The text for Pastor John's sermon is Psalm 147 verses 1 through 11.

If you're visiting and you don't have a Bible with you this morning, there's usually a pew Bible

in the pew in front of you there that you can use.

Psalm 147 verses 1 through 11.

Praise the Lord, for it is good to sing praises to our God, for he is gracious and a song of praise is seemly. The Lord builds up to

Jerusalem. He gathers the outcasts of Israel. He heals the broken-hearted and binds up

their wounds. He determines the number of the stars he gives to all of them their names. Great is our

Lord and abundant in power. His understanding is beyond measure. The Lord lifts up the downtrodden. He casts the wicked to the ground.

Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving. Make melody to our God upon the lyre. He covers the heavens with clouds. He prepares rains for the earth. He makes grass grow upon the hills. He gives to the beasts their food and to the young ravens which cry.

His delight is not in the strength of the horse nor his pleasure in the legs of man, but the

Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his

steadfast love.

Up until now in this series on the pleasures of God, we have focused on God's pleasure in himself and immediately in the works of his hands. And we have not said much at all yet concerning the kinds of

responses in the human heart that God might take pleasure in. We've talked about the fact that God

has pleasure in his son, that God has pleasure in the handiwork of his creation, that God has pleasure in the sovereignty and freedom of his

providential control of the universe, that God has pleasure in his name and in the reputation of his glory, that God has pleasure in freely choosing

a people for himself and in rejoicing over them to do them good.

And last week we focused on the fact that God even delights to bruise his son, because

in that great act of judgment, the stormy betrovel of those two passions in God's heart got married.

Namely, the passion to save sinners

and the passion to glorify his name.

All through the Old Testament, somehow interpenetrating,

...