Praise for the Redeemed Part 2 — Chuck Smith

Welcome to the Word for Today, featuring the Bible teaching of Pastor Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa, California. Pastor Chuck is currently leading us on a verse-by-verse venture through the entire Bible.

And on today's edition of the Word for Today, we'll be once again looking at praise for the redeemed, as we pick up in the 116th Psalm, beginning with verse 12. And now with today's message, here's Pastor Chuck Smith.

What Can We Give to the Lord?

So then the important question, what shall I render to the Lord? What can I give to God for all of His benefits towards me? Here God has given me life. What can I give to God? In reality, there is nothing of a material sense that we can give to God that isn't His already.

The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof, all they that dwell therein. And thus, when I think about giving to God, it has to be in the realm of Spirit or myself. He wants you. You know, I think that a lot of times we try to sort of buy our way.

In other words, you know, here God, you know, we give Him of our substance when He wants us. That's what He longs for. Just you. Time with you. Fellowship with you. Giving yourself to Him. So it's interesting.

The psalmist said, what shall I give to God? But then he starts out by saying, I will take the cup of salvation. Now, it's interesting thinking about giving to God. The first thing you do is talk about what you're going to take.

You say, well, that doesn't make sense, does it? I mean, what shall I give to God? Well, I'll take the cup of salvation. But it makes real sense because I cannot give anything to God until I first have taken the cup of salvation and thus have a relationship with God.

Receiving Salvation and Calling on the Lord

You see, it is our sin that broke the fellowship. It is our sin that separated us from God. It's sin that stands in the way between you coming to God. And thus, we have to first of all receive the forgiveness of our sins, that cup of salvation that was offered to us by Jesus Christ.

I will take the cup of salvation and then I will call upon the name of the Lord. Once I've taken the cup of salvation, the door is open for my prayers. The door is open for communion. I can now call upon God because I've been washed and cleansed of my sin.

I've received the cup of salvation. I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all His people. Now, in another psalm, David said, I will pay my vows that I made in the day in which I was in trouble.

Well, this psalmist was in trouble. Whether it was David or not, we don't know for sure. But he was in trouble. He was dying. He thought he was gone. And he probably made a lot of promises to God. God, if you'd just heal me.

God, if you'd just let me live. You know, I'll really live right, Lord. I'll really serve you, Lord. And so he says, I'm going to pay my vows unto the Lord in the presence of all of His people. It makes you think it was probably David.

For in a public figure like that, the things that you do are always in the presence of all of the people. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. Now, this just sort of seems to be inserted in here.

And it doesn't really seem to fit. The guy is just rejoicing in that God did not let him die, but that God healed him and raised him from this affliction in which he thought he was going to die. But then in reflecting upon it, he just said, well, precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.

The Precious Death of God's Saints

Ponder on that one for a while. Our attitude towards death, God's attitude towards death, precious in the sight of the Lord. If a person is a saint of God, if a person is a believer in Jesus Christ, when they die, in the eyes of the Lord, it's just precious.

He's receiving his child home. He's bringing him on into glory. They're going to have that glorious face-to-face confrontation. The child is going to enter into the awesome glory of the presence of God.

And as the saint passes that veil we call death, the Lord says, oh, that's precious, you know, coming home. And so it doesn't seem to fit contextually, but yet it's just thrown in there, and it's worthwhile.

Thanksgiving for Deliverance

Oh, Lord, truly I am your servant. I am your servant, and I'm the son of your handmaid. And you have loosed my bonds, bonds of death. So I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving. Again, God is good.

God has heard my prayer. Then it is only right and natural that I should thank God for His goodness, for His mercy, for His grace towards me. Offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving. Back in Leviticus, it was a part of the peace offering.

The offering of fellowship was a part of the peace offering was the offering of thanksgiving. Leviticus 7th chapter there. I will pay my vows unto the Lord, now in the presence of all his people. He said that earlier.

