Four Essential Things

With my whole heart I will praise you, holding nothing back. Hallelujah! Come with open arms to thank you, with my heart embrace. I can see your face, it's smiling.

With my whole life I will serve you, Captured by your love. Hallelujah! Oh, amazing love! Oh, amazing love! Lord, your heart is overflowing, accept your loving as you join the song. Hallelujah! Heaven sings along, I hear the voices swell to great crescendos, Praising your great love.

Hallelujah! Oh, amazing love! Oh, amazing love! You're the fairest of ten thousand, you're my life and breath. Hallelujah! And I'll praise this love. Hallelujah! Oh, amazing love! Oh, amazing love! Let's turn together to one of the psalms, shall we? Psalm 96.

And I'd like you to join in reading that psalm with me. We've been listening to our young ladies there sing about the amazing love of our Lord Jesus. And that love of our Lord Jesus is anticipated in the Old Testament, and sometimes the psalmist got quite exuberant about what he understood of salvation, which you and I have an even clearer grasp of, because we live after the day of the Lord.

So Psalm 96, let's join reading this together. If you've got the NIV version of the Bible, then join with me, will you? Psalm 96. Sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord all the earth.

Sing to the Lord, praise his name, proclaim his salvation day after day. Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples. For great is the Lord, and most worthy of praise.

He is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before him, strength and glory are in his sanctuary.

Ascribe to the Lord, O families of nations, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due to his name. Bring an offering and come into his courts.

Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness. Tremble before him, all the earth. Say among the nations, the Lord reigns.

The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved. He will judge the peoples with equity. Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad.

Let the sea resound and all that is in it. Let the fields be jubilant and everything in them. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy.

They will sing before the Lord for he comes. He comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his truth.

Now the interesting thing about the Psalms is that it's the oldest Christian hymn book. I really mean that because when our Lord, you remember, was on his way to the garden after they'd kept he and his disciples the Passover, which he'd changed into the Lord's Supper, then they sang hymns. And of course the only hymn book that they got was the Psalter, was the book of Psalms.

It's good to sing hymns to the Lord. It's good to sing scriptural hymns particularly. Psalm 96.

I mentioned this morning, yesterday I was in Kuwait International Airport. I was waiting there in the Gulf for a connecting flight. I'd come in from Karachi.

I needed a flight from Delhi on to London and there was a two-hour pause. And so for the second time in just a short space, I found myself in Kuwait International Airport. Working on an address.

Almost the headquarters of Islam. Working on an address to bring to a Christian church here in England. It seemed somehow, just to give me the perspective that I required, because I wanted to ask the Lord to focus my attention on his word that that could be the sort of fulcrum on which I could bring to you some of the convictions and experiences that are mine as a result of almost what could be called a whistle-stop tour of Nepal and Pakistan.

And so as I was meditating on this psalm, it seemed to me that the Lord was teaching me four things. Four lessons from the psalmist. And I want to share them.

But a great deal of what I have this evening is illustration. And I don't apologize for that, for it's a good thing sometimes to illustrate God's word by practical, relating of practical things that have happened in more recent days. Now four lessons from the psalmist.

Let me give them to you right now and then you'll see what is my skeleton, if you like, just to change the metaphor on which I'm going to speak to you this evening. What we are to sing to the Lord, verse one, a new song. You got it? What we are to sing to the Lord, David says, or whoever wrote this, a new song.

What we are to know about the Lord, verse four, he is great. What we are to know about the Lord, he is great. What we are to say from the Lord, verse 10, the Lord reigns.

What we are to say from the Lord, verse 10, the Lord reigns. What we are to expect of the Lord, verse 13, the Lord comes. The Lord comes.

Four very simple lessons from the psalmist. I'll come back to them, but as I say, most of what I have to share this evening is in terms of illustration, but you'll see that it knits in to what I've just been bringing to your attention right now. What we are to sing to the Lord, a new song.

Sing to the Lord, verse one, a new song. Sing to the Lord all the earth. Now it's very interesting, isn't it, that wherever you travel in the world today, it does seem as though Christian people are experiencing a new desire to praise the Lord.

