Tepid Worship (part 1) - [Psalm 95]

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Worship (part 2) - [Psalm 95]

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Well, it is great to be back here to Bethlehem Bible Church. Just got back from South Africa. There's a
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Shepherds Conference there. Three cities, Pretoria, Polokwane, and Cape Town.
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So I thought we had a long winter, didn't you? So I went all the way to South Africa to get to their winter.
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It's winter there now, so it's the perpetual winter. I almost feel like quoting
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Johnny Cash, not, I've been everywhere, man, but I've preached everywhere, man. Twenty -four, twenty -five sermons in the last couple weeks, and it is good to be back.
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Why are you here this morning? Why are you here?
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For whom are you here? What brings you here this morning?
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Obligation? Duty? Spouse made you come?
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Parents made you come? Did you know worship is not horizontal?
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In no way is worship horizontal, except for the saints of God coming together to worship vertically the one risen
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Savior, Jesus Christ. Turn your Bibles to Psalm 95, and I want to talk about worship today.
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Here's the way it works at Bethlehem Bible Church. When the pastor gets convicted, he repents and is thankful for the cross, and then he preaches to the congregation what he's been convicted by and from.
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And that's what I want to do this morning. I have been worshiping with different cultures and different races for the past couple of weeks, but what unifies us all in South Africa?
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You have blacks, whites, coloreds, and Indians. Those are the four racial groups. That's the way they would describe themselves.
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Yet, how do we worship the one Savior? How can different backgrounds, cultures, languages, skin colors, different sexes, male and female, how can we all come together and worship?
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And how does God expect us to worship? We're going to look at Psalm 95 this week and next week, and it's going to be very convicting, although very enlightening.
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And here's what I love about the Lord. He uses His Word to show us our sins, 2 Timothy 3.
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And then we own up to our sins, and then He corrects us, and then He trains us for righteousness through this beautiful Word.
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I could put it this way before we get into the text. Do you think you could worship God better? Loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength?
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Do you think you could pay attention to sermons better? Do you think you could give more generously? Do you think you could sing more enthusiastically?
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Do you think you could worship God with your heart, soul, mind, and strength as the Spirit of God gives you power to do it?
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I think we know the answers to those questions. Now, before we look at Psalm 95, let's think about this for a second.
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This is a psalm. It's a song. And in Hebrew, the title of the psalms means songs of praise.
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So they're songs. We have the lyrics. We don't have the music. In Greek, psalmoi means the plucking of the strings.
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And so we come to this psalm, Psalm 95, a very famous psalm.
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And if you look at the very top, does it tell us who wrote it? Sometimes there's a little superscription, a writing above.
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For instance, Psalm 92, a song for the Sabbath. If you look at Psalm 90, above that, it says a prayer of Moses.
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But our psalm doesn't tell us anything. Now, in the Old Testament Greek, it does say this is
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David's psalm. And if you go to Hebrews 4, it gives us a little inkling that it's of David as well.
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And it's written to draw people to worship the Lord God. If you look at chapter 95, verse 1 in the psalms, let us sing to the
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Lord. 96, verse 1, sing to the Lord a new song. 97, the
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Lord reigns, let the earth rejoice. 98, 1, sing to the Lord a new song.
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99, 1, let the peoples tremble. And 100, verse 1, make a joyful noise to the
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Lord. Every one of these, drawing the reader in, it's time to worship the God who is great.
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And we think maybe David wrote this for the Feast of Tabernacles. It was a festival, it was the autumn time.
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It was a good celebration that God had rescued Israel out of Egypt. And so let's have a psalm, and let's have a psalm that invites other people to worship.
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Tozer said, Worship is to feel in your heart and express in some appropriate manner a humbling but delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder and overpowering love in the presence of the most ancient mystery, that majesty which philosophers call the first cause, but we call our
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Father, which art in heaven. Let's go to Psalm 95, and here's the outline for this morning.
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We won't get to the whole thing, but that's fine. I'm going to give you some commands to worship, how to worship, reasons to worship, and warnings about worship.