He's repeating it. And in the courts of the Lord's house, in the midst of the old Jerusalem, praise ye the Lord. Another one of the Hillel Psalms, a very short one. Again, one that was sung by Jesus in the Passover feast.

Psalm 117 and the Call for All Nations to Praise

Oh, praise the Lord, all ye nations. Praise him, all ye people. You see, through the death of Christ, salvation is now to be offered to the world and taken to the world. Jesus said to his disciples, go into all the world, preach the gospel to everyone.

And so, Psalms 117 takes us into the whole race of people, all of the nations, all of the people. Praise the Lord for, why do you praise the Lord? For his merciful kindness is great toward us. And the truth of the Lord endureth forever.

Praise ye the Lord. Beautiful little short Psalm here. In joining the whole world to praise the Lord for his merciful kindness is great. I have to, I have to concur with that. When I look at the things that are transpiring in our world today, God is merciful and God is kind that he has not already wiped out mankind.

I mean, surely we are deserving. That is the world, apart from Christ, is deserving the judgment of God. Thank God we have escaped the judgment of God through our faith in Jesus Christ. We are no longer appointed to wrath.

The Coming Day of God's Wrath

But the day of God's wrath is coming and I can't see that it can be too far off. Peter tells us in his second epistle that in the last days there would be scoffers who would come saying, where is the promise of his coming?

For since our fathers have fallen asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning. A description of uniformitarianism. The world just goes on. Everything that we can see can be explained by the processes that we can observe.

And so that life does not have to be created. The processes that we can observe can show us how life could come into existence. That is a fallacy. I don't see any cells being created out of mud. I don't see any transitions taking place.

I don't see any half-men, half-apes. I mean, if we went through that transitional state, how is it that that transitional state isn't continuing? Why aren't monkeys still losing their tails? Half-cats, half-dogs.

I mean, I don't see any transitions. So how can you explain by the processes that we can observe, how can you explain this transition from one species to another when we don't have any evidences of transitional forms now?

It seems to me that if we did evolve, every transitional form of the evolving order should be observable now. And surely we should have found some fossils of those transitional forms in the same abundance as we find the fossils of the plain species.

So it's really a fallacy to say that the whole process from fish to man, you know, is observable. I can't observe it. I don't see it. And I can't find an explanation in the forms of life that I see today in the speciated forms.

Noah, Divine Patience, and the Certainty of Judgment

So Peter went on to say the last days, they're gonna say that, hey, just all things continue. We're from the beginning, you know, just we've just evolved. Here we are. But of this, he said, they are willfully ignorant or willingly ignorant that God destroyed the world with a flood.

The judgment of God came upon those people that were existing at the time of Noah. They came to the place where they went too far. And though God's mercy is great, yet there's a limit. And God said at the time of Noah, my spirit will not always strive with man.

Now what was happening at the time of Noah? We read that everyone was doing that which was right in his own eyes. Or the philosophy of existentialism had prevailed in that society. You make your own rules.

Does it feel good to you? Is it wrong to you? Is it right to you? There is no absolute truth. And so it was a period of existentialism, everybody doing that which was right in his own eyes. And the thoughts and the imagination of man's heart, second thing, thoughts and imagination of man's heart was evil continually.

They'd gotten into Satanism, the worship of Satan. They got into genetic engineering. God said that's enough. And his judgment came. People don't like to think of a God of judgment. That's the whole thing behind the evolutionary theory.

I don't want to think that God is going to judge me for what I do. I want to do what I please and I don't want to have to worry about God disapproving of what I'm doing. And thus I don't want to retain God in my mind.

I want to put God out of my mind. I want to explain the universe apart from God so I don't have to think about a creator. And we look at the world today and we're just about the same boat that Noah was in.

Sodom, Idolatry, and Israel's Apostasy

God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Sodom and Gomorrah, the final straw, was the blatant parading of the homosexuals, the defiance of God's laws, God's natural laws. And the aggressive, militant behavior of the homosexuals was the final straw.