This isn't something at the tab. If you think it is, then I can take you to many, many a place in various parts where folk are finding a new release in song. In the last couple of months, I've been into Tanzania, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Pakistan, and Nepal.

So I can speak with a certain degree of authority in this issue. People are singing new songs. It's not that they're sort of jettisoning the old songs, not that they have any sense.

The best of the old songs need to be kept. But there is a spirit of praise. Somebody got alongside me the other day, I think it was in Pakistan, and said, do you think this is a dispensation of praise? Well, I wasn't quite sure what he meant by dispensation, actually.

Probably been reading the Schofield Bible. But if he meant, did I think that it was good for Christian people to praise the Lord, then yes, I do. And I recall a little meeting I was at in Nepal just, what, eight days ago now? It was in a very, very humble place.

Probably the luxury that you give your car in a garage. That would describe the room in which we were all squatting together, about 30 or 40 people. And we spent about an hour just singing the praise of the Lord.

They in Nepali language, me trying to follow what they were saying. And then suddenly, and I don't speak in any exaggerated fashion, the Lord came. It was a remarkable experience.

He just came in waves of His grace. And from the eyes of everyone present, again, I don't think I exaggerate, tears started to fall. And I was asking the Lord, Lord, why am I crying amongst these people? What is it? And then the burden that they had seemed to grab me, as I realized that within this fellowship there was a great deal of misunderstanding and a great deal of hurt.

And the Lord was dealing with this in a most stupendous fashion. And although I hadn't prepared what I was going to say, I felt Him directing me to that little incident, you know, where our Lord Jesus takes the water in the bowl and He applies it to the feet of the disciples. And I spoke about Christian humility and love.

And then the Lord gave us our song back again. And for about three hours, we came before the Lord in praise and in worship. The Lord praised His name, verse 2, proclaimed His salvation day after day.

What we are to sing to the Lord, a new song, but it's a song about something that is the most spectacular subject in the whole of the world. You see, you can't sing these songs that we put on our overheads, or indeed what we've got in hymns of faith. You can't sing them from the depth of your heart unless they are illustrating verbally an experience that is yours.

Cliff Richard doesn't claim to be a theologian, but actually he's quite cute. And he wrote a book entitled New Singer, New Song. And he was illustrating the fact that when he was saved, he became a new singer.

And he had something else to sing about. And around the world, as I say, and particularly in Nepal and Pakistan, they are singing to the Lord the same sort of praises as we're singing here. I had Sunday on Friday in Karachi.

If that sounds a bit Irish, it's not. It's Pakistani. Because the holy day in Pakistan culture is a Friday.

That's when the Muslims go to the mosque. And the Christians have to go to church on a Friday. Because if they didn't go on a Friday, they went on a Sunday.

Then all the Christians who were normally working, they of course couldn't get along to church. So I've already had one Sabbath this week. So I'm pretty good, actually.

I've been to church three times, so to speak. But in Karachi, in the Lagos Fellowship, on Friday afternoon, there would be about 80 young people who met with me. We started our service at 4.30 and we finished getting on towards 8 o'clock.

And the rapturous singing there was something that had to be believed. Now most of these young folk had come away from a background. I do hope you're listening up there, because I've come a long way to share this with you this evening.

They were singing songs that indicated they'd been released from Hinduism. They'd been released from the power of the devil. And when you have had something like that as an experience in your own life, then indeed you really need to sing.

Do you remember some of you, Gary Goodall, who's out there in Pakistan? You see, some may be thinking this evening as I open my address a little further, well it's all right, this is all for special people. Those folks who are out in third world countries, or special saintly people that we call missionaries. But you know, there was a lad who came into the tab hardly five years ago, perhaps four years ago.

He didn't actually come into the sanctuary, he came into the coffee house. He got long hair, he got earrings through his ears, he could hardly twin three or four words together without stuttering. And he was in a right state.

And God came along and he changed that fellow completely, upside down, inside out. And just Saturday I was having lunch with him in a restaurant in Karachi. And I said to him, Gary, don't you realize what's happened to your personality? You're so different, and he is.

