Deliver me from my enemies, O my God; protect me from those who rise up against me; deliver me from those who work evil, and save me from bloodthirsty men.
—Psalm 59:1–2
The rejected ruler seeks the life of God’s chosen one while the chosen one seeks refuge in His God. Again, we have the king in a state of humiliation, crying out to God for deliverance. This is God’s King. This is not how we expect to find him. He has been anointed, but not exalted. In his victory over the giant and his triumphs over the Philistines, something of his might has been seen, but it is this that provokes the jealousy of Saul and sends the shepherd boy back into the hills, but this time as a vagabond.
As we read through the gospels, this is how we find God’s King. He is anointed but not yet exalted. Something of His glory is manifest, but these wonders provoke the jealousy of the powers that be. He wanders, with no place to lay His head. And in this state, the King laments. Isaiah wrote of Him, “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3). This is God’s way. He brings His King to exaltation through humiliation.
God’s innocent King laments for what He is certain of. Through lament comes this expression of confidence. Often I’ve said that lament is weak faith crying out towards the strength of confidence and assurance. But when we look to the King crying out, we know His faith was perfect. He poured out His soul in faith, and having poured out His soul, He took faith in the God He poured His heart out to.
Even for He who had perfect faith, lament was the way towards confidence. Saints, because God’s King prayed this prayer, you may too.
O my Strength, I will watch for you, for you, O God, are my fortress. My God in his steadfast love will meet me; God will let me look in triumph on my enemies.
—Psalm 59:9–10
Here is your confidence. God has heard your King. God’s unfailing steadfast covenant love is plain in this, Jesus has looked in triumph on His enemies. Lament. But learn to lament like the King. Lament not only seeking strong faith. Lament with strong faith. Do not just grow strong in faith through lament. Grow in lamenting with strong faith.
Give ear to my prayer, O God, and hide not yourself from my plea for mercy! Attend to me, and answer me; I am restless in my complaint and I moan, because of the noise of the enemy, because of the oppression of the wicked. For they drop trouble upon me, and in anger they bear a grudge against me.
—Psalm 55:1–3
A lament is a cry, and this lament is a cry to be heard. I mean that in three ways.
First, this is a cry to be heard in that we are meant to hear it. This is the word of God, given to us by the Holy Spirit to reveal Christ. God has spoken. Let us listen. David’s cry is a cry you are meant to hear. The King’s lament is meant to welcome your own (v. 22). This is a cry to be heard.
Second, this is a cry to be heard in that being heard is what David is crying out for (vv. 1–2a). David cries out to God asking to be heard. This speaks to the fervency and intensity with which David laments. This is a cry to be heard.
Third, this is a cry to be heard in that, it is the kind of cry that must be heard. This is the kind of cry that demands a hearing. It is the kind of cry that cannot but be heard. It is like the cry of a sick toddler sleeping near to a loving mother. Such a cry is a cry to be heard. There are many cries a toddler makes which a mother knows need not be heard. These are cries to be ignored. But then, there is the cry to be heard. It must be heard. Such is this cry. Still, the analogy falls short. This cry must be heard not because our misery demands it, but because God’s mercy demands it. For God to be God, this cry must be heard. His covenant faithfulness demands it. This is a cry to be heard.
It is one thing to cry out “I must be heard.” It is another to cry out a prayer that God must hear. David does both. Jesus does them better. Hebrews 5:7 tells us that “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.” With Jesus, the intensity with which He prayed was matched by the intensity with which He must be answered.
Never so perfectly, but assuredly, you too may cry out “you must hear this” when you reverently understand that for God to be God, He must hear such prayers. Such prayers are rooted in who God has revealed Himself to be in Christ Jesus for us.
This is a cry to be heard. It is God’s Word. You must hear it. And if you hear it, may you learn this two-fold mustness. Not just the mustness of your desperation, but the mustness of God’s declaration.