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Commands how to, reasons for, warnings about. Ready? Verse 1, let's give some reasons, or excuse me, some commands to worship.
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Verse 1 of Psalm 95, O come, let us sing for joy to the
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Lord, let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. That word there, O come, literally come, is an imperative.
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And it is basically, it's like David saying, why don't you come with me to go worship God? It reminds me of Jesus in John 4,
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God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.
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Come worship, and you say, well, you don't understand my situation. I'm now unemployed. You don't understand that I'm tired.
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You don't understand that I've lost a loved one. You don't understand my trials, my kids, my issues.
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Irregardless of financial status in the church, irregardless of social status in the church,
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God is commanding people to worship. You say, well,
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I don't really feel like worship. God is commanding you to worship. This is reminiscent of what's going on in heaven now.
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Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. Worthy are you,
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O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power. Now, he wants us to come and worship, but what do we do?
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Look at verse 1. This is the how -to. He commands us, and then he gives us how -to.
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And I'm going to tell you right now ahead of time, it's loud. It's enthusiastic.
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You say, well, the good news is I'm a New Englander, and it's the frozen chosen, and we just, you know, we don't get too riled up, not charismatic in these parts.
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This is going to be the language here, poetic language, that should result in sweat on your forehead.
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Okay, for you young people, make it super simple. Your armpits are going to be sweaty underneath if you worship this way.
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Okay? At least you're paying attention. And look at the language. Let us sing for joy so other people can hear me.
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No, let us sing for joy to the Lord, to Yahweh. That means a ringing cry.
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Let us sing bad translation. Let us sing with some enthusiasm is a great translation.
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Christians are a singing people. I was in South Africa, and we had like three channels on the
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TV. We had an Afrikaans channel, some other Zulu channel. I speak neither of those languages.
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And we had the rugby channel in English. All rugby all the time. Man, those people who go to rugby matches, they're singers.
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They shout. They sing. They've got it going on. You think, you know what? We sing. We worship.
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But not really too much in church. It's at the Red Sox game. Here is singing unto
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God. You notice the text again? Sing to the Lord. If I ever have to hear one more time,
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I know I do, and I have to be patient. I'm a pastor after all. But this kind of lame, kind of weak sauce argument where you go, well,
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I'm not really a good singer. The command for you is to sing joyfully and loudly.
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Because otherwise if you say, I'm not a good singer. I don't understand the nuances. I wasn't trained.
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I don't know tone, pitch, tenor, staccato, forte.
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I don't know any of these things. I have a bad voice to boot. This reminds me of the garden, doesn't it?
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It's the woman you gave me. God, you gave me a rotten voice, therefore
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I won't sing. How did you do the first couple songs? How did you do the last couple praise songs?
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Did you mimic this at all? Let us sing for the Lord. Hey, it's like midnight from where I'm from.
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I thought the first service wasn't too bad. I thought I just had to get through this second one. Let us sing to the
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Lord. How did you do the first couple songs? Heart, soul, mind, and strength?
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Or was it tepid? Can there be tepid praise? Jack Hayford's wrong when he said we need reformation of worship.
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He should have said we need our heart to be reformed so that we can worship. Wesley, above all, sing spiritually.
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Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing Him more than yourself or any other creature.
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In order to do this, attend strictly to the sense of what you sing. And see that your heart is not carried away with the sound, but offered to God continually.
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So shall your singing be as the Lord will approve here and reward you when
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He comes in the clouds of heaven. Now, I get it when songs are biblically incorrect.
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But if there's a song that's biblically correct with God -centered lyrics, we ought to be singing it corporately whether you like the tune or whether you do not.
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Well, I don't like dry old hymns. I don't like contemporary new songs. Remember what
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Sinclair Ferguson said? When people go around saying, You'll love the worship at our church.
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We've got great worship at our church. You'll love the worship at our church. Sinclair always says,
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Well, let God be the judge of that. And the judgment from God is, the command from God is,
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Sing with your hearts to God. It's got the feel.
