Read together some 48 already, so let me ask God's help for us to understand, believe and obey, this part of His word. Let's pray. We do pray, God, that you would overcome the dullness that is the condition of our hearts apart from you and apart from the means which you have given us to know you. That is the Holy Spirit. We pray the Holy Spirit would remove the scales from our eyes and unstop our ears so that we can understand what you have said and understanding that we can believe it. We ask that your Holy Spirit would help us to stir and us conviction of the truth of your words and not simply the truth but the blessing that is to be found in obeying them. When we pray in Christ's name and I pray that you would help me to know nothing but Him and crucified a man. Steve Brown's here, maybe there might be others who knew many stories of a similar nature, Alice maybe. After Hurricane Andrew hit Keybiscane and God specifically targeted Keybiscane and of course Miami and Homestead got it because Jonah was hiding in the ship and Keybiscane that a lot of people, when they returned to their neighborhoods after the hurricane passed by, homes they had lived in for 15, 20, 25, 30 years. They couldn't find their houses. All the shrubbery was gone, all the trees, the signposts, familiar landmarks were just missing and people couldn't find their own homes. Think of them, how disturbing that would be to you to not be able to recognize the place where you lived. Until you might, and I heard several stories like this, I was driving along looking for something familiar and all of a sudden I realized I was right in front of my house. Now only a huge storm could do that kind of thing to our houses but there are times in the Christian life and there are times in the history of the church where we are homeless because our attention has been fixed upon the adornments, on the landscaping and upon the signposts are not upon our very home. Solid 48 speaks of the home that is the Christians and there is no other place that is the Christians' home in this world. And sometimes we feel like homeless people because we haven't studied our home but instead we've studied the world outside. I want us this morning to look at Psalm 48 and understand this lesson for us. That because God has glorified Himself in the church, we must come to know the church intimately. That's the simple thesis I think of this song. First, this is so because God has established His presence in the church and because He has established His presence in the church that's where we must worship Him. Look at the first three verses actually that you read. Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, His Holy Mountain. Now, the city of our God is a reference to Jerusalem, His Holy Mountain is a reference to Zion. In fact, Zion is specifically named in verse 2. Zion was actually not within the walls of Solomon's Jerusalem. In the greater extent of the city, Zion was within His walls, the particular Mount Zion. But I think here Mount Zion is being used as a autonomy or as a symbol for the whole of God's favored city, the place where He had established His presence. He is greatly to be praised in the city of our God. That's where He has to be praised in His Holy Mountain. This mountain is holy because the glory has descended upon this mountain. God is in her palaces for three. The beauty of Zion is because of the one who lives there. God has established His presence in Zion and that was where He has to be worshiped in the Old Testament. The last part of verse 2, I'm sorry, the New American standard, the revision hasn't caught it yet either. The Old New American standard, and I think the NIV also said in the far north, in the Hebrew, it's beyond Zeyphon. Is Mount Zion beyond Zeyphon? Zeyphon was its mythical mountain where Bale dwelt. And while Zeyphon can refer to the northern expense, it's here, it's referring to the mountain where Bale dwelt. Zion is more beautiful than Bale's mountain because Jehovah is more beautiful, he's more powerful, he's the great God above all God's of any other God, including Bale. So Zion is great because God's there and the church is great because God is there. Time doesn't allow, and I think the context of our being where we are today will permit me to make the connection between the church and Zion. For one thing, the New Testament refers to the church as Zion, that is where the place where the Spirit of God has taken up its residents. If you track the presence of God in the glory cloud and you Genesis, Joshua, students, or I hope not weary of this yet, but familiar certainly, that what Zion represents in the Old Testament were the glory dwelt in the midst of the people of God, so the church is that place today. And it's true that in the gospel and in through Christ we have come to Zion because Jesus has come to Zion, we have come to Zion. Hebrews chapter 12. And that's what makes the church beautiful because God's there, not because it's just a church. There's a story of a city councilman in Jackson, Mississippi. Because he's a Christian man, he likes to once a month visit a different church in his district. And he usually takes one of his children with him. He took his 10 year old boy with him one Sunday to a church that was very upbeat. I'm not going to go into detail about describing the style of worship because that's really not the point. But it was