God’s declaration speaks to our desperation. If such prayers are not heard we may lose our lives, but God will lose His glory. Pray with this kind of mustness: “God if you do not hear my cry, I will perish. God if you do not hear my cry, you are not faithful. My life is a small thing, but your glory is the biggest thing. So have mercy and do not hide yourself from my plea.”
“O God, save me by your name, and vindicate me by your might…
Behold, God is my helper; the Lord is the upholder of my life.”
Psalm 54:1, 4
This psalm can feel very familiar and yet very distant. It can feel distant because it is familiar. Here we encounter that which is native to the psalms. This is why it is familiar. And, this is why is seems distant, for what is native to the psalms often feels foreign to us. It’s like having a pocket full of foreign currency in a strange land. We know we’ve got money, but we don’t know how much we’ve got.
This foreign familiarity is frequently so because we try to relate to the psalms in the wrong way. We can’t take them up like a pop song. One can’t come to the psalter as though it were karaoke night, seeking a sad song to express their recent heartache. We cherry pick the psalms for emotional feels while avoiding them intellectually. There are many psalms, that when honestly examined, many think, “I could never pray that!”
Here we have a prayer for deliverance. Most everyone is comfortable with that. When we’re in a real pickle, we will all pray for deliverance. But David also prays for vindication. He prays against his enemies. This is where we get uncomfortable. Here is where this psalm feels foreign to our Christianity. “Vindication? I’m a sinner. Enemies? Aren’t we supposed to love our enemies?”
When we experience such discomfort with the psalter we must begin here: if this psalm feels foreign, it is foreign to me, not to Christianity. When I can’t seem to square it with the New Testament, this is because I’m out of harmony, I’m out of balance, I’ve emphasized some truth such that I cannot understand another truth. So instead of discarding such a psalm off or treating it like a salvage project, picking the good parts, lets recognize that it is truth and then let us seek to recognize the truth that it is.
To begin this, I think our biggest help comes in verse 4. The psalmist turns from prayer to address those listening in on his prayer. Before you pray this prayer, you are meant to listen in to this prayer. You are meant to hear God’s King praying for vindication. How can you sing this psalm? You are meant to sing it with the King.
The reader through the psalms might here experience something of déjà vu? If that’s you, know there is an explanation for the feeling.
Psalm 14
The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good.
The LORD looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God.
They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.
Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers who eat up my people as they eat bread and do not call upon the LORD?
There they are in great terror, for God is with the generation of the righteous. You would shame the plans of the poor, but the LORD is his refuge.
Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion! When the LORD restores the fortunes of his people, let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad.
Psalm 53
The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, doing abominable iniquity; there is none who does good.
God looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God.
They have all fallen away; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.
Have those who work evil no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call upon God?
There they are, in great terror, where there is no terror! For God scatters the bones of him who encamps against you; you put them to shame, for God has rejected them.
Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion! When God restores the fortunes of his people, let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad.
The similarity is unavoidable, but the differences are not insignificant. Charles Spurgeon comments, “It is not a copy of the fourteenth psalm, emended and revised by a foreign hand; it is another edition by the same author, emphasized in certain parts, and rewritten for another purpose.”
There are differences not only in content, but in context. Psalm 14 appears in Book I of the Psalms (1–42) while Psalm 53 is in Book II (42–72). Books II and III together make up what is known as the Elohistic Psalter (Psalms 42–83). These psalms show a preference for speaking of the the God of Israel as Elohim (God) instead of Yahweh (the LORD). In the first book, Yahweh is used 272 times while Elohim is used only 15 times, whereas in Book II, Elohim is used 164 times while Yahweh is used only 30 times. Psalm 14 uses Yahweh four times, while Psalm 53 doesn’t use it at all.
Also, within Book II, Psalms 51–70 form a sub-collection of Davidic psalms. All these Psalms, with the exception of Psalms 66 and 67, are attributed to David. Further, Psalms 52–55 are all Maskils. This stands out even more when you observe that Psalms 56–60 are all Miktams. All this to point that these psalms are where they are for a reason. There is purpose.