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It's got the force of Revelation 19. I heard as it were a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven saying,
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Salvation and glory and power belong to our God. It's got the feeling of sweat in there.
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Now, if you can't stand it and you're just learning, we want to be patient, just sit up here with me. Why do
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I sit in the front row? Many reasons. It's closer to the pulpit. But I sit up there so when
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I sing, nobody can really hear me except the reverb off the wall of my kids. They can hear me.
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When you say, I don't want to sing out loud because what other people will think or hear, you don't get worship because worship is not horizontal.
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It's vertical alone. Now, if you notice in verse 1, Let us sing.
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Verse 2, let us come. Verse 2, let us make a joyful noise. Of course, there's a corporate community worshiping
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God, but worship is not horizontal. It's vertical. You worship the triune
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God alone with other people. By the way, doesn't this blow it out of the water when people say,
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I worship God on Sundays in the golf cart. I worship God down by the lake by myself.
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No, this is corporate. To use the language of Hebrews, God extends to you the scepter and says,
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Everything I've done for you, forgiveness of sins, you get together with other Christians and sing my praises on Sunday.
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By the way, we have a little thing in our family. Kids are older now, but they knew when they were young.
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Abendroths sing. That's what they do. You come to church and you sing. I didn't ask you if you could sing.
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You sing. I didn't ask you if you could carry a tune. You sing. And by the way, it all starts with the dad.
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Because if the dad's not singing, all the kids are like, especially the young boys, my dad doesn't sing, so I don't have to sing. I learned a word in Africa.
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They have pretty much the same things they'll say in English, but they use a different word. So to use a little
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South Africa language, when you were little in the Abendroth family and you didn't sing, you were going to get a hiding.
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And that's not H -I -D. Hiding place. You've got tunnel vision.
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You've got blinders on. You're thinking, I'm going to sing to the Lord. For all that He's done.
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Look, it just keeps getting more sweaty, as it were. More joyful. More enthusiastic.
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Look at verse 1. Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. This word is used for battle of the war.
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Seventh time the priest blew the trumpet. Joshua said to the people, Shout! That's the word right here.
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And he came to the circle of the camp while the army was going out in battle array, shouting the war cry.
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Ever been in a war? That's the language. You raise your voice. It's also used, this word here, to make a joyful noise.
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It's to shout in triumph when you win the war. Yeah, we won.
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Score. Scoreboard. I mean, we won!
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That's the language. It's used for alarm. Blow a trumpet in Zion.
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Sound an alarm on my holy mountain. For the day of the Lord is coming. Surely it is near.
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Now, our alarms are either loud or they're louder. That's all. If you have an alarm in your house, like security, what do you do?
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You say, give me that stuff that's just like a low frequency. Nobody can hear it except my dog. This is to shout animated praise, enthusiasm.
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I'll ask you again. How was your singing this morning? Was it like this? If this was good for Israel, how much more for the
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New Testament? When we look in here, we see from creation to consummation and what the Lord God has done for us.
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And we zoom into verse 1 and 2 of Psalm 95. It's all about God.
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Enthusiastic, wholeheartedly. Eugene Ormandy, learned after the first service.
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Carol Dame met him when he was in Worcester a few times. He dislocated his shoulder while conducting the
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Philadelphia Orchestra. He was so into conducting. That's the language here.
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Maurice Bord said he might have been conducting Brahms because in one of the symphonies,
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Brahms wrote, as loud as possible. A few bars later, though, in the margin of the symphony, it said, louder still.
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And then the writer asks, I do not know what they were playing, but Ormandy was giving all of himself to it.
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And I ask myself, sadly, did I ever dislocate anything, even a necktie?
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True or false? Moderation in all things is a good slogan for worship.
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False. Just think about Jesus for a minute. Zeal for my Father's house consumes me.
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You say, Mike, I know what's going on here. You go to a conference in South Africa. They're all charismatic there. You come back, you're not charismatic.