I mean, this lad who was so stuttering, and although he looked a little bit like a dropout, he had little going for him in his life. And yet when the Lord Jesus stepped into his personality and changed him, he's given him an ability to tell others of the gospel of Jesus. And although he can't speak Urdu, there in Pakistan he's selling more gospel tracts than anybody else in the whole of his evangelistic team.

And he just loves the Lord. Four years converted and he's been in jail. They chucked him in jail for about a week.

I said, what was it like? He said it was good. Now, have you all got this? We're not talking about David Livingstone. We're not talking about George Verver.

We're talking about an Aubrey Garden kid who came into our coffee house, a dropout, and he's now in Pakistan telling others of the gospel of Christ, and he rejoices that he was thrown in jail. And I said, why? Well, he said the prisoners came and they so admired what we were doing that they listened to what we had to say. They brought us all our food.

They did all our washing, and we just had a ball in jail. A new singer. A new song.

What does the Lord, what are we to sing to the Lord? We're to sing a song that proclaims the salvation that is ours. Edith Cavill, a great missionary woman of a century or so ago, says never, never stop singing God's praise. What are we to know about the Lord? Look at verse four.

For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise. It's good to be clear about what you believe. It's good to be clear in conveying what you believe to other people, or else they completely misunderstand you.

Do you know that the Queen got to Nepal before me? I said to Margaret Thatcher, I said, please send somebody on just to sort of make things easy for me. Well, the Queen went there, and now you've got to think this one through in an English culture, how you would read this notice. It's beautiful in Nepali pidgin English, but a sophisticated Western mind that reads it sees something completely different.

It says, this is Kathmandu, the main city in Nepal. God bless the Queen of England, and God help her consort. You see, you can take it in a couple of different ways, can't you? I don't know what Prince Philip thought when he went down there.

God help her consort. What are we to know about the Lord? We want to know precisely who God is and what God has done. God is great.

God is praiseworthy. God is awesome. God is supreme.

This is what God is. He's great. But the most wonderful thing in life is to know this God.

And he's not great in the sense of being matey. Now, I don't want you to go away from the tab, ever feeling that we've got an attitude to God that makes him our mate in a very sort of slovenly way. He's a mighty God.

He's to be feared, you see. He's to be respected. Do you know what he is to fear? Some folk flew from Addis Ababa, just in case your geography is not that good.

That's Ethiopia. To Kathmandu. And on to Pokhara to one of the conferences I was taking.

And they flew by Air China. Air China. Now, have you ever noticed how the Chinese, they have problems with English too.

It's not that they can't express themselves rightly when they're speaking it, but they get their L's and their R's mixed up. Have you ever heard a Chinese who's very glad to see you? Well, these missionaries who've been doing leprosy work out in Ethiopia, they got aboard this jet to get eventually to Karachi and then on to Kathmandu. And the voice of the captain or one of the stewards came through on the loudspeakers.

And he welcomed them aboard. He said that they were very welcome. And he trusted that they would have a very good fright.

And cap that by saying our frying time to Karachi is three and a half hours. Someone who's neurotic as I am about flying would have got off, I think. Now, God is to be feared.

Not in the sense of an impending air disaster, but in the sense of a great and a holy God who's all that you are not. And yet he longs to have a relationship with you. The fear is really the fear of respect.

The fear of respect. Great is the Lord. He's praiseworthy.

He's awesome. He's unique. All the gods of Kathmandu, of Nepal, the whole country, of Pakistan with Islam, of India with Hinduism and Islam and Buddhism and Sikhism and all the rest, all those gods are pretend gods.

They're no gods. Ah, you say, but here in Worthing we don't have gods. I know people who make gods out of materialism, who make gods out of the television, who make gods out of anything that's a substitute for the Lord, and they give him their devotion, they give it their time, they give it their money.

What are we to know about the Lord? He's great. He's so great that it's worth taking any risk, so to speak, to get to him and to move away from him and to tell others about him. You know, Barbara Hatton, she's another lassie who came to the tab not that long ago, just, what, three, four years ago, and now she's also out in Karachi.

She's learning Urdu. That's the language of the Pakistanis. It's a very, very difficult language.