Additionally, Davidic psalms with historical settings aren’t extremely common. There are only 14 of them in the Psalter. They are more rare in the first book of the Psalms than in the second. The first book has only five, whereas the second has eight. The third psalm is the first psalm with a historical superscription, “A Psalm of David, When He Fled from Absalom His Son.” Because of the rarity of historical settings, when read through the first book of the psalms, any time we read about any opposition to David, Absalom is on the mind. The 14th Psalm gives us no setting. When we think of the fool there, Absalom naturally comes to mind.
Whereas when we come to Psalm 53, a different character is suggested. There is an unusual concentration of psalms with headings here and most all of them are relate to a specific time in David’s life, that period when he was fleeing from Saul. Psalm 52 was occasioned by Doeg’s wickedness. Psalm 54 when the Ziphites betrayed David. Psalm 56 was written when David was with the Philistines hiding from Saul. Psalm 57 was written when he fled from Saul and hid in a cave. Psalm 52 relates to events from 1 Samuel 22. Psalm 54 relates to events from 1 Samuel 23.
Though the superscription of Psalm 53 has no historical setting, there is something in Psalm 53 that relates to 1 Samuel 25. In 1 Samuel 25 we encounter Nabal, who refused to aid David. His wife Abigail was praised as being both discerning and beautiful. Hearing of her husband’s insolence, she comes before David saying, “Let not my lord regard this worthless fellow, Nabal, for as his name is, so is he. Nabal is his name, and folly is with him” (1 Samuel 25:25). This psalm speaks to “nabal.” Nabal’s name is the Hebrew word for “fool.” “The nabal says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” And the chief way Nabal does this, is by saying “No” to God’s King. The supreme way men say “There is no God!” is by saying “There is no eternally begotten Son of God, incarnate of the virgin, Jesus the Christ, Son of David, King of Israel.”
"Why should I fear in times of trouble,
when the iniquity of those who cheat me surrounds me,
those who trust in their wealth
and boast of the abundance of their riches?
Truly no man can ransom another,
or give to God the price of his life,
for the ransom of their life is costly
and can never suffice,
that he should live on forever
and never see the pit."
—Psalm 49:5–9
Why should the saints not fear the wicked-rich-powerful? Because no matter how rich they are, they cannot buy their own ransom. Adam was warned that he would surely die when he ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 1:27). The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). In his sin and rebellion, man incurs a debt and that debt is his everlasting soul. It is a debt he cannot pay. The price for life is life. Man cannot pay because he owes himself. Another sinful man cannot pay for him, for that man also owes himself. The wealthy who trust in their wealth trust in that which cannot ransom them. Spurgeon wrote, “They boast of what they will do with us, let them see to themselves. Let them weigh their gold in the scales of death, and see how much they can buy therewith from the worm and the grave. The poor are their equals in this respect… A king’s ransom would be of no avail, a Monte Rosa of rubies, an America of silver, a world of gold, a sun of diamonds, would all be utterly contemned. O ye boasters, think not to terrify us with your worthless wealth, go ye and intimidate death before ye threaten men in whom is immortality and life.” Jesus asked, “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26). Why fear those who stand empty-handed before the holy God of heaven?
Still, death is the great leveler. Before God, all our pockets are empty. If you can’t give riches for your life, you can’t give poverty either. So if both the wise and the fool alike die, shouldn’t we fear? We have wicked men to deal with now and a righteous God thereafter—should we not fear?
“For he sees that even the wise die;
the fool and the stupid alike must perish
and leave their wealth to others” (v. 10)
No, for although the wicked-rich can purchase no ransom, for the poor in spirit, one has been provided.