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Pentecostal. Well, the good news is I was the speaker, but this has been eating at me when
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I say to myself, just how do I worship? I'm too concerned about what people think.
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I'm not focused in again on who the Lord is when I come to worship. You look at verse 2.
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He says it again with this parallelism with poetry to make a point.
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Let us come before His face, our presence, with thanksgiving. Come into His presence with thanksgiving.
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When you get an audience with the King, what do you do? It doesn't take you very long to look back at the
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Old Testament where you show up before the King without a smile on your face. He's going to think something's kind of wrong and you're going to be in trouble.
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So you're going to sing to the Lord with thanksgiving. Say, well, you don't know what
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I'm going through. The command is sing with thanksgiving. Here's the easy paradigm if you are a complainer.
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Struggle with complaining. Half a full cup.
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What do I deserve and what do I get? I deserve death and hell, judgment, and God gives me forgiveness of sins.
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And you come and you worship, you go, I'm thankful. And it keeps going, verse 2, let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms.
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It means to raise a shout, raise your voice. How many of you raised your voice when you sang today?
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Now here's how pastors manipulate people. Say, well, we usually have the giving, we have the offering before the sermon, but giving's been down so we'll have a sermon on giving and we'll have the offering after the sermon.
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So is that what Mike's going to do? He's going to whack us, didn't sing well, now we get to sing at the end?
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No, not necessarily, but it helps. Have a song at the end. Why do we think
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Psalm 95 was given so often to the churches in the
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East and the churches in the West? And how many times do Eric Johanson and Tom Bertrand give us for a call to worship
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Psalm 95? Because we need the reminders. Now before you think
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I've gone off the deep end, I'm going to be wildly Pentecostal or something, look at the other command to worship found in verse 6.
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If you overdo 6 and underdo 1, you're in trouble, but the word in verse 6, okum, it's a different word in Hebrew than okum in verse 1.
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You can't tell that with your English text, they both say okum. Well, the first one has some sweat to it, some enthusiasm, some joyful shouting, raising your voice.
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This word, kum, means you're going to a solemn house of worship and it's got the feeling of quiet, respectful, on your face, solemnity, reverence, spurgeon.
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This word is to be accompanied with lowliest reverence. We are to worship in such a style that the bowing down shall indicate we count ourselves to be as nothing in the presence of the all -glorious
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Lord. There's a tone that's changed here.
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We've gone from, yes Lord, you're the greatest, to, yeah, you're so great I better be on my face.
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Getting low. And look at how the psalmist writes with this parallelism again, all driving the point.
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There's a reverence and a humility and an homage. Verse 6, let us worship.
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That means you meet a king and you lay down. You get on your face in front of the king.
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Now that's kind of hard to do during a worship service here corporately, I know. But I wonder if you've ever done that at home where you just lay down on your face and say,
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God, you're just the greatest king. I'm thankful that you'd love a sinner like me. He says in verse 6, let us bow down.
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See how similar that is to the worship? Worship means to bow down, and now he says it explicitly.
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Bow down. Every knee shall bow kind of language. Augustine said they were misled into seeking
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Him by throwing out their chests rather than beating upon their breasts.
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2 Chronicles, and all the sons of Israel seeing the fire come down and the glory of the Lord upon the house bowed down on the pavement with their faces to the ground and they worshiped and gave praise to the
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Lord. Truly He is good. Truly His loving kindness is everlasting. And the writer goes on, verse 6, let us worship.
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Get on your face. Let us bow down. Let's get low. Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker. Kneel down.
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Luke and I stopped off in London for a few days on our way to South Africa. We didn't go to the
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British Parliament, but it reminded me of the story. Neil Martin, a member of Parliament, was giving a guided tour and he saw, along with his group,
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Lord Halsham, the Lord Chancellor, and he had all his stuff decked out.
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He was wearing it all. All the regalia. And Halsham recognizes
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Martin and said, Neil! And they all went down to the knee.
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Friends, you're a worshiper. And you will worship something with your whole heart, mind, soul, and strength.
