SUNDAY SERMON - Pastors Who Shut Down Their Churches | Psalm 63
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4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 18 December 2022
⏱️ 71 minutes
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Summary
This sermon was preached at Covenant Bible Church on September 19, 2021.
Psalm 63:2 says, “So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory.” While on the run from his son Absalom, David has been effectively cut off the land of Israel, and most significantly, the sanctuary. Therefore, the psalmist is deprived of the praise of God, the people of God, and the presence of God. He is consumed by a desperate, and even violent, thirst for the pleasure and privilege of the presence of God in public worship. David longs to appear before his God. David knows that the sweetest times in the presence of God are not found in private devotion, but in public worship.
For the past 18 months, Christians (and especially pastors) have been presented with a simple choice: Either forsake the gathering to minimize the physical threat of death to our bodies, or continue to gather to minimize the spiritual threat of damnation to our souls. Some overly zealous Calvinists might object at this point by insisting that God is sovereign over salvation, and therefore, he is capable of preserving the souls of his elect, even in the absence of physically gathering together on the Lord’s Day. However, I might remind these Calvinists that the same God who is sovereign over salvation is sovereign over everything, and therefore, he is also quite capable of preserving the health of his people as they diligently seek to obey his commands.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey guys, real quick, before we get started, I have a small request. |
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| 0:12.8 | to ensure that this content gets out to as many people as possible. |
| 0:17.5 | Thanks. |
| 0:18.0 | One final time, our text for this Lord's Day is Psalm 63, verses 1 through 3. |
| 0:23.2 | The Bible says this, O God, you are my God. Earnestly, I seek you. My soul thirst for you. My flesh |
| 0:31.3 | faints for you. As in a dry and weary land where there is no water. I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, seeing your power |
| 0:40.1 | and glory, because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. This is the |
| 0:47.0 | word of the Lord. All right, please be seated and we'll begin. By way of introduction in your |
| 0:53.3 | notes, if you'd like to follow along, |
| 0:55.1 | I've written the following. Psalm 63 begins with a heading that says, a Psalm of David when he was |
| 1:01.9 | in the wilderness of Judah. A Psalm of David when he was in the wilderness of Judah. If you were with us |
| 1:08.6 | last Lord's Day, we had a similar context for the writing of that |
| 1:13.5 | Psalm. The context was that David was a fugitive. He was hiding out. His house was surrounded by |
| 1:22.5 | militia, men who served King Saul. But there's a difference in the context of our text today. |
| 1:29.0 | Very similar in many ways. David is on the run. Once again, he's in the wilderness. |
| 1:33.6 | He has been effectively severed from the kingdom of Israel. And therefore, by being severed |
| 1:39.8 | from the kingdom of Israel, he's been severed from the temple. He's been severed from, well, the |
| 1:45.8 | tabernacle at this point because his son Solomon ultimately built and constructed the temple. |
| 1:50.6 | But he's been severed, separated from the place of worship, the place where the glory of God |
... |
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