- We Sing and we Witness. (Ps 96:1-3)
- We Acknowledge, we Give and we Tremble. (Ps 96:7-9)
- We Rejoice and we Celebrate. (Ps 96:11-12)
Because He is Magnificent and He is Creator. (Ps 96:4-6)
Because He is Sovereign and He is Judge. (Ps 96:10)
Because He is Righteous and He is Faithful. (Ps 96:13)
Mark Ort - Elder HBCPN
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
-
00:00-00:02
Open up your Bibles to the book of Psalms.
00:02-00:04
We're going to study Psalm 96 today.
00:06-00:30
And while you're turning there, I want to tell you a story about a guy whose nickname was "The Great Blasphemer." Back in 1736, this kid named John Newton, he decided he was going to get a job for a shipping company, this sea merchant guy hired him.
00:32-00:36
So he worked on this shipping dock and shipping stuff.
00:36-00:38
He was out on the seas.
00:38-00:43
And he was not a very responsible young man.
00:44-00:50
He took six or seven sea journeys and he got fired because of his lack of restraint.
00:51-00:56
His boss told him that he had unsettled behavior and impatient of restraint.
00:57-01:01
This is a pattern that would persist in this young boy's life for a long time.
01:03-01:04
He joined the Royal Navy.
01:05-01:11
This was in, he was an English sailor, so this was around London, Liverpool, where he worked.
01:11-01:16
And he joined the Royal Navy and the pattern continued.
01:17-01:22
He got discharged from the Navy and because of rebellion, he deserted.
01:23-01:24
He ended up working on a slave ship.
01:25-01:27
Again, the pattern continued.
01:27-01:33
He was arrogant, insubordinate, and recklessly immoral.
01:34-01:38
He said in his journals later, "I sinned with a high hand.
01:38-01:51
I made it my study to tempt and seduce others." In 1747, at the lowest point of his life, he was in rags, had no money, he was hungry, and he worked on these slave ships.
01:54-02:04
He was reading a book, a Christian book, and this storm came upon the ship, battered the ship severely, and he thought he was going to die.
02:05-02:10
And so at that point, he gave his life to Jesus Christ.
02:10-02:11
He got saved.
02:13-02:21
Later on in his life, he became a minister and had a Thursday night Bible study.
02:22-02:32
Maybe it was like a small group type thing It was a Thursday night thing, and he would write songs for this Bible study for them to sing.
02:32-02:38
And one of those songs is one of the most beloved hymns that we sing now, Amazing Grace.
02:39-02:40
You guys know that song, right?
02:41-02:44
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.
02:45-02:47
I once was lost, but now am found.
02:47-02:49
Was blind, but now I see.
02:50-02:52
Some people might look at that and say, "A wretch?
02:53-02:55
That's kind of hyperbole.
02:56-02:57
Isn't that kind of extreme?
02:57-03:00
You know, a wretch is kind of like a despicable person.
03:02-03:14
Why do we have to be so harsh on the guy?" Well, John Newton knew what kind of a guy he was, and he knew what Jesus Christ had saved him from.
03:15-03:18
So he was able to write those words and mean it from his heart.
03:19-03:23
Songs like that come from somebody's experience.
03:24-03:37
A lot of times, and you can talk to music people, Darren or Matt or guys that are into music, a lot of times the songs that are written come from their experience, what's happened in their lives.
03:38-03:43
And the same is true with David in this psalm, Psalm 96.
03:44-03:49
Something happened here make him write this song.
03:49-03:57
I don't know if he was, you know, was he sitting around in a, you know, under a tree and watching the sheep and he decides, he's, hey, I got a good song I wanna write.
03:58-03:59
And then he starts scribbling it down.
03:59-04:06
That might've happened, but in this song, this Psalm, something happened that made him write this.
04:07-04:08
And so we're gonna look at that today.
04:09-04:14
Before we get into the Psalm itself, I'd like to read the Psalm actually in its entirety.
04:14-04:25
And then for us to really get what's happening here, I think we got to backtrack in history a little bit and see what was happening to make David write this psalm.
04:27-04:29
Sing to the Lord a new song, he says.
04:29-04:31
Sing to the Lord, all the earth.
04:32-04:33
Sing to the Lord, bless his name.
04:34-04:37
Proclaim good tidings of the salvation from day to day.
04:38-04:41
Tell of his glory among the nations, his wonderful deeds among all the peoples.
04:42-04:44
For great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.
04:45-04:46
He is to be feared above all gods.
04:47-04:51
For all the gods of the people are idols, but the Lord made the heavens.
04:52-04:54
Splendor and majesty are before him.
04:55-04:57
Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.
04:58-05:00
Ascribe to the Lord, O families of all peoples.
05:01-05:03
Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
05:04-05:07
Ascribe to the Lord the glory of his name.
05:08-05:10
Bring an offering and come into his courts.
05:11-05:15
Worship the Lord in holy attire, or in the beauty of His holiness.
05:16-05:18
Tremble before Him, all the earth.
05:18-05:20
Say to the nations, "The Lord reigns.
05:21-05:23
Indeed, the world is firmly established.
05:23-05:27
It will not be moved." He will judge the peoples with equity.
05:28-05:31
Let the heavens be glad and let the earth rejoice.
05:31-05:34
Let the sea roar in all that it contains.
05:35-05:38
Let the field exult in all that is in it.
05:39-05:44
Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy before the Lord, for he is coming.
05:45-05:47
He is coming to judge the earth.
05:48-05:53
He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness.
05:55-05:55
Let's pray.
05:57-06:01
Heavenly Father, we come to your word now and it's not something that we take lightly.
06:03-06:04
God, you're serious in your word.
06:04-06:06
You're serious about things that you say in your word.
06:06-06:10
So we come to Your Word looking to see what You have to say.
06:12-06:18
Lord, I pray for this sermon that it would be honoring to You.
06:19-06:23
I pray that I would get out of the way and that Your Holy Spirit would have His way today, Lord.
06:24-06:31
I pray that You'd help me through this passage and that it would be beneficial and meaningful to those who hear.
06:32-06:36
Lord, might You be exalted above all things You are worthy.