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And if it's not going to be the Lord God, the triune God, then vacuums must be filled and it'll turn into worshiping your spouse, your kids, your job, your career, the
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Boston Red Sox, or something else. As I also think of these verses here where God commands us to worship
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Him with an enthusiastic reverence, doesn't this destroy our idea of worship where we say, you know,
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I didn't really like that song we sang today. I think the pastor preached too long.
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I prefer... I wish they would have... See how man -centered that is?
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See how anti -Psalm 95 that is? That means worship is for you.
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That's consumerism. That's Mac worship. I guess people worship
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Apple too. I'm saying Mac like McDonald's worship. Have it your way. I just wish there would have been a little more entertainment.
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You know how I like drama. You know how I like the mime ministry up front and the puppet ministry. I sure wish they'd have something for children during that.
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Every one of those is I, I, I, I, I instead of what would glorify
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God. What does the Bible require of me? Is it biblical?
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Is it worshipful? And now take a look at verse 3.
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There's a command to worship. There's how to worship. And now we get reasons to worship. Isn't this good?
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He could just say, you need to worship. But now he gives us some reasons. And so let me give you some reasons that even if you have the worst trials in the entire world and you're the person that wants to make sure everybody knows how miserable you are.
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You're the person. You can't see anything good in life. You're the person who struggles with with rising your eyes up high enough to see that your salvation comes from the hills.
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Let me give you five reasons to worship God. These are good for all of us.
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Number one, found in verse 3, for the Lord is a great God. For Yahweh, see all the capitals there?
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He's a great God. Why do you worship this God? Sing joyful noise with thanksgiving.
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Songs of praise. Why? This God is great. This God is great.
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Remember the psalmist, he says, don't forget any of God's benefits. If you had to put a list together, tell me the reasons why you think
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God is great. What would you say? What would be at the top of the list? More and more these days,
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I'm impressed with God's greatness. Especially with the incarnation.
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Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
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Being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
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Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is
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Lord, to the glory of God the Father. When you see
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God and who he is, think of the Old Testament. Think of the transcendence of God.
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Think of the holiness of God. Think of the otherness of God. You say, hey, you have to say to yourself that this
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God is a consuming fire. Who is like this God? He is too different. He is too above.
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He is too transcendent. And by nature, he is exactly that. But with the incarnation,
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God by essence is transcendent. But by will, he is close to us.
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He is eminent. And he decides, the second person in the Trinity, to cloak himself with humanity so he could be our representative, so he could be our substitute, so he could identify with us, so we could have a brother, so we could have a friend.
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Why is God so great? He is so great because his transcendence is not the end of it.
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He is transcendently eminent. That is to say, he is close. Turn to Judges for a moment.
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Judges 13. I was reading this yesterday and just thought, you know, I must tell this to the people.
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I almost said share, but pastors don't share, they proclaim. You ever want to really slam a pastor, you just say to him at the door, thanks for sharing.
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When 2 Timothy 4 says, we are to herald, we are to proclaim, preach the word in season, out of season.
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But I want to show this to you. Judges 13. And I want to just give you a little hint of how great the incarnation is.
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Why is God to be great? Was the last time you said, God, you are great because of the incarnation.
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I thought that was only for Christmas time. Well, here is a nativity story, a very famous nativity story, where we have angels visiting the mother.
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We have angels talking about bearing a son. It says in Judges 13, one of the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the
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Lord, so the Lord gave them into the hand of the Philistines for 40 years. We are going to learn about Samson's parents.
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There is a certain man of Zorah, of the tribe of the Danites, whose name was Manoah, and his wife was barren and had no children.
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And the angel of the Lord, that is the second person of the Trinity before he is born, the eternal
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Son, who one day will be named Jesus, appeared to the woman and said to her, behold, you are barren and have not born children, but you shall conceive and bear a son.
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A Nazarite vow is going to be here, therefore be careful, drink no wine or strong drink, or eat nothing unclean, for behold, she will conceive and bear a son.
