A Word in Season: Seek My Face (Psalm 27:8)

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Seek my face. Such is the command and invitation of the

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Most High God to His people. Now when you consider what we ought to hear from God, that we should by nature and because of our sinful deeds be cast out of His presence, the fact that God calls us to Himself through Christ Jesus is the most marvellous thing that we could ever imagine.

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He beckons us into His holy presence. He calls us to come and to find

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Him, to seek after His favours, His mercies, His goodnesses. He invites us to call upon Him and to receive from Him all that He intends to bestow.

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Now we know that when we come into the presence of God we can only do so through the blood of sacrifice, the blood of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one who's made a new and living way into the very presence of God for us through the veil that is

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His flesh. And with that privilege and with that opportunity we ought to respond the way the psalmist did in Psalm 27 and verse 8.

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When the Lord said, seek my face, my heart said unto you, your face

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Lord I will seek. How do we respond to the opportunity that God gives us?

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How do we respond to the duty that God puts upon us? How do we respond to the privilege of being invited into the presence of the

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King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the God of all the earth to obtain from Him what

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He intends to give? Are we slow? Are we casual? Are we careless?

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Are we irreverent? Or do we come with a proper humility, with confidence in Christ Jesus?

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Do we come with a holy expectation? Do we seek God where He is to be found?

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He is there when His word is preached. He is there in the ordinances of the church.

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He is there at the throne of grace. And we ought to take every opportunity that we have, we ought to seize it eagerly and readily to seek the face of God.

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He smiles readily upon His people. He is not antagonistic towards us.

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He is not distant from us. Rather He calls us near to Himself.

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He is the God who is ready to draw near to us and who invites us then to draw near to Him.

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And while that's a privilege that we should take often and regularly, there's a distinct reality about the gatherings of the saints on the

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Lord's day that we should never neglect. This is the day when closest of all to heaven, the saints of God, the ones who are set apart for the

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Lord and for His glory have the opportunity together to come into His presence.

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And so it ought not to be simply an individual experience or appetite.

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It ought to be the united and the corporate sense of the church of Jesus Christ that when the

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Lord says to us, seek my face, our hearts respond to the

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God who calls us to Himself, your face, O Lord, I will seek.

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So will you determine to do that today? Will you do it for yourself, individually, as God calls you into His presence, as He invites you to know more of His mercy and His favour?

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Will you by prayerful devotion seek after Him and desire from Him His favours?

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And what about in the congregation? I know that some of us are sometimes providentially hindered.

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We don't have the opportunity. We may face particular obstacles or difficulties.

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It may be some crippling sickness or some other thing. But you probably know, as I do, men and women who would crawl on their hands and knees for miles just for the possibility of coming with God's people into God's presence.

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And if there are men and women who are perhaps in chains who could not come, men and women who are on sickbeds who could not come, people who have other burdens or duties that, for a time at least, might prevent them from attending, shall we not make sure that if we have the freedom and the opportunity to do so, that when the

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King of Heaven calls us to seek His face, to Him our hearts will say eagerly and readily and humbly and expectantly,