06:37-06:39
In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.
06:40-06:44
Like I said, we've got to back up a little bit and see what's happening here.
06:45-06:51
And whenever David wrote this psalm, they were bringing the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem.
06:52-06:59
The Ark of the Covenant - well, let's back up a little bit more than just a few chapters before this happened.
06:59-07:03
We're going to go the whole way back to Exodus 25.
07:04-07:15
Well, that's like right after the Red Sea thing, the Israelites going through the Red Sea, and Moses gets the Ten Commandments.
07:15-07:26
And in Exodus chapter 25, God tells Moses what has to happen next with them traveling through the wilderness.
07:27-07:30
Remember, they had to go through the wilderness for what, 40 years?
07:31-07:33
So they're staggering through the desert.
07:34-07:36
probably going in circles, not knowing where they're going.
07:38-07:44
And God says, "Hey, we need to build a tabernacle." You know, a tabernacle is just like a tent.
07:44-07:45
It's portable.
07:45-07:48
They can pick it up and move, go to the next location.
07:49-07:53
Well, part of that tabernacle included this thing called the Ark of the Covenant.
07:54-07:55
I have a picture of that.
07:56-08:00
It's kind of a, I think this is a little model that somebody took a picture of.
08:01-08:05
And it was the best thing that I could find on the internet just to show you what it sort of looked like.
08:06-08:13
It was about 27 inches wide, 27 inches high, 3 feet long.
08:14-08:16
And it was made out of acacia wood.
08:17-08:19
And they got everybody's gold together.
08:20-08:21
People donated gold.
08:21-08:23
You can read that in Exodus chapter 35.
08:23-08:27
There was a campaign to get people to participate in this.
08:28-08:40
And so people were donating their necklaces, and their bracelets, and their rings, and they're silver and they're fine linens and they're costly perfumes and stuff all for the making of this tabernacle.
08:40-08:55
And the Ark of the Covenant had gold inlaid on the inside and out, and it had these rings on the legs and gold poles for people to carry it.
08:55-08:56
Weren't allowed to touch the Ark.
08:57-09:06
On the top, you can see this covering with these angels with outstretched wings, cherubim on the top.
09:07-09:08
They call this the mercy seat.
09:10-09:23
Now, I probably should have known this before now, but as I was studying this, that word mercy seat is the same word as the New Testament word propitiation, which is Jesus taking God's wrath away.
09:23-09:25
It's satisfying God's wrath.
09:25-09:34
And what would happen here is they would sprinkle the blood of sacrificed animals on the mercy seat or the covering, the lid.
09:36-09:38
I just love Old Testament pictures like that.
09:39-09:41
There's this covering for the ark.
09:42-09:45
In the New Testament, Jesus, what did he do?
09:46-09:48
He was our propitiation, he covered our sin.
09:48-09:50
Not only did he cover our sin, he took it away.
09:52-09:54
That's a picture of the Ark of the Covenant.
09:55-10:00
There was a guy who was commissioned to build this thing.
10:00-10:01
His name was Bezalel.
10:02-10:09
And people that were doing this building of the tabernacle, they weren't just some guy off the street.
10:09-10:12
They were like the most skilled craftsmen in the land.
10:13-10:16
And so this guy, Bezalel, put this thing together.
10:17-10:19
And you can read about that in Exodus.
10:19-10:20
I didn't make this stuff up.
10:20-10:22
It's all in the Bible.
10:23-10:25
In fact, we're gonna learn a little bit of history.
10:26-10:28
Did you wanna learn some history and some geography?
10:28-10:32
We'll follow this thing through, because to me, this stuff is really exciting.
10:34-10:39
In the ark, inside this thing, they put a couple of things.
10:39-10:40
They put a jar of manna.
10:41-10:43
Manna, when they were in the wilderness, they ate manna.
10:43-10:45
That was God's way of providing for them.
10:46-10:53
And so they put a jar of manna in there, and that was supposed to, the theologians say, that kind of represents God's provision in their lives.
10:54-11:00
One of the other things that they put in there was Aaron's staff, his rod, and I was thinking about that.
11:01-11:05
It must have been a shorter staff that was gonna fit in there 'cause that thing was about three feet wide.
11:06-11:08
So maybe they put it in diagonally or something.
11:08-11:12
I'm not sure how it fit in there, but Aaron's staff was in the Ark of the Covenant.
11:12-11:19
And the theologians say that, you know, well, that probably represents God's guidance through the wilderness and getting them to the promised land.
11:20-11:25
And then of course, the other big thing that was in there was the tablets of the 10 commandments.
11:26-11:29
Moses had the tablets and they put that in there.
11:30-11:32
It talks about what's in the ark in Hebrews 9.
11:35-11:36
So that's a picture of the ark.
11:37-11:37
We know what's in it.
11:38-11:39
Why was the ark important?
11:40-11:54
Well, in Numbers 7:89, it talks about how God spoke to Moses from the top of that.
11:54-11:56
Now, I don't know how he appeared there.
11:56-12:04
I don't know how this all happened, but the mercy seat was where God would often talk to Moses.
12:06-12:09
And so the Ark of the Covenant was pretty important.
12:09-12:15
The people viewed this little box as God's physical presence with them.
12:15-12:16
This was very important to them.
12:16-12:17
They revered it.
12:18-12:23
And while they were in the wilderness, they would pick this thing up, and it would go ahead of everybody.
12:23-12:27
It was always the first thing that would go when they were traveling from place to place.
12:29-12:30
I think I have some maps.
12:30-12:34
If you have the first map, here's your geography lesson.
12:34-12:39
Way down here is Egypt, where they were held captive, right?
12:40-12:41
They run across the Red Sea.
12:42-12:43
That's kind of down here.
12:43-12:45
They get over down here, and they're in the wilderness.
12:45-12:53
They're wandering around, they don't know where they're going, they know they're supposed to get to the promised land eventually, and they come around here and start heading up this way.
12:54-13:05
Here's the Dead Sea, they're to the east of the Dead Sea, and they come up and that green arrow, they're just about to go across the Jordan River, and you can read about this in the book of Joshua.