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No razor shall come upon his head, for the child shall be a Nazarite, you can read numbers about Nazarite vows, to God from the womb, and he shall begin to save Israel from the hand of the
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Philistines. You are going to have a baby, and this baby is going to have the hand of God on him, and he is going to be a savior for the nation.
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Verse 6, and the woman came and told her husband, a man of God came to me, his appearance was like the appearance of an angel of God, awesome.
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I did not ask him where he was from, he did not tell me his name, and he said, behold, you shall conceive and bear a son, so then drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean, for the child shall be a
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Nazarite, to God from the womb till the day of his death. Manoah then prayed to the
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Lord and said, O Lord, please let the man of God whom you sent come again to us and teach us what we are to do with the child who will be born.
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God listened to the voice of Manoah, and the angel of God came again to the woman as she sat in the field.
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But Manoah her husband was not with her, so the woman ran quickly and told her husband, behold, the man who came to me the other day has appeared to me.
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And Manoah arose and went after his wife and came to the man and said to him, Are you the man who spoke to this woman? I am.
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Now when your words come true, what is the child's manner of life, and what is his mission? You have a Nazarite vow for a mission, what is the mission?
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And the angel of the Lord said to Manoah, Of all that I said to the woman, let her be careful. She may not eat of anything that comes from the vine, neither let her drink wine or strong drink, or eat any unclean thing.
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All that I commanded her, let her observe. Now here's where I want you to pay attention. I want you to think with incarnation at the center of your thinking.
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Manoah said to the angel of the Lord, Manoah says to the eternal Son of God, the second person of Trinity, let us detain you and prepare a young goat for you.
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And the angel of the Lord said to Manoah, If you detain me, I will not eat of your food. I'm not going to eat with you.
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But if you prepare a burnt offering, then offer it to the Lord. Manoah did not know he was the angel of the
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Lord, and Manoah said to the angel of the Lord, What is your name, so that when your words come true, we may honor you?
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First of all, I'm not going to eat with you. Second of all, I'm not going to tell you my name. And the angel of the Lord said to him, Why do you ask my name, seeing it is wonderful, incomprehensible.
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Same language from Psalm 139, Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. Think about it.
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The pre -incarnate eternal Son of God shows up to Manoah and then says to he and his wife,
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I'm not going to eat with you. And if I told you my name,
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I'd have to kill you. That's how I described it to my kids when they were little. You can't,
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Mo, know my name. I can't eat with you. I'm different. I'm other. I'm transcendent. I'm above.
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I'm alien. And now think for a second. That's the eternal
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Son of God before He's cloaked Himself with humanity. I won't eat with you. I won't tell you my name.
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I'm too different. I'm too other. I'm too holy. And now think of Philippians 2, where God cloaks
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Himself with human nature. Jesus Christ is born of a virgin.
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He's manifest in the flesh. And after these things, it says in John 21, they got out on the land, they saw a charcoal fire in place with fish laid on it and bread.
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Jesus said to them, Bring some of the fish that you've caught. So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled a net ashore full of large fish, 153 of them.
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And although there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, Don't ask me my name, and I'm not going to eat with you.
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And Jesus said to them, Come and have breakfast. What do you mean, come and have breakfast?
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You're the transcendent, eternal Son of God. Yes, who's now cloaked Himself with humanity and is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
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I think to myself, how great is God? You want to know the greatness of God? Read John 13, where Jesus kneels down and washes the disciples' feet.
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Jesus didn't have to cloak Himself with human nature to save us, but He did.
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And more and more, I'm so impressed with the Incarnation. To what shall we compare this generation?
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What are they like? They're like children sitting in the marketplace calling one another, We played the flute for you and you didn't dance.
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We have a little game, it's called wedding. And we play songs and you should be dancing at the wedding.
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We have another song, we sang a dirge and you didn't weep. We have another game that kids played back then, it's called funeral.
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Jesus says people have two games, the kids play wedding and the kids play funeral. Now kids play ring around the rosie.