“But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol,
for he will receive me” (v. 15)
What the psalmist could not pay, God has paid for him. God would become poor, so that man might become rich. For Egypt there is darkness and death, but for Israel, there is light and life. But for this to happen, God must provide a Lamb. God has paid Himself. He has paid a life for a life. Jesus Christ, owing no debt, came as the Second Adam and laid down His life. He came to death with His pockets full, having achieved all righteousness in our stead. Jesus endured the darkness. Jesus conquered death. He rose in light with life. He took on our debt so that we might share in His wealth. And though our debt was infinite, His wealth is greater still. We are not simply out of the red, we are wealthy in Christ.
Dear souls, God will accept no ransom from sinful man, but He has provided one in the God-man Jesus Christ. Do not be a fool, receive this wisdom, Jesus Christ the riches of God.
Walk about Zion, go around her,
number her towers,
consider well her ramparts,
go through her citadels,
that you may tell the next generation
that this is God,
our God forever and ever.
He will guide us forever.
—Psalm 48:12–14
“Biblical religion,” writes one reformed theologian, “views the whole course of history as a movement from a garden to a city.” I grew up in as rural Oklahoma as you can get on a peanut farm outside the small town of Eakly. And while I did enjoy some time in Tulsa, I have no desire to return to the city. As violence, drugs, and homelessness begin to dominate our cities more and more, they grow even less attractive to me. There are many iconic cities I now have absolutely no desire to ever visit. I’ve never been so glad to live in the country.
But a love for the countryside mustn’t cause us to simply the Biblical storyline like this: Garden good; city corrupt. Yes, Eden was a paradise, and Babel was evil, but in between Eden and Babylon, we do find Jerusalem. Regardless of their evils, don’t fail to think of cities in these two ways. First, in the ancient world, many cities didn’t obscure nature, they harnessed it, as ancient river valley civilizations meant more green and growth, not less. Second, cities were and are an outworking of the mandate for man to have dominion over the earth. As we look at cities we must remember the culture mandate and we must not forget that in between the garden of God and the cities of man there was a fall. So while cities do represent progress in one sense, and they are collectives of depravity of as well. It’s not that cities are more sinful, it is just that there are more sinners.
In this psalm though we are not talking about any city of man, but the city of God. This psalm is a celebration of the city of our God, His holy mountain, Mount Zion, the city of the great king, the city of David, Jerusalem. This city, ultimately, is the church, the assembly of the saints, the heavenly Jerusalem (Hebrews 12:22). She is glorious. So great is the psalmist’s delight in her, we’re almost tempted to say she’s worshipped. But the splendor of the city is the splendor of the her Builder (Hebrews 11:10). The beauty of the bride, is the beauty of her Bridegroom. The glory of the people is the glory of her God. As we survey the city, we behold her God, who dwells in her midst as King. As we survey the ancient city with the Psalmist, we anticipate the heavenly city of the new earth, the city we have a foretaste of in the local church. If the psalmist could so sing these words of Jerusalem, how much more may we now of the church?
Clap your hands, all peoples!
Shout to God with loud songs of joy!
For the LORD, the Most High, is to be feared,
a great king over all the earth.
—Psalm 47:1–2
All churches have liturgies; it is simply a question of whether they have a good one or a bad one. Liturgy is simply the form or ordering of a worship gathering. At Meridian Church, after some preliminaries, our worship gatherings formally begin with a “call to worship.” This historically common practice unfortunately is foreign to many who visit our body.
What is a call to worship? It is simply a reading of a passage of Scripture to usher forth our hearts unto God. God speaks; we respond. This is the Biblical pattern of worship from Genesis to Revelation. He initiates; we reciprocate. He reveals; we revere. The bride of Christ did not propose to her Bridegroom. In the dance of discipleship and worship that follows their union, He still leads; she still follows. Worship is not something we stir up within. It is something God stirs up within His people. Worship is not generated by man. It is summoned forth by God.