13:07-13:11
When they go across the Jordan River, the most interesting thing happens.
13:12-13:13
The guys are carrying the ark.
13:15-13:15
They get to the water.
13:16-13:19
Now this is flood season, so it's not like a trickle.
13:19-13:20
It's not like a creek.
13:21-13:22
The water stops.
13:24-13:25
There's dry land.
13:25-13:26
That's kind of familiar.
13:26-13:27
That's what happened in the Red Sea, right?
13:28-13:29
The water stops.
13:30-13:34
It stands up in a heap, and they go across the river.
13:35-13:37
The Israelites are probably like, "This is really cool.
13:37-13:38
This is great.
13:39-13:46
God's like really with us." So the next thing that happens is So they go up to this place called Jericho.
13:46-13:48
You probably know the story about Jericho.
13:48-13:50
They go marching around this city.
13:50-13:51
They're taking the land of Canaan.
13:51-13:53
They're supposed to defeat their enemies.
13:54-13:55
So they get to Jericho.
13:57-13:57
What happens at Jericho?
13:58-13:59
They got these big walls.
13:59-14:01
And they're going to go around six days in a row.
14:02-14:03
And they're carrying that ark.
14:04-14:04
They're carrying the ark around.
14:05-14:07
The seventh day, they blow their trumpets.
14:07-14:08
They yell real loud.
14:08-14:09
Boom, the walls go down.
14:09-14:12
They fall flat, just like it said it was going to happen.
14:13-14:17
The walls fall flat, and they are like, victory.
14:18-14:19
God's presence.
14:19-14:20
This ark was very important to them.
14:21-14:25
We'll fast forward a little bit further here, and they go up to this place called Shiloh eventually.
14:26-14:28
Now, Shiloh was where they set up this tabernacle.
14:28-14:33
It was there for a while, and it was kind of like this epicenter of religious activity.
14:33-14:37
And so they're feeling pretty good about now.
14:37-14:38
They're very confident.
14:38-14:40
They still got to drive out some enemies.
14:41-14:48
So they're going to go over to this place called Ebenezer now, and it's almost like, "Hey, we got our lucky charm.
14:48-14:55
We got the ark, so we're good." And they get to Ebenezer, and something really devastating happens there.
14:56-14:59
They go to battle against the Philistines.
15:00-15:10
The Philistines had this area over here, and this lower southwestern area over here was is where the Philistines were.
15:11-15:15
And Philistines is where we get the name Palestine now, that came from that word.
15:16-15:21
So the Philistines, they take the Ark.
15:21-15:26
They get into a battle in Ebenezer, and you can see the red part, that's when the Philistines have the Ark.
15:27-15:29
So they take the Ark, it's captured.
15:29-15:31
You can read about that in 1 Samuel 4.
15:33-15:41
And they cruise on down to Ashdod, And Ashdod has this temple with this statue in it called Dagon.
15:42-15:43
Now, Dagon was the fish god.
15:44-15:50
They had these statues everywhere of this Dagon guy, false god, who was half man, half fish.
15:50-15:58
And so, now I don't know if this particular statue looked like that or not, but they had-- Dagon was supposed to be the fish god.
15:58-16:01
In fact, a little bonus here for you.
16:01-16:01
Nineveh?
16:02-16:03
Heard of Nineveh, right?
16:03-16:04
Who went to Nineveh?
16:05-16:12
Jonah. Jonah went to Nineveh, and Nineveh, I think, is modern-day Mosul in Iraq.
16:13-16:16
I could be wrong about that, but the city is still there.
16:16-16:23
And, but Nineveh, they have unearthed many, many statues of this fish god.
16:24-16:34
I find stuff like that really ironic, that Jonah was in the belly of a fish for three days, and he goes to a place where they're unearthing fish gods.
16:34-16:36
It's just weird stuff.
16:37-16:39
But anyway, they're in Ashdod in this temple with Dagon.
16:39-16:41
They take this ark in and they go to bed.
16:42-16:43
They get up in the morning.
16:44-16:49
The statue is falling or fallen before the ark, facing the ark of the covenant.
16:50-16:55
They look at it and they, you know, they dust it off and they pick it up and they set it back up.
16:56-17:00
And the next day they go out and Dagon has fallen toward the ark again.
17:00-17:03
And this time his head's cut off and his arms are cut off.
17:04-17:09
So the people of Ashdod are like, get this thing out of here.
17:09-17:11
Like God's hand is surely against us.
17:12-17:13
Get this ark out of here.
17:14-17:17
And so they go down, send it to this place called Gath.
17:18-17:22
Okay, Bible students, do you know anybody, anybody famous from the Bible who's from Gath?
17:24-17:25
Goliath.
17:26-17:27
Goliath is from Gath.
17:28-17:34
So I'm wondering, okay, we read about Goliath and David and that whole incident.
17:34-17:38
And I'm wondering when the Ark was there, I wonder where Goliath was.
17:38-17:40
It's just stuff that I think about.
17:40-17:47
They take this thing to Gath, and the people of Gath, they start breaking out in all these tumors and sickness.
17:48-17:50
So now they're thinking, "We gotta get this thing out of here.
17:51-17:56
The hand of God is against us." You can read about that in, I don't think I have the reference on there.
17:56-17:58
I think that's 1 Samuel 6.
18:00-18:03
So they get this, they want it out of here.
18:03-18:04
So they send it to Ekron.
18:05-18:09
You can read about Ekron and it goes to Beth Shemesh.
18:10-18:13
And that's where the Israelites got the ark back.
18:13-18:16
And it goes to this place called Kiriath-Jerim.
18:17-18:20
Now from that Ebenezer down to Beth Shemesh was about seven months.
18:21-18:23
So it was gone for a while.
18:23-18:27
In fact, up in Ebenezer, Eli's daughter-in-law gave birth to a baby.
18:28-18:31
And this baby's name, she named it Ichabod.
18:31-18:32
You know what Ichabod means?
18:33-18:35
The glory of the Lord has departed.
18:36-18:42
She knew the significance of the ark being captured, and so she named her son Ichabod, the glory of the Lord has departed.