a terrific experience as the description often goes in our vocabular. It was a great worship experience. And if they left the church, the 10 year old boy said to his dad, he says, Dad, that was fun. Well, a month later, Dad took the sun to another church. And it was a little more state or a lot more state. Again, I'm not going to go into detail because worship style is not directly the issue at least. But it was a quiet place. It was a place of regularity, a place where there was kneeling and that place of quietness, as well as joy and other ranges of emotions. And at one point in the worship service, the 10 year old turned to his dad and he says, Dad. I'm not contrasting what not only the world looks for in the church, but also the criteria by which we judge the church and which is a more beautiful Zion. The one that's fun or the one where God is there. Of course, that's what first Corinthians 14 says. It's to be the cry of the unconverted as they worship with God's people. This is a people who God is in their midst. So whatever you think about the church, whatever you admire in the church, whatever your goals are in serving the church, remember that what makes the church great is the God who dwells there. But it's there that he has to be worshiped because the worship in where he's not is not the worship in, right? The church is a special place because God has placed his name on it. I was trying to come up with a term I still can't get the right term. But it's true that God is on the present. There's no doubt about that. Just as God has glory in the heavens. But there's also, and I'm touring around with mono presence or unit presence. I still haven't, unit presence sounds too much like unit bomber. I'm still looking for a word. Maybe you can help me. But while yet, while God is on the present in the world, yet he's present in the church in a way he is not present in the world. And you can't find him in the world as a God who will cause his name to dwell on you unless you go to the place where he's caused his name to dwell. He's given means of grace to the church that are to feed us, to sustain us, to give us a life. Those means of grace aren't found outside the church. The church is great not because the church is great, but the church is great because God dwells in her midst and he has attached his name to this people. But it's not simply about his presence. The second thing I want you to see is because God has brought salvation in the church. We have to worship him there for his saving work. Now those in the middle verses, lower the kings assembled themselves. They passed by together. They saw it. Then they were amazed. They were terrified. They fled and alarmed. Panic seized them. He's talking about when foreign kings would come to make siege against Jerusalem, how at different times in redemptive history that they were terrorized, these foreign kings were these great armies. Now, we don't know specifically what Psalm 48 is talking about. It could be when Raisin of Aram and Pekin of Israel came to gather to make war against Jerusalem, or when it's the Nathirah of the Syria, or even Zerah of the Ethiopian king. All these three instances are recorded in the Old Testament. It could be an instance that's not recorded. But the point is that foreign kings came to attack Jerusalem and it was God who chased them away. And he has to be worshiped for this saving work. This work where he defeats the enemies of his holy city. And he drives them away and he keeps it safe. I remember in high school I was probably having more than once. But there was a girl I was dating and I was a couple years older than her so I was able to stay out later by my parents' permission than she was. And sometimes I would drive by her house after her cure a few but before mine, and I remember one time I thought I would maybe go up and pack on her bedroom window and maybe talk to her a little bit since I came through the front door her parents would let her see me. And I remember as I'm sneaking up in the dark, anticipating just talking to her for a few minutes. The most frightening thing in the world for an adolescent boy, the porch light came on. And I ran into something that some kind of shrubbery on the way out but I was in a hurry. It was my passion that drew me but it was her father's passion that drove me away. And it's true of God's Zion. He is jealous. Zachariah talks about this. I'm very jealous for Jerusalem. And the nations, although I was angry with you, I was only angry a little while but the nations, they overdid it. They punished you beyond my chastisements and now I just wait for the show to begin. If you think my chastisements, my fatherly discipline on you have been difficult. Wait and see what I'll do the nations who dispossessed you. God fights for his holy sin. And the way he has fought for it ultimately, fully, finally, completely perfectly is in the war he made against sin on the cross in the passion that the sun experienced. And so now that the church is the ark of God and that's a metaphor by which the church has been described over the ages. It is the place you find shelter and protection from the fiery storm of God's wrath. If you stand on the outside of God's holy city, you're an enemy of God. But on the inside, you're a friend of God. And you have his protection. You have God's reign in rule. Now it doesn't mean you live as you wish