalm 24,

which we'll be looking at in a minute, is an exuberance, enthusiastic way of expressing a reunion.

Psalm 24 expresses really a childlike enthusiasm at a reunion.

I'm going to tell you in a minute, but before I do that,

it's amazing to me how our Lord Jesus so many times in the scripture uses

a child as an example. He talked about childlike faith, a child like innocence, a childlike enthusiasm,

and a child like trust. Now let me tell you about this psalmist, childlike enthusiasm,

childlike exuberance, a childlike joy at this reunion. Story time. The nation of Israel

lost the Ark of the Covenant to their enemies, the Philistines. Now, for those of you who

probably don't know anything about the Ark of the Covenant, which I doubted, but I don't assume

anymore, when God delivered his people Israel out of the slavery of Egypt and he made a covenant with them

and he said that I will never leave you. He said, when you forsake me, I will take my hands off

and protection, but I will never leave you. My presence will be with you always. And as a symbol

of that presence is going to be that box, the Ark of the Covenant.

Now, the magic was not in the Ark of the Covenant, just like the magic is not in the symbols of wine and bread,

just a symbol of our Lord's death and resurrection. The Ark was a symbol, but of course many people looked at the ark and did not

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