I brought a newspaper with Urdu scripts, and I gave it to Ted Davey, and he couldn't read a thing. He didn't even spot the spelling mistake. See, the words are so different.

The language, the script, it's so very difficult. So she is in Kinnaird College, which is the posh academy for the educating of young Pakistani ladies. You see, the BMMF, the Bible Society, which she works for, has a wing at this college, and they run their language training course just there.

And so I went to see Barbara on Thursday. Thursday last, I flew up from Karachi to Lahore, and I stayed the night in the guest room that they'd booked for me at that college. And the following day, I had to fly from Lahore to Islamabad, which is, what, a distance of several hundred miles.

No, I couldn't fly. That's right. I couldn't get a flight.

And so I had to go by Pakistani bus, and you do need trust in the Lord to go by Pakistani bus. And the problem was, the bus was going at 6 o'clock, so I'd been up just after 5 o'clock. And around this college, there are walls so high, you would think that it was one with scrubs.

And could we find that night watchman anywhere? You know, that college has got gates that are 12 foot, at least 12 foot high, with spikes on the top. And the OM vehicle that was to take me to the bus station had reversed toward the gate, but we couldn't get the wretched gates open. So at that stage, there was only one thing I could do.

Sling my luggage, which wasn't very much by that point, over the top of the gate, and then try and climb over the gate. Now, have you ever tried climbing gates, iron gates, with sort of gaps between each little piece of iron strut? Well, my feet are rather big, and the gaps are quite small, and when I got to right to the top, my foot got stuck between two of the iron gates. At this point, I'd swung my free leg over the top.

It was a rather painful experience. And the spike had punctured my jeans, and I could neither shift one way nor the other way. And I thought to myself, goodness, if any other Pakistani police force happened to come by, because it's a main road at this stage, they will never believe that at 5 o'clock or just after that, in the morning, a Christian minister has been engaged in legitimate business in Kinnaird College, and is making his exit in such a fashion.

But you know, though my illustration is a humorous one, it's good to use effort to get to know more and more and more about the Lord. Great is the Lord, says the psalmist, and worthy to be praised. He's to be feared above all gods, for all the gods of the nations are but idols.

You know, when you have been in the presence of God, He eliminates fear about other situations which might cause you to be otherwise afraid. On the borders of Pakistan, there is Afghanistan. There are Afghanistan refugees.

These are people who've come in from Afghanistan because of the Soviet occupation. And when I went up there, I was to hear about two people who are beaming religious broadcasts into Afghanistan through a missionary radio station, and the mufashaeen, if I've got the right word, the freedom fighters, who are fanatical Muslims, have put a price upon their lives. 50,000 rupees dead, 100,000 rupees alive.

And these folk, I went to their den, where they hang out in North Pakistan. They are risking their lives for the sake of getting the gospel of Jesus Christ into their home country. But you see, when you have been brought face to face with the Lord, when you have a respect for God, when you have put your trust in Him, then you have no need to fear about other men, what they can do for you.

Why? Because all the gods of the nations are idols, and all the power of human beings is limited. There is only one God who is great. It is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And to obey Him is the greatest privilege in our life. What are we to sing to the Lord? We're to sing a new song. What are we to know about the Lord? We're to know that He's great.

What are we to say from the Lord? Look at verse 10. Say among the nations, the Lord reigns. Say among the nations, the Lord reigns.

Now you might feel that that's a very difficult thing to sustain. But it's quite true, you know. The Lord God does reign.

He reigns through His children today. And He is bringing about in our world a change in circumstances. Eventually, as I'll mention in a moment or two, He's going to achieve His purposes absolutely.

But through His church today, in the world, the Lord God is reigning. Do you know, I came to this tabernacle some 16 years ago. Our church will hold about 500, 600, maybe if it's packed, 700 people.

There were no more than 700 Christians in the whole of Nepal 16 years ago. They are now talking about 20,000 people being committed Christians in that country. Perhaps even 30,000 people.

Now that's a very significant thing because Hinduism is almost the only allowed religion in Nepal. I use qualification. The king of Nepal is reckoned to be a god by his people and the official religion of Nepal is Hinduism.