God says that's it. And he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. God intervened with judgment. The nation of Israel, God's people, though they were the people of God, they turned from God. And they began to worship their idols.

Ashereth, the female goddess of sexual passions, the pornography, the little pornographic dolls and idols representing Ashereth, designed to inflame people's passions, arouse and stimulate pornography.

And as a result of that, the sexual licentiousness, open prostitution, free sex. And as a result of that, unwanted pregnancies and the destruction of the new life, the babies offered on the fires to Molech.

And God said, though they are my people, that's it. When they got to the place of behaving like the heathen around them, when they were giving over to pornography, open licentious living, and then destroying the babies that came from that kind of life, the judgment of God came and he brought the Babylonians, who carried them away into captivity.

He brought the Assyrians, who carried the northern kingdom of Israel into captivity. He said, that's it. It is interesting that in the United States today, all of these things are existent and growing.

Moral Corruption and the Fear of Judgment

In the United States today, our educational system has been captured by the humanist. And they are teaching the existential philosophy, do what you feel like. If it feels good, feels right, do it. Everybody's doing that which is right in their own eyes.

And our land is so filled with pollution and corruption. TV. I don't watch the major channels anymore except for the football games. I mean, they are getting worse all the time. I mean, it's like they're seeing how much they can get by with before the righteous people really, you know, get up in arms.

And the film. And what they are doing is planting in the minds of men evil so that the thoughts of man are evil continually. The conditions of Sodom and Gomorrah, parades, festivals, the homosexuals becoming militant, aggressive, forcing their lifestyles.

Sodom and Gomorrah. Pornography. The United States has become the pornographic capital of the world. That free sex. You don't have to go but a few blocks over here on Harbor Boulevard. You see the things that existed in the decadent age of Israel.

And then with it unwanted pregnancies and so the aborting of babies. The thing that brought the judgment of God on Israel. They're prevalent today. How can we think by any stretch of our imagination that we can escape the judgment of God when we are doing the very things that brought God's judgment upon Israel, upon Sodom, upon the world?

We're living in a fool's paradise if we think that we can do these things without pain by experiencing the judgment of God upon our land. If ever there were a time when the Church ought to be desperate before God in our prayers and intercession for our nation, it's today.

We're living in desperate days. His merciful kindness is great towards us, but His truth endures forever. And in truth and in righteousness, God will judge. But thank God if you're a child of God. There is therefore now no condemnation, no judgment.

Psalm 118 as a Messianic Psalm

Jesus bore it for us. No fear of judgment, but I fear for the world, concern for the world. Psalm 118, the last of the Hallel Psalms. And it is a psalm that is known as a messianic psalm, that it is a prophecy concerning Jesus Christ, so that as Jesus sang this psalm with His disciples, He was fully cognizant of the fact that portions of it referred directly to Him.

Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, because His mercy endureth forever. Let Israel now say that His mercy endureth forever. The house of Aaron now say that His mercy endureth forever. And then it comes down to you.

Let those who fear or reverence the Lord say that His mercy endureth forever. Well, why don't we say it?

His mercy endureth forever. That's right. Good. We'll return with more of our verse-by-verse study through the book of Psalms in our next lesson. As Pastor Chuck Smith continues with, let all the people praise God.

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That's right here on the next edition of The Word for Today. Now, once again, here's Pastor.

A Closing Prayer for Holiness and Spiritual Strength

Chuck Smith with today's closing comments. I pray that God will make this a very special week for you, that you might follow after the things of the Spirit, that He'll protect and shield you from those influences of the world that are so prevalent.

We're surrounded by them on all sides, but may the Lord just put a shield around you. And may you walk in holiness and in purity and in righteousness before Him. May your life be committed fully unto Him.

And may the love of Christ just dwell in your hearts richly as you experience His love and.

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