to live inside the city, inside God's Zion. Because the king is able to drive away his enemies, he's also able to rule within his house. And so to be a member, to be a citizen of the kingdom of heaven is to be a citizen subject to the king of heaven. And that's why the confession talks about the kingdom of Christ on earth as the church. The visible church is the kingdom of Christ on earth, apart from which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. We don't just promote and defend the church as the deposit of ethical or even biblical monotheism. The church is not primarily a cultural force to keep school massacres from happening. The church is the depository and in fact the beneficiary of the cross of Christ. The church is about the gospel. This is the Christian church that is so anticipated. The church is about the gospel. It's not about social work. There are social implications. There are social outworkings to be sure. But the church is about the gospel. And in the gospel we can come under the reign and rule of Christ. And to be apart from the reign and rule of Christ is to be apart from the gospel. So we worship God in the church because his presence is there. But we worship him for his saving work because it's in the church that he has defended us from our enemies and saved us from our sin. But these are then the foundation for the last thing the Psalmist tells us, which is really the main thing I want to say to you this morning. Because God reveals his glory in the church, we must devote ourselves to studying the church's beauty. And this begins in verse 12 I suppose, if not earlier. The Psalmist cries out to the pilgrims who would have come to Jerusalem. He says, let's go on a tour. He says, walk about Zion and go around or counter towers. Consider her ramparts. Go through her palaces. Have you ever been in Nashville, Tennessee and gone on a touristy tour? One thing they do is take you by famous country western stars houses. I kind of like it because I kind of like the music that they are. I forget whether it's Chad Atkins house or whether it was I think it was Chad Atkins house with a swimming pool is in the shape of the guitar. So much for the fiction of cultural elitism in the seminary, you say yes, Dr. James. I remember the swimming pool and I think it was Chad Atkins and I remember the guide walking us around the swimming pool. And as we walked around the pool, we heard the virtues of Chad Atkins extolled as we looked at this swimming pool shaped in the shape of the guitar, even with the painted lines on the bottom looking like strings and threats. Why? Because a dwelling tells you about who lives there. And the Psalmist is begging us to walk around Zion and to study it. So that we can extoll the virtues and the benefits and the deeds of the one who lives there. Churchill was his great general Montgomery. They had a somewhat of a difficult relationship, which is probably true of both of them in a lot of other relationships. At one point Churchill was urging Montgomery to become better acquainted with logistics because no great military genius could go without a knowledge of logistics. You know the movement and the location of materials, supplies. And Montgomery found it boring compared to the tactical side of war making. And Montgomery said to Churchill, he said familiarity breeds contempt, which is something you can say to your professors. But then your professors could say to you the very thing that Churchill respond, he says, no familiarity at all breeds nothing. And while it's true that the more you study God's Zion, the more you see it's it's it's it's a pock marks. It's scars. And in fact Zion itself is not a very impressive mountain. It's just a hill a little more than a hill. There are bigger mountains around there better looking mountains around. Yet God's command to study yet is a command to study him and his redeeming work. And to study the reign and rule, he has an exercise over and for the sake of his people. Now why is that so relevant to say? Well, it reminds me of a Nancy Griffith song that she's the folk singer. She has a song about the great depression. And it's a song about about children who grew up on the great struggling poverty of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl Oklahoma. And she says there's a book up on the shelf about the Dust Bowl days and there's a little bit of you and a little bit of me and the photos on every page. But then she says our children live in the city and rest upon our shoulders. They never want the rain to fall or the weather to get colder. The children of the Dust Bowl farmers forgot that life came from the cooling of the weather and the coming of the rain. And frankly we despise and we tread upon what the blood of the martyrs has bought for us. And in fact what the redemption of Christ has won for us in the church. And it's almost just says come back and study it. Now this could be a great apologetic for the study of church history. Okay, I was waiting Dr. Jane. But how can we grow to love something about whose history we know nothing about? The study of church history is like romance. When you come to understand what the church is. It's the Zion of God. It's the city of the Great King. It's where God has established himself. And where God has defended and ruled over his people for centuries. It's where the blood of Christ is efficacious.