18:42-18:44
It was gone for seven months.
18:45-18:48
And then in Kiriath-Jerim, it stayed there for about 20 years.
18:48-18:50
I think it was about 20 years that it was there.
18:51-18:52
There's some debate.
18:52-18:57
It does mention 20 years in the Bible, but there's other things that lead people to believe that it could have been there longer.
18:58-19:01
just timelines of when people were born and David's life and things like that.
19:01-19:04
So we know it was there no less than 20 years.
19:05-19:11
And David decides, I wanna get this ark back home to Jerusalem where it belongs.
19:11-19:13
You see where we're going, we're getting to Psalm 96.
19:15-19:22
You can read about that, this guy named Uzzah in 2 Samuel 6.
19:24-19:32
Uzzah is an interesting story where they have the ark on some ox carts, and the ark was about to tip over.
19:33-19:34
I don't know if they were on some rocks.
19:35-19:42
And I don't know what his thinking was or what was going on in his mind, but he reached out to steady the ark, and God struck him dead.
19:43-19:51
And it just displayed the seriousness of this box that had these items in it, the presence of God.
19:52-19:53
You weren't supposed to touch that.
19:54-20:01
Now, it seems severe to strike this guy dead, but maybe God was gonna perform a miracle there that Uzzah prevented.
20:02-20:06
He just reached out and indiscriminately grabs the ark and he gets struck dead.
20:07-20:09
So people were afraid there.
20:10-20:14
They're thinking, "Oh my goodness." So it stayed at a couple houses for a while.
20:14-20:24
And then it's coming into Jerusalem And David starts to celebrate 1 Chronicles 16.
20:25-20:34
David writes this unbelievable hymn of praise and worship and celebration that is Psalm 96.
20:35-20:37
And so that's where we're at.
20:39-20:40
We're in Psalm 96 today.
20:41-20:45
That's the story of how the Psalm came about.
20:46-20:52
just wasn't some kind of willy -nilly thought pattern that happened in David's mind.
20:52-20:55
There was something going on behind the scenes and this is what happened.
20:56-21:03
So if we go into Psalm 96, let's just go through a couple of things here and see how this will impact our worship.
21:04-21:13
First thing on your outline, we sing and we witness because he is magnificent and he is creator.
21:15-21:17
Now here at Harvest Bible Chapel, we have some pillars.
21:17-21:22
And our second pillar is lifting high the name of Jesus Christ through worship.
21:23-21:24
And we did that this morning.
21:25-21:27
We were singing, right?
21:27-21:30
I mean, it was, I look forward to that every week.
21:30-21:31
I look forward to coming here to sing.
21:32-21:33
We place a high premium on that.
21:35-21:38
He says here, sing a, I'm sorry, sing to the Lord a new song.
21:39-21:40
Sing to the Lord all the earth.
21:40-21:42
Sing to the Lord and bless his name.
21:43-21:49
You know, we sing a lot of new songs here, and there's nobody that likes old hymns better than me.
21:49-21:50
They're rich in doctrine.
21:50-21:54
They have a lot of truth in them, and we do sing some of those sometimes.
21:55-21:57
But there's something about these new songs, too, that are just amazing.
21:58-22:09
And I remember when we first started coming to church here, Pastor Jeff preached a sermon on the DNA of the church, and the second sermon was about the second pillar, lifting high the name of Jesus in worship.
22:09-22:13
And he said, you know, and he referenced this verse, sing to the Lord a new song?
22:14-22:15
Why do we sing new songs?
22:16-22:18
Because God loves new things.
22:19-22:21
God loves new things, and I can prove that to you.
22:21-22:25
In 2 Corinthians 5:17, what does it say?
22:25-22:27
If anyone is in Christ, he is a what?
22:29-22:30
A new creation.
22:30-22:32
If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.
22:33-22:37
You can look in Revelation, and what's God gonna create there?
22:37-22:39
A new heavens and a new earth, right?
22:39-22:40
He loves new things.
22:41-22:42
He loves new songs.
22:42-22:44
It's okay to sing new songs.
22:45-22:46
Fresh expressions of praise.
22:47-22:48
Those are okay.
22:48-22:49
We like those.
22:49-22:50
God likes those.
22:52-22:52
So we sing.
22:53-22:54
The second thing is we witness.
22:57-23:07
Here he says, "Proclaim good tidings of salvation from day to day." I love this phrase here 'cause it's much bigger than just proclaim.
23:08-23:15
This phrase here means exposing beauty through announcement.
23:17-23:17
Think of a wedding.
23:18-23:19
Has anybody been to a wedding?
23:20-23:21
Yeah, a lot of us have been to a wedding.
23:21-23:23
Most of us have been in a wedding, at a wedding.
23:24-23:26
Some of us have been in weddings.
23:26-23:34
If you think about the groom, he's up on the front with his guys, and there's some bridesmaids and everything.
23:34-23:36
And where's the bride?
23:37-23:39
Well, she's out back, usually.
23:39-23:43
She's waiting for the doors to open, and then the processional starts.
23:44-23:50
Here comes the bride or whatever anthem she might choose, and all of a sudden, the doors open up.
23:51-23:59
That processional is proclaiming-- it's getting ready to expose the beauty of this bride coming down the aisle.
24:00-24:07
I remember at our wedding when the door opened up and I looked out, and my bride was the most beautiful woman that I had ever seen.
24:08-24:12
There's something about a wedding, brides are beautiful, and this is what this is talking about here.
24:14-24:19
When we proclaim God's salvation, we're exposing his beauty.
24:20-24:24
We're letting people know about the beauty of salvation.
24:25-24:27
Well, this word salvation here is deliverance.
24:28-24:30
Has God delivered you from anything?
24:32-24:38
If you've been delivered from, say, alcoholism, you need to tell people about that.
24:39-24:42
You need to tell people that God did that, God delivered you from that.
24:43-24:50
Have you been delivered from drugs or any situation like that?
24:50-24:53
We need to tell people about that, that God did this to us.
24:54-24:59
What about fear or anxiety or impatience?