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The wedding game, you false teachers, you don't sing. And the death game, you false teachers, you don't weep.
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What was He saying there? For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine and you say
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He has a demon. When it comes to austere life and funeral dirge and repent for the kingdom of God is at hand, you won't identify with Him.
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And when it comes to the wedding game where there's eating and joy and rejoicing, Jesus said the
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Son of Man has come eating and drinking and you say look at Him, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.
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Friends, I wonder when was the last time you said, God thank you, I praise you that you sent your
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Son and He cloaked Himself with humanity because I was in Adam and fallen and now
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I'm in Christ raised from the dead spiritually and one day physically. I think
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God is a great God. Never forget about the incarnation. Let's go back to Psalm 95. As you're turning there, it says in Galatians 6,
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May it never be that I should boast except in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have lots of reasons to praise the
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Lord for the psalmist, God's great God. Number two, He's a great
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King above all gods. Do you see it in verse 3? Psalm 95 .3 A great King above all gods.
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Say wait a second, I thought there's only one God. Deuteronomy 6, The Lord our God is one. What do you mean gods?
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Well this is just a way to say it to prove that there are no gods. Remember Paul in 1
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Corinthians 8, Even if there are so -called gods, whether in heaven or earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is but one
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God. And so here's a way that the writer says, there's no other gods. There's only one
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God and He's a great God. If there were gods, He'd be the God of those gods.
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Philistines took the Ark of God and brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. Philistines took the
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Ark of God, they brought it into the house of Dagon and set it by Dagon. Remember Dagon? Who remembers what
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Dagon looks like? Some kind of perverse male mermaid kind of thing is basically what it was.
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The Ashdods arose early in the next morning and Dagon had fallen on his face to the ground before the
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Ark of the Lord. So they took Dagon, set him in his place again.
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Do you see the language? Here's the God, we've got to move the God back over with human hands. But when they arose early the next morning, behold,
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Dagon had fallen on his face to the ground before the Ark of the Lord. And the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off on the threshold.
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Only the trunk of Dagon was left to him. There are no other gods.
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And by the way, look at verse 4. God isn't just great, He's not just preeminent,
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He's sovereign over everything. Look at verse 4. In whose hand are the depths of the earth?
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The peaks of the mountains are also His. The peaks of the mountains are His also.
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ESV says, the heights of the mountains are His also. Luke and I fly from Joburg to London.
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Twelve hours. They had very interesting lunch. Same thing they serve for lunch and dinner on the airplane.
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It was patella, my own, jammed up, my knee in my...
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Thank you, may I have another? No, truth be told, I got...
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On British Airways, I got curry chicken for lunch, I got curry chicken for dinner, and for the snack before you disembark,
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I got a curry chicken sandwich. So, there you have it.
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I looked out the window, and for 12 hours, flying at 600 miles per hour, we're going the length of Africa.
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It took 12 hours to get from Joburg to London. And you look down there, and I could have just easily started singing,
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He's got the whole of Africa in His hands. This is language, so we're trying to say to ourselves, who is like that?
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Who is so great? From the lowest place where the miners bore a hole down into the ground, that's the language there of mining, to the tops of the mountains, and everything in between.
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God is a great God. Just listen to Isaiah 40 for a second.
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Same language, Behold, the Lord God comes with might, His arm rules for Him. Behold, His reward is with Him, and His recompense before Him.
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God is powerful, omnipotent, and He's going to come back, and He will tend
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His flock like a shepherd. He'll gather His lambs in His arms. Oh, what about the one that can't keep up?
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He'll carry them in His bosom, and gently lead those that are with the young. And then it says, of God, with language from Psalm 95, or at least reminds me of Psalm 95,
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Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand? So that's the hollow of your hand right there.
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How much water can you scoop up? How much water can you scoop up and keep in your hand without any spilling?
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That's the hollow of your hand. It's pretty fascinating to be at Cape Town, South Africa, and you stand there at the very tip.