The 47th psalm is a call to worship par excellence and God gives it through His people. The psalms are a gigantic call to worship by our gigantic God. God calls us to worship Himself. Have you ever contemplated that? C.S. Lewis did, and initially, it irritated him.
“When I first began to draw near to belief in God and even for some time after it had been given to me, I found a stumbling block in the demand so clamorously made by all religious people that we should ‘praise’ God; still more in the suggestion that God Himself demanded it. We all despise the man who demands continued assurance of his own virtue, intelligence or delightfulness; we despise still more the crowd of people round every dictator, every millionaire, every celebrity, who gratify that demand. Thus a picture, at once ludicrous and horrible, both of God and of His worshippers, threatened to appear in my mind. The Psalms were especially troublesome in this way…”.
How did Lewis solve this problem of praise? He gives a few answers, but here are the two I find most satisfying.
“What do we mean when we say that a picture is ‘admirable’? We certainly don’t mean that it is admired (that’s as may be) for bad work is admired by thousands and good work may be ignored. Nor that it ‘deserves’ admiration in the sense in which a candidate deserves a high mark from the examiners—i.e. that a human being will have suffered injustice if it is not awarded. The sense in which the picture ‘deserves’ or ‘demands’ admiration is rather this; that admiration is the correct, adequate or appropriate, response to it, that, if paid, admiration will not be ‘thrown away’, and that if we do not admire we shall be stupid, insensible, and great losers, we shall have missed something. In that way many objects both in Nature and in Art may be said to deserve, or merit, or demand, admiration. It was from this end, which will seem to some irreverent, that I found it best to approach the idea that God ‘demands’ praise. He is that Object to admire which (or, if you like, to appreciate which) is simply to be awake, to have entered the real world; not to appreciate which is to have lost the greatest experience, and in the end to have lost all.”
Lewis goes on to clarify that God does indeed demand praise as the just law giver, but He demands (commands) praise as one who demands (compels) praise. God doesn’t call us to worship Himself as some wicked tyrant, distracting us from that which is transcendently good, true, and beautiful. God calls us to worship Himself as the transcendently good God, the true God, the beautiful God. God’s call to worship then is a call to our greatest joy. This is the second insight of Lewis I appreciate.
“But the most obvious fact about praise—whether of God or anything—strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honour. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise. The world rings with praise—lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favourite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game—praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. …I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: ‘Isn’t she lovely? Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that magnificent?’ The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about.”
I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.”
The call to worship is an invitation to delight in what is most delightful. Evangelism, proper and good evangelism, is public praise inviting others to rejoice in the good news of Christ. “Taste and see that the LORD is good” (Psalm 34:8). Missions is praise calling for praise. It is worship calling for worship. It is joy calling for joy.
My heart overflows with a pleasing theme;
I address my verses to the king;
my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe.
—Psalm 45:1
Many solid commentators, especially the older ones, argue that Song of Solomon is about Christ and the church. I don’t think that theory makes it all the way down the aisle. I also don’t think it is necessary. You don’t need to make Song of Solomon about Christ and the church because marital union and communion between husband and wife are already an analogy of Christ and the church. The Song of Songs is about that which is about Christ and the church.
The 45th psalm is also “A Love Song.” It is utterly unique. It is a song of praise for Israel’s king on his being wed to a foreign bride. How did a royal wedding song make its way into the hymn book of Israel?
The psalmist tells us he was inspired. But is this the Shakespeare kind of inspiration or the Spirit kind of inspiration? Why not both? The psalmist takes up a pleasing theme that then takes him up. He takes up the pleasing theme of love between a man and a wife, and then that theme takes him up to the reality that stands behind it. The God-designed analogy is used by the Spirit to testify of the Son.