25:00-25:01
And we could go down the list.
25:01-25:03
Has God delivered you from those things as a Christian?
25:04-25:06
Is He delivering you from them?
25:06-25:08
Maybe we still struggle with some of that stuff.
25:09-25:25
We need to tell people, if we've been delivered, especially that we've been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's glorious light, that's the biggest deliverance of them all, right?
25:25-25:28
We were lost and headed to hell, but God saved us.
25:28-25:29
He delivered us.
25:30-25:32
He delivered us from the consequences of our sin.
25:33-25:36
That is an eternal conscious punishment in hell.
25:38-25:40
We need to tell people about that.
25:40-25:41
And that's what this is saying here.
25:42-25:43
We need to proclaim that.
25:43-25:48
We need to expose His beauty by letting people see what He's done for us.
25:49-25:55
Here's how you would maybe throw water on the flames of evangelism.
25:56-26:04
So you use those situations enter into a discussion about the gospel, that, oh, I was a sinner.
26:05-26:08
I was headed to hell, and the wages of sin is death.
26:09-26:12
But the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
26:13-26:20
If anyone confesses Jesus as Lord and believes in their heart that God raised them from the dead, they'll be saved, they'll be delivered.
26:21-26:23
We can enter into conversations like that.
26:25-26:26
But you know how to throw water on that?
26:26-26:27
I'll give you a couple things.
26:29-26:35
If you don't have any enthusiasm, no enthusiasm, Jesus, he's just not exciting to me.
26:37-26:40
It's kind of boring actually, the Bible is kind of boring.
26:41-26:47
If you don't want people to listen to your message, just have no enthusiasm and they'll tune you out.
26:47-26:48
How about this one?
26:49-26:51
You're being confusing or indirect.
26:52-26:53
We need to speak with conviction and clarity.
26:55-26:56
We're not beating around the bush here.
26:56-26:58
This is a life and death message.
26:58-26:59
We don't need to beat around the bush.
27:01-27:05
Is anybody impressed with your Jesus if you're timid about him?
27:07-27:10
Who wants that Jesus that we're ashamed of?
27:10-27:11
Who would want that?
27:12-27:14
So we need to be direct.
27:14-27:15
We don't need to be confusing.
27:16-27:17
And how about this one?
27:18-27:18
Pride.
27:19-27:20
I'll say this gently.
27:21-27:22
Nobody cares how much you know.
27:23-27:24
They really don't.
27:24-27:30
You could quote them 100 scriptures and show them how much you know about the Bible.
27:31-27:33
People really don't care about that, seriously.
27:34-27:35
They want to know that you care.
27:36-27:38
We need to show them that we're committed to the truth.
27:39-27:40
We need to be knowledgeable.
27:41-27:48
But we need to be careful about blasting them with truth bombs because we want to win an argument.
27:50-27:55
So no enthusiasm, being confusing or indirect, pride.
27:56-27:58
And here's another one, and there could be some more.
27:59-28:03
But this will throw the water on the flames of your evangelism, hypocrisy.
28:05-28:12
If you're a hypocrite, believe me, people know when you're being a hypocrite, it's like written all over your face most of the time.
28:12-28:14
Nobody wants to hear what you have to say.
28:15-28:17
If you're a hypocrite, they don't want that, Jesus.
28:18-28:21
If Jesus didn't fix you of that, nobody wants that.
28:23-28:23
So how do we share?
28:24-28:25
We just tell our story.
28:26-28:27
We can tell.
28:27-28:33
It even says here, I will tell of his glory among the nations and his wonderful deeds.
28:34-28:36
This is an interesting word here.
28:37-28:41
It means to enumerate or keep score, keep track of.
28:42-28:44
I pictured like these little hash marks.
28:44-28:45
You know, you're keeping score.
28:47-28:49
It's telling people what God did in your life.
28:50-28:52
I don't know, you could come up with a hundred examples.
28:52-28:56
"Oh wow, did you see the rainbow?
28:56-28:58
That was an amazing rainbow, I love rainbows.
28:58-29:02
You know, God put that there." Or, "Man, I was really sick.
29:02-29:13
I had the flu and I prayed and it just seemed like God was..." We tell people, we're enumerating, we're recounting to people what God did for us.
29:14-29:16
That's what he's telling here, tell of his glory.
29:17-29:20
Tell of these things that God has done.
29:20-29:23
Bring them into conversation when you're talking to people.
29:24-29:27
You could do things like, let somebody ask you how you're doing.
29:27-29:28
God's been so good to us.
29:29-29:29
He's really blessed us.
29:29-29:31
He's given us a great family.
29:31-29:32
He's provided for us.
29:33-29:38
If the topic comes up at work, you won't believe what I just learned today in the Scriptures.
29:39-29:40
Telling people what you're thankful for.
29:42-29:43
I'm so thankful for my home.
29:44-29:46
God provided a home for us.
29:46-29:48
You can bring those into conversations.
29:48-29:54
That's what he's talking about here when he says, "Tell of His glory among the nations." His wonderful deeds among all the people.
29:55-29:56
And why is that?
29:57-29:58
Because He's magnificent.
29:59-30:01
He's Creator. He's magnificent.
30:01-30:02
He launches into this thing here.
30:02-30:05
He says, "Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.
30:05-30:07
He is to be feared above all gods.
30:09-30:14
For all the gods of the peoples are idols." Back then they had a few gods, false gods.
30:14-30:16
They had Baals. They called them Baal.
30:17-30:42
the supposed sun god. They had Ashtoreth, it was the female counterpart of Veil, the moon goddess. They had this god named Molech and they would sacrifice children, live children, to this false god Molech. And they had Dagon, we saw Dagon, the fish god. They had numerous gods. We have some of that.
30:42-30:46
We have gods in our own lives, false gods.
30:47-30:50
I love the play on words in verse 5.
30:50-30:51
This is pretty cool.
30:52-31:00
He says, "All the gods of the peoples are idols." There are no less than 18 words for the word "idol" in the Old Testament.
31:01-31:03
I couldn't believe how many words there were.
31:03-31:06
And for the English language, we only had one word for it.