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And over here is the Atlantic, and over here is the Indian Ocean, and here it's like total chaos.
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And you go, God is so great and greatly to be praised. You take all the oceans. How many different oceans in the world are there?
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Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Arctic, Antarctic Sea?
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With the southern motion. What are you doing up an ambulatory anyway? Am I right?
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These are rhetorical questions, Russ. You say,
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God is so great, everything He has is just in the palm of His hand right there. It also says in Isaiah 40,
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Who marked off the heavens with a span? So let's see. All those galaxies, all those stars, all those suns, all those moons.
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I just marked that. Let's see. Compared to me, the entire system out there is that long.
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Is that not a span? Russ, that's a rhetorical question. Well, right there, that's a span.
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Enclose the dust of the earth in a measure. You know how much dust is in the earth? You just have, well, here's like a little one -eighth of a, of a, you know, little measuring.
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One -eighth of a teaspoon or a tablespoon. How much dust is there? By the way, if dust is basically dead skin, 80%, how much dust is there?
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And weighed the mountains in the scales. Let's say put Everest there, K2, Rocky Mountains.
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Let's put them on there and let's see what will be on the other side. Well, are Adirondacks Mountains? Yeah, okay,
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I guess they go there too. Actually, Wachusa is a mountain. 2 ,000 feet or above is a mountain. I think
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Wachusa comes in at a stellar 2 ,004 feet, so we're set. And the hills in a balance.
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What's the point? There are some great things about God to praise Him for. There are no other gods.
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He's great. And when it comes to His size, as it were, He doesn't have a physical body, but He's immense.
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He's big. He's different. That's why you need to get a book called The Sovereignty of God or The Attributes of God or The Knowledge of the
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Holy and immerse your mind in the sovereign attributes of God because you'll think, you know what? He's a powerful
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God and I can praise Him. And all of a sudden, when you start thinking about God, then you don't think about, I'm sick,
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I'm broke, I'm tired. Repeat. Start thinking, you know what?
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No matter what, I'm going to praise God. So here's the good news, congregation.
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God loves repentance. Aren't you glad? So, if you're a tepid singer and your praise is bad and you're an awful giver, you don't really pay attention during sermons, think for a moment about the
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Lord Jesus Christ and I think He loved His Father with all His heart, soul, mind and strength.
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I think if you went to the synagogue and they had scripture reading, He would be paying attention. I think He would be paying attention to the message.
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I think when they were singing on the way to Jerusalem, Psalm 118, I think He sang with joy and with thankfulness.
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And so, when we are bad praisers and worshippers, aren't we glad for the atoning death of Jesus Christ?
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So, those sins are forgiven and we get credited for His great worship because He always worshipped the
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Father. And since those two things are true, that should make us now want to praise
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Him all the more. So, we're going to sing our final song and I hope you sweat.
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I hope your armpits are pitted out by the end of the song. Now, I don't want you doing some funny dancing here coming up and doing some things you ought not to do.
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Tozer said this, I wonder if it's even close to our radar, I want it to be in my life. I mean it when
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I say that I would rather worship God than do anything else. Let's pray.
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Father, thank You for these dear people. I'm thankful that this word here not only directs us but also convicts us.
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You're a great God, a great King, sovereign and yet You would send
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Your Son to rescue sinners like us. Thank You that He's been raised from the dead and sits at Your right hand.
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Could You help us even now as we sing to not think about other people, to not be too prideful to learn something and then not want to do it.
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Would You help us to sing? Father, I especially pray for the men. Pray that You'd help them not to be prideful, not to be disobedient.
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Help them to be leaders in their family, to even sing. And Father, we know it's not just about volume.
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We need a heart to sing. So may Your Spirit help us and may the fruit of the
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Spirit by Your working through the Word enable our hearts to just sing and to praise and to love and to be thankful and to shout joyfully.
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And Father, would You give us opportunities this week to speak well of You. We could even evangelize with more zeal and enthusiasm.
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Father, may Psalm 95 serve as a reboot, to reboot our lives so we could serve