And yet, in the country of Nepal, there are 20,000 Christians and I was told of one area where there are 1,000 people waiting to be baptized. In Nepal. The Lord, you see, is working out His purposes.

The Lord reigns, even in that country. And ultimately, Nepal will yield to the gospel of Christ. In the 1930s, there were a little group of Indians and Nepali Christians who banded together on the borders of Nepal and they had a prayer conference for one week every year.

Back, as I say, in the 1930s. And there are those who believe that the answers to the prayers of those dear people 40, 50-odd years ago are now coming true in Nepal. I met a young fellow, not much older than some of you in the gallery, who has as his life's objective, with some teams that he's mobilizing, to reach every village and every person in every village in Nepal with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Would you be prepared to make such a commitment for the villages that are here in Sussex? You can do it without any fear on your life, without any possibility of the police saying, hey, you can't do that, but this young man, he risks a great deal. And yet, through his ministry, the Lord is doing remarkable things. For example, he uses his mind, he's sensitive in the way that he goes about his evangelism.

He's produced a little booklet. It's entitled something like this. Five Enemies of Nepal.

And the first three chapters, he gives to the enemies of disease. And Nepal is a very unhygienic place. You check any of their toilets, and you will see what I mean.

And so he spends one of his chapters just telling some of these Nepal villagers how to build a simple toilet, because bugs, viruses, or whatever the plural of virus is, it becomes a very great enemy in Nepal. But there are other enemies. There is the enemy of dishonesty, and so on and so forth.

But on the last page, he says that the biggest enemy that there is in Nepal is the enemy of sin. And he's put on the last page, John chapter 3 and verse 16. For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

He took his book to the censor in Kathmandu. The man looked through the book and saw all this business about hygiene and honesty and so on and so forth, thought it was a very good book, gave it the official censor stamp, and when he went to the village to distribute this book, one of the policemen in this local village came along and said, you can't do that. He said, why not? He said, I've got a censor stamp from Kathmandu.

And the policeman took hold of the book, looked at it, he said, my, that's a good book, isn't it? Can I have one? And occasionally they put tracks in this book inviting people to conferences. They've had something like 2,000 to 3,000 folk respond to these invitations. Twenty Brahmin, that's high caste Hindus, were invited to one conference just recently, within the last weeks.

Now a Brahmin, it's hard for us English to appreciate the religious significance of the high caste. And for 17 of these men to come along to a conference in some remote area in Nepal was tremendous. And one Nepali pastor brother who I know very well indeed in Kathmandu, he was invited to explain very clearly the gospel to these men.

And they got so excited about it. Every time he said a word that really encouraged them, they'd repeat it. Do you want to go to heaven? Heaven! Heaven! Heaven! Are you going to witness for Jesus? Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! He couldn't shut them up at times.

Seventeen of them, the lot, committed their lives to Jesus. He said, will you go back to your village and evangelize? Evangelize! Evangelize! Evangelize! But he's not baptized them as yet, because he wants them to be fully appreciative of what they're doing. Because if you're baptized as a Christian, you switch from Hinduism to Christianity, in Nepal you're risking a great deal.

Now this is what God is doing. He reigns, you see. Do you believe this, my friend? God is reigning in England.

Not just the water that comes down. We had a semi monsoon when I was having an evening meal with Barbara Hatton. She laid it all on.

The rain, the lightning flashes, the thunder, it was terrific. We couldn't shift from the restaurant for about three hours. But God is reigning, R-E-I-G-N.

He's reigning in the world today. You know one of these Brahmins, he was asked, why is it you came to this conference? Well he said, I received these four lessons on Bible study that had been sent me, having had this brochure and completed the tract which said that if I wanted more information, it would be sent me from Kathmandu. And he said, when I completed the course, your Bible study said that this God was alive.

Now I'd lost my cow. And so I said, God, the God of the Christians, if you're really living, show me where my cow is. And it was incredible.

He got instructions. Go down that path. Turn right.

Turn left. On he went. Straight to the cow.