31:06-31:20
There's words like shame, dung, refuse, a shadow, a statue, a shape, a device, a molten image.
31:21-31:25
This idol that was spoken of here wasn't any of those words.
31:25-31:34
It's the word "nothingness" or "non -existent." What he's saying there is those gods of the people, They're nothing.
31:36-31:36
They're nothing.
31:38-31:39
But here's the play on words.
31:40-31:41
What's he say next?
31:42-31:46
"But God made the heavens." What did God make the heavens out of?
31:48-31:48
Nothing.
31:49-31:51
He created everything that you see out of nothing.
31:52-31:54
He's calling these idols nothing.
31:55-31:56
Just an interesting choice of words.
31:57-32:10
He goes, "Your idols are nothing." "Oh yeah, I made the heavens out of nothing." "Splendor and majesty are before Him, strength and beauty are in His sanctuary." This is speaking of His magnificence.
32:11-32:11
Look at these words.
32:12-32:15
We sang about this stuff just minutes ago.
32:16-32:20
Splendor, majesty, strength, beauty.
32:22-32:28
When I think of His power here, His strength, just even that rain out there today.
32:29-32:31
When's the last time you guys made rain like that?
32:33-32:38
When's the last time we made thunder and lightning?
32:39-32:41
And when's the last time you made a rainbow?
32:43-32:46
I've seen a lot of rainbows, and I never made one like that.
32:47-32:53
I mean, well, our family, we took a vacation in 2013 where we took a tour around the country.
32:54-32:54
Like, we looked.
32:55-33:05
We saw the Redwood Forest and the Pacific Coast Highway, and we went horseback riding in Wyoming.
33:05-33:10
And we were coming through the South, and we were on our way home from California.
33:11-33:14
When we went through Las Vegas, Nevada, it was 118 degrees.
33:16-33:17
And I'm thinking, wow.
33:18-33:19
First of all, that's really hot.
33:19-33:23
And secondly, like, wow, God did this heat.
33:23-33:24
He made the heat.
33:25-33:31
But the most interesting thing happened to us when we were riding through New Mexico.
33:32-33:33
And you can look this up on the internet.
33:33-33:34
This is amazing.
33:34-33:45
On July 4 of 2013, if you get on your devices and look up Santa Rosa hailstorm, you'll see some pictures come up on there.
33:46-33:47
We were there when that happened.
33:48-33:49
We were on the highway.
33:51-33:52
And all of a sudden, it was 9 o'clock at night.
33:53-33:56
We're tired, we have to go to the bathroom, we just want to get to the hotel.
33:57-33:58
We're trying to get to Amarillo, Texas.
33:59-34:01
We didn't have a hotel yet, we were just kind of winging it.
34:02-34:05
So we pull up, we can see the city lights of Santa Rosa.
34:06-34:08
You know, we had just come from 118 degrees.
34:09-34:11
It's probably 90 degrees at 9 o'clock at night.
34:12-34:13
And the traffic stops.
34:14-34:15
It's a dead stop.
34:17-34:18
It's 9 o'clock at night.
34:18-34:20
We didn't move one inch until midnight.
34:21-34:31
nobody knew what was going on. We were there for three hours. We start creeping along and we get to Santa Rosa and there were six inches of hail on the ground.
34:33-34:40
Leftover from two feet of hail, golf ball-sized. And it was just in Santa Rosa.
34:40-35:18
Santa Rosa is like maybe the size of Butler. It's not real big. Just in the city and right on the outskirts of the city where the highway went past, two feet golf ball size hail. Now aside from the damage and maybe some injuries that might have happened from that, God is awesome. I never made two-inch hail before. Golf ball size hail. I never made that before. I couldn't believe it. It was like we get there and we're driving like we're driving in Pittsburgh. People were just like, they're afraid, they don't get snow down there. I'm like, I see that stuff all the time.
35:19-35:23
But I'm looking at that, I'm like, that's the strength and power and beauty of God.
35:24-35:26
It was an amazing thing.
35:28-35:31
We need to tell people about this amazing God.
35:32-35:33
It's part of how we worship him.
35:35-35:38
Okay, next one, and I gotta hurry along here.
35:39-35:44
We acknowledge, we give, and we tremble because he is sovereign and he is judge.
35:45-35:47
We're gonna talk about the judge thing at the end.
35:48-35:50
But acknowledge, he says ascribe.
35:52-35:53
He says ascribe here.
35:55-36:03
The definition of ascribe is to humbly give credit and acknowledgement to God for the attributes and characteristics that already belong to him.
36:04-36:05
I'll say that again.
36:06-36:14
Humbly give credit and acknowledgement to God for the attributes and characteristics that already belong to him.
36:15-36:18
He says here, "Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples.
36:18-36:20
Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
36:21-36:28
Ascribe to the Lord the glory of His name." We're not giving Him strength.
36:28-36:29
He already has that, right?
36:30-36:32
We're just acknowledging that He is that God.
36:33-36:34
That's what it means to ascribe.
36:35-36:36
It's an acknowledgment.
36:38-36:39
And then how about this word "give"?
36:39-36:46
He says, "Bring an offering and come into His courts." Now is he talking about passing that offering thing around?
36:47-36:48
Yeah, that's part of it.
36:49-36:50
But it's just a part of it.
36:51-36:52
He wants all of you.
36:52-36:54
He wants you to give of yourself.
36:55-36:59
Your time, your talents, your offering, your money.
36:59-37:00
He wants you to give.
37:01-37:03
What he's saying here, it's a command really.
37:03-37:07
He says, "Bring an offering and come into his courts.
37:08-37:13
Worship the Lord in holy attire." and it says holy attire.
37:15-37:23
The translation of this really should be something like, what this means is, maybe a better rendering is, worship the Lord in the beauty of his holiness.
37:23-37:30
This doesn't mean like, OK, I'm going to go worship the Lord, so I got to go get my holy-- my suit and my tie and everything.
37:30-37:31
I got to look nice.
37:31-37:33
If you want to do that, that's OK.
37:33-37:34
But that's not what that's saying here.
37:34-37:36
It's saying, worship the Lord in his beauty.