Song of Solomon is limited to earth, but the analogy it speaks of is not. Here, the analogy reaches such a fullness in the king of Israel, that the transcendent is touched. The King is God (v. 6). Derek Kinder says this “is an example of Old Testament language bursting its banks.” In the 110th Psalm David sang, “The LORD says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’” There, Yahweh addresses one who is David’s Lord. Here, this same Messianic figure is not just David’s Lord. He is God. And God (the Father) anoints God (the King). Hebrews 1:8–9 leaves no doubt as to who is the only one who could fulfill such language. “But of the Son he says, ‘Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.’”
Understanding this, consider the “plot” of this wedding procession. The King is the most handsome of the sons of Adam and He is God. Having put on the glory of conquering the foes of God, the King then takes to Himself a foreign bride who is called on to leave her people.
The Psalmist here is inspired, but not to make an analogy of this wedding. He is inspired, but the analogy that is marriage reaches its greatest earthly heights in this wedding of the King of Israel; heights that can only reach their fullness when the King of heaven is born in Bethlehem as a Son of David: the most handsome of the sons of Adam, God and King, victorious, and taking a foreign bride.
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.
—Psalm 43:5
Psalms 42 and 43 present a song interrupted. The common themes, the shared refrain, and the progression of the psalm, as well their placement, all convince us that they belong together. In addition, a number of ancient manuscripts do present them as single psalm. All the more then, the question is, why did the division come to dominate their presentation? Why was this song broken into two?
Much will remain an mystery, but part of the answer is so plain and obvious that, like the nose on our face, we tend to overlook it. The song is interrupted, it is broken in two, because two psalms were desired for the worship of God’s people. They are not one, because two were preferred. Or, we might say that the division is liturgical. It has to do with how they ordered their worship.
It is like a concept album where a part of a song may occur again and again throughout the album in bits and parts, sustaining a theme. Or it is like a recurring motif in a symphony. We can’t sure exactly how the division of this song into two was used liturgically, but that it had some liturgical function is plain enough. Even so, I think we can safely speculate a bit as to how the division worked, and the significance of it. Something came between the pieces of the song in their worship because, often, something comes between the pieces of the song in our life. You don’t just sing this psalm, and then, that’s that. Burden lifted. Faith bolstered. Done. This is a song you need to sing and you need to sing it again and again. And all other kinds of things come in between.
Not only that, this is a song that you can learn to sing better, to sing more fully. You sing this song. Then, when you sing it again, you sing it better. There is something of a progression to the verses of this song as we move from longing to lament to petition. There is no ultimate resolution, but still you sense hope growing as your progress along through each verse and return to the refrain. In our longing and our lament we hope, but then, with our petitions, we begin to hope more. We hope better. Keep preaching God’s truth to yourself and hope better—that, I believe, is something of the message of this song interrupted.
As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?
—Psalm 42:1–2
In the opening paragraph of his Confessions, Augustine writes, “you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” All spirituality, all religion, all quests for the true, the good, and the beautiful, man’s every longing, all of it testifies to this restlessness, and yet, it also shouts that man does not long for God. Romans 3:11 tells us “no one seeks for God.” Man paradoxically wants all that God is, minus God. Man needs God and is desperate for all that God is and God alone, but he wants it all apart from the true God as He is. Sinful man is a fool wanting a solar system without a star.
This is also true of many who long for the true God revealed in Jesus Christ, because they long for God too. They long for God to deliver them, to help them, to lead them, to bless them. Such longings are not always evil, but it is evil to only long for God to.
Even the true saint recognizes something of this idolatrous longing cloaked as piety remaining within him. Here is something rare and beautiful. It is a work of God’s grace. Here the psalmist longs for God. Oh, it will be plain he longs for God to as well, but foundationally, what he longs for is God himself.
God is not a means to to. To is a means to God. Deliverance is deliverance to God. Help is help unto God. God’s leading is a leading unto Himself. Blessedness is God.
John Piper helps separate the wheat from the chaff with this question,
“The critical question for our generation—and for every generation—is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ was not there?”
Here is the heart of true worship, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you” (Psalm 73:25).
No Other Boast 