Now this sounds silly to a western mindset, doesn't it? I mean, some of you think, well this is so simplistic. I know, that's the way it affects me. But you see, you've got to understand that your way of approaching the Bible and your culture, the European culture, which is very much a mental culture, where we think in terms of concepts, where we think in terms of propositions, that's not exactly the same way as an Indian or an eastern mentality approaches truth.

He wants to know, does this work? Will this God do what I ask him to do when I'm in a situation where I cannot help myself? And so this Hindu, this Brahmin with tremendous simple faith, he said, Lord, well, if that's what these Christians say of you, then do it. He was led to his cow. And as a result of his prayer being answered in such a simple fashion, he went to that little Bible conference out in the sticks in Nepal and gave his life to the Lord Jesus.

What are we to say from the Lord? The Lord reigns. He can bring a Hindu to his cow. He can bring a prodigal to the father.

He can resolve the complexities of your life. Let me tell you about one little chap I met. Cute fellow he was.

I was flying down from Islamabad to Karachi, a journey of about two hours. I've forgotten the days. I've done so much in the last fortnight.

This must have been Friday. No, it wasn't. It was Thursday night.

And as I mentioned this morning, I got a standby ticket. My confirmed flight was on the Friday, but I wanted to get to Karachi on Friday morning because I got two meetings in the morning, one meeting in the afternoon, then I needed to fly out just a few hours later and fly back to the UK. So I got standby and they put me in a much better class of seat as a result because there was a vacancy than I can normally afford to fly.

And there was this Muslim, a small fellow as I say, who was at the seat by the window and he was wearing his white Muslim regalia and his hair was short cropped, though he wasn't an official priest or anything like that. And he started to speak to me. He took the initiative and he said, you know, we've got two hours together.

He said, let's make them good hours, shall we? He said, what are you? And why are you here? So I said, I'm a Christian. I'm a sort of, and I use the word to describe the equivalent position to my own in a mosque. He said, isn't that marvellous? I've wanted to know what Christians believe for such a long time.

You've got two hours to tell me. Can you believe it? I said, well, what are you? He said, I'm a lazy Muslim. I'm a lazy Muslim.

He said, I'm not what I should be, but I do believe in God. And do you know, as I said to the friends this morning, halfway through our conversation he broke off, he excused himself, and I thought he'd gone to the toilet at the back of the plane. And then when he came back, he said, I had to go because it was a time when I pray.

I've been prostrated at the back of the plane. Can you imagine doing that on British Airways? You know, Lord, it's my quiet time. It's nine o'clock and we're not yet in the United States of America.

Let me get down and kneel before you. And he said, he was a lazy Muslim. And I started to tell him a little bit about the Lord Jesus.

I said, look fella, here's my sin. This is what Christians believe. Here is the Lord Jesus.

When he died on the cross he took my sin into his own body and he left me free. Ah, he said, that's nice. He said, but I can't really believe that.

Because he said, if that was the case then you could go on and do whatever you wanted to do and he'd still save you. And I said, well it doesn't quite work like that, you see. He will only take my sin one, if I'm sincere and two, if I love him.

And it's because I love him that I won't exploit his grace and I won't live as I used to live when I wasn't a Christian because I don't want to offend him. He said, is that really so? So I said, yes. He said, but the problem with you Christians is that you believe in three gods.

I said, don't believe it. We don't believe in three gods at all. He said, yes you do.

He said, there's God the father, he married Mary and as a result of their physical union they got Jesus. Now you smile. There are millions of Muslims who believe that that is what Christianity is about.

I said, my good man you're so misguided. I said, I believe that God is one. He said, you do? That's what I say in the mosque every day.

And he almost gave me a charismatic embrace in front of everybody on that jet plane flying down to Karachi. So I said, yes, Jesus is the illustration of God to the world. We believe that God manifests himself in three persons as the sun is fire in its essence gives out light and heat but it's still the sun.

So the heavenly father the Lord Jesus and this Holy Spirit are manifestations of the oneness of God. The following day I'm on another plane flying to Kuwait from Karachi and I start to speak to the stewardess and she too is a Muslim and we went through exactly or more or less the same conversation but this time I was better armed. I got a book on the resurrection which I thought I'm going to get to her to get her to accept by the time this conversation is through.