37:37-37:39
He's the one that's got the holy attire on.
37:39-37:41
He's the one that's beautiful.
37:41-37:42
we're worshiping him.
37:43-37:49
He says, "Tremble before him all the earth." You know what trembling is?
37:51-37:54
Trembling is like a palpitation of the heart.
37:56-37:57
You just, you get this feeling in your heart.
37:58-38:02
Like, I was talking to Sherry a little bit before this.
38:02-38:05
When you get up here and speak, it's no small thing, anytime.
38:06-38:09
You know what, going into jail or whatever, it's not a small thing.
38:09-38:12
And so, you know, you get a little bit of butterflies in there.
38:13-38:15
Your heart's palpitating, it's beating hard.
38:16-38:17
That's what he's saying here.
38:18-38:22
You know, our hearts are supposed to palpitate when we worship Him.
38:22-38:23
It's supposed to beat hard.
38:26-38:32
When you open up your Bible, think about, this is God's Word to you.
38:33-38:36
Like, every time we open up the Bible, we should be trembling.
38:37-38:39
This is a great gift that God has given you.
38:41-38:46
Yes, it was written by 40 men or something, over 1,500 years.
38:48-38:49
You know, people say, "Oh, that was a thing.
38:49-38:54
It was written by men." Well, yeah, they wrote it down, but God told them what to say.
38:54-38:56
They wrote in their own personalities.
38:56-39:01
They wrote from different moods, sadness, happiness.
39:02-39:05
There were different people that wrote the Bible.
39:05-39:06
There were kings. There were prophets.
39:06-39:16
there were statesmen, there were shepherds, there were doctors and tax collectors, and it came from the pen of different men.
39:17-39:21
But it's God's word, this is God speaking to us.
39:23-39:28
He's telling us who he is, what he expects of us, what kind of worship he wants.
39:30-39:30
We tremble.
39:32-39:33
Our heart starts to beat.
39:35-39:51
These guys that built that tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant, they were bringing this stuff into the collection place as a willing thing.
39:52-39:55
This was something that they wanted to do out of their own hearts.
39:55-39:57
I imagine the gravity of that.
39:58-40:05
"Hey, God told us to build this thing." And they bring all this stuff back to this passage about bringing an offering.
40:07-40:08
God is sovereign.
40:09-40:10
That's the next part of this.
40:10-40:11
He's sovereign.
40:11-40:12
He reigns over all.
40:13-40:22
He says here, "Say to the nations," in verse 10, "The Lord reigns." That's it, he reigns, he's in charge.
40:23-40:24
He is in charge.
40:24-40:28
Sometimes it doesn't look like, things are, you know, the wheels are coming off, it seems.
40:30-40:31
But God is still on the throne, he reigns.
40:32-40:33
He's still sovereign.
40:34-40:35
And he is judge.
40:35-40:37
And we're going to hit judge here in a couple seconds.
40:39-40:45
Last point here, we rejoice and we celebrate, because he is righteous and he is faithful.
40:48-40:50
Look at these verses here at the end.
40:51-40:53
"Let the peoples be glad.
40:54-40:55
Let the earth rejoice.
40:56-40:59
Let the sea roar in all it contains.
41:01-41:03
Let the field exult and all that is in it.
41:04-41:08
And the trees of the forest will sing for joy, for the Lord is coming.
41:08-41:13
And He is coming to judge the earth, and He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in faithfulness.
41:15-41:19
This exult, this word exult, it's like jumping for joy or leaping for joy.
41:20-41:22
In fact, go back to the beginning when I was talking about David.
41:23-41:32
Remember when he came into Jerusalem and he was dancing and he was jumping and leaping, and he was so happy that the ark was finally home.
41:33-41:43
And his wife, Mikkel, Saul's daughter, she looks at him out from the window and it says in the Bible that she despised him for that.
41:44-41:56
And when they saw each other a little bit later, she says, "Wow, look how the king of Israel has distinguished himself.
41:57-41:58
Look at what you were doing out there.
41:58-42:00
Look how you distinguished yourself.
42:02-42:09
And I love what David said in I think it's 2 Samuel 6:21.
42:10-42:13
From the window of his house, his wife saw him leaping.
42:14-42:16
She was pretty upset about that.
42:16-42:37
Says, "Oh, how the king has distinguished himself as one of the foolish ones." And David said this, before the Lord who chose me above your father's house, therefore I will celebrate." When I read that verse, I thought, here's a guy, he didn't care what people thought about his worship.
42:38-42:43
Even his own wife, his own family, she's looking at him, despising him.
42:44-42:45
And he says, you know what?
42:45-42:47
This was, it was for the Lord.
42:48-42:50
We brought this ark into Jerusalem for the Lord.
42:51-42:52
I was happy.
42:53-42:54
And I'm going to dance before the Lord.
42:57-43:02
And so, is that how our worship is?
43:02-43:05
Do we care what other people think around us?
43:05-43:08
As long as we're worshipping God in a biblical way.
43:09-43:20
If we're doing some crazy things that maybe aren't reverent, or maybe out of line as far as Scripture goes, then okay, that's probably wrong.
43:22-43:45
But if we look at this passage here in Psalm 96 and see how we're supposed to worship God by singing and proclaiming and ascribing about His splendor and beauty and majesty and trembling before Him and celebrating, if we're all in the biblical bounds here, we don't need to care what other people are thinking, right?
43:46-43:48
We have a fairly diverse church.
43:49-43:50
Some people like to raise their hands.
43:51-43:52
That's okay.
43:52-43:55
You know, I have traditionally not been a hand raiser, but maybe I should be.
43:56-43:59
Maybe I should do that, 'cause sometimes I wanna do that.
43:59-44:04
I came from a really, really conservative background, and sometimes I feel awkward doing that.
44:04-44:04
But you know what?
44:06-44:10
Not to be mean to you guys, but after studying this, I don't care what you think about that anymore.
44:11-44:16
People can make fun of me, but I'm gonna praise the Lord the way I want to, and we should do that.
44:17-44:19
If you're going to clap during a song, that's okay.
44:20-44:23
Tap your foot however you want to worship.
44:24-44:25
We can't make you not do that.
44:27-44:37
If we're not passionate in our worship, I'm thinking we might be in a little bit of trouble because guess what we're going to be doing for millions of years in heaven?
44:39-44:44
If singing and worship is not your thing, I don't think you're gonna like heaven.
44:45-44:46
'Cause that's what we're doing there.
44:48-45:00
I loved the one song we were singing, and I scribbled this down real quick, where it says, I think it was the last song there, our eyes will look upon his glorious face.
45:03-45:11
When we're in heaven, for all those millions of years, we're gonna be looking at his glorious face.
45:13-45:14
That's worthy of worship.
45:15-45:17
He says he's going to judge the world in righteousness.
45:18-45:21
Now, many of you guys know that I do the prison stuff.
45:22-45:26
A couple of you guys have gone in, Jeff and I, Darren, I know Ben has been in.
45:27-45:28
It's a great ministry, we love doing that.
45:29-45:32
But I encounter guys who are in trouble with the law, obviously.
45:33-45:40
And I want you to imagine that you are in trouble with the law and you have to go before the judge.
45:42-45:45
You are at the judge's mercy.
45:46-45:50
Whatever sentence he hands down, that's your sentence.
45:51-45:56
So I tell the guys all the time, God is a judge.
45:57-46:01
They have rap sheets as long as their arm in some cases.
46:02-46:04
And the judge looks at that, and he's like, you know what?
46:05-46:06
Off to the pokey.
46:06-46:07
You're going to jail.
46:07-46:12
I was just talking to a guy Friday, and I said, "Where's so-and-so and where's so-and-so?
46:13-46:22
Where are these guys at now?" "Oh yeah, they went to state 25 to 50 years." This guy, 12 to 24 years.
46:23-46:25
They've been before the judge and they got sentenced.
46:26-46:31
We too have a rap sheet because we're sinners.
46:32-46:49
In Colossians 2, it talks about the decrees, their certificate of death, or death and decrees that are against us, but they were nailed to the cross, Jesus took them out of the way.
46:52-46:56
So when we appear before the judge, he's gonna set all things right, right?
46:56-47:00
It says here that he's righteous and he's faithful.
47:01-47:02
He's all about keeping his promises.
47:03-47:04
He's faithful.
47:04-47:05
He's going to keep his promise.
47:06-47:15
And when he says that, "Depart from me," he's sentenced people to an eternal conscious punishment in a real place called hell.
47:16-47:18
And we don't want people to go there.
47:19-47:20
We don't want people to go there.
47:21-47:26
And so, we talked about this earlier, we evangelize, we tell people, it's part of our worship.
47:28-47:37
But he has taken the decrees that were against you What's not to celebrate?
47:38-47:40
That's the ultimate thing to celebrate.
47:41-47:46
That our sins have been taken from the East to the West and removed from us.
47:47-47:48
They're gone.
47:50-47:53
But it says that God will remember them no more.
47:54-47:55
He'll remember your sins no more.
47:56-47:57
It's not that he has a bad memory.
47:58-47:59
He's not going to bring them up to you again.
47:59-48:01
Jesus took them out of the way.
48:01-48:03
Jesus took our place.
48:03-48:04
He was our substitute.
48:06-48:10
I tell the guys in the jail, somebody had to pay for your crime.
48:11-48:11
And it was you.
48:13-48:15
And the same with our sin.
48:15-48:16
Somebody has to pay for that.
48:17-48:22
And it will be you if you don't let Jesus do it.
48:22-48:28
Jesus came, bled, suffered, died on the cross as your substitute.
48:29-48:35
He looks at us as righteousness We put our faith and trust and our hope in His Son, Jesus Christ.
48:35-48:41
And so why I say that is that's why we worship God.
48:41-48:43
That's why we're not ashamed to worship God.
48:45-48:51
When we've been there 10 ,000 years, you know this verse in the song, right?
48:52-48:59
I was looking at this song this week, and this verse never clicked with me until this week.
49:01-49:01
Think about this.
49:02-49:03
It boggles your mind.
49:04-49:13
When we've been there 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun.
49:15-49:19
You can be there 10,000 years and you haven't lost one day of worship.
49:20-49:26
You're just going to keep doing it for another 10,000, for another 10,000, for a million.
49:27-49:29
And there's no days being knocked off.
49:29-49:31
It's like, I still have forever.
49:31-49:32
We still have forever.
49:32-49:40
When we've been there 10,000 years, bright, shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun.
49:42-49:42
Let's pray.
49:43-49:47
Heavenly Father, we have so much to praise You for.
49:48-49:53
We have so much to give You honor and worship You for.
49:54-49:57
Lord, You took our sins and cast them into the sea.
49:58-49:59
The depths of the sea.
49:59-50:02
took them as far from the east as to the west.
50:03-50:14
That alone, if you never did one more thing for us, God, you did more than enough by offering your Son, giving Him to those who would receive Him by faith.
50:18-50:27
Lord, that's just amazing that you would do that for me and for my friends here, Lord, that you would do that.
50:28-50:42
Lord, I pray that we would sing our lungs out because of our great love for you.
50:43-50:50
Lord, forgive us of our half-hearted, lukewarm singing, praising you, our worship Lord.
50:51-50:56
Forgive us of not loving you with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
50:56-51:09
Lord, I pray we would have a reasonable rekindled, fresh look at who you are, and just give you all the praise, because Lord, You are so worthy.
51:10-51:14
Thank You, Lord, for the opportunity to look at Your Word this morning.
51:14-51:15
You are awesome.
51:17-51:18
And we acknowledge that today.
51:19-51:20
In Jesus' name, Amen.
Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Psalm 96
Why does Harvest Bible Chapel place such an emphasis on high impact worship services?
What is meant by 'ascribe to the Lord'? Why would God want people to recite His attributes?
How are worship and evangelism related? And what steps can you take to share the gospel with more confidence and with more frequency?
What obstacles are holding you back from passionately worshiping the Lord? How can you overcome these obstacles?
Breakout Questions:
Pray for one another.