She had no understanding what Christianity was all about but she'd been to see the film Jesus and she said what did happen when Jesus died on the cross? So I had the great privilege of telling her what happened when Jesus died on the cross that wasn't the end of it I said. Take this book and read all about it and her eyes just glowed. What have we got to tell the world? The Lord reigns.

What else are we to tell the world? What are we to expect of the Lord? The Lord will come. The Lord will come immediately as people respond to his gospel. The Lord will come ultimately as in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ he will reinstitute his government.

That's why the psalmist in that beautiful psalm we were speaking about talks about the fields and the trees all rejoicing when Jesus comes. Why? Because our planet which is in such a mess not only as far as human beings are concerned but the whole world of nature has been affected by the fall. You see that with the obscenity of the deserts that I was flying over.

You see it in the pollution of our waters. You see it in the Mediterranean Sea which in part is not safe to bathe in. You find it in Lake Victoria in Tanzania full of Bilharzi disease.

The world in which we live is in an absolute mess. Man has polluted it. The landscape is wrong.

It's not how God had it in the beginning. It's not how one day it will be. But Jesus Christ is coming again.

And the Bible says he's coming again to remake the world as it was originally. But before Jesus comes to get the landscape right he gives the opportunity through the proclamation of the gospel to get the in-scape right. What do I mean by the in-scape? Your heart and my heart.

So that we might be prepared for the moment when Jesus comes to establish his government on planet earth. And this is the reason why it's so important to take the gospel to the Muslim, to the Hindu to the unbelieving pagan in Worthing and say this is the word of the Lord. And if you accept this then you get a new song which you can sing to him.

When you begin to understand something of what's in this psalm then you get information about the Lord. You realise that he's great. When you look into this psalm you get commands what to say from the Lord.

The Lord reigns. When you look into this gospel you know what to expect of the Lord. The Lord comes.

Now excuse me for getting excited. It's nowhere near as excited as I get in the third world when nobody can check up on me. I'm so glad to be a Christian.

My dear brothers and sisters at Worthing who I love so dearly or else I wouldn't have stayed here for 16 years you don't know how fortunate you are. Let me repeat that so that if in God's grace nothing else is retained but that. At least you've learnt something tonight.

You don't know how fortunate you are. The squalor the muck the superstition all that binds us people in the power in Pakistan and much of this you've never known you live in the aftermath of the blessings of the gospel which cleaned up Europe. I could prove to you that our hospital service, our education service, the average standard of ethics that we enjoy in our country is traceable back to the gospel blessings that we had years ago in our land.

That there is no commitment to the gospel on the major part of our people this day does not in any way make my argument defective. We live nonetheless in the aftermath of gospel blessings. These people have never known what Christianity does to a society.

You have. And if ever there was a people on God's earth who are guilty before him those people are Europeans who have heard of this great and glorious gospel and what he has done for us and have spurned and rejected. So learn this lesson.

These four lessons from the psalmist taught me in International Airport Kuwait of what God wants you to know and how he wants you to respond to what he has done and commit your life to him and pray for those in other countries who as yet don't know him as Lord and Savior. Let's pray. Father, your gospel is a great gospel.

You transfer sin in the way that I illustrated by the moving of my book from one hand to another. You exchange it through our Lord Jesus and as a result of his death and his resurrection you make it possible for people like us to go free. Not only do you free us but you involve us in the family of God.

You make us privileged people. You make us sons and daughters of the living God. You deliver us from our fears and you watch over us like a shepherd looks after his sheep.

Father, you're so good and I just pray that your goodness might be recognized by everybody here. That not one person shall leave this place without an appreciation of what you've done for them. And we ask, Lord, for the forward work of the gospel in Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Bangladesh, the whole of the Muslim world, may it yield to the gospel of Christ.

For Barbara Hatton and Josephine McKim, Patrick and Heidi Paris, and Gary Goodall, linked with our fellowship here, working for you there, Lord, bless them and thank you for the privilege of just being able to help and support them as a local fellowship back home. Keep us faithful. For Jesus' sake.

Amen.